Our Guests: Julie Pierson-Fields, Fathom Social Media Manager & Renee Fregenal, Manager Content Marketing

Join us on Wednesday as we put together a rock solid social media strategy and calendar with Julie, Renee, and Geoff during this interactive Fathom Live. Click here to download the interactive guide!

Wednesday, November 3rd @ 1:30 PM Central Time.

Transcript:

0:00:00.0 Geoff Stertz: Hello, and thanks again for joining us for another Fathom Live, a live stream show dedicated to giving you tips and insights from experts in and around the real estate industry. I’m your host, Geoff Stertz. I am very much looking forward to this show today, it’s like it’s an interview, it’s a class, it’s a conversation, so we’re gonna be doing a lot of things together. And when I say together, here we are. We’ve got Julie Pearson-Fields, our social media manager, and Renee Fregenal, content manager, marketing manager for everything in Houseopedia. [chuckle] And by the way, congratulations, you just celebrated your 100th article on Houseopedia. If you have not been over there, if you’re watching and haven’t been over to houseopedia.com, it is a monstrous wealth of house information, home information that you can use as an agent, and we’re gonna be talking about some of that today, but I’ll just give a quick couple of notes here before we get going. The one is, if you haven’t gone to the Fathom Live blog, fathomcareers.com and downloaded, or opened, made a copy of this document, and I have it here on paper for you so you can see what it looks like, you’re gonna wanna do that, if you wanna print it off, that’s fine, otherwise, you can just use it right in your browser, but that’s something that we’re gonna be working through today.

0:01:13.7 GS: Also, there’s a link to a spreadsheet on the bottom of that, we’ll get to more of that later, don’t worry about that now. Feel free to engage, ask questions as we’re going through. Also, our sponsor GoSocial agent offers effective and affordable social media solutions to help agents grow their business, we will give a shout-out and talk about them just a little bit today as well. But yeah, we’re talking about social media, it’s gonna be really practical and you’re gonna be able to hopefully by the end of this show, you’ll be able to fill out a plan of how you’re gonna do social media perhaps over the next quarter or over in the next six months, and that way you’re not kind of starting from scratch as we get going here. The first thing I need to ask though, Julie, what in the world is up with the thumbnail that we used for the show today? [chuckle] Do you wanna explain?

0:02:05.3 Julie Pearson-Fields: Absolutely.

0:02:05.5 GS: I’m gonna say explain yourself, because… Yeah.

0:02:08.7 JP: [chuckle] I personally think that for anything with a Unicorn and a Godzilla is fantastic, and so we were joking around it in the pre-show, and I was like, “Can we please, please, please have a Unicorn and a Godzilla?” And then they threw a cat with a light saver, which just made my life that much more awesome, so yes.

0:02:27.9 GS: Yeah. Good job, Hannah, for putting that together, and yeah, we’ll see if it worked. I don’t know, is anybody watching the show? If you are, give us a shout-out. Yes, there are some people watching, so a bunch, actually, a bunch of people watching. We’ve got Yvette, and Jerry, and Andre. So, remember, if you say something in the comment section, it doesn’t have to be anything sensible, it could just be “Hello”, which is not sensible, but you can say whatever you want in there that’s appropriate, and we will enter you into a drawing to win either a package with GoSocial agent, which is 200 bucks worth of lead service, you can win a photo listing package up to 200 bucks worth of that, or you can win $200 worth of a yard sign, so it’s just easy peasy. Our winner for today is, da, da, da, da, Andre. Let’s see. Yeah, he just commented a few seconds ago here. It’s T-O-I-N-E-S, Toines. I’m not sure what the…

0:03:32.5 JP: Toines.

0:03:33.6 GS: Toines, Toines, yeah. So, anyway, that’s that easy, it’s that easy, so just get to comment in. Alright, we’ve got more people now watching, why don’t we get into things right now? We wanna provide you a framework so you can come away from this segment with kind of a one-page, two-page social media strategy that you can have at your desk, on your computer, on your desktop, whatever, today by the end of the show. So, there’s that. Am I missing anything else by way… Oh, let me just throw one other thing out there, here. We are sort of exploring some stuff here today, we’ve never really done a webinar-style Fathom Live, and we wanna know, do you like it? Is this something that you enjoyed today? So, let us know. The other thing is, if you do like it and you say, “You know what? Social media is a pain point for me, but there’s like five other pain points that I really would love solved, I’d love to have somebody come on do some sort of interactive webinar show, whatever, on,” let us know what those are in the comments below, please do that. We would love to know what are the things, what are the problems that we can help solve on this show, and we’ll bring experts on to help solve those problems, so that’s something else that you could help us out with so we can better help you. Alright. Julie, what is the goal of social media? What are we doing here anyway?

0:04:52.8 JP: Alright. So, before we get any further into planning, or talking strategy, tactics, and today we’re gonna be talking more strategy versus granular tactics, but the main thing, case in point, if you’re traveling somewhere, you have a map, or you have a GPS, or you are, if you’re like me, yelling at your phone and going, “Why don’t you understand my accent?” But you have to know where you’re going, and so it’s so important to have your goal, and if you’re looking at our Interactive Planning Worksheet, you will see that we went ahead and put in a very general [chuckle] goal for social media for most real estate agents, and it’s that “I want to use social media to build and nurture relationships with previous and future clients”. Now, that being said, that is super broad and super generic, so I encourage you, take some time and think through what might be a good goal for your social media.

0:06:03.3 JP: And I also wanna just caveat, if you currently have zero social media presence or a very inactive presence, a goal of saying, “I want to get several thousand followers or several thousand likes,” your goal has to be pragmatic and build your business, if you are not building your business with your goal, it’s not useful or relevant. So, again, for the most part, this is kind of a good goal and a good baseline for us to build off of that you want to use social media to build and nurture relationships with previous and future clients. And you notice in there we didn’t say, “I always want to sell.” [chuckle]

0:06:48.2 GS: Right, right.

0:06:48.3 JP: So, there has to be a balance, and part of that is the nurturing process.

0:06:54.4 GS: So, we are trying to eventually create conversions, but that’s not like the focus of your social media?

0:07:01.8 JP: Yes. So, like this… Yeah, go ahead.

0:07:04.1 GS: Go ahead.

0:07:05.9 JP: Well, that takes us down into the next portion.

0:07:07.2 GS: Yeah. So, like I said, what is the focus? There we go.

0:07:11.2 JP: So, when you take all of the complexities of marketing and you get rid of all the fluff, and as marketers, we love the fluff, that’s what we… That’s for the… But the main goal is your customer journey, is the know, like, and trust factor.

0:07:30.6 GS: Okay. So, I’m gonna interrupt one more time here, just to be annoying. But if you have not yet downloaded this or opened a copy of it from our… If one of our viewers is out there, could you just paste it in the link, either on YouTube or Facebook? Paste it in the comments, excuse me, because if you don’t have this, you’re gonna have a harder time following along. So, right here, we’ve got know-like-trust there across that, so that’s what Julie’s doing here as we’re going on this guide, so hopefully that helps you. Alright, sorry, continue.

0:08:10.0 JP: No problem. Give me two seconds, and we can get that up there, if somebody has not handled that.

0:08:17.7 GS: Oh yeah, I’m sure it’ll show up here.

0:08:22.8 JP: So, pretty much with the know, like, and trust, this is a very simplified version of what all of your marketing and all of your advertising should work for it, you’re working to get your prospective client to know you and your service, to get them to like you and your service, and then to finally trust you and your service, and once they know you, like you, and trust you, they will convert to becoming a customer. And again, and then ideally, when you continue that cycle of know, like, and trust, you’re continuing to nurture them after they’ve become a customer, so they then will refer other customers over to you, and when that happens, you’re automatically helping establish more of that trust factor. So, again, all of your content, and we’re gonna talk on this, and I’m gonna let Renee really cover this in depth, but all of your content, if it works in those categories, it’s gonna be successful. So, as we go from the know, like, and trust, at the end of the day, we also have to know who our audience is.

0:09:43.6 JP: And if you’re like a lot of people who will say, “My audience is everyone, anyone who wants to buy or sell a house,” and that’s technically true, but when you’re putting together your content, if you are speaking to everyone, you’re speaking to no one. Your social media, and again, any of your marketing and advertising, you really need to know who you are speaking with, the problem you are solving for that audience, and how to integrate them into your workflow once they want to convert.

0:10:19.5 GS: So, what does that look like by way of real estate social media? I mean, how do I narrow my audience?

0:10:26.8 JP: [chuckle] So, it’s one of those things, if you are an agent and you have a specific geography that you prefer, or a certain price point that you prefer, and I use the term “prefer” lightly, because, again, it could also be a price point, or a geography that you have more experience in, if there’s, again, something in your life history that you really feel that you resonate with that audience, and so this is a personal thing for everyone, because no two people who are gonna fill it, they had the exact same audience, it’s gonna be very similar. And so, what I recommend doing is taking some time, and again, in marketing, we build customer personas, it’s very trite, but that being said, it’s trite because it’s true, it really works, and you don’t have to go in and be like, “I wanna name this customer persona and get all crazy on it,” if you just start thinking about, “Okay, who is my audience? Is there a ballpark age range that I tend to appeal more to, or that I have more experience with? Is there a geography that I have more experience with?

0:11:48.9 JP: Is there a stage of life that I have more experience with?” Case in point, I have a young child, I feel like I could speak really well to people who are in similar stages with me, whereas a couple of years ago that would not have been the case. So, again, coming into things and knowing who you are, but also who you’re speaking to. And this doesn’t need to be something that you spend hours on and it doesn’t need to be a paragraph worthy of being included in a publication, it can literally be bullet points, in fact, I encourage it.

0:12:25.3 GS: Okay. So, yeah, just kinda on that, what we’re trying to do here is help you not spend too much time on things. So, I think to Julie’s point there, if this whole process is, when you’re done here is taking you hours to think through all the stuff, you’re probably taking too long, like just set a timer for two minutes and jot down, who am I? Who is my audience? And move on with your life. Is that kind of what we’re talking about?

0:12:53.8 JP: Exactly.

0:12:54.5 GS: Okay.

0:12:54.6 JP: Keep it as simple as possible, ’cause the more complex you make things, to quote Tony Robbins, “Complexity is the enemy of execution,” just set a timer and just jot down, again, it doesn’t have to be fancy, it doesn’t have to be formal, the only person who’s going to see this is you.

0:13:13.1 GS: Right.

0:13:14.5 JP: So, this is simply for you to establish and think about, because knowing who your audience is is then going to dictate the platforms that you are on. And I want us to take just a really quick moment and think on… Because on platforms, two things, [chuckle] first, do not ever feel like you have to be on all the platforms, ever, ever, ever. Once you know who your audience is, pick one and get really good at, create solid content that appeals to your clients and prospective clients there, get that 100% solid, and then you can see about growing other platforms. But if you try to do all the platforms, you’re gonna get overwhelmed so quickly that you’re gonna be like, “This is it, I’m done, this is not worth my time.” So, again, pick one platform. And a general rule of thumb, if your audience is around 40 plus, they are gonna be on Facebook, and if it’s a ubiquitous platform, everybody expects you to be on Facebook. If your audience is anywhere in the 20s to mid-40s, Instagram is gonna be more where they play. If your audience is more male-heavy, and again, for that age range, anywhere between 20 and 45, they are gonna be more heavily invested in Twitter.

0:14:51.2 JP: So, again, TikTok is a fabulous platform, but you are gonna have to do a lot more content creation for TikTok than other platforms. So, today, to keep us from getting lost in the weeds, we’re not gonna really touch too much on TikTok other than short-form video converts well. So, once you know who your audience is, and that will help you really determine what platforms you need, platform or platforms. Again, please just pick one or maybe two, and don’t let yourself get overwhelmed.

0:15:24.0 GS: Yeah, great advice. If you do need help with… We talk about Facebook enough, I think there’s not like stuff we need to go over here on that, we’ve done stuff I think almost a year ago that’s specifically about Facebook, but we also had Jen Hermann on it twice about Instagram, so if you’re kinda wondering how to figure that out, there’s some great resources there both on her site, but also on the show that we did. So, know, like, trust, that’s what we’re trying to do, and pick a platform and target it towards a certain audience that matches you and the audience that happens to be your sphere of influence, or at least your demographic that you’re going for. So, Renee, as it relates to content then, how do I establish that “know” part, K-N-O-W part, to make this work?

0:16:18.8 Renee Fregenal: So, when we talk about know, the two words you just have to remember are market expert. You wanna establish yourself as the market expert so you’re communicating your brand authority to your sphere, they know you’re the go-to person for all things real estate. So, we do that through different types of know content, one being educational type content, and this is when I point to our Houseopedia content platform. We have over a thousand articles, as we said before, about buying, selling, owning, and investing in real estate. So, those are basic articles that kind of serve as a foundation for you to promote yourself as the expert in real estate. Easily, you can just go to our Facebook page, like the page, and our post will appear in your feed on a daily basis that you can share with your sphere, or you can go to the Houseopedia website, and on each article at the bottom we have social share buttons that you can click on and you can write a comment or a summary in the post just giving your reflection on maybe five tips that are within the post.

0:17:43.2 RF: [0:17:43.3] ____ pre-approval you can talk about tenacity, go and buy that car, or take out a credit card when you’re already pre-approved, those little tips that are within the article will enhance people to want to read more and engage with you, comment on those posts. And if they comment, you should as well engage and reply, that’s how you get the conversation going. So, that will move us to kind of the second type of know content.

0:18:21.8 GS: Can I…

0:18:23.3 RF: Yes, go ahead, yeah.

0:18:23.7 GS: Yeah. I was wondering if I could jump in on a couple of points there. One of them, again, kinda going back to a previous show, Will Draper, not Draper.

0:18:33.3 RF: Right.

0:18:35.0 GS: Yeah, is it the guy?

0:18:36.4 RF: Yeah, yes, Will Draper, yes.

0:18:36.9 GS: Sorry. We’ve had two guys Will that sounded similar on the show before, so I believe is Will Draper out in North Carolina.

0:18:45.5 RF: Yes, he’s here out in Raleigh, yes.

0:18:47.8 GS: That whole concept of being a market expert or a content, like an expert within your field, he nails it, he nails it in his business, he nails it on that episode, so if you’re kinda wanting some information on that, that’s great. The other thing I was thinking about too, and we’re not really slated to talk about any of this stuff here, but we talked about doing a little selfie videos, those kind of things, don’t make them long, people don’t like it. But I was gonna say, Houseopedia is a great source for that too, because you could just go through Houseopedia’s bullet points and say, “Hey, a little shout-out to Houseopedia here, but I wanna give you just three tips on stuff you gotta do for the Spring. Take your iPhone, hold it up, do it, post it,” and there’s free content that you can reuse as an agent, so just some ideas there. Alright.

0:19:29.8 RF: Yeah.

0:19:30.9 GS: And then, data, where do I get that actual hard data?

0:19:35.3 RF: So, in terms of data, you wanna answer that question, that quintessential question everybody asks you, “How’s the market?” Right? So, all these resources are free, NAR, as you know, National Association of Realtors, they actually have a whole section of infographics that they create on a monthly basis with the existing home data, all kinds of data points, very easy to go in and just share right from there. And I just wanna mention as an aside, that after the show, Julie and I are going to post links to all of these resources in the comments on both Facebook and YouTube so that you’re not writing away trying to get all these points down.

0:20:25.1 GS: I was just gonna say, the community is kind of jumping in on this, they’re already doing it for each other down there, too, which is kind of fun. So, thank you, guys, thank you, viewers, for helping each other out here, that saves us some work.

0:20:35.4 RF: Yes, and we’re gonna back you up on that, we’re gonna back you up on that.

0:20:39.0 GS: There you go, yes.

0:20:39.1 RF: So, it’s NAR data, it’s national monthly data, it’s also your state and local data. Like right here I don’t know if you can see, here’s the Triangle MLS data. So, right here, this month, this is from September, we have new listings data, current year versus prior, we have days on market, we have inventory, months supply, all those points, one, even one of those points can be a post. So, again, it’s just keeping your sphere informed and knowing that you the agent are gonna provide them with the information and market expertise that they are looking for. Then we move to hyper-local content. This is so important. Now, we are moving from a zip code mentality to a neighborhood mentality. So, here, I live in Apex, North Carolina, 27502. Do I really care about all of 27502? No, I care about Heritage Point, the community I live in. So, be hyper-local with your information, be the expert in your community on what’s going on with the HOA, what’s going on with volunteer activities, anything that’s going on in the community, that’s where you wanna be. And we actually had a resource on Fathom Careers that talks about hyper-local content. And that really feeds right into the like factor. Being hyper-local means also that you’re genuine, you are authentic, you’re the person that has visibility into the community.

0:22:24.8 RF: So, we would recommend that you get into subscribing to as many community focus newsletters and information that you can, maybe your Chamber of Commerce has as a newsletter regularly, [0:22:46.4] ____ so you can mix that up, your educational content with your local content, local data, local events, join us in the community for a volunteer opportunity, etcetera, etcetera. So, that’s how people get to like you, they’re seeing your genuine, authentic self, they’re seeing what your interests are in the community. And then the next piece of liking is taking your skills a step further in employing video, video, video, video, we all talk about it, but video can be just more of your listing walk-throughs, your neighborhood tours, driving around your neighborhood, and saying, “Hey, look at this, or look at that,” people will hear your voice, get to know what you’re about. And another piece of the liking content is personal, yet still professional, is your hobbies, you can present your hobbies in a very professional manner, okay, maybe you’re a golfer and there’s an event coming up, “Come join me, let’s do a tournament,” something like that that people that also like to golf will feel like they can bond with you, they’ll like you, they’ll wanna do business with you.

0:24:00.1 RF: That’s the whole purpose. And then we move on our journey into the trust factor. And what is trusting? Trusting means that you’re driving your followers to become leads by showing results, results so they can trust you, they know that you are a real, serious business person that’s gonna help them with their transaction. So, you wanna show that you’re active in your business, you wanna show your listings, you wanna show your closings as well, like those pictures with your recent buyers celebrating. “Wow, that agent, they’re doing a lot of business. Maybe that’s somebody I wanna work with,” as well as sharing testimonials, this is so important. So, that could be, obviously, your clients asking them for that testimonial, maybe they’ll shoot a short video for you that you can post, and if you’re a new agent and you really haven’t started really growing your business, you can still get character testimonials from your peer groups, from former employers, your co-workers, someone that’ll just say, “Hey, you know, Geoff is a great agent. He’s just a great person to work with, he studies hard, he’s willing, he’s so personable, and he’s willing to meet and help with anything needed,” so those are the types of testimonials we talk about there. And then the third…

0:25:28.0 GS: I’m not even an agent, but that made me feel good, it’s not even true, but thank you, Renee, thank you.

[laughter]

0:25:32.9 RF: You’re so welcome. And that third factor or the third piece of trust are your awards and your credentials, so, hey, if you got an MVP award in your training team or your district, you wanna post that, you also wanna post like if you have credentials, if you’re credentialed as a senior living specialist, a military specialist, a green living, green home specialist, you want people to know those things, and it’s okay to repeat, you’re not being braggadocious, I’m not saying every day, but every once in a while, remind people, “Hey, I have this certification. You’re really interested in green homes? Or you have an elderly person that you’re caring for and they need to downsize? I’m the person you wanna team with to work with on a transaction.” And then we talk about really in our posts closing, not all posts, but some, with some calls to action, and they could just be saying, “Hey, do you want a free marketing report? Or do you need a CMA put together? Give me a call,” put your contact information, “Subscribe,” maybe you have a newsletter that you put out on a weekly, monthly, or even quarterly basis, “Subscribe to my newsletter. Do you like the information I’m providing? Here’s a chance to get more.

0:27:00.9 RF: Of course, follow me on social. Give them the thumbs up for Facebook or for Instagram.” And then also you can create simple checklists or anything that would be in a form of a lead magnet, so they’ll wanna download it. And then what happens? You get their contact information, and that’s what’s gold, to get that lead. So, that’s kind of, in a nutshell, the pieces that will lead you on that know, like, and trust journey.

0:27:32.4 GS: Awesome. Well, I was just gonna…

0:27:34.1 RF: So, Julie, do you wanna add something?

0:27:36.8 GS: No, go ahead, Julie, you go first.

0:27:39.5 JP: Well, I thank you. Here, on any of the calls to action is so important to give people a simple way, a simple action to take. Again, you’ve gotta keep it very simple so that it’s one thing that’s easy for them to do, if it’s not easy, they’re not gonna do it. So, they’re having to click three different things or whatnot, but having that call to action and having it that you’ve led with value, that you have given them value through, again, your know, like, and trust content, they are going to then that call to action is a super easy step for them, that’s just the next natural progression.

0:28:22.9 GS: Very good. I was just gonna say, you see this sort of package, those three pillars all the time in marketing. The “know”, you see billboards, that’s kind of the “know” thing, or you’ll get some ads on your Facebook, those “like” things are when they do something interesting or funny or maybe they provide some content for you that you can engage with, a handout of download, something like that, and then the trust is when you’re scrolling down that website and they’ve got a list of logos or brands of all the people that we serve, or testimonials, five stars, all of that, you see that like on a single web page, that know, like, trust sort of thing, and then what do you see at the bottom, “Begin Now”, “Start Now”, “Get Started”, “Buy Now”, whatever, it’s that same flow ’cause it’s just something that we’re sort of naturally programmed to do. Donald Miller, if you read his StoryBrand book, he talks about this, excellent, excellent book about that.

0:29:23.3 GS: You’re basically entering into that person’s story and saying, “Hey, I’m somebody that, you know, hopefully, you like me, but if you don’t trust me, then I know you, I like you, but I don’t know if you’re doing anything for anybody, or are you just blowing smoke?” But that trust factor you have come along and saying, “Hey, thanks so and so for the great review on the recent closing,” something like that, that really helps establish in the viewer’s mind, your sphere’s mind, that you’re somebody that they should feel comfortable to take action with. Very good. So, calls to action. So, then let’s talk, Can we get into the granular then, or did you have anything else?

0:30:06.0 JP: Well, I wanted to kind of… Go ahead.

0:30:07.1 RF: Go ahead, Julie.

0:30:09.5 GS: Alright, here we are.

0:30:09.6 JP: [chuckle] So, I was gonna take it where Renee had said on the different… The know, and she went through the several types of content, I would highly recommend once we go through, finish this training, to maybe go back and just watch one more time, ’cause she… But she was talking about, for instance, the know content, educational, current data, hyper-local, those are things that in the planning document that you have, if you look under the content pillars, instead of where it says, “Know Content Type 1,” put in there “Educational Information”, and the different types of the content within each of those pillars, because that will make your planning, when you actually get into the granular of planning your content, having that front center, and honestly, print it off, [chuckle] and have it so you can see, and it’s Renee reminder of what each of those types of content is, ’cause sometimes it’s easy just to get that you’re trying to tell me things and your brain is hard to focus, and having that kind of like a cliff notes of the types of content.

0:31:25.0 GS: Alright, cool. So, on that, I was just gonna let Renee know here she’s got a lot of love on Facebook from that, great info, great content, great resources, easy to access, love it. I was thinking the same thing, I’m thinking about stuff that I wanna do for Fathom’s marketing, and I’m going back in my mind like, “Alright, I’m gonna write Renee’s section again there, ’cause there’s a lot of boxes to check as far as what you could put out there.” So, are we talking about…

0:31:56.2 RF: Julie and I have one little tip too on this. This is just like a very little thing. But every Thursday, Julie and I post on our Facebook page, on Houseopedia’s Facebook page, the Freddie Mac release of the weekly mortgage rate.

0:32:12.0 GS: Cool, very good.

0:32:13.8 RF: So, you guys should be sharing that every Thursday morning, [chuckle] and a lot of what people ask, “How’s the market? And what are the mortgage rates?” Right?

0:32:22.6 GS: Right.

0:32:23.2 RF: So, that is such an easy get, and people share that, they love it, they talk about it, right? So, just say, “Oh, wait, Geoff shared that this morning on his Facebook page. Gosh.”

0:32:37.9 GS: So, I’d be curious, just for our viewers, there’s a bunch of you who are watching, are any of you filling this stuff out right now? Or maybe a follow-up question is, are any of you like, “You know what? Once you guys stop talking, I’m gonna sit down for the next hour or block out the next hour and a half or whatever, and I’m gonna just do all of this,” I’m curious if anybody’s ready to do that, ’cause to me it’s like strike while the iron is hot on this one. Alright. Have we talked about types of content yet? I think we already have.

0:33:06.6 JP: No, that’s my…

0:33:07.3 GS: Okay, alright, go ahead. Let’s get into that then.

0:33:08.6 JP: And one thing Renee and I were talking about prior to this training today, because we know we’re throwing a lot at you all, in a good way, we are gonna be monitoring all the comments, so if you have questions that maybe as you get into it that come up, comment and we will make sure that we hop in either with a written reply or a video kind of walking through that process a little bit, if we can help.

0:33:35.5 GS: Awesome.

0:33:35.7 JP: So, when we talk about content, this is why it was so important to define which platforms you are on and your audience prior to getting into the types of content, because obviously, Facebook, you can link to outside sources, although I do recommend, because Facebook, they like people to stay on their platform, so the algorithm tends to prefer content that keeps people on the platform, so you need to have a balance between content that is going outside the platform, which would be links to say, a website, a single property website, any type of content like that. Instagram, I’m not sure if anybody’s tracking, they just updated, we’ve been hearing about this for months and it finally happened, that for all accounts, regardless of follower size and Instagram stories you can now add a link, and so that is a huge benefit, ’cause Instagram used to have that you could have one link, and yes, you could do a link in bio, you had options, but it got really clunky for the user experience. So, again, Instagram, you’re gonna need to be generating a lot more of your independent content. LinkedIn, if you are focusing on LinkedIn, which I personally love, LinkedIn is a content-poor platform, so they’re like, “Whatever you wanna put up, we love you.” Twitter, again, their algorithm, it doesn’t really play favors if you link off the platform or not.

0:35:11.8 JP: So, once you kinda know which platform you’re gonna be focusing on, also, it’s very important to recognize your own strengths and weaknesses, some people are not comfortable doing video, and while I’m a huge proponent of video because video converts and in pretty much every platform goes gadder over video, the algorithms love video. But if you’re not 100% comfortable with, say, you recording a quick video, another way to do it is, like Renee said, if you get one of the… Like a market report, and you can do a screen share, you can literally record a video on your computer walking people through that report and then post that video, so work with where you are in your comfort level, but really kind of hone in on the types of content that you wanna create. If you are only wanting to do links to outside websites, which I do not encourage, just because a lot of times people they get into the what’s called a post-and-ghost, they post it and then they ghost, there’s no engagement, no comments.

0:36:29.4 GS: So, can I interject on that one, because somebody just asked here… And by the way, a lot of people said, “I’m working on it right now, I’ve got my sheet printed off, or I’m filling it out right now,” so I don’t know if they printed it, but they’re filling it out, so awesome. Marcia asked, “When I post links like something from Houseopedia, I find I don’t get the likes or reach like I do when I don’t post the links, any feedback on that?” And maybe that’s the posting and ghosting you’re talking about, Julie.

0:36:58.0 JP: Well, so as far as having like if you’re having the copy and then the link, I’m not sure if she’s talking about keeping the link in the copy, and this is something that I might need to just directly address with Marcia and get a little bit technical. Yeah.

0:37:17.2 GS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’d be great.

0:37:21.6 JP: The algorithm, again, they allegedly don’t play favorites if you keep the link in or not, I personally like to keep the link in because from just a strictly, transparent perspective, people know where they are going.

0:37:38.6 GS: Right, right, instead of having just the thumbnail with the title on it.

0:37:42.1 JP: Yeah, ’cause, again, that’s just my personal perspective on that, everybody is different and you need to do what works best for you and what you prefer.

0:37:53.2 GS: Cool.

0:37:54.1 JP: Okay.

0:37:54.7 GS: So, how…

0:37:56.1 RF: I can just interject just a little bit on that, too.

0:37:58.3 GS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:37:58.7 RF: Is more what Julie was just saying about the post and ghost kind of an idea. So, we do have a service through GoSocial agent where people will auto… We can for free, Fathom agents have the right, oh not the right, but the opportunity to post four times a week with Houseopedia articles, they get four posts a week to their social.

0:38:25.1 GS: And that’s done for you, you don’t have to even mess with that part of it.

0:38:29.2 RF: Right. So that’s a free thing that you should definitely be taking advantage of. Check out gosocialagent.com. Give Paul Lester a call, definitely. However, just doing that, that’s like a foundation, but just doing that in a vacuum is not helpful in terms of you have to make it personal, you have to add what’s going on locally, you have to bring your personality, your business to your business page. So, yes, Houseopedia, all these posts, it’s all a layering effect, not one piece alone is gonna create the magic you’re looking for.

0:39:09.6 GS: Right, right.

0:39:11.3 RF: Also, we wanna mention, and we did give a shout-out already to a couple of people, so we are gonna put those, their Facebook links in our comments again, but if you check out, Will Draper or Deb Stallings in the Collin County, Texas area, or Colley Bailey in Northwest Arkansas, those three, they’ve all been guests on Fathom Live, they do a phenomenal job with what we’re talking about, three totally different personalities, three different ways in which they post and things that they post, their style is totally different, but they all do a great job, they all generate a lot of leads, and they use the current aspects of the content pillars really well, so I just wanna put that out there.

0:40:08.3 GS: So, as far as how often we’re posting, and this is gonna get to actually working out a calendar, what’s the frequency that we’re looking at?

0:40:17.4 JP: Well, so that, first of all, it does depend on platforms, because certain platforms are what are considered content-rich platforms, and certain platforms are content-poor platforms. And a content-poor platform is LinkedIn. Now, if your audience isn’t on there, you don’t need to be on there. [chuckle] Content-rich platforms are platforms such as Facebook, and Instagram, and Twitter, those three are more of your content rich. And when you’re looking at your content, the guidelines that Instagram gives are ridiculous, and I say that with love, I love Instagram, but nobody’s gonna be able to do that much content unless you have a full-time team that that’s all that they do. So, what my suggestion would be, start with 4-5 posts a week, ideally, if you could get to every day, but the key is with that, and I wanna caveat this, always, always, always lead with value. We keep coming back to it, if you are giving people content that they want to consume, they won’t mind seeing you in their feed, so again, it’s leading with the value. Now, if you are, let’s say you have three houses that you are the listing agent on that literally all list in the same 24 hours, okay, then that’s something that you might need to space that out just a little bit, but you could go heavier on your posting schedule during that time.

0:41:56.0 JP: And again, these are not hard and fast rules, and part of the reason we are gonna be walking through planning is because if you take the time to plan your content ahead of time, to take a couple of hours once a month to go ahead and get a lot of your content ready, you’re not gonna have to be worrying about it at, say, 8:00 PM and you’re like, “Oh, my goodness, it’s been three days since I’ve posted, I need to post something,” and then you just throw something up there, and it’s not part of your strategy, it’s not working towards your end goal, which is to get people to know you, like you, trust you, and then become a client.

0:42:36.4 GS: Awesome. So, let’s get to planning it. How should they best flush this out?

0:42:45.1 JP: Alright. So, what we would recommend before you start any actual content planning, again, on the guide, go ahead and type in your content pillars for your know types of content, your like types of content, your trust types of content, and your calls to action types of content. And then if you are in that guide, if you click the link, it’ll take you to a sample social media planning worksheet.

0:43:15.1 GS: Okay. So, the bottom of the Google Drive, Google Doc, we also put a Word Doc on there, if somebody wants to download that, there’s a link to that, so either way, but the very bottom of that has that link for the spreadsheet?

0:43:31.1 JP: Yes. So, when you’re looking at this, again, I always, always, always point out, keep it, keep it as simple as humanly possible, because the more complex you make it, you’re not gonna do it, it’s not gonna be something that becomes a priority to get done. So, again, it’s very simple, you have a column for your date, the column for the type of content, and for the sample I put in just, again, for giving kind of a reference point to the different types of content, but I would recommend coming in type of content, hyper-local, type of content, testimonial, things like that, you don’t need to really have the “know-type of content”, that was just to show that we need to put the content pillar in here.

0:44:20.4 GS: Right.

0:44:22.0 JP: The various platforms, again, this, just as a sample, so put the platforms you are focusing on. Now, if you’re only focusing on one platform, you can get rid of that column, you don’t need it, [chuckle] but if you’re doing two platforms, it’s handy to have that, you can see, okay, what’s going up on Facebook versus what’s going up on Instagram? And then you have the copy, and this is where you write what you wanna post. And again, when you have these content pillars, it makes writing this copy super simple. When you have some of the resources we’re gonna be putting in the comments, it more or less will make writing this copy really simple, that you can go to Houseopedia, you can go to the NAR website, again, putting this content together, we’ve got a lead magnet 60 social media prompts. Again, putting this content together becomes very simple once you have your content pillars, ’cause you know the direction you’re needing to go. And then you go ahead…

0:45:28.7 RF: I’m gonna just interject as well, as far as Houseopedia goes, if you share directly from our Facebook page, that copy is already there, you can choose to use that copy, or you can add to it, or you can change it, and at least it’s a starting point. And just as an aside, you can share any of our articles directly from our website, share from social, the only thing we ask that you do not do is copy an article and paste it into a blog of your own, that will infringe…

0:46:03.2 GS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you can’t just steal stuff, you can’t steal.

0:46:06.2 RF: Yeah, that’ll infringe on copyright.

0:46:07.8 GS: But to share it is not stealing it.

0:46:08.1 RF: Yeah. A lot of people ask us, and it’s a very innocent question, but that would infringe on our copyright, and as well, we cannot have duplicate…

0:46:18.0 GS: We will hunt you down.

0:46:19.9 RF: [chuckle] But actually who’s gonna hunt us down is Google, because Google really disses you if there’s duplicate content.

0:46:26.9 GS: If you’ve ripped off somebody else.

0:46:28.5 RF: Yeah, yeah.

0:46:29.5 GS: Yeah. So, a question two people ask right back to back, should they be doing this activity on their personal page or their Facebook page? So, Julie, I know you’ve answered that one in the past, but this is a really, really important question to answer.

0:46:46.1 JP: It is super important. Alright, you are a business, you are a business, you need to have a business page on Facebook, you need to have a business account in Instagram. First, you actually get metrics on those pages, you can know what is being successful, what’s working, you can see what people are responding to, and it gives you brand legitimacy. Also, it keeps your personal life personal. Now, again, we also acknowledge that as a real estate professional, everybody kind of skirts this unique line as a real estate professional. So, again, getting back into that like content, you will want to have some of your personal content on your business page, but have a business page now. And that also gives people who are in your network, on your personal network, the opportunity to opt into liking your business page, ’cause not everybody needs to like your business page, not everybody, again, not everybody, especially if you are an agent in Texas, and your great-aunt lives in Maine, and is never going to move to Texas. As much as you love your great-aunt, she does not need to be following your… That’s not a priority for your page, but have a business profile. Sorry. [chuckle]

0:48:23.6 GS: Yeah. And there’s some legal reasons, legal issues to that as well, that you’re not supposed to be doing real estate business per se on your personal page, is that correct?

0:48:34.8 JP: Yes.

0:48:35.3 GS: Yeah.

0:48:36.3 JP: And well, just as a note, and I wanna caveat, if you have a business page, do feel free to share. If you have a post on your business page, you can share it to your personal page, and that helps increase your audience, helps increase your reach, but again, you really wanna try to drive people to your business page, especially if you are considering ever running paid ads or paid lead generation, you have to have a business account.

0:49:07.5 GS: Awesome. Hey, just one more request to our audience, have you found this helpful today? Are you putting it into action? And then also, outside of the realm of social media, what are some other things that you wanna hear? It would be really cool to hear that from you that way as we’re thinking about future shows, we can kinda put some more of these kind of things together, so we would love the feedback on that. I already got tons, tons of feedback, yes.

0:49:35.9 RF: Yes. I just wanted to give another shout-out for another resource that we have in Fathom, Fathom Wiki, our knowledge base. There are new, I wouldn’t say new, the past couple of months we’ve been adding to it, we just recently this week put up some new customer-focused social posts that are branded with Fathom red and white and gray that those are readily available for you guys to share as well, download and share on your social. Just kind of fill in a lot of them. Again, some of the content came directly from Houseopedia, like tips about home maintenance, checklists, things like that. So, those are available on our Fathom Wiki knowledge base, and if you’re not a Fathom realtor, you wouldn’t have access to that, but that’s a more reason why…

0:50:31.4 GS: I just was gonna say, it sounds like we’re segueing into the end of our show/workshop there. If you wanna get behind that golden paywall, I mean, that’s all you have to do, is sort of just let go and become a Fathom agent.

0:50:51.7 RF: Surrender.

0:50:52.3 GS: Surrender, surrender, I don’t know, that sounds a little bit… We’ll try something different in the future with that, but it got weird.

0:51:00.1 RF: [laughter] We’ll do all we can.

0:51:03.0 GS: So, yes, if you’re not a Fathom agent, please check us out at fathomcareers.com. There’s a little freebies tab on there, we’re gonna have a ton of stuff on there by end of hour, we’ll have the 60 social media prompts that you can download, otherwise, if you are a Fathom agent, you don’t need to worry about doing it on there, but there are a ton of things, resources on there, and you can get to know us through those sorts of things. Otherwise, just get on the phone with one of our local district directors or recruiter and ask the questions that you have. We have our commission structure right on our homepage, our fees are linked right off of that, if you wanna know the nitty-gritty, if that’s kind of what you’re looking at. But I will mention, one of the things that we hear all the time, and Julie and Renee can back me up on this, is constantly, people will say, “Well, I came because the commission structure was great, but then I stayed because the culture is great,” and we’ve just generally found that to be the case throughout all of our markets, and so that’s who we are, and if you wanna check us out, hit that join button and contact us and we’d love to talk with you. Any last words, ladies?

0:52:11.0 JP: No.

0:52:11.5 RF: Just reach out to us if you have any questions. I mean, we’re here, just send in comments on that, Renee and Houseopedia.com, or rfregenal@fathomrealty and Julie.

0:52:26.6 JP: I am wandering in the social channels, so feel free to reach out, yes.

0:52:30.3 GS: Alright, alright. So, it’s over, but it’s not over, so you can keep interacting on Facebook and YouTube, and yeah, let us know how we can be a help. Alright, we’ll sign off with that. So, I’m recently doing the show myself here, and I can’t find how to end the show, it’s gone. The button was buried. Man, this is gonna go on forever. Alright, see you, everybody, we’ll see you in a couple of weeks. 

---

FOLLOW US!
Facebook: @fathomrealty
Instagram: /fathomrealty
Twitter: @fathomrealty