Ep: 144: How to Get Started, Build Your Brand and Get Business from 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 Cogill 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, your number one source for truth in Mortgage Marketing. Hey listeners, what's up, it's Jeff Zimfer, your host once again for another edition of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. So thrilled you're here and excited to bring you another superstar interview, which I know you're going to be thrilled with. Before I get to that, I want to, of course, always give a shout out to you, our listeners. If you don't know it, you can leave us a review, if you like to show, if you're getting value from it, hey, I appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or wherever else you're listening to this podcast, you can do it on Facebook or wherever it is you're listening to this podcast, appreciate a review in it as an exchange. I'm going to send you a swag box with a t-shirt and some other cool podcast stuff for you to probably wear and display. So on that note, I want to give a shout out to one of our more recent podcast reviews by Jay Baker 89. This was just left for us on October 30th. So it's brand new fresh off the press here. Here's what Jay Baker 89 says, content rich and essential for all LOs, speaking from the position of an independent broker that's starting over from absolute zero in a new market. Mortgage Marketing Radio is an incredible resource. The content offered here for absolutely free would cost thousands in courses or coaching anywhere else. Keep up the awesome work. Wow. That's an awesome review. Thanks Jay Baker 89. And you're going to be getting this swag box. If you DM me, PM me, whatever on the socials, you're mailing address and t-shirt size. If you're listening, please do so so we can take care of you and appreciate you leaving that review. All right. So let's talk about my guest, my very special guest who this is a long time coming. We've been talking for probably on and off for, I don't know, maybe eight months, maybe a year or so. And it was about time that I brought this young lady on the podcast to bring her wealth of knowledge and expertise all about Instagram. That's right. Instagram. Right. What does Michelle Burman do? Michelle Burman, owner of Burman Media. She specializes in building, growing and monetizing companies on Instagram, helping you to build marketing campaigns, build awareness, build relationships and build referrals. And the cool thing about Michelle is she specializes in the real estate and mortgage industry. She's been working with real estate agents, mortgage professionals, both in helping them step up their Instagram presence, but also teaching classes, doing, you know, coaching them, leading them, enjoying them, kicking them in the butt in some cases, like with me, to get my Instagram game on. And so if you've ever wondered about, hey, is Instagram really worth it? Do I need to be on Instagram? How do I even get started? How do I show up in the right way? What's the right way to build my brand? What's the wrong way? Do I do stories? Do I do feed posts? Do I do IGTV? How can I actually engage with realtors, you know, all that kind of stuff? How can you get chosen, right, and have people be attracted to you? Well, we unpack all of that with Michelle on this episode. And yeah, this is just, it's a clinic for me all about Instagram and how to master that. And so we're going to put links in the show notes to everything that Michelle has to offer. She has what's called a Instagram power method. If you're interested in learning more about that, there'll be a link in the show notes for you. On that, follow her on Instagram. We'll put a link, of course, in the show notes to her Instagram feed. But she's at Burman Media Social. On Instagram, she can go grab, follow her there, check out her profile, check out her contents, really good stuff. Burman Media Social on Instagram. And without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Michelle Burman, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Jeff. Excited to be here. Pumped to have you. I feel like I got to flex my muscles, because you know. I'm flexing out. There you go. Awesome. Hey, glad to have you here. You and I have been chatting for, it feels like a year now, right? I mean, yeah, just about. It's crazy. So you have a crazy schedule as do most of us. For the listeners, give us your personal version. Let me ask it, let me ask it this way, because I gave the formal kind of intro up front. Let me just get ready to add, you know, you and I talked before. I'm going to approach this in a total organic way. So your expertise is Instagram for real estate and mortgage, right? Correct. Okay. Tell us how long you've been working in that space, and why is it Instagram for you? So I have been working solely with real estate agents and lenders since January of 2018. So it's been almost going on two years now, not quite two years. And how I got into that space was essentially decided that trying to be a master jack of all trades as far as industries were concerned was a little exhausting. I had clients in pretty much any sphere of business that you can imagine from like hair salons all the way to, you know, real estate lenders, a dog walker, like all kinds of crazy companies. And I found my passion to really lie in the real estate market and with the lending side of business because I just love that side of life. I love building houses. My fiance and I are hoping to do so ourselves one day. And I'm a big HGTV fan, big chip and joint against fan for all my ladies out there. I was just watching that last night. I mean, it's like the most amazing show, Fixer Upper. But so that is how I really decided like we're based off the clients. I have where am I most excited to work and it was a pretty natural transition for me. So going on two years and it really came down to what do I love more than anything. And as far as why Instagram, I love this. I genuinely believe at least for the marketing budget side of people or of agents or industry as a whole that it's the most inexpensive way to create a brand, promote your brand and have the most organic and personal connection that doesn't cost you a dollar to do. So it's pretty much in my opinion the smorgasbord of perfect because you can be you. You're supposed to be you. But at the same time, you can provide value and you can do it all for free. I think that's a new term. The smorgasbord of perfect. That's how I heard of that. That's pretty good. We're going with it. All right. Okay. Instagram for you. And I'm multitasking here, looking at kind of your feed and some other things to talk about here. So it's Instagram for you. Thank you for that backgrounder. Yeah. So my self-proclaimed title, if you will, here for the podcast is Chief Truth Teller. So I think one of the reasons why people like listening to this is because I'm always trying to get down to the truth and not ask those surface level questions but dig deep like the question behind the question. So I'm just going to re-enter this where you and I talked about before before we hit record. And let me ask it this way. Do mortgage and real estate professionals need to be on Instagram to succeed? Do they need to be on Instagram to succeed? No. Should they be on Instagram in order to reach a market that in my opinion is where their main source of leads lies? Yes. All right. Let's unpack that a little bit. Your main source of leads. And what you're going to find is I tend to get like very specific as well. Because I think the quote, main source of leads, don't you think that depends a little bit on, well, I'd love to hear your answers, why you think that Instagram, right? Let's just take that. You're the Instagram gal. You're not the Facebook person. You're not the YouTube. You're the Instagram person. Why do you think, to use your phrase, Instagram quote, main source of leads. Why do you think that actually holds true for real estate mortgage? And I'll tell you why I'm a millennial. I think there's a lot of us out there in this world, right? But I think also the referral based side of business will always be the main source of your funnel right, especially if you've been in the industry for a long time. And even if you're, even if you haven't been, even if you're a brand new realtor that just got your license yesterday, you most likely have a referral network of people that now know that you're a realtor, at least family friends. But my take on it is where are your new pipeline of leads sitting? And the answer to that question in my opinion is Instagram. And here's my unpacked reason. We all have older parents. My parents are in their 60s. I have an older sister who's in her 40s, both of which have no desire whatsoever to be on Instagram. But they both know that I am and they both know that my generation, my millennial generation, that is where we live. So when my parents are getting ready to buy a house in a 55 and older community in Palm Desert, California, who did they call? They called me because they know that I know realtor and I know that I deal with social media as far as what I consume for content and for information and news, if you will, although not all the best news, but still news regardless. And so whether you have a older generation business or a younger generation business, you will see that the people who will be connecting you to a potential lender or a potential real estate agent, whatever are on Instagram, they are consuming it. So subliminally, even if they're consuming realtor, realtor, realtor, and they're seeing all these posts, they're more likely to call one of those people than the person that helped them sell their house two or three years ago, just by nature of this subliminal marketing, really. Do you think, do you ever come across potential clients you're talking with right about helping them work on Instagram? Do you ever feel, where do you stand on maybe Instagram's not right for you? That question. Yeah. My question to them or my response, if you will, I always respond to a question with a question usually, but my response to them would be, do you have somebody who, if you are too busy, which is my favorite response, if you are too busy to be using Instagram, do you have somebody on your team who has delegated, who has been delegated the side of marketing or branding, or do they, are they the person that does your admin work? Are they the person that does your contracts if you're an agent? If you're a lender, do you have like somebody who does all of your upfront stuff before it even lands on your desk as far as taking the application and doing all those things? Because if you have that person on your payroll, if you will, their job description by nature is designed to make your job easier, right? So that would be my response, my first response would be, do you have somebody that's on your team that does that and does it work or, you know, is it going to work for me? The second part of that is it will give back to you as much as you give to it. So if you want to use it as a Legion and you see the value in why I am and other people like me are trying to get you to use the platform, then it's a no-brainer. What's your take on? Look, obviously Facebook owns Instagram and, you know, myself, right? I'm trying to take advantage of some of the ability to appear in both places, right, with the cross-posting and all that kind of stuff or using now Facebook creator and things like that greater studio. Do you think, because my assumption, my guess is based on, like, the level of exposure I've had to people in our industry is that up until recently most have been on Facebook versus Instagram, particularly the older, right, older, 40 plus. And so they've kind of shunned away from Instagram and just, you know, kind of stayed on Facebook, but do you think it's okay to try and cover both bases, you know, with using some of the tools that you can do that? Absolutely. Facebook has designed itself to be multi-purpose, like it is in its fund or foundational design, if you will, Mark Zuckerberg is an absolute genius, in my opinion, in more ways than one, but he has designed his platform to be multi-directional on purpose and create, you know, something like creator studio has been designed so that people can be more available to both audiences simultaneously. I've just briefly started using creator studio, I still prefer plain only, it's the application that I use, it's the application that I teach for my students, which allows both Facebook and Instagram and IGTV and now Twitter, excuse me, now Pinterest, but again, all of these tools that are approved by Facebook are designed to allow you to be in multiple places because the value is so important. Okay, exposure is so important. Yeah, I've recently been kind of toying around with creator studio as well and for all of us who are time strapped, it does provide some efficiencies, right? What do we need to be aware of though? Well, and let's maybe highlight stories as something different because you can't yet, if I remember correctly, you cannot yet post stories from creator studio. You can in my application? In, oh, you mean in planally. Planally? Correct. Planally, sorry. Yeah, but not in creator studio itself. You can't post stories, which is, to me, the big thing on Instagram is. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. So let's kind of break out the context then in that, okay, so I'm creating a story on Facebook, right? And I, if I remember correctly, I'm trying to remember the flow of this. No, I'm doing a story on Instagram, then I can cross post that to Facebook. Yes. Right, right. That's cool to do that. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Mine happened naturally because my accounts are all connected. Yeah. So if I post on my personal bit, you know, and my business Instagram, really either one, they will show up on my Facebook stories simultaneously. Yeah. By the way, you mentioned business account on Instagram, and I'm making certain assumptions, so forgive me listeners, but I assume that you guys already get the fact that you need a business account on Instagram versus personal, you know? So I don't even want to go there because I know you've covered that, covered that on other shows, but look, if you're going to do anything meaningful on Instagram, you need a business account. And if you want to know how to convert your personal to a business, well, you know, Michelle's got resources for you as well as there's this little thing that is called YouTube, and you can learn how to do that possibly there as well. Yeah. It takes a whole whopping 30 seconds. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. So let's share some stories with me on how you see loan officers or realtors winning on Instagram. The biggest thing is creating conversation. Conversation is where we convert, right? So the ability to create conversation with people who we may not have the opportunity to physically go sit in an office and meet with is the value in that for me. You know, I would say maybe a third of my students are all locally to me, but that's from attracting them to geotagging and other things that I've been doing. And mostly because I am the type of person who I do like to meet you in real life, whether it's like you and I Jeff, whether it's on Zoom or whether it's on, you know, pounding the pavement meeting at a coffee shop together, but I see as far as what the purpose of all of this is, is it allows us to create the virtual handshake that we wouldn't be otherwise able to do and to network in a broader sphere versus being so confined to our local Facebook groups in our cities or our local DM group that we make for everybody that lives in Phoenix if you're me. And it also takes away the boundary of, you don't want to work with me because you can't connect with me. So like you don't even know that I exist, right? But it opens the floodgates for all kinds of, I mean, I've networked with people all over the world and it's the power of what this platform allows for me and for my business. Yeah, and so I'm just funny, I'm doing some, some looking here at different lenders that are on Instagram trying to find some really amazing examples. There's this guy Eric Braun out in New York, not your average lender, I don't know if you know him, but he's got, he's got 15,000 followers. Yeah, he's crushing it. Yeah, that's pretty solid, but I'm looking at his content. So if an originator is listening to this, right? And let's just say they've recognized that obviously the biggest bulk of future buyers is millennials. And you know, we can look at some of the stats on Instagram, demographics who's there, but let's, I mean, look at Instagram's obviously blowing up, what do they have, a billion users a day, something like that, going to Instagram. It's, it's, and growing probably, yeah. I'm reading some quick stats, 70% of users look up a brand on Instagram kind of to your point earlier. I'm gonna let's face it, right? In this business, even though it's a, if you have a highly referral based business, we all know they're still going to search you, look you up. And yes, some will go to Google, but others will go to social like their preferred platform and to be like, you know, so Michelle's a realtor in Arizona. I got a referral from someone, so huh, what if she's on IG, let me pull her up, you know? Oh, yeah. I mean, you can't even get a job these days without on the application, it's saying what's your Instagram, what's your Facebook handle, what's your LinkedIn profile. Yeah. I mean, without a presence like a lot of companies won't even hire you. Even if it has nothing to do with, even if the position you're applying for has nothing to do with social media. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. You probably heard about the girl that just got fired from Panera, I don't know, did you see about that? No. A girl got fired from Panera for posting on her TikTok and her Instagram story behind the scenes of how they make their macaroni and cheese. Oh, really? And she was, in my opinion, probably not the smartest that she decided to tag Panera in her story. But she actually posted a behind the scenes video of the mac and cheese that comes in a packet that you put in a deep fryer, basically, and or not a deep fryer, excuse me, like a unfreeze is this frozen bag of mac and cheese. She cuts it open with a pair of scissors and dumps the mac and cheese in a bowl and serves it. Yummy. And people, you know, it became this fireball of a conversation of like, should she have been fired or not? Because I mean, if anything, she was just exposing something. So. Well, and yeah, they could have handled that very differently as well. You know what I mean? Had a very transparent conversation about our process and all that stuff you could do from branding. She probably has some job offers coming her way though. I would imagine. Yeah. You know, that's interesting. I've eaten that Panera quite a few times. Okay. So, and I'm looking at some other stats and we've heard these before in terms of like engagement rates. You know, there's a percentage and you may know these facts better than me in terms of like how many, how many conversations lead to a DM, right? There's a lot of DMs happening. They're direct messages. Yes. Yeah. So I have an entire module, if you will, that's in my course that's called literally it goes down in the DMs. Mm-hmm. And I teach very strategically how I actually convert somebody from a follower who obviously is somebody who is interested in what I'm doing. If they've taken the time to follow me. And if they obviously fit my niche, which AK real estate or lending. Mm-hmm. And then I have a, what I call a KPI tracking sheet that I can literally track all the way from my initial conversation to how many touch points it took to me took me for, to actually convert them. Mm-hmm. And 95% of my leads, and I have done this math multiple times, but literally 95% of my leads are already following me on Instagram before I have an initial conversation with them. And they're converting because I'm ending up in their DMs. And I have paid to date, I've literally paid zero dollars in any Instagram ads, any Facebook ads at all, because it's all about just creating a conversation in your DMs. Yeah. And I think that's one of the, you know, the reasons why I think people understand why they need to step up their presence and have a current relevant presence online is that that's the world today. People are going to check you out, stalk you, kind of sniff around. Who are you, right? Or reach out and contact you about lending a real estate? Yeah. I mean, are you an authority or are you not? And it's pretty easy to figure that out pretty much right away. You mentioned something earlier, geotagging. So I'm reading a stat here, this is from Add Espresso. Post with locations gets 79% more engagement. How are you using geotagging or how would you suggest those listening use geotagging? Multiple different ways. So I suggest no matter what you're doing story wise, especially if you are meeting with people or if you're a real estate agent trying to sell a property or if you're a lender trying to promote a program that is specific to like, for example, I have a client in Utah, just in South, South Utah. So there's a loan program called Utah Housing. And it's very specific to a very specific area. And so using geotagging and our stories using geotagging and we're actually posting content means that the algorithm is going to know who to show that to versus showing it to somebody in New York City that like doesn't care about Utah Housing, you know. So in our stories, the biggest thing is if you notice and I encourage everyone to try this, if you post the same story one day and do the exact same story the second day, the first day post it just like a normal post without any hashtag and without any geotags whatsoever. And post the second, the exact same thing the second day with your geotag location actually like on the story and at least one hashtag that's relevant to whatever you're posting, you will see that that 79% will blow your mind like statistically it's literally nine day. How does somebody do a geotag? So in your stories and I will actually I can even show you on my screen because it might help because if people are watching this then they can see it that way. But if my wonderful Instagram will show up, but if you say for example, you're posting a picture, right? So this is a picture actually where I was talking about meeting with you Jeff, but up at the top there's a little square sticker that has like a little curve at the bottom like a tab opening. If you click that, you'll see the location button on the side that literally says location. You can click that and you can type in any location. It's going to auto populate wherever you are. Right. So mine, obviously the first thing that shows is Mesa Arizona because that's where I live. But you don't have to tag Mesa Arizona. You can tag anything you want. All you got to do is type it in. So whatever you type in, it will show up and that's as simple as it gets as far as tagging. Speaking of that, I got to do this right here. Take a snapshot. There we go. There we go. Fones in the middle of my face. Yes it is. Who cares? Just get it done. Right. All right. So geotag is cool. I like to explain that a little bit for people because, you know, I'm in the older demographic and I've just slowly been, it's funny because somebody didn't audit of my, my, my Instagram feed. And by the way, I'm fully disclosed. I suck at Instagram. Right. I'm working again. Better. I've been slow to kind of take it up. But I have seen the benefits of it for sure. But you need to be very intentional and thoughtful and be educated about how to actually make the platform work, which is why somebody like you is so valuable. So I, for the longest time, never did any hashtags, right? And then I'm looking at all these other people that are in my space and I see like somebody pointed out, hey man, these are all the hashtags these people are using and look at how many followers they have compared to you. That's one area you're missing out on is by not leveraging these hashtags to grow your followers. Yeah. So best practices for hashtags. So this is a really loaded topic and it's something that I deal with. I deal with this literally every single day because I have agent who will call me or they'll text me or DM me and say, you know, hey, Michelle, how do I get to 10,000 followers so I can have my swipe up feature? And first off, you can swipe up or have a swipe up feature without 10,000 followers and if you want to know how, then please DM me, but first and foremost, anybody who is educated by me will know that my response to you when you care about how big your following is is that you shouldn't. I don't care if you have nine followers or 900 followers because if you have 900 followers that can't do anything for you and can't bring you any business, it's a complete waste of 900 followers. But if you have nine followers and all nine of them are target specific, demographic specific and actually genuinely interested in what you're doing and you're likely to convert nine out of nine versus it may be 10 out of 900 or people that can actually bring you business like the ratios are messed up there, right? But as far as hashtagging and the correct way to do it, here's my biggest piece of advice if I can do it quickly. When you're creating hashtagging, especially if you're a real estate agent or if you're a lender, right, you don't want to attract other lenders and you don't want to attract other real estate agents. So how do we do that? The answer to how to not do that and not end up with just a crap ton of other real estate agents following us is developing a hashtag matrix is what I call them that will actually attract whoever your ideal client is. So first and foremost, we have to know who that is. But secondly, we have to also determine that if I am that person, if I put myself in the shoes of that ideal client, what am I searching on Instagram? So if I am a brand new person getting ready to buy a house, what am I searching? What am I looking up and then creating matrices around that versus assuming that people will be looking at it from a real estate agent's perspective, if I'm a buyer living in Phoenix and I want to look up properties in Arizona or real terms of who I might want to work with. Me as the buyer, I'm going to search AZ realtors, I'm going to search AZ homes, I'm going to search AZ living, I'm going to search AZ events like things that are going to tell me about what's going on in the area. So if I'm the realtor trying to attract me, I have to create hashtagging around how to attract that person, if that makes sense. No, it does. Could you even get more specific like, you know, hashtag Gilbert Homes, hashtag mag up and make some homes? Oh, yeah. So the end of the way to do this in a really very smart way is to really be conscious of the hashtag size that you're choosing. So if you're choosing hashtags that are over a million uses, it's a waste. If you're choosing hashtags that are under 10,000 uses, it's also a waste because it's too small, unless very key, unless it's a, it is a branded hashtag, right? So if you're a real estate agent and you're a part of a team, say for example, you're the Clark team, which is one of my teams here in Phoenix. But if they are the Clark team, then they should put that in their hashtag grouping as the Clark team, because that's their branding, just like Nike, right? Whatever, what you want, anytime you see this, whoosh, you don't even need any words. You just know what that means. Right. So it's the same concept, but anything over a million uses, if you're, if you have any understanding of the algorithm, what you'll know is that the bigger the hashtag, the faster you get shuffled, like shuffled down the feed. So unless somebody sees you within a matter of a few seconds or minutes, you're going, even, I encourage you guys even to test this. Use hashtag hashtag real estate agent and then use the same exact hashtag the next day of real estate agents with an S and see how much that longer you stay at the top of your feed. All right. Let me back this a little bit. So I'm searching right now, hashtag Mesa Holmes. Uh-huh. There's a thousand plus posts, too small, too small, but we're looking for 10,000 or more, 10,000 or more. So look up AZ homes, um, something like, uh, Mesa AZ, like Mesa Mesa, Mesa AZ, I mean, you're, it's just a question of do people actually type that in? I know I'm trying to make you work through this, but the average, the average user, would they actually type in Mesa AZ homes, or they're just going to do like Phoenix homes, you know, AZ homes. It depends on the user, right? Because if they know, if they're, if they live in Arizona, like, for me, right, when I bought the house that I currently live in, I was actually living in another city in Arizona. Yeah. Um, but my fiance and I wanted to live in Mesa, specifically East Mesa, because there was a lot bigger property size at like lot sizes, um, we have two really ran bunches dogs and we have a hopefully growing family here soon. So we needed more land and we needed a bigger house for less money. And we knew that Mesa was that place. So for me, as somebody who was consuming Instagram, I look up hashtag Mesa AZ, because I know that that's where I want to go. Okay. Let's continue this thread then. Um, so I did hashtag AZ homes. There's, um, 42,000 posts, um, with the hashtag, I can choose to follow little glare there, but I can choose to follow this hashtag. My question though is with 41,000 posts, um, how am I going to get found in that? So if you click over to the recent tab, yeah, so right now, you should see the top tab. If you click over to the recent tab, that's where you'll get found. Is anybody and people know to click that recent tab? Yeah, because that's where anybody who, if you're looking up people who have recently used that hashtag and you want to see what's happening right here right now, it's recent. Because top tag, if you look at like the first person under the top one, the post may be two, three months old, um, but the recent tab is literally showing chronologically who's the most recent person to abuse that. What, what keeps that top post in that, those top positions, um, the very simple answer is base off your ratio of how many followers you have and how fast and how quickly you got likes, that's the answer on that post, okay. On that post. So if you have 900 followers, but you've got 40 likes in the first five minutes, but and you have 20 followers and you've got 50 likes in the first nine minutes or whatever, you're going to, that person, even though you have a way smaller following, you're going to be at the top. All right, ratio is higher. So then that, the key, what's important about that is number one, use the right hashtags. And by the way, what's interesting and I think useful about, um, Instagram with this hashtag. So I went to the hashtag AZ homes, what it'll show you. It also is the related hashtags that might be good to add to your post, right? Correct. Yep. It is the top 10 most searched aside from what you just typed in. So do you recommend people, uh, kind of create a notepad, just cut and paste those hashtags with all their posts? Yeah. So yes, but in the software plenoli, you are able to actually how was all of your hashtag and you're back in that plenoli, aren't you, man? I won't use anything else. Yeah, um, plenoli is the gold mine of Instagram. It allows you, you know, a lot of us have previously had to like literally copy and paste note or from our notes like our 30 hashtags and then go and post them after we manually update or upload a post. Um, plenoli will house all of those hashtags and you literally just click the ad button and all 30 of them auto generate and with your caption. I just lost later.com and Gora Paul says sponsor, but that's okay. I'm just kidding. Not even close. I do think it's awesome. It's funny. Um, yeah, this is really cool because this is an area of weakness for me. And I know a lot of other people too because we want to, we want to get discovered on the platforms. And so the trick here is you got to know how to get discovered. There's, there's rules to the game. There's major rules to the game. And once you actually are effectively using hashtags, the next step is rules of the engagement, right? Of how, as the person trying to grow, how should you be engaging? Who you should be engaging with, where you should be engaging, right? Not just, oh, if I just click on every one of the hashtags I use and like or two or three pictures, I'm going to grow. Like, yes, you will. But there's, there's a much more strategic and much more step by step way that will make sure that you don't just get found, but you get found by the people that can bring you business. Okay. And I want to talk about the step by step ways. But I've, I've, I've come across here something that I know is, is ridiculous. And people need to wake up and stop doing this. You've seen Lenders post finance flyers on Instagram. Oh my gosh. Pepe 101 with Michelle Berman is screenshots of flyers. Right. That are too small to read and annoy people and cause them to unfollow you. And you can't, I mean, you literally can't read it. And the, the biggest thing I will tell people, this is like a fun fact, right? If you post a flyer that has like the top 10 tips or the top 10 financial points of our market for the last quarter, like, do you not just read or hear what you just read? You just gave me 10 tips. Why are you giving it to me in one post? That's 10 posts, worth of content that you just posted in a screenshot. And if you break it down and you actually make it like what I call a value series and create value around that one flyer, you're going to keep coming back because they're going to want the rest of the tips. But why are we wasting a piece of content that has 10 things in it for in one shot? One shot is done. Yeah. Excuse me. What are some of your rules of engagement? Um, the biggest one is doing what I call the 25 comment challenge. And I won't give away the secret of what that actually is. But I will tell you that there is a 25 comment challenge that all of my students do every single day. And it's a very strategic way to comment who to comment on and how much like basically qualifying them as a potential person that deserves your comment. And based off that, that's where my students will grow. And that's why they grow in a very targeted and specific area and way that will actually generate leads for them. Okay. Interesting. Um, what is there anything? I don't know if this is a good question because it's pretty broad, but like what tends to get the most engagement on Instagram? Um, videos is really big right now informational videos and it doesn't have to be your fancy video auger for a video. It can be like an off the cuff video that you take while you're walking your dog. Um, people love it. Um, and the second thing I will say is the lifestyle side of things. So while we have to be really good at producing value with it. And when I say value, I say business oriented information, um, we can do it in a way that grabs our reader better. Right. So if you guys can zoom for immediate content, um, or for media social as my Instagram handle, but if you can zoom my content, you'll see that 90% of what I publish is personal. It's me. It's my fiance. It's us in Sedona. It's, um, you know, my favorite coffee shop. It's an example of a chip and Joanna Gaines house that I can't wait to design. Or it's like, um, you know, very behind the scenes, very who is Michelle Berman. And then my captions are where my meat potatoes are as far as value value value business occasionally sprinkled in. Uh, by captions, do you mean on your videos? Or just do you talk about in the post? I'm talking the caption in the post. Okay. The video will grab them. The lifestyle image will grab them. The caption is what keeps them and converts them. Got it. What, what does your take on these types of branding video or pictures rather here? You know, um, what do you want my honest answer? Yeah. They're overused. They're overused. So that's interesting. And maybe I'm just, you know, thinking through it to I'm just wondering if the average consumer, you know, it dawns on them that, you know, what you've got there is you're out somewhere and, you know, somebody's taking a photo of you at your computer having a coffee somewhere. Yes, it's an attractive well done photo. But I'm just wondering like, does this really have brand impact? So here's my biggest thing. I want to be attainable to any, any person, right? I want to be the person that anybody, whether you're an agent or a lender that is brand new and doesn't have any money because you have, you have never done it before. And I also want to attract the luxury list reading real estate agent that sees me as somebody who's of equal to them. Right. So, um, are the branded photo shoots important? Yes, right? It's, it's an important way to establish authority. But is it equally as important to, if you're me at least I love posting in the morning and just being bedhead and like getting on my story and saying, here's what it's going on for my day or like a behind the scenes of me at the gym or just me being me because I also attract people on a human level versus I am a still image behind a really fancy camera. Do you think is the bedhead, you know, kind of rolling out? Here's what's on my thing. Do you think that's right for everybody? I think that the value behind personal, the personal touch, whether that's bedhead or whether that's you behind the scenes on date night with your, you know, husband, wife, fiance, whatever, is absolutely instrumental in whether or not you will convert on the platform. Absolutely. Whether it's like super, super personal, like no makeup, hair and a bun, you know, bedhead, I'm literally laying in bed or whether that's, you know, maybe a little less personal. Yeah. Whatever you're personally comfortable with, but get more transparent. Absolutely. Like people hire people and Gary Vee, you know, anybody who knows me knows that I love Gary Vee and I love that his mentality behind entrepreneurship. And I don't just love Gary Vee because he's well spoken. I love Gary Vee because he's honest, like he's really honest. And being personal and being who you are is so important because people hire people. And especially on Instagram, we don't, I don't just, I'm not going to hire the agent that looks like they've done the most business, looks like they've been able to get me or get people the most money for their houses. I'm going to hire the person who, oh my gosh, you're an Olympic weightlifting here too. Oh wow, wait, hold on, you also live in Mesa. And wait a minute, you're also marrying somebody that's in the military. Holy shoot me too. Right. And now I have this in same connection with this person. And I go have coffee with them. And I love them. Even though they're not the most seasoned and most experienced realtor, they resonate with me. Interesting. People hire people. We don't hire, I mean, what makes you different than the other realtor? What makes you different than the other lender down the road? How are you different to me? Well, but that's just it's a lot of people don't think that they are different. They think their lives are average and boring. People might think that my life's boring because I work from home and all I do is work out, eat movies and or drink finished movies and hike. No, but see, but the point is it's not what you think, right? And look, I think the same thing, you know what I mean? That's the struggle. I think for those of us that aren't, you know, quote younger, if you will, it's much more natural for for people that I would say, let's just say under 40, they kind of do be doing this out and about because what people I've talked to feel that that constant focus on self, they feel it's overly promotional. Self-promotion. I think it depends on how you do it and do you do it correctly in a way that doesn't feel salesy? And the way that it doesn't feel salesy is just be real, be raw, quit-pitching, right? Yeah, it should be, you know, I'm sure a lot of people have probably heard this, the 20% business, 80% personal number. When I teach how to develop a content calendar, if you will, which is what I call my content Bible or 30-day content schedule, essentially is 15 posts a month or lifestyle images. That's just me being me. That's just me with my fiancee in Sedona. That's me at my favorite coffee shop. That's me on date night or out with my girlfriends. That's just me. Five of them are testimonials, aka, you know, people who have said good things about me. Five of them are value series driven, aka I'm literally asking for business in these five posts. And then the other five are if I'm a real estate agent or if I'm a lender, the other, the remaining five are talking about a lending program or posting and talking about listings that you have or buyers that have just closed, so an under contract style post. But if you do the math and you add that up, that's 30. Hmm, interesting. Are you scheduling a lot of those out in advance on planally, planally? Planally? Yeah, planally. I can only say exactly. So yes, I teach them to be able to sit down and have your templates scheduled and pre-plan so that you can create 30 days of content and a matter of a few hours on a Sunday with a couple of coffee in your hand. And what about the design elements of those for those that lack the skills? There's this fun tool called Canva. Okay. And if you've never heard of Canva, please google it. But Canva is the dream for all of us who are not right graphically inclined. So you wouldn't consider yourself graphically inclined? No, I mean, I don't have a graphic design degree whatsoever. I have a degree in psychology and social media. Yeah, well, there you go. But to your point, Canva and other tools, right? They've got all the templates and stuff that make it easy. Easy. What are you doing or any quick comments on IGTV? Yeah, I love IGTV. Try saying that three times fast. I love using IGTV and I actually teach it as a value series basically where you can create three to five of them for the month. And that becomes like your value for the whatever the topic is that you're discussing for that month. I have several agents who specialize in, you know, buy and sell at the same time and a lot of them are dealing with people who are moving from out of state or into state. So they create an entire series for the month on things that you wouldn't think about when you're trying to move out of state, right? And they turn those into videos and people can hear their voices. They can hear how they talk. They turn them into this really very simple IGTV video with a great cover photo, if you will, which again can be made in Canva. Super simple. And they post that on the day that they're supposed to post and people consume them as longer sequences, right? Because IGTV can be any maximum minutes. There's no minimum of the or maximum of the one minute regular standard Instagram video. So it allows Instagram to basically be more of a YouTube channel all in one. Yeah, so it's going to say it's it's kind of like YouTube for the Instagram or users, you know. Yeah, I've started to do more stuff on IGTV because I do think it has relevance. And it's like, I think YouTube is incredibly valuable too. But, you know, I'm Congress and I've like, do I am I trying to take people off of the platform, right? That they want to be on. So if I can give that same video content on IGTV and they're already there, why not do it, right? Yeah, instead of setting them up. The least amount of steps to get somebody from a worker to a lead is the best. Ooh, there's a new program from Lurker to Leeds for Jeff and Michelle. Okay, awesome. So yes, reduce the friction. That's what I was trying to think of. All right, cool. So I know you're a wealth of knowledge. We've barely scratched the surface here when it comes to Instagram, things like that. Let's talk about some of the cool things you got available for loan officers, resources, those that are listening that are like, Hey, man, I want more. What's the next step? Let's talk about your program for agents and lenders, the Instagram power method. What do you want to tell us about that? Correct. So the Instagram power method is a very strategic, very step by step program that goes from the very basics of how do I develop a presence on Instagram that's niche and designed around a specific target audience. And it ends with these two bonus modules. The first one being it goes down in the DM. So I teach you how to strategically sell there. And then the second one, which is a brand new one just went live last week, is how to actually turn either your new lending program that you have available or something that you're trying to market or your new listing into an actual IG story ad. So I actually teach you how to turn what would be either your still images of your listing or maybe that video you took up a walkthrough real quick and combine them into a really powerful ad that can help you both generate buyers for a listing that you know is going to sell in five seconds and also help you sell a listing that might be harder to sell one. Yeah, unless I forget the supplies to lenders as well, whether it's your own personal consumption or like you and I've talked lenders teaming up with realtors to learn this content together and kind of have your own accountability group in conjunction. Yes, creating a team and taking the program as a team. I allow teams of up to five. And these people get their own one-on-one session with me every week. It's a very you know homework assigned basically Zoom call where you guys will all be told, you know, hey, this is what you I've seen from consuming your content over the last week. Here's your homework. Let's do this. Yeah, I know you've worked your your ass off on this thing and it's well thought out and well structured. So I want to applaud you because I know it's not easy, you know, create. It's benefactors a book and I see it on my shelf still. The War of Art. I don't know if you've ever heard of that Stephen Presley. Sounds like I need to read it. It's a really cool book for those of us that are creators because it's that's it's a battle right to create and you know it's a play obviously on the art of war. This is the War of Art. Really cool. Stephen Presfield. But it's a very short book too, which is easy. Amazon coming in. Yeah, right. It's insightful talking about fighting against the resistance. All right. So let's talk about how do people who want to learn more? And I'm going to put links in the show notes, but give out the URL for people who want to check that out. So it's a very specific URL, which is why I'm glad Jeff is going to make sure it's in the show notes because it will be easily typed in incorrectly if not paid attention to. So it's firm and media PDP is in Paul D is in dog.com forward slash Instagram power method. So one word, but the I and Instagram, the P and power and the M and method have to be capitalized. So that is the URL. It will actually show you the entire module breakdown of exactly what's covered in every section of the whole thing. It'll also show you some payment options as far as monthly. If that's maybe something that's better for you, the annual version as well as the team version. So lots of testimonials, lots of great feedback from other students and just some really good opportunities for you guys to get to know more a little bit about what I do. Yeah, fantastic. And for those who want to connect with you on Instagram, what's your handle there? Berman media, social. Awesome. So listen, Michelle, thank you so much. I'm glad we finally came together to do this. I know you've you've got to go and I've got to go. So people reach out to Michelle. If you got more questions, but I highly support what she's doing. I encourage you guys to take further action. So thanks, Michelle. Thank you very much, Jeff. Thank you to everyone for listening. Yeah, you bet. Listeners, as always, you know, to do if you like this episode, reach out. Let us know. Leave us a review on the socials. And we appreciate you. 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. Hey guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the Mortgage Marketing Pro membership before. And I just want to quickly remind you, if that you're in a place in your business, where you simply need more purchased loans, you need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. Our Mortgage Marketing Pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. Done for you, agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you, everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market, attract and convert agents into referral partners. Plus done for you, proven marketing materials and plug and play content to make promoting your class, getting agents, butts and seeds, partnering with affiliates, real easy. But that's not all. You'll also get access to our weekly mastermind calls with top elbows, authors, speakers and coaches to learn the best strategies to grow your business right now in today's market. And as an extra bonus for limited time for all new members, you'll get access to a database of 200 agents in your local market that have closed anywhere to from eight to 50 transactions in the last 12 months. And we'll provide that list uploaded into our platform for you. So you can get off to a fast start in reaching actually productive agents. So what are you waiting for? You can check out more at mortgagedmarketing.pro, see more of the success stories there. And if you feel compelled to do so,