EP 313 – Marketing Monday With Serving Social’s Kristie and Elijah Whites

NCS 313 | Serving Social

NCS 313 | Serving Social

 

When you’re in the online marketing space like Kristie and Elijah Whites from Serving Social are, automatically what you get a lot is, “I want to build a web store because this kid on this show that I saw made $100 million in two weeks and I know I could do that because I have a great product.” Kristie and Elijah says you could probably make $1 million dollars in two weeks or even $100 million if you wanted to, but it takes a lot to build up to that certain point and it’s something you have to consistently do. They say when you do something like a podcast, you have to be ready to be authentic. You have to have your own original concepts, your own original story. You have to put yourself out there and you have to be somebody that some people can relate with. In other words, you have to be you. You have to maintain saying, “This is who I am. This is who I’m going to be and I’m going to consistently deliver you this exact same content on a regular basis.”

Listen to the podcast here

 

Marketing Monday With Serving Social’s Kristie and Elijah Whites

We are starting a regular tradition each month with the third Monday being a Marketing Monday. We have Money Mondays on the first Monday with Quest. We’re excited to have the third Monday be marketing. All about marketing with an amazing couple of people doing some rocking jobs, rocking in the RV all across the country, helping people take care of things out there. We are joined with the brain power of Serving Social, Kristie and Elijah Whites.

We’re good.

We are excited. It’s hard to believe that we are literally days out from Note CAMP 6 taking place. You guys have been speakers in the last two, four, and five and two of the highest ranked. Everybody loves your stuff. You’ve also become a staple of the Masterminds for coming out and sharing some great stuff. Also, our cohorts in crime for the National Social Media Day, 26.5-hour live stream craziness that we did.

A lot of great info that came off that. Even stuff that I didn’t even know. It’s great to listen to the experts. There’s a lot of good stuff.

That’s why you bring in the experts to talk about all these topics. There are going to be topics that you don’t think that you would talk about. The practical application of stuff but then also a deep thought in concepts of mental health, in concepts of different things.

I enjoyed it immensely. We’ve got some great stuff. I know that you’ve been working hard on the replay videos and we’re jacked up because we’ve gone over 100,000 views on the actual page.

We’ve been taking daily tips from our video and going back and optimizing all our YouTube videos. It’s been very helpful for us.

Dana Garrison rocked in both of her sessions. I was excited about that. People fail to realize that you and me, we’re always constantly learning new tricks. We’re always constantly learning on new things to help better our business. Even though you guys you are teaching us entrepreneurs across the country, you never stop learning because the technology never stops evolving.

Constantly, things are changing. The networks are changing. People’s mentality are changing. The way they search for things, what they like, and what they don’t like. You hear stuff like trends all the time and there are so many trends online that, as a small business, sometimes you can get lost in the trends instead of having a foundation that you’re building on. When the trends come through, you ride the trend out, but you don’t base your entire marketing on the trend because it is what it is. It’s just a trend. It’s a fad. It goes away. The algorithms change. Facebook or one of the other social networks decides, “We don’t like that anymore. It’s not generating what we need.” They do away with it or they change it up.

There were major announcements for every social network. They had new updates that dropped. They had new features that are now available. We’re having to take time out, not only as business owners for our own business to do, but also as individuals. What do I need to learn now? Like Instagram’s IGTV. You can upload a whole one-hour video to Instagram Television. If any of these changes aren’t telling you anything, it’s all video, it’s all television, it’s all we want to watch versus read it.

Which we all heard when Kris and I were at Digital Marketer Traffic and Conversion Summit from Mari Smith. Let’s talk about those things. The people I talked to were like, “It’s overwhelming.” Everywhere I go, people are like, “You’re killing it. You’re doing amazing stuff.” Marketing online and marketing, it’s not a lot of stuff that I’m doing, I’m just getting it out there.

You’re consistent, Scott. That’s the one thing that you kill it on. That’s what blows people’s mind is the consistency. There’s nothing more gratifying than spending a whole week and just getting a week’s worth of postings out and then the next week comes around and you’re like, “I need to do that.” Your day-to-day keeps on building up and here you are and you’re like, “I’m going to do another posting.” That’s not good enough. What you do well is you’re consistent. You’re always out there. People know that, “If I refer somebody to your channel, you’re going to be on there putting out content on a regular basis all the time.” That’s what a lot of businesses miss out on is that they’re not being consistent with their content. A lot of times is that they don’t know what to put out there. Content can be very bold. When it comes down to it, if you can figure out the type of content you put out and you clearly have, you have your Note Closers Show. That right there allows you to be consistent.

It’s all confusing and everybody’s listening to what their friend told them worked for them and so they’re like, “I need to do this too,” and then you become overwhelmed with all the things you think you need to do before you’ve figured out anything. I’ll jump right in with number one on the thing that you need to know before you’re going to do anything is to know yourself. You’ve built a brand, We Close Notes. It has colors, it has an identity, it has something that people can relate to. When you’re asked what is We Close Notes, you can answer it without having to think about it because it’s what you’re living and breathing. That’s what a lot of people are missing when they’re marketing is that there is no clear identity of who they are or who their business is and what it’s trying to accomplish and how to present it. That could be taken back to branding 101 in trying to figure out who you are and what you’re doing.

NCS 313 | Serving Social

Serving Social: It’s great to listen to the experts.

 

It’s fine to test things out like, “Does this piece of content work? Does this hashtag work?” That’s great but if you don’t have a core, that center of everything of who you are, what you look like and how you’re going to speak, then you’re a little bit of everywhere and it’s harder for people to jump on board with who you are and what you’re doing because if you don’t know how do you expect them to figure it out.

It was funny because we got back from Michigan. We spent three days driving around all of Michigan looking at 51 assets and in the airport, I made it a habit of wearing my black polo that’s got my podcast thing on it, the Note Closers Show Podcast, and I wear another shirt that had another logo. I had no less than 30 people throughout the weekend say, “What’s your podcast about? You’ve got a podcast?” I was like, “Okay.” In the airport, I step in line at Chick-fil-A in DFW to get something. I was standing there, then I see this guy waving at me. I was like, “That guy looks familiar. It’s the guy I worked with at the Gristmill twenty plus years ago.”

He’s in Dallas getting ready to fly out to El Paso and we talked. He’s like, “I keep up with all your notes stuff that you do on your podcast and your videos that you do.” He starts rattling questions. It was like, “How’s it going? What are you doing? Married? Kids?” He went straight to the thing about, “Are you buying? Are you just educating?” It was funny. You’ve hit the nail directly on the head, Elijah. You probably remember Henry Kaminski from Unique Designz, I talked about this on National Social Media Day about knowing your brand, be who you are, live it and embrace it. Be who you are, don’t be somebody else. Kristie, you said that too. My friend did AdWords and my friend did Google Plus. Figure out where your client is and go from there.

I know it can be very hard to try to figure out who you are, especially when because it’s yourself, you’re not the one on the outside of it looking in. You can’t read the label when you’re inside of the bottle. With Serving Social, we even had trouble trying to figure out, “How do we project ourselves out there? We hate being called a marketing company. We’re a marketing agency because how we do marketing is completely different. The how and the why we do it is what we’re trying to put forth first before anything else. It’s like, “We do this because of this.” We tell everybody every single day this is why we do this. Now, they’re starting to understand. Like you, you saw our road show, you know what we’re doing across the country. We keep talking about it.

There was a great article that I was reading. It was ESPN’s 10th Anniversary Body Issue and it had a softball player. She was talking about her body and how it can be very difficult because you’re wanting to be this Instagram person versus the person that you are. What you don’t realize is that you don’t have to be this person over here that has 100,000 followers. You be you and you’ll gain 100,000 followers. Don’t try to be this mirror image of what you think that you should be. Just be you, which is vulnerable. A lot of people have a hard time doing that and then you question yourself on, “Should I post this? Should I talk about that?”

You mean posting yourself in a bikini on your Facebook post? You’re talking about stuff like that?

That was a big moment for me because I don’t do that often and I didn’t take a picture. Elijah and I were out swimming and he goes, “This is a great shot.” I’m like, “No.” He sends it back to me. I was like, “That was a great shot.” He’s a talented photographer. He’s going to make me look good but it’s also owning up to the fact that, “This is me. This is my body and I’m going to put that out there. I’m going to take whatever comes back from it,” but that was a big moment for me to put that up.

Don’t go out and try to get 100,000 followers. Be you and you’ll attract the right 100,000. We all know those Insta-fame people that have 10,000 followers in twenty posts. That’s not legit.

I could go buy 1,000 followers right now if I wanted to, but the issue with that is you didn’t earn them. They don’t know you. Most of the time, the accounts are fake. Some of the time, you’ll gain real wins from it, but they haven’t found your content and they’re never going to engage with you. If anything on social, you need engagement and conversation. If you purchased it just for the vanity number, then it’s not going to contribute anything to your account whatsoever other than it’s going to make you feel good because you have a big, large vanity number. That’s it. It’s all vanity.

I can play games on my iPhone that will allow me to gain coins and I can cash those coins in for Instagram likes and followers. There’s so much BS out there that it’s ridiculous. By being yourself online, it’s authentic. Like what you said, Scott, you’re going to find the right audience. The type of people that aren’t going to get on there and beat you down all the time and about this and that and everything else that you see online, which is also another good reason why a lot of people are afraid to put themselves out there is because of the criticism that you can get. At the same time, when you are yourself, for instance, Scott, if I talked to you through this podcast and then I go meet with you in person, you’re the same person. You are Scott Carson through and through. You’re not trying to be some big host and you’re a total A-hole on the other end. You are who you are.

That’s what it is because you’ve done that and you are who you are. You are getting the right people. You’re getting the people who want your content. They’re interested in what you have to say. They are interested in sharing your information with their friends and if you’re not authentic and you’re not going after the right audience, then you’re going to end up with results that you don’t enjoy.

Let’s talk about authenticity. You don’t know this but in the note industry, there are a few people that have been around for a while. I’ve been around for a decade. Donna Bauer is a lady who has been around for quite a while, for about ten plus years. We have a lot of people that are popping up that aren’t closing deals, but they’re trying to do marketing or they’re trying to do the things, but a lot of them aren’t providing anything authentic. They’re copying, “We’re going to have the same guests on a webinar we’re going to do,” or “We’re going to start doing webinars,” or “We’re going to try to start our own mastermind up.” The lack of authenticity is going to kill these people because they’re not going to draw anything else except the low-hanging people that don’t want to either pay for something or the haters out there, those others you will just find. Hater, you can go somewhere else.

Send them to the group link, “Try this group. It might be right for you”

You see that. Everybody wants it. “I’m excited. I’m going to do a podcast.” If you’re going to start something, you got to do it.

We have one client that has another competitor that religiously follows what we do, and we’ll notice about a couple of weeks later. The messaging that we had placed out, they’re now putting out in their own way. They didn’t directly copy it but it’s the exact same thing. It’s one of those deals where we have to be careful about what we are putting out there, what we are seeing because it’s her brand. We don’t want somebody else ripping it off and there is a level where if we notice that they’re doing it consistently and too much in our target area, we can get them for copying us. There’s copyright on our stuff. Were protected by the things that we create. There’s ownership. You don’t want anybody else taking it.

When you’re in the online marketing space, automatically what we get a lot is, “I want to build a web store because this kid on this show that I saw, they made $100 million in two weeks and I know I could do that because I have a great product.” That takes a lot. You could probably make $1 million in two week or even $100 million if you wanted to but it took a lot to build up to that certain point. It was something you have to consistently do. When you do something like a podcast, you have to be ready to be authentic. You have to have your own original concepts, your own original story. You have to put yourself out there and you have to be somebody that some people can relate with.

NCS 313 | Serving Social

Serving Social: You have to have your own original concepts, your own original story.

 

One of the hardest things that I’ve seen when you go to conferences is I’ve seen these individuals that they see these very successful entrepreneurs and they’re almost intimidated by them, but that person had to do the exact same thing that you’re doing right now to get on that stage. They had to be humble and go to those experts and talk with them and basically be authentic human beings saying, “I want this opportunity.” Especially when you’re doing podcasts, you’re putting content out there, being authentic with your business, who you are, why you started it. The types of audience you’re looking for is extremely important but you have to be consistent. You have to get it out there and you have to maintain saying, “This is who I am. This is who I’m going to be and I’m going to consistently deliver you this exact same content on a regular basis.”

We’re talking about know yourself and figuring out who you are and talk about that. I want to make one thing as a distinction between talking about yourself and saying what you do. We work with a lot of businesses and the first thing we ask them is, “Who are you? What are you trying to accomplish? What is your goal?” Most of the time, when they answer who I am, they say what they do, “I am blah, blah, blah that provides blah, blah, blah to blah, blah, blah.” It doesn’t matter. That doesn’t give me any connection with who you are and what you’re doing. You just told me what you sell, you haven’t told me who you are. Versus somebody saying, “I’m a community that helps grow note closers and note investors in this market.” You told me a little bit more about, “I started this many years ago and I do this because this is my passion and this is what I love to do,” versus “This is who I am and what I do.” There’s a difference in wording that.

Think about some of the businesses that you’ve come across and that you’ve read and that you want to have a narrative. You want them to tell you a story and you connect with that story of how their business was developed much more than what that little short paragraph that says what they do. I want to be very clear in that when we’re saying know thyself and create your brand and know who you are. It’s not what you necessarily do. It’s the story of how you got to what you’re doing and what you plan on doing in the future that makes it so much fun. People didn’t connect with us because we’re a marketing agency. They connected with us because we sold everything and gave up our life to do what we’re doing by helping people on our road show. That’s the point of Entrepreneurs Roadshow. It was meant to be engaging and one-on-one with people and understand why they’re having problems with their marketing. I’ve had more people cry to me over marketing than anything else. I made a few people cry but it’s getting down to the root of what you’re doing and who you are. It’s difficult. Make sure it’s not like, “I do this, this, and this.” It’s, “What was your story that got you there?” Nobody cares that we’re a marketing agency. They care about us and what we’re doing with that marketing agency.

It’s like the excitement, the innovation, the technology. I know one thing and I’ve been told this a couple of times, I’m a talker because I’m passionate about what we do. I would say the worst and best thing someone could ask me is a marketing question because I’m not afraid to tear apart their business right there. I’m not afraid to point out things that they could have done better because the only way that I’ve grown is by people like you Scott coming to me and say, “You could have done that better and this is how.” I’m like, “Okay.”

When we first met, we would spend what we thought would be a 30-minute meeting to a two-hour meeting just bouncing ideas and learning. Three hours, a couple times. That’s the beautiful thing about coming together and being open to getting better because when you screw up, you don’t know you screw up half the time unless somebody says, “You need to tweak this and make this thing a little bit better.” Be true to thy own self. Tell your story. That is the biggest thing in developing content. Identify who you are. Take some time to literally tell who you are. What your interests are. A great thing is like TOMS Shoes. They have the big cause behind, “Buy a pair, donate a pair.”

That story was their brand. Their brand wasn’t that story. The story precedes the brand.

I’m going to put on some people. We’ve got Gail Villanueva. She’ an ex-astronaut. That’s what I told her. I was like, “Talk about that. You are skyrocketing returns. You’re not talking about that. Don’t be afraid to be who you are.” We all know Stephanie is a big cat lover and enthusiast. Don’t be afraid to embrace that a little bit more. She’s working on her own podcast, Furbabies Podcast, to help market some things that she’s doing. I’m asking this question when it comes to sharing content.

Somebody asked a question. This is the thing that drives me bonkers. It is exactly what you said. Our buddy, Brader, who is the Mortgage Medic, that’s not what his is. He goes, “The odds are not good for anyone trying to step in. Scott Carson is a marketing prowess. Might as well take on Coke or Pepsi a fool’s errand.” That’s the thing. You don’t have to take me on. Maybe he wasn’t listening. Maybe he wasn’t logged in when we first talked about this. Don’t be Scott Carson, be Brady Durr, be Waddell Conley, be Clifton Sadler, be Kristie Whites, be Elijah Whites. You’re not taking me on. Create your own message because what I’m doing now, most people can’t ever do.

I did a lot of women’s events. I was the Marketing Director for Texas Women in Business for two years. I’ve been teaching and stuff being on a board for a nonprofit for two years. The thing that when I was young and I was starting out is I would go into these big rooms with these amazing women and instantly feel small. I come home and I’d tell Elijah, I was like, “How does my brand, this little itty-bitty fish, get in this big pond of people? Who’s going to care? I’m just another marketing agency in Austin, Texas and there are 80,000 of them.” He goes, “Nobody does what you do the way that you do it. People aren’t coming to you because you’re a marketing agency. They’re coming to you because of you and how you work with them and what you do with them. They are buying you. They’re not buying your brand. Your brand is the nice packaging that you put around it. Put a little bow around me because most people want to consult with me, they don’t want to consult with Serving Social. I would not compare yourself to anybody else in your own market because nobody is going to do what you do the way that you do it.

That is the same concept of any innovation. The thing is that our product has already been developed and there no way that you could either do it better or have something that would appeal to another audience, maybe it’s a different color or maybe it’s how your hand fits around or whatever the case is, just knowing that.

If that was the mentality, then Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, all of these companies, if they thought that it was good the way that it was and that nobody else could do it better or different then we wouldn’t have this innovation that we’re having. I love that you made that point.

We’ve always come into our own. That exact same challenge of, “Well they already do it really well and they’re right next door to me. How would I compete with that?” Even on National Social Media Day, I forgot who it was. It was another woman that was on there but she said, “When somebody heard it from me, I was the only person that could have explained that exact same thing that they’ve heard 100 times, I said it a little bit different that snapped.”

It was Ali Larter.

Some of these towns we’ve gone into like what Kristie mentioned earlier, this lady asked about her brand, “Everyone always tells me I need to figure out my why or who I am.” We even talked about this on Social Media Day, “You are who you are. Your story is the reason why you got your business started.” Just by explaining that a little bit differently, she came up and she was like, “I’ve been trying to figure out this whole logo thing because everyone keeps on telling me like I got to do it this one way, but I never thought about looking at it like, “Who I am and the reason why I started my business.” Not like, “What’s the brand of my business? I started my business to encompass these things and so I’m going to take these things as the reasons and that’s what I’m going to build my brand out of. That’s my narrative. That’s my story. That is the cornerstone of how this company moves forward and the organizations that we associate with.”

That’s a big thing for real estate entrepreneurs to realize that is that they don’t have to be somebody who’s closing a thousand deals a year because that’s intimidating. They don’t have to be the FortuneBuilders. They don’t have to be the HomeVestors. They don’t have to be the Scott Carson’s. They can be John Smith. John’s goal is to help America, help people stay in their homes, but also retire from work, to leave his corporate job, to do what he wants, to help him send his kids to college, retire his parents or whatever that story is, use it to embrace it. I guarantee you, there’s a lot of people out there that are thinking or need the same thing, they identify with you, they can be your best cheerleader, your best brand awareness, and your best clients.

The thing with that is once you figure it out, keep talking about it. That’s number two. It’s your content. It’s continuing that narrative consistently. What I’ve noticed with some of our clients is, “I’ve already said that.” “The people that were watching last time know that. The people that are watching this time don’t know that.” That’s why to Elijah’s point earlier, that consistency in your messaging, you need to introduce yourself more than one. For example, we’ve done podcasts with you often, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to assume that everybody knows what Serving Social is. Majority of your audience probably does, but some of them are new. They don’t know who we are. They don’t know our backstory. They don’t know why we’re the ones talking with you every third Monday of the month.

It’s just the narrative to keep consistently talking about. It doesn’t have to be the same way. For example, you tell your full story the first time and the next time you tell a little example of your story why you’re talking about this next topic. Give them a place to go back and learn more. This is the third one and I’ll make this a big one. If you do not have a place where I can go learn more about you, I’m not going to do business with you. It just is what it is. If I met you in person and you give me a business card and I want to go see you on Facebook or see what you’re doing on your website and I can’t find you, I’m not going to do business with you. The reality of that is Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Y, whatever you want to call us, that’s how we do business. That’s how we decide if we’re going to make a purchase decision. Is it can I find you online and learn more about who you are and what you do? Sure I can ask you that question, but it’s not a mentality to necessarily do that at a very loud networking event. All of us are so busy, we don’t have time to sit down to coffee all the time. Your website, your landing page, your information gives me that.

NCS 313 | Serving Social

Serving Social: If you do not have a place where I can go learn more about you, I’m not going to do business with you.

 

That’s the key thing about having those items out there. Yeah, a website is great, but if you don’t have anything on it that talks about you and your business, people are going to find it. The Facebook and LinkedIn, the Twitter, the Instagram, that shares the story behind the story of who you are besides that’s who Scott Carson is, not who We Close Notes is. That’s who Kristie and Elijah when they’re out in Nashville helping somebody versus just, “They’re posting Facebook ads for somebody.”

We’ll talk about our clients occasionally through our personal channels if we’re using their product at that time. If it’s something that we’re actually doing. We go out to eat at the restaurants that we serve all the time and we’ll talk about that if our experience was great. We want to share those things with people, but it’s not about promotion of those things either. It could be a landing page. It doesn’t have to be a full-blown website. It could be a Facebook page that’s you and your business, but you have to start somewhere online. The thing with me is that I thought it needed to be perfect. I needed to get something out there.

For the whole first year, I’m a marketing company. I’m going to own up to this. I am a marketing company. For the first year of my entire business, I did not have a website. That killed me. I’m sitting here wondering in 2014 like, “Why don’t I got people coming and visiting? I don’t have people calling me?” It’s because I haven’t put anything out there. I was doing traditional face-to-face networking. I was hitting the pavement every single day. I was getting business but I wasn’t getting business in the way that I could have as much as I could have because I didn’t have that info out there. I lost a lot of business because my presence wasn’t there. They did not care if I had 100 followers or not. They cared if I was there and they could learn more about me.

That’s so huge in our niche of investing, especially real estate because we deal with a lot of banks or asset managers or other investors out there. I see this especially on LinkedIn. If you got a LinkedIn profile, how many searches did you show with them? Who’s looked at your profile? “That asset manager. Let me give him a phone call or I send an email blast out.” Suddenly, LinkedIn views go up by 500 to 1,000. I’m like, “People are checking us out. They’re seeing what we’re doing.” They see the story and they dropped me an email or they may connect in return, which is what we want, That’s the same thing is if you know where your audience is at, if it’s a higher-level audience, you’re looking for CEOS or high end, you want to be on LinkedIn or twitter because that’s where they spend majority of the time. If you’re looking more of like a personal story or do you get the word out more so, Facebook’s better for that along with Instagram.

That’s a misconception with some of these social networks is that they think that I’m going to be on Facebook, I’m going to start a business channel, and I’m going to get all of these leads and sales. That’s not what social media is for. If you think that it’s going to be lead gen and sales, then think again, it’s not that. It’s your supporting narrative, it’s your supporting content that leads to your sale. Social media is what allows them to connect with you to make that final purchase. If I’m going to go to your website and purchase it, then they’re going to do it with or without your social media. Your social media helps you do that.

That’s the thing where we have some people coming to us going, “I want to start a Facebook page. I want to do this much content of it and so how many leads can I expect to get from that?” I’m like, “Absolutely none.” You need a lead gen, you need a funnel setup with a landing page. The mixture of all this marketing melting pot, people aren’t really figuring out the actuality of what each thing can give you. They naturally assume, “I can make money from social media and I’m going to get all of these leads. I just got to put stuff into it.” No! You can run ads and have a lead gen funnel that allows you to get the sale because that’s what you should be doing, and then you should be supporting everything else on your account because it’s a long game. How long would you say, Scott, were you running your channels before you started seeing people coming in and converting?

At least over a year. We can thank Curt Maly, who was a speaker on National Social Media Day. The guy that got booted off of Facebook for 888 days. I didn’t have money, was going through a divorce, I was literally at the bottom of the valley and I was like, “What can I do? Let me start posting pictures of these assets, putting pictures of properties, talking about what I’m working on.” I’m literally doing it consistently. Then some guru reached out to somebody and said, “Who in here knows somebody who’s doing a note deal and buying distressed debt?” Curt knew me, being local and being friends on Facebook. He’s like, “You need to reach out to my friend, Scott Carson.” Then this guy reaches out to me through Curt and says, “I see you’re doing these deals. We want to fly you out to LA or Orlando and put you on stage in front of everybody to talk about your deals that you’re doing.” I’m like, “You’re going to pay me to fly out? Good, because I can’t afford the airfare.”

I’m on stage. They gave me a half hour onstage during the lunch break because they give people boxed lunches. They literally give me a talk about the note business. I get bombarded with 200 people at the end. They’re like, “Do you teach a class?” I’m like, “I teach a class.” I was making something up. Here’s my card. Here’s my email. Introduction from somebody on social medial, that the big thing I keep telling people, you never know who’s going to refer you out, but if you don’t post anything, you don’t share your deals that you’re working on, the deals that you’re closing, the only thing you’re guaranteed by not posting on a consistent basis is failure.

Failure to plan is planning to fail. I wanted people to think about social media like this. Social media is the modern networking event and when you go in there, you automatically start talking to people. That’s what you should be doing here. Now, your postings are when somebody asks you, “What’s going on in your world? What exciting things have been happening?” Those are your postings. What things do you need them to know? Those are your postings. It’s about engaging in a conversation. We want people to comment. We want to be commenting back to people. There’s the other thing that has been missed is people get content out, but they don’t talk to a single person. You want people to talk to you, you’ve got to talk to them. That’s how it works.

It blows my mind. I see some of these great piece of content out there. These are from small local businesses and then they’ll have a couple of people get on there and take in mind some of these comments could just be other companies trying to get engaged. They’ll jump up there and they’ll say, “Awesome stuff.” A couple little firecracker emojis and a heart. “Fantastic. No big deal.” If somebody does that, reply to them, “Thank you so much. This is pretty awesome. The one thing that I thought was the coolest part of all of this is…,” then you lay it out. Now you’re continuing on the conversation and you’re giving additional talking points hoping to engage with additional users that would maybe reply to that again and like, “I love that part too,” or whatever the case is.

Every time somebody comments, respond to that. Ask people to comment like, “Let’s talk about this in the comments section and let’s keep the conversation going.” Remember that every piece of content that you put out there that you want to get the maximum value out of that and the more engagement you have on that post, the more Google is going to continue to push it up the ladder and you’ll see that, “I had twenty comments on this post.” Here it is and people are still commenting on that same post.

It’s visibility. Even Facebook came out and said, “The more engagement comments that you get on a single posting, the more priority it’s going to get in placement in a timeline.” On the postings where I’ve had tons of people like, it doesn’t get as much exposure on the postings where I’ve had tons of people comment. I keep noticing more and more comments rolling in throughout the weeks because it’s getting priority placement. That’s the network telling you exactly what you need. We actually taught a course a couple years ago on the 40 different ways to engage on social media. One woman took it and ran with it. She took the concept of asking a question and she turned it into asking a question every single day. It was through her personal channel. She put it to a nice graphic background and she’d ask a simple question, “Is it ketchup or mustard?” Seriously, simple questions like that.

She would ask these questions every single day and at times, people are like, “French fries and here is why.” I caught myself even engaging with them. Everybody came for that question every single day. She’s going to ask something. I came to read the comments because I’m curious to know how people answer or respond to things and then I chime in with it too. She created a conversation that then allowed her to post her other elements of, “Here’s who I am and what I’m doing in my business. Here’s what I’m doing here.” That got additional exposure because she was using the network in a way that engaged and she still asks the questions every single day.

Anything that you can do to provoke that thought. Questions are good. Talking about a cause. You see this with Steph. She’s talking about the journey that she’s going on with these cats and you have people come in and like, “This is great.” She has all these people commenting on it because it’s things that they relate with. She knows that audience and she’s going after it. It’s good stuff. It keeps people in the loop. That’s also another thing too, is that sharing stuff like that that may not pertain directly to your business or talking about things, maybe it’s not, “If I post that, that’s not going to result in a direct sale. That’s not going to do this.” Think about your friends. If you walk around and you’re all the time trying to sell to your friends, you’ve gotten this, “I’ve got this new thing we’re doing. It’s these pills. They do all these great things and I can get you signed up underneath me and then you can get somebody signed up underneath you and we’ll all make millions of dollars. The guy that brought me in. He’s doing seven figures easy.”

The triangle method. What kind of music should you listen to while fishing?

She got six comments, three shares and seventeen interactions on that. Then she turned around and asked, “Question of the day. Soccer, yes or no?” Fourteen comments on this. Some of these range more, but she consistently asked that every single day. Something fun. Something out there. She asked the soccer question because we have the World Cup. She was hopping on trends too.

As you post content like that, it gets that engagement. When you do come in with that one sale piece, that one piece that you’re trying to funnel them back to your landing page or your website where they can find out more information, they’re going to be a little more acceptable to that because they haven’t been seeing the same, “Buy this. This is what we got in store.” There’s a time and place for all that. Newsletters are great for that. Being able to remarket people, doing your ads, stuff like that. Being able to engage people and get them interacting with you and then touch on those sales and try to see who’s interested, you’ll probably have a way warmer response from your audience compared to, “I just lost 100 followers. What happened?” They got tired of your shit and they couldn’t take it anymore.

That’s how you lose followers. Keep in mind that as you change and more, your content is going to change and more, how you speak is going to change. Serving Social has changed a lot over the last five years. What we first thought we were, we’re not now and that’s okay, but we made sure to change the narrative along the way and let people know what’s happening so you can change along with your business and speak differently and put in different pieces of content. As long as you’re not alienating the fact that you’re supposed to be having conversations and you’re selling to these people. It’s not about don’t ever sell your stuff, but if you’re always making a posting that has a sell link going back to, “Want to learn more? Go here. Want to learn more? Buy here. Register here.” I’m going to stop listening. I’m going to stop reading.

NCS 313 | Serving Social

Serving Social: As you change, the more your content is going to change and the more how you speak is going to change.

 

You see a lot of that happening with the new Instagram Stories or Instagram. People who are posting things, it’s always something about, “Sign up for my workshop” or “Sign up for this.” I’m like, “Nobody wants to see you in front of your fake Lamborghini.” Be yourself. They know you are renting it anyway.

I’m a marketer and I post these things. It’s not going to be the same thing as another marketer friend of mine. She posts completely different stuff. How I talk about Facebook is not how she talks about Facebook. She’ll tell you something different. What Eli said, every person needs to hear it differently and that person is going to connect with how you said it more than how this other person said it. It’s all finding likeminded people literally that speak your language. It’s about the conversation. Facebook said it’s about the conversation. Twitter said it’s about the conversation. Google said it’s about the conversation. You might need to have one maybe.

I doubt most people could even follow him. I follow a guy named Cord Shiflet here in Austin. He’s a multimillion dollar realtor, sells huge homes. I read this whole story about how he does daddy-kid days. He picks a day, flew his kid out to Lego land, he has the money to do that type of stuff, but if you watch his posts, he sits there and he talks about himself and his family and what they do on a regular basis. Then out of nowhere, he’ll come out with this million-dollar listing and this brand-new house and 100 comments. Tons and tons of likes and stuff like that. He’s engaging finding those people who are interested in who he is as an individual, very wealthy, successful realtor and then turn him around and dropping those little houses every now and then. For the majority of it, it’s all about him, his lifestyle on a regular basis and then he does the sales.

We connected with Cord because he started posting about what he was doing. He was being an Uber driver and he would pick up the people that would pay for the lowest fare, like you have levels of how you do cars, you can get a premium car, you can get a lower fare car. He would pick up people in the lower fare cars in his Bentley and these people were freaking out because you have somebody who’s expecting a cheap ride. They need to get to work and a Bentley is pulling up and picking them up and he would use it and do that with it. I’m sitting here like, “This is a pretty cool dude.” I connected with him and so did Elijah. The next thing you know, then we realized he’s a real estate agent. We have no idea.

Just that type of content. Showing how he puts himself out there like that is a great example. I am not saying that if your life isn’t as exciting as a millionaire, that’s okay. There’s a lot of people out there that don’t have $1 million. I won’t get close to that but being able to share your journey, your adventure, and then talk about how you make a living is powerful and can change the tides of a business. Remember as a business owner, you are the CEO, you are the owner, you are the influence of your business. Scott Carson is the influence of We Close Notes. People trust Scott, so therefore they trust We Close Notes. Putting yourself out there and then showing how you work inside your business it can be a powerful piece for yourself.

I’ll give an example. We did The Note Roadshow and I put out some teasers throughout the week like, “Would you be interested if somebody showed up in a market and start looking at assets?” Steph can vouch I literally came up for this. We talked about doing this before we flew out for an event in Ohio. I was like, “I can’t wait that long. I can’t wait a month to do this. I want to do it now.” I did that. Then I reached out to asset managers here to find assets because one of the biggest things that drives me bonkers is when people say, “I can’t find deals. There’s no good stuff out there. There’s nothing in my market.” I’m going to pick two of the markets that a lot of people are investing in. I found roughly 50 assets in Michigan.

There was a lot more. I could only get the 50 though. I literally found over 100 assets, but 50 were along my triangle basically. They hit in three days. I can still be there looking at assets next three days if I wanted to do these one off flyers, so that’s what we did. We flew in, we charted off, and we started driving by. We did a Facebook Live video on Friday and Saturday and then as we drove by the properties, we took a picture, put the picture in the comments, Asset 101, Asset 102. The longest one was three minutes or maybe five minutes, a little video that we uploaded as a comment there.

You got two days of videos with pictures and us talking about the asset. Friday, we had 272 views. Saturday, over 500 to 550, maybe almost 600, depending where it’s up to now, but people started reaching out. We had realtors reach out, “I’m in the neck of the woods if you need me to pull comps.” A friend of mine said, “Are you coming to my town? Please come by at the office. We will help you pull comps in every Detroit asset.” People are reaching out, “I want to buy that asset, I want to fund that asset or I’ve got money to do deals and stuff with, tell me more about what you’re doing.” We put it on the line like, “Here’s how you do it. Not very hard to do. All the marketing came from a cell phone.”

That’s the thing. If they don’t know about it and you don’t tell them, how are they ever going to know that the opportunity is there? You’ve presented them with the information in a channel that they could potentially engage on and allowed it to develop from there. Your intention was to just showcase the contents and get out there and do this and see what comes from it. That that’s great because again, you don’t know what you don’t know.

We’re going to end up buying a big chunk of them. Fourteen of the assets were stuff that was already in my portfolio that I drove by. A couple I know that I’ve got to put into rehabs, a couple are occupied, so we’re going to expedite that with the attorney stuff and a lot of them were making bids on, so it gives us a dose, but we’ve got the message out to our audience, “Here’s where we’re at. Here’s what we’re doing.”

I’d definitely like to touch on is technology. If you have not upgraded your tech, it’s time to. You’re missing out on deals. I don’t know how many times I’ve had somebody, “You just got to take really good photos and you could really get your products out in your store.” “I don’t have a camera.” Go buy a camera. It’s like this how I see it. You are losing money if you do not have the right tools and resources to make what you are trying to do, whether it’s your marketing, it’s your day to day operations with your business, it’s your finances, whatever it is. If you don’t have the right tools and resources, you are losing money. You’re losing money on the opportunity, you are losing money on the time and you’re wasting your time. Honestly, as business owners, I don’t have a lot of time. That’s the one thing that I covet the most is my time because I’m already strapped for it in the first place. If you are not upgrading your phone, if you’re still using something old, if you need a DSLR because you have a couple hundred products inside your store, go out and spend $1,000 on a camera or go buy a bad ass phone that you can utilize.

You don’t even have to buy this thing. You can lease them from Apple for $56 bucks a month. I shoot in 4K video, I have unlimited space on this thing that instantly uploads to the cloud and you know how many apps that I can buy for $199 that edit all of my videos for me and make them look pretty? It’s next to nothing. When we first started the business, we drop thousands into camera equipment, lighting equipment. It’s all obsolete now because my phone can do it better.

A lot of this stuff is easy things that you could probably get off Amazon. If you’re going to be doing podcasts and stuff, you can get really nice lighting sets that are very easy to use. It’s not rocket science to get it, but technology is so important for your business these days and if you’re not investing into new technology, more of a streamline way to produce your content, to take videos, to take photos, anything like that, you’re screwing yourself over. That’s something that it doesn’t have to be, “We’ve got to drop $10,000.”

You could find that one deal. You could just find the camera that works for you or the video camera that works for you there but even then, there are services like epic.video. They do stuff where you send them a bunch of twenty-second clips and they’ll brand a really solid template for your company and then they will just basically be able to start sending you really quality videos from the video content you sent them. You don’t even have to worry about being some kind of fancy editor or learning a whole new skill and editing. Just shoot that video and there are so many resources out there to do it. It has to start with the technology to make sure you can shoot the video in good enough quality in the first place, because remember, when it comes down to video, visual is one thing, but audio is important. If I’m looking at a video and I can’t hear it or I don’t see the subtitles, there’s a good chance I don’t want to watch it because I don’t understand what I’m looking at. Most people like to understand what’s going on when they’re looking into a direction. With that, get better technology and if you already have that technology, just start using it.

NCS 313 | Serving Social

Serving Social: Get better technology and if you already have that technology, just start using it.

 

It doesn’t have to be expensive. We lease the smartphones from Apple, we get free upgrades, we get priority upgrade actually. When the new phone comes out, we can go trade our phone in and we still pay the same amount of money. We lease them until we buy them basically is what it is. It was great because if you don’t have the $1,400 up front to buy it, for $52 a month it is what it is. Then I went out and I spent $32 and I bought a selfie stick. This one’s a little bit different. You connect your camera to it. It has a tripod at the bottom. I set this thing up. It has a remote so I can start and stop my video. It came with a light that I attached to the top of my smartphone like a halo and it came with the microphone that I attached to this so now I have lighting, audio, I have a wireless Bluetooth control, I have a full tripod and a lavalier mic that I spent $32 on plus the cost of the phone.

Technology like that is really easy to get and once you get that cleared, you got the good lighting, you got some good audio, at that point in time you really see the difference in your type of video work that you can put out there.

It’s quality of any of your content. If people couldn’t hear us right now or if we didn’t have good visuals right now, people aren’t going to be watching this.

Elijah went through a little bit of a thing when we were doing the National Social Media Day. We basically in the database have three webcams. You brought in a lot of great stuff. I’m like, “That’s awesome,” but we don’t need that for what we did.

We brought in too much and then realized it can be very simplified with just a few pieces of equipment. Like what? My $250 laptop I bought at Walmart because mine broke. We did that thing for 27 hours on this little laptop. It doesn’t matter the how much the equipment was, as long as it gives you the quality that you need.

We did a shoot with one of our influencers. We do influencer marketing with some of our clients and just like that, Scott, I brought tons of equipment, cases and everything. We’re doing multiple locations and every time we did one location, another box got dropped. Something else got put away. By the time we got to the end, we had the camera. There was no lighting.

We shot twelve hours’ worth of shooting with two iPhones X and Steadicam and that was it. That’s what we had by the end of it.

The quality we got out was phenomenal. The equipment that we used out of all the stuff, tens of thousands of dollars that we’ve spent, this was stuff that probably under $500 for all of it. Here we are again shooting some amazing content, amazing quality.

That allows you to take the money that you would have put because equipment depreciates quickly, like they’ll tell you. If you want to get a loan, like equipment is not something that you want to get a loan for, unless it’s machinery. It’s one of those deals where if we can minimize the cost of our equipment, we can maximize how much we’re putting in to creating our content, what types of content, editing, post production. That budget then can get reallocated into the things that are most important versus spending it on the actual product you’re trying to film with.

Let’s do a little recap. Knowing who you are, creating the content about yourself and your story, sharing it consistently and then what else? What was it, Kristie?

Technology.

Cheap and usable technology.

Just having the right tools and resources to facilitate the type of content that you are creating. If you’re creating a lot of graphic photos, just have something that takes those good photos.

Thank you so much for joining us here. To the audience, thank you for being here. How do they get ahold of you?

ServingSocial.com. You can find all the information you need on us there. Lead by example. Thank you so much, Scott, for having us home.

Thanks, guys. Check out Kristie and Elijah on Facebook under their own personal Facebook, Serving Social on Facebook. There will be one of the speakers at our upcoming Note Labs. One of the great things that we’re working on here for Note CAMP 6.0. The days of Note CAMP 6.0 is September 27th through the 30th. We’re doing something different this time around. We’ll have our regular lineup of speakers providing great quality content but also on one track, we’re going to turn it into a lab side of things. We’re going to have consistent two to three-hour sessions, deep dives into specific subject matters, specific things that you guys are looking to have. If you haven’t signed up, you can go to WeCloseNotes.com and sign up there for the early birds’ tickets. Have a great day. Go out and make something happen. We’ll see you all at the top.

 

Important Links

 

About Kristie Whites

Kristie Whites is a brand and marketing strategist, philanthropist, and national speaker. Looking to create social impact in the world, Kristie started Serving Social, LLC whose mission is to show businesses that marketing can be simple when you’re provided the right tools and resources.

Having worked with brands like Harley Davidson, Women’s Business Council – Southwest and various nonprofits, Kristie has helped businesses in establishing their marketing strategy, navigate the uncertainty of social media and measure results.

Kristie’s many achievements include becoming a Google Partner, Board Member of the Year for Texas Women in Business, ABJ’s Women of Influence – Profiles in Power Finalist, ABJ’s Rising Star Finalist, 2nd Place in the Pitch-A-Kid Pitch Competition, and the Moving America Forward Award Presented by Rear Admiral Kevin F. Delaney.

Some of her other business ventures include acting as the COO of VettedHeroes, LLC a revolutionary job placement platform that connects veterans with today’s top companies. As well as an advisor to the prominent Washington D.C. women’s organization Success in the City.

Currently, you can find Kristie and her partner in life and business, Elijah Whites venturing out on the road with their Serving Social offshoot, The Traveling Marketers Roadshow. They’ll be bringing marketing tools and resources directly to business owners across the country in an effort to spread their knowledge beyond urban centers and to build, connect, and grow communities across America.

 

About Elijah Whites

Elijah Whites is the CTO and executive of Google partners programs at Serving Social LLC. Elijah has had the opportunity to work with highly influential companies across numerous industries. His work discovers new and creative ways to incorporate marketing strategies through technology to gain brand awareness and increase market share.

Having worked with small businesses and national brands to reach a broader audience. Elijah’s work engages users across multiple platforms and increase online as well as in-store traffic by using Google‘s Street Views 360-degree immersive Technology,

The Elijah serves as a business Advisor to VettedHeroes – A platform for training and career placement for our country’s former military members. As the Advisor for VettedHeroes, Elijah oversees all research and development initiatives. His work is helping this worthy organization connect skilled veterans with employers that want to hire them.

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join The Note Closers Show community today:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.