Podcast Episode 73 Transcript

Episode 73: How To Connect With Your Audience Effectively w/ Elizabeth Ruth

Are you ready to bring your real estate game to the next level? My name is James Prendamano. I'm the CEO and founder of Prendamano Real Estate "PreReal". And over the past 25 years, I've closed over a billion dollars in transactional real estate each week, a meeting with outstanding standing investors, high performing individuals, visionaries operating in the real estate space. These are the people that are actually out there in the real estate game right now. Getting it done.

This podcast aims at bringing anyone's game to the next level. This is the Prereal podcast. Welcome everyone to the Friend of Mino podcast. So this is Serendipitous timing, if you will. Many of you are aware now that we are launching a new brand and we're trying to build something really special that we can scale throughout multiple markets. We want to be best in class and continue to be best in class here under a new flag. And then we want to take that on the road. And with that comes a massive, massive marketing effort. And we're joined today by Elizabeth Ruth She's, the CEO marketing strategist and chief copywriter at Er Marketing Services. Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. It's our pleasure. And the timing aligns beautifully. We're undergoing a massive rebrand or relaunch, if you will. And one of our strategies is extraordinarily heavily dependent on blogs. So I was wondering if maybe first you can kind of walk us through the background, give us a little bit of history on yourself and the company. And then we can kind of get in the weeds and really talk about the unbelievable place that blogs have taken in promotion, social media websites, newsletters, the whole gamut for us. It's a foundational piece of what we're doing. So I'm looking forward to jumping into that. But if you can give us some background, start with yourself.

You're out in California? Yes. No, I'm actually in Canada. I'm just outside of Toronto. Yes. So actually, there's two Ontario's, and I thought that they had said, Ontario, California. You're actually in Ontario, Canada, correct. Yes. All right. Our friends from up north. Yeah. So how did you end up giving us the history? I know you've got a formal education in the field, correct. Yes. I have an English degree, a BA honors. And I've always loved to write. I'm a self published children's author. I love to market for many years. While I was raising my kids at home, I didn't have a lot of personal interactions. So social media was the go to where I got connected with other moms and people who were going through things that I was. So I decided to marry those two together. And that's how I started my marketing agency focusing on strategy for marketing as well as the content aspect of it.

Sure. So as this was coming together for you, how many years ago did this all? When did you officially launch 2018? I officially launched, but I had been doing it for friends for many years because, you know about this. Help me organize this, tell me what to do, and then it just naturally. Hey, maybe I have a business idea here. So the last few years, there's been some disruption, but the ten years leading up to that, there's been significant disruption in the space. Right? You're seeing technology disrupt on your side as we all are technology in what way? For example, when we first started with blogs, I don't know, maybe 1520 years ago, there were no programs that helped with generating intros or outros or weaving in SEO. Those types of things beyond that. Are you seeing opportunity for or are you seeing technology disrupting your side of the business significantly? Or has it really not been beyond that affected? I would say different from technology would be the way that people are using blogs, because ten years ago, my son is going to be 14. And when he was a baby, I had a mom blog, and that was more like a Journal. That was the original way that we used blogs. We would Journal, we wouldn't use it. And I would say the way we do it has evolved because now we can target keywords, we educate, inspire, entertain, we demonstrate our authority, and then we can also control through those keywords how we can get found on search engines like Google and Yahoo. So that's interesting. You brought that up there's still quite a few people believe it or not, that think of the blog as that traditional kind of Journal entry where it's a place you go to to see what was happening on that particular day, as you had noted, almost like a diary. And now it's become for us again, it is the pillar strategy, actually, that we're using where the blog becomes the first piece of content which then is able to be broken up into multiple different pieces downstream. And we're using that to help share our knowledge. To be candid. Over the years, I think we've taken for granted just being in the business every day for as long as many of us have here, we've got a really solid base of knowledge in the business, and it's a great way to establish authority and to share the knowledge. There are so many questions that are commonly asked in my field and in real estate that as you start to build a comprehensive program and you're starting to answer and speak to those questions. It really can be an unbelievable resource for folks and a source of leads. Yeah. I think on our website last month alone, we had 2400 or 3400 referrals to the site from our blogs. Yeah, because you've probably used keywords that people are searching for. So going back to the search engine, the number one goal of those search engines is to give the user who is typing in a question the right answer to where they want to be. So when you're answering questions using different ways that they might type in to get a response. If you're finding success because they're finding what they want, and then the second part of that, let's get a little text. The bounce rate is, are you keeping them there when they're finding you right? And that also will show if you go higher organically in the search results. So should I define bounce rate for anyone? So if you have a high bounce rate, that's actually not good, it means that people are coming to your site and leaving very quickly. The idea is you want to keep them on as long as possible. One way that you can do that is you can link to other articles that you've written that are related to it, and then it becomes like a blog version of a Netflix Binge. You want to have them having ten or 20 of your tabs open because Google is yes, this place. This website is giving the reader exactly what they want, gets you up in the rank, and that's the free way to do it. You don't have to pay for ads to get high in the ranks that way. Yeah. And for us, obviously, bounce rate was one of the metrics. And then we started to look at as they were coming to the website and reading our blog. So we had accomplished the first half right. We knew the right questions that were being asked. We were serving up the right answers in a way that against fierce competition. Sometimes they were selecting our piece of content, they're reading it on the website. And then what? We're in the business of selling services in real estate. So we began to tinker around with different links within that blog that not necessarily took them to another blog, but took them to a service related to what we do. Right. So the lazy approach is just throw up a link that says, Check out our listings. Right. And what we found is as we tested that there was a profound difference between that not having that at all, or if it was a blog that was tailored to a commercial audience, for example, commercial real estate. We had specific links to the typology that would be referenced in the blog. Right. So if it was something about how to out position the competition in retail space, we then would offer a link to take them to our retail leasing options or our services as related to the retail leasing options. If it was a sprucing up the house before you list, we were taking people to our tips and suggestions. We have that we walk people through before they list or to residential listings. So you're right. Once you get them in the funnel, that's just half your job right now. Keep them there. Right. Keep them interested. And the more they click through and the longer that they're staying and the more that they engage, the more Google goes. Oh, these guys got this piece, right. So that next time someone makes that search, Google recognizes that and they bump you up in the algorithm and you're appearing ahead of all of these other pieces of content. Yes. So blog writing it really is a much more complicated undertaking than I had originally thought it was when we first started engaging in this, and we've now used it to generate videos and quotes and social posts to both promote the blog and just to have quality content that answered those specific niches, it's become really, again, it's a foundational thing of what we do. So I thought it may be a fun exercise if we could walk through. If I came to you, Elizabeth, and I said, hey, Prereal wants to undertake and get some help in blog writing what that exercise would look like. But I also wanted to talk about some of the other services I know there's email and newsletter services. There's social media, there's web website content and SEO. But let's start with the blogs if we can. Sure. So I go and I find you online. I inquire. I take the little neat quiz, which, by the way, folks will be in the description below that pops up on Elizabeth's website. What does our interaction look like? I'm a business owner. I'm looking for help. Where do we go? So the first thing that I like to figure out is, where are you in your marketing journey and where do you want to go based on your goals? So if you don't even have a website, is that something that's important to your business, to have a website? Or do we just go right to social media? What makes sense for where you want to go? Usually, I find nine times out of ten a website is the right first place to go, and that's what this quiz will answer. Based on your answers, it will tell you where to go next in your marketing journey. Generally, this is a general client journey. We do the website, and then we decide, do we want to do blog posting, or do we want to do social media next? So the website is like your house. You get your house ready. And before you send out the invitations, which are your blog posts and your social media to come back to your website and check out your services, that's next. And then we fold in as we are building your social media and your blog post. We're inviting people to stay. So come join our email list so that we can stay in touch. That's great for past clients. You keep them warm. They're warm leads who have worked with you in the past, future clients who just I'm not quite ready. I need to know you a little bit better and then your existing clients, they build that confidence that, yes, I'm in the right place. This person is giving me value and understands what I need right now for my business. That's why I've hired them. So that's usually the journey that we follow. So many folks today. A lot of us are so busy, Elizabeth, working in the business that it's hard to pull away and find time to work on the business. Right. And I think that's where a company like yours has become so invaluable that as a business starts to take off, or if you're a business that's been around for a long time and you've enjoyed some success, times are changing around us, and it's very easy to get lost in working in the business and not paying attention to some of these external forces. You'd be surprised how many people don't understand that when you talk about a blog sometimes, what do I need a blog for? They don't understand that. That's how they're finding you. That's how they're being introduced to your service. The numbers in my industry are startling, and I'm sure there's similarity across the board, but people want to work with folks that they identify with, that they have some commonality with that they enjoy. Honestly, if you think about it, we don't hire people often to do things for us, like third party services in all walks of life, if you don't enjoy the relationship, right. So blogs have become this way for us to tell our stories and to share information and to connect with people without actually having to do the physical connecting part. So a company like ours, we've had success. We've been around for a long time, but we want to revisit our blog strategy or expand on our blog strategy. What would the next step be? So for you, I would start asking, how often do you want to post? Let's go piece by piece. Right. So for us, we want to post once a day. I mean, is that something that you guys do? Is it that kind of mass content, or is it a much more personalized service we could do daily? Generally, what we do is we're trying to draw out the story. The business voice and a lot of business owners are like, yes, I know, I read about that. But what does that mean? So we do an interview style approach, so I would say, okay, what are we talking about today? Are you promoting a certain property or maybe you're making your podcast into a blog, and then we can embed the podcast that keeps readers long or readers longer because they're watching the video and we might have our strategy based on is it more on we want people to come for longer? Is it where they want to purchase what's our call to action? We figure out the format of generally what you're trying to achieve with your blog and using the interview style, we can draw out stories. Everyone is drawn to stories. So if you have sold a comparable property or you had a listing. What is the story that really I don't know. Maybe the market is totally flat, but you were able to get over asking, how did you do that? And from that example, they're going to have confidence in you say, I want those people to list my property. So that's, like, so critical. And I think as the technology has evolved, the personal touch has bled out of a lot of the blogs. You see quite a bit of blogs, and we've been guilty of this from time to time as you try different things. Some things work, some things don't, but the personal piece kind of bleeds out of the story. And then it becomes entirely counterproductive. Now you just have really a generic piece of content that although you may have the proper SEO weaved into it, Google is going to recognize that people are not finding value in that, and it actually will count and cutting against you from an SEO perspective. Yes. So to answer your question on frequency, usually, I ask my clients, what can you commit to that you can maintain if that's once a month, that is okay. Because then the third Wednesday, you know, your schedule, your readers know your schedule. And that is when we push out the content to social media, we push it out to the email list so that they don't have to remember to go to the blog on the third Wednesday of the month, we're giving it to them. We're telling them that it's there, giving them a little summary and doing that you can do once a day. But on your point, is that going to be quantity or quality. And what's your end game? I would rather see you do one a week, make it a little longer, tell a story more thoughtful, and have a really strong call to action to get people to take action instead of just oh, yeah. There's another post. Okay. So it sounds like we would be a fit on the meaningful pieces that we're producing. Some of the pieces are. I don't want to say generic, but they're more common. A lot of the questions that are asked in the industry, there's only so much of a narrative you can put around that. But then there's, like, my market insights, right. Things that I'm seeing. I've built a reputation over the years for being ahead of the curve. And that would be like, super interesting. So if it was once a week or once a month, we would sit each time and go through that interview process again. Correct. Correct. Now, if it was a podcast, you could just hand over a transcription and say, Here you go, make this into a story. And then it would be an abbreviated version with the invitation to read the full 30 minutes or hour long production so they can get more details. But we would just touch on some key points of interest. So let's say it was a market insights type of because this is something we're contemplating now and we want to have it as part of our newsletter have like a little corner that's market trends or market insights where we're offering what we're seeing on the ground in real time, what we're pulling from our past experiences based on those markers and where we think we're going to go tomorrow based on the other external forces, where there isn't commonality from our kind of historical experiences. So how long would that interview process be if I wanted it to be really solid, detailed kind of piece that we were going to produce? Let's say it's once a month because the newsletter would be monthly. How long would the interview be that we underwent each month? I usually book in an hour. I can get what I need and then I Polish it up and send you the version to make fine tune points. I am not in your industry, so I may miss you some terms that you would just have to correct full disclosure. That's just the nature of you know, your terms better. I will do my best. So you just have to correct it there and let me know we learn and we adapt. But generally in an hour it's pretty much a formula. I like to do an introduction, three main points and a conclusion. Let's talk about length because that is the big. How long do I do 2000 words? Do I do 500 words? What do people want? And I think it's a combination because there's a lot of information fatigue. Think about you just want the answer. You want to get in, get out. Just tell me the answer. Yes. Unless you're a University Professor or medical document on your blog, people really want to just get the answer, give it to me and go. So I like 500 to 1000 words. But there is a place for longer blogs as well. Keywords, you can use them more different phrases to get found for. So accommodation is nice to have. Okay, so do I have to after that interview, do I have to play a part in the actual draft, or are you writing the whole thing? Yes, we draft it and we give it to you. Ready as we would publish it. You're just looking and making sure that it is accurate. Oh, wow. So it's the interview and then you're handling it. Okay. Cool. Now let's assume that we don't have much experience in SEO and metadata and backlinks and all that good stuff. What does that process look like? Do you guys offer suggestions on SEO? We do it. You do it? Yes, we do it for you. The only thing we will consult you with is what are we writing about? And what keyword do we want to target? And if you have no idea that's okay. Together in the call we'll decide. Okay. I'm feeling this one is going to be a key phrase, and we look it up together. But because then we are able to sprinkle in the keywords naturally throughout find synonym phrases so that it's still saying the same thing. But as people are using it in a different term, realtor real estate agents, it's the same thing, essentially. But how are people going to search for it so that you can get indexed? Because Google will sort it. We will write a little excerpt, which is also your Google meta description. And if anyone has no idea what that means when you do a search in Google and it describes what it's about in about three or four lines, that's a meta description. You want to make sure you have your keyword in there, too, so that it's showing up in the search result. But we do that. We set it up for you so you're able to and you are actually writing the metadata for the post as well. Yes. Okay. You're weaving in the SEO, which folks, what you think people are searching in many cases is not what people are searching. You may have a good sense of the topic that they're searching or the idea that they're searching. But the way that I talk and the way that Elizabeth talks and the way that people in California talk and the people in Texas talk, we all have different spins on how we search these things and what you think may be your keywords. We found that lesson out the hard way many years ago are not often what they are, and there are tools out there, and it sounds like Elizabeth will handle this for you that will help you identify what the terms actually are, what the phrases actually are, so that if you're producing this wonderful piece of content, it's actually getting to the right people at the right time. Okay. So the post gets written. Now we want to post it on our blog on our website, but we also want to include it in our social media outreach. Can you walk us through that piece? Do you give advice on what to write or how to post? Yes. All of the processes are very similar. We always have an editorial calendar which will have the dates. We're consistent because you want to play the algorithm, whether it's the website or the social media, they will learn your patterns, the artificial intelligence as well as the real people. They will know if you post three times a day or if you post once a day, you're diehard. Fans. That is not just anyone, but so we want to make sure that the schedule is consistent. And again, it's easier for you to maintain that consistency because, you know, oh, I have three social media posts to do this week, and part of that strategy for social media is we want to share testimonials, so don't just take our word for it. This is what other people are sharing. We can break out the blog post so that you've already created the content. We're just fine tuning it a little bit and you can really dig in, if you recall. I said intro. Conclusion Three main points. So your social media could be the intro as one post, the first point as another post, et cetera, et cetera. You do have to rewrite it slightly, but it's not a start from scratch at all. Okay. And are you offering as a service social media assistance beyond it being centered around the blog post? Absolutely. Yes. Okay. And we do always come back to no matter what content, we need to know what your goals are for social media. You probably want to have engagement because there's no point in posting to the void. You want people to comment, you want people to like, you want to get leads. We're doing this because we're in business, not because we're just sharing random photos. I mean, that's your personal account, but we're talking about business. We want to get leads, people calling you. You want to get people on your email list, you want to capture them so that if they're not ready right now in the future, we have had a relationship with them, and they think of us when they think of the services that we offer. So you're actually doing the full gamut lead the whole nine. Yes. Okay. And that's another. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say an important part that I like to distinguish. Many people think that if they just post on social media, that's it. Let's go back to the house thing. So social and media two different parts. Media are your posts. They are like a sign on your lawn. Someone has to drive by it to see it. What that means is they find you by your hashtag. They go directly to your account. Or maybe it's in there for you feed as they're scrolling. It's served up to them. So that's the media part. And that has its place because you can get engagement from other people, you can comment with them there, see how they're reacting. If there's no reactions, why are they not interested in what you're putting out? If there's negative feedback after you get over the initial back against them all like what? There's gold in there. If you can unpack it and look at it on arms length, they're telling you something that's not working that you can fix. And then obviously there's the fans. We love those because they tell us we're on the right track. So that's the media part of it. And people will bet us if they're interested in working with us. They'll check out our social media or our website When's the last time that it was updated? If it's two years old, they're going to question the AI. Are they even in business anymore? So that's why we want to have that presence. So the second part is social. We want to engage on other people's posts, people who follow us. That should be part of the strategy, because when you're engaging, I mean, think about it. When you follow someone who you really admire, maybe it's a celebrity and they respond to your post, you stop and feel very special, you feel seen, and that's the experience you want to give to your audience as well. So without a doubt, Elizabeth, again, another misnomer is you hear content content, right? And we subscribe to that. We believe there's no more important place than you can be making investments than in the digital space right now, especially in our industry. But there is a huge difference between hosting a just sold with no context, no relevance, no story, no narrative and actually going and taking the time to build something that's engaging. It pays massive dividends if you do it the right way, but it's time consuming. So when you're handling these, are you actually like taking over the account and actually you're going out and commenting on other folks that have interacted on that. We're doing the media part. But I coach you on how to do the social part and part of the social as well. When we're posting for you, it's the evergreen information. This is a whole other thing. Short video. It is where to be right now. Tik Tok is exploding. Reels is exploding. Instagram just got rid of their IGTV to really merge it and make reals the thing because 1 minute is about the maximum that people want to spend hearing it. But it makes your message super focused when you only have 60 seconds to say it. So if you can do that, that will also help your engagement. It's amazing because you can post it on stories. You can repost it multiple platforms. And really people buy from people. Yes, you have a business. But James, as you said before, if they don't like you, they don't get a good vibe. They're not going to work with you. And the best way to experience that is video. And then the next best thing is through stories that you're sharing about how your process works.

Now, it might be up to 13 steps that we take from every blog that we generate. Right. And one of those steps is we take I think it's a three minute video that we post about the blog on our YouTube channel. But then we condense that and we stay within the 62nd and on some platforms 30 seconds to generate videos from. So again, from this one masterpiece of content, the blog. That's the pillar. You have all of these different excerpts that you're able to create and remarket to. Are you working on the video piece as well? We do not do video. Okay. I can advise on it, but that's not our wheelhouse. We are the word wheelhouse, right. And they are completely different disciplines. Which is why I had asked that question. Yes. So the 62nd thing, it's only 60 seconds, but it's 60 seconds. Right? To get 60 seconds of someone's time. Today is a big deal. The average attention span has shrunk from 20 years ago. Don't hold me to this being exact, but this is close. 20 years ago, the average attention span was three minutes. The average attention span today, 3 seconds less than a goldfish. Right. I think they said a goldfish in six to get someone's attention and go, yes, this is something I'm interested in. And you can embed correct me if I'm wrong, but you can embed videos in the blogs as well. Yes. Okay. And that helps your bounce rate because they're watching the video. It can be a YouTube video embedded on your blog, and you are still getting the credit for them watching that video on your blog post. Right. And it doesn't have to be a video about that blog post. It should be relevant. But meaning it doesn't have to be that specific content. You can embed videos for all different types of subsets from the blog. So there's a number of different ways to again take this original piece of content and break it up into many different touch points, if you will, of media. So in my business, you had said video is the place to be in my business. 87% of property sellers, not necessarily just residential, any type of property seller want video content in their marketing. Yet I think it's only 13% of Realtors are providing that as a service. Right. So like, what a massive opportunity. And let's talk about video because I had some ideas thinking, yes, there's the showing of the house and the tour because in 2020 we had to adapt. No one could go in person but also share if you have a unique way of selling. So maybe you do luxury homes and you partner with exotic car lots. And you have 40 exotic cars at your open house, because then you're getting your high net worth clients coming interested so you can get really creative in how you do that. Capture that film the experience so that people get FOMO fear of missing out the next time that you put a show up. And also maybe you're not high end in your sales. You're more of an average level. Share what the neighborhood is like. What is that lifestyle? The feeling that someone lives in that community is going to get showcase the amenities. Are there local restaurants that are really popular? What is the school experience? Are there private schools or a specialized school that sets that neighborhood apart that you want to attend? So there are so many opportunities to unpack how video can be. I know a lot of people just think, oh, TikTok, I have to dance. There's so much more that you can show than dancing. There are some video people I follow, and they're not even in it. They may be just talking while they're showing the house and they're telling the story of why the buyers are selling. Maybe something interesting. I follow on TikTok, a Gal who goes and she cleans really old headstones in cemeteries. And as she's cleaning them, she I follow too. Yes, she's amazing. She's telling the story of that person's life. I never thought I would be watching tombstones get cleaned in a Cemetery. And I always check back to her account. I wonder what story she's going to share now. Yeah. Without question. It's so funny. You have touched on the neighborhoods and restaurants, neighborhoods, time and time again. We're finding is one of the top searches where people when they're looking at the homes. We started back linking the neighborhoods direct from the listing now. So when they click on that, they can jump over and see what are the schools? What are the restaurants? What are the parks? What is the public transportation look like? All of these things are relevant. And again, by starting with that original piece of content, that was a blog. All of these pieces get layered in. And now you've become a real resource for this person that initially may have just been looking for a specific home. Or maybe they weren't even at the point of looking at a specific home. Maybe it was a blog about financing or the state of the market. And now all of a sudden, they've taken a deep dive on the site. They've gone into the listing section. They've gone into the neighborhood section. They're really getting value out of the site. That's the idea. I try and tell people here all the time. Don't sell on social. We're not selling, right? We're providing a service. We're providing information. We're providing value. The sales will come as a backstop to that. So I love that idea. I love the strategy. You guys also are involved in the email newsletter service, correct. Yes. And before we move on to that, can I just say on your tagging experience, tag that local restaurant that you are featuring tag the school because it is super likely that they are going to share and forward to their audience saying, hey, look, we were featured just like if you're tagged from someone, you should share that and tag them back so that they see that you're sharing the love. It's all about collaboration. And people are so willing to collaborate. Right. Everybody is looking to increase their footprint. And if you are tagging folks, the next thing is, after you've built up kind of that synergy of back and forth. We've many times ended up requesting and have had requests for back links. Right where you're actually posting it on the site? Yes. In your article, link to their website. Always linking. Yes. You're that collaboration. It's community. That's why it's social media. It's community. I love the way you broke it up. We've had a lot of guests on that have talked about these different elements and it's always social media. It's media, and it's social, right? I love the way you split the two because they really are completely different pieces of the platform, but both are so critically important and more times than not, we're finding people are reliant so heavily on the media. When you're not engaging on the social side, then people say, oh, I've tried it. It doesn't work. It works, folks. It works. But you have to really put the time and effort into it. So thank you for that distinction newsletters. Let's talk about the services there. So again, it's very similar. Our approach is similar for everything, which is great because I like to be consistent with my clients. Whether we're doing blog posts, emails or social media, you can send us bullet point notes of what you want to get, and the more we work together, the less we have to have meetings because we'll learn your style and your voice. But especially at the beginning, we need to build our own relationship and understand how you express and represent your business because we want it to be consistent. And the reason I'll just say, before I go into emails, the reason I've created it as an interview style is because there were so many times I would meet people at in person networking events. I'd go home, check out their website and their social media. It was very clear someone else was writing it and that they just handed it over. The message was so different, and I would not have hired them from what I was reading online versus how they represented themselves in person. So that's why we really need your involvement. I know you're probably oh, my gosh. But in an hour a month, we can do a whole month's worth of social media. That's three posts a week and then just to get you the evergreen content. But wouldn't you rather have it represented how you speak about it with your passion, your expertise and your stories than someone who I can't speak to real estate? I don't know. I had a cement pouring business. I don't know what they do, but I could get those stories out of them that they didn't even know they had. So let's go into emails. That process is very similar. If you want to promote YouTube videos or blog posts, what's your goal from your newsletter? Is it a sale or are you doing it as a newsletter where it's a curation of everything that you've put out on your blog videos and your social media so that your fans. Here you go, wrap it with a bow. You don't have to find me on Instagram and LinkedIn and blog posts. I'm just going to send it to you once a week or once a month. However, we're doing it, and they get the information that we feel that they want to have. We can do one off emails where it's a sale or it's a promotion or you have listings. So this is a hot listing. And as a VIP, I want to give you a first rate of refusal to see it. I only have five spots in my open house, so you can really engage them that way. And think about a couple of weeks ago when Instagram and Facebook went down and what that? How many of you were reliant on that and your business was shut down. If you had an email list, you could have pivoted your message, sent an email saying, I know we usually talk on Facebook and Instagram it's down, but here, I really need you to see this today. You had that opportunity. Are you handling one component of the newsletter? Let's say I love the idea you just suggested about kind of rounding up all of the different content that we produced for the week or for the month. And basically, here's the highlights of the articles, some posts, some off market deals, things that we wanted to produce. Are you going to produce the entire newsletter or just a blog about the newsletter? How far do you guys go with that service? We write the newsletter and we schedule it out. Wow. Okay. So we'll give you our email addresses and you'll put it into a mailing program. The whole nine, you would have a mailing program because you own it, not us. Got it. As I'm saying it. You're right. I'm thinking about this backwards. So you would generate it, send it to us, and then we drop it in MailChimp or whatever, and we press it. We can create it in MailChimp. You approve everything before we send it out. So we're meeting. We do a final draft, have graphics made up. Once you say yes, we schedule it out and it goes, okay, so if I can just jump again, because as I'm going, I'm coming up with more questions. Is there a preferred platform that you suggest for the blog posts or something for the blog post? Yeah. Your website just on the website itself. Sometimes what people will do is they'll have a separate URL or business address for their blog, but that's actually counterproductive. The whole reason why we want to have a blog on our website is we want to draw people in. And when they're at the website, they are seeing your menu bar. They have listings, they have free guides, they have a quiz, and then they're engaging further. They can unpack how they would like. And when someone comes to your website, they're not always coming to the home page, their journey. We're pulling them in from so many different directions. And by using keywords in our blog, that's just another way to pull them into our universe, our orbit. Yeah. So very important to do that. And I'll tell you a technical reason you want to have a blog is Google, and all the browsers have spiders, and they crawl it and they index it. Because again, their number one goal is to give people who are searching the right answer. The first time. When you first launch your website, then the spiders crawl it, they index it. But as time goes on, if you're not posting anything new to your website, a year goes by two years go by Google saying, is this place still even in business? So you naturally fall down in the ranks. A way to keep it up is you have new content once a week, once a month, and when you drop that new content, those spiders reindex your site. So that is a technical reason of why you'd want to have it on your website to keep it current and higher in the search results. Got it. So what is a typical turnaround time from the interview part to a finished blog 24 to 48 hours? Oh, wow. It depends on how intensive research is. So we talked about interlinks to keep people on your website longer. But another strategy that you want to fold in is reputable non competing external links. That's how you also get ranked as a resource in Google and the search results. Can you speak about that a little bit further? Yes. So even if you're defining a term in your industry and you're linking to Wikipedia and someone wants to according to Wikipedia, real estate means that and you've linked to that Wikipedia definition site. Or maybe we have MLS in Canada, which is our multi listings. I don't know what it is in the States, but some kind of professional organization. It's non competing, but it makes sense. So you could link to the listing off site so that they can get the full information, if that's what we're talking about. And having that external link, as I said, it just shows that you are a resource. Again, you're presenting information that is relevant to the searchers request and it's giving them more value, because if they don't understand the term and they want to read it, and that's not really what your article is about, and it would derail your message. You can read it after you read the post and what we have to say. But here you go so that you don't have to Google it and remember and try and find the right term. Okay. So by competing links, you don't want people bouncing out of what you've produced to go read about something somewhere else by a competing link, you wouldn't want to link to another realtor who's competing for a similar listing. Got it.

Okay. So 24 to 48 hours, we have the turnaround and then that can kind of kick off this full compliment of services. Yeah. I love the fact that you guys are personal. The interview is a one on one thing, or is it one on one? So we're not going into a portal and just answering questions? No, I don't have time to fill out a form, do you? No. And then that's a lot of though what folks do is they kick you to a portal. And that's where when I was referencing earlier, I was being polite about the personal piece bleeding out. That's what I was referring to as we found. And again, look, if you're not failing, you're not trying enough new things. So we've tried a lot of things over the years, and we'll continue to do that. And some of the programs that we've landed on, they push you to a form which in the moment feels like great. I can go in and I can knock it out. But we found that it completely took the personal touch out of what we're doing. And that's completely counterintuitive to who we are and what we're trying to do here. And that's what you're trying to represent is your personal self, your stories, your expertise. How can a form get that it can't. And real estate is a very personal thing, of course. Yeah. One of the biggest purchases people are going to make in their life. Yeah. So I love that idea about the one on one interview. And I even love the format that it's an interview. And we're talking to real people. So you're getting a flavor of who we are and what we're about in each post. So how do we learn about pricing? Elizabeth, you can book a discovery call with me, and I will advise you often. I have clients come. I have to do all the things. Okay. But let's step back because you're going to burn out. It doesn't give us an opportunity to really get to know your business. Let's master one thing and fold in the next. As it makes sense. It might be like a one or two week succession, but it's very overwhelming. Oh, I should do my website and it's got to do a blog. Okay, well, let's set up the next four ideas of what we're going to post. Let's do social media for a month at once. It's very overwhelming. So we fold in. So, yes, book a discovery call, and then I will recommend based, and it will be with me. I will recommend based on your goals. What makes sense if you need immediate sales? It's November 17. Let's say we both have time next week to meet holiday sales might be the number one thing to push. So it makes sense to start with social media for you. Whereas if you're playing the long game, maybe because in the new year you're launching your business, maybe it makes sense now to spend the next six weeks. Let's get your website ready. It doesn't have to be complicated. We can do a simple version. You're about story, a home page, contact page, and a little bit about your services. And let's just get it live. A website is a living document. What that means is don't set it and forget it. You're always updating. It your credentials. Maybe you take a course. You have to update your credentials on your about page. So we're always evolving it. Don't let that stop you from just hitting the publish button. I love it. This is again. It's great timing because of where we are as a company and what we're looking to do and certainly doubling down, tripling down on that kind of free, value driven content. And I think the personal touch is, without a doubt, a distinguishing factor for you guys that we haven't seen with some of the other companies. Is there anything else? First of all, kudos to the kids. We're now 15 minutes past D Day, and it's nice and quiet over there. Yeah, I muted when I heard some footsteps, but no, they're good, good stuff. Elizabeth, where can people find you? They can find me on Instagram, Ermarketing services or my website, ermarketingservices.Com. If you fill out the contact form, I'll immediately you'll get a link so that you can book a discovery call with me. Or we can just take the conversation further. Awesome. Elizabeth, thank you so much for the time today. Thank you. I had a great time, James. No, us too. Everybody out there as always. Please stay safe.