Agents should consider setting up a Facebook page for their businesses as well as using YouTube in order to increase their online presence.
MediaVest director Charles Reid said setting up a Facebook page allows agents to control how their business is presented to the public and even allows them to edit out negative comments made on the site.
Meanwhile, videos of fam trips and destinations placed on YouTube can advertise an agent’s work and can also be linked back to the agent’s main website.
Reid said: “Facebook can be used as an opportunity to take on other agents and big business.”
He added the additional sites can be linked back to the agent’s core site, making it more likely to come out nearer the top of any search engine searches.
Similarly, linking a site to everything from public bodies to newspaper articles, will also help drive better search engine results, as will ensuring content is written according to search engine optimisation rules.
Reid added agents can measure the traffic their site is attracting by using the free Google Analytics programme.
With 15.4 million UK households now online and four million Brits having booked a holiday online in the last six months, agents cannot ignore the opportunities the web offers.
He said: “Google is the UK’s busiest high street. The internet can be quite daunting and it is quite challenging but if you ignore it other companies will exploit it and it’ll take you a long time to catch up.”