Episode 42 - Build Your Personal Brand!

• Welcome & Episode Info:
  • Host: Bob Mangold, the Listing Coach.
  • Episode: 42 of the "If You List, You Last" podcast.
  • Topic: Personal branding – its importance and how to build it.
  • Reminder: Join the Facebook group "Real Estate Asset Advisors" for discussions.

Recruiting High-Performance Agents

• Target Regions: California, Arizona, Florida, Texas, Illinois, and Kansas.
• Opportunity: Interested in starting and growing a listing agency.
• Support: Marketing and infrastructure investment with no overrides or royalties.

Mortgage Market Update

• PCE Data:
  • Headline rose 0.15% in July, year-over-year inflation at 2.5%.
  • Core rate inflation remained at 2.6%.
  • Impact: Inflation moderating, aligning with the Fed's target.
  • Mortgage Rates: Potential drop below 6% by the end of the year.
• Existing Home Sales:
  • Sales rose 1.3% in July, median home price at $423,000.
  • Inventory slightly increased, with the market still stagnant.

Personal Branding Overview

• Misconception: Personal branding is not just social media.
• Importance: Engage with your audience, showcase expertise, be personable.
• Strategy:
  • Post content and engage with the audience.
  • Social media is a conversation – interact, don't just post.

Content Creation Tips

• Content Types:
  • Market updates, industry insights, behind-the-scenes content.
  • Client testimonials, personal stories, educational content.
  • Use tools like ChatGPT for research and content creation.
• Research:
  • Use Google and YouTube to find trending topics.
  • Focus on educating the consumer.

Community Involvement

• Branding Beyond Social Media:
  • Be known in your community through sponsorships and partnerships.
  • Consistency is key: Regularly post content to build trust.

Website Importance

• Shocking Statistic: 74% of real estate agents don't have their own website.
• Website Content:
  • Should be educational, geographically specific, and mobile-optimized.
  • Incorporate blogging for SEO and lead generation.
  • Use ChatGPT for content optimization.

Video Content & Distribution

• Video Ideas:
  • Market updates, property tours, educational videos.
  • Client testimonials and personal stories.
• Distribution:
  • Use platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
  • Leverage tools like Simple Social Posting software.

Offline Networking

• Networking Groups:
  • Start your own if needed, use platforms like Meetup.
  • Sponsor local events, volunteer, and speak at community events.

Measuring Branding Success

• Engagement: Look for growth in followers, engagement, and business results.
• Regular Review: Consistently update and improve branding elements.
• Handling Negative Feedback:
  • Respond professionally, not defensively.
  • Understand that negative feedback is inevitable.

Final Thoughts

• Personal Branding: It's an

Join our Facebook Group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/realestateassetadvisors

Visit our website to watch replays of our Wednesday "Elevate Business Briefings" at: www.RealEstateAssetAdvisors.org

Download a copy of my book, "If you list, you last!" at www.IfYouListYouLast.com

Transcript

Hey, welcome fellow listing agents. Bob Mangold, the listing coach here with episode 42 of the, if you list your last podcast. Hey, as always, thanks for listening, sharing, and downloading. So today we're going to talk about. personal branding, why it's important, and what you can do to build your brand. Now, just a reminder, make sure you join our Facebook group, the Real Estate Asset Advisors, and that way you can join in on the conversation, share your thoughts, comments, or questions on any of the topics that I talk about right here on the podcast.

And before I get started, one more important topic. We're looking for high performance agents in California, Arizona Florida, Texas, Illinois and Kansas, and we're looking if if anybody has any interest in starting and growing. a listing agency. Now, if we feel you're the right leader, we'll invest in the marketing and infrastructure of your business without taking any overrides or royalties.

Now, if you're open to a conversation around that, go ahead and join the Facebook group and send me a DM. So with that, let's roll. Let's talk about what's happening in the mortgage markets this week. Let's actually, let's talk about what happened last week. PCE, personal consumption expenditures showed that The headline number rose 0.

155 in July. So rounded up to 0. 02 or to 0. 2, I'm sorry, which was slightly below what was expected. So what that means is year over year inflation is at about two and a half percent, which is a little bit better than what they were anticipating. So that's why you didn't see the markets really go up or go down.

Literally three days in a row, the 10 years treasury was down. One or two and the mortgage backed securities were up one or two. So traded within a ridiculously tight range What's important though is that the core rate that strips out food and energy costs and it's the main focus of the fed Never understood why that's one.

That's why they like that one because well, isn't food energy costs almost everything So year over year inflation remained at 2. 6 Some are looking for 2. 7 But the monthly core reading was very good at 161 and when annualized  That actually comes out to 1. 93, which is below the fed's target. What does all that mean for us?

It's a lot of the geek speak, right? It  means that inflation is moderating and it's heading into the fed's target Despite good monthly progress and year over year progress Because of the low replacement values from last year. Hey, August was August from 2023 was very low, but we should be able to make some good progress when we get the data for September.

And again, everybody's is pricing in a 25 basis point cut in the Fed fund rates, which again, psychologically, it has an impact on the mortgage rates. But what you have to understand folks, Fed fund rates is the money that banks lend each other overnight, right? And so That has a big impact on your car loans your credit cards But other than psychologically not very much for mortgage rates, but I do believe that you'll see them going down I would say substantially at least I think by the end of the year will be under six Now the other good news that came out last year is existing home sales snapped their four month losing streak Home sales rose 1.

3 in july to 3. 95 Which was in line with what the market was looking for sales were down You Two and a half. Percent year over year. Now the median home price for existing home sales sits at 423, 000. So that's up about 4. 2 year over year, 1. 3 month over month. But each month you're seeing more and more revisions on the annual sales pace.

We started out in July at 4. 05. Now we're down to 3. 95. Inventory creeped up a little bit. But again, folks, the average market time is 24 days, right? So we need to bear that in mind. So overall the market is still stagnant. We do need to see some things happen with interest rates before we break off and see a big buyer and seller market, certainly more buyers will come into the market when that happens, but I also believe that more sellers will also come into the market.

So with that, let's talk about personal branding.  Everybody always assumes personal branding is always just social media. And it is, and it's an important factor, right? So I would do the podcast, but it's also about engaging with your audience and letting them see who you are and really what level of expertise you have.

And are you personable and are you friendly and knowledgeable and all those other things? But hosting content's important, but it's really half the battle folks. It's the engagement that you get from. Your social media, right? Because that's where if you start again, let's say for example, you have people Raising questions on facebook or instagram and you get in there and you answer them that engagement is going to take and drive people to you and make you much more interesting, right?

So now, you know just imagine social media is it's really a conversation You walk into a room announce something and then leave well, you wouldn't do that Would you'd stay you'd listen to what others have to say? You That's what you should be doing on social media, asking some of the questions, right?

That's why I encourage you to join the facebook group so you can go in there  And interact with me and answer questions or ask questions and see what the thoughts are, right? Because interaction does two things for you first It shows that you're active and you're engaged which makes more sense That you're more approachable and personable think of it this way folks.

You could have a social media presence You could be posting all kinds of content, but if you don't start getting engagement, the algorithms don't kick in to help you.  And so everything that you create, you're going to want to create in terms of trying to get people to engage with you.  Then next, it helps to build that relationships.

Talk about some things that you can do to help them and things of that nature. And I'm going to give you some ideas on content in a minute. But I want you to understand that yes, you certainly have to post content, but you do have to put some thought into it about what is it that you're going to do.

Now you can use things like chat, GPT to take and do some research on trending topics on real estate in your market. You could have it do hashtag. Look up for you so that you can see what is it that people are interested in. And then you're going to have a chat GPT help you create the content, right?

It's not as hard as what you think it is, content is king. Make no mistake about it. You can't have interaction if you don't have content, right? So what kind of content? That's the important thing. What is it that you're supposed to create? What if we start with market updates and industry insights?

So I teach my coaching students and I've got a format that they can follow on doing monthly real estate updates based on zip code, right? Number of homes that are available, number of homes that sold, those kinds of things. So that's one way to take and do that. But It's also talking a lot about now these buyer agent commissions and seller commissions and things like that If you start creating content around that you'll be shocked how much engagement you'll get especially in the real estate community Just anything that has to do as I record this today with buyer compensation Is huge right  then you could do behind the scenes content  People love to see what actually goes on, right?

Take your phone and kind of walk around and show people what are happening. I always tell agents to get out and actually walk through homes, especially where it's especially helpful is if you get a home that needs some TLC need some work. If you were to walk around with your iPhone and just simply.

Talk into the microphones like hey, you know my best estimate here in this kitchen is gonna be about ten to fifteen thousand dollars you're gonna want to redo these cabinets and just talk like you were a real estate agent they want to see what really happens as you're going out and touring properties, right?

Then you could actually have somebody string all that together. Hey, here's my day of looking at properties and it's three or four properties where you did that. So they love the behind the scenes content. Then we always have, of course the client testimonials and success stories. It's folks, it's nothing more difficult to understand that it's just proving that you are successful in what you do, that your clients do and appreciate what you've done for them.

And having that positive piece of content go out there is a big deal for you. And then it's okay. I've heard people say no never post anything personal in social media. And that's just simply not the case. You don't have to go overboard. But you do want to post a few things out there from a personal nature.

It could be kids birthdays, places you went on vacation, things of that nature. Don't go crazy with it, but it needs to be part of your plan. They need to know that you have a life outside of real estate, right?  The next one is probably one of the more important ones. Educational content. Simply start researching what is it that people  are looking for.

And the easiest way to do it, folks, is go to Google and start typing in most frequently asked questions homebuyers make or home sellers have  and when the little menu drops down, you'll start seeing a list of all those questions that people are actually looking at. Another great place to do that is go to YouTube, punch in the same information and look for YouTube titles where it got a lot of engagement or a lot of views, right?

That meant that means that stuff is important to people. So you got to do a little bit of research into this. So everybody thinks, Hey, social media is just, whip out my phone and do that. And yeah, you can do that, but you do want to do some research. And the best thing you can do folks is educate the consumer.

It's really why they use real estate agents. This is what we do all day. This is supposed to be our business. You need to demonstrate it, right? Let me give you a quick example. One of The biggest misconceptions for homebuyers is you need 20 percent down.  Now that's nowhere near true,  but that is what people believe.

If you start to educate them and you start to create content around them, then I promise you that'll become a big deal. The other thing y'all have, or hopefully you all have a CRM with leads and sphere of influence and things like that. If you shoot video content or you create content around that, email it out to that database.

Make sure that the people that you know that have some kind of relationship with your, maybe they're just leads that you got from Facebook, but at least when you're out in front of them showing your expertise, it's going to have a big impact on your business right  now, community involvement in local events.

Unfortunately, most people think of personal branding is only social media. That's not it at all. Folks, what is it you're known in your community for? Do you sponsor, I don't know, high school football teams or, as high school athletics or, Little League type things or any of those things that you want to do, you got to get out there and build a brand and build a face  in your community so that people know who you are.

You've heard the old adage in advertising. Somebody needs to see your ad at least eight times before they even consider hiring you. You got to do that.  In branding too, in person.  Next let's talk about consistency. It's probably the most maybe not the most, but it's right up there with one of the most important things you do.

Cause folks.  It's not so much that you create content,  but what the algorithms are looking for is how consistent, what your audience is looking for is how consistently do you do this, right? This is episode 42.  So I've been doing this podcast for 42 weeks coming up on a year, right?  And the key is that it gets done every week and are some shows more popular than others?

Absolutely.  That's just the way it is. But if you get into this thinking that you're going to build this audience of, 10, 000 people in 90 days, it doesn't work like that. It can take years and years of being consistent, but you have to create the content and then you have to figure out what else could I turn it into?

So if I do a video like this, can we turn this into shorts? Can I turn this into a blog post? Could I turn this into a white paper? And the answer to all that is no. Absolutely, you can.  But what consistency does most importantly, folks, is it builds trust  and people understand that they can count on you to do things over a longer period of time. 

And trust is what's critical in our business with clients, right? The other thing is, as you consistently do this, start to think of ways that you can turn this into other content. Take one long video, cut it into shorts, turn it into a blog post, all those things like I said before. Now you can take and create 8 different things with it, and it can go on tic tac and Instagram and heck, some of the content you may be able to take and put on a Pinterest and things like that.

Just get it out there, don't be afraid.  Next, and we tend not to think of this as personal branding much, but it's your website. Here's a shocking statistic folks.  74 percent of all real estate agents do not have their own website. Now, they may have a page on their company's website, but it's not branded to them. 

They didn't design it. They didn't talk about what's important to them. They didn't go for the look that's consistent for what they're doing. As we speak right now, I'm redoing, my website is being completely revamped to make sure that it stays congruent with the things I'm talking about in today's marketplace. 

So you need to take a look at that website, and if you don't have one, you really need to. What does that say to you when they just go and, you're going to the page, the About Us page, or the agent page of your company's website? Remember this, folks, that probably the most important thing about branding and social media and websites and reviews and all those things is that when you get referred by somebody,  one of the first things they're going to do They're going to go to Google and they're going to start doing some research on you. 

If they can't find you folks, that's an issue.  So let me give you another example of something you don't consider as personal branding per se. I'll look up an agent and I'll see their realtor. com, their homes. com, their Zillow page. And there's no information on them. They haven't even uploaded a picture on there.

You go to zillow and realtor. com And there's no picture. Those are the two most searched websites for homes  And you couldn't take 15 20 minutes and upload a picture and put your website and about you and things like that that's personal branding in most cases folks. That's the best google ranking you're gonna have  Is your zillow and realtor.

com and homes. com profile and then Facebook and LinkedIn That's all personal branding folks. You can call it social media call it what you want, but it's personal branding Then as it relates to your website, what kind of content are you going to put on there? Is it educational? Is it area and  geographically specific?

And it should be.  Next, does it do anything to generate leads? So like one of the things we're doing on my website right now is we're putting in a bunch of free resources  that I can direct agents and lenders to access some of the resources that we give away for free.  It's a lead generation site, so we have to update it, right?

It has to change with the times and it's got to be mobile optimized for a phone, right? And the truth is guys, in most cases, most websites in today's world are. Mobile optimized, but all those things are important. And then it also needs to take and start branding you together with all of your other content.

So it has the same look and the same feel make sense.  And then you should have a blogging section of your website because that's what's establishing you as an expert. And if you do it properly, it actually will get you ranked on the first page of Google, right? You could write a blog and then you could actually go into chat gpt And say can you optimize this for seo for the following?

Keywords in a real estate in whatever 67226 or whatever it might be And go in and chat gpt will optimize that so that it repeats the keywords Multiple times or it'll insert that in there. Folks, that's a pretty simple way of doing it and you know It almost comes down to like your writing style when you go to chat gpt.

You just say hey, I need some research on real estate market activity in your zip code and I need it to be presented in a casual friendly You Professional manner. Can you create a 2000 word blog  for me?  You'll be shocked what it comes up with. Folks. Just absolutely shocked.  Tell it. You want it.

Friendly, casual. You could say professional authoritative. You can train chat, GPT to do what you want. And it'll go out there  next. What are you gonna do to promote that blog?  Maybe what if you ran a Facebook boosted post towards it?  Or you posted the YouTube video, things like that. You've got to get out there and promote it.

Don't just think because you create it, like they'll just automatically come. Don't do that.  One other thing that you can do is when you create a video and you have a blog, you embed the blog. There's an embed code inside of YouTube. When you click share,  you want to embed that in your website.

And you're probably wondering why I just put the URL in there. The truth is guys, it's not enough YouTube's thought processes. If somebody is going to take. And literally embed a video into another website. That content must be pretty good, right? That's a reasonable thought process and that's how Google thinks.

Now, video content is going to be, what's really going to bring your  social media to life. And the algorithms around YouTube and Tik TOK folks is a big deal. So what kind of videos can you make? What about market updates? So Property tours, the educational videos, personal stories.  Not only could it be personal for you, but client testimonials.

Talk about how that worked  now. I find most agents freak out about. Oh my gosh. It has to be completely perfect No folks, it doesn't all you really need and I will tell you I used to be  you know an android user  and I finally gave in and upgraded to iphone And the reality of it is folks the iphone  huge difference gives you all the video quality that you could possibly want This podcast is actually being recorded You On an iPhone as a camera, so don't sweat it Then you need to take and distribute your content One of the reasons we created simple social posting software is to create that content everywhere or distribute that content everywhere, right?

It goes to google my business tiktok instagram facebook twitter linkedin  Get that stuff out there.  And then finally, let's talk about networking to build your personal brand, like offline, like being members of a networking group. You go I don't really like the way those work, or I can't get in. They only allow one of each one in there.

Guys, start your own, go to meetup. I think it's 29 and start doing your own meetups.  For things like that, right? Start doing it with vendors that you refer, things that people need for their homes and start doing that. Start sponsoring some local events, start speaking. I know a lot of people are afraid to get up and talk, but start to do speaking events at like churches and, educational places, volunteer to go talk to college students.

And that's probably been five years ago. I got asked to speak at the at ASU, Arizona state university to their business group and come in and talk about what's it take to become successful in life.  It was a cool experience for me. It was great content too.  Then building a referral network and I won't go into huge detail, but this is part of what I teach from a coaching strategy.

I have an entire platform of how we build. Referral networks. I think we all can agree that a referral is your single best lead source, isn't it? Why not get more of them?  And the easiest way to think about it folks is if you want to get referrals you have to give referrals, right? It's called the law reciprocity  Then what about community involvement giving back like sponsoring as we talked about or volunteering? 

Or doing local partnerships with local businesses guys That's how I built my production. I used to spend a lot of money in advertising, but then over the years, as I built more and more referrals, both locally and nationally, I was able to scale my advertising way back.  And then I get this question a lot.

How do I tell  if my branding is being successful?  There's all kinds of answers that I could give you. You could certainly study it and write, do all these online metrics and stuff, but I would tell you the best way that you could tell is, are you getting engagement? And it's hard to do folks,  but if you're getting engagement or you start to see the growth of your, say, YouTube channels or the number of followers you have, but most importantly, folks, are you getting business from it?

That's really the measure of why we do it.  And then I would tell you this, you need to regularly review that branding, right? Is it consistent? Maybe go to Fiverr and have, three, four, five people design some things for you and see if there's a different design that you like.  You know always be looking at how you can upgrade and do that stuff,  right?

So we talked about being consistent, but here's a big one that I do want to talk about What happens if you get negative feedback?  What do you do? It  doesn't matter who you are folks. You're gonna get it So just doesn't matter who you are That's why when you're looking at reviews for restaurants and three or four bad reviews out of 200 Folks, that's just people you're gonna have it.

But the most important thing to do is answer it You And be professional.  That's all there is to it. Don't be defensive, be professional.  That's all it really comes down to folks, because it's going to happen. Can't avoid it. It's just how you deal with it. That's going to make all the difference in the world.

So we covered a lot today. 

We'll have to edit that out.  Now we've covered a lot today, but there's one thing I want you to talk take away from this.  Personal branding is not just a buzzword, something that you do or you talk about. It's something that you have to plan in, right? You have to, Time block your schedule and you have to put it in there.

I blocked my schedule every week to create podcast content, then to record that podcast content, then to have it edited, fortunately. I use a an AI service called the script  that literally I used to have a whole production team that did it and spent literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month.

For 30 a month, you run it through Descript. It does all your editing, takes out all the mistakes that you've made. It's just unbelievable. Then it transcribes it for you so you can turn it into a blog. But you have to spend time for that. You have to allocate time for that just becomes part of what your business is.

Your brand's always going to evolve. You're always going to evolve. So keep learning keep striving to be the best you can be. And Hey, thanks for joining me today. And remember this, if you list you last, we'll talk to you on the next episode.