Speaker 1:
Cool. Cool. Okay. I'm going to talk a little bit about growing your brand through social media. This is something that I've been focusing on a lot more since April. Especially when I had a little bit more time at home. I started spending about one hour per day, really focusing on lead generating through Instagram. And of course it kind of trickled over into Facebook and some LinkedIn and things like that. But I really focused on Instagram myself. Since then, I received about 10 really good leads through Instagram. I also gained 300 followers or so, that all live in Portland. So that's 300 more eyes that live in Portland looking at what I'm posting and things like that. These are people that I would never have met without just reaching out to them on Instagram. And then in the last couple of months, I also referred a friend who ended up buying home in Nebraska so I got a referral fee for that. And then I also helped one brand new client buy a home last week, closed last week through Instagram as well.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. Through social media really can be lucrative if you can be patient with it. First of all, why do I need an online presence? Online presence, I think we're all aware, is really important. It helps us connect with our sphere of influence, our community and colleagues in a really efficient way. We are able to update everyone regarding maybe business or personal life events all at once, as opposed to calling all of our contacts saying okay, I got engaged. You can just post one picture and get a couple hundred people congratulating you and saying they're excited for you, whatever it may be. And then another big factor is of course, prospective clients are going to look you up online. I don't think any of my clients, I'm trying to think.
Speaker 1:
I would imagine most of my clients, if not all of them, have looked me up on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. I, I know that I just got added to LinkedIn to two of my brand new clients last week. So they're out there. They're looking at us. They want to see that we have experience. They want to see our reviews, they want to see that we also have a personality. That's a big factor. Of course you want to keep things professional on all of social media. Most of your potential clients don't want to see that you're binge drinking of smoking weed or anything like that. I do see a lot of people posting about on social media. I always try to keep mine relatively professional.
Speaker 1:
So engage with followers and your community. It's really important to provide market updates. Everyone, or at least people that I'm friends with are curious about how the real estate market is doing. Especially right now, during the Coronavirus times. People are always asking me how the Portland market's doing. I'm getting a lot of people reaching out from different cities, whether they're other real estate agents or just my friends and family, trying to see how we're doing up here.
Speaker 1:
Also you want to be able to tell people about your business and show them that you're human. That's an important aspect, like I said. And another thing that I think is really important and something I used to do a lot in high school is I used to get in a lot of heated arguments about politics, religion, whatever it may be, but I've really dialed back on that. I still express myself, I still express my viewpoints. Like you can see, I posted picture of myself at the protests a few days ago, and I was happy to do that. I also posted the blackout Tuesday because I do want to express my own personal belief. That's me being genuine and connecting with people that have some similar beliefs as me.
Speaker 1:
Instagram and Facebook tips. These are a few things that I really like to focus on. Do not neglect the story function. A lot of people are actually looking at stories as opposed to the actual timeline. I've been really focusing a little bit more on stories, posting about three to seven times per day on the story. Maybe posting once on my timeline per day, but usually it's one to two times a week. I just really want to post quality content and not just random photos of my food or something like that. This story on the right hand side was about staging. That had a lot of engagement. I had over 60 responses to that poll.
Speaker 1:
I also got 25 people responding to me directly and saying like, Oh my gosh, that's terrible staging. Why would anyone do that? Why would someone pay money for that, et cetera. I went in to the 60 people that responded, there are about seven or eight that I had never talked to before. I actually reached out to them directly and introduced myself. I saw that they weren't following me. They probably just saw me at some point. I reached out to them directly and said, Hey, in real estate and in Portland. Trying to see who they are and why they decided to respond to my poll.
Speaker 1:
Another thing that I see people doing a lot is buying followers or likes there's one real estate agent that I follow. He has over 200,000 followers, but he only had about 50 likes per post. It's really clear that he's just buying all of those followers and that just makes him look kind of really dumb in my opinion. I don't understand why someone would buy followers. What I want is people that are actually engaging in what I'm posting and people that are actually interested. And especially people that primarily live in the Portland area. That's who I'm targeting, of course. I definitely think it's a good idea to use polls and questions to engage your audience primarily through stories. Like I said about the staging one, but I'll post things about different houses or styles of houses. Have people choose which style is their favorite.
Speaker 1:
I got a lot of engagement on things like that. Basically any time I'm showing a property, I'm looking for things that might interest my clients. I also like to point out things that are issues like foundation issues or issues that they may not see. Like a roof or something like that. I just like to point that out to them so they can look at their own homes and be like, okay, my, my roof looks good or, Oh, maybe I should get my roof cleaned off or something like that. So Instagram for Lead Gen. One of the best ways to develop leads is to look for the different hashtags in your area. I'm following things like hashtag Portland Oregon, hashtag Southeast Portland, because that's the area that I want to focus on. More recently, I'm, I'm looking at buying a place in Mount Scott or [inaudible 00:07:31] neighborhood.
Speaker 1:
I'm looking at that specific location and geotag, and I am basically liking or commenting on all of the photos on all of the posts in that general area. Those are people that I'm going to want to connect with. I want to get involved in that community and I want them to know who I am. If they're putting hashtags on their posts, it's kind of fair game. Most people are not shocked that I'm liking five or six of their photos. They're like, Oh, that's nice. That's genuinely how I've gotten the leads in the past. I basically spammed people and I liked five to 10 of their posts, their most recent posts. I only liked the ones that I actually liked because I don't want to be disingenuous. But once I do that, then I usually have someone saying, Hey, saw you liked a bunch of my photos, then they reach out. They might follow me or whatever it may be. I'm helping two people get preapproved right now, that I just met last week, which is pretty awesome as well.
Speaker 1:
Use up to about 20 hashtags on your posts. The more specific, the better. Like I said, if you are looking in the Mount Scott, [inaudible 00:08:47] specific hashtag. If you're more focused on Beaverton, use that hashtag or Tiger and 12th, Southwest Portland, Northwest Portland, Hillsborough, whatever it may be, you can plug in that and hashtag and then you're going to get people that are in that area looking at your posts. I don't necessarily post a ton about my business. I do mainly in my story, but I also like to post a lot about my community and then I add that location.
Speaker 1:
So again, other people can look me up. I get a lot of businesses looking me up and being like, Oh, cool, another business in the area. You can talk about different golf courses that you're at. Won't be me, but I like to talk about all the parks and restaurants I go to and things like that. Basically one of the biggest things I can say is don't be shy. Feel free to comment on a stranger's posts. If their profile's not private and they use hashtags, they will likely appreciate people commenting and engaging with them. It's kind of like, you're just at a bar and if you see something interesting or see someone you want to talk to, just talk to them.
Speaker 1:
Make sure everyone knows what you do. And this goes for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, all of your profiles. You want to make sure that your sphere is aware of what you do and all of the work that you do to get from meeting someone to the closing table.
Speaker 2:
I had a quick question on the one slide. Do you typically follow a lot of people? [crosstalk 00:10:24] There's a lot of people that are like follow to get you to follow back and they'll unfollow you.
Speaker 1:
I don't do that. I basically will comment on people's posts and I will follow them if I think there's someone I would lecture like to follow. If they don't follow me back, I actually don't worry about it. I know that a lot of people care about their follower to following ratio. I think I'm probably following 900 and I probably have about 1200 followers.
Speaker 1:
I just don't really care. I'm not the type of person that wants to follow someone just so they would follow me and then unfollow them. If I notice that someone I'm not really interested in their posts is not following me and I don't care about their posts anymore, I'll just unfollow them. But I do kind of do an audit of that and if I realize that I'm engaging with their posts and I'm not that committed to what they're posting and they're not following me, I will do pretty much a monthly audit where I'll just go through and see if these people are talking back to me. If not, I will just unfollow them.
Speaker 1:
I am conscious of the follower to following ratio, but not something I focus on too much. I would be fine if it's about even. If I have 10,000 followers and I'm following 10,000 people, I'd be totally fine with that. Yeah. Making sure that everybody knows what you're doing. A lot of my friends will be like, Oh, I saw HGTV and it looks like what you're doing is really cool, really fun, glamorous. They also think it's an easy job. I like to talk to them about, well, I don't feel like it's an easy job. For instance, a couple of days ago, I posted on my story that I spent two hours cleaning before I handed off the keys to my client.
Speaker 1:
A lot of people are like, wow, I had no idea real estate agents did that. My client was incredibly impressed. His whole family got there while I was still cleaning the house. I was in the process of deep cleaning this disgusting fridge. And they're like, that really sucks that the sellers left it that way but thank you so much. He pretty much immediately gave me a really good review. That's kind of one of the best ways of getting more business is good reviews and he's definitely going to talk to other people about me as well. Two days ago I just got a lead from a past client that talked really highly of me. Like I said, I don't usually post too much about business on my timeline, but you can see here, I posted about three of my most recent reviews.
Speaker 1:
I got a lot of people reaching out saying, Oh my gosh, of course you are such a good real estate agent, blah, blah, blah. It's really nice for them to be able to say that to me and for me to see these reviews and be really proud of them. I'm okay with tooting my own horn when people are impressed with the work that I do. This actual review post is one of the main ones that got my last client to reach out to me and be like, Hey, I would really like to use you, it looks like you do a great job and it's because I posted those reviews on my timeline.
Speaker 1:
Like I said, [inaudible 00:13:56] review is posted on social media. I posted this one to Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Make sure that you're linking all of your social media back to your website, just so they can easily see what you're doing and see a more professional side of you as well. That is it. I believe. Just my face. I meant to add more on that slide, but I guess I didn't. That's me. Any questions you guys?
Speaker 2:
How much time do you devote to this a week?
Speaker 1:
Kind of depends. Usually it's time that I'm already spending watching Netflix or something like that. I do try to do about an hour a day just because once I post a lot on my story, that's kind of when I go through and will start liking other people's posts. Super, super easy for them to be like, Oh, that's weird, this guy just spammed me. And then they'll click on my face and it automatically takes them to my story. I did this yesterday and I got over 400 people that looked at my story from yesterday. Probably about 200 to 250 people that would not have looked at my story already.
Speaker 2:
Do you typically do it on your phone or your computer or what works best?
Speaker 1:
Definitely the phone works best because like I said, I like to do it while I'm watching Netflix or something. I literally just scroll through and double tap. I kind of just do it until it tells me I can't double tap anymore because at some point it'll will say that you are spamming people and it cuts you off. I've kind of learned to just keep going until I can't anymore and then I'm done.
Speaker 2:
What would you say are the most contacts are coming from? Is it Instagram?
Speaker 1:
Yeah. Definitely Instagram. I'm also on Facebook as well and I try to connect with people on there, but it's a little bit weirder to friend people on Facebook because they have to commit to you being their friend. Whereas, on Instagram you can follow somebody and they can either choose to follow you back or not. I've noticed that it's just a lot less weird that way. I do think that Instagram is also a bit more of a public space. From what I post on Facebook, it's a little bit more private. That's what I'd probably suggest doing. Although I do like to be in all of the groups possible on Facebook and that's again how I got the deal that we're in contract by. It was because I connected with someone through a Facebook group who got me in touch with the seller and then they ended up posting it on the market. I still got that first conversation with the seller and was able to move forward first
Speaker 2:
Cool. Do you have templates for the messages that you send?
Speaker 1:
Honestly, no. I like to make sure everything is very personal. I like to talk about what they posted first and then after that I might move forward. I started following someone, a chef owner of a vegan sushi restaurant because I'm vegan and I love sushi. I followed her and then she followed me back and she just recently talked, let's see, this morning. I followed her literally last night and this morning she was like, Oh, Hey, you're in Southeast Portland too. And I was like, yeah, let's meet up some time. I'd love to go have some of your sushi. I'm probably going to meet up with her sometime this week. That's just a new friend that's already connected with the community. Cause she's the chef owner of a restaurant.
Speaker 1:
Let me know if you guys have any questions. I am going to keep charging forward with this whole Instagram thing. I kind of like it a lot. Have any of you guys dove, jumped into the world of TikTok?
Speaker 2:
No.
Speaker 1:
One of my good friends has over 200,000 followers and he's a real estate agent in California and I'm like, Oh gosh, maybe I should, but I don't want to. That's just a whole nother platform that I'm not familiar with and I don't have the time to be.
Speaker 3:
I would say your lead demographic in that app would be between the age range of 10 and 13 years old.
Speaker 1:
There's actually a lot of people over 40 on TikTok and my friend in California, like I said, he has over 200,000 followers and all he posts is real estate stuff or dances or whatever to engage people. He is averaging about 10 deals per month. He says about 25 to 50% of that comes from TikTok and social media in general, of course.
Speaker 4:
Probably as for deals.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. I would [inaudible 00:19:14] for deals. Happy to.
Speaker 2:
That's interesting. I have not even ventured into Tic-Tok.
Speaker 1:
Well, cool. Any other questions?
Speaker 5:
Can I make a couple of comments on your social media thing?
Speaker 1:
Totally, Yeah.
Speaker 5:
When you're doing hashtags, a couple of helpful tips are the first three and the last three hashtags that you use are going to be the ones that get seen the most and that people are actually going to click on. It's always helpful to make those a little bit more eye catching. Throw in something comical, something serious and something interesting. So the first three, the last three. And then I keep on my notes on my phone just a big chunk of middle hashtags that are relatively the same. I always change the first three in the last three for every post.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. I've got the same 15 hashtag or no it's probably more like 12 hashtags and then I see do change some things up. Like the actual park that I'm at or the part of Portland I'm in or something like that. I like that. Comical, interesting or serious.
Speaker 5:
Yeah. Or informative. If you guys aren't familiar with doing Instagram posts, if you separate your lines by just doing a period and then the next line, usually you can do two or three periods for line breaks. It makes it easier for people to read. Just make sure that your posts also provide, they're not just all real estate based or serious based. They're also providing like, Oh, here's a recipe I thought you might find interesting because then people will see that and they'll go back to your page to find that idea or that content or that recipe. They'll keep revisiting you instead of it being, Oh, here's a picture of a house and everyone is a house or a deal. They have no reason to go back and see the deals that you did, but they have a reason to go back and see the recipe or the lamp fixture or something.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. Like I said, I post some personal things. I have real estate posts and then I post a lot of views of the city because I love to go on walks and I love to go on hikes. That's something I'm passionate about and other people like too. Live vicariously through me, which is a friend just told me today, I love to live vicariously through your Oregon experience, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 3:
Do you have a separate business page? Sorry
Speaker 1:
What I would say is, definitely have a business page, a business Instagram, it's very easy to just switch over to a business Instagram. But this is my personal and business Instagram. I kind of keep them the same because I want people to engage with me and know who I am as a person. I want to work with people that like me and if they don't, then they can move on.
Speaker 3:
Same with your Facebook too? You have just your personal?
Speaker 1:
I do have a Facebook business page because that can be public. I think my personal Facebook page is a little bit more private. The Facebook business page has reviews and the about me and it's quite a bit different. I definitely like to have the separation between public and private there.
Speaker 5:
When you have a business Facebook page too, you can also create groups and they're friend groups. You can choose who your posts go out to based on the friend groups. So you can say this goes to everyone or this only goes to the people from this group or this group. You can kind of pick and choose a little bit better for your Facebook posts.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely.
Speaker 2:
Cool.
Speaker 1:
Cool.
