Why Your Social Media Strategy Matters

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Go check it out right now. Visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, listeners, what's up, Jeff? As in for welcome to this episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Quick housekeeping. Let's get this out of the way. As a reminder, you want to join our private Facebook group. We are doing some cool, fun things in there. We're going to be launching some, ask me anything, some coaching sessions, some hot seats, and things like that, going live and all that kind of jazz. So you want to go check that out, obviously, over at Facebook and type in Mortgage Marketing Radio and look for the group and just hop on in. And of course, there'll be a couple questions. So please answer those, make sure you answer those, complete that process and I look for it to see you on the other side there. Secondly, here is a new feature that I'm testing out with the podcast. There's lots I have planned coming with this podcast leveling up in terms of production quality guests and things like that coming your way real soon. One thing that I wanted to test out and this is your opportunity to get featured on the podcast, win a cool swag box of awesomeness and that is by asking me a question. That's right. A wonderful world of technology. You can tap a link, leave me a short, verbal question and I can take that question and if it's a good one, put it on the air and answer that question for the benefit of other people because guess what? A lot of people have the same questions. And as a thank you for that, as a reward every month, I'm going to be taking all the questions we get and of course, some of those I'll be sharing live. All those will be added to a contest every month where some lucky winner gets to win an awesome cool box of swag and furthermore, I just decided I'm also going to have you on the podcast. And we're going to talk about your business and we're going to do whatever it is makes sense for you. It could be a live hot seat, it could be a live coaching call just you and me. It could be you interviewing me, whatever you want to do, right? But one lucky winner is going to get all that every single month as well. How do you do that? You go to askgefanything.com, ASKGEOFF, askgefanything.com and you can do this right from your mobile. You simply tap the orange button that says start recording and you leave me your message. I've already got some people who started doing it. We're getting some good questions so you want to make sure you get yours in. All right, so that's the housekeeping. Let me get into this week's special guest and what this episode is. So from time to time, if you've been listening for any period of time, what you may have heard in the past that occasionally, I will take a one of the weekly calls we do in my small VIP elite group of mortgage professionals. We meet once a week and we have a small group kind of mastermind best practice coaching call. We go through some training coaching, a lot of good stuff and it's actually part of our mortgage marketing pro membership. One of the primary things we do in there is, well, we're going deep on the hybrid loan officer concept. So we're on the one side of hybrid. We are focused on our agent partners and growing our referrals from those sources. If you heard the last podcast, you hopefully understand why that still makes sense when they still have directive control of consumer's choice for mortgages and are still at the top of the funnel in controlling the real estate transaction, 90% of people still use a real estate agent. Why not have that as a source of business? So what we do is, you know, we teach a lot of agent classes and things like that and if you guys want more about that, it's mortgagemarketing.pro. But once a week we have these private calls and once a month on these private calls, we bring a special guest. And this week, what I'm sharing with you is an inside listen, if you will, a sneak peek, a look behind the curtain into one of these weekly calls. And on this version of this call, I'm picking it up from the start of our special guest coming on and sharing her wisdom about social media and who am I talking about on this episode? I'm talking about Deborah Bird. And Deborah is, you may have known her or know of her. She's pretty active in the mortgage code community with Dave Savage and Todd Bookspan, two good friends. What's up, guys? But she also, here's what I love about Deborah. She speaks mortgage. She has been a mortgage professional. She's a mortgage coach black belt. She's certified mortgage planner. She's an MBS highway user. She's a certified lending divorce lending specialist. She's a Todd Duncan sales mastery attendee, Todd Duncan bootcap graduate and amplify graduate the KW bold graduate. She's mortgage nerd certified. By the way, her sister is Denise Donahue. You may know her, the mortgage nerd, she's a one of the top 1% of producers in the country. And Deborah does all the social media, of course, for her twin sister. But she does the social media for a lot of other people too. Whose names I cannot mention here, but I know who they are and their names you might recognize as well because some of them have been on the podcast. But I wanted Deb to come to my private coaching call with our small group because, as I mentioned a moment ago, what I'm looking to level up this year is strategy, strategy, because I think how would you agree that if you look back over 2021, do you feel that the volume of content on social media has become quite noisy and that there's just a huge volume of content and getting engagement, showing up, getting retention, obviously has become harder. And here's what I've realized over the last year of just posting content without much thought, strategy behind it is, it loses its effectiveness over time. And I can't help but feel I've been training my audience to tune out when it comes to my social media content posting because it's the same thing over and over again. And it can't be. And so I brought Deb in because I wanted to talk about strategy. And so that's what you're going to hear today is the conversation about that with some of our members. And I hope you find that useful and beneficial. We'll put links to Deb's how to hook up with her, you know, link up with her in the show notes, whether it's her website or her Instagram, by the way, right now if you do want to follow her on Instagram, let her know you've heard about us, heard about her from this podcast. You can follow her at plug and play underscore SM her website is plug and play sm.com. You can also, that's her company, but you can also follow her personal account, which is the one I would definitely encourage you to do her. So her personal Instagram handle is Deborah bird, that's D E B O R A H A B Y R D Deborah A bird. And then we'll link that up in the show notes and all that kind of stuff. So go check her out. Go listen to this episode. Let me know what you think. If you got a question that comes out of it, you know what to do. You go to ask Jeff anything and make sure you're hopping the Facebook group because we just might be bringing Deb back for a live stream into the group. All right. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our special guest Deborah bird. Well, thank you. And you know, it's funny when you said you weren't even sure how to introduce me because I kind of, not that I cringe when I hear social media expert, but I feel like so much of what I do and my team is around strategy. And that's why I only do this for loan originators. I don't do this. And I've had many real estate agents or people outside and other industries ask for the same kind of support. But I just, I wouldn't be able to consume the amount of content that I do where I literally study the mortgage and real estate market trends, not only marketing updates, but it's knowing your business and taking the same classes that you guys do so that I can help create the perfect strategy and the message architecture so that you're positioning yourself and your consumer's mind beyond what any amount of ad spend that say rocket mortgage or whomever. Like how are you going to differentiate? And you know, you talked about adept being able to adapt. I think that is the number one factor for those who are successful on social media is you have to be able to adapt and react quickly because it is changing fast. And there's new features that are coming and it's learning how do you use those features and how do you stay up on the trends? And you know, I think it's important to recognize this is the first time ever that marketers are having to market to five different generations. So you have to get really clear when you're talking about strategy and your ideal audience, remember, and I won't go too deep into this, but you have to remember, you have baby boomers who didn't have social media until later in their career. You know, it's going to be more foreign for them, especially the ones that even I coach, where I'm asking them to be more vulnerable and to create a social environment as that's where you need to adapt. And they're like, why would I ever post a picture of what I eat? Like why does anybody care? It's so foreign, but I think it's important to have empathy and understanding of the psychology of where you're at and why you may experience more friction when you are trying to leverage social and have a little bit of grace on yourself, but no too, you know, kind of like what Jeff said, it's time to step it up. And this is the reality. This is where it's headed, whether you like it or not, you have a personal brand, again, whether you like it or not, it's just now time to have people see it. And knowing that the way that people socialize is on social media, but also recognizing social media is still meant for social, not selling and marketing all the time. So you have to, I believe a lot of marketers out there are really just glorified technology departments that will have tasks assigned to them that you're having to lead or you're getting very vanilla content and wondering why it's not working. It's because it's like mass produced for everybody in the country to use if you're at a mortgage company. And some of the content is great, but a lot of my clients come from those type of companies who they don't want what everybody else at maybe fairway or thrive or cross country is using because then everybody else and their market centers using the same post. So it's getting comfortable expressing yourself and recognizing, you know, even Gen X, Gen X is when you kind of look at their psychology and how that group more and more of their families, their parents were divorcing at a younger age for them. And that was when 90210 and friends networks were coming out. And so it's a smaller demographic and they hold the most amount of leadership positions. But they too were just entering their career life when social media came about. So, you know, the Gen Zs and the millennials, there's really no boundary to the offline and online world. I mean, Gen Z pretty much was given an iPad at birth and that's where they don't even really watch TV. It's YouTube and they go to learn on social, they shop on social, they depend on peer recommendations and they are research obsessed. And it's because the evolution of marketing, when you go back and look before, there were regulations and agencies that monitored it. People are so tired of the bait and switch with these over promising hooks and everybody knows that you're writing a hook just to catch my attention and then I'm going to buy something and almost likely be disappointed because you under delivered. So people are becoming especially the younger demographics. They are, they are spending more money just for ad blockers. And that's, those are the behavioral metrics that I'm fascinated about. I've always studied human behavior, why people do what they do, why since COVID. So if you're feeling your social is lacking in engagement, likes, comments, know that that's very common across the board. In fact, I coach with top chief marketing executives and they're like, why is it everything we've always done with marketing and the typical click funnel buyer process just isn't working. And I'm like, well, because marketers destroy everything over time. We over do it. And now people are scared to death to like or comment or even like a page because they're, or they're scared they're going to have phantom ads now chasing them all over the place. And they just don't want to be marketed to. So how do you come across as someone who is trying to you know, create that online transparent transparency of a resume that's not just about look at me, look at me, you know, rates are going up refinance refinance, you know, that whole pressure selling almost. It's, you've got to use social to create connection to create a sense of belonging to use it as an extension of your database and CRM. Like I love what you said, Jeff, with post webinars going through and kind of ranking the people who attended and then friending them or following them on social and interacting with them, creating those connections. So that over time, the real goal is is when they say, gosh, I feel like I already know you. Yeah. So let's let's unpack then and people start to put your questions in the chat. Because once I said, you know, it's strategy. And let me ask the question right now, people put it in the chat or unmute. What's your biggest challenge right now with social? First of all, we talked about time earlier. We know we're all struggling with the issue of being more, you know, intentional with our time. So I know part of it for me anyways is, quote, finding the time, right? But that's just an excuse isn't it really? Because it's about making the time. But what's your biggest challenge? Often I hear it's what's opposed. And while I'm asking for everybody to put your questions in the chat, let's talk about this thing strategy. And let's talk about this. Something I've been hanging out on lately is this concept of just post more content. Like somebody, you know, we all tend to like look to Gary Vee as, you know, our north star for social media and stuff like that. And I think part of the challenge with that is that what he says isn't necessarily always accurate for everybody across the board. And I'm looking at a lot of data as I know you do, and especially in preparing for these classes, as a matter of fact, our brand new class has some data about frequency of posting and what happens to accounts with less than 10,000 people. And that posting more often doesn't actually necessarily help depends on the platform, et cetera. But the point is this. I've asked this question in my class yesterday. And I'm going to ask you guys right now, how many of you feel your, your, your news feeds are already super noisy, super busy and most of its sucks and is irrelevant. You don't care. Really show a hand, show me. Okay. And in the chat, put yes. Okay. So if that's the, that's what you feel, then your audience probably feels the same way too. And so Deb, how the hell do we deal with that? Well, I would say what is it that you're posting and how, how good are you at knowing what your audience needs? And that's before, during and after the loan process. I think a lot of times loan officers get so fixated on the educational piece before where it's like, okay, well, if I just refinanced with Liz last month, and my interest rates, two and a half percent, why the hell do I need to keep following you or paying attention to your content when all you're talking about is stuff that no longer is relevant to me. So you've got to have a strategy that is part of the lead gin. But I think we're in the sales cycle that most people forget is then your retention. And so maybe you interview a contractor once a month going over, you know, things, home maintenance, a home maintenance checklist for every month, you're providing value of, this is how you now take care of your home. And by the way, we're going to have a contractor help you with, you know, how to clean out maybe your air ducts or how to winterize your home depending on where you are in the country. Like those would be things that are beneficial to people after they've done alone with you, which we know it's easier to get referrals from them because they've already done business with you. But yet you talked to loan officers and you look at their feed and they're so fixated on the next new client, the next new client, and they forget about the ones that already know love and like you. So, you know, also you could interview someone in home decor for, you know, the 2022 trends. Here's what to look out for. You could interview, you know, right now I think a great idea is a CPA. I think Liz, are you the one that said you work a lot with CPAs? Yeah, so it's like, we've got tax season. Not only could you be educating real estate agents of, hey, here's, you know, tips and strategies around filing your taxes just as an agent for your agent partners, but also, you know, for your audience of people who've already done loans with you, interview a family law attorney. There's a lot of think, there is no school or class to take for adulting is what I call it of like, okay, I bought a home, I'm not married. I'm a single woman. Now I've got some dude living with me like, what do I need to be aware of? What's co-mingling the funds? How do I sell a house if I have a geographic restriction in my divorce decree? Like these are ways that you can provide value beyond just the rates or low. Why me? Just closed. You've got to get away from that and look at what is it that they care about? Why also being a human? Because I will say where the trends in the shift is heading is the most human brand wins. And if you could start putting this in your awareness, your real marketing department is your clients. And it's creating a space and part of your process where they are the ones doing the marketing for you because they're tagging you in post and you're giving them permission that, hey, not only do we help you build wealth through real estate, but we understand this home. We are creating generations of memories for you. So when you're bringing your first born home from the hospital or they take their first steps, like we would love to be a part of that journey with you, send us those pictures, tag us in those posts because we love help, we create communities. Like it's not. And so when you're doing that, you're leveraging their database and you're leveraging their trust to prove because talk is cheap, guys. And I have a lot of discovery calls. I don't mean this to be rude, but I have a lot of clients that tell me my value is I provide education and I, I'm their lender for life. I'm like, cool, can you prove it to me? Your social should prove it because words no longer matter. Too many people say the exact same thing and guess what? They, there's no proof of it and worse, a lot of them don't do it, especially these last two years where you've been indated with probably ReFi business. It's like, well, you may have fallen off the annual asset reviews, okay? Well, I want you to interview if that's what you say you do and I don't care if you do or don't, then prove it where interview someone that you helped buy 10 years ago and how you helped them build wealth and how you stayed in touch with them. And here's their journey, kind of like the you've ever seen the man in the arena, the Tom Brady special and he talks about, you know, each year, could you do that with one of your clients that has maybe bought with you or done a loan with you, whether it's refinanced a couple times and just made an informal just Q&A, it could be live so that you're leveraging their audience of now proving how you're different and not feeling like it always has to be you because people do get tired of seeing you. Okay, some good ideas in there and I see I'm going to address some of the comments in here. And by the way, regarding that, you know, people are creating memories and things like that, that is why we want to, as I also teach realtors, you want to engage with your clients, right, post transaction over time. And that I know a lot of us here today probably need a reminder of that too, like people always ask, what's the best way to grow my social following? Well, aside from paying for it, right, engage with your existing following and seek out the people that you already know that you're not following and start engaging there. So let me go to the questions here in comments. A lot of people said, I don't want to ask them what their biggest challenge is. Some people said, editing my short answer to that, Stephanie is outsource it. I mean, sorry, it just is. I know it could be a budgetary concern. You can feel free to unmute if you want. As you guys know, all things go here. But that's even that budget concern. I would say your opportunity cost of you trying to figure that out. This is where a lot of loan officers, and look, I have packages where it's from a very basic plan to help the solo L.O. who's just getting started all the way up to an influencer package. And so I will tell you, you've got to have a mindset shift that this is an investment. And it's freeing up your time because I have clients that are like, it took me an hour to make this one canva link. And I'm like, oh my, what you could have done with that hour instead, possibly calling a prospect, a real estate partner, your cost of time. And this is where going back to your beginning video, Jeff, it's like, you guys got to get back to the fundamentals and don't try to do shit. That's not in your lane or your wheelhouse that takes you too long to try to figure out when you're not the expert in the field. Do what you do best and leverage out those tasks because that's an administrative task at that point. Editing is an admin task. Yeah, and we know Liz LaFore here is the VA queen where she's, you know, if you look at her YouTube channel and all that kind of stuff, great editing. And she just posted it in the chat there. One to five minute video, what, 10 bucks for five to 10 minutes. I mean, no brainer, when that would take you an hour or so, whatever. That's the best thing I ever did. You know, whenever I did outsource, whatever that was is like in terms of posting, editing, all that. I don't do any of that. I just record, send the file, I'm done, I'm out. You know, now there are some things to improve still from there, but at least I'm not bogged down in that. And so that's definitely worth it. All right, let me keep going through here some of the questions. James, we've got a marketing person that posts content on your social media, but the social aspect is not there 100%. And that's I think to Deborah's point a moment ago, which is we got these companies that are posting the same vanilla template, you know, template one right from from Canva template 27 from can't it's the same damn thing over it, but there's no zero engagement. And so it all sucks and there's no personality. You're not in it, you know, you know the deal and we're preaching to the choir here. I think part of the challenge with a lot of us is we just need to finally make that shift away from okay. In order for me to really succeed with this thing, maybe the light bulb needs to go on to say, it's got to be me, me, me, me. And there is a place for images in carousels and all that kind of jazz and infographics, but more than anything else, would you agree, Deb, that more of more often than not, when you look at somebody's social media platform, whatever, it's very generic and there's usually not the individual in there at all. Right. I want you all to try to look at it this way. Your social media rank score is no different than a borrower's credit score. And when you're explaining to a borrower how that scores created from, you know, credit utilization, credit history, different credit types, whether that's installment, revolving, a mortgage loan. I want you to apply that same concept to your social ranking. It's based off social consistency or utilization, your social account history, and then your different social post types. So you have to look at all of those variations, it kind of a cocktail of a mix to then create the perfect feed. And so it's got to be a little bit of the static images, which again, for full, if you're not paying for ads, the likelihood of a branded post ever getting seen is less than 4%. It is way much you mean by branded posts. Anything that has your color scheme, your logo, that is about mortgage. And you have to understand how the algorithms work. They are feeding in addiction. All they care about is how do we keep people on our platform as long as possible. So it's kind of a little sick in the background. But they, they know, like they can look at my followers. They know what they typically engage with. In fact, if you've ever gone to any of your explore pages and you're like, that's weird. I have all these golf, maybe golf in people. And it's like, yeah, the system knows where you spend your time, what you expand the picture on, how long you look at each type of content. I mean, that's how much depth that they, they know what will feed your addiction to keep you on longer and worse. They will know and they figure out what type of content comes in front of you where you then get off the network. Okay. So your followers most likely are not following a bunch of mortgage people. That's just reality. So if I make a post with me and my four kids and we're out doing God knows what and you make some interest rate, cool graphic, it can be the best engaging graphic ever. It's not going to go in front of your audience and an organic scroll. So when people will typically see your content is when they've been referred to you and especially a millennial or Gen Z, they're going to go do a little bit of research and they're going to swipe for 10 feet on your account and they're going to make a judgment and they're looking for two things, warmth and competency. Can I trust this person? We typically trust people who seem to value the same things we do or seem to be a lot like us, which is why you've got to get comfortable with the uncomfortable part of being a human. Show me what sports team you're rooting for this week and show me what other things you're into besides just mortgage and business. I want to know how do you even go to the grocery store and make your list? Show me those other sides of you because that's what builds trust and connection and that's when and it's hard to track on a ROI because when they go to your website and they apply and it says who referred you they're going to say my real estate agent but that wasn't what made the decision for them to contact you. So you can't assume that your social is not working just because you're not getting likes or comments because those are drastically decreasing. You can't assume your social is not working if you don't have a ton of followers following you. It doesn't mean it's not being viewed and that people aren't going back and looking at it. Statistically the number of people following and I'll ask all of you this one was the last time you followed a business Facebook page or a business account. Can you even remember? Yeah why? Right because social is still about social interactions and creating satisfying interactions of what people want to be watching when they are escaping because people go to social when they're taken a poo in the bathroom or they're sitting at a red light or they're at a meeting that they're bored. It's a it's an escape so they don't want to think too hard. That's where you have to really know your audience. So if you're on if your goal is Instagram then I would say right now focus all your time and attention making reels. Reels, reels, reels that is where it's at for Instagram. There's no ads on reels yet and Instagram is competing so heavily with TikTok because TikTok once again was the number one downloaded downloaded app and it's because it's short bite size creative not too silly like there's a fine line between being silly and using content to be creative and again when you're making the reels don't just make it about business have some in there maybe it's you and your kid. I'm sure your kid knows some TikToks see Jimmy on here Jimmy I've seen him with his kid you know and that's relatable but it's because people want to escape so if you're an Instagram person I would be focusing every post as a real because that not only goes on the explore page it also goes on your news feed and you'll start to see for some you can look at your audience some only want to see 10 to 13 second long reels not 60 seconds you'll you'll see a drop off and you'll see trend so get in the practice of maybe for this month only create 10 to 13 second reels and see how your analytics look and maybe the next month increase it to 30 seconds and you'll start to see which of your audience what do they prefer so for best practice on strategy you've got to break up like Monday I Monday is my recording day I recommend for my loan officers record two educational videos one that's meant more for a client like a frequently asked question that you've gotten in the last seven days and one that's geared more towards a real estate agent and those longer tail videos are meant for YouTube because I will say YouTube has got to be in your strategy for 2022 you've got to get Google owns YouTube if you don't know that you can also create YouTube shorts but you've got to get on YouTube so make Mondays carve out guys I'm talking 30 minutes that's all you've got to make talk about going back to the fundamentals if you value your business and you want a business in the next couple of years you're going to have to time block and just get it done doesn't have to be perfect okay in fact the less perfect the better because then you give people permission to also be imperfect and let's face it anyone applying for a mortgage you see them naked you see their assets their debts oh I guess they've got to trust you not not naked naked but you know it's a kind of report as you run it over there guys so I this let me ask you guys this do you as anybody here still trying to figure out where like where to focus because I think when when people hear some of the advice out there of like hey you know what if you're not on YouTube and YouTube you know all the kind of jazz and I'm not disagreeing with you but I think part of the challenge is is obviously people are spread thin and like my general advice because I'm trying to I approach most people and that's not necessarily everybody here but you know most people myself included are if you look you know I'm just in I'm in I'm a freshman is what I am on my journey for social media I'm not a freaking sophomore junior I'm a freshman I'm not a senior and so as a freshman there's only so much I can focus on and so much to you know a band with the attention that I can give and so with that I try and suggest to people when they say well what like where should I be and I'll steal that I forget who said the line I think it was um Mark Schaffer that I interviewed author of uh marketing rebellion and that you know what he said is it's very difficult to be great across multiple platforms unless you have a team unless you're outsourcing like we're talking about here and so yeah so at least again says he feels like a freshman trying to take upper class in courses yet so is anybody else struggling with that like I where should you personally show up I'll be honest you're yeah go ahead um well for me I'll be honest with you and I think this was it blew my mind yesterday I took a con I took a application 1003 blah blah blah filled it out client calls me up and says I see you on tiktok I'm like with what how did that happen apparently once they save your name on the contacts you go into the tiktok ad it says would you like this friend to be such and such friend and she says I love your videos and I was blown away I only did like six posts on tiktok right I'll be honest with you I'm not a fan of it but I understand it because my kids got me dancing but the point to whatever is saying what people are doing they're just researching you and by doing that especially with tiktok once they save your contact as soon you open up the ad that information is delivered to them it was it blew my mind yes and I was like big brothers definitely watching me that's good to know I have struggled I mean I have struggled with social media trying to figure out what to do and um you know being a jack of all trades and a master of none but I I have definitely decided I'm just gonna focus where I am and I I personally love Instagram I'm I'm on Instagram just like Deborah said like I go to mindless think at night like that's what I do when I'm done with work and I'm done putting the kids to bed like I'm on Instagram I'm looking at stuff that I want to look at I've curated my feed I don't want a bunch of crap in there I just want like I want to see clothes I want to see makeup I want to see you know some real estate people so it's like I've just decided I'm going to focus on that and then the reals you know you can push those over to tiktok just so there's something there as far as like what I'm thinking but yeah I think that's a big struggle is like trying to decide where where to be let me say this while I can't Stephanie because who else is following Stephanie Instagram and notice right a dramatic change in her content right I see a couple hands go up like what you started posting in the last few days that I've noticed I was like holy shit like you that's pretty cool like you're clearly spending some time thinking about it and it's getting attention I'm actually like having fun I did the first one and I'm like oh shit this is kind of fun um but and also it's like okay I feel like on reels and tiktok it's just I want people to to see me and that's always been another struggle and mental thing is like you know at work I feel like I'm very profite you know I try to speak very professional try to you know do this do that but then in real life I'm really like a total goofball and I'm starting to have fun with it like this is who I am and you know and I can listen to get a rap and do math it's so this is me and that that's what I want to applaud you know because it's versus the play card of like you know hey you need to be everywhere and you're gonna miss out if you're not over here I would rather see you go down the road of like embracing what you already enjoy in the place you already hang out on because that is what you're gonna get more progress on that if you're like how the hell do I figure out YouTube like keywords and shit and this and that and freaking thumbnails and you know what I mean they all have their challenges and it's very hard considering oh my god you got to originate loans too and that's why I lean towards the you're already living in breathing on Instagram that's so easy of a go to later you can add YouTube that's my two cents on that hey it's important to think about what influences your target audience I think we all know in these next couple of years the the biggest demographics that are gonna be buying or your Gen Z in millennials so what is it you know like Stephanie said she's on there looking at makeup and think you said hair I'm not sure rappers rappers and apparently rappers so the next call she's gonna do a little rap for y'all in fact fun fact if you follow Jacqueline she's if you just look up the singing lender that's like her thing she loves to sing and make up songs and I have it stuck in my head now it she has one that's I like pre-approvals and I cannot lie I mean it was really funny and I'm like I can't get this out of my head but it's it's interesting and so you know it's just being yourself one of my best post I ever made was I took a picture of how this looks when I wake up and my hair is naturally it's not curly and it's not straight it's like it looks like outward Einstein I mean I'm a hot sleeper so I took a post or a picture and I posted it and I had so many people engaged because they're like thank god I'm not the only one that looks like you know hot mess express in the mornings where I'm like yeah this is how it starts guys is Albert Einstein hair you know hot mess express there's there's your new title yeah hot mess express follow me for more tips shani what were you gonna say hey um Deborah I think I met well I saw you and your sister at high trust sales academy last year yes yes and I've been absolutely obsessed with her Instagram profile ever since I think it's the most adorable thing but it's so like educational and so I have been like almost I don't know like sweating it every single day like I got to create a different brand I've got to do something completely different and my brand right now is like non-existent first of all because I haven't had any time to do anything with it but I've been home loan shani on like my social medias and stuff like that and I just keep thinking myself like I can't figure anything else out I am at this like mental block and now I'm at this point where I just don't even want to create anything at all until I have a different brand so I don't know if you have any suggestions like obviously your sister's got like she is your sister right you guys look a lot like we're twins okay I thought so um I couldn't remember but so I don't know do you suggest um like somebody if do you suggest having like a really strong personal brand like that or creating the content to become a strong personal brand based on what you've already got because I feel like I've got nothing at this point so fun fact um you know when we we used to be called the donihut team whenever we were both the team um and then she went to your mortgage nerd which her CEO at the time was like please do not do the mortgage nerd like no high net worth persons ever gonna want to do business with you because it's a gimmick and anytime there's a gimmick you know people like we all know that eating apples is good for you don't see advertisements for apples right and so it I will say don't let that stop you that used to matter more the mortgage nerd logo and brand means nothing and met nothing until she put meaning behind it same thing with apple nobody even really realizes the apple logo there's a big bite missing out of it and they don't understand the why behind the mission and the psychology of why they did the logo that way it you you actually have a personal brand everybody has a personal brand I even tell when I used to be a coach I would tell my athletes I'm like you have a brand right now that you're creating as a freshman that are gonna it's either gonna help or hurt you get recruited to the team that you want to go to you have a brand it's now putting meaning behind it and the meaning is you showing up as you not trying to be anyone else and guys if I can give you all any advice don't compare your chapter to to someone else's chapter 20 on social who started and got in the game in 2012 when guys there wasn't even algorithms then so your ability to grow and compete was very different than what it is today it is very hard there's 5500 post every minute so I would focus more on your reputation and your brand becomes your consistency in the market place do you have a borrower experience that is something that's repeatable and that you're creating raving fans where people are referring you because at the end of the day your social just becomes the new storefront and whether you like it or not you can choose to adapt and get into the social game or wait and see how that works for you later but people will create stories in their head if they go to do a little bit of research and they try to find you you can't control that narrative unless you are actively on social and then it's programming even your assistance or your LP ones or Laways that anytime you have a first time home buyer that calls in I don't care if they apply or not apply it's programming and scripting of hey by the way if you're not following Jimmy on social media like Jimmy is committed to creating educational content every week that you know you may wake up at 2 a.m. in your james and have that freak out home buyer moment like most clients do and I guarantee you if you're following his account you'll find the answer that you need because sometimes there's questions that you don't even know you should have but then we'll come up just by staying connected so you've got to ask for the follow you have to ask for that because people need to be told what to do and if you're not asking for it they don't know to do that one of the things that we changed just in Denise's process is every Friday when she sends an email out to her agents she's now added please follow me which is so basic but you would and you would think that that would have been it's in her email signature like connect with us on social but she had to put it at the end of her email template every single time to get more follows and it was that simple and it's also making sure that like your tiktok in your bio is telling people to go to your Instagram and how it all links together um but I would say for for strategy again you still have to build the the connections and the relationships where every morning I would wish all your friends happy birthday on Facebook it'll take you five minutes you can do it from your mobile app again when you're going to the bathroom if you want to don't post in ghost so don't just make a post and then get off you've got to warm that up a little bit you need a like and comment on five different accounts then post then like and comment on five more accounts because the system knows of it's a symbiotic relationship and if you're just posting and ghosting well then that's a very selfish motive where you're just expecting love when you're not willing to give it and return space here see if anybody's got a question because I have a comment on that all right um one of the things I'm trying to hold myself accountable to this year is how many of you do this you're scrolling on your social feeds whatever and you see a post from someone you know and you're like huh there's Kevin keep going you don't post you don't comment I mean you don't comment you don't comment but you know the person or you want enough right and I'm like I'm trying to get my muscle to be no stop let me leave a nice little post for Kevin that says dude that's awesome right congrats good for you that's it that's what I'm trying to build my muscles to do today because I know that's the secret hack of getting withdrawing my social media is flowing love to other people well that could be a challenge just for this group of all of you in this group right now when y'all see any of you make a post if it's some love because when you do that it reignites your post after about 60 seconds it's gonna go dead unless somebody likes or comments and then it refreshes it so even if it's a day later give it a light give it a comment um if you can encourage people to save your post that gives it the the biggest um you know boost is saving and again um in the algorithms like you'll see even with Denise's account she may not always get a lot of likes or comments but I look at her back and then I'm like holy shit you had 50 saves on this post now then I go and I realize oh these are people just trying to copy and duplicate some of her post which is fine um but you can't get discouraged by those vanity metrics and assume people aren't looking at it if your motive is to provide educational truth to build connections relationships awareness then own your motive it's not to be famous I mean and remember you also don't own your accounts like my business Instagram account that took me years to create got hacked and I lost it I had to start all over guys all over so real quick uh Carlos uh he's smart hey Carlos by the way brand new member welcome to Carlos shout out everybody do the virtual wave you know whatever that thing is um so Carlos is a brand new here and he had the bright idea for everybody to drop your Instagram handles in here so we could all follow each other hello um not a bad idea okay yeah right there it is in there okay cool um and Janelle before I lose it in the questions here you asked a question how do you encourage people to save do a arrow and show them it's the banner icon or say if it's a video then make that your call to action hey if this was helpful for you or if you know a Gen Z who's looking to buy hit the save button most people don't know what the save button is I think that's also important to understand that mortgage and real estate our communities of being on the front end of marketing is is way advanced compared to like attorneys or family law professionals or average consumers that are like what's the save button it looks like a banner they don't know what it is um and is that only from a business page no it's personal too okay if your if your count is private guys I would really recommend not making it private nobody's private here if they they get booted out if they have a private account it's kind of like what why be private I mean well you're in a business where do you want like clients coming to you for organic research whatever right social can't do that I mean because how many of you you've done this you've gone to an Instagram account and it says this account is private and you know like that's like the doors are locked right close it's closed all right right I don't even want to ask that person like you know for unless it's a unique situation but generally that's like a slap you know boom turn away I'm really not open to connecting yeah because people want to creep on you that's that's why I mean Facebook business pages hardly ever get looked at but that's still a place where people can leave reviews and they just want to peek behind the curtain kind of get a feel for who you are without revealing they're looking right right yeah exactly right and and like like like Jimmy said with the whole TikTok thing like out of the blue and you guys have heard the interviews I've done it's like you Deborah you said this like you never know most people are lurking versus commenting right and then they just pop up and go I have been following you and like hey I want to talk about alone you know oh I could have a follow up question how can you tell how where do you get to the information that you can tell who saved your post like on Instagram do you have you ever clicked where it says insights do you have a business account I was talking on Facebook but all right here I'm gonna I was thinking about doing this a moment ago and it's different so I so try and you know what Jeff I'm so sorry I do have to go because I have my next meeting starting right now okay well listen how do people connect with you uh go to so follow me on Instagram plug and play underscore SM that's because my plug and play SM account got hacked make sure your accounts are verified um but go to plug and play underscore SM or you can go to uh plug and play sm.com we can schedule a free discovery meeting and get your strategy in order the biggest thing is I would say take action just commit if it's Instagram you got to be doing reels Facebook I would say videos and going live and don't forget to comment and like so I love that you said that Jeff that is so important yeah yeah baby it's all about all right we know you got to jump everybody please give Deborah a big round of applause for me thank you thank you ever you take care bye bye all right she's got to jump like that boom can't be late for those calls all right guys last last feedback comments questions can I ask a question please um anybody have two Instagram accounts why why not I can only handle manage in one um I have I have two I have the I use I'm very active on the the Jimmy mortgage one the JJ to New Jersey that's my past and I don't want to go there shut it down uh why not close it I don't know I guess sometimes I listen to I don't know Jeff you you you're right why not I don't I don't know why I don't know what that's a good question I'm gonna answer that this weekend fair enough man fair enough I mean yeah if you're not using it and it's your pet and you don't want to go there I get it man so just shut that down um Jessica answered I have two one for mortgage one for the divorce mortgage so two to one that's an exclusive brand right why Liz you got two no I was just curious part of you don't need another thing to manage I know that's what I was like what am I doing no then so I just started asking if somebody did that and it was actually going well yeah now I just think to Kevin's point is like this is another thing to manage and we're why blend the two business and personal right there you go we already learned that lesson here today uh Jeff I wanted to say something real quick just in case uh yeah someone could gain a little bit of insight from this so a number of months ago my account was also hacked my Instagram account and I lost it got disabled on Instagram and I think for about a year I've been trying to fathom how I wanted to do a rebrand in like I don't know come up with a way to like leverage it make it more impactful the stuff that Deborah was really talking about and I found myself after my account got disabled and got hacked that I felt like I was making the exact same impact with that disabled account that no longer existed than I was with my previous account so when I went and started doing research on like now that I'm completely fresh and I can do this whole new account I started learning about all these amazing things about how Instagram really really rewards people that start fresh new accounts and do it with intentional approach and so just a few weeks ago I started my my current account and I haven't post much but I've been doing that engagement thing that is just like trying to test out if the engagement piece like works and it does so those of you that maybe are all the fence and you need a little bit of support maybe do what Jeff did to the more smart and inst uh pro accounts and press that nuclear button on your account it will change your mindset hopefully it doesn't have because you got hacked like me but still wants for a short I I I have found it a very liberating experience and um one that I would not have sought out on my own so feedback feedback man sorry that had to happen I think it's never a good thing um all right I think for sake of time I'm gonna let everybody go um the social media 22 class 22 class is live in both platforms the emails are live in the new platform the landing pages are live the new platform if you're not using the new platform yet um and you need help as I said earlier let me know you can still get all the content in the previous one um but that class uh is a great class I mean it taught it yesterday and I know some of you have it coming up and it's no all I can say is after the class agents thrilled title rep comes up to me and said bro crushed it great content so get out there and do it it's perfect time to do it all right did people thanks a lot see you on the next one bye for now hey guys what's up real quick uh you've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before and I just want to quickly remind you if that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans you need to fill your pipeline with purchase business let's just face it agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you well good news our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling done for you agent classes expert training videos a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market attract and convert agents into referral partners plus done for you proven marketing materials and 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