Ep #79: Starting a Weekly Mortgage Video Show to Grow Your Business

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey listeners, Jeff Zimper, welcome to this episode of mortgage marketing radio. And you're either listening to my voice or you're watching me on the video right now. How you doing? So part of what I'm doing is actually following my own advice and starting to do more video. Video is where it's at. I need to do more videos so I'm taking my own advice and you're going to see more videos coming from me. And in this case, what I'm doing is it's a great lesson for you in content marketing and content production is create multiple chunks of content from one source in case and point this example here. I'm creating podcast episode if you're listening to just the audio. But I'm also creating a video of it as well because we're recording the video portion of this and therefore I'm able to get a bigger bang for my buck out of my time and start to add more of your content to my various social media sites, platforms, destinations and so forth to build a larger brand. So anyway, as you can see here, if you're watching the video, this might make you curious to come watch it. Right? I've set this video up not a fancy setup, just me and a laptop and the same mic I used for the podcast and the headphones, it's all I'm doing so far. I got this setup in my little casita here that's outside of the house that I'm renting. And the good news is this casita is already set up the person who actually owns this house. You should have a music studio in here so you can see if you're watching the video, which you can see is a lot of the sound proofing, right? In the ceiling on the windows and on the doors. So that creates a better audio experience than in my office, which is echoey. So from now on, I'll be shooting videos in here and recording when I can and more good videos and content to come. I'd love to hear from you guys what you want to hear and learn when it comes to digital marketing content, how it can help you be more successful. So speaking of that, that leads us into a nice transition into this week's guest. We're talking about video, a special guest is Chris McWilliams, mortgage broker owner of EST mortgage in the lovely state of Michigan. And I asked Chris to be here and be on video because he does a weekly show called the mortgage marketing minute. And he's really grown his viewership, his engagement. And I wanted to Chris just kind of walk us through, you know, how he got started, how he got overcame the perhaps the reluctance he might have had early on in the process. And how does he do it, you know, what tools does he use, does he use his phone, does he know what kind of editing does he do, how does he map out his content, how does he promote it and what's the overall impact it's had to his business. So that's why I asked Chris to be here. We just do a quick, deep dive. We just grab the camera, set up the microphone, hit record, nothing fancy, and we're bringing it to you. There we go. So that is it. And links to Chris's website and stuff in the show notes, you can look at my Chris McWilliams on Facebook. That's okay. Our ISMC, W-I-L-I-A-N-S, or his website, ESThomemortgage.com. That said, let's get over into this week's show. Chris, welcome to the show. Hi, Jim. Thanks for having me. Welcome back. Glad to be here. Yeah. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day. As you can see, we're doing video. Everybody who's watching, you know, I'm wanting to do more video. That's why I asked Chris to be here as the podcast has largely been audio for quite a while. But I recognize the importance of us doing video. So bringing Chris here to talk about the mortgage minute videos he does. So let's just get into it. Real quickly. Tell those that are watching or listening. We're yet in the country. How long have you been in the business? Yeah. So in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is on the west side of the state, and been in the business for going on 16 years this year, I started an operations role and then brought into a sales position in 2012. So. All right. So 2012 started in sales. All right. And what's the source of most of your business? Realty business is probably 70% of my business. So. Okay. All right. Because for some reason, you're on my Facebook feed and every time you do a video, I get a notice that you got a new video, which is cool because you're doing the mortgage minutes. And let's start from the beginning. Why did you start to do video and how long have you been doing it? So I started with video with mortgage coaching, right? That was my introduction to video. And that really kind of gave me that first comfort level of being on video first, right? Because you're sending video to clients, which is a smaller audience, right? And so it's just you and the potential one or two clients. And so that's a good entry level into some video. If you have a little nervousness about going on Facebook or LinkedIn or YouTube, you know, they kind of start. And then once I got a little better and more comfortable, you know, just doing the mortgage coach edge presentation, then I wanted to take it up a notch to, you know, doing some Facebook and YouTube and LinkedIn. And so started the social media platforms and must have been late 2015, probably was when I started doing the social media videos, so. Late 2015. Okay. And so what helped, like you've heard it before and I'm sure you faced it, you know, the whole, I don't like how I look on video and the road, the mental roadblocks. What would you advise to people that are struggling to start with video? I would start with make a video with your dog or your kids, right? And that's the easiest way to do it. Just, you know, work with I movie or any of the other platforms that are out there and just use a video that you got and say, Hey, you know, if I did some transitions or I did some basic titling, right? What would that look like? And I think that's, you know, something good to start with and then, you know, make it a good segue then into potential business. And are you saying that just to practice and not post it or to also post it? If you like it, post it, if you don't like it, then don't post it, right? That's how they are. Yeah, but the point is just get started and start working those muscles of using video, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's cool. While you're talking, I'm just going to YouTube page here as well. So let's, let's talk about this. You do kind of your, your known for, becoming known for, you know, your mortgage, what do you call mortgage minute videos? Yep, mortgage minute. Mortgage minute. How often do you do them? I typically do them once a week. Yep. Once a week on the same day every week, ideally. Ideally same day every week. I try to post it on Friday mornings every week on that and, yep, so that's my schedule on that. Okay. So every Friday and how do you choose what to talk about? So I am, well, I am in a B and I group, right? That's a source of my business. And so I typically do my dry run of my mortgage minute on my Thursday morning. Oh, that's nice. You get to test it out, huh? Yeah, absolutely, right? And then I, then I come back from B and I on Thursday. First thing I do before I even turn on my computer, I do the recording of the mortgage minute that I just did in my presentation in person, right? And so then I go in, you know, I do that on my iPhone and just here in the office and then, you know, edit that in I move and then I post it on Friday. So. So, and I know before we hit record, you've got the tripod right in front of you. Do me a favor, do a quick spin to show people where your tripod is sitting. Yeah. We're curious. Yep. Just your normal everyday tripod that you can get at your local camera store. Yeah. And you don't have a microphone hooked up because you're close enough for the audio's good. You've got good natural lighting in there, which is good. Okay. So how do you, so you're, you're rehearsing it in your B and I, that's cool. And then you're not rehearsing it again, you're just, you're just hitting record and go. Nope. I did so. It's a good question, right? So I back it up. I do one drive on before I record. Okay. And so I typically say, you know, I go through the whole, whole pitch just to make sure. And I try to do it just like we were doing today, right? Like we're just having a casual conversation with a friend, if I was going to give them a short 60 second advice and one little more topic, right? Like that's how I try to do it. So I, that's how I go through it. And then the second time I just hit the record button, go through it and typically, you know, one or two takes tops. So you've gotten much better at reducing the amount of takes. Yes. Absolutely. And less conscientious of small clubs, right? If it's a very small thing, I don't even worry about anymore, because people aren't going to, you know, call you out, and it's just called being human. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's awesome. And then you edit, you said on iMovie. So do you edit right on your phone? Nope. I do transfer it to the Mac. I like editing on the Macbook rather than my phone, and it's just a little easier for me to do on that. So I transfer the video from my phone to the Macbook and just via the cloud transfer, right? And then, you know, open it up and edit it in iMovie. So. And then you're also uploading that same video to your YouTube channel? I do. Yeah. Yep. So, and you know, some of the mechanics that I learned along the way, once you share the movie, you know, your movie in I theater, then you can save a hard copy to your phone. And I do upload it to Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube from the phone, rather than directly from the share button on the Macbook, as you tend to get a better upload on all those different social sites from the mobile. Got it. Got it. Man, yeah. You've got a good amount of videos out there now. Yeah. Yep. I got a few out there now. I'm always trying to put a little bit more out there. So, and think about that in the future. So. Are you yet experimented with boosting any of your videos? I hear. I've done two boosts on that. And one was a animated video that came directly, you know, from the United States. They have a great marketing team that you partner with when you're a motorist broker. And then I have not boosted any of the motorist's benefits though. So. And for those of listening, I didn't say this earlier, but your Facebook page is Facebook.com. Ford slash EST home mortgage. So that's clearly your business page. Are you doing any videos on your personal page? I am. Yeah. So most of the mortgage minute has been on my personal page, not on my business page. And that's done very strategically, right? I am trying to influence my personal friends on my personal page because we know from the algorithm, it's more likely that your video would be seen on your personal page than your business page. So you're putting it on your personal first and then you're sharing it to your business page? I am putting it on personal page first, yeah. And then I am, I just started putting it on the business page probably the last two weeks. And I had put it on the business page at all. And now I've added it to the business page as well. The great thing about the business page is that you can add the captions in Facebook from your business page, right? And that can be helpful for getting more views. So. All right. So tell us about that, adding captions. How are you doing that? And so Facebook does it automatically. And so that's a great feature of a Facebook business page. If you add a video, you can add the caption automatically, which allows people, which will get you more of your ship because, you know, maybe people are watching an office, right? Or, you know, however it might be, if they see the caption, they're more likely to kind of stick around for a smidge longer and help on that. So Facebook does it automatically. I believe there's a function on YouTube in which you can have YouTube captioning your videos and then you can potentially do it shared other ways. But as far as I'm using it right now, just for Facebook business page on the caption. Yeah. And the point about that you're referring to is that the statistic is roughly 80% plus of the videos watched on Facebook are watched in silent mode. At least in the beginning, because to your point, people are either in the office or bathroom or wherever they're at and they're like, right, and they're seeing, hey, what's this all about? And if it captures their attention, well, then they'll click the button where it brings the video up and the audio comes off. Exactly. Yeah. All right. So you're using the Facebook has an option to check a box or not, right, whether you won't want the caption. So that's good. So very smart. And generally, it's pretty accurate, the captioning. Wouldn't you agree? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, listen, for those people that are like, you know, overly focused on the details, which a lot of them officers are, you know, it's, it's okay to have a couple of, if there are a couple of, you know, flubs or missing or miss spells on the, on the captioning. You know, people, people are forgiving of that and they understand, right, that the caption is not going to be 100% perfect. So don't get yourself all caught up in that. Okay. So I'm bouncing back and forth between your business and personal page. And general, yeah, why did you start doing videos? What was the motivating factor behind it? I wanted to market to my audience where they work. Okay. And what does that mean, where they were? I think I can get more traction to both my real letters around my friends page and my personal contacts. I think it's more effective to put a video on Facebook than it is to send them blind emails. Mm-hmm. That whole. All right. So how are you using this to communicate with realtors, is it the mortgage minute thing pretty much or what? It is, yeah. Yep. So I, you know, I typically do have a strategy around, you know, my audience when I do the mortgage minute, right, whether it's a consumer facing or realtor facing, and sometimes even if it's a consumer facing, I might even try to put a little angle in there for the realtor to understand, you know, okay, if I told my client that I might, you know, that would help them help me or, you know, on that front. So that is a thought when I do the video from a script perspective. Well, what I'm noticing too is your viewership is, I haven't gone back that far, but, you know, it's growing pretty strong in terms of your viewership. I'm looking at some of these videos. You got, you know, almost 200 videos reviews on that one. So you're, here's the thing, right? And I think you are, you know this, is that consistency. If you're going to do the weekly mortgage minute while dog on it, you better do a weekly mortgage minute, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. When you first got started, I'm sure you put some videos out there and it was like crickets, right? Yeah. It was. And I didn't share them, right? All right. I posted it to YouTube and then shared a YouTube link on Facebook. Right? That's not the right way to do it because Facebook doesn't want you playing YouTube videos because it takes you all the way. Right? So I'm going to learn some of that in the beginning as well. Yeah, man. You got a bunch in here that are over 200. How do you decide what to talk about in your mortgage minutes? I decide to talk about that from coming questions that you get from borrowers and clients. That's a great way to do it. You know, jot those down. If you're in, you know, in that, then again, I shared review of this new podcast, right? And so anytime I hear something on the podcast, I have ever known on the phone. So I flip over. I got a little section mortgage minute ideas on my ever known. And then so I just quit jot it into ever known and say, Hey, you know, here's the one sentence I'd like to cover, you know, off that topic. And so, yeah. So it's that your podcast. I also listen to a couple other mortgage podcasts and that's where some of the ideas come from. Nice. Nice. Good. Well, glad we all the help. When you shared that tip about not sharing a video from YouTube to Facebook, it's funny, man. There's still a lot of people that are unaware of that. So I'm thank you for pointing that out that, you know, there's this, well, I do this class on video and stuff. And you know, one of the things you got to keep in mind is that there's a battle going on between Facebook and YouTube, YouTube owned by Google. And yeah, so Facebook doesn't like, like you said, right? If you're going to, if you're going to put a link from YouTube video on Facebook, that means you're taking those eyeballs off of, if they're going to click, click over to watch that thing on YouTube and they don't want that. Absolutely. Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. So you got a nice mix of personal and business. Looks like you're following the 80-20 rule on your personal page with 80% of it being personal. Yeah. Yeah. And it was way more active on the personal, my personal social, Facebook page prior to the last year or so. And I started my own mortgage broker shop here in Kalamazoo. And so my personal post on Facebook page I've gone down dramatically as I become a little busier. So. Well, and so here's the interesting thing though, I'm glad you're sharing the videos though over to your business page because, you know, you don't want it to be like a graveyard over there. And the challenge with the business page, as many people know, is kind of the engagement right, isn't what it used to be. And that's because, you know, the real, I don't know how to say this accurately, other than, you've got to have the business page and personal page. Somebody asked me that just the other day on a call, it's like, hey, you know, do I need to have a business page? Yes. You need to have a business page, man. Yeah. You're a business professional. And people, right, well, are going to come check your business page out. So you need to have content there. Absolutely. The thing to keep in mind is don't look for the same level of engagement to your point Chris, as you do on your personal page because for the way Facebook works, they want you to pay for that on the page by boosting ads and things like that, which is really not the intent of this chat. It'll be a future one. What's next for you with video, man? What do you want to do next? Yeah. Next is I need to get better on call the actions, right? And maybe some type of lead capture form. And so I'm exploring some options there to, you know, how can you, you know, kind of, you know, correlate those whether it was at a landing page or there's a click called the action, is it, you know, messaging and trying to get some more effective use out of that from a direct to consumer marketing perspective. And then also, you know, there's some ways where I could email bless the mortgage in a minute on every Friday, you know, from database, whether that, you know, because I use jungle and I also use bomb, and so it'd be fairly easy for me to, you know, push the mortgage minute out there to all pass clients and curfew leaders as well. So that's some future ideas that I have to potentially, you know, give it some more traction. I agree. That is a great idea to repurpose that video, as I'm sure, you know, right? Put that video into bomb bomb and then you email it to your database. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Just give me another idea. It's like, you know, everybody talks about farming your past database of clients to get referrals and et cetera. And of course, video, right? If you want more engagement, more response, video is going to, going to move that needle for you, particularly if it's an email. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And then, you know, I like to, I like to do more video and maybe do, maybe explain it to a two-week segment. One would be a 30-second segment, you know, on a weekly basis, that's more in a, a human basis type of video, making fun of something within the mortgage industry, like, you know, a common misconception and just making it a humor type of video. And so that's an interesting thing that I think I might try to look forward into the future as well. So if you thought about doing anything Facebook live. I can't. And it's an interesting, it's an interesting concept. I could certainly do it the mortgage minute, and yeah, so I, because you're certainly going to get more views, I think, if you do it live, right? Because they're going to push it more. That's higher than the algorithm. So it's certainly a concept, but I do like just the little bit of transitioning and framing that you can do what I'm going to do. So I'm tied to that, you know, to some degree. I do like a lot of kind of what, you know, Brian Stevens and Frank Gray at the National Legal State Post are doing with some of their live broadcasting with, you know, call to action. They're really, really good at the capture from that point. And that's who I had initially reached out to this year, I went to their video boot camp, right? And they have some great ideas and, you know, strategy behind that. I haven't been able to fully implement that yet, just because the pre-app 103 function that they use for that, I'm teched out to some degree between all the different functions that I had. I used to float a fighter for my current application kind of pulling a sail transaction. And so I don't want to flip, I don't want to be pre-app 103 and float by the same time. Yeah. No reason to. Yeah. So that's some more ideas and kind of thoughts on how I want to potentially do Facebook live in the future and how I could do that. So. Well, yeah, one idea I have for you is consider interviewing a couple of real estate agents, you know, and talk about topical issues such as how to get your offer accepted in this market, et cetera, et cetera, you know, I'm not sure your situation in your local market, you know what it is. Yeah. But obviously that's pretty easy to do in your office where you're at right now, flip the switch, go live and just, you know, have five questions prepared and, you know, start out with a simple 5-10 minute show and it'll grow from there, man. Yeah. And another idea that I have for potential in the future, 2018, maybe or 2019 now, I should say, is small business Saturday. Yes. And so maybe interview another small business owner in Greater Kalamazoo and say and just give them, you know, a good look like, so. Love that. Love that, man. All right. Cool. So how should people find you online if they want to start checking you out? You can give out, you know, your Facebook page or website, whatever you want to do. Yeah. So website is at ESDHomeWorgge.com and then Facebook, you know, and personal is Christmas Williams and then the business page is ESD HomeWorgge, like you mentioned earlier in the interview here. Awesome. I hope people I definitely encourage to check Chris out, follow him on Facebook, give him some love, give him some likes on those videos and stuff and, you know, hey, you know what, model, what he's doing, you know, it's a simple concept, but look, that's the best thing about it, right? It's simple and it works. Right? Because the mortgage minute, anybody could talk about the mortgage minute to weekly updates and hopefully you guys got some value from today's session. And let's stay connected on as you continue to grow this thing. I'm here to help you. Anyway, I can with ideas or resources, whatever you just let me know, man. It sounds great. Jeff, I always appreciate the podcast and everything that you bring to the community. So, you bet. And so for you listeners, we're going to sign off right now. Thanks for listening or watching more good stuff or video to come for you guys and I always appreciate you guys tuning in. 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 mortgagedmarketinginstitute.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 of that. 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