I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe right now. We're having our monthly Spyglass Realty meeting. And we're going to do it on all the realty hack groups. Right now is just like such a trying time in our life and I don't think anyone has seen anything like this.
What we need to do is to try to normalize our lives, we need to be engaging with our clients, we basically what are you gonna do, you're gonna sit home or go crazy, or you're gonna like try to make the best of this. And the way that we can do that the number one thing that you can be doing, anybody that you have worked with, or potentially work with is conversations.
That is the hardest thing to do because it requires picking up the phone and making calls. But, it's the most important thing, and we've talked about this before, is that what we're trying to do as real estate agents, as human beings is engage, build relationships, the relationships that you build right now are going to be more important than any other relationship you've ever built in the past.
So when you're making calls, and you're talking to people, just be a human being, you're not trying to sell anything, you're just asking them how they're doing, how you can support them. Then you're gonna let them know what you're seeing. These conversations are going to be like Kwazii about real estate but really what they're going to be is you're building relationship.
What else are you going to do right now?
So what we're going to talk about today, I've got a couple different top topics. I've got how to real estate agents can use video for engagement during coronavirus. We're going to talk about the newsletter we have going out, it's going to have a lot of helpful tips and then a lot of social media, posts, videos.
Last month, we had Adam Contos talking about the 30 days of video and he put in basically that we have three different ways to do that. You've got Facebook Live, you've got groups and you've got stories.
What we're going to put together for you is the images for you to do the very basic stuff but you still have to do the work. You have to come up with the topics. You've got to go live.
You've got to you know do videos. You know the world is changing right now and we're going to see more innovation in this period in these next three months in a virtual world. What we want to do at Spyglass is we want to be at the forefront of that. We wanted to help you to engage with your audience to be the source for real estate in a virtual world.
We've got a lot of things coming over the next week or two, we're going to be having a virtual transaction that we're putting together. We're going to have 360 cameras that you're going to be able to tour any property uploaded on our site, people are gonna be able to look at properties within a 360 virtual world without ever leaving the house. We know that the world is going to innovate, because that's just what happens in times of crisis. We want to be the world ones that are going to be at the forefront of that.
How Austin real estate agents use video for engagement during coronavirus?
The first thing is Virtual Open Houses.
A lot of you guys know that we're in basically a shelter. We call it a shelter in place. When I talk about these things, make sure that you are legally allowed to do it. Real Estate Agents are considered essential services right now. We don't know what that means. We're going to get more into that. For the purpose of this webinar, we're going to be talking about vacant homes.
If you've got nothing to do, and you're in shelter-in-place and you have permission to go do a video of a property, this is a really good opportunity to engage with your audience. So make sure you have permission from the listing agent on Facebook first.
The other thing is, you're gonna want to have a lead capture for people that maybe your Facebook friends that register so when you're doing a live walkthrough in a home, you cannot put a link in there, you're gonna have to have a link added by a friend or spouse or whatever so on you can go to one of our agent sites, type in the address that way when someone does register, the lead will go to you and it won't go--it's like a house lead. So you want to prepare for this by having that link ready, and have one of your friends posting it as soon as you go live.
You should also have to prepare for safety purposes. You have to be comfortable with this. If you have any issue at all, if you have any kind of health concerns, don't freakin do it, okay. This is something that you're going to do if you're comfortable in a safe environment and that's what this is why we have vacant homes there. So bring disinfectant wipes you're gonna bring soap, hand sanitizer, and a handheld phone tripod.
Video Walkthrough
I've got a whole video in here of how to like disinfect the house. Go in, wash your hands, use a disinfectant to turn on the lights, familiar yourself with the property, and know what you're going to say. What I mean by that is you're gonna know what the square footage of the property is, how many bedrooms and baths, wood floors, quartz countertops, waterfall countertops. Know what you're going to say, and you're going to treat it like you're walking through with a buyer.
So you're going to start on the outside of the property with Facebook Live on selfie mode, say,
Hi, this is Ryan from Spyglass Realty. We're looking at this property, 123 Main Street and I'm going to do a walkthrough of the home for you…
And then move to Picture Mode. Take your time, go through the property, point out the features, and give the stats of the property. When you walk out the front door, go back to the selfie mode and then talk about the amenities.
In other words, let’s say you’re near Baron Hills Elementary, which is a highly rated school. We're three blocks to the greenbelt and then finished by saying, if you have a property you'd like me to do a virtual walkthrough for, please let me know.
When you sign off what I recommend doing is use this opportunity you're already at the property and you want to like, while we're creating video, you want to get as much as possible. The video that you do on a live Facebook or Instagram is going to be grainy, you can download that video and that's fine if you do nothing else, but you're already the property, go through and do another video with your tripod.
If you’ve got an iPhone 11 with a wide-angle lens, in a wide-angle those turn out really well, the stabilization is going to be better, everything is going to be better if you're going live you're already there might as well do it. If you've got a GoPro, put the GoPro with a wide-angle lens, use that. If you have a 360 camera, which we're going to be getting one here very shortly, then do a walkthrough with that as well. The reason for this is you can do the exact same walkthrough, but you're going to be able to multi purposes on social media with a better copy of the video.
If you're using your phone for the second one, put it on airplane mode so you're not interrupted that happens all the time.
Now you have your video, you have your live, it's already done. You have your video, second walkthrough. Go back when you get back right in description and say,
Hey, this is Ryan, with Spyglass Realty, they toured 555 Main Street in Barton Hills. If you have a property you've seen on MLS you'd like me to tour, please comment below the video and let me know or send me a direct message. If you wanted to have a conversation on what we're seeing right now, please send me a direct message. I'm happy to have a conversation with you.
Everything that we're going to talk about doing in the next 20-30 minutes is about having conversations. Engage anything that you write, ask them about the conversation. Take that video in that description, and you're going to repost it on other platforms. You've got Facebook groups, neighborhood-specific, or client-specific.
You're going to put it on Instagram, with one-minute clips, you can use cut stories for that. On YouTube and LinkedIn, you take that description.
You put it on every single social media platform and that way you have the widest audience. Everything we talked about with Spyglass, it's about multi-purposing content. You never do one thing for one platform it's always multi-platform. Pretty easy.
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Newsletter Video
We're going to talk about our video for the newsletter. We've been doing a newsletter for our for you guys for the past year, I think where it's got the market stats. Recently, in the past few months, we've asked you guys to do a newsletter.
This month’s newsletter will include Market Stats, Home Survival Kit, Where to Get Booze Delivery, Take Out, Kids Activities, Arts and Crafts, How to Practice Social Distancing When Walking, Essential Places That Will Be Open, Alternatives to Grocery, Market Q&A from Independence Title, New Listings, Saved Searches.
We are building a newsletter that is all about how one can keep themselves busy during this time of crisis. What we're talking about here is putting the video in front of it. We put a video in front of our last few newsletters, but you want to make it personal. Tell them where you're at in your life right now. Right? You're going to be a little bit more vulnerable. You're going to talk about what you're doing to keep yourself busy and your family busy. You're gonna talk about what you're seeing in the market. Okay? And then finally, you're going to talk about the virtual staging option.
Let me tell you this. If you do a video for the newsletter that we're going out on Monday, it will have the biggest open rate in history, I promise you. So you know, make this video personal make it maybe a little bit vulnerable, you don't go crazy and you know, talk about how manic depressive you are, but you also want to be positive, vulnerable and informative.
Creating Relevant Content for Social Media
We took this from my friend Amy Youngren. What we're gonna talk about in this segment are posts, video stories things to put in groups and so this is one of them like guys we're having a meeting twice a week now or three times a week. You know take a screenshot of it right and then put this caption market update with our team DM me for info or probably DM me for questions.
Another one is Tips for Quarantine. This is for stories or posts or Instagram The 14 days for Total Organization that's very relevant in today's world.
Market Videos. We've been doing like these are great ways to engage with your audience. People are wanting to know what's in the market and be truthful. Tell them exactly what we're seeing right now. It's kind of a mixed bag, it may turn into a complete shit show here pretty soon. We don't know.
By the way, I always say this, if you're having conversations with clients, don't predict. Even if you predict something and you think it's gonna happen, don't tell them because we just don't know what's going to happen. Don't tell them the markets gonna come back in full force, don't tell them it's gonna turn into Armageddon. Whatever you think, keep that to yourself because you just don't know what's gonna happen. But you can tell them what's happening right now.
We've seen multiple offer situations, we've seen people that have bailed out a property's at the last minute because they're scared. So keep that knowledge of what is happening in the market relevant to what you're seeing and consistently with you and your team members. Check-in with lender rates, they have to date with the most accurate quote.
Conduct Interviews. When we were brainstorming this with Kelly and John McCarthy and Sunny, we went through like principals, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, economists, right. This is a previous interview. We did it.
Homeschooling Tips. That's a big issue right now. We'll have all this stuff. And by the way, we're going to have a master's article that's going to cover all of the things we're talking about. It will be on our website, it will be sent out in the newsletter.
Ways to Keep Kids Busy. Is that a big topic right now or what? Like, everyone's driving each other crazy. You're cooped up at home practicing social distancing. This is a really good one.
Daily Gratitude. We took this from Isabel Affinito. We think that this is a good one.
One of the things that we were talking about yesterday was that you have different segments of your audience. You have people that don't have kids that are going to be interested in different things than people that do have kids. So keep that in mind and you can talk about things that are not exactly in your sphere. Like, what people without kids you're doing. How to keep yourself sane when you don't have kids like. Everyone's going through this crazy stuff right now.
Places you can get liquor delivered. Did you know that Texas is like the number one state for drinking right now? I would have never thought that but it is and we're gonna have that on our blog as well.
Top Do-it-Yourself Tips from an Austin Home Stager.
Sunny is going to be doing this basically, here's the thought behind this.
I'll do it first. I'm going to be having an interview with Sunny, our stager, going over the DIY tips for staging and it'll be live on Facebook. It'll be probably 5 or 10 minutes and then if you're with our company and you're in In doing the same thing, you can do that with Sunny as well and you'll go live on it.
Here's the kicker.
Make sure that you're going to offer them a $30 gift certificate by Home Depot by commenting in the section below during the interview. You're also going to offer them a virtual staging appointment to go over these tips with them. Completely free, no charge at all. What we're trying to do here is we're trying to offer them an item of value through staging tips, through DIY, you know, things that are going to help them improve their home and keep them busy during this time. We're going to create engagement through likes through social media, comments and through hopeful shares. So you'll go through decluttering and organizing you're gonna take this. This is basically the presentation that Sunny will give during the Facebook Live that she does with our agents.
This is going to be the interview with Sunny. These are the things that you can do and this all will be available to you, whenever you're ready to do this or if you're ready to do this. People have a lot of time right now. This is an excellent idea. For people that are wanting to have that presentation. Sunny’s going to go through every single part of this, but even better than that, like you're gonna offer them the virtual staging appointment so that Sunny can walk through on the phone, go through the property and basically help them organize their next project because here's what we found is that people that do this on their own and left to their own, you know, suggestions are gonna like painted burnt orange, how many homes in Austin have you seen that are burnt orange? It's horrible and never it's not a good idea.
I do want to reiterate that our next newsletter is going to be a whopper. We have social media tips that are going to be on social media.
Start building these relationships, really do your best to make yourself memorable. We're going to do as much as possible to innovate right now. So that when this is all over with, we're going to be memorable.
Here's the deal. There are 13,000 agents in Austin right now. Here's my prediction by November, there's going to be 8,000. Could be wrong, but there's going to be a huge fallout of the agents and the people that are putting in the time right now are the ones that are going to reap the benefits after this overweight. It's a scary crazy time, but it will pass and we're going to get you through it.
We're going to keep innovating. We're going to keep providing the content. We're going to help you to know exactly what to say when to say it and what platform to say it on. I hope you guys are all staying safe right now. Loving each other being kind and be patient. Holy shit. Is it hard to be patient right now? Like it's a trying time indeed. So, everyone, take care.
Posted by Ryan Rodenbeck on
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