EPISODE 35 : Digital Storytelling w/ Social Media (Miami Association of Realtors)

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Are you ready to know what you don't know about social media? Well then you're in the right place. This is the Zebra Joe of Social Boss On Air. Social Media Radio! Bring your death with the trick. And now here's girl. So bad What's happening, party people?

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Hey, welcome back to the show. Taking time out of your day to you and listen to me talk about a few things that you may or may not know that you don't know. I'm really excited for this episode. I'm here to talk to you today about digital storytelling, okay? Nine out of the ten of realtors that I meet are doing it completely wrong. And I'm gonna help you better understand right from wrong. I want to start off with a story. I remember speaking of anybody everyone remember 2009? Just checking, because everyone's got a new Ben, so I was just checking. Um 2009, uh job market was tough. Remember the story of a guy named Jim lost his job. Jim was passionate about animals, so he said, uh, you know, I'm gonna go down to the local zoo and I'm gonna see if there's anything available. You know, definitely he's Jim was a realtor part-time. 2009 he decided he wasn't gonna do it part-time anymore, and he wanted to go down to the zoo and speaks with the manager, and manager said, Unfortunately, we don't have anything available, but Jim, our our main attraction just died this week, and that's our gorilla. So if if you're down, what we can do is until we get a new gorilla, that's quite the process, we can put you in a gorilla suit, and you can just fill in for the gorilla exhibit. That way we don't miss out with all that. It's a great foot in the door. Jim said, I'm in. Started immediately, put the gorilla suit on, it fit like a glove. Went over to the gorilla exhibit, jumped into a cage-like exhibit, and there's vines and all this gorilla stuff. He starts swinging from the vines, he gets a little too excited, and swings to the cage next to him. And what cage was that? That's right, ladies and gentlemen. King of the jungle, a lion. So he lands about two feet before the wall. The lion looks up like, well, this is gonna be interesting. The lion kind of takes a step forward and he starts to take a step back, realizing I've got like two steps left, and then I'm against the wall here. So the lion continues to take a few steps forward. He moves back and he goes, Please don't eat me, please don't eat me. The lion goes, Shut up, stupid, you're gonna get us both fired. I'm here all week, folks, twice on Sunday, try the veal. So I want to start things out with a story, because number one, I've engaged you with my SpongeBob pants. Um, I've been described as a tornado of enthusiasm, so clearly I'm here to deliver some energy as well as as well uh as a message. So, storytelling has been around since the dawn of time. Right? Cavemen and women used to do it on the wall with hieroglyphics and all kinds of crazy stuff by telling stories, and stories have continued to evolve specifically with media. So, with television and with radio and the ability to uniquely tell a story. All of us are storytellers. Some of us are good and some of us not so much. But I'll tell you this one thing I want you to, I want to invite you to consider the idea of creating a story about your brand that is not the same story that everyone else is telling. So, contrary to popular belief, listing the homes that you have available for sale on LinkedIn does not work. Has anyone ever sold a house on LinkedIn? I'll buy you lunch. No? Case in point. There's a lot of noise happening within the real estate realm. Oh, you did? Okay, we have one. One out of a hundred. Okay, so I was I was wrong. I was wrong. My point is you need to go where your audience is, but you need to create a story around what you're doing. My friend Janet's a realtor in uh Pennsylvania, small town in Pennsylvania, and she's made the decision that she's Janet the realtor, but she's also Janet about town. And she's about local and small businesses, and she's about her community. So she's interviewing local businesses, small businesses. She sits down with them, she goes to a grand opening, she interviews them, and she makes it all about them. She never talks about a real estate business, she hosts monthly networking events, and part of those networking events are bringing the people that she interviews to those networking events. What do those people want to do at her networking events? They want to sponsor her event. So there's no parallel pertaining to the interview and her actually selling homes, but I can guarantee you this the next time that individual has a buying or selling need of a piece of real property, Janet's the girl. Why? Because she tells the story of her brand by creating content. Now, we've got drones, we've got high definition pictures, ooh, we've got MLS listings. Ah, remember virtual home tours? Those are like so 1999, huh? I always told myself if I got my real estate license, I would do things drastically different, and I find myself teaching this now to real estate professionals that um that want to better understand how to tell a compelling story, right? If you're telling the same story that everyone else is telling, you're just noise. All you're doing is adding to the noise. And I think the main the majority of the noise that's happening within the real estate space is just the fact of the of the push. You know, the push-pull strategy, it's just push. It's like, I sold this, another listing, four deals just got, I mean, it's constantly see emails that say just got or are posts that say I just got into my office, it's Monday, and I've already got two offers. Has anyone ever posted something like that and sold a house because someone goes, dude, you actually sell houses? I need you. Never. The only thing you're doing, and that's social media, right? We're digitally addicted. Like this is a drug, like legit addicted. Because here's what happens, okay? I'm gonna break it down. We post something, and then we sit and we wait for that first like or that first comment that gives us that shot of dopamine, bam, right to the brain. It says, I'm freaking awesome. I really am. We're digitally addicted. It's an emotional transaction that's taking place when we're engaging in the world of social media. So, why wouldn't you want to peel back the layers a little bit and say, I'm gonna do things differently? Instead of just bragging that I've got another listing or that I've sold another home. Let's find out what the story is behind that home. In Brickle, there are no stories with those condos, but other than it went up last year. Um, and there's a pool on the roof, and you can, I think one building you can park your Porsche, and that's not Brickle. But anyway, you see why I'm not a realtor? Creating these compelling stories, and we run through certain scenarios. Um, Carlos Gutierrez um is in my B and I chapter, and he's also a client, and we um started a series that he had picked up a series that he had done previously with videos called Real Estate Quickie. So we go over to a property where he's at, and this is what we do for all of our clients, and we create these buzz videos and we tell the story. He wrote a book about real estate and divorce. I'm like, great, let's dissect that little, that let's dissect that book um into a couple of episodes of real estate quickie. He likes to kick people's ass, so we said, listen, let's talk about martial martial arts and how it relates to real estate. We did a series on that. Carlos isn't sitting here, and he's, I believe, one of the one of one of the one of the most professional real estate professionals that I've come across. Professional real estate professionals, redundant and all, um, that I've come across, and and and he's not a ball of energy like myself. He's a complete opposite personality. And I think that's why him and I were able to click and understand. But what happens when you start to really get into your story, you start to get excited about it. Because you're enrolled into the process, and my goodness, if you're enrolled into your own story, what in the world is everyone else thinking and feeling? So you've got to be enrolled. So I challenge all of you to sit here and evaluate what your current marketing strategies are to buy and sell the real estate that you're currently doing. Just just sit down and go, what are we doing that's driving in new business? By show of hands, who only operates on referrals? Okay, do we have any brokers in the room? Is there any brokers with agents? Okay, cool. Hey, it doesn't always happen. Sometimes it's a you know family member. Um, if you're a broker and you have agents, you need to be spending money on marketing for those agents. That's your job and your responsibility. And when I say that, I don't mean dropping some mail, putting some flyers that people are gonna throw away, giving them their yard sign. I'm talking about really investing into what they're doing. There are Facebook strategies out there that will allow you to generate leads in your specific chosen zip codes where you get individual leads that come directly to you on a daily basis based on a small little campaign that's set up for each individual realtor. We've got a client in Durral that has about 300 agents. And he came on board and said, I'll test it out as you do any type of marketing, let's see if it works. I said, Let's rock and roll, let's start with a small $800 test. If they don't work, you can just completely cut me off and we'll never have this conversation about this again. $800 second weekend, sure enough. These leads are shit, they're terrible. I don't like them, I don't think we're gonna continue. My agents hate them. This is ridiculous. And I said, can you finish out the $800 campaign before we start, you know, badgering me? Following week he calls me, dude, these leads are outstanding. Well, somebody clearly spent $800 and buyer uh and had some sort of transaction that worked. He wanted to try it with a couple of his go-to people in his office, and then he wanted to roll it out to his agents as an incentive type of program where, hey, listen, now we pay for your marketing and whatever, however, he structures on there. He's now got, I believe, seven of his agents on the platform investing in them. I go, is this like a Rev share? Do you like take this off their check? He goes, No. I pay for the campaign and I invest in them. I invest in their marketing, I invest in their training, I invest in their entire branding because their brand is my brand. And if I care about their brand, the point is a form of telling a story is people seeing, wow, this is different, and agents getting fired up. Now, obviously, his niche market are brand new agents. Average agents there's been there about a year. Green as the jolly green giant, but open, willing, available, will do Sunday evening open house, done. I'm in. Really helps him care about it. Now, what can he do and what can he now focus on while he's making sure that all his agents are rocking and rolling with the marketing he's providing? He can focus on telling his story now. So we're launching his podcast, we're getting a video series going where he can focus on telling the story of what it's like to actually come to work for his brokerage. What it's like from day one, what to expect. He just wants to educate people and continue to grow his base of agents and realtors that are there. So the storytelling component is there, and then the marketing component is there for them as well. Um the next the next uh uh example that I think of is our previous speaker, just now, Rich Barbara, uh, another client of ours. Rich, I went to I went to high school with Rich, went to him two and a half years ago, and I said, Um, you know, Rich, you really need to get on board with this whole social media storytelling stuff, and we're doing that right now through short, tiny buzz videos and podcasts. And he's like, Listen, Rusk, people don't go on the internet to look for an attorney. And I was like, okay, cool. So this is like our first disagreement since we've seen each other in 20 years. Like, we can totally agree to disagree because you are 100% wrong. I tell you what, Rich, I'm gonna give you a free video, and I just want you to tell everybody about me. That's it. I'm just gonna give you the video, you can do that. So we go, we shoot this video, we're in his office, he comes in, he goes, You know, Rusk, you may be onto something here. I want to do this every single week. I said, not a problem. Let's rock and roll. That was a little over two and a half years ago. Um, six videos in, you got a phone call. What happens is we create the content we post on the client's Facebook page, and then I go in and share it with my network and endorse the content, and then it gets distributed through Social Buzz TV, and I tag anybody that's that's relevant to the post. So if you've done that before, we all have. We know that people things come out of the woodwork, like in a good way, too. Like you're like, some guy calls on me and goes, Rich, like I see your stuff all the time. It didn't even dawn on me that you're a real estate attorney. I've got this matter right now that is a nightmare. The case ended up equaling, I believe, $25,000 or $30,000 for Rich to get in and resolve the matter on there. We had just gotten started. A skeptic that said, People don't go on the internet to look for attorneys. Oh, really? Because they just saw your video and called you and wired you $25,000, dude. Come on. He's been on board ever since. Now, he he started out with his buzz videos and then we moved into a short show format because he believes in the storytelling format. So it didn't stop with Title Buzz, which is our weekly buzz videos that go out, and the reason I'm bringing this up is not to brag about our awesome agency services. It has nothing to do with that. I share this, I share this because Rich brought this up last week when someone was in his office. He's no one sells me better than Rich Barber does. Find clients that that say amazing things about you and like endorse you. Um, he was talking to a prospective client of mine, and uh he said, you know, people I run into on the street that have nothing to do with real estate go, hey Rich, how's everything? How's the family? Dude, I've been seeing your title buzz videos, they're awesome. And now I'm to a point where we've been doing this for almost two and a half years now. People expect it, right? Isn't it cool for people to expect your content? I hate to burst your bubble, but I can almost guarantee you people are not sitting on the edge of their seat waiting for that next drone video of your brand new listing. That's a must see. What's the opposite of a must see? Like, do not come here. Quaint. I love the I love that Rich and so we finished the title buzz videos, and then he goes, Russ, there's gotta be more there. I go, you know what? There is more. We need to start doing a live show on Facebook uh once a week. You know a lot of people in Miami, we're gonna get people that are cooler than you, smarter than you, have a bigger following in you, and have nothing to do with real estate, and we're gonna have a conversation with them once a week. We'll get some director chairs, we'll convert your conference room into a little makeshift talk show set, and we're gonna call it the Title Talk Show with Rich Barbara. So we got Title Buzz, weekly buzz videos going out, now we got a weekly show of Title Talk, and then we realize well, getting someone in on the show once a week is a little challenging. Life just shows up, etc. Let's scale this back to once a month. That's easy. We'll find somebody cool once a month, and then let's integrate a podcast solution into what we're already doing. So we've got the once-a-week buzz videos, then we've got the once-a-month title talk, talk show, series like live show, then we then repurpose that video onto YouTube, repurpose it onto Facebook, run ads on it. You never know who's gonna see it. And now we're adding the podcast component in where it's strictly audio. That's easy, because I just go barreling into his office as disruptive as possible at one o'clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday, and I'm like, break time counselor, let's record some podcast. And I take his mic and I plug it right in, he puts his headphones on, gets a cup of coffee, and it's actually like a it takes him back down to the norm of the day because things get a little crazy in the world of a real estate attorney. And uh we record a podcast once a week, and he goes on a rant, which he's very, very good at, um, about what's wrong and what's broken with the real estate transaction between a real estate closing company and an actual realtor. And you guys and gals will absolutely love the content because he's talking to everybody pertaining to the real estate industry, and it's all positive and it's uplifting. But when he's going on a rant, it's kind of like, I guess this guy's right. Anyway, the podcast is called Confessions of a Real Estate Lawyer. And what's happened now is that he goes on these rants, which is a great part of a podcast, right? It's a great, if I'm gonna have a podcast show, I just want to talk about things that bother me but provide value, number one. But I also want to interview people that are cooler than me, have a bigger following than me, etc., so that I can grow my network. Um, and most importantly, if you're looking to get in front of someone that you can't get in front of and you can't seem to get past a gatekeeper or get that introduction, try the angle of hi, can I interview you and get you on my show sometime soon? There's this thing called an ego that all of us fall victim to that we absolutely love those words. Interview and talking about ourselves. People are more inclined to do business with you once you've talked about them and feature them. So I took a skeptic two and a half years ago that says people don't look like, look, look for attorneys on the internet and turn him into one of our largest agency clients. He happens to be one of my best friends, and we go way back, but it's crazy how the story unfolds 25 years later because Rich made a conscious decision that if I don't get in the storytelling race in this rapid, fast-moving world of digital, I'm going to be left behind. Most importantly, number one, number two, title companies aren't marketing themselves like riches. Um, is anybody familiar with a title company podcast? Alright, we have one out of a hundred people. Thank you, by the way. Is anybody familiar? And so that's a great thing to look around. I look at how many realtors are in just Miami?

unknown 19:16

47,000.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

47,000. That's a lot of noise. You gotta like really crank yourself up above that noise. And I don't know what that looks like for you individually, but there's something there that allows you to take your boring, mundane listing postings, because let's call them what they are. It's just a piece of real estate taking in some HD photos and maybe a cool video. Whoop the frickin' do. It's not that exciting. You know what's exciting? You. You as an individual is exciting because people are making the single biggest financial transaction they will ever make in their entire life, and they are entrusting you to execute it. They are buying from you. So, in my opinion, you are grossly negligent to not create a strategy to effectively tell your story that hits home. The kind of story where it takes you on a little bit of a ride. You want to cry sometimes, you want to yell sometimes, you want to laugh sometimes. You just want to feel good sometimes when you're consuming the product. Now, for people in the real estate profession, I'm not saying anyone in this room, but individuals within the real estate profession, I've found my experience has been that it appears to be all about them. And when I say them, I mean the real estate professional. And I'm here to tell you today, friends, your brand is not about you. Your brand is about what it can do for other people. My good friend Bruce Traquell says a good brand makes you feel good. A great brand makes people feel good about themselves. So I challenge you today and I invite you to consider the idea that you do, in fact, have a unique storytelling angle in you if you already start already on the tip of your tongue, where you can shift what you've already been doing of the boring, mundane, consistent storytelling that everyone else is doing. Everyone else is doing it. There's a lot of noise there. How do you get above and beyond that? Rich Barber says, I'm gonna take a I'm just gonna put the blinders on and we're just full throttle for the next 36 months. I've I've paid for myself for the next two and a half years anyway, with that huge case we got right out of the gates. So we're we're we're guiled. We've we've totally we're full steam ahead, and as we continue to evolve, he wants to be on the cutting edge of things. He continues to ask, what's next? And I'm like, as soon as we have the VR goggles to like do the closing and like we're next, yeah, we're in. How much time do I have left?

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Seven minutes.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Seven minutes, excellent. Um, is that is this is the plane landing?

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

My goal is to shift your mindset completely. I want to be in your head the rest of the weekend. That's my goal. Is to shake things up. You guys are here. You drove three and a half hours to come spend three days with your peers. Chances are these individuals will never give you a real estate transaction, but you're here because your priorities are in line to continue your education, to continue to sharpen your game. And I could be wrong about the deals. The networking could be, I could totally be wrong. My point is you've taken time out of your busy schedule to come down and spend three days and sharpen your real estate game. So if you've done that, why in the world wouldn't you want to do the same with your marketing and with your business? We are in the midst of an amazing shift in the way we communicate. Social media has been around for about 15 years. I've been in the game since 2004. I consider myself somewhat of a pioneer. We've come a long way, but I honestly feel this is just the beginning. Like the national anthem, they're just warming up the instruments. They haven't even sung the national anthem yet. For the beginning of this doubleheader that's just now beginning. How many people advertise on Facebook by show of hands? And what do you advertise on Facebook for? Give me an example.

unknown 23:19

Listings.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

Listings. Okay, what do you do? You boost the post? Is there a lead gen campaign behind it?

unknown 23:24

Boost it.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

Boost it. Has anybody ever hit you up on it and said, hey, that this looks cool, let's see it?

unknown 23:29

Once.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Once? Alright, cool. Fire that up. The idea is to drive interest. When people are looking to buy or sell their home, you need to create a general interest of where it's at. Click here on a list of homes for sale in your area. Bring them to a landing page with a video that you shot on your iPhone. You're like, what's happening, everybody? My name's Bethany Martinez. I'm the biggest, baddest realtor in Miami. This right here is my newest listing that you need to see. You clicked on a list of homes for sale in your area, you clearly are in the market to do that. Go ahead and click the form below. I'm gonna give you a free ebook, and you can also schedule a time to meet me tomorrow, and I'm gonna show you a few more properties just like this. How's that sound? And you're reaching out and grabbing this person and pulling them in with your personality by selling yourself. Again, you are the brand. Um I forgot what I was gonna say next. No, I wanted to segue a little bit into podcasting because we are living in this voice era right now where podcasts suck. If you don't have one, you're like, yeah, I know what you're probably thinking. I'm a realtor. What could I possibly talk about on a podcast? Really? Because Rich is a real estate attorney. What in the world could he possibly talk about on that? That's up to you to figure out what that value proposition is for a podcast. But I'm here to tell you today you can take out your phone, put it, put in an $11 lapel mic on uh from from Amazon into your phone and just start talking. My friend Brian Fanzo says, just push the damn button. Means just hit record, just go and see what happens. And stop judging yourself on what you think you look like and sound like on your content, because you don't know. You know why? Because you're not the person listening to your podcast, and you're not the person listening to your video. And I bring this up and I drive this point home because I spent a 90% of my time, and Carls will attest to this, not shooting videos for our clients, sitting down and helping them shift their mindset that they are in fact awesome on video and people want to listen to what they have to say. Why? Because they're not, it's not their decision. People say, I'm I look like crap on camera. That that might be your story, but that's not the reality of what's taking place. And I'm finding it's crazy. Like somebody said the other day, you know, your hugest they somebody gave me a testimonial of BI for the experience of working with Sebastian and what takes place to actually get to a finished product of a buzz video or finished product of a podcast and the psychological aspect. So get out of your own way and realize listen, I'm here to tell you today, and this is warm and fuzzy and motivational and yay and sunshine-ish, but yes, you can. If you haven't heard that in a while, yes, you can. You have the ability to dig real deep and extract that story and yank it out of you because it's in there somewhere and tie it into your marketing and mix things up a little bit. It is a crazy saturated market out there, and we don't know how long things are gonna rock and roll. We don't know how long this market's gonna be at an all-time high. So it's even more important to build your own individual brand as a as a real estate professional and a human being in addition to real estate. It's not just about selling houses, it's about the business and the and it's about it is about your brand. I believe your brand will sustain you during trying or challenging times. I pray those days never come again. But in the event things slow down a bit, what else then? There's never been a more exciting time to be in life. There just hasn't. I was cast for a reality show four years ago on Fox, and I had to fly to New York for the day to meet with the show producers, and I got to New York, I flew in, the meeting was at 10.15, I was done at 1020. Like that's welcome to Hollywood. What's your dream? Um so it was 10.15 in the morning, and I didn't head till 6 o'clock to catch a flight, so naturally I walked over to Times Square, and um as I'm as I'm standing in the advertising mecca of the world, everyone's looking down at their phones. No one's looking at the advertisements, no one's looking at the billboards, they're looking down at their phones, and I stopped and I thought to myself, Sebastian, we are living in the most exciting time that it is to be alive. Don't take it for granted, don't put it off, and don't shoulda, coulda, woulda. There are a lot of people that are shooting all over themselves when they must be telling an effective story on what they're doing. I really do appreciate all of your attention this morning. I know I came out of left field with my energy here, uh, but that's what I was put on this planet to do. It's my God-given gift to shift your mindset and help you better understand what you don't know that you don't know. Thank you. I really hope you're leaving this episode with at least two or three things that you did not know about telling your story in digital marketing atmosphere. And if you have any questions, please drop me an email at the social TV. I might be more than happy to have a conversation with you about your digital story telling me to be a podcast. If you like listening to the podcast, you imagine what if you like it around.