The Content Spider - Effective Marketing For Your Real Estate Business

Hey, good morning everybody! I hope everybody's doing well this Thursday morning. It is episode 76 of the Note Closers Show, and I thought today I would talk about something we haven't talked about in a while. I know we talk about marketing on a regular basis, but what I thought I would do is literally run a case study here for you over the next 7 days. Alright? Between what we do with this video and how we attract marketing, how we attract content, how we attract people to what we do. Now yes, I know We Close Notes has been around for a while. Scott's got a big 200,000 person database plus, you know, so many contacts on Facebook and Instagram and all that good stuff. But what I really want to do with you guys is give you kind of the groundwork of the skeleton, the foundation of what I started doing when I was brand new at marketing. What I started doing on a regular basis. Because that is what marketing is all about, it's doing it, and doing it, and doing it well, doing it, and doing it, and doing it well. A little LL Cool J there for you this morning and stuff.

 So you guys have probably heard me have Chase Thompson talk about the content spider, so what I thought I would do is give you my content spider and the 8 or 9 things that we do on a regular basis here. We tweak things up, things that I have done over the last couple of years to help me to get where I am and where I'll be in a year or two years from now.

Now a little background, I believe video is one of the best things that you can do. And so I'll go through a couple of things with you besides doing a Facebook livestream like this we'll go through another couple options that we do with video, and give you also some great examples of people who are doing some great videos as well on a semi-regular basis, okay?

So the first and foremost thing is you want to write this stuff down, all right? If you can take some notes, grab you a piece of paper, you know, an envelope, something to write on because this is really important. This is what drives traffic to us, this is what drives people coming to us, this is what drives investors. And the reason I'm bringing this up, in literally the last three days I have answered at least a dozen if not more posts on Bigger Pockets, posts on my Facebook page, or if not phone calls from people talking about note investing, and they all have the preconceived notion that they're going to use just their money, their 50 grand they've got saved, their 200 grand they've got in their 401K. And that's great that they have worked hard to have all that money there, but that's not the end all be all. You have to get beyond the point of using your own funds to make this happen.

I had one guy that got in an argument, "Well I don't' need to learn how to market for money, because I have some money." I'm like you're not only going to buy $250,000 worth of assets. You've got to get beyond threre, you've got to think bigger in this picture. And this is what the Content Spider as Chase likes to talk about. I've been doing this stuff for years and when Chase started talking about this two years ago I was like "Oh that's exactly what it is." I mean a lot of you are fans of Gary Vanderchuck who does a lot of the social media stuff. He's an expert at basically ... he really focuses on 3-4 prongs off his main content. Well if you're in business as an entrepreneur and you don't have the Gary veins with a million followers on one platform you've got to cross pollinate a little bit, but you can use the same content to make things happen. Okay? So I don't want you to think you have to go out and create 9-10 different things, this is all stuff that can be done relatively quickly, relatively easy, and relatively very inexpensive for each and everyone.

So one of the videos that I think most people need to start off with is a very simple video thing. And it's literally taking a PowerPoint presentation, 10 slides, PowerPoint presentation and doing a webinar, doing a go-to webinar. Now I know what you'll say, "Scott, I don't have a big following." I don't care if you don't have a following, I don't care if you have one person and it's your mom that gets on the webinar. The go-to webinar feature allows for you to record your webinar. It also allows you to practice at your craft. It allows you to practice at your story telling.

Now I'm not saying you need 40 slides. A very simple 30 minute presentation is basically 10-15 slides, and if you use the 10-20-30 method of PowerPoint presentations: 10 slides, which will equal 20 minutes roughly, in 30 point font. You want to be at 30 point font with the wording. Now really simple, do not use a white PowerPoint slide, don't use the automated formats. Use a solid color, blue is a really good one, lettering in white so it pops.

All right, and like I said 10 slides, first slide's going to be your logo, last slide's going to be your contact information. The eight slides in between should be, one should be a little about who you are, your history as a real estate investor. The second slide should talk about your goal for the webinar. And then your third slide, or really your fourth slide, if you figure your fourth slide because you have your face image, who you are, your goals, so your fourth slide is starting to get into deals.

Now, one of the great things you can go to get deals with photos you could go to FCI Exchange, you could go to Watermark Exchange, and pull photos of assets off of those slides. You could jump on our note funding league the next time we have a list of assets and pull some photos from those, and use those to market as your deal flow. Talk a little about what you're doing, talk about note investing and then get some case studies. Everybody loves 3-4 case studies, and that's your 10 slides. That's literally a very simple PowerPoint presentation to put together. So do the 10-20-30. Go to webinars basically free for the first month, 100 bucks roughly if you need to do that any further. But you record a webinar, you could do it over lunch time, a lunch and learn, okay? Send an email out to your database, post a Facebook. We're not going to talk about the pre-marking we're going to talk about the after marketing for the most part because if you're brand new you're not going to have a big database initially. And that's okay, it's quite okay, but we're going to show you how to drive traffic to what you're doing for future webinars, future videos, future marketing. Okay?

So you do your video on, go to webinar and record it. You want to make sure you have good sound in a quiet spot, but you've got your PowerPoint presentation and your video. This is your most important thing, right? It's your video. And do not be worried, don't worry if you have nobody that shows up. Use the opportunity to record and practice it. If you've got to record it once at night by yourself because you're afraid people are going to ask questions, that's fine. Record it by yourself just to get a good clear video, and it's okay to do it once or twice, get it down. I know I did my first webinar twice. The first time I couldn't get the freaking video, the audio to work, so I went through my whole presentation and didn't share my screen. Okay? You're going to make mistakes it's okay though, but this is so valuable for you. If you've never closed a deal, this can really help get people taking a look at what you're doing.

So you've got your video, okay, 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font, it's going to be 30 minutes because you're probably going to have a few questions from some people on there if you do it live. Okay? So now that's a video, now what do you do with that video? Well you send it out to YouTube. Okay? YouTube is the second largest search engine out there. A couple of things that you want to post to YouTube is you want to make sure to put keywords, tags in that stuff. You also in your description, all right, maybe you put in three nonperforming note deals case studies, something similar like that five deals, note deals in Florida, something generic like that so that when somebody's searching on YouTube for nonperforming notes it pulls up your video. Okay? You may even want to use the tags Scott Carson, Eddie Speed, Donna Bower, Troy Fullwood. Put those tags in your tag area there because it will draw content. It will also draw traffic from us who have a big following, it'll pop up in our search feeds when people are look for videos from us. It helps you, okay?

Now another thing you want to do probably before you probably really before you post to YouTube is go and create a photo. All right? You can use Instagram to post your photo of your PowerPoint. Now the biggest thing is you can go to Canva and create a really nice image very relatively inexpensive. A lot of times the videos we create are free, or the pictures we create are free or it's a buck. If we download a good template or things like that so a buck for a great photo is well worth it. Okay?

Now the thing about the photo you're creating this is going to become your thumbnail that you use for YouTube. It's the thumbnail that shows up. So you want it to look nice maybe it's going to have your face on there, a smile photo. Maybe use a slide from your PowerPoint with an image and then also say, "Hey our four case studies for March," or, "Four case studies, four nonperforming case studies for Chandler and Financial Associates, something like that. Okay? Very, very simple.

Now the good thing is you've got this video, this webinar you created it's now a video. Now you want to go out and send that video to a website called Rev. Now Rev.com will transcribe your video word for word into a word document for you. A 20 minute video will cost you 20 bucks. Okay? Seriously, a 20 minute video will cost you 20 bucks for them to transcribe, it's a dollar a minute. Okay?

So what do you do now? Well once you get that Rev back you go back to YouTube and you copy it and edit, take a look at it and edit it real fastly, and you copy the description back into the full description of the YouTube. Now you have the written word in below your YouTube video, so if people want to read it versus watch it they can. Okay?

Now what you also do though is you're going to create a blog. Okay? So, a couple of things about that blog, you can use Hubpages, Blogger, I like using ActiveRain, because you're going to use ActiveRain to pull comps, find realtors in areas, and the more comps that you have on there the more responsive the realtors are to you. Now you could also, post in another blogging website whatever you wanted to.

Nichole Herrman:           Can I post to LinkedIn? You use your own LinkedIn?

I'll get to that in a second, yes, that's a great, great point. Now that's where you could also, you must be reading my mind. No you're good. You could do this as a LinkedIn blog. Okay? You have a great image, you've already created which is your header, you've got the content and then you put the video in there. This is a really strong piece to put on Linkedin, okay? Your Linkedin blog which includes the video, the Rev, it also includes your photo over here, okay? Boom! Why do you want to put it on Linkedin? Because there's 145,00 real estate investors on LinkedIn. Okay?

Now you want to have your blog, very simple so people can track it down, you want the picture to look nice as they're scrolling through the profiles. You also want to put some tags at the bottom: real estate investing, nonperforming notes, investments, SDIRA as your tags at the bottom of your LinkedIn blog, okay? Now this becomes something now that you can share across several areas. Now you can share it to say Facebook. All right? The video you can upload to Facebook, but I would just do it when you've got a really solid LinkedIn article there. Now I've got some websites over here. I don't think this, is it off the screen? If it's off the screen don't adjust it. Okay, so we covered that. Covered that, covered that. Okay, back to this, you can also if you like Twitter, you could also send it to Twitter.

Now I would also make sure you've got enough room to use the hashtag real estate. With your title, that's why you don't want your title to be too long, "Check out my blog on the five nonperforming case studies #realestate #investing," okay? And post that to Twitter. You're not going to get a lot of Twitter followers immediately off of this, but this is something you could post three times, morning, noon, and evening for awhile to drive some people to follow you.

Now what's really nice is I would take this same blog over here and post it to Bigger Pockets. Probably going to have to do this in the marketplace, because Bigger Pockets gets upset if you do any type of self-promotion. Okay? Now you could say, "Hey I'm doing some case studies, here's the article on it, here's my video on it." Sometimes they'll let you do it sometimes they won't. So I would first post it in your traditional conversations, and if that doesn't work then go post it in the marketplace. And what's great is you'll be able to identify people who automatically see that and start connecting with you. I think Bigger Pockets is a really great website for every note investor out there because it's a really easy way to grow your database and expand.

Wayne Snell is a great example. He just did a short webinar that he did this whole basic thing on it, did a webinar, recorded it, uploaded to YouTube, and he's been religiously talking with people anyone who comments about notes, "Hey I found this short video on what we do. Hey I found this short video on what we do." So I reached out to Wayne and I said, "Hey man how's it going are you trying to teach people how to do this or are you trying to move upward." He says, "No I don't want to teach people, but we are raising quite a bit of capital with it." Okay, so it's a great thing, okay?

Now, this works out really well because you've got a nice piece of content here. Here's my blog on Linkedin, here's my blog on Bigger Pockets. Okay? Now what this all comes down to is a couple of things. One, is if you've got your PowerPoint, going back to your PowerPoint, over here to Linkedin, you can upload your PowerPoint and the Rev to SlideShare. And SlideShare will allow you to set up where you can actually have people opt in to follow you. And that's kind of a cool thing, we upload quite a few of our presentations to SlideShare and share those with individuals so that they can take my PowerPoint and use it, and use it as an example for when they download and follow along as well.

But with the description, I put the description in there and like I said a 20 minute video maybe about 3,000 words. A seven minute video is usually about 1,000-1,100 it's how fast you speak. If you slow it down a little bit, avoid the coughing and the Red Bull, you'll speak a little bit slower. If you're like Chase you'll rattle off and you'll get like 10,000 words in a minute. Okay? But that also leads us to the one most important thing. This is your email database. All right? "Hey, check out this blog I just put together, check out this article that I just put together." Okay? One of the things that you could do is if you see articles on DS News or Housingwire, you could have a little bit of a note. Adam Adams is really good at sharing as he shares and crosses different platforms with Facebook pages, but it would be really cool if he filmed a short little video, maybe a week in review because he posts 4 or 5 great articles each week and kind of a Friday review where he does a short little video, "Hey here's what I think about these articles, here's the five, here's my opinion of how it's affecting the market." And go from there.

So, this is ultimately sending an email to your database and hopefully people, whether it's through Instagram, through Bigger Pockets, through Twitter and Facebook, through ActiveRain, through Linkedin, Linkedin will connect with you so you can export [inaudible 00:17:37] they all opt in to your website, or they opt in to your email database. Because that's ultimately what you want to do to grow.

Now you've built some content, created some great content, you've built a little bit of a following, now if you do it again, it gets easier, if you do it the third time it grows exponentially. Okay? You will also get better at your craft, and if you do something regularly, once a week, I wouldn't say do it Monday night at 7 o'clock, somebody's got that kinda hand packed down, but there's a lot of opportunities, a lot of of lunch and learns you could do. There's a lot of Friday fun days or other things that you could do in your business to make things happen.

And working on a PowerPoint is something you can do at late at night, if you're working at a job and you're waiting for a ride, you could do your PowerPoint there. You can work through some great things very simply enough to do this. You could record your webinar at night if you work a full time job, and then still upload it and roll it all out later on for you. So you don't have to worry about doing this at prime time as well. You know like 5 o'clock or 10 o'clock or whatever that's something you could record and then roll it all out for content. So do I have any questions from people, any comments from people on this?

Nichole Herrman:           Um Ryan Roche, I don't know if this is a suggestion or a question, he says, "Earn 10% annual return on your IRA ask me how presentation?" Either he's going to do it or he's asking you to do it I'm not sure.

Scott Carson:                    I wouldn't necessarily go that route as your first one. I think he's asking, "Hey here's how to get 10% on your IRA." You could, maybe it's something you do second or third one, but I wouldn't come out to the gates blazing with it. I would talk more about you, your business. Don't be so pitchy, it's okay to provide content. Educate your class a little bit.

Nichole Herrman:           Oh, he says it's a suggestion.

Scott Carson:                    It's a suggestion, yeah.

Nichole Herrman:           Like for you to do it.

Scott Carson:                    Oh, no I have a different way of doing things, I mean I've got some aspect of that but I ... no I've got a different way of doing things. How to get above average returns is one thing you do but it's too, there are too many of those out there. I'd rather set myself apart with deal flow. Because that's what investors want to see. Okay? Investors want to see deals they don't want to see theory. Hey great awesome, I have enough theory, everyone's pitching me a return, give me something I can sink my teeth into. Okay?

Nichole Herrman:           Oh I have a couple shout outs. So Stacey and Karen Wall from Buy Homes they do a really great job on their dining room talks on their YouTube, and then ...

Scott Carson:                    Well let's cover that. They do a great job.

Nichole Herrman:           Yeah.

Scott Carson:                    So they do a great job with the video, they just need to probably start transcribing a little more so it becomes written.

Nichole Herrman:           I think they did in their last video.

Scott Carson:                    They did that in their last one? Okay, I missed that one.

Nichole Herrman:           And then me and Gregors were going through Instagram and Howard, I'm sorry I don't know his last name.

Scott Carson:                    Oh Howard Marcell.

Nichole Herrman:           Yeah, he had a great Instagram post on his video, and he did it in English and in Spanish, which is kinda cool.

Scott Carson:                    Howard did a really good job, exactly with the white background. It was very simple image.

Nichole Herrman:           He talked about what he did, who he is, and what he does.

Scott Carson:                    English, Spanish, and Instagram, I saw that on Facebook too. Howard did a great job with that.

Nichole Herrman:           He did a really really good job.

Scott Carson:                    Exactly. Victor Manuel, out of Indiana has done that a couple of times too with video stuff. Who else do you want to give a shout out to, anybody else?

Nichole Herrman:           Who was that man that did the property in Florida that we, we shouted out a long time ago, like awhile back.

Scott Carson:                    Clinton.

Nichole Herrman:           Clinton.

Scott Carson:                    Clinton did a really good job, I got to talk to him today. Clinton did a really good job with a long, about a 15 minute video going through a case study, and hopefully he transcribed the video, I didn't see if he did, but he did a really great video. Spent a little money on Fiverr to get somebody to edit it for him to help him out with some things and he really did a really great job with it so kudos to Clinton. We ended up helping him get about 1,000 views off the video.

Cody Cox does the weekly email and he'll get 700 to 1,000 followers to start following that stuff as well. He's been doing it for awhile, he's been doing it regularly every Sunday for at least 3-4 months now. It's staring to pay off for him. And Cody gets kind of swamped, Cody still works a full-time job so sometimes that's his only bit of marketing because he's busy, not only with that but with family. And so it's harder sometimes for him to get other stuff out. I know we were talking a little bit last night back and forth via text message and stuff and he was like, "Oh I'm stuck at work." And I'm like, "Listen, hey if you've got a little bit of down time, go down to the coffee shop and work for an hour or two or something that'll give you, while you're waiting on your ride, or if you miss the train that's the best thing. If you work full time you've got to fill in, learn to fill in the those cracks that you have in your schedule with content.

Nichole Herrman:           Like 7 pm to 2 am?

Scott Carson:                    Yup, 7-2 that's what Gary V likes to say. Always from 7-2. Well if you only have from 10-2, maybe it's 10-midnight, spend a little time going through stuff. And one thing, too, I want to make sure and clarify. You're not going to have overnight success. So be patient. Give yourself permission to goof up on some of this stuff, all right? I had six phone calls that were like, "Hey Scott we like your videos because you're just your normal self." And if I goof up I make fun of myself, I laugh at myself, I stutter "Blah blah blah blah."

Nichole Herrman:           You dress funny.

Scott Carson:                    I dress funny? What?

Nichole Herrman:           You know like on St. Patrick's day where you had on green.

Scott Carson:                    Oh yeah, yeah yeah.

Nichole Herrman:           Green and like.

Scott Carson:                    Exactly, I'm not afraid to ...

Nichole Herrman:           Yeah if they could do a scan of your toys in your office.

Scott Carson:                    Yeah, my office is kind of clouded right now, I need to kind of take some stuff home. But we have, it's kind of looks like, you're right. You're totally right, I've got different props, I've got books, I've got hats, I've got flags, I've got cash guns, I've got noisemakers. It makes me laugh and that's all I care about half the time. So what else do we have any other questions, comments?

Who gives a crap what you look like, okay? I hear this all the time, I hear this all the time and George, actually George you would have an easier time raising capital than I would because you have a little bit more seasoning to your face. Okay? When people first see this young looking buck with the short military style cut, they don't always trust me. You have a great face, you don't have a face for radio you have a great face, all right? Puts people at ease, all right? Ladies, nobody cares what you look like, well they do care what you look like but they don't. You don't have to be perfect. I had a conversation with Michelle Hill who's at the beach with this gorgeous view in Hawaii. I'm like just turn the camera around and show the beach and talk. Or show, "Hey, I'm living here my hair's not perfect but we're having a great time. This has all been paid for with Notes." It's okay you don't have to be perfect, you don't have to be a model, you don't have to be Claudia Schiffer up here, you know what I'm talking about? You know or Cindy Crawford with my mole right here, you know?

Nichole Herrman:           Don't eat while you're doing it.

Scott Carson:                    Yes, don't eat while you're talking. But realize people aren't coming to you for this. They're not, well I don't know I've had some stalkers, but anyway. People are coming to you, your tribe, the people that know you, trust you, follow you or start to follow you are coming to you for your content not, "Oh the playboy, playboy after hours or playgirl or whatever." All right? What other questions, comments, head shaking are we getting from people?

Nichole Herrman:           Jerry Vega says that's one ugly polo shirt.

Scott Carson:                    Oh that's because he's a Dodgers fan I believe. When you get three rings in five years, you can wear ugly shirts too. Jerry Vega. Yeah it's baseball season, dude, don't even start.

Nichole Herrman:           Well yeah that's it for now.

Scott Carson:                    That's it? All right guys, so one of the things that we will do with this video is we'll roll this out, so I'm going to share with you we need to keep a track so you want to write this down. Anyway, we want to have the number of viewers from Facebook live from this, number of viewers. We'll also see how many people read the blog, because we'll put this into a blog on Linkedin. Linkedin will share with us how many people actually watch this. We'll also put an Instagram post up feeding people to it, we'll see how many people read on ActiveRain, Bigger Pockets, all that good stuff. So we'll literally give you a step by step to say how many hits we have by next Thursday. Okay everybody?

Nichole Herrman:           Yeah a case study.

Scott Carson:                    A case study, case study for you. But anyways guys, go do something. This is not difficult we're talking a couple hours to really put this together for you, it's probably going to take the longest time on your PowerPoint. If you don't, if you struggle with PowerPoint do a video, if you struggle with video do a PowerPoint. Okay?

 A lot of us want to write blogs but we're like, "Ahhhhh, I got writers block right off the bat." So do a video and just record a you literally record yourself talking. Like I had to write a chapter in a book that I'm a part of. 100 chapters, 100 entrepreneurs, 100 business advice book that I'm a part of. So what I did? I go to webinar and turned it on and they recorded me going through my best advice to entrepreneurs. It was a seven minute video I sent it to rev. Seven dollars and 65 cents later I've got a written word document. I take a few minutes to edit it bam, send it in, it is done. 1000 words for my chapter. Literally less than an hour of time. I know I'm a little bit more polished because I've done this a lot more than most people. You're going to struggle at first, it's okay. Be yourself, don't be afraid to fail, but do something to help you market your content and before too long you'll spin a marketing web that even the biggest spider will be jealous of.

So, with that everybody, if there's no more questions or comments we're going to wrap it up for the day, go do something. Let me know if you're going to do something if you're going to record a video, a webinar, something like that feel free to share below, send me a message I'll be glad to help promote it out for you guys as well. Otherwise have a great Thursday, go get something done, we'll see you all at the top.