#141 Mail-Right Show With Special Guest Courtney Blair of ZippyContent

Subscribe: RSS

How Podcasting Can Help You Standout In Crowded Local Market

We going to be discussing with Courtney Blair founder of ZippyContent how real estate agents can use podcasting to promote themselves in the their local market and help them build relationship with some of mover and shakers in their local community.

Here’s More About Courtney

When she was pregnant, desperate for work and unable to find it (people don’t like to hire pregnant women when they know they’ll soon need a couple of paid months off for maternity leave); she began contacting anyone and everyone she knew for work she could do from home. Lo-and-behold, someone had something for her to do. It was her dad. He had his own online business in the psychology realm, and he wanted to be featured on podcasts.

Fast forward 3 years, and Zippy Content was born. Zippy Content now represents almost 100 entrepreneurs, authors, coaches, consultants, and just all around badasses from across the globe, and find them interviews with the COOLEST PODCASTERS ON EARTH.

In the coming months, Zippy Content will be expanding into a full-blown, multi-media PR agency.
Courtney is also a mother to a two year old, and a business student in pursuit of her Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration. She has faced and overcome challenges that most wouldn’t dream of, and has entered a time of synchronicity and harmony in her life.

http://zippycontent.com/

Here’s A Full Transcription of Our Interview With Courtney

Jonathan: Welcome back folks to the Mail-Right Real Estate show. It’s episode 141. We’ve got a great guest here. We’ve Courtney Blair of Zippy Content joining us and we’re going to be discussing all things Podcasting and how you can utilize podcasts in your local community to get much more quality leads and to build your network. Courtney, thanks for coming on the show. Would you like to do a quick introduction?

Courtney: Yeah. Absolutely. I’m Courtney Blair. I own and operate Zippy Content with a small team. What we do is we represent authors, entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, real estate professionals, investors. We represent all kinds of people and we find them interviews on podcasts within their niche.

Jonathan: Then you’ve guest for me, haven’t you?

Courtney: Yes, yes. Lots of them.

Jonathan: And I’ve got my great new co-host. He’s come back for a second try. The first show he did with me didn’t put him off for life. And that’s Robert Newman. Would you like to quickly introduce yourself, Robert?

Robert: Sure. I’m the founder of an Inbound Marketing company that focuses on Real Estate called Inbound Real Estate Marketing. I have 10 years experience in the Real Estate vertical. I’ve run sales teams for very well known Real Estate technology companies, probably top on the list would be Agent Image but there have been others as well. I’m back for a second time. Jon, you didn’t quite manage to scare me away.

Jonathan: Not quite. I’m child-friendly. So there we are. So I’m the founder of …

Robert: You think I’m a child?

Jonathan: English sarcasm. I’m sorry. I’m the founder of, I didn’t mean that. I’m the founder of Mail-Right. We’re a Marketing platform with a number of software systems to get you quality leads mostly through Facebook. So, Courtney, let’s go straight into it. What got you started with the crazy world of Podcasting?

Courtney: Well, I dove into it just out of necessity. At the time, this was about almost 4 years ago now, I was pregnant and just out of a job. It’s kind of hard to find a job when people know you’re going to be taking a few months off. So I just started working from my computer. I kind of started just by freelance writing. That was like the only thing I knew to do on the computer from home so I was just writing and it wasn’t happy. And so, I contacted my Dad, Mike, who is in the psychology realm, self-help, personal development, NLP, stuff like that. And he has courses, he’s a coach and he still does therapy and stuff like. So he told me that he wanted me to find him interviews on podcasts just to talk about everything he was doing. So he was actually my very first client and it was kind of crazy, really primitive, you know what I mean, in terms of outreach and just tracking the interviews and bookings and stuff, very primitive. So I spent a couple years with him just kind of fine-tuning it dialing it in and I turned it into something that people would pay me for, like a service that people actually thought was valuable. That’s where I’m at now. Now I’m representing a lot of people and it’s been a lot of fun in about 4 years.

Jonathan: Oh, great. So, what are some of the key things you’ve learned through those 4 years around how Podcasting can really help somebody develop their brand?

Courtney: Well, at first, when I first started doing this, I really was just looking at it like, “Okay. Cool”, like just a cool interview thing where you just interview each other and get to know each other and I didn’t even realize what a business tool podcasts were. Out of all types of media and PR, I believe in the Podcasting industry more than anything. I just had to learn it along the way and I had people tell me how they were being benefitted by it. And so, some of the ways, first and foremost is SEO. So on the backend, if you’re doing several podcast interviews over a few months or 6 months or a year even and you’re having each of these podcasters share your website, share your sales funnel, share all of your stuff, then you’re going to have exposure to that stuff that would have never been there otherwise and Google’s going to be more likely to pull you up first because you’re just being shared all over the place, all throughout people’s networks. So that’s the first benefit on the technical side that we’ve noticed. So especially if you have a sales funnel and it’s being circulated throughout email lists and social media platforms, I mean, that funnel is getting exposure that it would have never had otherwise, even it’s a paid ad funnel as well. There’s just so much more circulation happening when you’re doing a lot of interviews on a lot of different shows. So that’s a great, great benefit that people are seeing. Aside from just pulling in interviews off of this, it’s easy to opt-in to work with these people right off of the live interview. It’s an incredibly powerful tool.

Robert: Hey Jon?

Jonathan: Yes.

Robert: I want to weigh in just real briefly.

Jonathan: Oh, please, interrupt anytime you feel.

Robert: She mentioned something and I want to add a small slightly more detailed perspective to something she said. So in terms of SEO, Search Engine Optimization and Inbound Marketing content, you can do a lot of different type of content, podcast, YouTube. But here’s what driving Google results, it’s user engagement. So Courtney, to a slightly more technical perspective. So everything that you’re mentioning is if your stuff is being shared, if you have a good podcast and somebody is thrown a link of your website into your podcast, which Jon does, then you’re going to have some fact links coming into probably a primary website or a primary destination. You’re calling it a Marketing Funnel. Click Funnel does these little destination pages that have a sub-URL and then all those links at that page. There’s some SEO benefit. But the real benefit though is if you have a website and you’re doing a podcast and you throw that podcast. And now, if you’re doing it as part of a larger post or something else, you now have a lot of user engagement. Right now, we’re doing a three-way video, we’re going to have a podcast. So if somebody stays on the page or they happen to listen to you and you’ve connected a couple keywords to the podcast, that is actually going to give you a really good tool to potentially rank for a small handful of keywords that are then associated with your website. If you really know what you’re doing with SEO, podcasts can be dangerous in the hands of an experienced marketer. You can really do a lot with them. So anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there.

Courtney: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that. Yeah, thank you for that.

Robert: Yeah.

Jonathan: That’s great. Thanks for that Robert. Probably in the second half, we’re going to talk about how Real Estate agents can utilize it themselves in their local market. But to continue this initial discussion Courtney, what are some of the mistakes you’ve seen people do when it comes to Podcasting?

Courtney: Oh man. Well, just on the guest side of things, if you’re going be a guest on somebody’s podcast, there is definitely a proper guest etiquette to follow. I definitely think it’s smart to just research the podcast and research the demographics of the audience and what is typically discussed which is pretty much a no-brainer. And then, just showing up. I’ve been dealing with a lot of people who have just been sort of flaky in terms of the interviews themselves. So that’s really important to make sure that they actually happen.

Jonathan: Not turning up is not great, is it?

Courtney: Yeah. It’s rough.

Jonathan: What I’ll say about Courtney and her team is that I’ve found them to be very professional with their outreach and the booking.

Robert: Just out of curiosity. I have an amateur’s question here. How does that actually work? So you’re outreaching, right?

Courtney: Like pulling in the interviews, yes.

Robert: Right. How does that work?

Courtney: So, how we actually pull in the interviews is we have a network that we regularly work with that I’ve been building for quite some time that’s going on about 400 podcasters right now that we regularly send guest suggestions to and if they’re a fit, they accept them. And then, we also have a team that they send guest suggestions to podcasters that we’ve never worked with every day for every client. So the network is doubling over itself all the time based off of our needs within the niches. So we really really tailor outreach and I’ve really been on top of my team just in terms of making sure that it’s super professional and really relevant. Because in the beginning, it was kind of hard for me to do by myself. I had to learn a few lessons the hard way just in terms of the right ways to do outreach and how to really connect with people in a way that makes them think, “Okay. This is a professional. I’m getting a cold email but this is a professional and I want to work with them”. So it kind of took a little bit. I didn’t really have anybody that I could ask advice from at the time because I didn’t know anybody who was doing anything like this. So I kind of just had to trial and error it the whole way. Luckily, ended up somewhere that people think is really professional. I mean, it’s been a road but it’s been great. Now we’ve got it all dialed in.

Robert: So some of our Real Estate audience, especially my audience, which I’ll blast this out to. Some of them are going to ask the question of, like they want to do a podcast themselves. I know they’re going to be thinking to themselves, well you made a lot of mistakes, you’ve just mentioned trial and error.

Courtney: Right.

Robert: So, for those people that might be trying to do a DIY, which in Real Estate you really have, 20 percent of the profession has money and a budget to market themselves. And then, the other 80 percent, unfortunately, are like you were 4 years ago.

Courtney: Yeah.

Robert: They’re struggling and they just don’t have a lot. So there’s going to be a lot of that audience that’s going to be going, “How would I do that myself and she just said she made a lot of mistakes. Oh my God”. Name a couple of mistakes that you made that are like easy pitfalls that somebody who might be trying to do outreach themselves could avoid.

Courtney: So definitely, first and foremost, mind your spam laws. In that, you don’t want to send too many emails per days. Really make sure that each email you send is researched and you’re not just blasting people and you’re actually being super personal and you’ve watched an episode or whatever it is, whoever you’re trying to connect with, it’s a personal message. You want to think of the email as almost like you’re emailing a friend, even though you’ve never spoken before. Nobody likes to feel like they’re being sold to, especially when it’s an email that they’re receiving from somebody they don’t know. So very tailored emails. Don’t just pick a group of people and then blast them. That’s terrible. That’s terrible. Don’t do that. So that was definitely one that I learned the hard way in the very beginning. And I even had a couple emails shut down because somebody reported me as a spammer when I wasn’t spamming. They were legitimate for me to reach out to but I didn’t do it right and they felt like I was spamming them. And so, it’s easy for that to happen. People surprisingly get really weird about emails.

Robert: Okay.

Courtney: So, yeah. Definitely make sure that you’re just coming across as a human, a person who is not selling and is just trying to connect for a relevant reason.

Robert: Okay. I’m going to reveal the fact that I’m always fascinated by this because I get so many contact requests off my blog. It’s insane. I don’t have time to read them all. The only ones that capture my attention are people that have obviously read some of my content. They’re mentioning something where it’s just impossible to fake. Did you really listen to something? Like as you built up your experience in doing this, did you really legitimately listen to some of your perspective podcasters content?

Courtney: Yeah. Definitely. I have a team now. So that’s what they do. They just spend their time researching and getting to know these people. In the beginning, yeah, I was only representing a small amount of people. I only had maybe 10 clients and I had the time to just really spend my time getting to know, because I was so new in the industry. And honestly, being that I had never heard of anybody that was doing what I was doing, I was kind of insecure about my place in the Podcasting industry because I didn’t know if podcasters were going to like me or if I was going to be a like a pain. I didn’t know how I was going to be received. So just in terms of pitching guests, I definitely did everything I could to just make sure that I wasn’t going to be looked at like some willy-nilly, never going to be successful person in the industry. I really wanted to make sure that whatever I presented to anybody who was a new potential contact was completely legit.

Robert: Right.

Courtney: And that they knew I was paying attention to them and that I was really trying to align the guest rather than just send them suggestions.

Jonathan: Oh, that’s great. I think we’re going to go for our break folks. We’ll be back. We’ll be discussing the power Podcasting more with Courtney and we’ll be back in a few moments folks.

Male Voice in Commercial: Do you want quality leads from homeowners and buyers right in your own neighborhood? Then you need Mail-Right. It is a powerful, but easy to use, Online Marketing system that uses Facebook to generate Real Estate leads at a fraction of the cost you’d pay from our competition. We stand behind our work with a no question asked 30-day money back guarantee. So don’t delay. Get started today. Go to mail-right.com.

Jonathan: We’re coming back, folks. Courtney Blair’s been our guest. Like I say, our audience are mostly Real Estate professionals and one of the things I was going to ask you is I think it’s a super way, if you’re doing a podcast in your local community, city, and town, it’s a great way of increasing your network and increasing your self-promotion in your local area. Would you agree with that Courtney?

Courtney: I absolutely agree. If there’s anything I believe in it’s that podcasts, in general, are one of the most incredible Networking and Marketing tools out there.

Jonathan: I think you find if it’s done, you know, you do that outreach, if you do a cold outreach and say to somebody, you know, “I’d love you to come on my podcast and talk about”, let’s say you’re the Mayor of a city and it’s a great way for that individual to communicate with the local community and they’re probably going to say yes, aren’t they?

Courtney: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. Just on a local level, it’s an incredible way to just get to know the big people in your community, the movers and shakers that are really doing things and just spread the word about yourself ultimately. I mean, you’re leveraging each other’s audiences and networks by just associating with each other in person and online. So on a local level, obviously in Real Estate, you work on a local level, it’s an incredible way to just pull in new people and make new contacts and even just grow your audience online outside of a local level. It’s a great way to do things.

Jonathan: Now, have you got any kind of insights about the easiest way that people can get, if they’re looking to start a local podcast, what’s the easiest way to get started? I would imagine you’ve been asked this a few times. So maybe you’ve got some advice around that.

Courtney: I have been asked this and really it just depends, in my opinion, on how big you want to go in terms of production and everything like that. I plan on starting my own podcast and I’m going to have a professional with me behind the scenes that’s handling editing and production and stuff like that. But then, there’s some people who they handle it all themselves. I even know a couple, it’s mostly done from their phone. So really that’s the beauty of the Podcasting industry. You can tailor it to fit your lifestyle just depending on how hard you want to go. It just depends on which direction you want to take it. But I would recommend if you really really really want to take it to the next level to just talk to somebody who that’s what they do is help people start podcasts and handle the production and stuff like that. That’s what I would recommend. Unless you’re good at that type of thing. But for me, I’m definitely going to work with a professional.

Jonathan: There’s a couple of podcasts about Podcasting and there’s two individuals. They don’t come to mind, unfortunately. But I will make sure they’re in the show notes with a link to their website.

Courtney: Awesome.

Jonathan: And their podcast and their website is about starting Podcasting. One bit of advice is that if you’re doing a local interview, let’s say you’re inviting people, politicians, people in your local community that are doing interesting things, probably the most simplest way to start is to use your phone, iPhone or Android. There are apps that will record the interview and get some lapel mics that will join into one jack. Obviously, with the new iPhone, it’s using a lightning connection. So you’ve got to keep that in mind. If you’re using an older iPhone or Android, it will have a phone jack. You can get them on Amazon where you have a lapel and it goes into one jack and then you can record both voices at the same time on an app. And then, you can export that in a format which, either you get somebody to edit for your or you can even edit yourself. There’s a free program called Audacity for the Mac and PC which is readily available and you can edit on that. But there’s a load. Another resource is Fiverr where you could find somebody to do your initial editing. There’s loads of resources, isn’t there Courtney?

Courtney: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. There really really are. That’s what’s so great about the industry.

Jonathan: So, in general, how do you see the Podcasting? Do you think it’s still growing? Are there still more and more people listening to podcasts?

Courtney: Oh, yeah. Every day. The industry is always growing. Obviously, the Podcasting industry has been around for a while. But I think people are just starting to realize what a business tool it is and that it’s not just like, “Oh”, you know, a radio show you listen to in the afternoon. It’s actually a tool that you can use and you can do yourself. And so, yeah, of course, it’s going to keep growing. I think that any and every business could benefit from the Podcasting industry in some way and people are going to start realizing that more and more.

Jonathan: Got a question, Robert?

Robert: Yeah, I do. We’ve been speaking in generalities. I’m curious to know and I’m maybe putting you on the spot and I don’t mean to but it is. If you can come up with something, this is going to be a great plug for you. So I’m curious to know. Do you have a quick verbal case study of one of your clients who have spoken to you about the results of actually doing Podcasting or using your services or promoting themselves via podcast? Because I know that Jon, this is his second podcast. He has one that has helped him grow another business. But I personally have never played around with podcasts so I’m legitimately curious to know what the results have been for people that are doing it.

Courtney: So, I have one client that comes to mind, Whitney Nicely. She does a lot of interviews. She’s great. She just has a great personality. She’s super bubbly. She’s in Real Estate Investing and she coaches women to invest in Real Estate.

Robert: Okay.

Courtney: And so, she’s killing it. She’s pulling in so many clients. But what she’s doing that a lot of my other clients aren’t doing, is really maintaining the traffic that she gets from these interviews on her social media. She connects with her audience through going live. She’s got a great connection with her audience. And once she started doing these podcast interviews, she started really hitting it hard and following a formula for engagement and visibility, probably her own formula because she’s great. She’s just awesome. She’s got it all figured out. But that’s what she’s doing and she’s really pulling in a lot of new clients off of the interviews because she’s just establishing expertise and then maintaining the expertise down the road. And so, I tell people a lot of times, you can go on all kinds of big-time podcasts but if not doing anything to maintain the traffic, they’re not going to think you again.

Robert: Right.

Courtney: So that’s the biggest thing and that’s what she’s doing. Yeah, it’s working really great for her.

Robert: I’m going to extrapolate for some of our audience what those things might be because I don’t know who this is. But I can tell you right now that if you’re doing to do a podcast and drive a lot of traffic, like as soon as we drop this episode, a great way to follow that up is to do a couple quick live feeds through Instagram or Snapchat, naw, probably Instagram and then post them to your Facebook page and kind of talk about the show that you did and you could do that a few different times. Just like a 1-minute vignette where you’re just really quickly saying, “Hey, I did this thing”, and then you say, “The link is down my page”. But connecting and nurturing your audience, that’s the one thing that I don’t do a lot of because my website is built one static content, whereas Facebook live focuses on today’s experience. But I love the concept of developing such a strong relationship with your audience that you’ve got something that they could tune into all the time if they wanted. But as long as you had good messaging. It sounds like Whitney does. Anyway, that’s my thoughts. You post something to your Facebook page through Instagram. It could be very brief. And then, point to the larger piece of content.

Jonathan: Thanks for that Robert. That was great.

Courtney: Totally.

Jonathan: We’re going to end the podcast part of the show and Courtney’s going to stay with us and answer a couple of questions around being a woman and building a business and some of her experiences around that, which you’ll be able to watch on the Mail-Right website with a full transcript of this interview. So, Courtney, to just wrap up our audio interview, how can people contact you and find out more about you and your services?

Courtney: So, definitely the easiest way to get me on the phone and talk to me is to book an appointment with me, either through my Facebook, Zippy Content or just go to my website, zippycontent.com and use the Get Started button. You can just book an appointment with me there. Get me on the phone in a couple of days and we can talk about just how we can work together and just get to know each other.

Jonathan: That’s great. Thank you so much for that. And Robert, how can people find out more about you?

Robert: Go to inBoundREM. That’s’ Inbound and then R, as in Rabbit, E, as in Edward, M, as in Michael. And I’m on your site and the call to action guys if you want to get in touch with Courtney, is to click the Start Now button and that connects into her calendar and then you can go ahead and click on a date and book an appointment with her.

Jonathan: That’s great.

Courtney: Thank you, Robert.

Jonathan: Thank you. And if you want to find more about Mail-Right and all the guest interviews that we’ve done, I think we’ve got a small University of information freely available to people that want to improve their Real Estate career and get more quality leads. We’ve got enormous and now over 140 interviews from different experts and individuals in the Real Estate industry and it’s literally education in its own right. Go to the Mail-Right website and learn more about our product and you can directly contact me if you want to utilize Mail-Right and we’ll see you next week where we’ll have somebody with some great advice or insights to help you become a more successful Real Estate. We’ll see you next week folks.

So, Courtney, in general, in business, what are some of the business lessons you’ve learned over the past 4 years in running a business? Obviously, you’re a mother and you’re also trying to build up a successful business. Any kind of key tips or insights that come to mind?

Courtney: Yeah. Absolutely. Balance. Balance everything.

Jonathan: What’s that Courtney?

Courtney: You can work work work all the time. Yeah. You can work work work all the time and then before you know it, the house is crashing in around you. So the quickest way to success is make sure that you have balance in every area of your life. When I first got started, I was just working 12-hour days, every day of the week. I was just almost obsessed. It’s like your baby, your business. And so, I was just always always on the phones, always working. And something that I learned and that I think is helping propel me towards success is to give myself a break and make sure that I schedule time off and to just dedicate myself other ways of blowing off steam and stuff. When I just dedicate my life to work all the time, you get burnt out and it’s like almost detrimental to business. For me anyways, that’s something I’ve learned.

Robert: I’m somewhat curious because you’ve mentioned that, your bio mentions and you’ve mentioned that you’re a mother. I’m an entrepreneur too and I have a crazy hard time. I have four rescued cats and a partner and that’s crazy hard to balance and I don’t even have a kid. I’ve got cats and a partner who’s pretty understanding. So I’m curious to know how in world do you do the mother thing and do a 12-hour day on the business side? How does that even work?

Courtney: Well, I’ve definitely kind of learned how to time block in a way that still always me to have time with my daughter throughout the day. So I block off my calls, my sales calls and stuff in hour time blocks. But most of the time they only take 15, 20 minutes. So I’m able to just kind of get through it pretty quickly and then do what I’ve got to do to make sure that she’s happy, play with her for a minute and then jump on my next call. So that took me some trial and error to learn to where I can’t just load myself down with calls every 20 minutes and then not have time to do anything. That’s just not how it works for me. That’s been super important. I mean, she’s grown up with me running a business and so, she’s very efficient a lot of the times with coloring and doing what she’s got to do and she’s really good.

Robert: Okay.

Courtney: So I’ve gotten really lucky in that sense too. And I also have very patient people that work with me. Luckily people are like, “No, it’s okay that she’s screaming in the background”. So I’m lucky there.

Robert: I think it’s part of the personal story, whether you intended it or not, it’s probably become part of your brand.

Courtney: For sure. Definitely.

Robert: Part of my brand is that I’m in the establishment in terms of Real Estate Marketing.

Courtney: Here she comes. Give me a second, okay. I’m almost done. I need to help her go potty real quick.

Jonathan: She’s been extremely patient. Thank you so much for coming on the show Courtney.

Courtney: Thank you so much.

Jonathan: And thank you for your help with some of the great guests that you’ve found for the Mail-Right show. It’s much appreciated.

Courtney: Thank you guys so much for just being a valuable part of the network and for accepting our guest and helping me just nestle my way right into the industry and it’s been great. I look forward to working with you guys a lot longer.

Jonathan: Oh, thank you very much.

Robert: Nice to meet you, Courtney.

Courtney: You too. Thanks, guys.