Publicity is good for business. That’s the whole reason to chase it: done right, it wins you listings, brings good people to your door, and makes yours the name a vendor already knows when they finally decide to sell. And because somebody else published it, it carries a weight nothing you say about yourself ever will. An ad stops working the day you stop paying for it. A published story sits there, findable, for years.
Ryan Serhant put it to me plainly when I interviewed him on the Elevate podcast:
People don’t believe advertising. They believe PR. The power of the editorial goes a long way.
And before you decide pitching is beneath you, here’s his other line from that conversation: “People think that I’m in the news all the time because reporters come to me… 30 per cent of it are people coming to me, probably. The rest are me.” Seventy per cent of Ryan Serhant’s coverage is Ryan Serhant pitching. Every reporter is on deadline with a blank page – you’re not interrupting them by having a story, you’re solving their problem.
One update to the old playbook before the list. You no longer need to pay a PR agency to write your words – AI is your collaborator now, and the writing is the easy part. Put that money into placement in front of the audience you actually want, and build your own audience alongside it (your database and newsletter are free, and nobody can put the rent up).
What’s actually news?
Write down the thing you want to share in a sentence, then find the angle. A suburb report isn’t news; “Smithville prices tipped to lift as new infrastructure lands” is. It has to matter to that publication’s readers – ask what you want them to know, feel and do, and find a named human with something specific to say for the quote.
And remember: genuine news runs on merit. A new office, a record, a real appointment costs you nothing but a good pitch.
20 moments worth pitching
Each one linked to a real Elite Agent story, so you can see the shape of what gets published rather than guessing.
- You open a new office. Local media care about comings and goings on their patch. Like this one.
- You change what you offer. New service, division or pricing model – lead with what it means for the client. Example.
- You join forces with someone. Mergers, alliances, a team coming across. Example.
- You launch something digital. Newsworthy if it does something genuinely different. Example.
- You make a prediction. Back it with evidence and be willing to be wrong in public. Example.
- You tie yourself to a running story. If your auction results disagree with the national numbers, that’s a story. Example.
- You solve a problem. Pick something your community is genuinely worked up about and do something about it. Example.
- You teach something. A class, a workshop, a first-home-buyer session. Example.
- You’re speaking somewhere. Tell local media the topic and why it matters to the people you serve. Example.
- Someone on your team gives back. Name them, and make them the story. Example.
- You put a stake in the ground on the market. When rates move, editors hunt for people who’ll say something specific. Example.
- You appoint someone. New leadership, internal or board – include what it means for clients. Example.
- You start something people can join. A local group, a competition, a community drive. Example.
- You’ve been recognised elsewhere. An award shortlist or outside coverage – just don’t pitch it to a competing masthead. Example.
- You restructure. Only interesting if the customer feels it. Example.
- You strike an unusual agreement. Novel arrangements with clients, staff or suppliers make good copy. Example.
- You hit a milestone. An anniversary, a volume record, properties under management. Example.
- Someone has come through something hard. With care and consent, these are the stories readers remember. Example.
- You’ve made a notable sale or rental. Not just the number – the reason. What did the buyer respond to? How many were at the open? Example. (More on this one below – it’s the biggest missed opportunity on the list.)
- You think something is a story and you’re not sure. Send it anyway. It costs nothing – see below.
Use AI to sharpen the pitch – carefully
Three prompts worth keeping:
The newsworthiness test. “Here’s what happened: [three sentences]. You’re the editor of a real estate trade publication. Would you run this? If not, what’s missing?” Ask it to argue against you.
The angle finder. “Give me three framings of this story – local paper, real estate trade title, finance section – and tell me who the reader is in each.”
The de-slop pass. “Rewrite this so it sounds like a person who was there. No ‘thrilled to announce’, no ‘proud to unveil’, no ‘game-changing’.”
Two warnings. AI will invent a statistic or a quote with total confidence, and if a fabricated number goes out under your name, that’s the last release of yours a journalist opens – you check every fact. And a blank chatbot doesn’t know this industry or what our newsroom will run.
Need help?
We built Scoop, our AI assistant journalist, to help you find your stories. She’s trained on how this publication actually works, asks the follow-ups a journalist would ask, and has guardrails so she doesn’t make things up. Hit the “Got a story? Tell us here” button in the bottom corner of any page on this site, or go to scoop.eliteagent.com, and tell her what happened.
Made a sale? Google is one of our biggest readers.
The article title says 21 ways, but number 21 deserves its own section, because it matters. Yes, our human audience is other agents and industry participants. But some of our biggest readers right now include Google, ChatGPT and Gemini – and every model quietly forming a view about who counts as an authority on property in your suburb.
Google assesses agents on E-E-A-T – experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. Put simply: if Google doesn’t know you know it, you don’t have it. And it’s actively looking for information gain – whether content adds something new or just restates what’s out there. Compare:
Low gain: “Just sold for a record price”
High gain: “The pre-launch campaign generated 9,744 views across all platforms and portals, 12 inspections, and five competing parties. Four parties missed out – two first-home buyers, one relocating to the area and one investor.” – from a real published Ailsa story.
The second can only come from the agent who was in the room. No portal has it, no AI can generate it – and every sale you make creates more of it. A published story about your sale, on a masthead that’s covered this industry since 2013, is a permanent, indexed, third-party record that you’re the agent who did that deal and understood why it went the way it did.
That’s what Ailsa does. A short conversation about the sale – what happened, who bought it, what surprised you – and she turns it into a published story carrying that street-level detail. Get PR for your sale here. (Hot tip: PR compounds. Every story you publish makes you easier to find, and makes the next one carry more weight.)
Originally published February 2019. Updated August 2026.