Boroughs & Burbs, the National Real Estate Conversation

Boroughs & Burbs 175 || Marketing and Social Media in Real Estate

• Season 5 • Episode 175

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In this episode of Season 5, Episode #175, we dive into the ever-evolving world of marketing and social media in real estate with Sonny Amini, founder of Buzzy Agents. Sonny, a leader in real estate digital marketing, shares insights on how agents can harness social media platforms to boost their presence, attract clients, and ultimately drive sales. From crafting compelling content to mastering social platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, Sonny explains the essential strategies that today’s top agents need to succeed in a highly competitive market. Whether you’re an experienced agent or just starting, don’t miss this invaluable conversation on leveraging digital marketing for real estate success!

SPEAKER_00:

The Burroughs are New York City. The Burbs are everywhere else. Real estate is the ultimate game of risk and reward. It's the biggest investment most people ever make. Fortunes are made over a lifetime and lost in a day. And we're not playing with monopoly money. How do you stay ahead? Who's buying? Who's selling? And why? What do they know? We want the truth. You need an edge. Burroughs& Burbs is your secret weapon, giving you the insider knowledge and strategies you need to succeed in the high We press the experts to expose the pain, find the deals, and occasionally predict the future. That's Burroughs& Burbs, Thursdays, 3 o'clock Eastern, noon Pacific. Because everyone can make money in real estate.

SPEAKER_03:

Welcome, everybody. Burbs and Burbs, number 175, season five. Marketing and social media in real estate is what we've got up on the program today. Very excited to have our expert, Sonny Amini from Buzzy Agents. Say hello, Sonny.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you, guys. It's an honor, and I'm really looking forward to it. Let's have some fun.

SPEAKER_03:

All right, let me get through the housekeeping. That's Burrows and Burbs. You can find us at burrowsandburbs.com. I want to thank gracefarms.org, our sponsor. That's what they look like in a couple weeks when the cherry trees start blossoming. But I will say the grass is starting to green up. I originally found Sunny... and the Buzzy Agency because I'm a great admirer of Peter Hernandez's marketing. And when I saw Peter had 311,000 followers, I had to ask Peter, what's your secret? And he said, well, I use Buzzy Agents and you should too. Now look at Roberto. He's got a good looking page. And I've got a good looking page, but 2,400 followers, 1,200 followers, you know, how do we get to the level of a Peter Hernandez? How do we get to, there's Buzzy's page. How do we get to the level of a Ryan Serhant with two and a half million followers? So that's what we're here to ask our expert. Sonny, how do I get to two and a half million followers like Ryan Serhant? That's what I want to know.

SPEAKER_01:

You want the long answer or the short?

SPEAKER_03:

I want the long answer. I have an hour. I got

SPEAKER_01:

all day and a

SPEAKER_03:

pen.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, let's do it. So I'll just say people like Ryan Serhant have been on TV. That helps a lot, right? When you're on TV, you have the traction that they have. They have a PR team. That really adds up. It does make a difference. But I can also say that that alone does not work because I've seen people that are on these reality TV shows, real estate agents, and they didn't get the traction. And, you know, without mentioning any names, you know, people did come to us and work with us to get that traction. It takes a lot of different strategies to actually grow your following. There's no like shortcut or cheating. If that's the route you go and some people do, you don't really get any results. You just get some numbers, you know, for vanity and it's honestly a big waste. And to be honest, some people get scammed for that vanity, you know, to grow followers and whatnot. The real answer is that you have to do a lot of things and do them as best as you can. And you do need to roll with the punches. Because in the past few years, I've been working with Peter for five years, for example. And throughout that time, we've had to switch the strategy constantly because the platforms change. You have to have great content. You have to deliver a lot of value. You have to be consistent. For example, with Peter, we've been posting almost every day for those five years without stop. You have to use a lot of strategies, including Influencer marketing. So we have over 3 million followers on our own accounts that we've grown in the real estate niche on Instagram. And we've constantly used those to promote our clients and their content and direct traffic to them. That's one thing you can do. We've used paid ads with most of our clients. I highly recommend paid ads for all real estate agents. And that's one of the biggest mistakes that real estate agents are making is they're not using paid ads. Furthermore, in the case of our clients and how we grow in the big numbers, we really focus on the strategy to develop a connection. So what you see with a lot of accounts is they're unable to connect with their audience. A lot of times they're not showing their own face. They're not saying anything that seems valuable. They're talking about, if you want to sell your home, you should stage it. You should, you know, consider landscaping and just basic advice that nobody wants to stick around and follow for. So there has to be real substance, but there has to be traffic. So our strategy, the way we break it down and we can get deeper into this is one, two, three, brand, which means build out your brand so everything looks good. Aesthetically, especially with Instagram, everything looks good. Your content looks professional and attractive and you're being consistent. Part of that is posting and being consistent. So it's not just... building the brand and looking good brand identity. It's also brand awareness, which you get from posting constantly. And, you know, next is traffic, number two. So I mentioned paid ads. That's one of the easiest ways to just directly get traffic. You have to pay to play, of course, and it gets more expensive, you know, week by week. But that's a really effective way because it's targeted. If you get a post that goes viral, you know, you don't know necessarily where you're going to reach. You might reach all over the world. And some accounts lean towards locations that you don't even want. And that's just how it goes. And you can't always control it. But with paid ads, you have more control. So that's the traffic side. And we can expand on that. I mentioned influencer marketing before, right? That's another thing you can do, collaborating with other accounts. But thirdly, conversion. So most successful real estate agents on social media, they're handling the first and second part quite well. but they have no strategy or tools in place for the third to convert. And when I say convert, I mean, followers, leads, engagement, whatever your goal is, build your mailing list, whatever you want to do. They just, they just do, you know, the posting, they might do something for traffic, like let's say paid ads. And then they're hoping the conversion part just naturally happens because they're just, you know, so lovable or something. I don't know, but they don't have something in place like a lead magnet. Like we've been talking about, John, that's one great way. or having links, promoting your links to maybe like a Calendly for people to book a call with you. Whatever you want your strategy to be, there's a million ways to go about it, but they have nothing there to convert. And so that's usually the missing piece. So I hope that answers your question the long way. You asked for the long way.

SPEAKER_03:

I took notes. It started with, it helps to have a TV show, got noted, but it's not enough. Okay. Talk to me about the second thing you said was daily. That five years with Peter Hernandez and daily consistency. I heard the word consistency and I heard daily. That's quite a commitment. Most of us have a day job. And to come up with ideas, produce those ideas, post those ideas, think about hashtags. would be taking me away from my day job so yeah how much is enough

SPEAKER_01:

well in some cases it pays more to be an influencer so some real estate agents should consider the switch in careers but no just joking um honestly enough is daily at this point there's too much competition there's too much content out there if you want to succeed at this thing you can't be a part-timer Because if you are a part-timer online, you're gonna look like you're a part-timer offline and that's doing you no good. So the reality is you probably as a real estate agent need help. If you're a brand new agent and you don't have a lot of deals and things going on in your pipeline, then obviously go all in, spend half of your day online on social media and use that as a tool.

SPEAKER_05:

Sonny, I think you said something that was really important in the beginning, which is your brand. Make sure it looks good. Make sure you've got all those parts in place. And then I think the daily thing, John, being consistent, and I think you guys are really good at it, is crank something out once a day or whatever. And it doesn't take that long. It just doesn't. Put it on your calendar like you're calling your mom or something. But if your brand is all looking good and in place, I think it can just roll. Am I wrong, Sonny?

SPEAKER_01:

I love your mindset about that because most people would be like, Oh my God, that, you know, how can I do that? That takes so much time, but you're right. It doesn't have to. And honestly, that's one of the challenges that some people need to figure out, or we help some of our clients to, you know, make it more of an efficient process. It doesn't have to take long. It can obviously like anything with volume, just doing it over and over, you're going to improve and find ways to have shortcuts and find your strategy and your approach. But yeah, it helps to have the strategy laid out, know what types of posts you're going to post and all that stuff. And you can get, you know, we kind of approach it like a science. But if you want to just keep it simple and if you don't have a lot of time, you can start with three posts on your grid. I'm talking about Instagram on your grid per week and many posts on Instagram. You could basically redistribute to your other platforms. You might need to make a few changes. But I love to use, and we do use Instagram as a focal point and then expand from there, right? Because Instagram is the most versatile as far as post types. And so it's a nice place to start and focus. It's also aesthetic. You see the grid, so you're kind of forced to be more aesthetic with the approach and curate it a little more. But anyway, so three times a week on the grid, I would say is a minimum just to stay top of mind and be active and show activity. So Sonia, let me ask

SPEAKER_02:

you. Can I ask you something? When you talk about the grid, you're talking about an actual post. You're not talking about a story.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Actual posts, grid posts.

SPEAKER_02:

And is there an ideal length? Like, brevity is crucial, right? Because you'll just lose people.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So for brevity's sake, I'll say yes. You know, 20 seconds or less.

SPEAKER_02:

Is 15 seconds too brief? Is 15 seconds ideal? Is 30 seconds too long? Is two minutes too long?

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, depends what you're talking about. Generally speaking, we're trying to go, in our case, usually we're trying to go 20 seconds or less, 30 seconds or less, sometimes 12 seconds or less. That's a good range, but it depends what you're talking about. And some content you need to expand on it more. And so you might need to have like a two minute video on a specific topic, but there's different ways to approach that. One thing we like to do is in that case, take the first 20 or 30 seconds of the most compelling part of that video. And then you can direct people over to your YouTube where they can watch too many video. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And is it always video? I mean, I see that like Peter had like a couple of static images.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's not always video. But video definitely is like the king right now. The direction that things have gone recently, short video is dominating. TikTok was a big player in making that happen. You saw Instagram followed suit with Reels and YouTube couldn't be left out. They also came out with YouTube Shorts.

SPEAKER_03:

If I look at Peter, it's all professional. I don't know anything about his personal life from this page. And that's a strategy. But when I look at Roberto, and I've seen this done before, there's some of... Roberto, in media, there's some of him with his family working and things he sold. It's a combination. And so what's the right mix of allowing people into your personal life versus being only professional?

SPEAKER_01:

So the right mix... Definitely, we do recommend, this is a very common question, should I be sharing personal content and whatnot? The answer is yes, for sure, to let people connect with you deeper, more deeply. It makes a big difference. It's like having a relationship with someone. It could be a professional relationship, but just always veering away completely from any personal questions. If they ask about family or anything, what's your hobby? And you just kind of go dark. So it helps to have personal to connect. The ratio, it's up to you and how comfortable you are and what type of content you're creating. But I would recommend somewhere around 50-50 is good. And you don't want to go-

SPEAKER_03:

You're a super successful client, Peter Hernandez, has chosen not to. And you're saying it's not necessary. Basically, what I'm learning from that is it's not necessary.

SPEAKER_01:

It's not necessary. But if you look at Peter's stories, you'll often see his day-to-day, behind-the-scenes content. And that's what you should be doing on your story, is documenting your day. Depending on who you are and what your approach is, You can have your personal on your grid. Why not? I would recommend it, you know, but I would recommend less than half of your grid being personal and then documenting a lot of what you're doing every day, whether it's business or personal on your story. And then if we're going to talk about, you know, just on this topic of content types, look at what TV does. TV shows you about a ratio of about four to one of entertainment to ads, right? To keep you engaged. That's, this is, I don't know how they did it, but I'm sure they use tons of data to figure that out. And that's what they came up with. Social media is doing the same. They'll show you three to one, four to one, five to one, sometimes even two to one I've seen of posts that are there to entertain you and keep you glued to it. And then they'll give you an ad.

SPEAKER_05:

Sonny, can I ask you about how to break it down with a post versus stories? I typically might post something that has a few photographs and then I'll take one of the more anchor photographs and I'll put it to my story and I might add something differently. So, because I sort of see our audience as more into watch, looking at the story than checking out my posts.

SPEAKER_01:

There is some truth to that. Like, here's the thing. The story is the intimate connection. And actually a lot of the lead generation is going to happen from the story. So if you post something that, you know, it might be interesting to somebody, you might post the same thing on the grid and you might get comments or whatnot. You might post the same thing on your story and someone might decide to message you then. So, and, you know, and it might, like I had recently, one of our clients, they put, they went to the steakhouse, they posted the steak on their story. And then someone reached out, like someone that they knew but haven't talked to in a long time, reached out and said, oh, like I love this place or I was there recently or something like that. And then that conversation naturally turned into a real estate conversation and lead generation. So the story is very powerful.

SPEAKER_05:

So story versus post, is there a rule of thumb there? What's your recommendation?

SPEAKER_01:

The ideal situation is your more curated content would be on your grid. And on your story, you're documenting your data. OK, if you go look at my story right now on my Instagram, you'll see what I did today or some of what I did today, at least not a lot of it. I don't I don't go too deep into it yet. It's like some people do like influencers. I'm not showing my breakfast. Not yet. Right. But like you will see that I went to the gym today. You will see, you know, thanks for the follow, by the way. You will see that I you know, what else did I do today? Yesterday I went for a walk. You'll see that. And so I- And

SPEAKER_05:

that's in your story.

SPEAKER_01:

Story, a little bit behind the scenes, you know, just- Behind the scenes, okay. That's right. So that's the ideal situation. You know, you're showcasing, but then there's also a strategy. See, I always say real estate agents should market like digital marketers. So that's a very interesting concept because What are digital marketers doing? They have, you know, they have lead funnels going on. They're using the story as well, oftentimes to generate their leads and they'll even have a sequence. So that's getting very advanced. I don't want to get too much into that right now because that's like really high level stuff. But the story, you know, is great for lead generation and it should be day to day building a connection. You can use that same ratio four to one or so, like I mentioned earlier on your story. So you can show what you did three, four times with three or four story posts. And then you might have something there as like a promotion or ad as lead generation. It might be a listing with a call to action, right? To message you. One thing I don't like, by the way, is when agents post a story of a listing and then they'll put a link to their webpage and people usually would get lost. And just sending people from platform to platform isn't always in your best interest. especially when the webpage isn't even optimized to convert a lead or if you're sending them to like Zillow or something where they're gonna end up with another agent. So keep that in mind, right? If you have them right there on your Instagram or whatever platform it is, try to get them to take that action right there. Whatever your best option is, consider what you're doing. Don't just kind of do it automatically. You're

SPEAKER_03:

saying embed a link in the story or embed a link in the post. Yes, so that they don't have to say, go to Linktree, go to, right? I mean, where does Linktree fit into this as a call to action?

SPEAKER_01:

Great question. I'm saying use a call to action, but don't send them off to a whole different platform where they're less likely to convert. And there's not like a nice setup for conversion. Like there might not even be a forum or anything, or it might be like Zillow where they're not necessarily going to reach out to you. So I would say if you have on your story, if you're promoting a listing, Just ask them to message you. You're right there. Wouldn't that be the best, most instant scenario? But regarding Linktree, where does Linktree fall into this? Linktree is considered a landing page, so to speak, right? And its job is to convert. Even though people are right there on your platform, the job is to help send people to other places you want or really provide resources. It's all about providing value, and that's the best thing to do there. But the problem with Linktree is the landing pages, they also call it a squeeze page because it's supposed to squeeze people into one action. So a good landing page will have multiple times it'd be asking for people to fill a form or whatever that conversion would be, that call to action. But Linktree, sorry, in those type of pages, link in bio pages and whatnot, they usually have so many different places you can click. So it's unfocused. And that's one of the problems with it. So also, you know, Don't just throw every single webpage you have on your Linktree page. Be a little thoughtful about it and just put the most important. You might wanna collect emails because the beauty of mailing lists and newsletters is that you keep that data forever. If Instagram decides to ban you because you said the wrong thing, where'd all your followers go? Meta has it. So if you use these platforms you know, to run your business and whatnot. But I would always recommend on the side, try to funnel people into your mailing list. And there are certain high level tactics to do that, that work well. But you want to get people's emails as well on the side always, because that's something that you'll keep forever. There's a lot of value.

SPEAKER_02:

Can you explain what Linktree is? Sorry. I don't even, I mean, I hear, I'm listening, but I'm just trying to fill in the blanks because I don't understand that concept or what that is.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, for sure. That's a good one. So Linktree is just one of the many platforms and providers of a landing page that you can put on your social media. So, you know, you can put a URL, you can put a website on your social media, on Instagram, it's right under the bio. Linktree, what they do and similar providers or services, they give you a website where, yeah, I think John's gonna show us right now. It has a bunch of, John, if you can please click on that so we can see. It has like a bunch of links There's also a version that will show people's Instagram grids and you can click on certain posts and it'll take you to a link as well. It's a landing page, but it's a very unfocused one. Is that

SPEAKER_05:

available to any industry or just real estate?

SPEAKER_01:

Any industry. There's tons of providers and companies. It's usually free. There are paid versions. It's pretty valuable. It could be good, but I mean, I would personally have people go somewhere where I'm going to convert them best. Sometimes your website, sometimes your own landing page. Here we have about, what is this? Maybe 12 or so links, 10 links or something. So it serves, it's a pretty, you know, it's, I'm not knocking it. I'm not speaking against it necessarily. This is good. You can direct people to other platforms, but what's most important. Sometimes you want to choose your top priority. It might be to, gather people's emails. So maybe instead of a link tree, you just have a link that gets their emails. And exchanges, by the way, speaking of lead magnets, which I mentioned earlier and we probably should get into if we have time, you can offer something valuable in exchange for their email address. And there are automated and very effective ways of doing that, but we'll get into that if you want to.

SPEAKER_03:

Do you have an example of an effective, a more effective link tree than mine? I mean, I thought, oh, Linktree, they might be looking for my website. They might be looking to buy a house. I'll provide those two links. I mean, if I only have five things I could provide in my Linktree, you know, who's doing that well with the call to action? I mean, you said brand traffic, but conversion is key. And a lot of people are using Linktree because it's a free resource, but they're misusing it like I am.

SPEAKER_01:

Not necessarily misusing. I wouldn't say misusing it. It's just like, When it comes to marketing, we're all so distracted, right? When you're on social media, it's all about attention. That's the name of the game. And if you have their attention, you might not have it for long. So make the best use of it and try to get the action you want out of it. And or this might be the same thing or there might be different things. Provide the most value you can to that audience, that viewer. Think about what they really want. The best situation is a give and take. Think about what they really want and then offer them that for free. easily, without friction, just one small piece of friction. I'm going to pull up an

SPEAKER_03:

example of somebody else doing it, and you tell me how this is different. So when I go to Peter Hernandez, 300,000, I see that he's using LinkedIn.bio, and I went there, and boom, he's got Listen To Me, my website, and he's got videos. This seems to be pretty effective.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, there's a lot going on here for sure. So we just want like, look, everyone has different goals. Peter's not trying to generate leads to sell homes. Peter wants to provide the most value he can to real estate agent, his real estate agent specific, right? So that's why we have this going on. And we made the exception and weren't trying to do something that's a landing page that's going to convert for one specific action. If you just want to get leads and you don't care about anything else, I would do a different approach. I would create a landing page to get those leads, offer a lead magnet, in exchange for their information. What we did with Peter's account, which is pretty cool, what you saw was you see some of the posts that were on his grid. You could actually click on them and head to the links associated with those posts. So if there's like a YouTube video connected to it or whatnot, you could find that there in that landing page, which some of those services do, and it's very cool. Again, it comes down to your goals. You got to really keep things focused because your audience doesn't have much attention to give you. And you wanna- How important

SPEAKER_03:

are all these hashtags?

SPEAKER_01:

I mean- Not too important anymore. No, why? Not too important. They used to be, but even the Instagram CEO came out, it was several months ago, if not more. And he said, you know, hashtags, basically he said they don't work straight from his own mouth. He said that they don't really work anymore. Like they're not using them to direct your traffic or your post to traffic. The only advantage of hashtags and why we still use them is because it's like SEO in some ways. If people go on Instagram and search a hashtag, let's say they search Connecticut real estate, your post could show up there. So not everyone's searching on social media, but still many people do. And they wanna see, like if they wanna see what's going, if I wanna see, if I wanna find Connecticut real estate agents, I just might do that. I might just go on Instagram and search that. And if I do, you'd want your post to be there. So why not use those hashtags?

SPEAKER_03:

I wanna get real specific right now. I need, we need to get, We need to get out of the general and get right into a case study. Roberto, how many real estate agents are there in New York City that you are competing with right now? It's got to be several thousand. 5,000 agents?

SPEAKER_02:

At least. Maybe more. Maybe 10.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay. Can we construct a strategy for Roberto to win in New York City? All the business. All the business. Does he need to post every day? What kind of a paid ad budget does he need? Yeah. You know, I mean, if he says my goal is to be the next Fred Eklund, the next Ryan Serhant,

SPEAKER_01:

walk me through

SPEAKER_03:

the strategy.

SPEAKER_01:

This is the king of New York strategy. Yes. Let's talk about paid ads firstly, because this is the fastest way to get things going right now. We can literally sit down together, Roberto, launch some ads, and things will change for you today if you invest enough. So that's the problem. Most agents don't invest enough in the paid ads. They're thinking in terms of a few hundred dollars. We're not selling candy here. We're trying to sell real estate. Consider your ad spend or your investment into the marketing in proportion to what you're selling. There's an ROI there. It's not like you're selling something for 500 bucks so you can't justify spending thousands of dollars per month, right? So I believe real estate agents should be spending five figures monthly in real estate, in ads, sorry. And most of them are not. The large majority are not. The company is

SPEAKER_03:

usually- 10,000 bucks a month. That's hundreds of dollars per day.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes? That's

SPEAKER_02:

120,000 a year. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And so I'll say this. When it comes to paid ads in general, if you're doing serious business, I don't mean like a huge company, but even small businesses, if you're serious about it and you want to generate leads, usually you're thinking in terms of 50 to 100 bucks a day. If we want to run our ads, we're thinking that number minimum. So yeah, a few thousand a month. So that's what agents even, you know, independent agents- Let's say I say,

SPEAKER_03:

okay, how do I know it's working? What kind of a return should I expect on that investment?

SPEAKER_01:

Right. So here's something that we've discussed before. First of all, before you do that, I would recommend that you have posts. Your stuff looks good. It's clear. It's not all over the place. Back to the link tree conversation that we had. You want to have everything going to one clear place that you would convert them. A lead magnet, for example, is a great way to do this. So you could run an ad with a lead magnet so that you're not just running the ad and hoping they see your stuff, hoping they follow you, hoping they become all that stuff. That's just getting lucky. What's lead magnet? What do you mean by that? Great question. A lead magnet is simply something you give in return for something from them, which is usually their contact information, their follow could be. So this is a call to action. A call to action, but let me be specific. A lead magnet oftentimes is a PDF. That's a very common version. Roberto's Guide

SPEAKER_03:

to Buying in Manhattan. Roberto's Guide to Townhouse Living.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and so I would recommend avoiding the simple... approach, which doesn't seem valuable to the audience of guide to seller's guide, you know, in Fairfield County or in the main. You got to do better than that. Too basic. Okay. You got to get more complex, show more value, you know? Okay. So we can get into that too. And actually, so for everyone that's listening, that's interested in this stuff, if they go to my account, Sonny Amini, We have a bunch of lead magnets there. If you look at my posts, basically almost every post is connected to a lead magnet. So we're talking about lead magnets. One of the lead magnets that I offer and we offer is like 50 lead magnet ideas. So you might want to start there and get thinking about, and I can pull that up on the screen in a moment, but I want to make sure I explain this well. So let me not do too many things at once. So what we would do, back to the King of New York strategy, right? What we would do is we would want to offer a really good lead magnet, run as much, in ads as we can comfortably spend and just look at the ROI and justify it. So if you get one sale, how much would you earn in commission? And then we can probably budget based on that, or you can budget based off of your commission. One thing Peter Hernandez says, and a lot of people agree, he says, spend 25% of the amount of commission that you wanna earn into your marketing. And so I would argue, you might wanna have some physical, some digital, but I would lean a little more into the digital. And within that, I would also, assuming you have the brand side covered, you'd want to have the traffic and conversion next covered, which a big part of that could be paid ads. I'm a big proponent of paid ads here because it's just the easiest way for people to get results without getting too complex. When we talk about

SPEAKER_02:

paid ads, when you go through paid ads and you go through the prompts, You know, they asked you, how do you want to like geo target, et cetera. And then a lot of times, like, do you want email addresses or do you want more views or do you want, there's all these different categories and it's always sometimes difficult to decipher what's the better choice here or what should I be channeling?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's a good, very good question. There's a few different approaches. Following, getting follows is one because the beauty of a follow is you have that person basically in your database. I see Instagram as a database. Instagram followers are a database. So we got to look for quality and not just quantity. You know, it's not about getting your numbers up and having big numbers. It's about having the right people there, local people usually, or from feeder markets maybe, but you want to have the right people. And so when they follow you, not like when it comes to real estate, especially, this is the case for a lot of offerings and services and products and businesses, but real estate, especially, it's usually a longer sales cycle. And to get like a direct response would be amazing, but it's not so common, right? So you want to get their information usually or get them to follow you. And then when they're following you, every post you're doing, you're nurturing people at scale. And that's the beauty of it. You send out emails maybe once a month or once a week and whatnot, but on Instagram, on social media, you can nurture people daily and on a whole different level, way more intimate. And the communication is much more comfortable, you know, than even texting, calling or sending emails. It's just a message, casual from your story. People love it. People want to have this engagement on their social media. And so, yeah, going back to your question, Followers in many cases, especially in real estate, makes a lot of sense to have people come follow you from the ad. And another thing, as I mentioned earlier with the lead magnet, it makes a lot of sense just to have them convert right there. And the way to do this, and there are automated chatbots that you can set up to do this fairly simply for fairly low costs in most cases. You can get complex too, but you can do it simply. And so you can have people DM you. And that's one of the main strategies I would do is have people DM me. And as part of that, they also have to follow you So now you have the account there in the DM. You have the person right there. They had to follow you as well. And then only then they can get that lead magnet. And this can all be automated.

SPEAKER_05:

And how does it, how do they get the lead magnet thing after they ask you for it or confirm you want, they

SPEAKER_01:

want it? It's automated. Yep. It's automated. And through a chat bot that you set up with your account. If anyone wants to test this, just go to my account. And you could go to one of the recent posts on my grid, leave a comment. So, I'll show it on my screen right now.

SPEAKER_05:

It said type in goldmine. Okay. I type in goldmine. Then what happens?

SPEAKER_01:

Then you'll get a DM from me. Okay. I'm here on this call. You're going to get a DM from me though. And so simple as that. Then it's going to say, it's going to say, basically you have to click to get it. And then it'll, if you don't follow me, it's going to say, I noticed you don't follow me. This is only available to my followers. Please follow me and then click here and I'll send it to you right away.

SPEAKER_03:

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so I can set it up however I want. After that, I can then say if I want, it's more friction. It's not necessarily always good for lead generation, but I can also say, great, now please give me, and you can personalize this however you speak, but then you can say, great, please share me your email address and I'll send it to you. Now you've got to follow. You got to comment by the way, there's also engagement there. And then you also get the email address. I think you tick all boxes that way very nicely.

SPEAKER_03:

So step one, I have confidence that I have my brand is representing me properly and I've got my conversion Number three, all set in place and I'm confident in my lead magnet. Only then can I go out there and now double, triple, quadruple my traffic because I'm confident that when they get to my page, they're going to see what I want them to see and there's going to be a conversion tool. You kept mentioning chatbots. What does that mean? Because I saw it on your page, and you just mentioned it again, that I can automate it. Even though you're on the call with us now, your chat bot is responding to Meredith's inquiry. How does that work?

SPEAKER_01:

That's right. That's right. A popular company is called ManyChat. They cost around$20 a month. And there are very complex ways to do it where you have to hire a professional to do it. And there are simple ways that they set up for the average user to simply set it up and do what I said. That can be done quite simply. I think most people can set that up.

SPEAKER_03:

That's a more sophisticated way than Linktree. Go to Linktree. There's links. But you're saying this is a better way to capture leads to ManyChat instead of Linktree.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, first of all, most agents are not doing this. So if you want to just be more advanced and almost 90%, 95% of agents do this because what most agents do when they set up some chat bot, this is like the message of the chat bot of death. You'd message an agent and other people too, but I see it a lot with agents and they set this up. So it's like, you could literally say, hi, I want to list my$20 million home with you. And then they'll say, hi, thanks for messaging. I got your message. I'll reach out to you as soon as possible, or I'm not here right now. And then you never hear from them because they don't check their messages. That's the worst thing you could do. And whoever's doing that, you have to stop. Just turn it off. I'm not asking anyone to check their messages. Don't check your message. Don't go on your phone. Do whatever you want. but please don't set up this stupid chatbot that, you know, it just makes you look so bad and it's almost rude, you know, right? So anyway, with these chatbots, see- So the

SPEAKER_02:

alternative to that is what though?

SPEAKER_01:

You're saying don't do that, but- Don't do this, don't do that, do this. So instead of that, use a chatbot like ManyChat and set it up properly the way that I explained earlier with the lead magnet. I think every agent or team or whatever real estate account should have a lead magnet at all times sitting there available to people so they have a reason to reach out to you. Not everyone's going to reach out to you because you're, you know, you're so handsome like Roberto and, you know, you dress so well like John and whatnot, but They're gonna reach out if you're offering something of value, because you know what's not valuable? It's not so valuable always to have a call or know what their home is worth. It is valuable at times, but simply because they know they can have that anytime with any agent in the city if they ask. Give them something that is different, unique, feels like it's really helpful. One thing, and we discussed with John, that you can do for homeowners, because obviously homeowners need home services, It filters out everybody else, right? Homeowners need home services. You could offer something in partnership with a home service provider that includes an exclusive discount. And you can even put like a date limit to it. This could be like a seasonal thing. It could be something that you only do in the springtime, maybe spring cleaning, maybe landscaping. Window

SPEAKER_03:

washing.

SPEAKER_01:

Window washing. And you got some really cool stuff in Connecticut that we talked about, like those tank removals and stuff like that. That's interesting. And so you can partner with the service providers and you can even partner with them on the ads like agents do with mortgage brokers. And so there's a lot of interesting, creative stuff that can be done that nobody's doing. And hopefully after this, some people start doing.

SPEAKER_05:

And partnering with service providers is going to help you get in front of their followers, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Potentially. Hopefully they have a lot of followers. It's always another thing that you should keep in mind in your tool belt to try to be collaborating with people wherever possible, including within teams. A lot of teams, don't even collaborate with each other. And you don't know if it's a single agent or if there's 20 agents and there's 50. And you just never even see them representing each other with each other or supporting each other and sharing in audiences.

SPEAKER_03:

That's

SPEAKER_01:

such a good

SPEAKER_03:

idea. Sonny, I got to ask the really tough question now. What about cheating? We've all... We've all considered cheating. We've all gotten an email from somebody who promises to give us a few tens of thousands of followers. And if you're Roberto and you look good, you're confident in your brand, you got your lead magnet right there. It's all dialed in. All you need is followers. So I'll spend a hundred bucks. Give me the followers. Why does that not work?

SPEAKER_01:

So cheating doesn't work. First of all, let's clarify what we're talking about. I think most people know. And many people, everyone, I think at this point, every single person, myself included, yourself included, we get messages from people saying, oh, your account can be so much better. All authentic,

SPEAKER_03:

verified, no bots, we

SPEAKER_01:

promise. 100%. 100% and you'll never see me and you don't know what my business is and just send me the money and we'll do it. So basically we're talking about fake followers and fake engagement, fake likes, fake comments. It all exists. It's horrible. It'll destroy your account. Why? And it's a scam. Why? So it destroys your account because Instagram, they're not stupid. Think of the people that set up Instagram.

SPEAKER_03:

But if I go look at Peter Hernandez and I see 311,000 followers, I go, oh. That's credible. That guy's successful. And then I call him. How do I know

SPEAKER_01:

they're fake? So how do you know? Oftentimes you can look at the engagement of the account and you'll understand. So there's a lot of people. Here's a little trick people try to do. They'll get the fake followers. They'll have, you know, a million followers, whatever. You'll go to their posts and you'll see they hide likes and turn off comments. So no one can even comment. And then that's their way of acting like it's all real and they just want it to turn. For some reason, they don't like comments. Yeah, right. They just don't want to be exposed. Hiding likes is a different story. And we sometimes do it even because it distracts people from the actual content. And that's a whole different philosophy. But as far as fake followers, you can usually tell in the way I just mentioned, that's usually the most common way.

SPEAKER_02:

Every account is going to have a certain percentage of fake followers, right? Even Peter at 311,000, he's got to have of that, I would say 20,000 that are just complete nonsense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't know. Yeah. I don't know the exact ratio, but that's a, that's a insider pro secret. The fact is that when you start performing, your post performs well and your content and account performs well, these platforms are full of bots, right? And you can't control them and you can't block them. You can't stop them, right? So naturally, an account that's big. Let's talk about one of the biggest accounts, Kylie Jenner or The Rock, Cristiano Ronaldo. These are like the top 10 accounts on Instagram. They can't do anything about it. Their account is getting tons of bots for whatever reason daily. They're often losing tons of followers daily, you know, because when you do have fake followers, you also lose a lot of them rapidly. And there's nothing they can do about that. Um, that's the nature of, of like, let's just say your, your post performs very well and goes viral. You're going to get a bunch of comments from clearly robots, right? So why did that happen? Because the post went viral and these robots are set up to engage with certain posts, certain accounts that use certain hashtags, it'll engage with certain posts or certain posts with certain hashtags might bring, you might've seen on a lot of real estate accounts. Uh, when people post, you'll go, you'll see in the comments, some account says, Great video. Send me this video or whatever. These are just bots. They're just trying to get engagement traffic to their account for whatever reason, maybe to get that content. So they have content to post, maybe to bring you into the world and try to convert you for one of these big follower packages. And on that note, guys, I just want to say, I wanted to say this earlier, fake followers, fake engagement, all this stuff, fake stuff is extremely cheap. And so the big scam, especially when they're from third world countries and a hundred dollars is like a lot. and their minimum income monthly salary is like two,$300, they'll sell these things for a hundred dollars or whatever, a few hundred dollars. And the cost is a fraction of that. So just don't fall for it. You're damaging your account.

SPEAKER_03:

Wait, wait, why? Engagement is engagement. I have no engagement. I hire the guys in Pakistan and now suddenly I have people commenting on my beautiful posts and it makes me feel good. Why not?

SPEAKER_01:

Just call me. Call me in 10 years when you haven't sold any homes from social media. If you like how it looks, go for it and bless you. I saw

SPEAKER_03:

yesterday somebody said, sign up for my service and get out of 200 likes jail. And he made the point that most of us amateurs will post something and there'll be 200 engagements on it. And it's really hard to break out to the next level. How do I get out of 200

SPEAKER_01:

likes jail? Well, first of all, you can try different things and all that stuff, you know, change your strategy, collaborate for sure. That helps, um, doing this influencer marketing. I'm talking about collaborating with other people that, you know, sharing in the audience that helps for sure. Uh, but you could definitely use paid ads. That's one of the easiest ways that I always like to throw out there because it's so easy. And so it's like, um, I mean, a good analogy is like using steroids or something. Yeah, it's going to look good, but what's going on on the inside? Your account's going to be destroyed because Meta understands the imbalance. They see the fake accounts. They understand what's fake and what's not. Your followers are going to be dropping because those fake followers are going to be, those accounts are going to be removed and everything. The quality is just the easiest way to say it is the quality of your account just drops and you'll see the results. Your reach is going to go down. All your natural, less real people will see your content because of this. So that's a big reason why not to do it. And I'll tell you, we've been in this business, in this game, I'll call it, because even before it was a business, it was a game for us. And we've been in this space for like seven, eight years. And we've tried everything. So we have tried the fake followers and all that stuff back in the day. And at this point, it's just so, so... It's been around for so long that the platforms have really cracked down and it just hurts your account way more than it can help visually. Can we talk

SPEAKER_02:

about something? So you were talking about the fake people, I mean fake and like the people who are promising the world and it's really just useless. As an alternative, someone wants to come work with you. What does that cost? What's the process? How many people would work with you? Tell us a little bit about your operation.

SPEAKER_01:

For sure. So everything we do obviously is organic. We take a real approach to it, which is hard work. While he's

SPEAKER_03:

talking, I want to actually show you what he did for me, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. So there's hard work involved. So whether you want to do it yourself and put in the time for all the posting and all that stuff, that's up to you. Some of our clients do that and they have coaching with us. And obviously that's a lower cost for them. Some of our clients have us, and most of them have us do it for them because it takes up a lot of time. And so when we work with our clients and some of our clients want, I would put them in two categories. Some of our clients are very successful and they don't need leads and they just want to have their brand look good and have lots of followers. And some of them will spend thousands of dollars with us. And the reason is because we need to be able to do everything that we do. There's multiple strategies, including running ads, doing influencer marketing and collaborations and whatnot, posting the right stuff. So they'll spend thousands. I mean, when it comes to growing followers, some of our clients that don't need leads and want to grow followers, they've spent around$5,000 with us on average per month. And they get thousands of followers per month. I'm going to answer it my way.

SPEAKER_03:

I signed up and I said, I want to go be a realtor. I want you to worry about my social. And he said, I'm going to make your brand look good. And that's what you just saw an example of, a curated experience. And I knew it worked when I got feedback from people. And yesterday, I got feedback from a guy in Boston who said, I just want to tell you your branding is spot on. It's authentic. It looks good. It's consistent. Keep doing what you're doing. So you get the good feedback on the branding. Second thing was we picked up a schedule. He says, you got to be consistent. Do you want to pay for daily? Do you want to pay for three days a week? Whatever you want, John, we can ease our way into this. So I get branding. I get consistency. What you just saw was a newsletter. because he said, you own your newsletter and it goes to your database. Whereas when you post on Instagram, Instagram owns Instagram and LinkedIn owns LinkedIn, but you own your newsletter. So why don't we consolidate all the good things you're doing on Instagram, your podcast into your newsletter? So Sonny also takes care of the newsletter for me. So it's the Instagram, it's the posting the same content differently on LinkedIn, the Facebook posting, the newsletter posting, all of those things. And when we finally feel like we have it dialed in, now he says, now let's expand it with paid ads. How

SPEAKER_02:

am I doing, buddy? What have you invested to get to that point?

SPEAKER_03:

I... I think it's a rather modest, I mean, he just talked about hundreds of thousands of dollars when you're wanting to be at the Peter Hernandez level. But I have to say that my business is successful enough and I'll give you real numbers. I used to invest in Zillow. ads and that cost me$5,000 or$10,000 a month. I can engage with the buzzy agents at the level of$5,000 or$10,000 a month and tell you that I have something at the end of the day. When I invested in Zillow, the month is over, I have nothing. Here, I've now built a substantial presence on multiple social media platforms for$5,000 to$10,000 a month. It's a great way to, and then what?$10,000,$5,000 a month,$60,000 a year. And every one of us, Roberto, should be spending at least$60,000 on our marketing. And this is too important to ignore.

SPEAKER_01:

I want to put it this way. When you consider how much you earn from even a referral, not even a direct lead, right? And throughout a year of good marketing, when people work with us, they're going to get that referral. That's hands down. Our clients end up in the list of top social media accounts for different regions and whatnot. They're always top of the list. Peter Hernandez and different people that we work with constantly are in that list. And they also end up at the top of Google. If you just search for real estate and whatnot, their Instagram posts tend to come up, which is a very interesting thing. But yeah, when you consider the ROI that we're talking about, it makes a lot of sense. And I'll say our clients have spent$5,000 to$10,000 a month, which sounds like a lot. but they reach their goals and they do it online, which is a whole different feeling than doing it offline in the traditional ways. And it's much more scalable. Because when you do that and you see, oh, wow, I just got a lead right now this month, you know that you can double your ad spend if we're using ads. And at that level of$5,000,$10,000 a month, we're always using ads. You know that you can double your ad spend and get double those results. It's scary to spend so much money, especially on something that's new and not everyone's doing it, but you get ahead of your competitors and you're gonna have the ROI that you want.

SPEAKER_05:

Well, Sonny, I think you said something that's really important and that's most people, a lot of people that are looking for a home or looking for insurance or whatever, they go online and if you don't pop up in the beginning, you're dead. And by seeing you first and then going to your website and seeing a beautiful website that's starting to sell the person and then then they attack check out the social media and so on but the way young people especially are are connecting with vendors is based on how they found them on the internet i i believe that

SPEAKER_01:

well for sure and it's not even just young people anymore you know people are searching online and the fact is that They're not going to buy right away. It's not, it's not the days of the yellow pages. They're not going to open and see your name and say, Hey, you know, great. You have the service I want. They're going to check you out and they're going to go to Instagram and they're going to go to social media and they're going to maybe search you on Google and see what all your branding looks like and see if you're worthy of their business. And, you know, NAR, the national association of realtors says 62% of realtors use Instagram to connect with high end buyers and sellers. And there's a reason for that. And, you know, they say properties marketed on Instagram attracts 52% higher quality leads than MLS listings because those people are looking into you and they're deciding if they want to work with you or not. And you're just attacking them, you know, to lack of a better word, you're attacking them from different angles, from the social media, where everyone's spending time, you know, for entertainment. It's free. I want to just say that again, you know, it's free. Like I'm not talking about working with us or running paid ads, but if you're posting yourself, This is a free thing to get exposure. You know, it's worth the time. So many people- I gotta tell you,

SPEAKER_03:

everything you see Sonny and Buzzy agents put up, I don't actually have to put captions, take pictures, right? Find a picture of graduating and add Fairfield County. I don't have to do anything. Sonny takes care of it. And that is worth, and I look good and I'm proud of my presence And when people come up to me in my town and they're like, I saw your stuff. I saw your stuff last week on social media. I think, you know what? This is working. Does Roberto, can he expect the same thing in a big, in a big sea of Manhattan? Because for sure, you know, I think a lot of New York agents are like, I don't know if I can ever get it where people stop me on the street in New York and say, I saw your social media.

SPEAKER_01:

No, there's a hundred percent he can, because, you know, again, we don't, he doesn't need to read, reach all of New York. Right. He just needs to. So we always look at the rich half. We look at it and that's doable by the way, with what we're talking about. And especially if you have elevated branding, a lot of agents come to us because they want to elevate their branding and start entering the luxury market. And so they have to see. You know, luxury buyers, they buy with their eyes, as they say. They have to see luxury, they have to see the branding, and then they'll be attracted. Otherwise, they'll think basically you're doing a whole different business, if you're even posting at all. The problem is half the agents aren't even showing up to post. They're not even in the game. And those that are, often they're not attracting the right clientele. I would also

SPEAKER_02:

imagine that you have people that, you know, they look, I'm willing to spend the money. But they're struggling with the content. Like, what do I put up? How do I do it? I don't feel comfortable on the camera. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so we're hands-on, right? That's a big benefit because it's very important because most people, they're even scared to get on camera. And we work on that together. But I'll tell you the strategy that we have, that we use, that works very well. And our clients love it. So basically, we create months of content on a 30-minute Zoom call. That's one easy solution that we have. Outside of that, we provide topics and strategy. We can go back to Peter Hernandez. He has a whole branded series and everything. We came up with that. I came up with that name. And we come up with the topics and we do on calls with Peter and other clients too. We'll get on these calls and we'll hammer it out. So what we do is we'll sit there on Zoom, like we're doing now. They'll set up their phone there. All you need is a phone. You don't need a production crew. You set up your phone, you have a little professional camera, Mike, this one costs 150 bucks and it's one of the best. And you just, what we'll do is I'll ask questions. I'll ask, you know, strategic questions that will get an answer and help, you know, lead generating answers, right? Questions for, questions that your clients will be asking. You always have to reverse engineer. You said, what content to post? What content is your client's, What do they need? What do they want to hear? What are they asking you to keep it simple, right? What are they asking you? What's going on in your market? Talk about that. So on these calls, we'll do that. And the client will record from their phone. And then after that, they'll share that with us. It can even be on an iCloud shared album, nice and easy. and we'll edit it for them in the done for you situations. And if we're coaching our clients and we're not providing a done for you service, they can go ahead and edit it themselves with the tools and the strategies we taught them, right? And go ahead and post and go from there themselves. Otherwise we handle it for them. So all our clients really need to do to have high level content and keep it personalized and get over their fears and concerns and hesitations of creating content is do these once a month calls with us.

SPEAKER_03:

So- We have to now end the show. And I think what I'm supposed to do is a whole bunch of calls to action. So I'm going to try it and then I'm going to let Sonny do it. So I would say, so if you like the show, you can find us at burrowsandburbs.com. And please go visit our sponsor, gracefarms.org. Roberto Cabrera can be found over here at Instagram. the Engel team and John Engel as well. So please tell all your friends, like us, share. How am I doing, Buzzy? How am I doing, Sonny? We could do better with the call to action, can't we?

SPEAKER_01:

That's right. I'm confused. Which one do you want me to do and which one first? I want you to do all of those things, right? I don't. Can I get that in an email? It's a little... That's the problem often, right? I just wanted to illustrate, like, there's too much going on. I

SPEAKER_03:

give a whole dust truck of things that you could be doing if you love the show.

SPEAKER_01:

I love the show, but I also love my time. And, you know, I don't have, I just lost track of what's going on here. That's the problem. On social media, especially. They're just, they're going to get confused. They see a little cat video and they're

SPEAKER_03:

gone. Show me, Sonny. What's the call to action? If I think that Sonny and Buzzy is for me,

SPEAKER_01:

what do I need to do? Just follow me, Sonny Amini on Instagram.

SPEAKER_03:

That's all I need to say.

SPEAKER_01:

Follow me. Just follow me. Get in touch if you want. I'm there. Because your

SPEAKER_03:

chat bot will pick me up if I go there and follow

SPEAKER_01:

you. No, if you like it, yeah. I don't have it set up where you follow me and I engage, but that's something we'll definitely do. If someone comes into my account and they seem to be in my target audience and they're a real estate agent that seems like our clients and seems like a good fit, then you can bet I'm going to message them at some point and see how they're doing. Hey, why'd you follow? What brought you here? You know? This is what we do. Is that a problem you're having? And can we help?

SPEAKER_03:

I think

SPEAKER_01:

that's great. I get it. Otherwise, they're watching the content. Use this again. Realtors should act like digital marketers. I'm a digital marketer. Do what I'm doing. Just watch me and do what I'm doing. So otherwise, they're going to be watching my content. I'm trying to provide as much value as I can based on what I know my clients have asked and want and whatnot. And I'm trying to provide as much lead magnets as I can. So they have an opportunity on almost every post to reach out to me and basically digitally put their hands up and opt in and say, hey, I'm interested in this stuff and we can take it from there.

SPEAKER_03:

I get it. Thank you. There's a lot going

SPEAKER_02:

on.

SPEAKER_03:

Follow SonnyAmini.com. That's all you need to know. Sonny, amazing.

SPEAKER_01:

Really great. Thank you. Thank you guys so much. I hope it was helpful. I hope it wasn't confusing. I know I got a little bit complex because there are different levels of this, but to keep it simple, guys, just post and go from there. You're going to figure it out from there for sure. Just whoever's not posting, start posting. Awesome. Thanks, Roberto.

SPEAKER_03:

Thank you, brother. And thanks, Meredith. And thank you, Russell Barksdale, the king of healthcare in New Canaan. Thank you, Russell.

UNKNOWN:

Cheers.

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John Engel

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Roberto Cabrera

Host