KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Boost Production INSTANTLY with These Story Comment & Reply Hacks

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

Welcome back to another episode of the agent Goldmine, where today we are interviewing Michelle Berman, Michael, and in this episode, you're going to learn exactly the step-by-step process in order to start waking up to messages on your Instagram of potential clients having messaged you. So we're going to go over exactly what to say and what not to say. We're going to go over a 45, 20 of how to comment and how to comment and how to how to respond to stories in order to increase the conversion rates and therefore increase your production. And fun fact on how to never let messages slip again by labeling them. We'll go into more detail in a bit. Michelle is a nationally sought after Instagram prospecting coach, speaker, and the

owner of Berman Media PD. She created an online course that teaches realtors and loan officers how to tap into the brains of their ideal clients and leverage that data to actively prospect on Instagram. So Ali and I talk about Instagram a lot. Of course, we're very interested in it. Michelle takes a different approach. This is not the same type of information that we've been getting. And so super interesting, super tactical you will leave with like specifically what to do, you know, today to start making impactful changes in your business. I'm about to go implement. And so without further ado, gold miners, please welcome Michelle Berman Michael. Michelle, you have niche down.

You work with realtors specifically and loan originators through Instagram prospecting. And I'm so curious, what is the biggest mistake that you're seeing real estate agents make now with their Instagram prospecting? They're not doing it at all. Biggest mistake, they're just not doing it, right? So Instagram as a whole is really a platform that most agents look at as a passive space, right? I'm putting content out, I'm doing good videos, or I'm paying a service to post for me. So yay me, I posted on social media today, right? And they're they're sort of just checking the box and then they call either me or they call someone else or they bounce around companies and they'll say,

hey, Michelle, well, Instagram hasn't produced any fruit. me, right? I haven't seen any benefit off of doing this. And I really want to make Instagram profitable, but I don't know why I haven't yet. And so I'll ask them one question and one question only. And I always know based off the question exactly the problem. It's very easy to address or how should I say this. What's the word I'm looking forward? Diagnose. We'll use that word. So it's very easy to diagnose the problem very quickly. And here's the question. The question is, are you waking up to a multitude of messages every morning in your inbox on and Instagram with conversations that need to be continued.

99.9% of the agents I talk to say no. And so the reason for that, right, is again, we are passive consumers of the platform, not connectors on the platform. So when I produce content, that's the passive side, right? I am passively putting content out, waiting, sort of hoping people DM me about it. I'm using a call to action in my caption saying, comment this number, or comment, whatever to try to get engagement. And I'm waiting to receive that.

That is the true definition of passive marketing. So why Instagram isn't working for them is because they're not doing the opposite, right? They're not actively prospecting or actively seeking out new conversations and new relationships. So I'll stop myself there, but that's the number one thing.

Okay, yes, let's continue. So that's passive. What is active? What would you consider, what would you suggest that agents do? Yeah, that answer to that one, question is probably an hour and a half show by itself. So what I'll try to do is keep it to five minutes or less. But active prospecting in the simplest of forms is outbound messaging,

right? Meaning we have to identify who I want to be talking to on the platform. And then ultimately, where are they? Right. So quite literally, where do they hang out on a daily basis on the Instagram platform? What Instagrams or what type of Instagrams are they consuming? What accounts are they looking at regularly, are they in specific sort of niches that I can target, right, which I can talk about momentarily. And then in addition to that, so that's kind of part one, right, where are they? Who are they? Next is what to say to them. So once we've identified who they are, now we have to identify what to say to them. So for example, I always put myself in these shoes just for the sake of it's simple, right? And it's easy to understand. But

I am a licensed real estate agent, but I do not actively sell. I solely have my license. because I know real estate agents in 50 states so I can refer regularly. But if tomorrow I decided I was going to start selling real estate and that was all I was going to do, I was going to shut my whole company down and just start selling, where would I prospect on Instagram? And there's really three buckets or three specific categories. But I'm a military wife. I live in a military town. My husband is a medically retired Green Beret. So I live in a very military focused town, right, in the sense of there's a ton of those types of families here. I'm also very into fitness. I'm a retired swimmer. I spend for 22 years, competitive crossfitter for six years.

My husband runs ultra marathons. So we have fitnesses to really the core of who we are as a family. Now thirdly to that, I am a mom, right? I have a two and a half year old. And every mom, if you're a mom, you know, like life doesn't exist without your littles. So it's a very tight community. And so when I say all of that, my point is if I'm going to go actively prospect on Instagram, who am I going to target? right? I'm going to find all of the CrossFit gyms in the area that I live in. I'm going to find all of the running communities, both on Facebook and Instagram. I'm going to find the hashtags, the geo tags, all of that. I'm also going to find all of the veteran-owned businesses here in Clarksville, where I live. And I'm going to categorize that. So I'm going to have different

days of my week where that is all I'm doing is interacting in those three places. Now, why would I, as a real estate agent, want to comment on a CrossFit gyms post? Because guess who's consuming that post? a bunch of other people that are into CrossFit that are hyper local here to where I live. Then they click on my account. They come to my profile. They see that I'm into CrossFit. They see that I'm in the community of Clarksville. And they also see that I'm a mom.

They get to see all these other things about me. And then subliminally, oh, by the way, she's also a real estate agent. And therefore, I grow, right? I grow in a really hyper local fashion, which is every real estate agent's like come back at me, right? Or sort of defense mechanism is like Instagram. I can't, it's nationwide or worldwide. I can't focus on my little city. Yes, you can if you do it right.

But the point is, is as I am doing that, anybody and everybody in those three buckets here locally, where I'm trying to sell real estate are going to see my account. They're going to see more about me. And they're going to see me commenting on things and being really active, both on the main accounts and theirs. So the idea there is obviously I'm going to open up my inbox on Instagram every morning and have a whole bunch of conversation.

that I started intentionally in those three buckets or with people in those three buckets, and I have a ton of opportunity and conversations to continue. So it takes time. It takes work. It takes effort. But if done correctly, our clients crush it. Just confirming. So I'm good with the three buckets.

You know, you find those pages with the veteran-owned business, the military, the fitness, the moms, and then you engage in their content, like comment-wise. or are you like are you seeing other people who get are you reaching out like via DM? Yep. It's both. It's both. Okay. So you're doing.

I have a golden rule. It's called the 45 20 rule. So it's 45 comments and 20 story replies on a daily basis. And I think that's actually the document I submitted for you, Shelby and Allie to give to your audience in the show notes. Right. So it's the tracker built out and what that, or it's an empty tracker built out with all the different categories so that everybody can put their own categories where necessarily. But so daily, you will be doing 45 comments and 20 story replies across each of those five categories.

So my math, if that's correct, it's 225 comments per week and a total of 100 story replies per week. Right. So that doesn't sound like a crazy number when I say, hey, how many calls do you make per week? But when I say, hey, do this on Instagram, all of a sudden, everybody like shuts down and they're like, whoa, there's no way I can do that. Well, I'm going to ask you, ladies, would you rather? send 100 DMs or would you rather make 100 cold calls? D. D.m.

D.m. All day. We're not cold callers here. I don't think I've ever even made 100 calls. Dude, I did seven, year one and I was like, nope, not for me. Yep. No hate to the cold callers out there. You guys are great.

So 4520 rule, 45 comments, 20 story replies. Can we get a little more, let's get like granular on is this? Because, you know, there's the comments, which I I see myself doing something where I'm like fire emoji fire emoji post. I didn't even read sometimes like what the post was or like are these just like your fucking send in it or are we like thoughtful careful? Can we talk about that? Yeah.

So great, great question. Thank you for asking that. So it's there's two sides to it. So when you're doing a story reply, the intention behind a story reply is different than the intention behind leaving a comment on someone's feed. Right. So when I'm leaving a comment on someone's feed content. my sole focus is to get it read and to get it replied to.

How do I do that? I have to stand out, right? I can't say awesome content. I can't do to your point. Shelby, fire emoji, fire emoji, and expect a response from the person.

Right. Now, if we're doing that to our friends, if we're doing that to each other here, that's one thing, right? Because I know that I could reach out to you personally and we would get to talk. But if you're trying to outbound prospect someone

and you're doing that on someone that doesn't know you and has never even spoken to you or even been connected to you in any capacity. You can't do that, right? So when you're using Instagram and you're saying, my job is to create new relationships every single day. When you are commenting on feed content, it cannot be that. It has to be very intentional. And psychologically, this is broken into two categories.

Fun fact, I'm a human psychology and self psychology nerd. That's how I've built my entire company is the merge of those two things. So this is not your Instagram 101 fluff. I'm not going to tell you how to go viral because you can go to fucking YouTube and learn how to do that on your own. But so when you're leaving comments, right, acknowledgement is the key on feed content, right? Meaning I have to read their content. I have to read the caption or watch their content, excuse me, read their caption and leave a very intentional comment with the intention of my goal in doing so is to get you, Allie, or to get

you Shelby to actually reply to me. How do I do that? Obviously, I have to be a little bit more thoughtful. Now, story replies is a whole other ballgame. So when you're doing a story reply, you're ending up in someone's private messages, which allows for longer conversations, more personal conversations. You can get a little deeper. Typically, you can get a little bit more vulnerable in a space like that if you feel comfortable doing so. So the way that story replies works is it's three parts. Each of the three parts makes up one message. So this is not three separate DMs just for clarity, right? This is one message divided into three parts that make up that single message. So first part is acknowledgement, right? If you post a story about,

you guys going and getting a cup of coffee and you say that you're drinking a honey lavender latte and i comment asking what kind of tea did you get i just fucked up right because i didn't actually watch what you posted or read what you posted so that's a really important step to not miss right watch the video read the little text that someone posts then acknowledge first same thing as what we were just talking about so acknowledge directly hey alley i love honey lavender lattes i love that you just ordered one too right that's my acknowledgement piece then the middle the key. So the middle is truly, I would say the hardest for most agents to actually execute, but it's the one that cannot be missed in order to be effective. And it is the subliminal business

play. So, for example, Allie, right, I'm going to pretend I'm commenting on your honey lavender latte. And I can say, I love that you just order honey lavender latte. That's my favorite thing to order. And I always get oat milk, whatever I order it. Now insert subliminal business play. where is this coffee shop because I always love to take my clients out for coffee before we go out to do a showing or before we go out for a day of showings, period, right? Or in that case, that would be a question. That's the center. And now the key here is my job is to make it known that I sell real estate without saying, hey, I'm the slimy car salesman in your DMs. Here's my phone number for all your real estate means. Right. So subliminal business play. Then the last part of the message or the third part is the question. start a question and who, why, how, whatever you feel like in the moment, with the intention of obviously getting a reply. So what we've found is this structure of story replies gets way more responses, first and foremost.

Secondly, the people on the receiving end are more likely to respond in depth, right? They're going to give you longer responses because they are like, holy shit, you just took the time to send me a quality message like that. And then third thing is they're more likely to be willing to continue the conversation as long as you, the agent doing it, stay curious, meaning asking continual questions, right? When they reply, make sure you ask another question to keep the conversation going. So long story short, to your question, Shelby, by doing this specifically in this structure, the people that you end up on the phone with are people that are actually qualified to be on the

phone with you, right? Meaning they know what you do. They're ready to talk to you on the phone because you've done a good job at getting them warmed up. throughout this warm up period. They've consumed your Instagram. They know what you do. They know where you live. They have an idea of who you are as an individual.

So if I were to call either one of you and say, hey, Allie, I'm so excited to take this conversation off of Instagram. I know we were chatting there, but I just figured it would, I would give you a ring. Do you have some time to chat this afternoon? Right. So it's so easy. It's no longer a cold call. It doesn't feel awkward.

It doesn't feel slimy to the person receiving it. They're less likely to hang up on you, right? that we're avoiding that sort of intrusive, gross feeling. And we get to talk to somebody that we've hopefully built a somewhat cool relationship with via message. Yeah. How does that the story reply differ from the comments? Yeah.

So story reply is short. Or I'm sorry, comment on people's feed content is shorter, right? And it doesn't end in the form of a question. So it's just an intentional thought, right? Or statement or just think comment. but it doesn't have to be an open-ended question, right? You don't have to say, this is awesome that you and your family did this. Where are you guys going next, right?

You don't have to do something with a question at the end of it. But I know you just got back, Shelby, where did you just get back from? The Bahamas, is that right? Yeah. Okay, I saw that. So you just got back from the Bahamas. So let's say you posted something about that and I commented on it saying, oh my gosh, I'm so jealous that you got to go to the Bahamas.

I was just in Minneapolis and it was freezing and it was snowing, much rather be in the Bahamas explanation point. That would be my comment, right? I don't need to go into a question. I don't need to go into, hey, you should send me a message, none of that. Right? I'm just showing up in her space versus story reply is,

as I was just mentioning, it's a lot more intentional and the idea is to keep the conversation going. Got it. Okay. I think that's where I see a lot of agents or people, business, you know, whatever their businesses, entrepreneurs making the mistake where they're, it publicly, that's where they're trying to insert their business. And of course, they don't

insert it supplementally. It's very, you know, oh, she'll make a good job. The Bahamas. Yeah, like, I have all these claims. You need to move. Do you want to buy house out there? I got an agent. So, okay, okay, so I'm getting the difference now between the comments and, and the story replies, which by the way. Brand recognition versus connection opportunity, right? So brand recognition. is commenting, right? So my job is exposure to this audience, right? If I, if I comment on Shelby's content, right? Let's let's be super practical here, right? Like my business is designed to support real estate agents. So it would make a lot of sense for me to be commenting on a bunch of real estate agents content. Why? Because they're going to come to my account and see it. So if you

want to say it selfishly, which in this case, it's not, but let's just hypothetically say that Shelby is someone I'm trying to prospect. right or Shelby is someone who I know because I was just on a podcast that I saw her on that I could subliminally prospect her by just being present in her space right and so that sort of that intention it's just brand recognition and brand exposure just like if I'm a real estate agent commenting on a CrossFit piece of content that a CrossFit gym that I go to here locally posts my goal there is that everybody else that goes to that CrossFit Gym or lives in the area that follows them on Instagram will see my comment

and click on my profile and then be like, oh, well, she also lives here in Clarksville. She also CrossFit and, oh, she's a real estate agent. So it's solely distinct brand play or recognition versus story replies. My goal is to have a one-to-one conversation actively with this individual. Got it. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And that's where you can insert your own personality, like in the comment. Oh, that comment was fucking funny.

Who is this girl? Let me see if I want to follow her. So once, so being that that is the goal of the cover. comments, stand out. Hey, this is you. This is, you know, whoever vibes with you can take a look at your page. Once they go to your page, what is the, the best way for your page, a real estate agent's page to look like in order to get the next goal, you know, to start the sales funnel,

which I'm assuming would be a follow unless I'm wrong. No, you're perfect. You're dead on. So I'm going to ask you guys, you, you both, you ladies, this question. I say, hey, guys, way too much. And I'm trying to change that because I'm very offended. Get off the show. Yeah. So ladies, I'm going to ask this question back to you, right? When you guys go to a

real estate agent's page and you see nothing but boilerplate content, meaning it's stock images or it's graphics that were made in Canva that are not them. The people on the graphics are not, you know that it's not bad agent, right? How do you guys feel when you consume that? I'm not a following. I mean, I understand yours. I am following what you're saying. I'm not following that. account. Sorry. Yes. No, I'm, I'm with you. I knew that. But my, my follow-up question to your comment is why? Because it's boring. Because I want personality. I want, yeah, I want authentic. I want to know the human. We just talking about smells. I want to be able to smell them through the page. And I don't want to smell their Canva account. Yeah. And at the end of the

day, what is our job as real estate agents to stay? I mean, business owners, I think would be to stand out. you know this is my personality this is who i serve this is who i don't relationships relationships that's the answer so connection right all you were you were on you were on to something there but i was waiting for your comment right so what is your goal your goal is relationships right so you guys as real estate agents both of you ladies i'm not hiring you because you're a really good real estate agent no offense i'm sure you both are but why am why am i hiring you i'm hiring you because i vibe with you and i feel connected to you and we have similar things of interest and we have similar things of interest and And then you then, once I've created that connection, you both then become the vehicle of getting me to the goal of buying or selling a home.

Right. So that's the thing that most agents are missing is when they post content, they're like, oh, I'm in the top 1%. Here's all the listings I've recently sold. Here's all this value that I can throw at you about how smart I am. I don't give a shit if I don't know who you are. Right. So if I don't know who you are as a human being, because guess what? a real estate transaction when my real estate transaction when my husband and I moved to Clarksville

was nine months long right we built a house so you better hope that I like that agent in order to actually spend nine months going back and forth back and forth and back and forth with her fast forward to now she's one of my best friends our sons are in the same class we see each other multiple days a week right that is what a transaction should feel like for the consumer right so why did I hire her our husbands are in the same group here like our kids are the same There's just so much, right? And the reason I chose her was one, she was a human and I had this connection to her on Instagram.

We actually were able to chat back and forth. Secondly, she actually answered her messages. Hello, right? Holy moly. Didn't take her four days to respond to my DM. And I also didn't get a DM in response when I sent her one of, I've received your message. I'll get back to you within 24 hours. But for all your real estate needs, please text me.

It's faster. Here's my phone number. Right. So that's the point is our content is not designed to just be a trophy case of here's all my listings. Here's how awesome I am. We do want to show transactional history because at the end of the day, that does build credibility. But we need to be able to focus on who are we as people? Are we posting videos?

Are we talking in the video? I don't care if your hair is not done or if it is done. Hell, I proved a point with a client a couple weeks ago and I recorded a video and posted it with my head, my hair on top of my head after I got home from the gym, video did better than most of the videos that I do perfect with my hair done and my makeup on, right? So, point is, is it's about connecting. It's about hearing your voice. It's about feeling and feeling connected to the mannerisms, the way you enunciate, even just the passion you have in your voice about something. So how do we take those boilerplate graphics and make them valuable? You talk about

them in a video so that I can actually hear the 20 years of experience that you have, or I can hear the hundred transactions of passion you've had because you've helped that many people when you're talking about, hey, have me over to your house. Don't, don't spend $5,000 on updating your bathrooms because you don't fucking need to. Invite me over first. And I'll tell you if you need to. Right. I need to hear that in your videos. I need to feel that. And then ultimately, that's where the decision of I'm going to hire you is going to come from. So when, okay, so you're making comments, you're doing story replies. You're getting people to. click on your page and that in and of itself is one major filter. Those that follow you,

let's start taking it from there. Those that follow you, are you reaching out or are you waiting for them to reach out? And then at what point do you take it off of Instagram? Yep. So it's kind of a two-part question with a two-part answer. So I'm going to try to combine them. But when someone follows you, your goal is to initiate conversation with them. Right. So they obviously started following you for a reason. The day on our tracker, which you guys have for your listeners for the show notes, right? That tracker, if you'll notice on Mondays is what I call followers day, which means from week to week,

you're going to get a whole bunch of new followers, hopefully if you're doing this correctly and consistently. So on that day, your job is essentially to connect with the people that are already following you. Now there's a reason why they started following you. You just don't know what it is yet. So again, we're going, we're focused on interacting with our existing database. And I tell people this all the time.

I just did a webinar about this not long ago because every agent is sort of living in this land of I need more, right? In 2024, I've heard so many agents say, I want to do 50 deals instead of 25. I want to get to 100 instead of 50. Like, I want to do more. I need more followers. I need to do more video, right? And that word more just became a big part of their vocabulary, which I'm not saying.

is a bad thing. But I mean, Shelby, I'll ask you this and well, Allie, you can of course answer it too, but I'm just going back and forth here. But how many followers do you have? 8,000 something. How many of those 8,000 followers do you actually know? Not many. Okay. So of the, I mean, I have 10 and a half thousand and I can say the exact same thing. I don't know very many of them. Right. So what's my job in this case? If I, if I have 8,000 followers, Shelby, right? I'm, you and my goal is to go from 50 deals to 100 deals in 2024. Do you think you need a single new

follower to do it? No, I need to freaking follow up and connect with those I have. Right? Because they've already given you that effort on their part. They've already given you the best thing that you could ask for a follow, right? So now it's your job to go connect to the people that are already consuming you. So that's part one, your initial question, Allie. Now, part two of that is, what do you say to them? Right. And the answer is you don't. acknowledge, hey, thanks so much for following me. Never, ever send a message like that, ever. I don't care who you are, right? And the reason for that is let's pretend it to you, Allie. You just started following me on Instagram. I get to Monday and it's followers day. So I'm going to

go from the last week and I'm going to say, okay, I have 37 new people I need to send a message to. Okay, I'm going to click on your page, Ali. I'm going to go consume your content. Maybe you have a post up recently of you on vacation. Maybe you have a post up recently of your dog. Maybe you have a post up recently of your coffee that you love, right? And I'm going to interact like a normal human being just creating connection. So I'm going to, that engagement example that I was giving you about your honey lavender latte, that's my engagement. I'm not even acknowledging, hey, thanks for following me. I saw you follow me six days ago. And I'm so sorry, it's been six days since I sent you a message. But you don't need to say any of that. Just create connection in the

first place. Right. Because if you do that and they took the time to follow you and now you're interacting just like a normal human, you're giving it back to them. So what happens is you create a stick factor psychologically, right? They're more likely to stick around if they feel like you care about them. They feel heard, they feel seen, they feel understood in a on a platform that in theory can make you feel very lonely and very disconnected, right? So are you doing this with everyone or are you only doing this with your target audience. Are you doing a pre-screen and you're like, oh, you're actually not my target audience or,

oh, you are inactive? I don't know. Is there any screening or do you just do it for everyone? Yeah, I mean, I don't look up production because I don't, I don't care, right? Like if I'm, if I'm going direct to agent. So for me, that's what I do personally, right? I'm going direct to agent or direct to mortgage professional or L.O. So for me, I don't care about your production because at the end of the day, that doesn't affect me personally, as long as they have some a semblance of money, right? But I can't, I can't determine that from that. So for you guys, though, if you're pre-screening or how you would pre-screen is essentially what you just said, right? So you're going to look at their content. You're going to see, is this person in the area

that I serve? Right. Because as agents, you can't necessarily serve Utah or somewhere that you don't live, right? So you have to do some semblance of that. And then also, if they're not your primary demographic, and maybe you can tell that without being too overly booked by cover or judgey by in that sense let's say your primary demographic is you know the 35 to 45 age group so it's a married couple that is probably upsizing right let's just hypothetically say that and you click on a profile of someone that started following you and they're 65 look like they live in your area but they're based off their content they golf a lot and you're like you know I'm not a big golf course community gal but I guess I'll message them you don't want to do too much

pre-screening because you have no idea why they started following you. It could be their daughters that they might be interested in talking to you about. It could be, you have no idea, right? So to some extent, yes. Now, for you guys, if you're recruiting, that's a one, that's a different story, right? If you're using Instagram as a real estate agent to actively be recruiting for your downline or for your organization or whatever it might be, yeah, pre-screen them if you, if you care to, right? If go look up their production, if they're doing less than what your hope is, I would still message them. still create connection with them because maybe they're new. You have no idea what's going on in their life. Maybe they had to take a year off. Maybe they recently moved. You don't know, right? So,

of course, you want to create an interaction, but the ones that you pre-screen that do fit that demographic, like perfectly for you in that sense, I would pick up the phone and call them sooner versus later, but I would create a back and forth first. So the average real estate transaction based off of Realger.com and Zillow, NAR data, all of that is seven to ten transaction, I'm sorry, seven to ten touch points in order to get a conversation converted into an actual leap, right? That's standard data. I didn't make that up. So what we have to do is we have to work through those touch points in our messages first, right?

So we want to build a really good back and forth. We don't want to rush it and just take out the phone just because it feels good, or you have the dopamine of, oh, it might be good, build the back and forth with them, work through the touch points, make sure you're dropping subliminal business plays along the way. And then at that point, when they clearly are making or expressing interest, I could say something like to you, Alie or to you Shelby, I could say something like, hey, it's been amazing getting to chat with you. I feel like there's some synergy here. I think the best next step is just for us to jump on a call. Are you available on Wednesday at 2 p.m.? It could be that simple. And this was done all via written

text, right? Do you do voice text? Do you do a video? All three. It depends on the person. and it depends on the day. It depends on my mood or my attitude. I feel like I can say this with you ladies, but it depends on where I am in my cycle. Am I feeling bitchy today or am I feeling happy today, right? That's the reality of it, right? That sounds so terrible, but we're human beings, right? We go through this crap. So I have days where I'm like, I'm on fire. I just sent 27 video messages. And then I have days where I'm more of like a voice noter, especially if I'm on the run a lot or if I'm driving all over the place, my son's got this or my son, whatever, right? So it's really just dependent on the day, but I'm also totally not opposed to just like a standard message because

I do those all the time too. So I think you have to just go with what feels right. But video messages are always going to get opened like way more versus the latter, but it's not a requirement. I find it so interesting that there's such a difference. So I've done some cold texting, like not on Instagram, just straight up cold texting. And the actual just text works better than video. And I thought video was going to kill, you know? They don't know who I am. Here's my face. Here's like my little side of the back.

And they're like the response rate was so low compared to just regular text on, you know, SMS, iPhone, iPhone, whatever. But then on Instagram, they already see your face. And I found that there's a much, there's a bigger difference between the conversion right there with video and voice. If you're going to be doing text, though, how, what are your thoughts on hiring out a, hiring this step out, the first step. As you mentioned, depends on how many followers people get. I do mine on Friday where I reach out to every single person or try to reach out every single

person, you know, on Instagram, Facebook, you know, whatever. And I send out some sort of message. But this takes a lot of time. If you're going to be customizing this, personalizing it per person, what are your thoughts on using a VA to act as you? Do you want my honest answer or my politically correct answer? We always want honesty. Okay. Send it. Intuition cannot be denied in this conversation, right?

Meaning my intuition to respond to a message that I received from you is going to be very different than someone who's where English is not their first language. Right. And just my experience of interacting with people here in the states and the culture and the way that we do life, it's different. And that's not to say it's better or worse because I know lots of people that are probably a lot happier that live in XYC country than here. Right. So that's not the point I'm making. But what I am saying is I've tested this, right? I've been a business for 10 years and I'm not opposed to VA's by any means, but I have hired a ton of them that are bad, really bad because they just lack that intuition of being able to take and intuitively look at a conversation and say, you know what?

I just, it's an innate nature of, you know what, Allie and I are viving like I can tell. And so I'm just going to take it off the platform. I'm just going to call her. They don't have that. Right. And that's not a bad thing. It's just they're not necessarily meant in my opinion to be used in this context. So hiring it out is an excellent thing.

Find the right company for is all I got to say. Because hiring somebody, I've been doing this for such a long time, guys, and I can tell you, hiring somebody for 500 bucks a month, you will get. $500 worth of value like just point blank it's not going to work now if you're okay with just a pure scale aspect meaning you just want a million people to to know of you you don't care necessarily that that's how many messages it takes to convert the one to three percent that you're after then that's your personal decision and there's nothing wrong with that for me i would rather have a hundred really really good conversations going knowing that i can convert 15 to 20 percent of

those because that conversation has been done on a very high level or in a very high way. So hiring it out is a great thing. And time wise, I get that. And I can totally understand why people do and why people continue to. I have an executive assistant that does my outbound prospecting for me. Right. So as we have someone that joins my Facebook group, somebody that follows me on Instagram, I have somebody that calls them.

But they are here. They are in the States. They are someone who knows me personally. they spend a lot of time with me on Zoom in person as much as we can, right, at different events or things across the country, wherever I could be, were nearby her. So this person truly is an extension of me that makes it so that if, if Lonnie calls one of you and says, hey, Michelle wanted me to call you, that's not weird to you as the person I am outbound reaching out to.

So I hope that that was an okay answer. I could have gone in a different direction, but I was trying to make sure that that, that I don't want to alienate anybody, right? VAs are amazing and we certainly use them in our business for different things, just not that. On your Monday followers on your schedule, is this new followers or this is all followers? All, all. Holy shit, you have 10, how are we, how are we doing that? We're not reaching out at 10,000.

Remember our job is 4520. So your job is just to work through your list 4520 at a time. I can do that. So that could mean you're, this coming Monday, you're doing 45, 20 with people that are already following you. And then as people follow you throughout the week, you're just doing it as it's happening versus designating it for one day. That's what I do personally, right?

So as someone follows me, I just reach out. I click on their profile, like the first couple of things that they posted. If they have a story up, I'll do a reply. And I do it like real time. But on Mondays, for me, I have a designated day where I am outbound. to 45 of the people that have already started following me or have already been following me for a while. So they make up that 10.59, whatever the number is for me.

Okay, perfect. I'm glad. Okay, so before we move on though, because we keep, you know, hinting at your golden nugget that you provided. So guys, if you want Michelle's engagement tracker, which we're about to go over in just a second, go to the agent goldmine.com and get it for free, your golden nugget. But yeah, so we've touched on this a little bit, Michelle. Can you walk us through this tracker?

Yes, I would love to. Mondays is Followers Day. Tuesday, Thursday is what I call your third place. So when you're not at home and when you're not at work, where do you go that you could potentially be having conversations with people about real estate or where real estate will come up organically? Great example is I have a client who both of her sons are really active hockey players all the time, right? practice three days a week they're constantly a different tournaments over the weekend they're constantly

at different arenas all across multiple states she's well does that count as a third place is that a thing one million percent right so on let's just say she assigns hockey day to tuesday for her what she would do is she would find all the local arenas in her area she would find all of the different actual accounts of the hockey leagues or hockey teams her son's teams obviously the actual accounts of the arena itself as well as the geotags and then the house hashtags related to hockey in her area. Now, the other thing she could also do, which I highly recommend is if you're doing hockey day for sake of this example, find businesses that support the hockey community, right?

Find the actual coach that has their own Instagram account or find the business that sells all the hockey equipment that you guys have to go to 77 times a month because your kid always needs to do stuff. Right? That's what you should be doing on that day. So Tuesday, for example, you're just living in hockey land. And the reason for that is you're commenting, engaging, replying to all of this different content related to hockey in your area. Key word is in your area, right? So doing the research, finding the hyperlocal, different accounts, different like places that you would go consistently or that your son plays. And then you build this list. So on the tracker, it's broken into hashtags, geotags, and accounts. Accounts is exactly what it sounds like.

It's the actual account that you're looking at. find a core chunk of 15 to 20, right? On the tracker, it's only five, but there's tabs down at the bottom. If you guys decide to download the full version, right, there's tabs down at the bottom where you can actually fill in way more than just that front view of the five, right? Which we want. We want you to just build this whole bad boy out. So you'll have geo tags, you'll have accounts, and then you'll have hashtags.

So that's Tuesdays and Thursdays, right? So you're going to have a different third place for each of those two days. Wednesdays is what I call your CRM day or your data. a day. You're getting these inbound lists, right? Meaning somebody's random, if it's a Zillow lead, for example, someone's calling you randomly on the phone. If it's a Red X data lead, you're probably purchasing it. So you have a first name, last name address. Right. So your job with that is to actively go out and find them. So again, you have a tab on your tracker where you go out and you find those people. So if you have a first name, last name and an address, way easier to find them

on Facebook first. Facebook has that feature where we can get a little deeper in the search on a It's just easier, point blank, right? And then we'll be able to find their, to make sure it's the right person. Then we see their profile picture. Then we match it to Instagram to make sure that we're talking to the same person. If we can confirm that, then we start following them. If they're private, if they're not private, we're not following them right away. So that's Wednesday, right?

Our goal on Wednesday is to take our database of leads, basically. So if you guys have a CRM full of call it a thousand names, same concept. You're going to upload those thousand names. you're going to go find them on Facebook, find them on Instagram. And then every Wednesday, your job is to interact with people, specifically that are in your database that you find on the social platform. Now, this is as far as the data mining, great job for a VA, right? You guys do not need to be doing that.

That's not the highest and best use of your time to make sure you're making connection on Facebook and Instagram with somebody that's in your database. Let a VA do that. That's a great outsourcing opportunity for you there. I mean, I've had clients who have had databases. of 10,000 and they're trying to do it themselves. I'm like, excuse me? No, don't do that. So just not a good, not a good use of their time, right? So that's Wednesday. And then Friday is what we call your re-engaged day. So Friday's your job is essentially to catch up, you know, in theory, meaning you're going

to have had all of these really great conversations throughout the week. And you're going to have a whole bunch of conversations that may have organically come to a stopping point, right? How many of us have ever texted or a girlfriend or been on a group text and we're just like, shit, I forgot to respond to them and it's been two days or three days or whatever. So normal happens to every single one of us and it happens in your messages and it will, it's just, it's normal, right? So when you have that, you're tracking those. So on Fridays, your job is to go back and say, hey, I've been having this good conversation with Ali. I forgot to message her or maybe she forgot to message me. I don't really know which it is, but I'm going to go back to Allie's account.

I'm going to see if she has a new piece of content, does she have a new story up? I'm going to create a new interaction with you to essentially reignite the relationship that we've already been building or sort of brewing, right? So re-engage day is that. You're taking any conversation you've had from Monday through Thursday and you're reigniting it or continuing it intentionally on Friday. And just to be clear, with the on, let me see, Tuesdays, Thursdays, when you're when you're looking at the geotags and the hashtags that so what what exactly you're doing is like clicking on the locations or clicking on the hashtag of a group that you're somewhat a part of or a part of and going on those accounts and commenting on those accounts right or

are you following yeah so exactly so a geotag if you guys are familiar with facebook right where you check in somewhere and then you can click on where you checked in and a bunch everybody else that's checked in at the same location will pop up. You'll have this sort of pool of people. Instagram is the exact same thing. So that is what a geo tag is on Instagram specifically. So let's say I tag myself at the cross-o gym that I go to here, not tagging the account, but I tag myself at the location specifically. It's a very untapped part of the Instagram platform still to this day. Right. So if I were to click on that geo tag, it can the specific location and click on it, I'm going to get all of these people who have tagged themselves at CrossFit Sango, which is where I go.

And maybe they've dropped in. Maybe they're regulars. Maybe they're not. Right. But the idea is, I go to CrossFit Sango. And I just clicked on that geo tag and there's all these people that I can interact with and stay connected to because I sell real estate and I want to sell them real estate. Right. Now, same thing with all the other CrossFit gyms in the area because I don't want to just pigeon myself to just my local gym. There's eight or nine crossfit gyms here. So I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to go to the geotag and the accounts for all of those eight or nine. And I'm going to interact. Why? Because we share this mutual common connection. And if I engage on a piece of or a piece of content from a Griffin crossfit, which is over by base, I can still have a

really intuitive conversation with someone about a power clean or whatever. It doesn't affect me that they don't go to the same gym as me. So you're interacting with each of the three spaces. Right. So you're going to 15, 20 different accounts, you're going to a handful of geo tags, you're going to a handful of hashtags with the end game goal to Shelby's comment earlier where our goal is 4520. Don't look at the total number, holy shit, just execute the 4520 on a daily basis. And then what is wormhole that you have on Tuesdays? Wormhole effect. So the wormhole effect is basically where let's say I and this is actually how I ended up coming across Will, Shelby, to your point,

I first met Will. So I was, I had been on a podcast and I clicked on the podcast's account and I saw that they had interviewed all these other people. So I then clicked on all of the different people that they had interviewed and I just went to their Instagrams, liked the first couple pieces of content and then interacted with some stories. That is how I first interacted with Will. So that was an example of the wormhole effect. Now, if I continue the wormhole effect even deeper, if I were to go to Will's Instagram and the most recent piece of content that Will has posted, well, who is Will's primary audience? 95% of them are probably real estate agents, right?

So what I would do is if he has a most recent piece of content that has 50, 100 likes, whatever, I can click on that and I can see all of the other people or all of the individuals who have liked that individual piece of content and I can click into their accounts and continue that wormhole. Now, the reason I would do that is they're asking. Right? If they just liked something that Will posted yesterday, that means they're most likely pretty active on the platform. So I'm just creating a connection piece and then creating an additional layer of that connection. Because if I started a conversation with an agent that just liked a post from Will or just commented on a post that we'll post it or put out, we now have two degrees of separation.

Right. So everybody in this world, and I can use the word everybody because it's accurate. Will would yell at me for using that term because he says it's too all inclusive, right? This was literally the fun argument that we ended up having, which is how we became friends. He was like, you can't use an all-inclusive word like that because it is not accurate. Well, it is accurate in this, in this particular context, but every person on this planet is to some extent connected by six degrees of separation. Right. You guys have heard that. There's lots of books written on it.

And I don't know myself personally to have ever found that not to be true. So that's what the wormhole effect gives us the opportunity to do. It builds those six degrees of separation where even if we're two or three layers removed, I can still create a connection with you based off of another shared connection that we are bound by somewhere down the line. So that's the wormhole effect. We have at this point, you know, the reengaged day, we have a bunch of, okay, we have a day to day where people are literally in a database.

But for these rest of these where you have to like reengage, are you literally just like scrolling through the inbox to try to find them, the ones that you marked on red, because you can't pin that shit, or are you like taking these combos and putting them in a here? Here's what you can do, Shelby. You can flag them, right? So we have an entire code system that we use inside my program to teach you this, right? So you can either mark them as ordered, shipped, et cetera.

And each of those have a specific label that they're associated to. So if somebody's marked as ship, that means something. If somebody's marked as ordered, that means something. And anybody that has that label, it'll pop up in the corner. So even as you're scrolling through your list in your DMs, you'll see the flag or you'll see the shift mark or whatever and you'll know exactly who that person is on your on your list. So for the agents that are not active on posting, which is going back to a little bit more passive, right?

You post and then you kind of wait for somebody to respond to you. What are your thoughts on on agents that are still wanting to do this? you know, be active on Instagram, active prospecting. But when people get follows or when people get messages, they're essentially bring, you're bringing them back to your page, which isn't active. Does that hurt more than it helps? It doesn't, it doesn't hurt you, but it doesn't help you as much as it should. Meaning it's going to be good no matter what that you're creating this massive level of engagement that you haven't had before. But it's definitely going to detract from your credibility, right? So it's going to make your app that less likely to score.

If that makes sense, I'm using a baseball term. I don't know where that came from because I don't even watch baseball. But the point is, is that you're going to have a stronger app bat if your content matches the engagement level or the engagement effort, right? So if someone goes to my Instagram, I hope after doing this for as long as I have that my content's halfway good, right? But the point is, is that I show up every day and I'm on video all the time and I really want people to feel connected to me. I also am very personal. I post a lot of content about my family, about my kids, about my dogs, all of that because that really is who I am as a human. And I want people to feel that. So if I didn't have all that content and I'm sending all of these messages to these people,

I have to overcome more barriers, right? It's just harder for me to get connected to you because you will not have gone to my profile and seen all of this content about me and gathered your own perception. Now, this is where framing comes in. If you guys are familiar with the term, right. We are in control of how people perceive us in this scenario, right? So if someone comes to my Instagram and it's all boilerplate templates and stock photos and all of that, you have your, you've built your own perception in your mind of who I am and whether or not I'm good enough to be your real estate agent. In that case, you're probably not hiring me, right? So if I go to someone's Instagram, I'm having this good conversation with them and their content is really

consistent. They're on video and they're being personal and they're posting good content around their credibility, meaning they're showing transactional history. They're showing up, showing that they're going out and doing real estatey things and their stories, all of that. Like, we've built this credibility. So there is something, well, it's a lot to that. I shouldn't say there is something. There is a lot to that. But the point being, we don't want to detract from the frame, but I use the word framing a lot in my world, right? Because we are in control of how people perceive us. And that's the point of that comment. But we can overcome it, but it's going to be a lot harder with shitty content. Okay, Michelle, we have covered a lot, but what did we not hit on that

you think is important for our listeners before we move to wrap up? I think there's a lot that people are doing wrong, but I also want to say that I think there's a lot that people are doing really well, right? And I think I've started to see a big shift in real estate agents taking initiative in the sense of what I have been doing isn't working, right? And I've had lots of conversations this year already with agents who are saying that, exact thing. Michelle, I've been doing this for several years. I'm really consistent and it's just not working. I need to do something different. So there's there are a lot of agents who are looking at the Instagram platform as a prospecting place. They just don't necessarily know how to

do it yet. Right. So that they understand that there needs to be a shift and they need to do something different, but they're not doing it yet. So I've seen that, which is really, really exciting for me, as someone who my job is truly to make you see it as a viable lead source. And then on the on the other side of it, things that are still being done wrong is outsourcing the wrong way. Right. And Al, you kind of sort of brought this up and I tried and I danced around it just a little bit, but outsourcing is so valuable in your business, right? There is no way for us to scale to the level that we want as business owners.

And I assume you ladies are no different than me. We want to grow our businesses, but we also want to do it in a really controlled way where the quality of who we are and the quality of what we do doesn't change. And that's a challenge that I've had over the last several years, right? Because as my brand has gotten bigger, it's been harder and harder to control the quality of people that work for my team as the team grows. Now, we work our asses off to make sure that that remains true. But when you are outsourcing, you have to ask questions. And you can't ask the same questions that you ask every person, every time, right?

Because you'll get the same answer. Hey, can you help me grow more followers? Well, yeah, that's going to happen. Anybody could say that. But you have to dig deeper, right? You have to ask a better question of, well, how do you generate new followers? Okay, well, if you're doing a lot of engagement for me, how does the engagement or what type of engagement is being done? Can you send me some mock engagements, right?

So there's a, there are layers to the questions that need to be asked in order to get to where you want to get to ultimately make the decision of, is this the right outsource for me? Right. So asking better questions will save you a lot. of money. And if you need help with what those questions are, whether you hire you, Allie or Shelby, or whether you hire, I don't care. Ask deeper questions and get the support from the people who are doing it. And that can be eye-opening. I mean, I've given a lot of advice to plenty of agents that have not hired me. And that's great. I'm fine with that because at the end of the day, I helped them make better decisions and save money in the process. And ultimately, that's how I go to bed at night,

putting my head on my pillow knowing I did a good, I had a good day and I did a good thing. Hell yes. Okay, heading to our wrap up questions. The first question, what is your favorite app or tool and you can't say Instagram? My favorite app, it has nothing to do with work at all. It has everything to do with my mental state of mind. And I'm a very into fitness. I'm actually running my first half marathon here shortly.

And I've never been a runner ever until even as a competitive crossfitter for six years, I fucking hate running. It's never been my thing, but I decided to give it a go and I've really fallen on love with the process. And I use Garmin Connect. So I wear a Garmin 24-7. I never take it off even when I'm speaking and all dressed up like I just will never take my garment off. Because it's also kind of cool to come off stage after being nervous as hell and seeing what my heart rate just did for the last hour or whatever it was. So Garmin Connect, the app is my go-to for everything, my sleep, my nutrition, my rest, my recovery.

should I work out today? Should I not? Am I getting sick? All of it, because at the end of the day, I can't show up as the best human that I need to for my team, for my family, for myself, for my husband, right? If I don't know that data. What events are you going to in the next 12 months? Oh, that's a big question. So I have been asked to speak at a handful. I will be at Mastermind Summit in June in Vegas, which is a big real estate, I'm sorry, a big mortgage conference. I've been asked to speak for the Texas Association of Realtors in August. I'm also supposedly going to speak for the Women's Council of Realtors for Utah in October. And then we have, we have several webinars and other things in the meantime. But I do about three to five webinars a month. So that's

probably the fastest way to get value for me. But as far as events in that capacity, we just got back from Amplify. If you guys are familiar with Renee Rodriguez, we just got back from his event. I'm so glad our podcast was today and not yesterday because I was 100% brain dead yesterday after coming home from that. But I really like mixing up events. So I like going to some that I'm speaking out and getting paid to be there. But then I also really like to go to some that are just for me personally to be able to grow and connect with people like you ladies that are just trying to do better. Nice. Hellia.

And we are Allie the agent and the Shelby Show on Instagram as well. Michelle, thank you so much for coming on our podcast today. You gave us a lot of good tips. And I love this tracker. That is it for today. Be a bro.