291 Mail-Right Show With Special Guest Karin Carr

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Evergreen vs Viral YouTube Content Strategy For Real Estate Agents

Karin Carr has been a REALTOR® since 2005. She heads the Georgia Coast Homes Team with Keller Williams in Savannah, GA. Karin is a sought-after speaker on video marketing. She was named the #1 BombBomb Real Estate Video Influencer in 2019 in the Consumer Education category.

Karin has spoken at Inman Connect, KW Family Reunion, the Florida REALTORS® annual convention, and is a frequent Livestream and podcast guest to teach about the effectiveness of video marketing. Karin is the Amazon bestselling author of YouTube for Real Estate Agents – Learn how to get FREE real estate leads and never cold call again.

Robert Newman: Welcome back ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 291. We’re with a YouTube content creator extraordinaire that focuses on real estate. She has quite literally written the book called YouTube for real estate agents learn how to get free real estate leads I think it is, I can’t quite see the last word, but anyway, it’s definitely a book about YouTube for real estate agents. We’re real excited to have her it’s Karin Carr. Karin, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to our audience.

Karin Carr: Thank You so much. I’m excited to be here. My name is Karin Carr. I am the leader of the Georgia coast homes team in Savannah, Georgia with Keller Williams. I have been licensed for almost 16 years at this point. Stumbled across YouTube about four years ago. Just thought it would be a branding strategy, a way to get my name out there turned out to be the best lead generation strategy that I ever could have possibly imagined. So I went all-in with my YouTube content within a year I was getting so much business from YouTube had to form a team. So we now have a team of six agents serving four different market areas. And YouTube is probably 98% of the way that we get all of our business. It’s been amazing.

Robert Newman: Well we’re really going to look forward to this, John and I, so, cause we talk about this all the time. So John before I just get lost in the sauce of YouTube, John, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to anybody that might be tuning into the show for the first time?

Johnathan Denwood: Yeah, thanks for that. I’m really looking forward to the discussion with Karin, because I’ve really enjoyed watching some of her videos. You do a great job, Karin. They really, great content, but you have a great way of expressing that knowledge in an entertaining way. Karin. So Mail-Right, I’m the founder of Mail-Right we’re platform that uses the power of Facebook, generally, but we can use YouTube as well to generate leads for you. And we have a platform that nurtures those leads, plus it has some other important elements it is a great value package. I’m very passionate about it spent a lot of time working on it and we think we now have something that should be very attractive to the real estate agent. If you’re interested, go over to Mail-Right, have a look, what we are offering and book a free demo with me you get half hour with me and I’ll make sure that you get some value from the demo and some tips about maybe helping you get more leads online, back over to you Robert?

Robert Newman: All right. My name is Robert Newman. I am, an SEO guy that’s been doing it for 14 years. If you, for some reason are curious about real estate SEO, you can find all the information you need to know about how to do it, what you should look for and who’s good at it, which, I’ll give you a secret newsflash, not very many people. So inside the real estate space, it’s at InboundREM.com. So, John, I know that you’ve been, really like, building up, the, your appetite for this conversation. So why don’t you go ahead and kick us off with, your first question for Karin?

Johnathan Denwood: Yeah, sure. You know, a lot real estate agents Karin are a bit fearful of video live video and Facebook or using YouTube. They tend to do these very glitzy YouTube adverts, and that’s about it. What do you think? Because your story of being the main generator of leads for you and for your team is, you know, you don’t get many agents say that if you’ve got some quick tips and insights about what’s different in the way that you’ve been using YouTube, than what a lot of agents think about it.

Karin Carr: I know that when I watch other YouTube channels from real estate agents, they’re typically very glossy, very polished, and they come across as a commercial. And if I am the viewer watching stuff on YouTube, I’m not really there to watch a commercial. So when I started making my videos, I thought, I just want to be real. I just want to be, I am talking directly to my ideal client. I am telling them what they would need to know if they were interested in buying or selling a house in my market. I’m not a professional actress. I am not, you know, driving up in my silver Ferrari, getting out, wearing my, you know, thousand dollars suit, trying to act like I’m all super fancy and all that kind of stuff. I kind of felt like that would make me seem much more unapproachable.

And then people kind of like when I watched those real estate agents that are on, million dollar listing and stuff, you look at them and you’re like, wow, they’re so cool. But it’s almost like you’re star struck. And you would think I could never, I can never work with that person because they’re way up here and I’m just lowly me. Right? So I’m trying to be very real and normal in my videos. Now that doesn’t mean that the videos are slapped together and poorly done. It just means that they’re not super slick and polished and I don’t sell in my videos at all. I give, all this information. Yes, I have a call to action always, but it’s not, you know, if you know anyone looking to buy or sell, call me, here’s my phone number. And my phone number is like splashing on screen the entire time. I kind of have the opposite approach of just keep it really simple and authentic. And if people like your personality that will resonate with them and they’ll call you,

Johnathan Denwood: I’ve been looking more at your channel focused at other real estate agents I haven’t looked that much your channel aimed for your actual brokerage or your actual team website.
Karin Carr: So you can search anything about living in Savannah, moving to Savannah, relocating to Savannah, retiring, Savannah, you search any kind of stuff. You’ll find the Georgia coast homes team in those search results.

Oh, that’s great. So you must have read my mind. It’s very easy to read my mind actually but you must have read my mind because I was going to ask you what content you specifically use, on that particular channel when you have just given us. So basically, do you think that’s the difference because you put your mind in the search and you try and provide answers to questions where I think with your intro you were saying, and I agree with you, a lot of agents, they just use it as over a selling medium or they just show them the last really glitzy house that they have sold. Do you think that is the main difference?

Karin Carr: Yeah, that’s totally the difference. I think that people on YouTube are not looking for a specific house. And so if all you’re doing is listing tours and putting them on YouTube, they typically get very few views unless you pay to run it as an ad, those videos don’t get a ton of views unless it’s like a $4 million house and people just want to see it cause the house was spectacular. But if it’s the typical average house, that’s $253,000, those videos will get like 37 views. That’s not really what people are going to YouTube to watch. And the way I stumbled on this was because I was writing blog posts for my website. So Robert, when you said you’re the SEO guru? I was like, oh, okay. I got to figure out SEO.

Five years ago. I’d never even heard that term before. I did not know anything about SEO and I was pretty much self-taught. I was watching lots of videos and blogs and I started to understand the whole concept of it and thought, okay. So if somebody is researching online that they want to buy a house, what would they be looking for if they’re researching that they want to sell, what are they typing into the Google search bar? And how can I make a piece of content with that specific keyword so that my stuff will show up in the search results? And I started ranking my blog posts fairly, you know, it took several months, but it started to work and then worked very, effectively. And then I started making videos and thought, well, YouTube is just a search engine as well. And it probably works on the same general principles that Google does. So why couldn’t I take all of the SEO strategy that I’m using for my website and transfer it over to YouTube?

So I just did, like, I, I didn’t know if it would be successful or not, but I figured can’t hurt to try. And lo and behold it did. And so I created this channel specifically looking for buyers who are in the military, who are relocating to Savannah because they have orders to appear at hunter army airfield. So I was being very specific with the content on my channel. It was for buyers. It was for buyers in the military who were going to relocate to an area that they didn’t know anything about. So I figured all of the content on the channel was trying to reach that specific person. And it was extremely effective. And within six months, that’s where I was getting the vast majority of my business.

Johnathan Denwood: I think it’s so great to hear that because it’s one of the things that me and Robert have been hammering away Karin is that find your niche, find your local niche, you know, don’t try and appeal to everybody. And I think that’s what, one of the things that we’ve been hammering away, isn’t it Robert? So over to you Robert

Robert Newman: Yeah. Holy cow. Okay. Well for those of you listening, you can’t see my screen you can’t see what- so while Karin’s been sharing all this information, I have been just doing what drives John nuts and, just typing away furiously and using some SEO tools that I have. And basically trying to keep up with your, your comments, like I’ve already opened up your blog and I’ve got your top ranking blog posts in front of me. So I know keywords that, that you’re ranking for there. So for those of you listening, I do want to actually, instead of asking you a question, I will end with a question, but I’m going to say that some of what you’ve done, which has being said very fast is very important for our listeners.

So here’s a few things that I’m noticing just right out of the gate. This is a very focused strategy. Moving to Savannah, living in Savannah, moving from targeting the military. These are niches, very established niches, a geo-specific niche. Somebody moving from a certain place. You’re actually on the first page for moving from Florida, which is a hell of a keyword to, be on the first page for if you’re a real estate agent. So what kind of got you on the track to understand in such a very specific way who you were trying to speak to?

Karin Carr: Well, when I had the website, I actually lived in Atlanta, Georgia. So it’s about five hours away from where I live now in Savannah. And I started blogging and I was writing very broad topics. Like what is earnest money and how long does it take to close on a house? And my husband is a retired air force. So we’re a military family. We’ve bought homes with our VA entitlement all those things, but there was not an active military base in Atlanta. There’s a base, but they don’t have housing. So people are not moving in and out from the area. Then we relocate to Savannah and there’s not only one base here There are two. So I got very excited that I could finally start working with the military community again, because that’s what I know the best.

And I just felt like, I don’t know Savannah at all. I just moved here. I mean, I’ve literally been here for three or four weeks. I’m probably not the greatest person to talk about the area per se, because my parents live in Savannah. So I’ve been here a million times to visit, but I’ve never actually lived here, but I know the military life and I know buying houses and I know relocating cross country like I know all of those things. So I’m going to make content to help those people because I am very secure in what I’m talking about. And I can talk about all that stuff as I’m getting to know my new area. So that once I know where I’m going and all the different towns and I’m learning my way around now I can speak more knowledgeably about the area itself. But at first, I was really talking about a lot of these military-specific, video topics.

Robert Newman: Okay. And just, just for everybody, myself included to kind of get a feel for how you stepped up your success overtime on YouTube. So you start by speaking to the audience that you felt most comfortable with if I understood you correctly. And that was military and relocation, demographics within the area that you were living in?

Karin Carr: Yes

Okay. So how, effective was that right out of the gate? Cause I know you’re saying 80 or 90% of your business comes from YouTube right now, but that couldn’t have been the case when you first started, you were just feeling around in the dark. So you must have backed into your first success without and been like, oh I’m kind of surprised I’m getting calls. Right. And then you’re building on that over time. And now it’s like, you’re probably doing, you know, really well with every video that you produce. But how did you back into those first, like how much did business did those first videos generate for you? And then what were the lessons that you took along with you to make your second, third, and fourth iterations of these videos?

Karin Carr: It’s so funny that when I first started making videos I had read a statistic that said something like if you embed a YouTube video on your blog post, it is 43 times more likely to show up on the first page of Google. So I was making these videos and putting them on YouTube because the way that my website works is if you want to embed a video, you just put the YouTube link in it. You don’t put the video on the website. You put the link on the website. I was using YouTube as like a repository of where to hold all this content that I could embed on my website to make the blog posts rank better. I had no idea anybody would be looking for these videos on YouTube.

So when I got that first lead, I had not been consistent. I had not had a strategy. I was making videos, but with no strategy whatsoever, other than make something that I can embed on the blog post because I already have the blog post written. And when I got that first call and he said, we’ve been watching all of your YouTube videos. We feel like we know you already, we’re selling our house in New York. We’re going to move to Georgia. We want you to be the one to represent us. It was like, ding, ding, ding. Oh my gosh. He said, I feel like I know you already. And it was not because of my blog posts. It was because he’d watch the video instead. So at that point I just had this epiphany of, I really need to go all-in with video and everybody at this point, this is now like middle of 2017. All of the big real estate coaches had been talking about video video video, but they were mostly talking about social media video. And for me, this is not social media. This is more of a search engine. This is an SEO strategy.

So I figured, okay, I’m just going to try this and see what happens. What’s the worst that can happen is I may make a bunch of videos, but nothing really happens from it. So at that point, I said, I’m going to make a weekly video and every single week for 12 weeks. And then I got a come list me, which is very interesting because my target audience were buyers in the military. My first lead legit lead was a listing who was not in the military. And so I always tell that to people just because you have a very specific niche does not mean you will not attract anybody outside of that niche. You’ll still attract all kinds of different people. It just makes it easier for you to decide what you’re going to talk about on this channel. And when I got that lead, I was like that was the turning point for me. So yes, it took many months of consistent content before I got that first lead. But once that happened, then I got another listing and then I started getting buyer leads. And then I, the more and more and more, and now we probably get two or three leads a day on average on a good day, we get like five or six.

Johnathan Denwood: That’s great. We need to go for a break Robert.

Robert Newman: Yes, sir. All right, ladies and gentlemen, when we come back, we’re going to be talking to Karin more about her YouTube channel. And I’m going to have some comments about quality over quantity, which is one of my favourite topics. So stay tuned.

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Robert Newman: Welcome back its episode 291. We are with Karin Carr, who is a realtor, an author a video content producer. The book that she’s written is about using YouTube for real estate. She’s walking her talk and producing tons of business in the Georgia area, using YouTube as her main lead driver. And before we went to the break, we were talking about how, she had started to see her very first success and what she did to kind of build momentum and, build the foundations of what is her current business.

John, before I go off of my question, because I’ve kind of steered the ship here for like the last 10 minutes. I want to give you an opening to, ask something, from your, from your end.

Johnathan Denwood: Yeah something that one of Karin’s videos I put it to her before we went live on the podcast. And that’s the difference because I think a lot of agents, really, when it comes to video they want to get this viral video where, one of your pieces, you talk about the difference between evergreen and viral content strategy. Do you think you can share some of your views about that?

Karin Carr: Absolutely. I don’t know what just happened to my camera. There we are back. So evergreen is an amazing strategy because you make the piece of content one time, but it’s relevant for weeks and months and years to come. And you’re still getting business from that piece of content three, four years down the road, we get leads all the time from videos that I made in 2017. They’re, they’re old, they’re outdated maybe, but it’s still considered evergreen content versus a listing tour, which is not evergreen content. Because as soon as the house sells, that’s no longer relevant. That information is completely outdated now and is not relevant at all. And so it tends to get a whole bunch of attraction at the very beginning, but then quickly fizzles out. Whereas evergreen seems to build momentum over time. So you can post a video that might only get 20 views in the first week. And then maybe it gets, you know, 50 views and the following week, and then it gets a hundred views. And then all of a sudden the YouTube algorithm picks it up and it goes crazy. And now it’s getting thousands and thousands of views.

So evergreen content to me is extremely valuable because if you’re going to spend, I always compare it to like door knocking. If you door knock a neighbourhood and you go around, you knock on 50 doors, the minute you get in your car and you drive away, you’re done, that’s it. There’s no more lead generation. Like you knocked on 50 doors and of those 50, how many answered the door and had a conversation with you? Let’s say it was five. So you spend three hours talking to five people. If I spend hours making a video, I can talk to thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people from now until the end of time it doesn’t stop. It is so much of a better use of your time to do something that will just not ever stop. It’s like having an assistant that never goes to sleep. They never get sick. They never take vacation. They are working for you 24/7 365 days a year.

Johnathan Denwood: That’s so well thought thank you so much for sharing I think you put it so powerfully That’s why I love you Karin, that’s why I love your videos, back over to you Robert.

Robert Newman: So a couple of things that have come up, which maybe even might be relevant for you, Karin. So you and I are- you’re so much speaking my language that I feel in many ways, like I’m talking to myself, so just one thing to add. So I also, am a blogger I’m a 14 year veteran in the real estate industry. And the first thing that I did on my blog was start to build topics up, thinking that I was going to drive traffic and attract eyeballs like yours to the site. And as part of that, though I’d been researching SEO for well over a decade. So I have to say I was pretty knowledgeable when I started this company. But one of the things that I knew for a fact was that adding YouTube video to these blogs was going to, attract a deeper type of attention, keep people on the blog and, and most likely get me better SEO results.

That is literally the only reason I produced a video my first few. I just literally only produced them because I knew it was a good SEO strategy. So I put the videos on the YouTube channel and I forgot about it. And no sooner, I want to say a year after I started this thing, I started to cycle into my patter with my clients. How did you find me? Why did you call me? Like what got you to the point that you wanted to speak to me? And you know what, even to this day, this very moment, like right now, 99% of the time, because I have copious amounts of content out there at this point and 99% of the time when people are saying, Hey, I reached out, I contacted you. I used your appointment form. I used your contact form. It’s always the same thing. I saw a YouTube video.

They don’t even mention the fact that they may have found me on a Google search for whatever the search was. They, they mention the blog or the video. So now I consider my blog, which gets about 10,000 people per month to it. I consider my blog actually a funnel into my videos, as opposed to the videos as a ranking tool for the blog. So that’s a little bit of funny. I just, I didn’t know if you’d be interested in that or not, but I wanted to-

Karin Carr: It’s very much so you want to hear something really interesting? So a couple of weeks ago I got a lead and I said, how did you find me? And he said, I, YouTubed living in Savannah. He didn’t say I Googled living in Savannah. He said, I YouTubed. So now people are using YouTube as the verb, meaning that is where they are going to look for the information. Yes. I have a ton of videos that rank on Google as well, but they’re not only looking on Google and finding the videos. They’re also going directly to YouTube to search for it now, too, which I think is just so invaluable.

Johnathan Denwood: I think also, sorry, Robert, I don’t actually watch any American television gave up on it. There’s only so many murders and the-

Karin Carr: You don’t like seeing people get shot in the head multiple times a day. I mean-

Johnathan Denwood: [inaudible24:29] temperament can take actually. So, I tend just to watch YouTube, our television isn’t connected actually, I must be this rare breed that don’t actually have a cable package. You know, I just watch it online, through YouTube and a couple of other services. So I think, that’s also something which I think you, you pinpoint, you’d say clear, isn’t it, Karin, that a lot of people they’re using YouTube really to get almost all their advice from aren’t they?

Karin Carr: They really are. And I talk to people all the time that say, a gentlemen called me yesterday, from where did he live? He lives in Seattle, I believe, and said, I’ve just accepted a job in Savannah I’m going to go work for Gulf Stream that makes the private jets. They’re a huge employer here in Savannah. I’ve never even been there before. I’ve never been there on vacation. I know less than nothing about it. Found your YouTube channel started watching all of your videos. Now I have very specific questions about this town, this town and this town. And he is using that as the foundation for his research to decide if he should accept this position. Because if he moves here A, is he going to like it B, is he going to be able to afford it? Is he going to have the lifestyle that he envisions based on, you know, what his budget is for his house?

And when they find your channel and you’re not selling anything, you are being the opposite of a salesperson. You’re just trying to be helpful and answer their questions and be a resource for them. They get to know like and trust you. So now when they say, okay, we’re doing it. We’re taking this job. I am coming there. I’m going to be there on June 15th. I’m going to be there for five days. I want to be under contract on a house by the time I get back on the plane and go back to Seattle, you are our person. It’s so easy to say, fantastic here’s my exclusive buyer brokerage agreement, please sign. And they don’t push back on it. They don’t say, well, no, I’d really like to talk to five other agents. And I’m going to find the person who’s going to give me a rebate on their commission. They say, how fast can you send it to me in DocuSign? Because I’m ready to sign it right now.

Johnathan Denwood: That’s great, hopefully Karin’s up for some bonus content are you up for some bonus content Karin?

Karin Carr: Absolutely.

Johnathan Denwood: We need to wrap up the podcast part of the show Robert, I feel we got enough time for another question from you, and then we need to wrap it up.

Robert Newman: Actually. Karin, John, I’m not going to do a question. I’m going to do a statement, but I think it’s relevant and it’s certainly relevant for Karin. So Karin, I just found out right now during this podcast, doing some searches for relocating to, Savannah, Georgia, that Google has, once again changed their search results. And John, I emailed this to you. I took a screen shot and, sent it to you, but here’s what they did. They’ve actually increased the size of the search results that contain a video that they liked. And as part of that increased space inside the search results, one, they’ve done video index benchmarking, which is where they’ve put little points on the search result. And two, they’re talking about memorable moments inside the video. So this is an incredible increase in space inside the search results that contained video. This is literally Google making 300% more space.

Karin Carr: That’s amazing. I saw that last week at I was doing an incognito search just to see where our videos were ranking. And I could see like key moments in the video listed out below it. And it was like, holy cow. That is so cool that they’re doing that now. And then it also helps you create future videos thinking, okay, what are the key moments that I would want to talk about in this video? Hoping that that’s what would be displayed right along with it.

Robert Newman: Alright So ladies and gentlemen, when we come back, if John doesn’t have anything, what I’m going to ask you, Karin, is I’m going to ask you for some specific tips about topics that you, with all this experience that you have, what would you be talking about? If you wanted to generate leads today, you’ve got four years of history. That’s what I’m going to tea up as the, subject, when we come back, and, deliver our bonus content for those of those people that swing over to the Mail-Right YouTube channel and check out the video portion of the interview. All right. We’ll be back in a moment for those of you who stay with us. Oh, one last thing before I forget, Karin, if somebody was to look you up, how would you, I know y’all a lot of different websites and a lot of different stuff. How would you want them to find you?

Karin Carr: I would say go to my YouTube channel for agents, because all I do is give tips on how to make videos that will help you get more business. And my YouTube channel is just Karin Carr, Karin with an I.

Robert Newman: Okay. And John, if somebody wanted to reach out to you, how would you like them to do that?

Johnathan Denwood: It’s really easy just go to the Mail-Right.com I’m very approachable, and you can book a free demo, give some value and look at your online marketing.

Robert Newman: And ladies and gentlemen, if you’d like to reach out to me, Robert Newman, you can find me on the inbound REM.com a website, just use the contact form, be happy to talk to you about any questions that you have, about SEO marketing, real estate lead generation. The list goes on and on and on how fabulous I thought Karin was. You can ask me about that too. All right. So, with no further ado, we will catch you the next time for those of you listening to the podcast. Goodbye.