Secrets of YouTube for Loan Officers

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Go check it out right now. Visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, listeners, this is Abjef. Zinfra, welcome to this episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio Podcast. So glad you are here. All right, all right. So I got a doozy of an episode today. This week I'm honored to bring to you somebody who I admire greatly. His name is Kyle Seagraves and what is Kyle known for? Well, Kyle is known for having an amazing presence on YouTube. His YouTube channel is Wind House You Love. He has over 81,000 subscribers. That's right, 81,000 subscribers, subs as they say in YouTube space. And I learned a lot from talking with Kyle about how to succeed on YouTube. And let me just tell you, it's not about gaming, the algorithm. It's not about keywords and tags. As a matter of fact, what it's really all about is getting really, really clear on who you're ultimately serving, who you're ideal. Like Kyle says, make a video for one person. Who's that one person you have in mind? Most people mistake where they go wrong with YouTube is trying to reach everybody, trying to create a video that's going to be a have mass appeal. And Kyle says that's a mistake. And he's learned a lot with what he's been doing over YouTube over the last several years. And if I'm looking at some of his video views, I mean, they're just off the charts, right? I think he said his number one video has over half a million views. But his most recent one just post it as the time of this recording two weeks ago already has 17,000 views. His previous video for the month, 23,000 views. And I look at more and more and more 10,000 views, 9,000 views, 6,000 views. So he really knows what he's talking about because he's made the mistakes. He's paved the way for us to learn how to succeed on YouTube with the do's and don'ts. And what to prepare yourself for mentally, time wise, content wise. If you're at all considering creating a YouTube channel, and why you should, here's what I know. Kyle's YouTube channel now generates, if I recall, he tells us on the recording, but if I recall, roughly 300 leads per month, yeah. So he's doing some incredible things at scale. And I think you're going to learn a lot from this conversation, just like I did. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. I'm just going to start recording and I can piece it together. So anyway, there it is. It's like you want to jump off here. Yeah. So I started doing YouTube really, I mean, I joke kind of out of selfishness, but it kind of wasn't a way like so I before doing YouTube was doing bomb bomb. And so with bomb, I was on pace to do some around 800 to 1000 personalized videos a year. So anything from like to individual clients, loan quotes, loan estimates, closing disclosures, realtors, whatever I could use it for. I did because who's going to trust a 22 year old to do their loan for them? So I was like, I have to find some way to stand out, and they're, it's good on them to have that hesitation on working with a 22 year old who's never originated alone before. And then after a little bit, I just found it, you know, when someone asks you what's an appraisal, you get a little, after the 100th time, you're like, all right, I'm kind of done answering this question. So that is when I started thinking like, how do I take what I'm doing with video with bomb bomb? How do I make it a little bit more kind of evergreen ish? So that's when I started doing YouTube of like, how can I make a video about what's an appraisal? What is a title report? Just questions that home buyers would have. So I wanted to make this kind of library for my own clients. It's also a great way to like kind of warm up a lead if they have no idea who you are. Instead of hopping on the phone with me, hey, here's a video. Let me know when you're ready. We can talk through some questions that you have. And so it becomes, you're positioning yourself more as an educational expert rather than a salesperson who's trying to get them to take a loan application. So that's really why I did it. And let's get this. Yeah. So you never wanted to create all the templated milestone videos for those same 50 questions you get all the time. And just like, because you were doing one-offs, right? For everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Was that just because you liked the personal you wanted to go the extra level instead of here? You made your canned video. I didn't really. It's more that I just wanted to get in there and help us quickly as I could. And then you start getting to a point of like, oh, maybe I could turn this into something where it's a little more practical. Maybe I can answer this in one video and now send it to a ton of people and save some time doing it. But I didn't really go into the planning of, I'm going to go make a bunch of templated videos and this whole thing. And I think that's sometimes where people mess up is they always want to go, they want to plan out this long-term strategy. And but they're not willing to do the things to actually execute. And so I think what's more important is like, what can I do tomorrow to just get something moving forward? At this point, I just need momentum. So then I see so many people spend hours on strategy and they're never doing anything that actually brings momentum forward. The strategy is just like the path. It doesn't actually move me down the path at all. They're fixing to get ready, right? Like they say in text. I'm fixing to get ready. Yeah, you're like, great. Okay, then start tomorrow. Oh my God. Exactly, right? I'm sending this quick email for a second to see if we're actually on for this call because that might be an unexpected gift here today. Yeah. Yeah. Sidebar. What I did is I did a live stream with Megan Anderson at the MBS sideway and I decided to make my calendar available for everybody who wanted to talk, right? Yeah. So I booked a book, 25 calls from that live stream and just gave people my calendar and I'm like, go ahead and book a time, right? And this is sometimes people show. Sometimes they don't. You know what I mean? So I'm double checking to see if she's showing today, not to take anything away from our time together. Okay. So I hope you don't feel like I'm like, you know, just not paying attention to me. No worries. Just trying to see if she's here. Okay. So yeah. So the light went on and you're like, hey, man, I couldn't instead of doing a thousand videos, I could just like do one and post it to YouTube and then you wound up directing people there. Yeah. And so I was doing both. I was doing personalized videos mainly for like quotes, you know, I found like doing personalized video. I think it's a great way to start because people will shop your loan as they always do. But they would, after I started using video, I almost would never lose a loan to somebody else, no matter what the difference was in pricing or cost just because there's an element that no one else is providing. So I was doing the personalized video still for like quotes, loan events, closing disclosures. But transitioning to doing everything more informational in a way where I could make it once and it could be sent out to multiple people so that they could learn. And I wanted to make it so like they could see I could send them one video, but they'd have really it was like a kind of a library on YouTube of here's a bunch of other things to just build more trust with people. And eventually YouTube just started picking that up. And then that's when I started thinking, oh, well, my clients want this information as I imagine there's probably a lot of other people who are looking for this nationally too. And did you leave those videos up there or put them on a playlist? I just left them on my channel. So I didn't really start doing playlists until maybe a year-ish into making videos. What's your take on playlist? Because I've had one individual tell me in the past that no, do you like playlists? I don't really use them. I think it can be used. I think people make the mistake of thinking that they can have this channel that serves multiple audiences and they can segment it in playlists. Your channel is not about you, just because you can serve a bunch to different people. The channel should be for one specific subscriber. So if you're making videos on buying and selling, those should be different channels, not different playlists. The playlists are like targeted sections within. And so the I think playlists can be really powerful for like at the end of a video I can say, hey, I have this playlist on the four main types of loans and it will walk them through those four main types, but it's all for the same person. Do you have any data on, do people actually go to a playlist and search for a particular topic? I can see like the views in a playlist, but it's so insignificant compared to the rest of the channel that it's like, it just doesn't seem, I don't think people consume content in a playlist way, YouTube and their algorithm has gotten so good at knowing predicting what somebody would want to see next, that a playlist almost never is smarter, a playlist that we put together is never smarter than what YouTube is already planning on suggesting to that viewer. So do we have two different tracks though? We've got the one track of people coming to you and finding you organically through search, for example. But then what about the people who already subscribed do you, do you know if they then kind of deep dive on your playlists? It's hard to tell, there's not a lot of data that tells you stuff like that. I'm pretty sure views coming from a playlist is probably only some around three to five percent, at least on my channel from the last time I looked. So there might be people using it, but it's not like a huge strategy. Do you take a recent video that you've published and then eventually move it to a playlist? Sometimes, yeah, and I know that Daryl Evese does some YouTube teaching stuff, we'll talk about content buckets of sorts, so keeping everything in an FHA playlist, a conventional playlist. And again, I think that can help. I just don't see it being this like, I wouldn't spend a ton of energy on everything needs to be planned around playlists, just because that's not how most people consume content on YouTube. So they're normally watching one video and looking at what's coming up next, not necessarily diving into a playlist, unless it's like very structured content, like I have a 10 video series or something like that, most people just tend to, they don't tend to gravitate towards the playlist in that way. Did you have to or decide to use playlists just to organize because you have so many videos and get create some organization on the channel? That's the main reason why. Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. Yeah. That's right. You're right for yourself. Yeah. I'm looking at it too. I'm just, I just think it's just like, by the way, who is your, is it first time home buyers? Is that your target? Yeah. My, my target audience is somebody who is currently renting, they want to buy a home, but there's some obstacle in the way and for most people that ends up being the financing portion. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Dude, that is, that is like nitched, super nitched. Yeah. Like most people, oh, first time home buyers, right? And you're like, no, no, no, no, no. Say it again. I'm not going to buy it. Somebody who's renting, they want to buy a house, the obstacle in the way for them primarily is getting alone. Somebody who's renting. So we already know that you've already separated, they're a renter. They're not a homeowner currently, but they do want to buy and their obstacle is financing. Mm-hmm. Yep. For the most part, there's also, I also try to target a lot of the other obstacles, but the main one is financing. But for me, what stands out is you've actually articulated that they're renting, you know? And that's like, I don't hear that every day. Like I hear, oh, first time home buyers, right? So I just like, oh, well, that's a big ass bucket, you know? Yeah. People are afraid to, I think people are afraid to kind of narrow down a little bit. Right. What I found is like, I initially started very broad. I did stuff on like budgeting. Everything was tangential to buying a house, you know, budgeting for a house, you know, building credit for a house, selling, refinancing, buying on its own. I was doing stuff about, you know, realtor specific, I was doing low and officer specific stuff. And what I found is really narrowing down who that person is, I think is what creates long-term viewers and subscribers because if we think like, if somebody comes in because I had a video on refinancing and they look at that and they subscribe. But the rest of my videos are targeted towards first time buyers. Then they're not going to engage with the new content. And so what that tells YouTube is, hey, this person's current subscribers aren't even watching his new videos. Why would YouTube then push it out to a new audience? Right. They wouldn't because they're like, well, his own subscribers won't watch it. We're not going to introduce it to new people. And so what I found by really narrowing down who I serve, like the, it kind of does a little hockey stick chart on YouTube. I've subscribed growth kind of went from this to like, shot up. I'm just being really explicit about these are the people that I serve, the problems that they're facing and how can help them overcome those challenges. So they, and I've gone through this mentally myself of like trying to really get clear on who do I serve and then what, like what do I want to become known for, like my expertise, right? Did you have to go through a process or struggle with that at all? Oh, yeah. I feel like it's a, it's a daily struggle of trying to figure out like, who is this person that I'm serving and also making sure that, you know, we don't get our, in the way of ourselves. Yeah. Because we want to show up in a certain way. I also trying to think, is that who I'm actually showing up for? And I, I just have to constantly remind myself that because sometimes I'll get questions. And to me, they're like, you know, when you're in the, after a while you kind of get used to the jargon of everything, you understand things a little bit more internally. And I would get these questions from people and realize, oh, I need to like back up even more because I was assuming a level of knowledge or expertise coming into this. And so I think that's where it's, I think it's just a daily practice of trying to figure out, how do I hear from these people who are watching these videos? Where are they at? What are they facing and how can I help serve them and make sure that in my head, I'm not taking it in a direction, just based off of what I want to create, but what is the audience actually looking for? And where are they at? And how can I help them with that? Hey, hey, listeners, it's your friend, Jeff, I hope you're doing well. Wanted to pop into your ears for just a moment and remind you that if you're looking to quickly and easily get more agent referrals, more quality agent relationships and do it without chasing, do it without pay to play and do it with a predictability and a system that works every single month like clockwork, creating conversations between you and real estate agents that you choose who you talk to. You get to decide who you work with or not. But one that actually generates referrals for you every single month, so long as you follow the proven planning system, if that is something that you're interested in and if you're looking into leveling up your digital marketing game, well, perhaps you'd want to check out the mortgage marketing pro membership. Every single month, we've got loan officers, teaching classes around the country, getting in front of agents at scale, having conversations at scale and driving agent referrals. You know, in business, there's the concept I learned years ago from Tony Robbins and the two things I learned were, number one, if you want to improve your results, get better results or more results more quickly, you need to apply the principle of leverage. Leverage means the ability to do less and accomplish more with leveraged activities. And then the second principle is compression, right? To reach more people in less time and the concept of talking to real estate agents instead of one to one, you go group. So imagine if you instead of were one to one marketing to real estate agent, once the Tuesday, you were able to actually consistently get in front of 10, 20, 30 agents every single time you want to do by hosting a class, virtual learn person. And therefore, your conversation goals would happen much more quickly because you're using the principle of leverage with compression, which combines with a law of large numbers, you're going to get better results more quickly. So if you want to learn more about how do we do that, go to mortgage marketing.pro, check out the short video. This may be for you. That's up to you to decide. And now back to our regularly scheduled program. Your selection of the audience though, as you described it, that niche, is that because that's who you most associate with based on your age and I don't know if you've bought or owned a home or whatever, but did you choose that audience because you felt most connected to that audience? Yeah, I think it's mainly from, it's a great question because I don't think I've really thought about that. It's been a weird mix of seeing who is the audience that's gravitated towards me and then also recognizing who do I enjoy serving. And so I think it's come together well in saying that a lot of the people who gravitate towards me are people who are really stressed out and frustrated because people are not giving in the information that they are looking for, going through buying for the first time, because usually the people going from rinsing to buying are the ones who have the most stress and anxiety and overwhelm about the process. And so I found that a lot of those people have gravitated towards me. And also I really enjoy helping people understand, hey, there's a lot going on here, but if we actually take some time to break it down, you can feel more confident about when you're about to go purchase a home, that way you can feel, you can make a better decision. That's kind of why I call it when the house you love my theory is that the more knowledge you have, the more you understand about the home buying process, the easier it is to win the bid against all of the other people who want the same house that you do. And look at your sub headline too. The channel is when the house you love links will be in the show notes, but also the sub headline is the calm way to buy your first home, like that. When did you add that house soon after? I feel like it's been different iterations, but it probably took, it probably took, I think I've been doing YouTube videos for like two and a half, three years. It probably took two years for me to find that language. So what I started doing is I started taking, I have this note on my computer and I call it like voice. And so for me, it's like a brand voice. Anytime someone leaves me like a positive comment, sends me a positive text, sends me a positive email, anything about how the channel helped them or made them feel. I copy, paste it, put into a note. And then what I can actually use that for is marketing, copy in the future and also way to figure out like who are these people? What are they facing? How is this content helped them? And so what I started recognizing is the word calm, kept coming up. I would scroll through and I could just keep seeing calm all the way down. And then what I started recognizing is I think just as I've been trying to be more authentic and who expressing myself through my content, that idea of calm comes through for people. And so I've been trying to really double down on that, trying to figure out how do I, I'm not just here to give general real estate information, I want to help people really go from the stress of their facing because of disinformation and all the emotionality that comes from finances and purchasing home and possibly getting denied for mortgage. And how does my content help them feel more at ease, feel more confident and feel like they're in a position where they have really somebody on their side who's advocating for them through the home buying process that alleviates the rest of the stress. Very interesting. Clearly from that description, you can tell that you care, right? I mean, you didn't come out of the gate of going, hey, I'm going to figure out how to play a game YouTube so I can make it. Right. Right. Right. Right. Sure. I mean, really, and this is what I see with most YouTubers who succeed. Now, I know there's a thousand different ways to do YouTube and we're talking about specific for our industry and stuff like that. So we're not doing like, you know, will it break or stuff like that, you know, right? Yeah. I wish. Well, is that the right name of that show? Will it break or something like that? Will it blend? Will it blend? Will it blend? There's like that in half one. Yeah. The blender, right? Yeah. It's just a different angle. But we're talking about dealing with people and helping them with their financing, essentially. Yeah. God, there's just like so much here. How much time do you spend preparing the content for a given video? That has changed recently. So what I used to do, I used to write out a bunch of notes that I'd have, like, literally on a piece of paper. And so that would probably take me maybe 30 minutes and then I'd press a chord and it would be a one-take thing. So I was never like, I know people get it all in their head and stuff and it's like, if you mess up, who cares? Just keep recording. It's not the kind of deal. And so I first started doing that and would just kind of end up preparing notes on something, doing some research, making sure all my information is as accurate as it can be. And then recording and uploading it. And I was doing that for probably the first, I think about 270 videos now. So probably first 220 videos, we're all like that, just very like, not rehearsed other than notes. And I would literally talk, look at my notes, talk, look at my notes. And you would add in between? No. No, you would look down at your notes and there would be no editing. Yeah. I have a video right now that has the top video on my channel has around half a million views. And it is me. I use my iPad now to put my notes on screen, but it will literally be, I'm walking through my notes. I'm going down, talk about it, look down, talk about it. And so that's a 30 minute video and I'm looking at notes talking through it. So I have transitioned a little bit now to kind of doing more of a scripted method. And I don't think you have to do that. I would suggest people just start anyway that they can. But I'm learning that kind of as your channel grows, you do have to change strategies at some point. You're just kind of testing stuff, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't work. And so I'm going to more of a scripted approach where it maybe takes me an hour to plan out kind of a loose script. And then I actually do use like a teleprompter to run through notes and planning out some different shots and things like that. I don't think it's needed in the beginning for most people. But you do get to a point where I think things, you just want to change your strategy a little bit. See what's working, see what's not. Test it out. Yeah. Can you mention the iPad, is that your version of a teleprompter or something? Kind of. So like I will, I use like a keynote and I will go make literary notes about whatever content I'm speaking on. And I just use an editing software to put my screen recording in my iPad like on half of the screen and then my face is on the other half. And so I do have a separate teleprompter that I use what I do, what I mainly do now, which is having notes on a teleprompter, that's what I'm looking at you through. But I didn't start doing that until probably the last few months. Yeah. So only now are you kind of leveling up your production quality, right? Right. And it's always been that way. Like I first started doing videos with my iPhone. And then I didn't upgrade my camera until YouTube paid me enough to be able to upgrade it. And so each of it is like, each upgrade it comes from this, not necessarily necessity, but comes kind of as a result of growth rather than having this whole setup ready to go at the very beginning. All right. I'm going to do a quick screen share and bring in one of your videos here. You're seeing that, yeah? Yep. Okay. So are you using a vibe board? No. So I am, it's just an iPad pro. I basically take, so that's a keynote slide. So like PowerPoint or keynote with a, I changed the background, but it's probably a black background or maybe a green background. And I will screen record it, put it together in, I use Final Cut Pro. You could use Adobe Premiere or whatever. And then just like green screen out the background. Well, that sounds like a lot of work. I'll stop sharing. It's not terrible. It's a pretty cool effect though. And for those who can't see it, you're basically it's you on video and then to the looking at a screen to the right of his shoulder, there's bullet point texts. But then you're also writing and read pen on that. You're saying that was already pre-done on keynote? Yeah. Yeah. So we just go make the slides, basically export them as an image, throw them onto my iPad. I just use Adobe Fresco to be able to draw on top of it, like with a pen. And you are drawing in real time on your iPad. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Huh. That's interesting. Yeah. So what you see, they're both synced. So like what you see, if I draw on it, it would draw on the screen transparently. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's how it looks. That's pretty cool. Because the only other way I've seen that done that I know of is, well, a vibe board is the most recent example I've seen. Which is pretty cool. I don't know if you've seen those. They're not cheap though. No, I haven't seen it. Like 20, let me go back to this just in case I put this on YouTube. What a concept. Um, just so people, I do have a lot of people who comment and ask like, how are you doing this? I promise you, it's not, it's not that hard. Well, yeah, we were doing a call once with my people and Renee Rodriguez is in there and he was on Zoom and he of course has the hookups and he's like, hey, you know, can you pin my, my video and we pin his video, not all of a sudden he turns and he starts writing and it shows up on the, the Zoom just like this. Yeah. Everybody's like, oh, my God. But it's really cool. It's engaging for visual effects. You know what I mean? It makes you stand out. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Let me get back out of this where I'll go down that rabbit hole. Do you do a lot of testing like on thumbnails? Yeah. I, I have a love hate relationship with thumbnails and it's mainly hate because it just feels like the way my brain works is I want there to be a right answer and with thumbnails and videos and everything. There's no right answer. Unfortunately. Yeah. And so every once in a while, I'll go through and test what I've found to work a lot better than doing like a long-term AB thumbnail test with something like TubeBuddy is, and you can't really do this until you have like probably a few thousand subscribers who are watching videos when you put them out. There's no point in doing this in the very beginning because it's not, there's not enough data to do it. Right. But when you start getting people who when you put out a video, you get a, you know, few dozen or a couple hundred people starting to watch. I try to now prepare maybe two thumbnails or two titles and I'll post it with one and then I'll kind of wait and YouTube shows you real-time views. So if maybe after 30 minutes an hour, a couple hours, things are not as maybe high as I would anticipate them as far as like a click through rate that I would expect average, average on the channel, I'll go ahead and swap out a different thumbnail or a different title and just see what changed did views increase, did the click through rate all of a sudden jump through. Right. And it's really interesting because you get a pulse of it in real time. And so you, I can kind of see the curve if I post a video and it's like, okay, it's doing that, change the thumbnail and all of a sudden it starts growing. Yeah. And so it's this very weird thing that I think some people have mastered as an like an art of figuring out how to get a click without being click baity. And I'm, that's like a skill that I'm slowly trying to develop. Well, you know Evan Carmichael. I don't. Oh, really? You might want to check him out. He's a big YouTuber as well. He's interviewed like everybody from Tony Robbins to Oprah to you name it. He's got one of the biggest channels out there. But he is, he is self-proclaimed but he also hangs out with Darryl Yves and all the other people, you know. Sure. I'm just trying to bring him up here real quick. He, I attended a session he did once at social media marketing world or examiner, whatever right. And he is the self-proclaimed testing, you know, guru and has tested every possible thing on his channel. And he, one thing he tests a lot is thumbnails. And what he established was through all the testing he's done is, and you've heard this before, right, the big bold text, all that kind of stuff fully enriched. Sure. And bring quality. And also faces, like faces very, very close, you know, because as you know, it's horrible, right. But let me try and find him on YouTube. So it's amazing the change that you'll get in reaction from like, if, okay, so I was making thumbnails that were like kind of this frame for people watching. So it was like kind of chest up. And then one of my friends who has a channel, a big YouTube channel was like, hey, just zoom into your face. Right. And so I started doing that. And it's amazing to see the change in click through rate when your face is just so much closer. Right. So now it's literally like, maybe neck up. Yeah, just like, just like his or those, it's literally the bottom of the frame is the chin. Top of the frame is like cutting off hair. Yes. Yeah. And he says that these have far outperformed any other thumbnail he's ever tested and he's done thousands of them. So, I don't know. Pretty, where does he got three million subs to shabby? Interesting. Yeah. I have to check that out. Evan Carmichael, right? Yeah. Evan Carmichael. Yeah. Check him out. He's got some resources and stuff like that for YouTube. I actually just signed up for one of his things. So if you want the links later, I'll send them to you. But let's get back to you. Okay. What else am I curious about here? Thumbnail. So we talked about that. I heard you mention on a different podcast, the whole idea of tagging in key words is kind of like not really that important anymore. Is that accurate? Yeah. I do want to say, do you have to, do you have to head out? No. Do you? Because I didn't practice. I don't. Okay. So, so this is the other meeting was canceled. Yeah. So we're going. Okay. Cool. I was looking at 430. I was like, I think you got a hop off, man. Yeah. This is like way too good. So I'm like, no, she's going to, even though she does 100 loans a year, I'm like, no, you can wait. I got Kyle Seagrass. I don't know. She's going to start emailing me. All right. Okay. If you need for editing, you're welcome to ask me that again. Oh. The hell did I say? You asked. Oh, sorry. Let me restart. I'll count it down through to one. So I heard you on another podcast. You were mentioning that tagging in key words, not so much relevant anymore. Yeah. And even YouTube has said that, where tags are only helpful if it's something that could be, I'm trying to think, I can't even think of something on the top of my head. If you're talking about, like apples, for instance, I don't know, random example, are you talking about apple, the company you're talking about, the fruit, like what, what apple you're talking about? Tags can sometimes help add what Google calls a latent semantic indexing keyword in there. All they're looking at is contextual clues. Right. If you mentioned Steve Jobs. Okay. It's probably talking about Apple, the company, not Steve Jobs favorite fruit, the apple. Right. Is what they're doing there. And so in the earlier stages of Google and YouTube, yeah, it used to be keywords, tags, all that kind of stuff where you could kind of game the system a little bit. But YouTube and Google now have become really smart with their algorithms that everyone's afraid of. But I think it actually relieves a lot of pressure because the system used to be, I have to try to game the system, learn the algorithm to then figure out how do I please the algorithm? And what Google and YouTube have done is they've designed the algorithm now to not care a single bit about any of your tags or your metadata or anything like that. They're only cared about, only care about the viewers experience. And so they call these like signals that affect the view basically. And so the analogy that I like to think about is let's say like you were watching a, so let's say I'm watching TV, all right. So there's a TV in front of me. Obviously like light shining on my face. I'm sitting there watching it. And let's say YouTube is in the room. And it's off, YouTube's off to the side. A lot of people think that YouTube is looking at the TV to see is the show good. Right. Is the show colorful? Is it engaging? Is it fast? Is it funny? That's what everyone thinks YouTube is doing. And that's what YouTube used to do. They used to look at the show and see, is this a good show or not? If it is, then we show it to more people. Right. It's now changed where YouTube doesn't even look at the show anymore per se. They've actually zoomed over and they just look at the person watching. So they want to see how long did they want to make care what the show is? Did they watch that show for a long time? Did it create some sort of emotional response? Did they go and watch other that same channel? Did they go and watch different types of videos? What did they do? Or did they click on it and then they immediately went to something else? And so that's all YouTube and Google do now. So they don't really care about. That's why you see videos rank with millions of views. And the title is not engaging. The thumbnail isn't engaging at all. But it will have millions of views because the viewers really liked watching it. And that's what YouTube wants. Is they want to create a good product that people enjoy. And so they found that pleasing their viewers, showing them more videos that make them happy. And engaged is what helps grow YouTube. Okay. So watch time, engagement, things like that. For sure. How does that then come into play though? Keywords. I'm bringing up an example here of a real estate agent. And for agents or anybody who wants to get found in search of like, let's say people are, I want to get in front of people moving from California to Vegas or from wherever to Austin, Texas. You know what I mean? And play into that whole thing. Are you saying it's really not going to be keyword based? It's going to be all on your content? So they work kind of simultaneously. So keywords are, they're a part of like how we interact as people with content. And so I really think the best way to create content. And the reason why I think there's a lot of pressure off because you're not figuring out this algorithm is because think of it like you're giving a talk. So think of it like you're hosting a meeting with somebody else or giving a talk to first time buyers. If I wanted to give a talk to people in Austin, Texas, I am going to name the talk, you know, buying a home in Austin, Texas. Because that's what resonates with people. I'm not going to go and try to stuff keywords because that's what I think YouTube wants. And so keywords are effective, but they're effective from the lens of how do we communicate with other people? How do I tell somebody else with this and with this content is about? Sure. Right. I think the mistake that people make is they go and see a bunch of different keywords and they think they just have to plan for the keyword. And we have to remember that like Google and YouTube are actually not interested on keyword based search. They actually function based on intent based search. So it's like, what is the intent behind the person looking for the video? Because I can make a video about, for instance, I'm trying to make a good example here. If the keyword is what is an appraisal, my video about what to do when your appraisal comes in short, actually might rank at the top. Even though someone else's video is called what is an appraisal. If my video more clearly articulates what an appraisal is and helps people overcome all the challenges that they were looking for based on the intent of their search, then that video is going to rank higher there. So keywords are important in that way. Like YouTube helps us see what other people search for. Right. But it's only from the perspective of how do I communicate? How do I communicate with a person? I think it's the main thing to succeeding while on YouTube is like create content for people and YouTube will reward you. Are the keywords an indicator of what people are consuming or searching for? Yeah. Yeah, and so the keywords, what's great is the YouTube search predictions show you exactly what other people are searching for. Not what like the YouTube algorithm wants. It's what other people are searching for. And so it's the same thing. If a bunch of your friends were like, I would love to, I don't know, none of my friends would do this. I'd love to know more about how to buy a home. Would you put together like a talk on that? Like, okay, great. That's the same thing. I'm getting that information from other people. Right. And just making content that helps people is what will succeed. And have you used that technique to influence or, you know, yeah, influence content that you would produce? The keywords? Yeah. Search. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, I mainly started doing videos through search. And if I could do it again, I'm kind of torn on it. But I could start from the beginning. I don't think I would have. Because it's, it can be an effective strategy, but it's a long process. So basically the search strategy is go find what YouTube is predicting. So, you know, how, what is an appraisal? What to do with my brazil comes in short. Make videos on that. The only problem is YouTube search is just such a smaller portion of YouTube videos being watched. I believe YouTube search only accounts for around 25 to 30% of YouTube traffic. The rest is all suggested. And so if that's the, if those are the actual numbers, why would I focus a ton of time on search? By suggested, do you mean suggested videos? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. So that's where the bulk of your viewership comes from is YouTube looking out, you've already watched your watch time all that and then deciding, oh, they'd probably like something on this. Yeah. Well, that was my mistake in the beginning was I was making stuff that was way too niche down because I was only focused on search. Which again, I don't think it's terrible, but you're, you're serving a much smaller audience looking for very specific search terms. Like, you know, will my eviction help me count against my mortgage approval? That's not going to be suggested to a bunch of people. This is a very like niche, very, very niche audience for somebody searching. So somebody, there might be a few thousand people who searched that over a year. Great. They saw my video. Cool. Mm-hmm. But there's a lot more power, I think, in trying to find what can I make that is creates an element of curiosity for people where if they saw this, they'd be really interested in watching it. And so that's what search is mainly driven off of is what is content that's engaging to people who would be interested in that topic. And so it's, it takes a lot more creativity and it's a lot harder. I think to figure out what works there, but I would have gone back and focused more on that. And I think finding what works well in search comes down to narrowing down who is the person that you're serving. Because when you can articulate, these are the pain points they have. This is what they want. This is the frustrations they're facing. These are the questions that they have that are unanswered. That's what will work really well in search, in my opinion, than just a search based strategy. So the answer to that, the pain points and struggles, like, you know, solutions you solve. That arguably should come from your own understanding of your consumers, your ideal client and all your customers in prospects. That's what should probably feed your video topics is that deep understanding of your market. Yeah. And the hard part too is this is stuff that I'm just now learning and implementing over the past three to four months. So I by no means had any understanding of this and like, it took me, it took me a year, I believe, from a remembered correctly, to get 100 subscribers. Yeah, wow. And so it's like, man, like I wish I would have focused more on the suggested side and maybe had a little bit more of a better understanding of how it all worked. Because I think that I probably would have been a little bit further ahead if I focused on that. So how important then is the headline of the video, what I'll call the headline, the title. Yeah, I think the title is really important. Not from a perspective of how do I trick YouTube into this, but just in like, what is something that's engaging to people? And again, that's something that's like hard to figure out because you might think something is engaging into something else works a lot better. Is this makes sense? The thumbnail and the text that's on the thumbnail, if there is. And then the title of the video, aka headline, that's like the ad for the video to get people to click. Yeah, yeah, it's like the ad or like the branding for it. Like, you know, any products that we use a lot of times, we use them because we fall in love with the brand and the way that it makes us feel. And so videos in that same way are like your thumbnail, your title are basically like the branding or the advertising around that video. Why should somebody even watch it? And it's frustrating. The reason I kind of love and hate the game that part of it is like, you can make this awesome video and have a really crummy title in thumbnail. And no one will watch it. Yeah, I know, I know, that's the difficult part. And I got to give you a shout out, though, man, you did an hour long video on Oregon, Oregon banning the home buyer love letters. I'm like an hour. So this is something new that I've kind of found out and this is a lot of I'm taking cues from a lot of other people who have done this. Basically, I used to do live streams and they kind of be a general Q&A. So have on people ask questions, you answer them. And normally do that for like an hour or two. But then what I found is you can also do the first maybe 20 minutes talking about a topic and then jump into Q&A. And so that's been most of what that is is like, I didn't spend an hour talking about it. Yeah, so first probably 15 to 20 minutes was covering that. And then we jump into Q&A afterwards. But it's more engaging than just, you know, home buyer Q&A is something. But then if I actually have a topic to gather people around, usually creates some more viewership jumping into the Q&A. Yeah, I'm looking at the video. I'm like, yeah, and you're in optimal blue during this video. I'm like, why are you in optimal blue while talking about the home the love letters? I'm sure somebody asked about like, what are average rates or something pricing? And yeah, so I normally send people over there. So I don't, you know, I don't want to have to actually say what a mortgage code is and be liable for that. So in the live stream, you're doing a screen share. And I guess if you're doing a teaching live stream, that makes sense. And I've looked at some of your other videos. You've got some B-roll. You think B-roll is important? I don't know B-roll. I think B-roll is important from a perspective. I'm just learning more about trying to create stuff that helps people watch it longer and stay more engaged. Because most of my videos have been me just sitting and talking on the camera. Maybe there's a notes on screen. And what I found is like, okay, if I test out adding some extra footage in there, or just anything to change it up, increases people wanting to watch it longer, which tells YouTube, hey, this is an even better video. And YouTube pushes it out to more people. And so I think a lot of it is like, there aren't rules about it. Because again, there are channels that are huge. Like, what is it? Clear value tax, I think. All of his thumbnails are just screenshots. He just sits there and like basically passive aggressively yells at people about tax advice. And by his channel is huge. Whereas other channels have like soup, you know, ultra production to them. And so I think a lot of it is you're just, you're just testing out, seeing what works for a long time. I was just doing one camera angle, looking at the camera, talking. And I just want to test adding some B-roll and found that I increased a watch time by like a minute on average, which is huge. And when you go from like a six minute watch time to a seven minute watch time is awesome. And that just helps YouTube push your videos out even further. Yeah, that's what I back to Evan Carmichael for a second. I was briefly glancing at some of his statistics and data research that he had done. And that's what kept that top of mind for me is like he had the similar data and that, you know, the cutaways, the all that kind of jazz. That's absolutely a bit higher production quality. I'm not saying everyone should start there, absolutely not. But when you think about commercials and music videos and movies, you know, a lot of that has that moving on the screen to keep our brain engaged, you know. Yeah. And I think for a lot of people, because I know I was this way too, like I listened to stuff in the beginning about like creating YouTube channels and everyone's telling you, you have to make this. You have to do skits and you have to do all this like crazy stuff. And again, it goes back to like planning out the full strategy of it rather than just starting. And it really is you, it's no different than you picking up anything else or practicing anything else. Right. If I want to go learn how to ski, I can't have the anticipation that I'm going to like go up there and then be like greatest skiing. I have no clue what's involved in skiing. I'm probably going to like break a couple things. It's going to be really ugly. But like that's my expectation. Something that happens with a video where people assume, and it's probably because it's a very public thing that it has to be this fully produced thing. I have to be completely ready to make this awesome video when I first start. And it's like think of like the first time you did a loan or the first time you worked on a real estate deal was like, it wasn't great. You were not the best realtor promise. No, no one is. But you grow into that in each thing that you do gets a little better, a little bit better. And that's the same thing I'm doing is like the first video was me walking around my neighborhood with an iPhone. Like that was not great. But each video gets a little bit better as you practice and practice. And I think for a lot of people, it's just the hard work is showing up and getting into the habit of becoming somebody who creates content. That's the hardest piece. And so I really think like, I think that's, you know, doing stuff like B roll and thumbnails and production and all that is a great thing to work towards. But the best way to start is like, you have an easy way to record. You have the information you know what clients are asking you. Just do something to start there. And then make it the goal, okay, next video I do, I'm going to try to make a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better. And just keep up the practice of making video like you would anything else. Amen. And you got to be willing to suck when you first start, right? Yeah. Yeah. And just keep going. Have you, do you know, have you heard of Jennifer Beaston? Yeah. Oh, you have, okay, great. Yeah, I had her on the show as well. And she's obviously leveled up her channel. Yeah. But I just pulled her up right here just out of curiosity. So yeah, and I noticed I followed her. She's, she's recently gone with the full, full rich colors on her thumbnails and big bold text. And the one thing still missing, of course, is like the face closer. But you know, who am I? She's crushing it. Sure. Yeah. That's interesting. All right. All right, let's go back to your channel here before we wrap up. I was noticing the screen share. What is your production? Do you batch film? How do you get this content out? And how often are you uploading videos? I think people who batch film probably need to see a therapist. I don't know how anybody does that. Do you do that? Because I have. Yes. Oh, my gosh. But I don't know. There's no. Who did this way? I'd like to think that that's the way I'm going to produce more content. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think people have that mindset because people take videos as a saying that they don't want to do it to begin with. Right. And I think that again, you have to build the habit of you or somebody who creates content. Somebody who's in the habit of creating content doesn't do it on an off day and batches it because they hate doing it. I just don't think that that's a sort of never seen it to be like a sustainable thing. Just to be clear, what I mean by batch is you carve out a half a day and you film your five or ten videos in that span for the whole month. I don't know if that made sense on that, but that's what I mean by batch. The only time I've I've never seen anybody maybe I'm wrong. Do that and like do it at a sustainable pace. So, but here's the flip side of that. All right. The other side of the coin is like, okay, if I don't plan it out and have a designated day and maybe you're just saying you're going to plan out and carve out one. Sure. For a certain time of window. But I think the challenge is to your point is like everybody's super busy. I have to think I have to like plan out my content. What am I going to say? What are my bullet points? I got to get my camera or phone set up my lighting blah, blah, blah, blah. Like that takes time. Sounds like a time stock, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think if it works for you, great. I just don't know. I just haven't seen anybody do it well. Well, then how do you do it? How do you do it? How many of you are uploading a week? Right now I'm doing about once a week. So I normally do one a week and then one one live stream. I was doing one. I was doing five a week at one point in the very beginning and then have kind of slowed down. I'm working on some digital product and then I'll probably scale back up to doing more videos after I'm finished with that. But I literally do one video at a time. And there's also a flexibility that comes with that because I want to see what's happening. What's changing, right? Is there a new program that happens that I need to talk about? Is there something changing in the market that I need to talk about? And there's there's a thing with batching. I just feel like you become really disconnected from what you're creating. And maybe I'm wrong in that. Maybe that works really well for some people. But there's a connectedness that I think comes with saying I'm going to create this video. Put the full thing out. Then work on the next one. I have because I'm investing my full energy into that video. And not just this like I'm just throwing stuff out. People can tell when you're just throwing things at the wall and hoping that you're getting some return from it. Right. And so I think there's I think there's a more of an investment from like I'm just focusing on one video. That don't get me wrong. Like I have tons of I probably have around 300 video ideas like saved in the note. And kind of them categorized like here's my next probably my next 10. Here's the rest of them. But so I always have like a catalog of videos I can go to. That way I'm never sitting there wondering what am I going to make a new video on. But I like to have some flexibility with what I want to create in the future too. Okay. Real quick. I'm in your about section your description. And the links you've gotten here get a little officer referral anywhere in the US. So that's a form they go to fill out right. And are you giving any call to actions in your video? Yeah. So I have been I used to not. And I've learned that I probably need to do that. I've also learned to like not there's this weird balance of not being too pushy. People don't really like what she thinks especially on real estate. And that's not why they're on YouTube either. Yeah. Yeah. People get a heightened sense that especially in real estate. And so I will make some like very more subtle or contextual call to actions. So for instance if I have like a free tool for people to use. I give that if it's only in context that like fits naturally. If I'm talking about whether debt to income ratio is great. I have a free tool about debt to income ratio that can help them out. But it's not just a random plug at the end. And it's never just a hey call me when you're ready kind of thing. It's always contextual to that video. So it fits in really cleanly because then it becomes a next step rather than just a side step called action. So you're doing the end cards and all that? Yeah. I will do the in cards to reference a next video to watch. I found that that works really well. The click through rate normally on that depends on the video. Normally around like five ish percent, which is great. It depends like five to ten percent. But basically it's going from like a you know if I'm making a video about FHA down payments. The next video I want them to watch is what's the next logical step? Like oh well if you learned about down payments here's the rest of the guidelines. Here's my video on 2021 updated guidelines for FHA. Feel free to watch it right here. So what's the next logical step for somebody watching your current video to watch the next one? And you are not repurposing your content across other platforms? No. Is that is that what's the decision behind that because I heard you. I don't want to. Is it because you're not active on those platforms or it's extra work or what is it? Both like I'm not really active on any other platforms. I don't have Facebook. I have Instagram. I use it like for personal use. I don't really do anything business-wise with it. I have a TikTok account but I use it again for personal. It's not like I don't have videos of me dancing. So don't try to find them. Right. Yeah. I don't know. I just have not seen. I don't see a lot of benefit from it. I think that it could work. You do have a podcast. I do have a podcast. Yeah. So we're just repurposing the audio. Yeah. So I will take, just rip the audio from the video, upload it to a podcast. It's the easiest way to make a podcast. You already recorded it. The next step that I am working on is repurposing those into blog posts. So I'm kind of working on a website redesign and then we'll do the same thing. Take popular videos, basically transcribe them and then repurpose it into a blog post. So one piece of content that video made now becomes two extra pieces of content that people can find. Okay. So two things. As we close out here, I want to close out by talking about how this started to impact your business in terms of inquiries for loans and all that kind of jazz production. And then I know you shifted your role from originating to something different. You're welcome to describe that or not. And I obviously added this to whatever degree we need to. But was there at some point where you did start to have people get you up to fill out applications for loans? Yeah. Even when I had around 100 subscribers, I would get people who would reach out and ask if I could help them with the loan. The nice thing about working on the loan side is you can do multiple states in like a whole state area. Realtors have a much harder time because they can only drive within 30-ish minutes. But when I near the end of me stopping originating, most of the loans I was closing were from YouTube. Which is awesome because you don't have to do the whole chasing after Realtors thing, which is really nice. And now, so right now I stopped originating. I just do the education full time. And it depends on the month, but anywhere to 300 to 500 people requesting to be connected with a loan officer per month. That's amazing. That is amazing. Congratulations. Well, thanks. Yeah. It's weird. It drives a lot of interest just from people who want to see it. And even like before, again, it was like even around 100 subscribers, it's like you're still going to get people reaching out to you. Yeah. And you can create a really great business just from a small YouTube channel. I'll give you a success report from today, somebody that is in our little, you know, small lead group of loan officers. She's been on YouTube. What did she say? I don't know if what she said eight, nine months, something around there might even be 12. But she just this past week got two deals for over a million dollars total. Right. She's in California. So one was like 70, the other one was like smaller, but you know, boom. There you go. Yeah. It's a wild. And there's a lot of up front work. Yeah. Yeah, but here's what you know. There's less selling. There's less like, oh, what's your price? And now, you know, these people, this one in one individual happened to be a one was one was purchased one was re-fi. And now you take that purchase. And you're like, hey, do you have a realtor already? You want to buy? No, I don't have a realtor. Oh, right. Yeah. Golden ticket. Let me give one of my VIP realtors this $750,000 purchase. Right. Yeah. Did you do a lot of that like TN up leads for realtors too? Yeah. I would try to. I very quickly transitioned from doing like most of my business being from YouTube to like, I think I'm just going to switch over doing this full time. Yeah. And then some of my dad's company will take care of those people who are in Florida, Tennessee, Ohio. And so I didn't grow it into this like huge YouTube network thing for realtors. Just because I was like, I, you know, I'm not a huge fan of originating. I don't think a lot of people are. So I was like, you know what? I think I like doing the education side a lot more. So transitioned into that. But it is nice to be able to have the role reversed a little bit of instead of trying to go after a realtor spending all this time. They finally send you somebody and they're, you know, they had a bankruptcy yesterday or whatever. It's being able to say, hey, have this pre-proved person. They're fantastic. All they need is for you to help them find a home. And we can get this finished. It's just a much nicer change of pace that way. 100%. All right. For anybody who wants to connect with you, let me guess where should we send them? Probably YouTube. YouTube is a great place to go. Okay. I'm going to put a link in the show notes. But the name of your channel is win the house you love. I love that. Fantastic. So listen, man, appreciate your time. I know you're super busy. Listeners go follow him. Go, you know, learn from him. Do you have anything else you want to say before we sign off? Really just, you just got to start. Like start now. Just make a quick video. It doesn't have to be long. Something to help people. That's the best way to get started and other than trying to pull up, plan out the whole strategy. Really just got to start making content and videos. And don't necessarily early on get all hung up on view count and stuff like that. Yes, that's kind of an indicator. But this is what I tell people is like if you're considering going on YouTube, don't even consider it if you're not willing to put in at least a year. Oh, yeah. For sure. Or more. Yeah. Yeah, it's got to be a long term. It's got to be like, can I, will I do this for the next three to five to 10 years? Not a, I made five videos where is everybody at? Because that's just not how YouTube works. Right. And I've had a fair amount of those come through as well. It's just like, I've done four videos. Where's my leads? Yeah. Yeah, my dad said that to me. He started a YouTube channel too for, for realtors. And he made, he made 16 videos, which is great. But then he was like, where is everyone? It's been, it's been two months. Yeah. Yeah. They're good. It's going to take a while. All right. We'll do the, I'm going to sign off to my listeners, but hang out for a second. So everybody, if you like this episode, you know what it's do. Leave us a review and make sure you join the Facebook group over there at Morgan's Marketing Radio. We appreciate you and we'll see you on the next one. Well, there you have it. You heard from Kyle Seagraves. How to create a YouTube channel that gets you business. Hope you learned a lot from that. Like I did. All right. Everybody, thanks for listening. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. 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. You're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchased business. Let's just face it. Agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchased 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. 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