Stop Chasing Views: How to Build a Video System That Fills Your Pipeline

Have you ever spent hours filming a mortgage video only to hear crickets no views no clicks no comments look it happens to the best of us but what if you could build a simple repeatable system that turns those clips into real conversations with prospects and referral partners. You're listening to mortgage marketing radio podcast the strategic marketing podcast for modern mortgage professionals my name is Jeff Simfer your host and guide and everything from digital outreach to. Scaling referral partnerships to close more loans and today on the show we're tackling a critical question how do you move beyond chasing views and actually use video to grow your business and tell us answer that I've invited back Mike Ferassi founder of red button media and co author of rethink everything the power of video for business and sales. So if you don't know Mike he helps sales leaders and small teams turn video into consistent source of qualified leads and in this episode you're going to get three key takeaways number one why defining your ideal viewer personas is the foundation for every clip that converts number two how to use the five content pillars that's news education problem solving storytelling and local to multiply one idea into dozens of targeted posts and number three the metrics that matter. Why counting conversations beats chasing vanity views every time and be sure to stay with us until the end because Mike is going to unpack an unexpected surprise tactic to keep your content unmistakably human even as AI generated clips flood our feeds so if you're ready to stop guessing and start using video to book more appointments you're in the right place let's get into this weeks show. Mike welcome back thank you for having me this is awesome and welcome to Las Vegas yet it's been years I think last time I was here was 2019 for four mastermind back in 2019 last time you hear for mastermind summit which is why we're all meeting up here yep what I'm excited about is to talk about this new book rethink everything you're the guy as you got the shot the nose video that's right so just like it says on your sweatshirt I make content that makes you money that's right it's very different than making content that gets you views. Okay cool so let's jump in with let me start with what's the intent of the book what were you hoping to accomplish with this that book and in my mind the way I wanted to lay it out was that is the blueprint for anyone who wants to use video content to enhance and boost their business and sales efforts. rethink everything the title of book obviously it's under the rethink everything banner a collaborative Kyle draper yeah shout out Kyle shout out to Kyle thank you for inviting me on this journey brother but he kind of said this thing was the mic for us he showed that's how you framed it so that's how I took it and ran with it nice Kyle's really good at the things that I suck at. For example he's really good at telling people why they should make video okay get the non-believers over the hump yeah I can't stand talking to those people is twenty twenty five man if you're back there stay back there I need to take the people who know that this is valuable and teach you how to do it most effectively so doesn't take up so much your time and it sets you up for commitment to a long term system okay that's what this book is built around the first three chapters are Kyle kind of. tell you a little bit how and a few different ways to use videos that are not Instagram reels yeah because video is a means of communication sure and it's a marketing asset it's not just a real that you post and then it dies 24 hours later right the final. 13 chapters are me laying out my content system for a single solo person to repurpose on their own if they want to implement it for a team you can do that also but I really took this from the frame of mind of okay the person reading this book knows that there's a value here they might not know what to talk about they might not exactly know what what they should be saying who they should be saying it to what they should expect once they start actually posting this content publicly and then just taking that framing in a way to work and set them up systematically to continue it without taking you as long as you think it will take you is a lot of misconceptions out there about video content yeah one of the misconceptions is that it takes a lot of time to produce and there are lots of different ways to go about it where that is absolutely true but if you set yourself up systematically from a business mindset that's not necessarily the case okay so am I correct then to sum it up to say you know reference and Kyle shout out Kyle he's more the why are you the how yeah okay that's exactly right okay so let's break this down then I love like the first words that I write in the book in chapter four are literally thanks Kyle I'll take it from here so like that like it and that's what you're trying to say you got to cut off Kyle once in a while no Kyle is a pretty good job of cutting off Kyle so we don't have to worry about that he's watching his he knows we're just kidding we love him Kyle's awesome man very inspirational he's my brother from another mother yeah both of us we're basically the same person are your backwards hat bearded I think it's true inch of height of each other where you might learn for different sports teams I think but mostly I'm the California version is the Texas version we got somebody for everybody in here it's a Texas I don't know well that's all another conversation let's get into some of the nuggets here yeah okay so you're the how yeah and you're for the people who already understand I need to be doing video I don't need to be convinced anymore correct okay so then take that person they're at that doorstep they're like I understand I need to do video I get the why where do you start with them on the how I start strategically on the how so I like to think of any organic content like a business GPS right a lot of people will shoot a couple of videos and then they'll post it and they'll say well I'm not I'm not really landing I'm not really getting any traction with the people that I want to be getting traction with I don't think this is working for me and they want to quit and they do quit which is the worst thing that you can do is is quit because we can get into consistency later that's been that's the dead horse has been beaten by everybody right but that's kind of like saying you know hop to my car and I didn't really know where I wanted to go so from Las Vegas I plugged in Los Angeles to the GPS and I was just so pissed off that it didn't take me straight to the Hollywood walk of fame but you didn't tell it where you want to go yeah specific contents the same exact thing if you want to resonate if you want to connect with a specific group of people you need to reverse engineer your content in order to land with that group of people instead of trying to you know you fall into the trap like a lot of beginners do especially sales people of well my target market is that everybody I could possibly be selling to yeah well that's not the best target market in the world because if you make something for everyone it actually resonates with nobody because you're not talking to anyone in particular which is why content systems are so valuable because that lets you scale up the volume of content that you're making so that way if you're a mortgage professional and you have access to a great down payment assistance program you can make a piece that talks about it to the first time home buyers in your zip code. And then you can make another piece that talks about it to the real estate agents because the context is completely different there the messaging completely different maybe there's another piece that you make for the financial planners that you want to attract as referral partners maybe there's a piece that you make for the parents of college age kids because you want them to know about it because if their future grads are looking at becoming a homeowner pretty soon maybe you're connecting with the parents so they can kind of pass on the word. And let them know that these things exist. The message the topic so to speak doesn't always have to change your audience member changes. Yeah, it sounds like there those you've got from the same you know macro piece of content you've got four micro so to speak and I call it content multiplication in the book. So we first start with dialing in some target viewer personas not target client personas because you target viewers could be referral sources. They could be people you want to recruit to your organization so you dial in some target viewer personas and then you dive into some content pillars. If you have five target viewers and five content topics that's not 10 pieces of content it's 25. Okay, so are you then back to my question about when you start with somebody do you first start with identifying your viewer profiles that we correct that's a that's where I start not only. Is that where I start people off in the book or in my content follow me on the socials yeah, but when I sign on a new client right that's the first step in our onboarding session is dialing in there to you trying to reach exactly because unless you know. Who you want to be viewing your content then you're not going to be able to make content that's you're just guessing in a meaningful way by them yeah you're throwing crap against the wall that gives you some context and that you build strategy from that correct interesting okay so first is who you making content for yep. Um what mistakes do you think when you're dealing with loan officers let's say coming in you already mentioned one i'm trying to reach everybody yeah do what do you find where the areas they most struggle with or trip up when it comes to content strategy or viewer yeah content delivery content strategy um the biggest mistake that I see sales people not just Morgan said just people who sell things is selling. So I mean they're trying to sell that that's it they can't they can't get out of their own head yeah they have this amazing thing I have this amazing book disruptor died by Jeff Zimfer and I need to get it as many hands as possible because that's how I pay my bills instead of doing that like this is an amazing product camera to right but this is an amazing product a lot of people do not own this should on this. But they're not buying a book they're buying a solution to a problem right and that's where the messaging and our content needs to start yeah so many people freeze up. When I ask the follow up question the initial question is what do you sell everybody has that answer the follow up is great what are your customers buy from you. Oh they're buying a different solution to a different problem and those pain points need to be identified and addressed through storytelling through past experiences through solutions that do exist through myth busting through all all of these different tactics addressing click baitie headlines Morgan real estate that's huge right like there's a whole strategy right in becoming the news source for your audience as opposed to just being a part of the news story. What if you were the person who showed up every couple of days saying hey saw this headline the other day really pissed me off because here's here's what's really going on the market you know what I mean the the local following that you can build around being that expert the person who brings real perspective to a kind of a niche market or smaller audience. These are the ways that the solo loan officer the small brokerage can compete with rocket and being local and the loan depots because they have no choice but to expand nationally but they don't have the resources to pour into your kind of micro market so is that one of the key takeaways is if you can pepper in some local focus content. Not of the book but it's not a book here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, what I'm thinking about so like you mentioned Vaynerchuk calls it being the digital mayor of your town. Yes, right and I've always loved that concept like it resonates with me when I mean when it comes to especially we work a lot with mortgage and real estate professionals man why doesn't almost every mortgage professional in every small city have their own podcast where they just interview small business owners in the area. Every real estate agent gets approached by mortgage people and increasingly divorce attorneys are being approached financial planners are being approached things like that. But the mom and pop coffee shop down the street comes in contact with hundreds of people a day and they probably don't have a trusted mortgage professional and if you gave them a little bit of a platform to promote their thing they're going to feel like they will be a favor that's a great relationship and then all of a sudden all the small businesses in your area are recommending you yeah that's powerful. Um what percentage of the total content types right because we've got local we've got market driven educational mortgage and all the different yes. The mom and pop coffee shop thing or just answer the broader question right can you ascertain a rough percentage of content type buckets for people when they think about the types of content they need to put out. I like so I I lay out kind of five main pillars yeah you know one is news one is kind of just educational okay and not necessarily we have this product you need this credit score you need this DTI this is the maximum amount that no i'm talking about like this is what an adjustable rate mortgages okay you know the very foundational type of stuff sure. So educational news problem solving success or fail your stories a little bit of storytelling yeah and then kind of. Local okay there you are and i i really like an even split of all of that stuff yeah because it gives you a chance to try out multiple things yeah because don't get me wrong. There is no like a thagorean theorem that works every time that words too big for the show and sorry sorry i got into a little bit got a little bit of man break it down for the people in the cheap seats man right. There is no equals mc squared i got it there is no constant magic formula that exists and works for everybody if there was wouldn't have to write a book. And and and we wouldn't have to try to sell it even if there was everybody's audience is different right so dividing your content between pillars evenly especially when you start out. Allows you to run a bunch of content organically right it's not paid a play these platforms are free to access yep you run it out there you build a little bit of an audience you stay consistent with it. And then you start paying attention to it a little bit more tracking it and you're going to start picking that's it marketing it's all an experiment right everything's an experience then you find something that jams or clicks or whatever and then you're like oh all right that hit about the great quote that i heard one time science is just playing around with toys but you're writing stuff down. Like that's like that's like everything's an experiment right marketing is an experiment because everybody's audience is a little bit different yeah and like i live in Southern California i'm not going to make a whole lot of first time home by your content right now when in the county that i live in the media and list prices 1.3 million dollars that's just not it's not a thing i'm going to make more content for self-employed business owners to get. Along that they deserve by using tax returns instead of or a bank statements instead of tax returns going a little bit of non qm solutions there for them i'm going to make some content for investors especially i live in a college town huge for investors because there's not enough dorms and a lot of the local homes are rented out to students as seasonal investments and things like that and these investors make a killing on that stuff so my. audience in my location would be different than the next person's audience in the next person's location yeah but when you're first getting started with your content you have to run all types equally at least for a little bit in the beginning and then you're going to see what stuff you get a higher engagement rate on oh people seem to be liking this more people seem to be commenting or DMing more from the how does an adjustable rate mortgage work what is a buy down like that stuff seems to be hitting in my area mold. Sure then the news content so then you start leaning in proportionally where you're seeing a bigger pick up okay so starts with identifying who you're trying to reach right you're viewing audience and then you're going to get a little bit more strategic slash tactical yes with the types of content the buckets of types of content you talked about that's right and when it comes to like a lot of people think time lines oh how long is that going to take like it's not going to be short this is not like sales is what going to take it how long is like a content strategy going to take to start work. And start seeing like how long do I have to do videos before it pays off that's right that's right because everybody's looking for the magic bullet the magic wand and what do you say to that by the way I say six to 12 months before you start seeing a meaningful lift in conversations we're not looking for lead generation right we're not looking for clothes loans to automatically hit in your DMs that is not what we're looking for we're just looking to generate conversations with people we wouldn't have otherwise been able to have conversations with because that's where relationships come from and that's where referrals and business come from what was it you said at the beginning most people are optimizing for views versus a lot of people are optimizing for views which which leads them into creating a broader contents for a broader audience right trying to appeal to everybody so you can get a bunch of views because dopamine is a powerful thing yeah and that's right that's been the metric I fall victim to that sometimes too why am I not getting enough views on this I put so much effort into that one well dummy maybe you just posted it at the wrong time of day yeah so yeah try it again two weeks later in the morning instead of in the evening like that sometimes that can be the difference it might not be the content well what is the North star then what if it's not views what's the North star metric conversations yeah I like conversations when if you don't want to talk about it. I like to track all the conversations that you have I like to look at engagement rate which would be your your views yeah how long they're watching the good not necessarily links but likes and comments okay divided by the number of views you're getting so for every hundred views how many people are liking or commenting on this particular piece of content is the Holy Grail shares or is there a Holy Grail if you ask Instagram CEO it is you don't necessarily I mean he's but he's be he's been on record saying that shares are are the biggest it's hard to get shareable content though it's very difficult yeah the vast majority of shareable content there isn't necessarily education based it's it's entertainment and it's funny it's a quick hit people falling off their patio right the American funniest videos type of stuff you know so stuff we love to share yeah I like I like comments I like DM yeah there's more realistic in our world yes exactly because we don't need millions of views to be wildly successful which is a great point let's riff on this for a second then we'll get into the three ease because it's relevant to the views because that was the metric for a while right is how do you know if your contents all its views it's you know you mentioned comments as well yeah but let's riff for a second on you mentioned you don't need a million followers speak to the changes in the algorithm where it used to be about followers but now it's about the content and you can do you can have the right conversations that feed your business without a large following so I have proof of this literally in in my phone right now so I have I have a YouTube channel to passion project okay hardly anybody business wise knows about this it's a YouTube channel I'm a watch nerd I love I love watches really um you're sporting a good one today it's it's it's it's decent and so so the the apple you're like no dude this doesn't qualify I don't I don't wear spark watches no no all right go ahead don't do on that but I commend what apple has done with those because it's gotten a lot of people used to wearing something on their wrist when they didn't before yeah and a lot of apple watch users have turned into mechanical watch enthusiasts yeah well it's great a lot of engagement this watch yeah brolla people into the hobby all right keep those pretty cool anyways um so I have a YouTube channel where I review mostly budget entry level yeah okay mechanical watch like 500 or last or what a typically a thousand or a thousand or less and most of the ones that I review are in the one to $300 okay cool I just hit 5000 subscribers on that channel that's a pretty cool idea but three weeks ago I posted a watch review that has over 60,000 views now in the last month that channel has seen 118,000 views and 5,400 hours of watch time wow nice for all that YouTube has paid me $330 yeah like this is not monetizable in a meaningful way sure but if I'm a mortgage professional if I'm a real estate agent yeah and I can build something that gets me 1000 subscribers sure and 20,000 views in a month and 1000 hours of watch time that long of people in taking your messaging is going to result in people reaching out to you with questions and if you can convert one of those questions into a deal then all of a sudden UV clips to like three years of my YouTube earnings because even though I'm getting so many more views but also with my relatively small channel I can get hundreds of thousands of views I have one short on that channel has 380 something thousand views on a channel that at the time I posted it had like 1200 subscribers because the algorithms and AI being integrated into them yeah are at the point now to where they are transcribing every video in the background whether you put capture on it or not yeah so when somebody has interests especially on TikTok they're they're they're just ahead of meta and the algorithmic type of stuff but the TikTok for you page is it knows how fast you scroll it knows how long things are on screen for there's rumors that there's some eye tracking technology out there that's baked in I don't know if that's true or not but I've heard rumors all I know is that if you're on TikTok and you watch a video for 25 seconds and you watch another one for three seconds you will see more videos that look like that one you watched for 25 seconds then the ones that you watched for three seconds regardless of how many followers the account posted it has yeah because it's a merit based algorithm not a follower based exactly which gets back to the content which is why the content is so important now but now more than ever before you can start fresh brand new account yeah zero followers zero subscribe zero anything and start getting a meaningful amount of audience members well I've seen it happen for sure on YouTube smaller channels yeah promoted and we'll we'll before we wrap up we'll talk about platform choices sure things like that but I think that hits the point home for anybody who's listening or watching is you don't need thousands thousands of followers to build a business by the way YouTube ad sense is for most people listening not a business model the business model is you driving conversations through your content that's right whatever platform that's going to be um so it's about content over followers and just you you're not too small you're not too late as a matter of fact uh this is the time to double down on content quality yes hey are you tired of cold calling realtors and feeling like you're getting nowhere with my agent classes you don't have to chase agents anymore we hand you a done for you system of ready to teach presentations plug and play marketing and even 200 producing agents to invite so you can double your agent referrals in 90 days or less plus you'll get weekly coaching and a community of loan officers sharing exactly what's working right now here's a quick win from one of our members been part of my agent classes for a little over a year and totally changed my business I grew at least 25% and that was during a pretty down market and have only grown every single month that I've kept doing communities great jump to the Friday calls it's awesome have fun with it teaches many classes as you can just do more do better are you ready to stop chasing and start attracting agent referrals on demand book a call at mortgage marketing dot pro or hit the link in the show notes now back to our shop so let's then riff a little bit on production sure meaning because I think you have it in your book right quality versus quantity yeah yeah so quality versus quantity is actually talking about views is it all right we're back to views yeah back to views that that's the people chasing views equation all right don't chase don't chase views view quantity chase view quality okay that's view quality all right so let's then let's talk about things like would you rather have 13 million views and have two people reach out to you about what you actually do right or 1300 views and have five people reach out exactly yeah okay so then I've been spending a decent amount of time evaluating what I do content production like the content I want to put out because I'm going to refocus a lot of time on YouTube myself personally great because it is a discovery mechanism yes and regarding a podcast the podcast are pretty hard for discovery audio only yes so that's why I'm pushing a lot of stuff over to YouTube and learning a lot about content and the type of content now that said this I mean really the threat of conversation when it comes to what we're talking about here is contents got to be nailed down yeah which goes back to the buck that you talked about the production um consistent messaging consistent messaging even though your topics will vary they don't even have to vary you can do the same topic I used to do when I was when I was doing this for for mortgage brand yeah I would I would publish a short hmm about how you don't need 20% down to buy a house every Tuesday of every week oh really and you get a new audience you're all all people new people are always finding you right there's a reason that you know Tony Robbins Gary Vaynerchuk Alex Hermosi there's a reason that your favorite band right all these people that speak and play on the biggest of stages there's a reason they say the same stuff all the time right because the audience is different at every tour stop right there's a reason they play the same set list all the time um the audience is always different so as you're building audience through your content if you have the stuff and this is one of the content pillars core content the stuff that's like really at your core that's true to you it's a foundational business principle it's it's part of your ethical makeup is it's just something that you really believe everybody needs to know why is it that in that NARS study in 2022 did 70% of the entire country still think you need 10% or more down payment to buy a house why why I'm gonna make it my mission to get that knowledge out there if you do that over and over again more people will get that message if you do it once or twice and then stop because you get bored of it and the audience members that find you five and six months from now aren't gonna get that from you it was just popped up my head with stories and I know you you know you talk about sharing success stories and failure stories stories clients clients stories um what I thought about there is how many loan officers let you now are listening who have closed a buyer at less than 10% down and have not talked about that as a story you know I mean yeah like that to me that'd be a really obvious of like let me tell you I just work with this family a little more coaching with their storytelling probably let me tell you here again but isn't that an easy to go to bucket let me give you the example right okay all right straight to camera to hey I'm Joe blow L.O. at ABC mortgage and I just closed a loan in four days so what who gives this shit yeah nobody cares yeah why why did you have to close that loan in four days yeah was it a family who had a deal fall out but they needed it to close in four days because that beat the registration deadline in the school in the district that they wanted their kids to attend those are the human stories that people want to hear yeah the chest thumping look at me oh my gosh nobody cares and it makes you look slimy and salesy it's not good you are not should be looking at you because you know this you are not Luke Skywalker you are his lightsaber you are not Indiana Jones you are his whip you are not Captain America you are his shield you are the guide you are the trusty tool that the hero of the story uses in order to get across the finish line it's not your finish it's theirs so if you can tell those human success stories from the hero's perspective and maybe toss in a little bit about how you guided them across that finish line then you're really starting to hit on something so once it will take away from that awesome example would be if you just position yourself more as the guide in the story not the hero because the client is the hero yeah right yeah whenever somebody gets to the summit of Mount Everest you never hear the Sherpas name but they're the ones who have done it multiple times wow you know it's good okay yeah so tell stories you're the guide not the hero um okay what are the three ease three ease are educate entertain and emotion those are the three things that you can do to grab somebody's attention and hold it in your content okay a lot of people focus on education because we expert in things all day every day and that's the easiest but almost anybody who's posting content now can hit on one of those ease and any given piece of content that they want okay attacking multiple is really how you can make your content stand out I like to focus on emotion first that emotional reaction in the first five to ten seconds maybe it's in your hook huge my favorite way to do that is problem identification um and just relating to the problems that your target audience has hey are you looking to buy your first house in Orange County California sucks doesn't it I live here too like it's expensive it's crazy that identifies a problem and empathizes with them and let's you know let's them know that you understand and that gives you permission to then say but it might not be as tough as you think there's a couple solutions to this one of which almost completely overcomes your down payment should me a DM or give me a comment with the word zero down and I'll reach out to you personally so we can have this conversation because you're not going to want to miss out on this keeping at high level including a feel free to reach out to me call to action very important but what we did was you listed an emotional response yeah by identifying their problem and then educate them about a solution to that problem you don't always have to give them all the details of the solution you just have to let them know that there is one because they probably don't know that and that's a technique that is a tactic I would say which is you're you're selling the problem more than the solution the solution is correct DM me let's grab a call correct the the solution is you don't need all of that down payment to buy a house like the yeah and your back pocket solution you know it's a product you know it's a down payment systems program you know it's a grant whatever it is that you've identified but the way that you get people's attention off the bat is to elicit that emotion and the most effective way to do that is by problem identification because it's human beings back to our caveman days we are wired to run much faster away from pain than towards pleasure like oh these berries look great I would like to taste those berries but if that tiger eats me yeah right I'm not going to get to so I'm going to run away from the tiger faster and I run towards the bush you know like you identifying those pain points that you solve through your problems great tactic to use in your hooks in the openings to kind of gain some viewer retention there and then follow that up with some education and if you are bold and you want to try to entertain do so yeah even if you become the mortgage guy around the corner who's full of terrible dad jokes it's better than not being known yeah you know like and even and and everybody tells a bad joke or and it goes over poorly so it makes a human more relatable too right but if you want to toss into joke if you want to maybe you're maybe you're in a funny place I don't know I used to I used to record some videos for mortgage companies literally in front of dumpsters oh wow yeah it was an arbitrage that they were executing on low-fICO score borrowers as they're like our most mortgage lenders telling you that your credit belongs in there oh see that's good you know I mean it's a good tie-in but it was it was stuff like that it was like is this guy really in front of real life dumpster it's like yeah real life dumpster like that's that's kind but let me so here's the question how do you deal with her address the more analytical people because there's a fair amount of analytical people in the mortgage industry yes I would say different than real estate side yep so those that maybe don't have that lane of like oh I can piece these two together or you know what I mean they're all about numbers products structure deals things like that so lean into it or outsource your content creation because when it comes to analytics and math like there is nothing that turns the general population off faster than when you start to give the math to do like do the one of the best ways credit my friend Dan Green who explained DTI the best I've ever heard it and I've stolen it from him he said if you spend $43 a month or less out of every one hundred pre-tax dollars you make on your mortgage payment and stuff that shows up on your credit qualify and like there's no percentages there's no math there's no like that's the key to solid communication of those complex topics is I don't want to say dummy it down it's just ultimate simplification if you can say it to a fourth grader and they will understand it and and this works be to be also I always made the joke that if hey when I was in product management it was like hey man my my daughters in third grade if I can explain it to her and she understands it and I have a chance that a loan officer can understand it too you know I'll do respect but um like those are the types of things that you got to think about so when you get into the real like analytical side of things yeah that could just be a different target audience you could just be dealing with a more affluent in the area and there's a lot of engineers and stuff like that exactly then you can break stuff down systematically then you can dive deep into the numbers then you can you just have to adjust your expectations based on the audience that you're targeting okay um let's riff on this a minute I'm just keeping an eye on the clock when I'm sure I get a couple things in um platform choices um any directional advice for those that are you know like where should I post and all that yeah so the simple answer that everybody and everybody's gonna give you is everywhere yeah right we know that's not right uh posted everywhere and um the trouble with it is that it is right but what nobody is saying yes what nobody is saying is you shouldn't start there well you can't if you're just a one-man shop it's a real easy way to burn out in two weeks yeah so start in your digital home okay where you hang out already yeah are you spend most your time on Facebook on Instagram I'm a LinkedIn guy yeah I know you're big on LinkedIn yeah we're both big on YouTube wherever you are most comfortable digitally start posting there because you probably already have the most connections or followers there right and you will be most comfortable with that platform and it's tools you gotta get reps that's right once that becomes a muscle that you work every day that you don't even think about anymore at that point add in an extra platform okay right and and baby step your way into posting more if you are creating zero pieces of video content per month don't try to start going daily um start with like once or twice a week on one platform right right if you're already posting twice a week take it up to Monday Wednesday Friday on two different platforms yeah it's really important to baby step your way forward and look out for your future self with stuff like this because it's really easy to find yourself burnt out a lot quicker than you think and the worst thing that you can do is burn yourself out the second worst thing that you can do is not track your lead attribution that I've seen happen like if you're not when you make contact with new people actively ask them hey have you seen my social media content and make note of it if they say yes if you get a referral actually had this happen to somebody a loan officer was doing content for a little over a year who's actually working for them they were getting a bunch of referrals but they didn't know it because they met three really top producer top producing real estate agents that are area through their content they didn't notate it or log it anywhere and every single referral that they got from those three agents mentally was just referral business right not social media not attributed to the content strategy a little over a year later they figured well content's not working I'm not getting any business from it so they stopped guess where the business from those three agents went someone else away because they originally connected on platform and when they were off platform they weren't top of mind anymore interesting and they shut down a strategy that was actually working for them because they weren't keeping proper attribution details and it doesn't have to be huge it just has to be enough to instill that hey this is this is working how do you get here today and I like to tell people to ask it two to three times throughout the sales process as because even if your content isn't working to bring new people into your sales funnel if it's helping work people through your sales funnel yeah right it's just as valuable all right quick question then on and this may change based on platform like you think about this in the context of Instagram a lot of people that I know have asked about agent content versus consumer direct content yes but you can specify it per platform if you like sure what do you say to that agent content versus consumer direct on Instagram specifically Instagram specifically yeah okay so Instagram is a tough place to be why there's just so much content right a lot of people are posting that the arbitrage that existed on Instagram five six years ago but there are people that are doing well of course on Instagram of course and those people that are doing well are finding their tribe and being happy with what they have within that so I think the key to success on Instagram is again like with anything laser focus on a target viewer base and then maybe a little active outreach finding people that exist in that target viewer base follow them I guess it comes back to them not to interrupt you but I think it comes back to strategy for instance one of one of my clients I work with Travis Newton up in Oregon if you know him synergy one shout out Travis what's up reach out Travis I don't know you you shouldn't know my for sure we'll get you the book for sure at a minimum yeah he made a conscious choice in that the content he was posting on Instagram was intended for realtors yeah because he wanted to build his realtor base which he has and he gets tons of referrals yep his business is up 40% I think so he's making a conscious choice and I think that's what it comes back to and we said at the beginning of strategy who who's your ultimate view you're trying to reach however as you so intelligently pointed out it's hard to grow on Instagram and reach consumer direct it's difficult so is the better smarter play you know I mean to get the local realtors in your you know content strategy because you're that's going to pay multiples versus I'm trying to get you know lots of consumers for the quickest wins yeah attacking referral business is going to work faster right it's just it just makes it up a little bit on your feet yeah there are fewer people creating there are fewer mortgage professionals creating content for realtors yes so your competition is far less good point and realtors on that platform will appreciate it even more so because you're speaking in their terms yeah and a lot of the realtor focused content that you post is going to have overlap to consumer direct audience also especially for talking about investment properties and stuff a lot of your investment content that's targeted towards real estate agents yeah your real estate agent might be the borrower sure self-employed as well yeah absolutely absolutely so I really like the the B2B messaging strategy above and beyond when you think about it each one of those prioritized higher than yeah the consumer face the ROI on the customer air quotes right which is so I have a consumer right and that has how much how much potential does that have to defeat me additional business versus if I land a realtor that's right or however other financial referral partner and for the people who have the resources yeah be it time or money you know wonderful equation right they're going to take your time where it's going to take you money if you have the resources to throw at both audiences and you really want to be the go to in your market for both of those audiences then maybe it's a whole content strategy for B2B and referrals and a whole content strategy for B2C and they exist on separate Instagram profiles that are customized for each audience okay all right cool so for the last few minutes we've got left um let's jam for a few minutes on AI baby AI like I'm reading these things that you know Tom Bill you the co-founder of Quest nutrition right he's obviously a big influencer now so one of the things I've seen him post a lot lately is that you know within what three years call it 90% of the contents going to be AI on social media and so he's talking about building communities but I wanted to talk about in the context of what what's your hot take on competing with AI whether that's the you know um robot you know the fake whatever whatever whatever you call it you know I'm saying yeah the avatar that's not me but it is me correct you know all that human seek humans sure yeah um ever since we existed right and that's not going to stop any time soon it's it's in our DNA so what I'm finding just in paying attention to myself when I scroll through a feed of any kind um TikTok Instagram YouTube LinkedIn whatever we are live time actively building internal AI filters for ourselves yeah like we're just looking at like bullshit detectors we have to be yeah because and if you want to prove it and and you're not doing it go to any post that looks kind of cool and hop into the comments mm-hmm and one of the first five comments is probably going to say oh this is AI or is this real mm-hmm or is something along those lines because everybody's trying to weed out the noise yeah and I think that we are being conditioned to classify AI generated content as noise and I have a theory that especially on social media I think two to three maybe five to six years from now the talking head person talking to you person to relate to type of content is going to do the best is going to be the stuff that you literally can't fake because the prompts are so specific it would be it would be time prohibitive to do so so it'll be the content where I pulled out my phone while I'm walking my dog I address that I'm walking my dog I show my dog I'm walking around there's houses in my neighborhood maybe there's a street sign that actually exists in the background the little minute detailed the things that AI is going to get wrong about a larger environment mm-hmm those things I think you're going to start performing better than things that look like the stuff we're watching right now yeah because the podcast studio the lot like this looks and sounds sure let's take background we could be AI 100 percent I saw a clip from a podcast where Jesus Christ was interviewing the devil the other day I got I saw another one where guerrilla was vlogging in the woods about how he thinks he can beat up a hundred men right right right the big friend or whatever yeah like like these things are out there now right and you know that they're fake because those are audacious but they're good they look good they sound good and if anybody hasn't look up the recent demo that Google showed off about their AI video creation stuff yeah unbelievable and there's rumor that that's going to be rolling directly into YouTube really it's possible that you might be able to create a short straight in YouTube so it's like okay well here's here's the trash anybody can post anything so it's about finding ways to differentiate yourself and identify yourself as real I've already started in my content sessions with clients what I'm coaching a client through making their content that's what that's what we do read button media let content systems and it all starts with a one hour content session once a month with me where I coach you through making your video content I've started instructing our editors to leave in some of the ums and us and the awkward pauses and the fumbles over words and things like because those are the things that AI will not do for much longer after it starts replicating our stuff from a couple selfies in our camera rule it's made me think about and this is back to what Bill you said you know he's just the whole community's thing uh and then people debate well audience or community what's the difference and I think the difference is connection and engagement um is the difference and then like he talked about actually live streaming making a comeback because it's pretty hard to replicate that yeah yeah yeah I can't I can't disagree with that yeah live live is live is great like well even if it's like you said the live walk in the dog whatever it's it's just some type of a real in you know in your life experience could be a live stream we do officially set up and we can tell us live because hey Bill see in the chat like you know that's right all that that's right or or you maybe a maybe you pull out your phone make a couple shorts while you're in the city and it's busy because you know there's going to be a couple cars randomly honking yeah yeah or you're going to get interrupted and bump and bumped into when you're walking down the street like those type of some people make a argument that AI will be able to duplicate that um I'm sure AI will be able to duplicate that yeah but the odds of that passing somebody's BS filter is is going to be much higher than something where it's uh gorilla talking yeah I think there's there's there's an amazing applications for AI um I agree in the right context of course I mean it's never I don't want to say never never say never I can't say that it's never going to replace us because I still say thank you to chat GPT every time I use it you are wasting so much computing power I know I'm wasting computing power and I feel like our computer overlords appreciate appreciate when they thank you for and invade this is the guy who said thank you that's right I want to be on the side of the of the people that were pretty used the whiny bitches who never cared right all that kind of stuff that's right thank you camp well look for those who want to connect with you more tell us how they do it if you are a founder a CEO a sales leader an executive who knows that this digital visibility through content is important but you don't have the time for that stuff hit me up over at hit the red button dot com that's my website that's what we do yeah we specifically implement and strategize around content systems for founders executives and sales leaders for people who are looking to kind of DIY it but the best kind of DIY meaning with a little bit help head over to amazon and pick up rethink everything the power of video for business and sales very specific and very meaningful title it's not just about video this is video for business and sales yeah it's a it's like we said at the beginning it's in no longer just about the why even though the why is in here from Kyle shout out once again Kyle too many shout out too many shout out take that one back never mind Kyle delete that delete that and I'm Mike for Aussie on on Instagram or not on Instagram LinkedIn LinkedIn I'm a Z Mike for Aussie on Instagram but that's not where my main audience says I'm an Instagram I keep saying you got me in his Instagram mode man I'm a LinkedIn first guy yes um that's my digital home right so find me there shoot me a connection request I will accept it and let's chat whatever yeah what I always ask the listeners and viewers to do is I'm gonna link all your stuff up in the show notes but um get on um check out his website hit the red button but also go to LinkedIn follow him and DM him and say what's your one big takeaway from today's conversation I want anybody listening or watching to let you know what that is I would love that yeah fantastic yeah all right Mike well we have an event to go to mastermind summit man that we do let's do it everybody listening you know what to do follow Mike hit the red button get on LinkedIn and if you like this share it with somebody else who you think might find value thanks for tuning in we'll see you on the next one bye for now okay that's it for today's episode before we wrap up I just wanted to remind you about my agent classes your proven system to double your agent referrals in just 90 days imagine never having to co-call again instead building real lasting relationships with top-producing agents who want to send you business with done for you presentations marketing automation weekly coaching it's all designed to make growing your business easier and fun so if you're ready to take control of your agent referrals and grow your income visit mortgagemarketing.pro or check the link in the show notes and why you're there don't forget to check out the success stories from other mortgage pros who've already seen incredible results thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next episode