The Past, The Present, and the Future
So, the past three months have been crazy! Here is what has gone on.
I sat down five months ago, we have to go back a little bit further to get us to today, and talked to a man about running the social media for an apartment complex that had just broken ground on construction. I pitched him that I was an all in one service. I told him that I could run social media, drive leads in for them, put together videos, and help connect social and website together. I left the conversation feeling mixed. I didn’t hear anything back for two months, so I had taken it as a loss for my brand-new business who couldn’t compete with a bigger brand in the area. In the defense of the person who interviewed me, at the time of the interview I didn’t have a website, no business cards, and a Gmail account for my company’s email. I actually had to look up my email address, because I couldn’t remember it exactly. I know, that was bad.
One day I received a call, well it actually went to voicemail, because I habitually leave my phone on do not disturb. My family and wife hate that I do this. The account that I thought I had lost, called and left a message letting me know I won the bid on the big project against another local social media agency who is well established. I started out later that week with social media and ads. Pulling in too many leads at first, yes there is a thing as too many leads and later shifted into setting up property management software, becoming a temporary leasing agent, and getting to know all about how to market and manage an apartment complex. When the company asked me to do this, I knew that it would completely max out my schedule and force me to work in the business instead of on the business, so right before we concluded the meeting where they asked me to do the additional work, I told them I needed a raise to continue. They were a little shocked, mainly because this was the first time I had met two of the partners, but they agreed and we moved forward.
This completely maxed out my schedule and forced me to stop working on my business, the negative, but it came along with a significant revenue stream that is going to help my business have a significant profit at the end of the year, and allowed me to hire my first employee.
Seventy University Drive Apartments, Amherst
My First Employee
When I made the pitch to the company to do the extra work, I had also recently met a woman named Laura, who had previous experience in social media. As everything started to ramp up on the project, I quickly realized I couldn’t do it on my own and had my honeymoon coming up. Not that you are ever allowed to work on a vacation, but a honeymoon is definitely no work zone. Laura quickly jumped in and we went right into training. Within four weeks she had taken over social media for the account, was doing video editing, and responding to emails, which was amazing. Laura saved our honeymoon.
24 Coldbrook Drive
The owner of the apartment buildings also owns a house and a ton of other properties, hopefully future work, and asked me to help sell his house. This is going on at the same time as the apartments mind you. We created a Zillow Page, social media, and started running ads. Again, the whole too many leads thing. It becomes a reoccurring problem on Facebook. Leads are powerful, but unless you find the right recipe of questions and engaging content, they could be people who are just bored filling out your lead forms. I pulled in a great drone video camera man, Kevin Murphy, and we put together a video that has outproduced any of the other videos I have ever put on Facebook, which leads me to what the businesses next venture is going to be. By the way, this house is still for sale. You should look it up on Facebook, it may just be the perfect house for you. This allowed me to give Laura more work and expand her role.
Social Media Summer Series
I partnered with Lindsay Barron Loan Originator at Applied Mortgage in Northampton to put on a social media workshop series, which started with Facebook Basics, Instagram Basics, which blew everyone’s mind, not in the way you think, and finally an intro to Facebook Ads workshop. When I originally thought of the workshop and how many hours it would take me to put it together, let’s just say I underestimated a lot, and when it comes to public speaking, I am a perfectionist, ugh.
I got to meet some really incredible people during the workshop and figure out what they needed most, which was invaluable, and it led me to a side project, which was launching a beta version of an online coaching program.
Beta Version Online Coaching Program
I tried to launch a beta version of my online coaching program the day I left for my honeymoon. I know not the smartest. The good news is that I didn’t get any takers. Why is that good news? I hadn’t completely finished the program, so it would have forced me to create content over my honeymoon, remember honeymoons are a no work zone time. It also gave me much needed information that I wasn’t ready to launch an online coaching program. Lol.
Back to Social Media Summer Series
I taught Facebook Basics, which I am really comfortable with, but then it came to Instagram. I have spent thousands of dollars testing Facebook ads, and over a thousand hours with Facebook content, but when it comes to Instagram not so much. I do keep up with all the updates and listen to all the popular podcasts on both Facebook and Instagram to stay informed, but I don’t test on Instagram currently.
I also realized that it is really difficult to teach Instagram, because there is such a wide gap of knowledge when it comes to using Instagram, and also Instagram is three platforms in one with newsfeed, stories, and IGTV. At the end of the workshop, people looked like they were fried. I also can’t teach Instagram effectively over desktop because it is a mobile platform. Lesson learned that this needs to be multiple workshops on its own.
Finally, I taught Facebook Ads, which goes from being boring and dry one minute to a key point that can save you hundreds of dollars and generate way better results the next. We went through campaign, budgets, and the ads themselves with tips on how to navigate and create content most effectively.
In the end, I didn’t get any business out of this yet, however, I told them all that I was maxed out anyways and not taking clients on, so it was to be expected, but somewhere in there my stupid pride wanted at lease on person to reach out anyways.
The Honeymoon
I know that you are wondering. The honeymoon in the United Kingdom was amazing and I didn’t work at all. We got lost a ton of times while on a hike through the wilderness, which was exhausting, nerve-racking, but also a blast. We found the best breakfast place, Angie’s little food shop, and had some time to spend with friends, explore, and get to know each other a little more. It was pretty perfect.
Next Journey
One of the things I have discovered in my project with selling a house on social media, is that nobody else is doing it effectively right now. When I looked for competition, there was none, except for real estate companies that are just posting listing over and over again, not very engaging. On top of that, what does the for sale by owner do if they don’t have a real estate agent? They put a Zillow page together and wait. The cost per 15+ second video views were less than a penny and lead costs are extremely low.
Now on to the reason why having too many leads is a bad thing. In the process of personally reaching out to everyone who becomes a lead and trying to build a relationship with them, which is the process we are doing, so that we make what is considered an intimate process and biggest purchase of a person’s life a more personalized experience, we get about 7 leads per day. When you get 7 leads a day that you are going to eventually keep reaching out to throughout the process on any updates, it can become a time consuming job, which is ok, however, the likelihood that 7 people per day are seriously interested in buying a $449,000 house, seems highly unlikely to me, which means that there are people becoming a lead who have no intent on making a purchase, just curious. Some is to be expected, but we have to minimize the rest.
This whole experience says that there is huge opportunity in creating a Facebook Page where it focuses on for sale by owner properties initially and maybe even rental properties in the area. We posted our Zillow page and get anywhere from 15-40 views per day on it with a save or two. We run ads on Facebook and in one day reached 2,920 people, had 424 video views of 15 seconds or more, 40 people engaged with our content, and 6 leads came in using $24 of ad spend.
So that is the next big test, once we sell the house, we are going to turn the 24 Coldbrook Drive in Ware, which will be considered a dead page, into a New England Homes and Rentals Page that we will start growing organically and with paid ads building it out to eventually get enough traffic that homeowners will pay us to market their properties on social media. Hopefully at some point, real estate companies see that they are missing out on this way to market their properties, and hire us to run ads or teach them to do their social media more effectively. Either way, until more competition comes into the market, we get to reap all the benefits.
That online coaching program beta version will need an upgrade and I will need to officially start list building through paid ads myself now, so that I can market that program to a list of people who need it now. On to creating my first lead magnet. So now that I have finally got all caught up, I can start focusing on my business again, and free up a little more time for my wife and family. Thanks for following my story and keep checking in to see how it is going.
If you are looking for someone to take over your social media, run ads for your business on social media, or coach you on how to do it all yourself, email us at jamie@empoweredsocialmedia.com
