Heads In Beds Show - 5 Things You Should Be Doing With Video To Grow Your Hospitality Business in 2024

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

In this episode, Conrad and Paul chat all about video marketing and how to leverage video in your guest marketing and homeowner marketing.Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellLauren Madewell (LinkedIn)Eastern Shore YouTube Example🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagramTwitter🚀 About BuildUp BookingsBuildUp Bookings is a team of creative, problem solvers made to drive you more traffic, direct bookings and results for your accommodations brand. Reach out to us for help on search, social and email marketing for your vacation rental brand.

Welcome to the Heads and Beds show where we teach you how to get more properties, earn more revenue per property, and increase your occupancy. I'm your co-host Conrad. And I'm your co-host Paul. Hey there, Paul. How's it going? Just another fantastic football week. Oh, wait.

We're not talking about marketing. Oh, that's right. We stopped the marketing talk. We. Oh, wait, we're not talking about marketing. Oh, that's right. We stopped the marketing talk. We stopped the football talk. We're moving over to marketing. It's a fantastic week. It's starting. The fall colors are coming.

And I think that's good for the companies we're working with in a lot of cases, too, because travel should be abundant to see those. What is it? Fall leaf peeping? Those were always my favorite blog posts, right? How about you? How are you doing, Conrad? Yeah, I have not fond memories, but I have memories of what we called the leaf peepers growing up. Growing up in Western Massachusetts, there would be that time period

where, again, I think I've shared this before in the show, but I always took it for granted. I grew up in this very unique place. But when you're a kid, it's just what you're used to. So you just don't think, of course the leaves change. That's what happens in the fall. But the idea that people would come from different parts of the state or different parts of the world and come explore, hey, all the trees are changing colors, always seemed a little strange to me. Now look back at it and go, that was really cool. So yeah, the leaf peepers is what we called them. And they would just stop on the highway, though. Like you can't stop on this highway. There's not a place to stop. We've got to get to Springfield, like we got places to go. And people just didn't always vibe with that.

So yeah, I do have I do memories of the this time of year at the fall time. I think it's a great time, actually. Yeah, it was my it was my daughter's second birthday yesterday. So she's got one of these fall birthdays. And so there was a whole party and everyone was over here and everyone had a great time. So it was a good weekend didn't get much work done, as we alluded to before I did record. That's okay. Sometimes weekends can be less work and more of that kind of stuff. So it was good. That's it is.

That's the family time. Those, especially those little kid birthdays. There's something special about those. They may be a disaster at some point too, but yeah, I think we got lucky. Yeah. Minimal meltdowns, really no meltdowns to speak of. There was like a bunch of kids running around,

not even too much damage. At one point, I think she stuck her hand like into the slide and got a pin between a slide and something. There was like a little tiny cut on her arm and a little bit of crying but it was like a band-aid and things were all good so i'm like and sometimes those types of events like little kids parties a bunch of kids over and you're like huh no one like seemed to hit each other there was like no one screaming and you're like that was a massive success like the tier volume was like low like sub 10 tier volume so you just roll with it. It's good.

I love it. That's, that is absolutely a win. No doubt about it. Huge for the, for huge for the O'Connell household, for sure. You know what else is huge and growing a lot? Video. So we've got an interesting topic today. We're going to do five things that you should be doing with video to grow your hospitality

or vacation rental business in 2024. So I like this topic, Paul, this was your idea and I didn't waste much time as soon as I saw the title, I thought that's a good one. So I'm gonna let you maybe take us into the introduction here. I think obviously video is a growing trend. We've talked about TikTok in like a cursory fashion before in some respect, but it's not just TikTok.

There's all these platforms are really leaning into video. What's your frame on the video explosion that we've seen and how has that changed over the past few years? It is, I think video has always been something that I've seen a lot of value in, especially on the B2B side of things when we were doing more corporate marketing and trying to get more, I think more, tell more of the story. It was such a great way to do that. And the first thing we'll talk about is the power of that storytelling, but there's just something to be said for someone who's willing to get on camera and talk about an experience or talk about how well, talk about a specific area or talk about

how well you've done for them or how great an experience you created for a traveler. And it is, we say a picture is worth a thousand word, video, 15 seconds, 20 seconds of video. There's a lot of value that can go into that. So I think it's from the standpoint of just what you can put into it versus what you can get out of it. Yeah, there's maybe a little more input, a little more work getting maybe getting a photo shoot or a video shoot or doing something like that. But the outcome on the end of it, the final product, as long as you're working with someone who's professional and knows what they're doing, can do a little editing there. I think it's just, it's something that everybody's looking for video and the attention span. We just don't have that attention span as much anymore. So to be able to

capture someone in 15, 30, 60 seconds, 90 seconds, or even something a little longer than that, I think is truly important in anything you're doing on the marketing side. But what are your thoughts on video? Are you trying to push that more? Or is that something that I know different channels were using? But have you just used like those video raw assets more frequently in the last few years? Yeah, I'll be honest. I think we've had a mixed bag of results here this year with it. I think we've had some case studies or example projects that I can point to and went, wow, the video that we're able to produce here from an advertising perspective, and things that are on the website is really useful and helpful. And we've seen lots of benefits from it.

And then I hate to say, but we've had some some dud outcomes from video, I think probably because the creative wasn't solid enough, the area wasn't interesting, or the properties didn't have a unique visual look to them. And I think that if you put a subpar product out on video, you're not really going to get much of a response. So the things that do well in video are things that have a really unique look to them sometimes. So I think that can be challenging. If you're a vacation rental manager, and you have 25 plain white wall condos, like that's going to be hard to really figure out a video strategy around your property. So I think

you instead have to focus on your destination. We'll get to that here in a second. But if you have that property that does well on video, yeah, it can crush. And we've seen that certainly with clients who even though the production quality of what they're doing is very low, just by the fact of what they're promoting, they do well with different platforms. We had one, I hesitate to use this word because then it becomes an expectation, but we had several like sort of viral reels that we've edited this year. But it's just based on, it wasn't based on our unbelievable editing skills or anything like that. To my knowledge, I think we did a good job with some of these edits on our team, but rather the property itself was in

a stunning location with really unique amenities with all these things working towards it and that's really what led to the outcome so maybe the first thing to think about as we get into storytelling is what story are you telling in the video if it's the property is unbelievably amazing like it almost does some of the work for you if the properties aren't really the focus of what you're doing on video and perhaps they shouldn't be if you're not really, if you're marketing more of a commodity, hey, I have the same cabin as everybody else's property, then I think it's storytelling about the area or storytelling about the company or those kind of angles. So I'll go to you with storytelling. It's still storytelling, for sure. Yeah,

and the storytelling side, I do. I think that there's, especially with the more established companies that have that story, that have written maybe a whole about us feature on their site or a page on their site. I think really bringing that, putting words behind it, putting images behind it, putting visuals behind it. I think it's so important. It is. It's, if you can create that experience for someone of what they're actually going to do when they're staying there for potential guests, I think that's great. But to be able to tie that into some type of family aspect or what it is, I think a lot of those decades old businesses, it is, they've been handed over from maybe family to family or company to company or whatever that is. And there is a story to tell. And I think that allows you to connect at a deeper level with those guests. And even on the owner side with those owners, it is, you feel a little more confident trusting your home to someone who has been doing this for

years and has stories both good and bad. I think we're probably not going to highlight some negatives in video, but it would be an interesting anti-marketing effort or strategy to see if you can maybe make a little joke or make a little fun about that. But it is. There's just so much more you can do, I think, in being able to tell that story and being able to package it in a nice way. You don't have to write five paragraphs and have someone sit around for maybe five, 10 minutes trying to read it. It really is something that you can, you can just give someone what they need to see. And if they want to explore further, then you've given them that opportunity as well there.

So yeah, I thought we're coming at it from different frames, too, which is good, right? You're saying, hey, the owner considering listening with you may think of this. That's true that I'm thinking, what's the guest gonna see on social and I think the truth is, you might need both types of videos. But I do like your point there about injecting some personality into the video itself. For sure. I have seen some videos being produced by almost like a PR agency style approach where everything's positive. And to be honest, that can make them a little boring. Like years ago, not a current client that we're working with, but a client that I worked with a long time ago, and that's the previous agency. And they had this eight minute video produced

about the company. And it was like people shifting from like scene to scene. And it was like, I'm the housekeeper and I do a great job and I'm the property manager and I do a great job and I'm the real estate broker and I do a great job. And it was like, we value consistency. We value hard work. We value taking care of you on vacation. And these were all like positive messages. I don't mean to say those aren't positive messages, but it was a snooze fest too. So I think like having a little bit of personality or fun. There's people online that I follow Lauren Madewell does a great job on. She injects a lot of humor into her videos, like it makes it more fun and engaging to watch. And I think that if you can pull that off, that it's definitely worth exploring

that angle of storytelling, because we watch things that entertain us, right? And look at any TikTok feed. And what do you see, you see a lot of stuff that's entertaining, and educational, if you can weave those things together, as she often does in her examples, obviously, that's a really winning combo. But even if you can't educate, at least entertain, right? That's a better way to go. If you have to choose between the two, a boring educational video or a entertaining one, you're probably going to do better with entertaining one, even if it's just more awareness. So yeah, I think that's something to consider. And there is a way to storytell though, where you can inject a little personality without it being so dry and stale

and find the right sweet spot, in my opinion, for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. I'll take segment number two then, piece number two here, which is property tours and virtual walkthroughs. Because I think this is the type of video

that pretty much anyone can do. Again, I alluded to this in the last block, we were talking about having properties that are more appealing, are going to naturally do better on social media or do better as advertisements, etc. But I do think that pretty much any property will get some level of benefit by having a property tour or virtual walkthrough. Now, sometimes this is the ones that we've asked for clients, it's not even again, super high end equipment, it's not

the most premium Sony equipment, it's get an iPhone, get a gimbal, which is just keeps the iPhone steady. I think if you have a steady iPhone, then you're pretty much in business as far as being able to produce at least like B plus style video content of just walking through a unit, walking through a property, showing the different room, showing the view, showing the backyard. If it has a pool, these aren't necessarily always things that need a lot of explanation. Just that plus music is like a pretty decent video strategy. In my opinion, I think that's a, again, at least like a B or a C plus video strategy, just doing the basics. Well, now there are clients that we work with that use these really high end camera equipment, like Matterport style or 360 style video tours. I think those are

great, because they do allow you to like really dig into the exact nature of the property. I think the bigger the property, the more benefit you're going to get from that for the most part, a one bedroom studio apartment is pretty easy to explain the photos, it's hard to explain like a 10 bedroom property and photos, there's especially if that 10 bedroom property also has an amenity area or has a backyard with a bunch of different resorts, resort style things, a pickleball court over here, a private pool over here, and so on. We have a client that kind of has a property like that. And I think having those more detailed virtual tours can make a difference. So yeah, I'm really bullish on this. Again, the only I think contributing factor is like like you can't really use these on listing sites they're really made for your website

we talked about this in previous episodes where it's like all the work that you do towards creating awesome video and photo assets is like suboptimal by just putting that on airbnb and you could do a lot better on your website where you can have a separate tab or a separate section for these videos because if you're going to spend all the time and effort to do them you may as well make them shine that's my point of view on it. Yeah, absolutely. And this is something where I can actually, I can remember, and it was before I knew Hunter and Ginger at Beach Ball, just now working with them a couple times. But early on when they were early on with, I think just resortsandlodges.com at that point, we were talking to them about how they were getting so much traffic to the website. And

it was just doing these very simple, I think Hunter went around to every property that came on the program. And that's what he would do. He would just do a walkthrough. And over time, I think they had gotten a couple of those hit as viral. And it came to a point where I think they slowed down the website, maybe broke the website a couple of times just because they were getting so much traffic there. So I think it is. There's something to be said for, I love what you were talking about with the bigger homes. I think, especially when you're looking at the 360 videos, drone footage for those private homes, I think is really cool, especially in some of those either beach markets, or if

you're in the mountains to show just how protected you are or how great of access you have to X, Y, and Z amenities that are there. It is. I've also seen some people have some fun with it. There's Harrison up at Eastern Shore Vacations. He does, I think we should actually include a couple of his links because his videos, his property tour videos, fantastic. And as energy, he gives Lauren a run for her money for entertainment on that side of things on the property tour video. So there is, there's a lot of different ways. Oh, it's, I will certainly share that, share it with you one way or another, but I think we can maybe give that a little exposure because it is, it's really cool to see people who take it to that next level and have

fun with it because it ultimately we're looking to have fun. These guests are looking to have fun. Yeah. They may be looking to celebrate something or have a business retreat, but something that's creative and engaging is still going to definitely bring them in and make them more likely to book, I think. So yeah, I think that's certainly something that those walkthroughs, I can remember a few examples of those that just when you see them, you don't forget them. And that's something that's going to create that repeat business, that repeat customer to at least come back and see, hey, do they have new videos? Do you have a new property on the program?

And can I see more and learn more about that? So I think there's always a lot of positivity there. And it is. And as new properties are coming on, you should be doing that. I would say that should be part of anybody's onboarding package where they're going to do videos, they're going to do tours, they're going to do all these things so that you can present that property in the best possible light for travelers moving forward. We've talked about before in previous episodes about offers, like what offer do you

give the homeowner? And how does that offer make the homeowner choose you versus another property manager in the area, especially if your fees seem pretty similar, commissions seem pretty similar, etc. I think this is a great value add for sure, if you're willing to make that kind of investment. And some people I know in the past, I've had clients that have done this, and they've charged the homeowner a fee for doing it, which I'm not necessarily completely opposed to the time and place for it. I think if Brooke was with us today, I think he would say that's friction that's adding a slowdown to the process, he might not recommend it. But I do think there's something to be said for the idea of, here's the value that we're bringing you, here's the investment that we're making in you. So

therefore, here's the cost that we incur by doing this. Here's the way to get it on board. So I don't know what the right approach is there. Maybe it's something that we're testing. Do you offer a base plan, maybe for the homeowner side that doesn't include a video? And then you say, yeah, but I can do a video and it's going to help you get more bookings, but it's going to obviously cost me a lot of time. And in some cases, actual cost of hiring a videographer. Therefore, we do a video and it's $500 or $1,000. And maybe that doesn't fully offset all yourings, but it's going to obviously cost me a lot of time. And in some cases, actual cost of hiring a videographer, therefore we do a video and it's $500 or $1,000. And maybe that doesn't fully offset all your costs, but it offsets some of them. But I do think like long term, if you're talking about marketing the property, it's so funny, every once in a while, I just get like messages from people. And it's usually something to the effect of especially

over the past few months, bookings are way down, what do you think? I go and look at what they're doing. And sometimes I find flaws in the property itself. But usually I don't find major flaws for the most part, because if they were doing well before, it's at least a decent property. It's not like they weren't doing what needed to get done to get some level of progress. But then I look and I feel like sometimes what's often missing is like, where's your above and beyond towards showing the property itself? Or where's your amenity or something that really makes you stand out? And I think if you have it, then video is a great way of doing it. But it's people just get this block in their mind of I don't know what it is. But it seems like people get this block in their mind of Oh, it has to be perfect, or it has to be set up a certain way,

or maybe something like that. And they don't seem to make progress on it. And to your point, I think maybe doing a, a good walkthrough is better than no walkthrough at all. And a professionally shot one may not necessarily provide a significant boost in performance as regards to promoting that property, putting it out there on social media, for sure. We've seen that where we've had iPhone style videos do much better than more artsy, high quality stuff actually gets shot because people think of what I think when they see like the iPhone style video, they see like something that they can imagine themselves in a little bit. And if it's a property that's attainable for them, they look at it and go, Oh, that looks interesting. They click over and then they want to explore more

about the property and what it has to offer and that can lead to future conversions so i would also say in this segment don't overthink it too like you're probably better off doing you're doing it yourself or someone on your team is doing it you're probably better off putting out 20 mediocre ones or 20 bad ones and then you're going to figure out okay this seemed to work better let me figure out the music let me get the phone more stable with the simple gimbal and i think you could be a few hundred dollars in and 20 shots away from producing your 21st, which is actually pretty good and gets you a lot of bookings and gets you a lot of visibility. So that's another layer I'd add in there is don't think of this as a massive thing. Think of it as a way that you can add value and be willing to do

DIY yourself. Like you have to, I think, have that spirit. If you're a vacation rental manager or host, like what can I do myself in some scenarios, especially if cost is an issue for hiring a videographer and getting them out there for sure. Absolutely. As I'd like to segue that, cause that is just that format and stuff like that for the video itself, doing the iPhone video, I think on the guest testimonials and review side of things, that's actually where I think it does feel a little more personal having some do a testimonial or have an owner do a testimonial, have them do that up, down video on their

iPhone and just do a selfie mode, especially if you're going to, I think we'll talk about it more on the video distribution and social media side of things. But if you're going to go to the ad side of things, you're doing interruption marketing and someone's probably,

unless you've got a really compelling video, a final product of that video, someone's probably going to be a little more, it's going to catch them off guard a little more seeing that mobile video than it is to necessarily see the fully produced. Where maybe if they're going on social or on their Facebook or their Instagram, they're going to see all these videos that are produced that do look really professional. But yours, that is just this owner saying, hey, XYZ does a great job for my business. owner saying, hey, XYZ does a great job for my business, or I had an amazing time while I was at this vacation rental company, and this is what I did. I think that those specifically,

they do have that more personal nature when they don't feel overproduced. But I guess generally with guest testimonials and reviews, what are your thoughts there, and how have you seen them be effective? Yeah. So I would say we don't have a lot of examples that I can lean on here. We've had some clients that have done this. And I think that the testimonial format that I feel like has been the most popular with some of our clients over the past few years has been like these photo review style testimonials. I think we've talked before about Flip2 as a product on the show before. And I think they are leaning mostly into the photo angle of it. Hey, here's a picture of me and my family on vacation, enjoying it. Here's a picture of it, but it doesn't seem like they're really

aggressive towards pushing towards video collection. So I think this is an interesting angle to explore, but I can't point to a ton of examples. We've got some clients that have done worked with like influencers. And I would say that's the closest example that I can find to this approach where the influencer will leave some kind of feedback or talk about the property directly to the camera. Hey, I'm here. I'm staying at XYZ property. Here's what it has to offer. And that type of content, even though I don't think it was necessarily exactly in our outline, I guess it kind of ties to the social media piece that we talked about is actually performing pretty well. In some cases, we have a client that's based in Florida who needed this on his own, but he started working with a few

influencers who have like larger YouTube channels and they were creating video. They were doing that first person point of view of here's what it's like to stay in the property. Here's what it offers, et cetera. and they've got some really legitimate brand search traffic from that and property specific search traffic so people go into google and search the name of the property or they search the name of the property manager because it's mentioned several times in the video and i think that's an example of it's a little manufactured i'll be completely honest right it's not like a guest who's just like oh let me shoot up let me open my phone and start to film this video. It's a created environment to some degree. But that style of video content, I do think is

something that people are drawn towards on the ad side. And those those ads, when we take them, or we take that video content, and look at the views on it, and the engagement on it, it's much better, I think, which is interesting that this idea of let me walk you through this property and just show you what it has. It's more of that first person point of view experience. So that's the one I can lean to is like influencers masquerading as guests. They are guests. Sure. But it's that them simulating that environment

seems to be very effective. And especially if they have an audience, it can actually lead to more visibility for the property as well. That is, I can remember there when they were actually building hotels to be more influencer and Instagram based. I think one of their, one of the places,

I think it was in New York, had a selfie wall or a testimonial wall where that's what you did. When you checked out, it was right next to the front desk. And you essentially did your little selfie review testimonial, and they put that out immediately. I think that was part of the gimmick with that particular brand. But it is, there's something to be said for setting up that space right within on the property, or if you have an office, having that space where giving people the opportunity to do it, they don't have to do it, or they don't have to do anything crazy. They don't have to send it to you, share it with you, do anything like that.

But just to give people that outcome or that opportunity to do it, I think you'll probably get more of those reviews and testimonials coming through because people will think more, hey, or even if during the checkout, get 5% off your next day if you are willing to give a guest testimonial review, something like that. If you're looking to push things like that, I always think that's not a bad thing. Just trying to figure out how do you balance that getting those genuine, legitimate testimonials reviews without feeling like bottom paid for actors. So yeah, which is what an influencer is. If they're good, they make it much more convincing.

That's true. They're not good. That's also true. Yeah. Yeah. I think that you explore an interesting angle there. But I will say this. You're pretty much never going to get a testimony like that if you don't ask for it so by asking for it and creating the

opportunity for the video testimonial to occur it gives you the opportunity it gives you the chance of getting really high quality video testimonials and the truth may be that if you get 100 video testimonials recorded perhaps 50 of them are actually worth sharing how it's the world that would be that may be actually a pretty successful ratio to be honest with you just seeing some of the videos that we've gotten for on the one-on-one basis so yeah it's ultimately or you could perhaps use not the whole video but rather a snippet we've done like supercut style ads before for like in the vendor space where we've actually created an ad and the ad is something to the effect of a lot of different clips and interviews smushed together

into kind of this overall thing we don't do an interview show but if we did we could do like a little quotes from each people and then cut that into something that would be pretty interesting. Yeah, that's my angle there. I would go in that direction. All right, next on our list here is doing local area guide and recommendations. In my mind, this is just content, which we talked about a few weeks back, right? It's content. It's just instead of writing it into and publishing on a blog, you're doing the same service maybe to the content, but you're doing it in video form. So I see this as a very localized type thing to do. So we really haven't dipped our toe into it. But some of our clients have and they've seen good results. But I think it's a very boots on the ground type activity. And honestly, my approach here would

just be like, take your best performing blog content, and maybe make a short form vertical video about that. That's one approach, or just see what people are searching for. And then see if that would work well in a short form video format. So I'm bullish on this. I don't know if you have like specific examples or recommendations here. But this is the way to do it. I think if you're just trying to create reach, I would agree this is it's certainly collaborating with the local businesses anytime you can do that. I think that's beneficial because it is it maybe lends more credibility if they are more well-known business than yours is. But no, I think this is just a great opportunity to, again, paint that experience for people. It's, there's one thing to read it.

There's one thing to see pictures, but to really get that walkthrough, get that experience of where you're going to go and what you're going to do, going, doing a little 20 second video on the hiking trail or how maybe giving people that experience of if you're walking to the beach, what is that walk to the beach? It's two minutes to the beach. Let's do a two minute video talking about what you're actually doing or how you can pass the time on your two minutes to the beach, those small little things. But I think it does. It's all about that experience with video. And the more you can create or remove, let let's say remove the unknown about the stay or the experience that just again just adds to the credibility lends to more more understanding of

what you're getting yourself into it yeah i think my frame on that is always that people want to research and they want to consume before they go to a specific destination or area. So having the opportunity or having the chance to share it in multiple formats, if bandwidth allows, I think is a great way of doing things. And there's ways I think to do more of this remote video collection approach where you could maybe have someone helping you on editing, if that's really your strong weak point, excuse me, where you're like, feel like, Oh, I can't, maybe I can shoot the video, but I just don't see where that I could put it together or take me so much time to put it together. could work with an editor you could work with an agency that could help you take a longer video of hey here's the hiking trail and

here's all the things that you should know about it and chop that into a more kind of shareable short form vertical video a la reals tiktok style but i think it's something where again like you sharing that is going to give you the chance and it's a volume game as well right or this is something that we have had a client do recently. They hired someone locally to do marketing. And then they're doing that in their not free time per se. But when like, all right, I don't have a lot of my plate today. I can go do three, four, five different videos about different things around town.

And then I can publish that on our company's page. We can promote that on the ad side. And it's went all around. So I think you've got to get creative. You have to use your ability to share that local knowledge and realize that if this is like an example, I don't mean this as a shot of a casa, but like the casa or Airbnb is not going to make short form vertical videos about St. Simon's Island, Georgia, or about North Brittle Beach, South Carolina, they're just not going to do it like it's not it doesn't fit their model. What they would do is maybe promote that if they were

to, you know, consume that video, or they would be able to get something from it. So I think the best thing that you can do as a local occasional manager is highlight what makes you local highway, highlight what makes you unique. And I think that's a great way of doing it is actually going into the world and experiencing things and sharing them with people. And people are going to be drawn to that for sure. So most definitely. Yeah, let's go to the last one here, social media and video distribution. It is I think the only reason you're going to create something is to use it. I don't think you just want to create videos because it is. It can be time consuming. It's effort. There's a lot there. It can be expensive. But really, you want to make sure you're using that video, whether that's on social media. Obviously, there are channels on

top of channels on top of channels that you can put that video out or that asset out there. I think there's something to be said for matching the right channel with the right messaging. Certainly, it is a little more fun. You want to keep those on Instagram and Facebook. Maybe if you want to be more B2B with your videos and talk about those owner testimonials, hey, LinkedIn is a great opportunity for that or putting that out specifically in an ad set or targeting potential homeowners through some type of social media advertising. I think that's something where you really want to, you don't want to just put, I think you don't want to put a light, fun video on a place that would be more serious.

I think that's the one caveat to video is making sure you're putting it in the right distribution area. I guess, what are your thoughts on making sure you're getting that video distributed in the right channels in the right areas? Yeah, I think if you make it in a way where it can, in theory, work on both platforms, I think that's optimal from a budget perspective. So if you can make a video work and be able to post it to Reels natively and therefore syndicated Facebook, and you can post it to reels natively and therefore syndicated Facebook.

And you can post it to, let's say, TikTok natively as well. I think that's fantastic. Sometimes that's hard because I find that sometimes the video that does best in the platform is made and edited in that platform. So for example, with TikTok, you can download the video without the watermark. There's kind of little tricks and hacks to doing that. I would never recommend, by the way, posting like a reels watermark on TikTok or vice versa, because those always pretty much always seem to do poorly in my experience. So that's one small little tip that I would say.

But yeah, like using the wrong font, like using the TikTok font on Instagram seems to like not perform as well as the other way around. I'm an experience. So I think that it's like in an unlimited bandwidth, unlimited budget world. Yeah, you would create like stuff specifically for Instagram, and you create stuff specifically for TikTok or specifically for even Pinterest has a short form video product that a few of our clients have tested as well, which is just more like informational type stuff. Again, like we were saying earlier, things that do hiking trails in best places to go to the beach, that sort of stuff. But in the real world where most clients don't have that budget, I think you're better off producing it into something that matches your

brand standards. Like you were saying, if it makes the most sense that it would be set up in that way, then do it there. And then just post that to that platform natively and schedule things out in advance. But I think that you'll find this has been our experience that the audience overlap between the two. Some seems to be pretty small in some cases. So I wouldn't feel bad about posting the same video to different channels, even if it was on different schedules. TikTok seems to reward more of like pushing volume.

Like I think you're better off if you're not sure a video is good. One of our clients has this point of view philosophy, which is that I test a video first on an on tech talk. And if it doesn't do well, I don't it doesn't bother me as much. Because they seem to be more forgiving of like high volume publishing. If it does well, and only then if it does well, do I post it to Instagram. So that's an interesting point of view. I don't like her numbers back up, that seems to be the right approach. Whereas her point of view is that if you push a lot of duds on Instagram, it's going to hurt you, you're not going to get reach when you do put out a good video. So that's one way to think about it. I'm only going to put the good

ones on the more algorithm, me driven like platform, whereas tech talk is purely exploration. In many cases, where people are just on a for you page, a lot of the time, they're consuming video, and they're consuming a lot of it, according to the analytics, more so than they are on Instagram. So different philosophies. I would always encourage you to test your own kind of assumptions and try your own videos. You may find that you have a bigger audience on one of these platforms. We have a client that we took over working with recently who already had 25,000 Instagram followers.

She has like four on TikTok. So obviously we're going to get better on Instagram at first. Not saying that we can't have some success on TikTok, but it's probably not going to be like plug and play. Like it's going to be on Instagram. We talked to someone a while ago, who's the other way around, basically had worked on TikTok a little bit and actually decent following there and pretty much hadn't focused on Instagram or I didn't have a meaningful following there. So you may find that

one starts to do better for you. And in my mind, that's fine. I don't think it's nothing. There's nothing wrong if you're getting results with embracing the one that's doing better for you. It's something that we've talked about recently, which is you're better off doing one channel really well than trying to spread yourself thin across multiple channels and doing a half-hearted job in three or four that's generally my point of view agreed and agreed that's about it i was saying kind of just wrapping up here that's i think anything that we're looking at and and one of the things one of the recurring themes there's cost there's definitely cost associated with video. And I think anything that you're doing, whether you're doing, taking the first step and going

property walkthrough and property tours and walkthroughs, or just doing testimonials, taking, you don't have to do all five of these things or all four of these things, or do one or two of these things to start. But I think it is any, at any path place along the way of trying to create those videos. If you can't do it, there are people who can help you out there. I think that's the thing. If you think you don't have a great camera, but you can do the editing, have someone shoot the video for you or vice versa.

If you've got a great camera and you can't do the editing, there are resources out there. So don't let that cost or your inability, but maybe your early stages or your novice level of experience in doing video, don't let that be a stopper to actually trying some of these things because it is. I think the bottom line here is these can be effective if they're used properly, if they're distributed properly, if you're giving people, owners or guests that experience of what they can do, what they're going to get, how they can experience your brand and your business there. So anything else there, Connor? No, I tried to wrap it up a little

bit. No, I think you did a good job. And I would say the only thing that you didn't say maybe directly that I would add in there is that it might take time. And this is not a channel where you're just going to right away, you're going to launch in here and say, I've done 10 videos, and it's not enough. I'm reading the $100 million leads book from Alex Ramosi right now. And the first page of that book, some of the stuff he says is like, common sense, almost. So I sometimes struggle with it a little bit. But sorry, if you heard back right now, as I dropped the thing on the top of the book, but what's the what's I want to get it right. So I don't want to butcher the quote, the guiding principle on page three is do more, which basically he highlights a lot in the book where he talks about what people need

to be doing with regards to lead generation, which is what we're talking about here a little bit. Yeah. And he tells the story about I tried a flyer set and I tried 500 and he learned that he had to try 100,000 at a time to really get actual data. So I think the same message applies here with regards to getting success with video, which is that if you post 10 and you're like, oh, it didn't work, then like you need to do more. You need to do 100 videos. And if you only have limited time and bandwidth, that's going to take you a lot longer. Okay, that is what it is. Like we all have limited bandwidth and time, so you can't do it all.

But you can't expect top results if you're not willing to put in top effort to video because it is a hard platform to master. It's not something that I think you can sit down with someone in a day and teach them everything. I think they have to do a lot of it to get results. And some of our clients that have seen results have, like we were saying earlier, lent on the experience of someone leaned on the experience, excuse me, of someone else that's done it, and then piggybacked off their audience. That's my final parting thought, you got to give this stuff time. But if you have

success, you're going to really, you're going to be rewarded for it over a long period of time, for sure. Most definitely. Awesome. Thank you. If you got some value, if you made it this far, hopefully you've liked the heads in bed show. We always record on video, but we only put out little clips and things like that. But if those appeal to you, you can follow us on LinkedIn. Paul puts out clips on LinkedIn. I put out clips on LinkedIn as well. You can see our smiling faces. Otherwise you just listen to it, which we appreciate that as well. If there's anything that we can do to help you feel free to reach out to us. We'll have links in the show notes to like our profiles. You can reach out to us that way. We always appreciate reviews. So it's not video related. But if you just go to your

podcast app of choice, subscribe to the show, then you get future shows in your feed, which really helps us out. And if you leave us a little rating, we're trying to get some more ratings here before the end of the month, that would be greatly appreciated as well. Otherwise, we will catch you on the next episode. Thanks for your time and attention. And we look forward to bringing more stuff in the future. Thanks so much. Bye