We’ve Been Giving You Homework. We Have a Better Idea.

By Ryan · Virtual Results

Starting with November’s content plan: one email delivers your prepared month. See the stories together, approve all with a single click, or change anything you like.

For years, our idea of helping with your content marketing was to give you one more thing to look at. About twice a week.

Here’s an article. Want to publish it? Change it? Skip it? Here comes another.

The articles were the service. The tiny decisions were apparently a complimentary extra.

We’ve been rethinking that arrangement. We’re introducing Virtual Results · Real Estate Wire Service, the next chapter of the content program we’ve long called PubSub. The changes start with how you review your content—and what might make you want to read it yourself.

We counted the little decisions

We’ve been producing real estate content for more than a decade. Over that time, we’ve worked with freelance writers, writers around the world, and an in-house writer and researcher. We’ve tried different subjects and formats, added licensed photography, and encouraged members to make the writing their own.

I’m proud of that work. I’m less attached to sending you another little assignment every few days.

Two articles a week means roughly eight separate decisions in a four-week month. That made sense when getting the next article ready was the main challenge. Now, getting a moment of your attention is a challenge of its own.

One month. One email. Approve All.

The experience we’re rolling out for November brings those decisions together: one email, one page, the next month in front of you.

Two articles a week, shown across four weeks. Your monthly plan can vary.

The stories, images and scheduled post dates are already prepared and visible together on the page. Approve All sits above the list. See something you want to change? It’s right there. Like the plan? Approve all with a single click.

You can read down the list without opening each item. For a closer look, open a story, edit it, skip it, or change its scheduled post date.

Think of it as a quick checklist with the work already done. We’re aiming for a five-minute review when you like the plan, or perhaps thirty minutes when you want to dig in. You decide how involved to get.

We’re testing the monthly review before opening it more widely. A missed review won’t unleash a pile of overdue posts; you stay in charge of what goes out and when.

Apparently, the skeleton has something to say

We’ve given real estate the pressed-shirt treatment for a long time. Useful information, sensible advice, very few poltergeists.

Useful information is staying. It’s getting some more interesting company.

A twelve-foot skeleton that has become a household commitment. A kitchen renovation whose real beneficiary is the next owner. A quiz that matches you with your inner haunted-house ghost type—and gives you a result worth sending to someone.

These are different reasons to stop scrolling. Some stories will teach you something. Some will make you laugh. Some will make you wonder what your neighbor is doing over there.

We want to earn that curiosity. If a headline promises a reveal, the article needs the reveal. If a quiz gives you a result, the result needs enough personality to be worth sharing. A clever headline stapled to an ordinary article won’t do it.

You also get veto power. Your audience, your judgment. The skeleton may have to sit this one out.

A quick glance at the ratings helps you decide where to spend your attention: Quality, Viral potential and Editorial risk, each out of ten. A higher editorial-risk score flags material that sensitive visitors to your website may not love. You decide whether it fits your audience.

An open-house announcement can do an excellent job by reaching the right few people. It does not need to become a national incident.

The good stuff should have more places to go

For years, we’ve helped members semi-automate social media publishing. Too often, that meant a conversation, a manual setup and a moment when everybody happened to have the bandwidth.

We want you to be able to decide on a quiet Tuesday.

Optional automated or semi-automated social network publishing, with reformatted content versions for each platform, is a major part of this rollout. Use the website version, the social content, or both. Post it yourself, or connect supported accounts for scheduled delivery as access opens. Social-only is fine. So is publishing on your website and using social posts to bring readers back. It’s your choice.

We’ve tested Facebook and Instagram publishing in a pilot. Member account connections and wider scheduling access are still being rolled out; they aren’t available to every member yet.

What we’re not trying to replace

HubSpot, Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Buffer, Mailchimp and Constant Contact give marketers powerful ways to manage their work. If you already use one, this isn’t intended to replace it.

Our job is narrower: prepare real estate content worth sharing and make a month of decisions manageable in one sitting. A capable marketing platform can still leave you asking, “What am I going to post?” That’s the part we’re taking on.

You may be fitting this in between a showing and a listing appointment. We want the content ready when you have a few minutes.

HubSpotFounded 2006

Began 2008

Launched 2010

Launched November 2010

Email & marketing tools

Email & marketing tools

Social content can start a conversation, build recognition or bring someone back to your website. We want those options to be easier to use.

Fifty clicks. Five clicks. Which story won?

Here’s a problem I keep thinking about: this month’s article gets fifty visitors. An article from three months ago gets five. What should you write next?

The example above leaves promotion, exposure and outcomes out of the comparison.

Those two numbers leave a lot out. How long was each story promoted? Where did the visitors come from? Did anyone do something useful afterward?

We’re planning recommendations that use your site’s audience data alongside relevant content and real estate trends. The goal is to give you a better starting point for the next month, with reasons you can inspect. A fifty-click headline should not automatically get to be your assignment editor.

Those recommendations would also give you a starting point for creating your own content with AI: subjects your audience has shown an interest in, with suggestions for the angle. You could use them to develop an article, a headline or an image for your site.

We also plan to let you add your own content directly from the email-linked review page.

Ask your favorite AI for a hand

Reviewing your content plan from ChatGPT or Claude is another thing we’re working toward.

That last idea might look something like this:

The goal is less context switching: review your content directly in your favorite AI tool.

We’ve spent years helping members put more on their websites. We’d like to give you fewer things to deal with—and more things you’re glad to share.

Your month, already laid out

One email delivers the prepared plan. See the stories together on one page. Approve all with a single click, or change anything you like. Approved website posts and social versions follow your chosen dates as delivery becomes available for your connected channels.

Interested to learn more? Contact Virtual Results.

Virtual Results · Real Estate Wire Service