Ep. 130 - How to Grow Your Business with Instagram

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Coghill is a must-read. This has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals. And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business. To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy of the case study today. You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can, too. Don't miss out. Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute. More number one source for truth in mortgage marketing. Hey listeners, what is up? This is your humble host, Chief Truth Teller, Jeff Simford coming at you live somewhere in the city of Las Vegas. If you're ever out here, hit me up. Let me know you're out here. I'll show you off the strip. I'll show you where the locals go to have a good time away from the craziness of the strip. I don't like that. We'll go there, too. What's up? Hope you're doing well. I am so excited to bring you this week's episode, which I'm going to tell you about in just a moment. But first off, I got to give a shout out to one of our podcast listeners who left us a awesome review. Tom, the lender, what is up, Tom, the lender? Tom says, thank you for blowing my business up. Woo, we like that. Absolutely love your show. I have three to four minimum great new ideas after listening to every episode. Keep up the good work. Tom, we're working on it. It's people like you that keep us going. So I want to thank you, Tom, for leaving that review and send you some podcast swag. One of includes a t-shirt. So here's how you get that email me podcast at margarsmarketingradio.com or hit me up on Facebook. Let me know your t-shirt size, your mailing address, and I'll get you out some podcast swag as a thank you for the review. And for you listeners, if you haven't yet left us a review, let me know. Please, how do you like the show? Do you like the content? If you're listening to this podcast, leave us a review, then let me know that you did just like I told Tom, he's getting himself a free t-shirt, a box of swag. You can get yourself the same. And that's how I can give you a thank you for tuning in consistently over time. I want to know that you like this content. You can always reach out and tell me what topics or ideas you want to hear. Okay, and speaking of blowing up your business like we did for Tom, do you want to blow up your business? Hopefully you're getting ideas from the podcast, but guess what, that's not enough, right? How do we keep the conversation going? How do we actually take these ideas, implement them and help you put them in the action in your business, in your local market? One way we do that is through our mortgage marketing pro membership, we have got a complete suite of tools, resources, community of support and accountability to help you succeed with agents to get maximum agent referrals and minimum time and help you transition to survive and thrive, the digital shift, become a modern originator. Now, hey, get educated on how to leverage content marketing. Facebook ads, YouTube, Instagram and more, lots of self-paced modules and tutorials in there for you to take and learn and apply to your business. But also the crux of our membership is getting you in front of real estate agents by teaching agent classes and getting referrals instantly. We've got lots of success stories. You'll want to see them go over to mortgagemarketing.pro, watch the brief video, check out the testimonials. And if it's right for you, become a pro member. We'd love to have you in there. Okay. Now, speaking of being a modern originator, this week's episode, I'm very thrilled to bring with you somebody who actually is collaborating with me on content for our mortgage marketing pro members and the classes that we teach real estate agents. None other than Jen Herman, Instagram, thought leader expert known as Jen's Trends. And I'll put links in the show notes to all her website resources. She's invited you to be part of her private Facebook group, Jen's Trends and Social Media. You can look that up on Facebook as well. But Jen is just a rock star when it comes to social media. She has been on many different media platforms. She's one that prestigious award of being a top 10 social media blog three years in a row. She's spoken at the big social media conferences and TV interviews. We've been featured in magazines and podcasts and she has looked upon, looked to as one of the most respected and knowledgeable experts, thought leaders and teachers on Instagram. And that's why we brought her here today to impart this information to you. Share this podcast with your real estate agents if you want. And this is a great crash course in how to get started, get better and blow your business up. Dare I say, using Instagram. So I think you're going to like what we have here to share today. And without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Jen, welcome to show. Welcome to me. I'm excited to be here. This is so much fun. I've we've chatted obviously a number of times and I'm excited to be on the podcast. Yes, yes, yes. So I do a formal introduction as people have heard as listeners of this. But I always like to allow you to give your own personal version of who's Jen? What's she all about? Why is she all in on Instagram? Well, first of all, it's Jen with two ends. I always state that because I was born in 1980 with a bazillion other Jennifer's. So I've always been two-end Jen and you can find me everywhere as Jen with two ends, Herman with one end because it confuses everybody. But Jen's trends, I fell in love with Instagram, gosh, it's been like six years ago now. And it was a total, you know, circumstance of of happenings. I just I had my blog and I was blogging about social media and all my friends were on Instagram and I was like, well, if I'm going to do this whole social media stuff, I better figure out Instagram. And so I started using it and I fell in love with it as a user. I just I love the community. I love the interaction, the engagement. I love photography. So it was a natural fit for me. And then I was like, well, how do I use this for business? And I started googling it and no one was talking about it. There was everything was like, like more posts and use filters. And it was very generic, superfluous type content. And I was like, well, I can do better than this. And I got this little tiny, itty bitty blog over here. And so I started blogging about it and I was blogging at the time three days a week. One day a week was dedicated to Instagram marketing and all those are still there. If you want to dig in the archives, they all still live there. But I did it very hands on. I tried this, this work. I tried this, this didn't work so well and got very strategic with it. And within about six months, people started inviting me on the podcast. I started getting speaking invites because I became the only person when you googled anything that would show up and search. So everyone started finding me and I became the Instagram person. And it was not intentional. I did not wake up one day and say I was going to be an Instagram expert. But I've been blessed that Instagram has continued to rise in popularity. And Facebook keeps putting more and more money in there and doing all the things that make it popular and growing. So it was a good place to fall into. Well, good for you. Congratulations. You were an early adopter. So right, first to market somewhat helps, but your content's really good too. So for those, and we're going to put the links obviously to everything in your show notes. We'll talk about that before we wrap up. So I want to think about where to enter this conversation, right? Because there's, as I said, two different audiences. They've got mortgage loan professionals and then real estate agents. And so, so I'm trying to, I'm looking at this through the context of my eyes and from people that I've talked to, which tend to operate in the same demographic that I'm in, which is, excuse a little bit older than the average Instagram user. Which I'll break that myth. Okay. There are more people over the age of 35 using Instagram and there are using Twitter. So it's not that it's not for older people. And it's not that it's just for young people. It's not just for millennials. And even then millennials are pushing 40. So let's just be real about age range here. I'm a millennial. And I'm going to be 39. Oh, yes. Yeah, that's a lot of you. But yeah, it's not that it's, but yes, I do, I know what you say. Some people are kind of scared by it because technology that they're familiar with, they're familiar with Facebook. They may not be as familiar with Instagram. But your audience is there. They may not be there in as much popularity as they are on other platforms in some ways. But they absolutely are still using Instagram. Oh, I see what you mean. So by popular, you mean the age segment might not be there in as great or numbers as other platforms. But it's growing because let's just face it. Instagram is attracting attention pulling users away from Facebook, right? Yeah, all that stuff. Yeah. So the challenge I'm trying to think is how do you recommend? Because here's the difficulty I think I've seen with people is, it's first of all part of the challenge for us in that older demographic is everything's on the mobile phone. Like anything I want to do on Instagram is here. I can't do much on on my desktop laptop now, which at first was a challenge. And it is. And even for marketers, it's a challenge because everything's on your desktop, all of your marketing materials, all of your content, all of your photos and your videos, it's not on your mobile device. If you work in a team of people, it's all on a, you know, shared, you know, either device, where it's in a drop box or, you know, something like that. It's not on your phone. And that is a hurdle. It can be overcome, but it is a hurdle, you know, for certain circumstances and certain people to realize that you can't post, you know, content from Instagram from your desktop, which is frustrating for a lot of people. Remember the first time I tried. And you can't post stories. No, Instagram from your desktop. So it is, it can be a challenge for some, but the reality is it was built as a mobile app. It's designed to be a mobile app. They have allowed some things to loosen up to allow marketers and more people to have flexibility to do things from a desktop or from, you know, the website version. But it's, it's meant to be mobile and it's meant to be, it's content that's meant to be ingested that way. So it helps to create it that way because that way, if you're creating it that way, you know that people are more likely to react to it on that device. When you build things for a website or you design things for YouTube or whatever, and you've got the widescreen videos and you've got all this different orientation. And then you try to stick it on Instagram. It looks funny. It doesn't translate the same way. So by having to create it on the app, it's, it typically will be better formatted for the app that way. Well, I mean, it makes sense. Anyways, because we know most of the world's on mobile predominantly as well. When you look at, look at Facebook, what's 80% plus our view Facebook on their mobile device. Absolutely. I mean, even when I'm sitting here at my computer, I still have my phone in my hand going through things on my phone. It's just what we do. Right, right. Okay. So then how do you recommend somebody kind of get over the, get through the learning curve with, with navigating and posting content on the phone? Like what's a good place to start? If the average people I'm looking at that, I see a lot of people just getting started on, on, on Instagram. Of course, there's a lot of people who are like, you know, have 15,000 followers and all of a kind. And you're like, Oh, my God. Right. How did they get there? So where do we start? So the first place you do want to start is just get on there as a user. Don't try to create content. Don't try to be that person who just, you know, knows what they're doing, but really don't know what they're doing. So be there as a user. Get on there, follow people that matter to you. So they can be celebrities. They can be colleagues, friends, family. You know, your grandkids, your kids, somebody's dog. I don't care because yes, people's dogs have Instagram accounts. It's very normal. But get on there and start following people and start to feel what the app feels like in a day-to-day environment. So look and see how content comes in, how other people are creating content, how to interact. It's a double tap to like a lot of times people don't, when they get started, think you have to like, you know, touch the little heart icon or they don't even realize the heart icon is the like. But you start experimenting with it, you start playing with it and you get to see how the content flows. You get to see how content comes in and then you start to feel more comfortable on the platform. You're going to be able to create better content and feel more comfortable doing it. Part of the reason a lot of realtors live on Facebook is because we're comfortable on Facebook. You're on there already. You know how it works, you know how groups work, you know how, you know, your friends and family are using it. And it's a natural place for you to create content. But if you're not used to Instagram, you need to get used to it first. And then that way when you start creating that content and uploading there, you're going to be more comfortable. So play with around with it, check out stories, you know, get into your direct messages, send people messages, just get really familiar with the platform. So you understand those different components first. Hmm. Okay. Well, how would you describe Instagram? What is it? I mean, because, you know, people who used to describe Facebook, you know, social media is like the, the online kind of cocktail party or whatever. Instagram is, is correct me if I'm wrong, but like very visually oriented. It is. Right. I always say it's the photo version of Twitter. So if you think of Twitter in back in the day, it was text space. It was just this like endless stream of text tweets. Instagram is the same thing, but with photos and now with videos. So it's not like Facebook where you have lots of different types of content. It's not like LinkedIn where you have different types. You don't have links and then you have text and then you have a photo and then Instagram is a photo or a video. That is it. So you have to create content starting from one of those two places and it's a fast moving feed. People scroll really quick. Most of them are not stopping to read that much. They will and you can condition them to read the captions, but they're there for visual content. They're not there to read a novel. They don't want to read, you know, your full week recap in 2000 characters. They want to see a beautiful photo, a quick caption, most of the time and then scroll onto the next. So it's a fast moving platform. It's highly engaged. It's designed to generate more engagement than a lot of platforms. So for example, on Facebook where if you like something, then your friends and families see that you liked that or if you comment on something, now that's going to show up in your friends and family's feeds. And now everyone knows that you liked something or commented and what your opinions are and you get tagged and something and then everyone else sees it and it's it's very open to public display. Even if you're private on Facebook, Instagram is not like that. You can like things and just keep on going and it's not going to tell everybody that you like something. You can post something and it'll show up in their feeds, but when you tag people, it doesn't show up in their feeds. It's everything's a little bit more controlled in terms of that environment. So it's better suited for engagement because people aren't as afraid to engage with people's content and then have the whole world see it. So it's fast moving, photos and videos and heavily engaged content. Okay. So I'm a mortgage loan officer, mortgage broker. Let's just take that first. We'll come to real estate agents next, but obviously I'm in the business of helping people finance homes and getting to homes. What type of content and what style would be appropriate then on my Instagram feed? So you're going to want to focus on education most of the time. This is something that people struggle with on a platform like Instagram because it's a photo based thing and they want to, you know, how do I turn this into education? But you have to find a mix of balance of, you know, it has to be entertaining. It has to be valuable, but still educational and you need to know where your target audience is. What are they doing? Like so if they are interested in, you know, learning more about, you know, buying homes or selling homes, then you create educational content around that. You don't have to create nine posts a week. You don't even create one post a day. You can do it. You can create one post a week, just one and you'll be fine, but create the educational content that serves a value to your audience. You have a beautiful photo of a house, something like that. And you can talk to that. If you are a local, you know, type environment where maybe you only work in a very specific, you know, either city or community, you know, I'm based here in San Diego. And so loan officers don't even do San Diego. They may do regions within San Diego. You can have things related to parks and schools and beaches and, you know, themed events that are going on. Like if you've got a county fair going on, you can take content related to these local things and again, so come out of an educational capacity. Talk about what these do for the community in terms of, you know, generating revenue for the community, you know, bringing in tourism. How to avoid the tourists and you live in a touristy place like San Diego. So the education doesn't just have to be about the actual business component of what you do, but augmenting that with education related to your target audience, where they live, what matters to them, and constantly providing a value in that way that they're always going to want to come back and get more from you. I think that's a great point. I know I've been preaching that for a long time to both regions and loan officers is it can't always be about quote the product, right. It's not. Yeah, it can't always just be about the listing. People have to look at listings. That's cool. But like I was reading earlier, which is not everybody that follows you is in the market to buy. Well, and so I literally just had her email in my inbox today. There's this woman that I met about a year and a half ago when I was looking to rent the condo that I currently live in. And so of course, she got my email address and I ended up on her email list. She's the only realtor who I have not deleted from my email because she doesn't make it about her. I have no need to buy a house. I have a three year lease on this condo. I'm not going anywhere. But she's the one realtor who's still in my email every month because she sends me one email a month and all it is is all of the events happening in San Diego that month. So it's a calendar that I can go through and see what events are going on. Do I want to go to one of my tickets? Am I available that weekend? And it's a great resource for me now granted that email base, but Instagram and social media are the same thing. If you're showing up and giving them what they want in their context of value to them, they're not going to leave you. They will keep you around. So in a year, two years, three years, when they are needing that service that you offer, you're the only one still showing up in their feed every week and they are going to want to work with you. Because if you do put a listing up, yeah, that's only valuable to the 10 people who are currently in that area who currently follow you who are currently looking to buy a house. And so those are very limited scope projects like it's not those are like Instagram stories. Instagram stories go crazy with your listing because the only last 24 hours, talk about your open house, be done with it. But your regular feed content has to be almost that evergreen endless content that is, and I always say this and like it is not about you. And it's about your customer. If it's valuable to them, you need to create that content. If it matters to them, you need to figure out how to share it with them. If it matters to you, you don't post it. Because all you're asking for at that point is what's the litmus test is like, if it matters to me, don't post it. That's awesome. That's actually a great point. It's just really, it's really accurate. You're right. And the thing is if you're doing it for them, if you're giving them everything they want, when the time comes for you to ask, they will answer or when they need you, they will come running. But if all of your posts are about, hey, we have this great deal. Hey, we have this great promotion going on. Hey, we have this great seminar we're offering. Hey, we're doing well, if it's always about you, they just stop listening. No, like no one wants to be sold to in that way. So you really need to put your mind in the mindset of who your target audience is. And whether that's as a loan officer or a realtor, who they are, what are they looking for? Why do you want them to connect with you? And then how do you get them that information to make it valuable to them? Like here's a great example. I'm scrolling my Instagram feed while you're talking to find up some good examples. And here's, here's a, if you're listening, team Anderson loans craft beer garden coming up, right, Riverton Renton River Days. Who doesn't like craft beer. So let's go. Exactly. That's a thing like if you are doing a seminar or you're doing a webinar or you're going to be at a local event or doing anything, you don't need to talk about it that it's you going to be there. Just say, hey, craft beer festival going on this weekend. Right. And then you're there. And you've got a table or you've got a booth or you've got whatever it is. And they're going to be like, hey, we saw that you guys were doing this. Like they'll come find you. What do you, I'm showing it. Hopefully you can see this. What do you think of these kinds of of things? So it's a meme. Yeah, I, you know, on Instagram, I hate them. They do perform. People will respond. People will engage. But in general, Facebook is a great place for memes. Facebook is where you get all the crazy, you know, reactions and stuff when you put up a meme. You know, gifts and those sorts of things. Instagram is not people want pretty pictures, you know, memes do work when done occasionally. But all they do is generate engagement. They're never going to provide a real value to your business. Even when their industry related, you know, okay, throw up one a month if you're really love them. And it's going to, you know, drive some entertainment value. But they don't really augment a strategy. The most of the time on Instagram. Like in this case right here, it's like Friday is for the memes. And then this is a, yeah, you're right. It's totally like it says right across the top says listen, Linda listen. I can't show you houses until you speak to a mortgage lender. Yep. Like that's not that's very self-serving. It's not that's not entertaining. That doesn't relate to that or other loan officers or realtors. Right. Right. And that's so you remind me of the phrase. Right. If people would rather be entertain than educated. But if you can bind the two, now you got a winner. Exactly. You know, um, all right. So let's Before I get into do's and don'ts, I want to clarify a video length on Instagram. So we got the feed, which is one type of video. That's a minute max, right. Yes. And then how about stories stories are 15 seconds. Now, yes, you're going to go there. Right. But But So if you're recording a story, if you press and hold the the shutter button on the story, you can actually record a full minute and it will cut it into four, 15 seconds segments. All right. So you can do multiple videos and create more than 15 seconds worth of video, but each segment in and of itself is always a up to 15 seconds. So let me share understand this. So if I'm going to record of I just got to kind of be aware that I'm holding down the button for a minute. Yeah. Right. And then what I what happens when I upload that Instagram is going to cut it up into 15 Even before like as you're recording it, you'll see it go and when it hits the 15 second, you'll see the first segment on the screen. And then it'll go another 15 seconds and the second segment shows up. So even before you upload, whether you have two, three or four segments, you can then still go in and add stickers, you can add filters, you can add locations, do whatever you want. And then you upload already segmented in the multiple 15 second sections. Then do you, does it upload it as one single file or do you have to then pick those different files from your camera roll? No, as soon as you hit, if you filmed it with an Instagram, as soon as you hit upload it uploads all for them individually, but at the same time, if you want to upload a longer video than 15 seconds, you can just choose your 32 second video of your camera roll. When you upload that, it'll cut it into 15, 15 and two. And so same thing, then you can add stickers, filters, whatever you want and hit upload and then uploads all three of them together. How about if I had already a bunch of different separate files on my camera roll that told me like them all individually. Right. What I've been using is a cut story. Any comments or thoughts about that versus the version you just described. I mean, they work. I mean, all of those work fine. There's a bunch of them out there. Which they do the exact same thing. Those will usually allow you to do more than a minute. If you upload into Instagram, it only allows you to go up to a minute. So if you have a like a minute and 30 second video, you want to cut the Instagram upload won't work. So it won't go beyond a minute. So you want to use something like that. If you had a minute and 30. But remember that again, people are conditioned to watch these in 15 seconds segments. So if you're uploading a video that's more than like a minute and a half to two minutes, you're going to have a massive drop in those views. And you're going to like the retention's not going to stay through. They're not going to watch that much in a story. So usually that. And that's why they cut it at a minute because usually that's about where, you know, be up to four or five or six. Get into about the minute and a half range is usually about as long as you can go and keep people's attention. All right. So do you have a recommendation on story length? I mean, obviously a minute is kind of the sweet spot. But are you seeing a different engagement metrics with different usually five to seven posts is the ideal rate. And that can be a combination of videos or photos. So if you did like photo video, video, photo, photo, video. That would be fine. Um, in whatever, you know, combination, you're talking about combined in one story. Right. So, uh, and that's what I'm going to do. And individual story is the either photo or video. And then the whole sequence is like the story sequence. There's no like terminology. Just everything's a story. And it's really confusing when you try to teach people how to use stories. Yeah, because everything's just a story. Telling your story using a story and a longer story, really complicated. But yeah, if you're going through five to seven individual segments that make up a complete story sequence where in general, you want there to be some sort of like actual story, like a beginning, middle and an end, like you start with something. There's a purpose to it. And there's an ending phase. There are times where that doesn't work. So for example, I do a lot of stories when I travel. And it's literally like, here's me in the Uber. Here's me in the airplane. Here's me at the venue. Here's me up for dinner. Here's me up with friends. And it's like, it's just a bunch of random content all stitched together. And there isn't a story component, but they're following me on a like a three day journey. So it's just the long stretched out story where there's still multiple components to it. So you have to kind of figure out what that sequence looks like for you. I do recommend you plan these things out in advance if you can. Like if you know, let's say you are doing an open house as a realtor, you know, you could have a story sequence where you have the front of the house where you have, you know, showing the like the exterior of the house, then you can have one where you walk literally a video into the front door, see the scope of the house, then you have a photo of the living room, a photo of the kitchen. And you have a video going out to the backyard and then you have a photo of the master. Boom, there's a dead like that's your story sequence. You've showed the entire house in one sequence, but it's how you would walk through a house. That's normally the direction you would go when you're, you know, touring it. So it stays true to that. But again, you don't want to do 20 posts with every, you know, every bathroom and every aspect of the kitchen. People don't want to see that if they get enough from those three, four or five individual pieces, they will come to the open house to see it for themselves. You don't want to give them too much for them. They're just like, I don't even want to deal with it now. You want to leave them wanting more. So just to clarify for those listening in the example you gave where you've got images combined with videos, those are separate files that you that Instagram is you're going to, as you choose, you're setting up your story. It's going to, it's going to, if you're not doing it real time and loading it up real time, if you're using files you've saved, then what you're going to do is select those files and it'll stick together as those little you see the little like interruption for a split second. Right. And it kind of like literally like flips through to the next kind of thing. But yeah, so you would pick in your camera roll, which, you know, videos you want, which photos you want and you know what sequence you want them to roll up. You can also with, even within stories, sometimes what I'll do is I'll have like a photo. And then I do a text based so I don't upload an external piece that go into stories and I go over to type, which is one of the options within the stories banner you choose type. And now you can just do type text on a colored background. So you might have a great photo of the external of the house and then you have a text that says open house today and you have all like you have the address and the date and time kind of thing. And then you go into uploading another photo video sequence of the interior of the house. So not everything just has to be a photo or a video, you can use the text based ones. You know, and things like that to add more components to the story and get more content out there without having to record it as, you know, a video piece or that sort of thing. Yeah, I think for me what I found what you just described there, easier way to integrate stories is like you said to think in advance of how I want to leverage this. Let's say I'm going to a concert or whatever who knows or to start to think about compiling different snippets of content knowing that you're going to compile those later into a story. Yes, because for a while there was this pressure to like, what am I going to create here? Relive real time, holy crap, 15 seconds, you know, so it's like, I got nothing. But then when you start thinking about an event, you're like, wait a minute, I can create little like you said when you travel. Here I am getting on the plane and then there's the rental car bus and then whatever, right, then you're going to stitch those all together later. And the same thing goes like let's say you are, you know, some you're doing a charity event, whether you're hosting it or you're just attending it. Thinking that through and being like, okay, I want to get an external shot of the venue. I want to get a shot of the signage that talks about, you know, what the benefits are of this charity or what the, you know, the proceeds are going towards. I want to get a photo or video of the, you know, CEO on stage announcing, you know, how much they raised. I want to get, you know, an internal shot of the entire like all the tables full of people. And if you start thinking that out in advance, then you do remember in the middle of dinner to get up, stand at the back of the room, take a photo of the whole venue, rather than when you get home and go, Oh, I should have took a photo of that. That would have been good. Or when you're leaving the event and you're like, Oh, I have to upload a bunch of stuff. If you think it through in advance, you're more aware of the images you want to gather when you get there. And, you know, work with a team, talk to your, you know, your colleagues or even, you know, if you have an assistant or your boss or whomever and say, what story do we want to tell, what pieces of content do we need to gather? Do we want to photo or a video? And that way you can gather as much content in advance, prepare to gather what you need when you're there and make sure you have everything for a great story. Yeah, it's like I've tried to train myself to just take a bunch, just start collecting, you know, images, content. And I'll figure out how to stitch them together later or create something. Well, and you know what I tell people all the time, I tell my clients this all the time. I'm like, everywhere you go is content. Yeah. So if you just go out for dinner and you walk by a beautiful building with beautiful architecture, stop and snap a couple photos. Get on the corner, get interesting angles and unique perspective of that building. You don't need it today, but in two weeks or even a month, you may have this great concept of a post you want to share and you could use a great architectural image. Boom, you have it because you took a random photo when you went out for dinner two months ago. You know, just walking by a park or a playground or a school or any of these things that are part of your natural community where you serve. These are all things that again, maybe the day you wanted it's rainy and nasty, but you took a photo a month ago when it was sunny and gorgeous. Now you have that photo, you can go back to. Get yourself into that mindset of always having visual content ready and available and it's on your device. You can drop it in your drop box if you want to, but you have it for when you need it. So do we have to learn basically how to become little movie content producers? So the way I always say it because that sounds overwhelming. I always say I'm like, imagine you're in a reality TV show and you just have a camera crew behind you all the time. Like that's that's a little easier because you just keep going about your life. Don't change your life to try to be called here. That's the that's the the gap though, right? For a lot of people becoming content creators. You can do documenting right? That's the challenge. It is and if you're not used to like my phone's always in my hand always. It's because I will at any point want to throw up in the camera and grab a video or a photo. And if it's buried in my purse or it's in the backseat of the car or my kids playing with it, but at the time I can get the phone and get a photo that opportunity is lost. So you do have to change your mindset into being prepared to capture content when it comes across. And this, you know, they always say I have it takes 30 days, right? It takes a month to develop a new habit. So commit to I'm going to be more consciously aware of taking photos when I drop the kid off at school, when I go out for dinner, when I go out in a date, when I, you know, I'm out, you know, on the way to the gym, on the way to work, whatever it is, if you see a beautiful sunset, take it. You know, if you see beautiful flowers, take a photo, you know, grab a quick video of, you know, something, you know, just traffic going by in a busy intersection downtown, like any of these sorts of things that you can, you may, you need me never use them. I have so many photos and videos that I will probably never use, but it's just getting into the habit of creating that content. So when you do want something, you have it readily available to you. And at that point, you on the copyright, you're not worried about taking somebody else's image. And like, do you have rights to use it? Is it okay to have this content? You just, you have your own gallery of content at your disposal. Yeah, I have to say you, that's, that's very true. You've got to train yourself in the new way, because really, I remember I made a shift for myself one time where, you know, because it's uncomfortable, I think, for a lot of people to document their lives. Yeah. Because to our point earlier, doing this, right, is all about you. Yes. But what shifted for me, right, and of course, been following GaryVee and others for a long time, which shifted for me was the reality that this is the world we now live in. Yeah. And that, while this may feel uncomfortable, it's what we live in today. And that's how people document their lives and engage. That's how they share and interact. These are the platforms and the forums through which we communicate and engage today. When I always tell people, like, the first thing they ask, you know, my customers and my clients, is what kind of content do you watch? What do you listen to? What photos are you stopping to look at? Like, think about what you do, and you realize that all the content you're watching is the things that you're terrified to create. Like, you're watching videos of people walking down the street telling you a tip as they just walk to work. You're watching videos of people, you know, sitting in their home, you know, you're listening to podcasts. You're like, you're already taking in all this content that you are too afraid to create, because you think it's not normal, it's awkward. But literally that's what you're watching. So if you're watching it, your audience is watching it. Yeah. And you have to get comfortable with creating that content in a different way. And it doesn't mean you have to be on camera. That reminds me, I got to take a screenshot of this podcast. There we go. But that's, he doesn't have to be you on camera. It doesn't have to be a selfie. You can be on a front facing or the rear facing camera and talking a voiceover as you walk through something. You don't have to physically have your face on camera. That's something you're uncomfortable with. And again, everything, I always say people do a lot also with the music industry. And I always say I'm like, probably people who play instruments didn't wake up one day and just become a master at playing an instrument. It took time and practice. And this is the same thing, photography, videography, content creation. It's probably going to suck the first time you do it. But guess what? We all suck the first time we did it. And you do it more and you get better at it. And you learn what works for you. You learn your, you know, your nuances and quirks and you get better at it. And but you're not going to get better until you start. You think? No, I'm just trying to be very with this the last two minutes or so we have. Because what came up for me, I'm trying to figure out how to articulate it is. Do people need to be on Instagram? I mean, you know, if you are in the business world today, okay, so go ahead. What do you mean, no? So I say anybody can. Not everybody should. Hmm. Literally any business can be on Instagram. There are people that should you would never think can make an Instagram and they're successful. It's if you are not passionate about it and it's going to come through that you're not passionate about it. And you're just doing it to check the box. Don't do it. You're going to hurt yourself more than anybody. Just by forcing yourself into doing something you genuinely don't want to do. If your audience is not there, if it's not worth it. If you have 10,000 people paying attention day in and day out on Facebook and you're going to have a hundred people on Instagram. Why would you take two more hours out of your day or however much time you need to learn Instagram and manage it and create content for those hundred people. And especially those hundred people are already part of the 10,000 over on Facebook. You know, it's not necessarily for everybody and can I help? Yes. Can you learn? Yes. Can it be successful? Yes. But it's not for everybody. And some people just like I just genuinely don't like certain social media. I freaking hate Snapchat. Like you're not going to get me on Snapchat. No matter what, I don't care what happens. I'm not going to be there. Not that it matters. It's dying anyways. But I never jumped on that bandwagon. Right. And I was like, that's okay. It just doesn't work for me. And if it doesn't work for you and you're not going to enjoy it or if your audience isn't there, then don't. Don't listen to anybody who says you have to be on every platform because you do not have to be on every platform. You need to be a where your audience is and be where you're comfortable. Right on. And be you. Just be you. And if you can't be you on Instagram, then don't fake it. Then don't. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, cool. This is all good stuff. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day. And like you and I talked about before is we've been a collabing on some stuff some Instagram courses and all that. And we just there's content for our pro members in there. And we are for those listening who aren't yet pro members. There's a brand new Instagram class that just dropped and went live for you to teach your real estate agents. But Jen, tell people how they reach you to learn more. It's your Facebook group. Aren't you go ahead and read that off? How do they get involved with you over there? Yeah. So the Facebook group is the place to be. I know we're talking about Instagram. And I'm told that Instagram too, but the Facebook group is where all the breaking news goes down. So go search for Jen's trends in social media over on Facebook. You'll find the group. You have to request to join it's a closed group. I'll let you in. And that's where if anything new comes up. Any new features breaking news, roll outs, testing issues. The first place we talk about it is my Facebook group because that way we get everybody's input. And then I can go talk about it on Instagram and actually know what I'm talking about. But anything in relation to most social media, we talk about in the Facebook group as well. So Facebook updates linked in Twitter, any of the sort of stuff that's going on in the online space. We talk about in the group. And if you have questions where I need help with things, it's a great place to come and bring those questions and have me and or others in the group offer their insight and help so that you can get more success. And it's a totally free group. So just come hang out. Absolutely. And I know you're coming out with book number two. Do you want to give a shout out or mention for that? Okay. So Instagram for business for dummies is already out that came out in 2018. Instagram for dummies, which is going to have a huge component on Instagram stories because it wasn't that big when we wrote the first book. It's coming out October of 2019. So stay tuned for that one. And it's going to give you everything you need to get started on Instagram. General content strategies, but then a ton on stories as well as IG TV. That's awesome. And you're of course among the best, most highly regarded Instagram experts authorities out there. You've been all over various media channels and so forth. So those listening, you want to get your Instagram game up. Definitely check her out in the Facebook group. We'll put links in the show notes as we talked about. And so again, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Bye everybody. Yeah, yeah. Listeners, as always, we appreciate you. So if you like this episode, you know what to do. Like us. Love us out on the inner web. Then we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing. Get more free training and resources at MortgageMarketingInstitute.com. 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