KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Top Communication Expert Reveals Best Digital Mayor Techniques

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

Summary:Discover the secrets to becoming the "Digital Mayor" of your local market with insights from top communication expert, Coach Randy Byrd. This episode reveals how to effectively geofarm by providing hyper-local, value-driven content that positions you as the go-to authority for buyers and sellers. Learn the essential communication techniques, from leveraging social media and video to building genuine online community engagement, that will help you dominate your area and create an unstoppable real estate brand.Bullet Point TakeawaysThe "Digital Mayor" Defined: Understand the concept of becoming the online authority for a specific neighborhood. This involves providing extensive, hyper-local information about the community—what it's like to live, work, and play there—to build credibility and trust with potential clients.Create Hyper-Local, Value-Driven Content: Learn to craft diverse content that tells the story of your neighborhood. This includes interviewing local business owners, reviewing establishments, showcasing community events, and creating videos that give an insider's look into the lifestyle of the area.Strategic Multi-Channel Communication: It's not enough to just create content. Discover the importance of consistently distributing and promoting your content across all relevant channels, including your website, blog, and social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, to ensure maximum visibility.Engage & Build Your Community: The final and most crucial step is to engage. Learn how to be present online by responding to comments, answering questions, and keeping the conversation going. This interaction builds relationships and establishes you as a helpful, knowledgeable resource.Master Core Communication Skills: Understand that even in the digital world, foundational communication skills are paramount. Learn the importance of active listening, clear and concise language, and positive non-verbal cues (even in video) to build trust and prevent misunderstandings.Topics:Digital Mayor Real EstateReal Estate GeofarmingHyper-Local Content StrategyReal Estate CommunicationRealtor Local AuthorityCall-to-Action:Ready to become the go-to authority in your local market? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and learn the secrets of a "Digital Mayor" today!

All right, all right. Good afternoon, everybody. How are we doing? Good to see everybody. I don't see anybody. I see a lot of, I see Mark. How you doing? Mark? I see Jenny. I see Pete. Now I'm seeing you. I see Eric. Way better than talking to a black blocks talking head. How are you all doing? Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Thanks for being here today. It is the Tuesday coaching call. And I've got some, I think good content for your plan today. But real quick, let's start the power out. Any wins this week? Anything you want to share that is amazing real estate related or otherwise? I'll share. We have an active listing that went pending and closed in under 25 days. Wow.

Which was great. And a while for us from start to finish. That's a beauty. Was it cash or lending even more? It was lending. That's even more impressive. They got a loan that fast. Yeah.

I love it. Hey, I'd love to hear that. Through my communication with a lot of agents around the nation, we're hearing things are picking up. Things are, it seems like there's more activity. There's properties coming on the market. Just overall, the sentiment of activity has been picking up. And some are even saying they're completely swamped. I've had probably four people tell me they're going to have the best year ever in January, right? We understand that their optimism is very high and we appreciate that. But they're having the, the first four to six weeks is the busiest they've ever been. So that's good coming from some of these agents that are very seasoned.

Anyway, great to see everybody. Robin, good to see you. How you doing? Thank you. Doing well. I would actually agree with your comments. It's been amazing so far our first quarter. Just last two closings were over 2.3 million.

We have another one closing tomorrow at 1-8. Seeing a lot of cash. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's so many people that hate you right now, Robin, because of your sales price. I'm sorry. There's people in like Oklahoma going, what? Who is she?

Right. Where she live, right? Yeah. And you know what's funny? I posted the $2.3 million and Scott looking goes, you know, that's a really nice house, but I mean, you think you'd get more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, it's, it's okay. Yeah, it's okay. But the market's strong, like I said, lots of cash. well and other loans too but you know our boards filling up i bet we i love it 12 solid deals we're working on since you spoke up why don't you tell everybody who you are where you're at and you know and throw your throw your contact info or something in the chat for everybody or i will my name is robin tittle tulle and tuddle group um i do the ex p luxury um which i am beyond thrilled with. It's just been the best platform. And where are you at? Ben, Oregon.

Okay, Bend, Oregon. Good job. Yeah, the whole area. A lot of resort. But yeah, I'm happy to be here. Thank you. Well, thank you for Sharon. Thank you for sharing. So, and Jenny, I know you're in the Ben Market as well. So you spoke up. I'm going to highlight you as well. So let's dig in. So here's what I'm coming up with today through the coaching and all the things that we're looking at of how we're really going to get market share in 2025. In my mind and everything that I've done over 10 years of coaching now, it's really becoming the digital mayor. There's a lot of ways to say that.

But having a digital footprint that is very valuable, whether that's Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn. There's some electronic channels, if you will, that you can dominate. But I really recommend you in this coaching call today, picking one of those that you're going to dominate. Pick one of those that you're already proficient in. You're already in, for instance. It could be Facebook personal that we need to move into a business posture.

There you go. So it could be, you know, maybe you're in the Facebook world and you haven't dabbled into the Facebook business pages and stuff, but that's still a conduit for you to stay in in Facebook, for instance. A lot of age or a lot of younger-aged, you know, age. agents in life age, not business age. I've got people who've been in the best two years that seem like they're 20-year veterans with the things that they're doing, right?

But young age, Instagram seems to be where most of the communications at. Instagram is what I'm finding to be about 80% of the agents that are communicating coach with is they're in that space. That's not my space, right? I'm not an Instagram. I'm a Facebook guy. I'm starting to get much more into YouTube. but give that some thought when you're putting this in front of you as far as how you're going

to become the digital mayor right now youtube kind of overlays that i think everybody needs youtube because that's where the eyeballs are that's where the videos really housed and so on so if you're going to go in all on instagram i still like to see you in that youtube category but let's talk about what what is this social media mayor what is the digital social media mayor in real estate look like right so let's take um since we're talking about Bend today, I'm going to make a fictitious subdivision up. There's a subdivision called River Bend. And River Bend has maybe 5,000 houses in it. How do you become the digital mayor, the go-to real estate source for that particular area?

And it's very similar to when we're setting up geographic farms. It's very similar. We're identifying a geographical farm. And then we are making sure that we're touching the people, in that geographic farm. Sometimes it starts at 500 out of 5,000 and moves up. But eventually you want to wrap your arms around these areas, right? You could do the same thing with social media, which is really interesting.

So track with me for a minute. Let's talk geographical farm for a minute. We've taught on this before, but I think it's equally an opportunity right now. Geographic farm means a subdivision. So we took Bend, Oregon. We make this fictitious subdivision called, River Bend, right? Riverbend's got 5,000 houses in it. In a geographical farm, you have to either lead with sweat equity or check equity, right? Sweat equities, you're door knocking,

you're handing out flyers, you're running coat drives and putting dumpsters in the neighborhood. You're doing things that are your grassroots in that neighborhood, right? That's sweat equity. And if you don't have any money, by the way, you're sweat equity. So just figure it out. You've got to go sweat until you make money and then you could lead with check equity. Check equity is maybe it's somebody like Robin has a successful business going, but she wants to go to the next level in terms of adding database and adding people to her sphere of influence. But she's got little time, right? She's got little time, but now she's accumulated some money, some opportunity to expand in the business side. Then you could put that into a check equity where it's just happening automatically.

key points minimum of 500 homes right if you could afford 5,000 go forward if you if you can't minimum 500 if you get below that the metrics don't work but if you commit to 500 homes a month look for a 6% turnover you can ask title but in 500 homes that means 30 cells every year the you know 6% turnover annually you don't want to get too much below that unless it's a sub farm of another farm you've got a farm here for six and six and six and all of a sudden you get into that five thousand homes and there's a little pocket that's only three and a half i'd still would include them in that scenario but if you're searching out for your first 500 you don't want to pick one that's at three and a half turnovers just not enough houses for you to get your piece of the pie to make it equitable and have a

return right so then twice a month mailing for the first year right that's the other key point of this twice a month mailings for the first year and then the the fourth component is set it and forget it You've got to do this for 18 months now. It used to be 12 months is what we taught. It's getting longer. And that's just because of the amount of noise in the space probably or the amount of opportunities. I don't know what it is. But the time for that's getting a little longer of a commitment to see that true two, three, five times ROI.

Okay, so that's geographic farming. Now let's switch it into digital farming in the same regard. Same subdivision, same number of houses. but now you can go after all 5,000 at once and become the digital mayor wrapping your arms around that. Imagine if you could put a fence, geo fence, around this 5,000 homes. That'd be kind of cool, right? What about if you could know every time somebody was on Facebook in that fence? Picture it not like a prison, but picture it like a golf community with a nice big brick fence around it.

Something nice, right? every time somebody drove in that gate, you would get notified that they were in your fenced area. What about if they got an ad from you every time you went through the front gate, they don't know you, but they drive through the front gate of this fenced area, and your Facebook ads start popping up automatically in Instagram ads and things. You think that would be valuable? Do you think you could then target them on purpose because you've identified through names, phone number, email address in that 5,000 homes that you can get from Title, by the way,

eight cents a record, 5,000 homes you're talking about, what's that, 40 bucks? You can get everybody's name address and email and phone number from title, import them into Facebook as a custom audience, and then Facebook will only target that audience of those 5,000 people. And then you could geo-fence that geographical area with Facebook groups, but every time, somebody drives through that area, you put your fence around effectively on Facebook, it alerts you and puts ads in front of them. That's the future.

And by the way, there's some things you'll need to spend money on, sweat equity, check equity. Same thing as a farm, right? Sweat equity is you can make sure you go in there and Facebook friend request every single person in the 5,000. You could make sure you're being very purposeable in getting them to your database. You could even walk those particular neighborhoods, but that's 5,000 homes now, right? You got to think of it

a little different scale-wise. But now check equity is Facebook ads. So you're running sponsored ads that are showing value in the neighborhood, and that's done through Facebook ads. So I can run a Facebook ad, custom audience 5,000. It's only going to be the people that live in that area. And then I could put ads in from them about what house values are doing or open houses or podcast, I'm doing with the school superintendent in that 5,000 home area of the school that it serves, right? I can interview the police captain. I can interview the public water department head. Whatever's going on.

Say there's a water main break in that subdivision. Then you interview the head of the public water department. All of a sudden, you become that local celebrity. You become that mayor. Right. So if you're thinking it from that perspective, that's why I love the word mayor. Digital president, digital mayor. There's a bunch of different ways to look at this.

but if you look at it from this perspective of you're going to be the digital mayor then what would the mayor say to his people right give me some ideas on that give me some feedback if you were the mayor of that 5,000 foot or that 5,000 home subdivision what would be expected of you what would you say what would you do what would you do for your people keep them updated on what's happening in the community okay like what items Maybe like I'm like thinking of our town here. We do first Fridays. We do,

they do like an anti-car show and just talking about that and promoting that. We've done it for our own database where we go in and we interview local small business owners and spot like their business. Exactly. Exactly. And so the mayor, you're going to probably talk about crime. crime, right? You could talk about good things going on. You could talk about welcome to the neighborhood. You could welcome babies. You could do a whole bunch of things through this automation of this campaign, if you will, right? And I love what you said, Pete. Any other ideas? Any other ideas for bringing value to

that neighborhood? A couple of my favorites are coat drives, dumpster days where you rent a dumpster and you just notify everybody in there. We're going to have a trash day Saturday. Work out a deal with the disposal company. Maybe it might even cost you a thousand bucks to have a couple dumpsters in there. But that's, you know, that's an act of kindness. That's an act of servitude for that area.

And it's not always just an ask. You're giving equity back to that area, right? Anything else? This is kind of a cool opportunity for you, guys. And it's not all real estate, right? Your open houses, your new listings, all that stuff's going to increase that traffic that you're having in there making you the local expert. I would say in my area, we're having a ton of new growth.

So there's constantly road construction on busting through new arteries and new neighborhoods. You know, and you assume you drive by that, you know exactly what's going on. And the average consumer does not. So I'd say that. Yeah, 100%. Sisters, for instance, just putting roundabouts. And man, big deal. sister's got two round bouts now.

But you as an agent could become almost like an editorial newscaster to those kind of new things coming up, right? As silly as that one may sound, that adds value to this community. So now you're a Facebook friending them. You're adding value to the Facebook page every time you do any of these things, right? Whether it's purposeful podcasts or whatever it may be. So I love this particular, this component of this, right? Mark, are you going to say something else?

I'm sorry, I might have cut you off. Oh, no, no, that's fine. I was just going to add to the conversation and just say that you could tell them about existing nonprofits and new nonprofits that are coming to the area that are doing things for the community that other people might be able to benefit from. And then probably pull together some type of an event, a local event in the area. Like we do every other Friday here in the El Grove area, they have the food trucks and the food trucks drive in Old Town.

So do something like that where you can coordinate a community event and be the vocal person for that event. 100%. I just thought of blood drive, for instance, blood drive truck in the center of the community, two taco trucks for free. They're just going to come in and feed everybody because you're having a blood drive. You put it out to everybody. You're a hero. You're contributing. We did this in Reading. And I think we, I think we broke the record for the blood drive record, whatever that was, 30 pints, 30 gallons. I don't know what it was. but we had lines and lines and lines of people. And it just started with my Keller Williams office at the time. And I said, hey, all the agents, if you can give, you know, I know you've probably given

before and all this stuff, but we need to make a big bash of this thing. And out of 100 agents, we had like 35 or 40, which is a great number, show up to give blood. And then we had another 50 or something in the community show up to get blood. So we just hammered them, right? I mean, we just from start to finish, they were just hammered. They left at the end of the day, weathered and tattered and was like, that was amazing. right and so there was a lot of press that came from that and we're doing it just to be good but that's that's a i love the ideas that are happening here so now you've got this facebook page that could

become the community info right it could be the community information page you start making admins of this so you're not having to do everything you're making admins of this that are coming in and they're allowed to let certain posts in they're keeping activity in there they're watching all the new people coming in. They're verifying that it's kind of like Facebook in the beginning, right? You couldn't be in Facebook unless you had an EDU address. It was like you had to be at a university. They have a Facebook account.

And then it got bigger. Imagine that, right? Hey, this is Jenny. I'm just checking in. You know, I'm the head of the group here. And I just didn't recognize your name. Are you part of the subdivision? Are you part of our community?

No, my friend Sally's in there, but she said it's really cool. Okay, cool. I'm going to have you as a friend of it, but this is for our community, right? And so that exclusivity. And then also, what about every time a house sells in that neighborhood of 5,000, which we just said, it's 30 a year, did we not? What happens if you only sell one of those every year? Yes, you're going to get some value of an open house and mailers and postcards and just listed and just solds and all that, right? But what happens if you're the mayor of a town that sells 19 other escrows that you weren't involved in?

you're running the Facebook page. You're running the announcements. You're running the blood drives. You're the mayor of that area. Right? I want to tell you a little story. I'm going to leave the names out to protect the innocent. But I have a coaching client that I hired years ago.

I've told this story before for geographic farming. And he came to me because I was helping Tom Ferry build teams and he wanted to build a team, solo agent. And I think his best year was 18. I think he was doing like 11. when we met. And he says, hey, I really want to get into farming. I have a farm now. And it's, we did three listings in it last year. I go, that's great. How many, how many people in the farm? He goes, 250. I go, yeah, we got to bump those numbers up. But long story short, he hired me.

And we went after this campaign. And he goes, I'd really like to get this neighborhood next to it, but it's dominated by these two agents, like 90% of every listings, those two agents, right? And a big community of 1,000 homes. They just were absolutely dominant. And so we went in with this strategy of really just becoming the digital mayor of that area and the social media mayor of that area. And in 18 months, he became so dominant in that particular thousand home, it was a 55 and over, this particular community, he became so dominant that those two agents started referring him the listings that they got because they didn't want to lose them to him.

See what I'm saying? he had like an 85 or 90% market share in that particular subdivision in under 24 months. It was under two years. He ended up doing 80 transactions, I think a second year and almost 50 something from that subdivision. Right? Because he became dominant. And he became so dominant. Now he's the number one agent in an area.

How many times have we said, oh, I love Edgewood. But man, that Robin Tuttle's in there. and she's a beast. I cannot compete with Robin Tuttle, right? So you stay away from it. I'm just saying you can get Robin Tuttle to work for you. Just saying. Depends how you want to look at this, right?

So I love this strategy. By the way, I haven't even talked about how you can ask for business within that now. Right? We've just been kind of passively. But now come from an unsolicited CMA component of this. You know, I love all. unsolicited CMAs, meaning reaching out to a seller saying, I've already prepared a CMA for you

as part of a bigger CMA. I just want to give it to his value. You owe me nothing? It's done. Do you want it or not want it? Right? It's just a question. It's almost like, I've done it.

I'm going to drop it in the trash. If you don't want it, it's all good, right? That demeanor is going to be valuable rather than, hey, this is Randy at EXP. I really would love to produce a free CMA for you. There's no obligation whatsoever. All I have to do is come out, walk through your home for an hour, hour and a half. it's going to be great, right? They didn't ask for it.

They don't want it. That's how the typical CMA conversation will go. We've proven that if you have the language around no attachment, already done, then you'll have a much better success ratio. Matter of fact, it was like 400% better, just changing the language of how you presented that. So now, how much does it cost to do everything I just mentioned, minus the check equity components of it. How much does it cost?

Zero, right? You don't have to buy a Facebook page. You don't have to buy an Instagram account. You just have to put the work into being committed to getting those up. Okay, let's say you're not a Facebook person. Let's just say somebody listening. I know everybody on this call is, but let's say you're not a Facebook person. You're not a social media strategist.

This just intimidate you. Is there anywhere in the world that you can go hire somebody that is probably five bucks an hour that would know all this stuff and do it for you? Is that a possibility? I see some people shaking their heads. How about my VA for $5 an hour in India, Ria? If you want her and you're on this call or seeing this coaching call, I will share her with you. Just message me, DM me on whatever, Instagram, Facebook, all the stuff, Coach Randy Bird. Right, just DM me. and I'll connect you directly with my VA. She's seven or eight bucks an hour.

I've had her for eight years. Five bucks an hour. You'll get the same rate. Anybody I send her, anybody I connect her with. And I get nothing. This is just trying to provide value. Don't let things get in your way.

Don't let obstacles stand in your way of what you can accomplish. It doesn't matter what your business strategy is. This is a business strategy. You can add to it. And if you've already got it, then double it and triple it and quadruple it, right? Kyle Whistow is a great example.

Kyle Wissel lives in San Diego and he lives in a little place called, is it Saniam? It's a city. I think it's Saniam eats, I think is what it is. Anyway, he's got a small outlying community in San Diego. And he just started interviewing all the restaurants. And it was just a regular thing. He'd go in there with a, you know,

it turned into a guy with a real camera. You know, not just a cell phone, but it started out that way. And he just started interviewing this restaurants. And I think it's called Sandium Eats. I'm not positive about that. But it's massive, massive, massive, thousands and thousands of followers, thousands of people on the page. And all he did was go and interview and highlight restaurants, right?

That could be your jam if that's your thing. Right. So as we're looking at this from a perspective of digital, marketing being the digital mayor. What are you the digital mayor of? Answer me that, riddle. You have to take your mute. There you go, Mark. The city of Mark Charles, or I just say the real estate agent of Mark Charles. That's right. That's right. You got it. It's not about that little division. It's about you as a brand. Right. And then this thing's very scalable. You could put this into communities. You could put this into groups. You could put this into areas. You can

start running events in that particular area talking about the houses, you're likely to get builder developer business. If you dominate an area that's got new construction opportunities or, you know, infill builds and stuff, when you become that digital mayor in there. Because then it's not so much about the other real estate agent relationships. It's that you're just the mayor of that area. You're the well-known person that is in that area, right? So give me, give me some kickback. Give me some arguments to this. Give me some, you know, let's talk about this.

What's going on in your brain right now? So, Randy, not kickback, but just thought process around it. Because I love the idea of being the digital mayor, and I love the idea of creating a group. And if I'm completely honest, the only thing that's ever stopped me from creating a group is the idea of when it starts, there's nobody in there. So the first few people that come in see one or two or no people,

how do you get that to stick and build momentum? That's what I've been my concern. Love it. So that's your drunk monkey, right? That's like people that don't post videos because they don't like the way they look, but then nobody watches them or everybody watches them. So I'm going to just coach you. I know you're a great coach too, Pete. So don't let the drunk monkey get in your way of that. What would it look like in 24 months from today or 48 months from today or in 10 years from today what's it look like right so here's here's a shortcut here's a here's a shortcut i was thinking of another word but the shortcut sounds better right here's a shortcut reach out to five or 10 people in that community first and say i'm building this i'd love to find

out if you'd be willing to be a contributor you can post i'm going to make you one of the admins if you start with five admins and tell them it's a period of just three months at a time or something so they don't have to do it forever and just say all I'm looking for is items of value from the neighborhood or just at least chatty, how things are going in the neighborhood. We could have a neighborhood watch for them. We can have a neighborhood, you know, message board effectively through Facebook. Hey, the water's going to be off.

Like my neighborhood, the water's off every two, three, five months. And they rebuild the system and do things. So there's this community text thread, right? But now it's become, hey, is anybody own a black dog? Hey, this weekend we're doing an open house. Hey, I'm going to be gone Tuesday and Saturday. if anybody could feed my dog, you know, it's turned into that. But it started out as just acknowledgement.

But I would do that to answer your question. I'd get your, and it does it have to be somebody in that subdivision? No. Has to be somebody else. Do you want to let agents in your five, say an agent lives or works in that 5,000 homes? Do you have to let them into your group? No, sir, no ma'am, right? Can't have to choose, but that's not, that's not who I'm looking for, right?

Mm-hmm. So I would, I would start with four. or five homeowners or people that are familiar with that. Could be somebody that lived in there, lives in there, what other, otherwise, I think you could probably find that pretty easy.

And then just be consistent with posting. I'd probably get an auto post going so it's consistent. You could use it through lofty, buffer, all, hootsweet, all these different things and have some, you know,

just put a week in advance of something that has to do item of value in the, in the subdivision once a day. And then when something lists, put it in there, doesn't matter who it listed from. When something sells, put it in there. It doesn't matter who it sold from. And then start putting that news of that subdivision in there. It will build. And then just keep, remember, you're controlling the list. So you built this email list from title. Then you can be purposeful about reaching out saying, hey, I noticed you haven't accepted our friend

request yet. So far, we have 15 people in there and it's growing. We'd love you to be in it. And then out of that 50 emails, only three or seven more sign up than you've got 22. And you just you build on that. Building from there. Makes sense. And then eventually, in my, you know, in my mind, I believe that it's going to have enough value that people want to be in it and they're attracted to it because of the news and the value that starts coming out of that.

It doesn't have to be all on you, by the way. You can hire a stay-at-home housewife in that subdivision that becomes the administrator of this thing and runs with it, right? That's a better leadership way to go is look for four or five people that want to run it for you, but you control the page and what it's doing. Right? You're just the facilitator and you're the one to put it together. That makes sense.

Okay. And so again, if I were starting right now in one minute, here's what I would do, right? The last minute of the call, here's what I would do. I'd number one, identify the homes, maybe three subdivisions that have a significant number of homes that you like or areas of town and have title run a turnover report for it. They could do it very easily. break it into sections for this we're talking maybe 5,000 homes at a time break it in sections have them run that next thing get the VA to upload all that into your database whatever database

you're using that it cost you about 20 bucks and then have her build a Facebook page that it cost you about five bucks and so for a hundred bucks you could be all in on this thing even buying the list from title at eight cents a contact right so that's kind of that's kind of that where my brain is. That's what I would do. I would just launch it. Then I'd be focused on putting content into that that's valuable. All right? Because immediately you'll have houses that are selling every month in there. Matter of fact, three a month mathematically. Right. Five thousand homes. Right. That's 30 a year. So approximately two to three a month. Those all become what's going on. Just listed, just sold. All of a sudden, just that alone is 12

posts. Right. What under contract? Another post. and it's informational that's a real estate flavor, but it's really about the community. Okay, hopefully that strikes a chord with you. Hopefully you gave you some ideas today of what you can do to maybe expand your current book of business. And if that was a brand new agent, this is what I would do. I would do that because you don't have the check equity.

I would do that and then I'd start walking that neighborhood. I don't care if I had two kids. I'd put them in a wagon. I'd start walking that neighborhood and adding value. All right. All right. Thanks, Randy. You bet, everybody.

Thank you for being here. See you next week. Next week I'm flying. So I'm not sure if I'm going to be here. I'll let you all know. But I am flying back from Dallas at a leadership event. So I appreciate you all. Bye, Randy.

Thanks. Have a great day. Thank you much. Thanks for being here. Cheers.