#371 – Mail-Right Show: Instagram Reels Ideas for Real Estate Agents With Special Guest Nick Niehaus

Instagram Reels Ideas for Real Estate Agents

Head Trainer + Co-Founder | Business Video School | We teach real estate agents how to use video in their businesses.

When it comes to real estate, Instagram is one of the best platforms to post photos and videos. It’s also a great way to show off your work, meet new clients, and create opportunities for yourself. In the past, we’ve shown you how to promote your Instagram real estate page with some Instagram marketing tips for real estate businesses.

Nick Niehaus

Head Trainer + Co-Founder | Business Video School | We teach real estate agents how to use video in their businesses.

https://www.bizvideoschool.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-niehaus/

 

Episode Full Show Notes

[00:00:11.290] – Robert Newman

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Mail Right podcast. We’re incredibly thrilled, excited, and happy to have Nick Nyhouse, who has a long track record of being an entrepreneur and founder of a lot of things. Currently, he’s head trainer. Actually, Nick, let me do this. You have a pretty robust profile, so instead of me trying to introduce you and list off all of the things that you’ve done or that you’re known for, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to our audience, anybody that might not know you.

 

[00:00:44.780] – Nick Niehaus

Sure. Yeah. I’m Nick Niehaus I’ve been in the, I would say, marketing space basically since I was a freshman in college, so almost 15 or so years now. I can kind of figure out how old I am based on that if you want to, but my background, I’ve been self-employed pretty much the whole time. I invented a product called the Case. Cooley. Keeps a case of beer cold for 10 hours out of ice. That was a lot of fun. I did that for a few years, but my primary focus has been video. So really, for the past seven years or so, I’ve been making videos. Making videos, and other people teaching people how to make videos. So for about three years now, I’ve been running we started a company called Business Video School. Not on purpose, in alignment with when the pandemic started, but it kind of worked out that way. So we pretty much launched right as everything got shut down, which was kind of good timing because it’s an online school. People were able to dive in right from the start. And, yeah, I worked with a couple of thousand real estate agents over the past three years or so, teaching them how to use video, so all kinds of stuff.

 

[00:01:47.730] – Nick Niehaus

So I’m always happy to talk about video, whatever vein or topic you want to go on there.

 

[00:01:53.270] – Robert Newman

Okay, cool. Well, I’ve got my pugnacious partner in crime for those that you don’t know him and you should. Boy, oh, boy, should you ever. John, just for the people that might not know you, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience?

 

[00:02:10.230] – Jonathan Denwood

Thank you so much, Robert, for that introduction. I’m the joint found of Mail Right mailhytheonright.com. We build beautiful websites and WordPress. Plus we got a number of great marketing widget add-ons to help you get digital leads through your website, and it’s just a great product. Back. Over to you, Robert.

 

[00:02:32.470] – Robert Newman

And I’m Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound REM. I made my bones in the real estate marketing business by being known for real estate SEO. But I’ve expanded. I’ve done a lot of things. I’ve actually found a couple of businesses in this space. I sit on the board of advisors for a couple of digital back-ends, prop, tech, technology companies, and a whole bunch of stuff. Go, look at me@inboundrem.com and look at my about page. And you’ll get any story that you want from me. But today we’re going to talk to Nick, and I did the rare thing. Where do you want to hear a funny story, Nick?

 

[00:03:05.540] – Nick Niehaus

Sure.

 

[00:03:06.250] – Robert Newman

Okay. There’s a reason this show was created and founded by Jonathan.

 

[00:03:11.600] – Nick Niehaus

It’s his show. Really?

 

[00:03:12.430] – Robert Newman

Well, it’s our show now, but it was originally his show. It was his show 100%. And then we had this experience where he got on with a guest and he tried to pronounce their last name, and they just got really upset at him. And this is about a year and a half ago, and he’s just like, that’s it, Robert. You’re doing the hosting. And now I just massacred your last name. I’m so sorry. It’s nehouse. And I said, Nighhouse.

 

[00:03:44.630] – Nick Niehaus

I almost consider that an acceptable alternative for how often that’s what I hear. So it’s not a big deal at all. I need to start putting since it’s the word knee and the word house, which are both very obvious English words, I should just spell it that way, you know what I mean? That would make it a lot more straightforward, obviously.

 

[00:04:02.670] – Robert Newman

Perfect. Well, today, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to talk about a subject that’s really fun and it’s also really catching a lot of buzzwords lately, and that’s Reels. We’re going to talk specifically about Instagram Reels, but honestly, video content can really be repurposed for any place that hosts Reels, which is most services these days. Facebook does reels. Instagram does reels. A lot of people do Reels. YouTube does reels. Everybody’s getting into the short little clip business because everybody’s trying to compete against the phenomenon that is TikTok, and not very well, I might add. But be that as it may, Nick, while I would consider myself relatively adept at YouTube specifically, and I certainly am adept at the realm of storytelling, I am not adept at taking a long vision and turning it into a 32nd reel. So we’re going to lean on you pretty heavily, I feel like, in terms of this show, this particular subject. So if I want to do Reels for business and let’s say I’m a Real tour, would you immediately have any suggestions about how one might approach researching what kind of reel you want to do?

 

[00:05:17.270] – Nick Niehaus

Yeah, that’s a great question. So when you’re first getting started with Reals, I guess the first thing I would suggest is it should not be the first place you start with video in general. So I think that this is an area that a lot of people get wrong, where they go straight to social media, they go straight to short form content. And I personally think that might be the hardest kind of video there is to make. I think people often look at, like, live video. It’s harder. And I’m like, well, you just go live and just talk whatever comes up off the cuff. That seems easier than trying to make, like you said, make that whole thing in a 20 seconds long, right? So I think you got to keep that in mind.

 

[00:05:55.230] – Robert Newman

Right?

 

[00:05:55.410] – Nick Niehaus

So if you don’t have any experience with video at all, you might want to start somewhere else for a little while first. Get some reps in, get comfortable and that’s going to help you learn how to be concise. And I think that’s really the first thing you got to remember with Real, that’s one thing you got to have some experience. Number two then is who are you trying to attract? You got to know who the audience is and one of the things that’s different about short form content versus a lot of other kinds of content is, and this is how TikTok works, is that it’s not necessarily that people are following you, right? Most social media is about you’ve got followers, you’re making content for them. The short form stuff is more about you’re making content for the people that follow those topics. Right? So it’s kind of more akin to like a TV channel sort of attitude as opposed to active followers. So when it comes to the real, that’s where you start. So who are you trying to attract? What is it that they care about? So if it’s a Realtor, I’m going to focus on their community.

 

[00:06:54.450] – Nick Niehaus

Can I highlight things in town? Because that means I’m going to attract people who live in my area and as a real estate agent I need people who live in my area obviously. And then you can stop there if you want. You could just sort of make things about stuff that’s going on in town. I like to go a step further and ask how further can I narrow that audience? Are they young families? Are they people that care about sports? What do I know about my ideal customer? And try to come up with really I try to aim for three to five content pillars, three to five topics that you can come back to like clockwork. Right? So I’m talking about the same few things, not too many. In fact kind of less is better in most cases and then you got to just figure out what can you talk about in under 20 seconds? And obviously reels can be longer than that. But when you’re first getting started, anything you think is going to take 20 is probably going to take 40 or 50, you know. So you almost have to like aim for extremely short in order to get something that’s even reasonably short.

 

[00:07:53.180] – Nick Niehaus

Right? So I think starting out I would, I would really dial into that and I think that I know that’s not necessarily easy. So that’s why again, I don’t necessarily say start first with reals, I would start with other kinds of video so that the video skills are out of the way. You kind of feel comfortable making something and then you can be targeted to that audience. And I think that to me, if you do that part, the number of views, all that kind of stuff is less important because you’re sort of guaranteeing you’re talking to people who are going to be a good fit for your business. And then, hey, if I get 500 views on a Real that was well targeted, that’s 500 people that could potentially hire me. That’s what I’m really looking for. I don’t care about going viral at that point. Right. So, yeah, just a couple of thoughts on kind of where to get started. Does that make any sense? Hopefully?

 

[00:08:39.510] – Robert Newman

Well, certainly, but I want to let John has been masterminding these subjects lately, and I feel like he oftentimes has, like, a background action or thought in his head about how he wants these conversations to go. So, John, why don’t you jump in here on the Real conversation?

 

[00:08:59.250] – Jonathan Denwood

I’m sorry to blow that bubble. There’s very little that goes through my head, actually. Thank you for those kind words, Rob. I think when it comes to Instagram, Reals and how they’ve been trying to utilize Reals as a kind of competitor to TikTok has caused a bit of controversialism because a lot of people say, well, we come to Instagram and Reals doesn’t really fit in. I don’t know what your stance on that is. But secondly, through your course, you’ve trained a lot of real estate agents. Are there anybody that is in that’s come on your radar lately that you think have been utilized in these short it’s called short videos. I think that’s a better because they’re on YouTube, they’re on Instagram, they’re on TikTok. Are there any of your students or anybody that’s come on your radar that’s in your memory bank recently that you think has been doing a really good job about utilizing that short video? And maybe you could point out why you think they’re doing a good job.

 

[00:10:24.920] – Robert Newman

I love that question.

 

[00:10:26.470] – Nick Niehaus

Yeah, there’s kind of two questions there. I’ll start with the first half and then come back to the examples. I think. First of all, yeah, I think one of the problems that Instagram and Meta, which owns Instagram, are having right now is well, and this is my opinion, but it’s basically that they sort of screwed up social media. Social media is supposed to be, you know, people in real life. You connect to them through these platforms, and then you can build and maintain that relationship sort of through this digital medium. And obviously the pandemic made it even easier just to immediately connect with somebody on social media. And maybe you never met them in person.

 

[00:11:07.820] – Robert Newman

Right.

 

[00:11:08.010] – Nick Niehaus

And then you can still build that whole relationship there. So traditionally, that’s how we see social media. Right. Well, these platforms, they just have messed with it so much. We’re going to click for a while. Facebook started pushing news, and they started pushing group posts. It was stuff that kind of came before TikTok even, that started to turn people off. I said, Well, I’m here to talk to my friends and family. Like, what is all this other junk? Well, that’s kind of the backstory to that. Then you have TikTok starts to emerge, and TikTok is we would call this more of like a content discovery platform. It’s not as much about the people you follow. It’s not as much about having that relationship. I mean, you still build the relationship, still very much a parasocial relationship, but it’s much more akin to, like, TV channels. It’s much more like YouTube, right? And you hear people talk about YouTube as a social media, and it never made sense to me because they’re literally called channels. It’s like television, right? I think that’s where Instagram really messed up. They just kind of kept copying because that’s what Meta knows how to do, is copy other companies, right?

 

[00:12:15.550] – Nick Niehaus

So they said, oh, here’s TikTok, and we got to copy this. And that’s what everybody that’s what the backlash was ultimately kind of about, right? It’s this idea of, well, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I want to connect with specific people. I want to see the pictures from my friends lives. And instead, you’re showing me random videos from random creators that might be engaging, might be interesting, might be exciting, but they’re not what I asked for. You know what I mean? That was the problem. I think that’s why you see Instagram kind of circle back. They’re deemphasizing video. Right? Now they’re leaning more into photos again. But it’s not about video versus photo. It’s more about, I want to see the people I chose to follow. Right. And that’s worth understanding, right? Because that means that currently these strategies work very similarly because Instagram copied TikTok. So if you take a TikTok strategy and you apply it to Instagram, it still works pretty well. Right. But I think we’re going to start to see that change because I think Instagram is pivoting back in this direction of you’re going to see reels from the people you follow.

 

[00:13:22.400] – Nick Niehaus

At least that’s what they’re kind of saying, right? That’s kind of where we’re at there, right. So that being said to sort of answer that second question of who’s doing well with this, what I’ve seen is that there are several examples of people who are kind of doing this stuff well. And what’s interesting about it is they’re just influencers. It’s not like we talk about real estate and then we have these individuals. For instance, like Zach Faust, zack spouse has 1.5 million TikTok followers. At this point. He’s a real estate agent, and he’s just basically he’s a super animated guy. So, like, when he talks and obviously leans into it, but it’s just engaging. Right. And then he emphasizes it, but he’ll do this thing where he’ll zoom in and out on his face as he’s telling a story. And a lot of his videos are like, he’s just sitting in a car yelling. Basically he’s just telling the story. He’s so impassioned. And I’m like, if most other people told the same story, I probably wouldn’t watch that video, right? Because sometimes they’re really good stories, sometimes they’re just sort of average. But it’s how he tells it, right?

 

[00:14:34.310] – Nick Niehaus

So that would be kind of one example. And I think that’s what in terms of a strategy, you have to look for that’s. What you have to remember is that this at this point, if you want to go in this direction of these short form videos, it’s less about the relationship you already have. It’s less about just checking in with people who already know you, which is what you would do on Facebook or Instagram. And it does work. And the truth is I think that’s better for most agents. I don’t think most agents need to have a very large audience. They need a small audience, a few hundred people, maybe a couple of thousand in their town that want to have a relationship with them and they need to maintain those versus the short form stuff is amazing for going viral. That’s kind of what it’s built for. It’s built for this idea of like if you make something that’s just really engaging, that’s really funny, that just gets somebody glued. It’s why things like the number of times it gets replayed, that’s an important stat on these short form platforms. Because they want to see content that keeps people even re watching the same thing a couple of times.

 

[00:15:37.530] – Nick Niehaus

That is what works there, right? For the agents that it’s a little bit of a catch 22 in some ways because I feel like if you go all in on that, you might end up with a million followers, but most of those followers are not going to be in your area, right. They’re not going to be people that can do business with you. And so you’ve also seen some of that where you’ve got certain individuals that are in cities that are just exciting places to be, right? Like if there’s certain agents who are in, for instance, Las Vegas and they have hundreds of thousands of followers because Las Vegas is just full of really cool, interesting stuff to look at, right? So they go make these little community highlight videos, but they’re talking about stuff that doesn’t exist in most cities, right, versus you go to somebody who’s based in like I live in St. Louis, Missouri, right? There are some exciting things to talk about here, but we don’t tend to have as many of those type of influencers in St. Louis, right? So you do have to kind of consider where you are and then sort of match what you do to that.

 

[00:16:35.550] – Nick Niehaus

If you think about it that way, you can find a strategy that does cater to your area. And I would actually say for a lot of agents, I think having a couple of thousand followers but they’re all in my town is more useful than having several hundred thousand and most of them can never hire me, right? Because I might get a lot of engagement. But let’s say I put a video on, I get 200 comments on it. Now I got to go back through and look at all those and I don’t know how many of those people could actually hire me versus if I have a smaller audience that’s more targeted, I know they’re all worth talking to.

 

[00:17:06.220] – Jonathan Denwood

So I think before we go back to Rob, what I think you’re trying to point out, and thank you. It’s been really insightful of what you’ve just outlined, but I think what you’re trying to say is some of these metrics when it comes to a real estate agent, could be a bit vanity metrics where the real business of really getting clients is a smaller but a more engaged audience.

 

[00:17:34.850] – Nick Niehaus

100%. Yeah, I think we’ve always dealt with vanity metrics and social media but I think short form video has made that problem worse. Also like TikTok, for instance, a view which they actually call a play just means the video started moving at all. So on Facebook it’s 3 seconds. So if you get a view, you know that person spent at least 3 seconds with you. YouTube it’s 30 though, right? So if you can’t really compare those together and then you got short form like TikTok where it’s literally zero if it starts to show up at all accounts, I just really warn people about it’s. Great, you want to have lots of views, that’s all really exciting stuff but they don’t mean the same thing. I talk a lot about the idea of being active versus impactful. So is the thing you’re doing making you feel busy or is it actually accomplishing something for your business? And social media? And especially these video tools can be really impactful but they can also be a way to feel active. And I think a lot of times there’s so much psychological blockage when it comes to making video because they’re so nervous, they’re so uncomfortable with it, that you make one of these videos is 20 seconds long, you put it out and you get this huge sense of relief because you just did the video thing, right?

 

[00:18:54.270] – Nick Niehaus

And that’s certainly true and by all means the first couple of videos you make you’re going to go through that. But what are you getting from it, right? Are you tracking those results? Are you tracking? How many people are actually reaching out to you about real estate? Or are you getting conversations that lead to business conversations? Or are you just getting comments that make you feel good because you got ten comments on your video. And this is obviously stuff that has become kind of a personal pet peeve of mine because I see people talking about engagement rates and all that stuff all the time. So I get it. I mean, it’s hard not to think about, but it’s very important, especially when you’re talking about social media, that you’re measuring the right things.

 

[00:19:30.470] – Robert Newman

Okay, so, Nick, on that note, we’re going to take a break. We’re going to go to for our audience, it’s going to be a brief little break here. And for us, it’s going to be a few seconds, but when we come back, I’m going to share some thoughts about where I feel real are for real estate. John, I’m going to ask you to do the same, and then Nick can weigh in at the end. So without any further ado actually, you know what? Before we go to break, Nick, we’re going to do this twice. If somebody did want to reach out or do a little bit of research on you, I think that you’re savvy you’re talking about a lot of the same hot points that I talk about when it comes to video. So if somebody wanted to watch your videos and learn from you, where are they going to go?

 

[00:20:15.330] – Nick Niehaus

Well, the two best places to go would be our YouTube channel. That’s going to be for our business. So you just want to look for business video school. I put a lot of our even full 1 hour trainings on there for free. And then, honestly, it’s a little old school, but I still like connecting with people on Facebook. So if you just look me up on looking for Nick Nihaus on Facebook, it’s Nickniehaus. And obviously you’re looking for the one that the guy who works in business video school. So just make sure you find that there are a couple of nickname houses out there I’ve found without many. So that’s probably the best way to find me.

 

[00:20:48.980] – Robert Newman

Cool. All right, so, ladies and gentlemen, stay tuned. We will be right back. John and I will be giving you our contact information at the end of this podcast session. If you have seen us on any platform at all, that allows for ratings, reviews, or comments and you’ve appreciated the show, which I’ve been getting more and more comments lately, John, that people have been I think three people have mentioned the podcast so far this month to me, which is crazy. So do us a favor. Leave us comments on those platforms. It helps us a lot. All right, thank you so much. We’ll be right back.

 

[00:21:23.050] – Nick Niehaus

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 mailwrite.com.

 

[00:21:47.810] – Robert Newman

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the podcast Mail Wright podcast. We are doing an interview with Nick Neehouse and we are talking about video. We’ve gone deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep down the rabbit hole for reels. And here is how I view reels. So I don’t do reels at all, ever. Okay? I experimented with reels when I first started my Instagram channel and I got thousands of views on them. And then because I was properly tagging and I’ve got about 3000 viewers and then I started getting leads. Everybody hold the phone, it sounds so exciting, right? But everybody was turning into a lead based on a 1 minute video. And that one minute’s worth of information was not nearly enough to take that person to the place I like them to be before they talk to me. It wasn’t even close to it. I was getting random questions like, do you own a marketing company? What kind of marketing do you do? I was like, well, here’s my website, go there. I don’t want to talk to any of you. So I stopped doing reels. I think though, that if I had an existing, strongly focused audience, I would do reels for them if I thought that there was a purpose.

 

[00:23:08.660] – Robert Newman

I’ve watched Tom Ferry do reels. I’ve watched a few other people that I follow do Reals. And if you’re doing a very quick little inspirational thing to a very select, targeted group of people and you’re intending it as a value add to an existing audience, I love reels for that purpose. Give me 1 minute of like, let’s go and I’m going to be like, awesome. As long as that’s the only purpose you’re not really trying to give. You’re just trying to say, hey, it’s another day. It can be harder, it can be great, and you just make it whichever way you want it to go. But something like that. Like I watched Tom Robbins reels, there’s a few people cyguru. I watch the reels because they’re little injections of a message I’m already familiar with. That’s my opinion on real. So if you’re a real estate person and you have a huge audience and you’ve worked really hard on it, maybe save yourself some content production time and just do a little quick reel to keep that audience engaged with your channel. Jonathan?

 

[00:24:08.840] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, thank you. I agree with you there. Robert, what’s coming to mind? And I wonder if Nick agrees. If you’ve got a Pacific property and you want to promote it quickly to get it out there, that’s one way. I think real, especially if you’ve built up this tight knit social media that you were talking before a break. Nick, where you’ve got like 1000, 2000 people on Instagram or Facebook following you. If you’re utilizing reels on Instagram or Facebook, this short form video about Pacific property, I could see it being quite useful. What do you think, Nick?

 

[00:24:51.630] – Nick Niehaus

Yeah, I agree with that. Sometimes the stuff a lot. This is about testing and just seeing what people respond to it. Blows my mind sometimes, the kind of house walk through videos that will get 100,000 views on these short form platforms because it’s nothing special, right? Somebody just kind of walks in each room, sticks their phone camera in it, and they speed it up so it goes through in 30, 40 seconds. But that’s the kind of stuff that works really well, right? So, yes, I think the short videos highlighting properties, I think that you need to have more than that. You need to be doing other types of stuff, too. But yes, if you have an audience and you can put something in front of them like that, realtors have that kind of nice built in advantage that people are naturally curious about what the inside of other people’s houses look like. Right? So you just lean into that, give them what they want, and they’ll respond well to it. And I do think back to what Rob was saying. I love that understanding of these short form videos, which, the way I would kind of come back to comment on that, is just that idea of whatever your thought is, what is the short but entertaining version of it, right?

 

[00:25:55.590] – Nick Niehaus

Because you’re right, you’re not going to teach much. You’re not going to provide a ton of value in 20 seconds. Right? So whatever that highlight is, that little sound bite that is out of context but is still interesting to hear, that is, I think, a great sort of way of explaining what makes a good short form video, for sure.

 

[00:26:15.830] – Robert Newman

Awesome. I’m going to move the target a little bit here, and I’m going to pull it back a bit and ask you some, like, higher level generalized questions. So John and I talk about video incessantly. We talk about it all the goddamn time. And finally, after I’ve been talking to Realtors about video for ten years, and for the first eight, I got ignored, no joke. Last couple of years, especially since the Pandemic hit, people have started to look at it with, like, a much higher degree of intent. And I have watched certain people come out of nowhere and make massive incomes from themselves, all using video as the primary strategy, the primary driver of said strategy. But with emerging adoption comes a need for more thought out strategies. The way that most of these people are making it in real estate. Nick, whether I don’t know if you’re familiar or not, but they’re doing like, top ten reasons to move to Dallas. Top ten reasons to live in Dallas. What I hate about Dallas, honestly, every single Realtor in the US is following the same template right now. They’re all making the same kind of content, whatever market they’re in.

 

[00:27:30.880] – Robert Newman

All right? I do not advise my clients to do that. We do different content. But I’m curious, you’re a video expert. You understand that the challenges I’ve painted it. So what would you be telling you? Get a. Real estate person who’s called you? I’ve been doing video, it stopped working. It’s not working as well. Nine other people are doing the same videos in the same market. Nick. What do I do?

 

[00:28:01.450] – Nick Niehaus

Well, yeah, it’s a great question. I think that the reality is right now, if you were an early mover, you’re probably not going to lose your advantage maybe ever, right? So you don’t really get those kinds of calls because that person is already better at video, right? They’re a better performer, they’re more compelling on camera, they understand lighting and audio and they’re just making a better video that’s easier to watch, which so good for that person, right? So that’s why this is the issue. A lot of agents, they see that person, they go, oh, they’re making these top ten list videos, I’ll make the same thing. And then they don’t get the same results, right? They’re not as good on camera, they don’t have the experience, et cetera. So it’s all about niching down. I think that in my sense, anything you get more experienced with, there’s sort of this theory that the more of an expert you become as something, the simpler it becomes in your mind because all the steps sort of blend together into just a few steps. And with this video stuff and with social media, it’s kind of for me, started to feel that way, where it’s like it’s just marketing fundamentals, right?

 

[00:29:03.940] – Nick Niehaus

So a lot of people, they skip the marketing fundamentals. They don’t think about those questions that you should ask before you start any marketing effort. And so one thing that’s always confused me about those kinds of approaches is it seems like all the realtors with these YouTube channels are marketing to people who are transplanting to their city. Because I’m not going to search for a video of like, what are the top ten things, what’s traffic like in the city I already live in? Like I already know what that’s like, right, or the reasons to move to my city. Like I’m here, I’m just moving from one house to another. So that to me, I think is the next stage we’re going to start to see is people thinking first, okay, I’m here, I’m in this area. What’s the group of people in this area that I want to do business with and they’re not going to search for that kind of stuff. I mean, YouTube is a search engine. TikTok is a search engine. In fact, people under the age of 25 search more on TikTok than they do on Google in some cases now.

 

[00:29:58.080] – Nick Niehaus

So that’s what you want to start with, right? So it’s so narrow further down. You’ve probably seen this stuff, right? So I would get into like, who’s the customer, who’s the avatar? I mean, this is the work that people want to skip because they want to just ask what the tactic or strategy is and implement it. But if you do the work once, you tend to have an advantage for years to come. So who’s that person? If I’m going to make a video about something in my town, what are the parts of what’s going in my town that that person cares about? So it’s not about moving to St. Louis now. It’s about what do I do? What’s something coming up this weekend that young families would be interested in? If that’s my target audience, right? How do I talk about those topics over and over again? And you should start to see everybody sort of develop their own strategy. So YouTube, and I think TikTok as well, was built on sort of a television model. They call them channels on YouTube. Well, what differentiates different channels on TV, right? They tend to have kind of themes.

 

[00:30:55.900] – Nick Niehaus

You got news channels, you got ones that will show a bunch of reality TV shows, ones that are all about nature, et cetera, with social media, where this isn’t social media. Now we’re talking about these sort of content discovery platforms. It’s even more niche. Right? So how can you get into those smaller niches that people are probably searching for? So if you combine understanding your ideal client with the kinds of search terms they look for, which is that’s just fundamental SEO stuff, that’s where you’re going to find the gold moving forward, I would think.

 

[00:31:25.370] – Robert Newman

Agreed. And I would approach it much the same way, and I will just add a little to denim. You covered all that territory so well for us, Nick. I oftentimes have to throw in a little thought at the end. I don’t with you. I will say this. You want to use tools. The two tools that I use. The three tools that I use. No, the four tools that I use. So here’s my tools. I use Neil Patel’s ubersuggest. I use a reps for YouTube searches, and I use vidIQ for only YouTube. I think that Jonathan uses YouTube, buddy. But either way, you can use something for keyword research on YouTube specifically. And if you got a larger budget and you happen to be or some of you who are listening are CMOS marketing guys, operations guys for real estate brokerages, get them to get you an arrest account is about $99 a month. But you can search all the platforms all at once for keyword research. Everybody. Amazon, everybody.

 

[00:32:23.470] – Jonathan Denwood

I think the other thing, Rob, is, Nick, last week we had an internal show. We were talking about Google Local Guides and becoming a contributor. I think video for your blog content, for your website, for your content that you’re providing for Google. Using video is a great way of showing Google you got a lot more value to your audience. And I think a lot of people would devalue, but I think people I just sensed it. I don’t know if you agree, Rob, that people are realizing having your own website and utilizing these platforms to drive people to your website is the best long term way to go. Rather than just utilizing these platforms as a way of generating metrics that to some extent a vanity metrics. What do you reckon, Rob?

 

[00:33:34.850] – Robert Newman

I think that most of real estate is vanity metrics, especially if we start to say, what are you looking at? What are you trying to do? That’s where my conversation happens much more frequently. A lot of people are trying YouTube, they’re trying video, and they’re getting it wrong. Like, bit deeply wrong. They’re doing commercials, or they’re trying to be too entertaining. It’s funny because some of the most successful agents I do like leads for actual leads. People calling them is still just a neighborhood where you get in a car, you drive through the neighborhood, and you do the who, what, when, where, why of that neighborhood where you just say, this is how many houses that were sold here last year? I’ve been selling houses here for ten years. A house like that used to go for 10,000. Now it goes for 50,000. I like the fact that there’s a Costco over here and a school over here. I’ve never been to the school, but I’ve heard that the kids that go there tend to be pretty happy and you’re just driving around. Believe it or not, that video still gets more leads than oftentimes.

 

[00:34:36.930] – Robert Newman

Like a video that has 50,000 views, it talks about the ten top reasons, like you might want to live in Dallas. That’s not very specific to call me for about a house that is really come to my channel, become a follower of me. I am, generally speaking, like a tourist guide. I don’t think you really want to do that. If you wanted to do, every once in a while, drop a video that you know you’re aiming at a big audience so that you can increase your total user base into a channel. Sure. But I would personally ground that channel foundationally with really valuable, specific, deeply knowledgeable real estate information. That’s how I would do it. That’s how I’ve seen my clients be successful. My guy Brett has 60,000 views and makes about half as much as another channel in the same area that has 1.6 million views. Okay, that’s crazy numbers. And he’s not doing all the false calls, all the false stars as everybody else, because his channel is very goddamn specific. And for those of you who are doing the podcast, nick is just sitting here nodding. So I think that I’m used to.

 

[00:35:42.220] – Nick Niehaus

Being on video, so I just not. But, yeah, they’re hearing us. They can’t hear me nod.

 

[00:35:47.710] – Robert Newman

All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve kind of come to the end of our time. We gave everybody some bonus content. Usually we asked Nick, but we’re actually well over the time that we normally schedule. So we accidentally had you deliver a little bit of bonus content for us. That last little segment that wasn’t based on Instagram is probably how we’re going to divide this up and say that it was bonus content. But this is one more chance for people who might want to know you follow, you get to understand what kind of value you add. Keep in mind, our audience is 100% realtors or real estate professionals. That’s all we target this show at. And I know from personal experience we get a lot of brokers and people like that who listen to the show. So how would you like those people to reach out to you if they were interested in researching it?

 

[00:36:35.070] – Nick Niehaus

Yeah. So this time I’ll give you my website, bizvideoschool.com. So www.bizvideoschool.com, that you’re going to be able to get a hold of us. There contact info, lots of guides, free stuff you can download and then really again, it’s Facebook. I mean, I know that’s for how old I am, that’s not really popular on my friends aren’t on Facebook, but most of our customers are. So that’s where I tend to spend a lot of time. So you find me, Nick Niehaus, on Facebook. N-I-E-H-A-U-S. That is a great place to connect and I accept all my friend requests unless they are suspiciously weird. So as long as you don’t have a weird sound and account, I will accept your friend request and be happy to connect to the connect there.

 

[00:37:14.970] – Robert Newman

Awesome. So John, same question for you, but why don’t you tell people what you’ve got going on? I know that you’ve been looking for some beta testers. Why don’t you talk to us a little bit about that as we wrap up.

 

[00:37:28.770] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, we’re looking for mail. Right champions. If you become a male right champion, you’ll get a beautiful WordPress website free for one year and hosted and supported, and the only thing we ask you is that you utilize the platform and you have strong connections in your local community and your local real estate association and you become hopefully a real champion. If you’re not happy with us after the year, we will move your website somewhere else and you won’t lose it. It’s a great offer and we’ve had quite a bit of interest and we have a chat with me or Adam and we see if we are a good fit and then we get you on board. Back. Over to you, Robert. Beautiful.

 

[00:38:21.200] – Robert Newman

If anybody would like to do some research for me, about me or at the company that I founded or anything else you want to start that inboundrem.com and either watch the video on the homepage or watch my about video. There’s two separate videos that will both do a deep dive into who I am, what the mission is, what the missions are that I have, and how you can engage either me or in one of my missions, if you so choose. So, having said that, everybody, ladies and gentlemen, Nick Jonathan. Listen I so very deeply appreciate that. Everybody that shares time with me has been a lot of fun. Nick, you’re deeply knowledgeable. If anybody is looking for some information on video and maybe some kind of coach or material, I’m going to give it my stamp of approval. Jonathan’s offer is amazing. For those of you who might be looking to make a change but don’t have a big budget, a beta test best offer is incredible. So take him up on it. Call him. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much, guys. Thank you so much. We’ll catch you the next time.

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The Hosts of The Mail-Right Show

Jonathan Denwood & Robert Newman

jonathan@mail-right.com

https://www.facebook.com/mailrightusa

————————————–

Robert Newman

InboundREM

https://inboundrem.com

 

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