Tara Meier a real estate marketing technology expert talks about how she got into the real estate business. Tara discusses the importance of online presence and also shares tips on how to utilize AI in your everyday work. Next, Tara talks about the best way to create content. Tara also discusses her thoughts on sharing personal life vs professional life on social media. Last Tara gives tips on how to use paid ads on social media.
Please follow Tara on Instagram and on LinkedIn.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Tara Meier can be reached at (623) 253-6257.
This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
Curious about how to utilize AI in your business for 2024. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. Welcome if you’re new, welcome back if you are returning, and in just a moment, I’m going to be speaking with top producer Tara Meyer. Before we get to Tara, just a few few quick announcements. Number one, let us know how we’re doing tell us, the best way you can tell us how we’re doing is by leaving us a review. So whether you’re listening to us on Apple podcasts or Spotify, or one of the other million places you could find us let us know what you think of the show. We take your feedback into account and we make changes because this is all about you. And one way you can help us in addition to that is also by telling a friend think of another realtor that could benefit from while you’re about to hear an amazing conversation with Tara and send it over to somebody because everybody needs to know about AI and we’re going to be talking about that a lot today and also online presence and how to build your brand via social. So we’re gonna talk about all of that stuff. So please tell a friend and also support our sponsors. That’s the last thing they’re the ones who pay the bills they keep our show rolling and we love our sponsors please love them back check out their products and services give them a try. I promise you won’t be disappointed. But alright guys enough pitching for me. Let’s get to the main event my conversation from with from my conversation with the great Tara Meyer.
Today on the show, we have Tara Meyer from my home, which is in Chandler, Arizona. Let me tell you more about Tara. Tara Meyer is a seasoned real estate marketing technology expert with over 20 years of industry experience. She’s known for her entrepreneurial spirit and Tara also excels in leveraging innovative marketing technology to enhance visibility and productivity. Now as a coach and consultant she specializes in brand and identity development, online presence and online presence and reputation management and social media strategy. Tara’s expertise extends to AI and automation. That’s what everybody’s wanting to learn about. We’re going to talk about that today. Also digital advertising CRM implementation and transaction management systems. Her focus is on driving growth and efficiency for real estate professionals through cutting edge strategies and tools I want we’re gonna have such a fun conversation today with Tara. But before we do I want everybody to follow her on Instagram. We have a link to this in the show notes but it’s underscore Tara T Ara Meyer, m e i e r underscore so underscore Tara Meyer underscore, don’t worry. We’ll have a link to it. You can find it there. And please follow her on LinkedIn as well search for Tara Meyer. We have a link to that in the show notes as well and go to her website, which is Tara meyer.com We to learn about all things Tara? Tara, welcome to the show.
Tara Meier 4:30
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
D.J. Paris 4:31
I have to say my very first real girlfriend in life was named Tara. And so and I haven’t thought of that name in a very, very long time. So I’m having these weird flashbacks to my early 20s of going this this painful relationship that was a million years ago and actually she’s she’s she’s a lovely person. Everybody’s first relationship was was terrible. I think so. But it is it is funny. I I I haven’t talked to too many terrorists since then. And I was I had a moment where I was, I was like, why am I thinking about my Oh, that’s right. They have the same name. So just kind of a cute story. But she’s married has kids, she’s doing great. But anyway, let’s talk about some fun stuff today. Because I, I’m a marketing person as well. You’re a marketing person. You’re about systems and branding, and marketing. And we’re going to talk about all that fun stuff, as opposed to just how’d you grow your business, which is what I do on every other episode, which is really fun and exciting, too. But people really want to hear about systems and marketing. So let’s talk about that. But before we do, I do want to find out how you got into the business. How did you start in real estate and why?
Tara Meier 5:43
Yeah, so and 2002, I found myself at the front desk of a title insurance company. I spent 10 years at first American Title kind of doing various positions I, you know, grew from, like a set of receptionist, I did escrow disbursements and signings, and finished off as an examiner on the title side. Shortly after that, I was recruited by a an agent who liked my title background, he was focused primarily in REO at that time, so that was around 2010. And I, you know, helped him with it. I mean, he was a one man show running like, you know, 30, various 30 to 50 Reo dispositions at one time. So it was all things vendor management and Cash for Keys and some of those, you know, not so sexy things. And then from there, I transitioned, I got my license in Arizona in 2012. I was a, you know, a successful agent, I think I did, roughly around 150 transactions between two 2012 to 2019, when I also got my broker’s license, and then I quickly decided, I decided I wanted to pivot and do something new. And so I went into prop tech, that where I was a supervisor and a Program Manager for Zillow offers, and you know, I learned all things, you know, scaling and how to, you know, operate with, well manage people, as well as work with some of the most top producing agents in in the western United States that were affiliated with Zillow offers at that time, they unfortunately went through a wind down, which everybody knows.
D.J. Paris 7:31
We all know, we all know, Zillow offers this is no, by the way, by the way, I know a lot of people have strong feelings about Zillow in general, I do not have those same strong feelings. I am, I am a big fan of tech companies, Zillow, I don’t you know, will they ultimately try to replace agents? I guess, you know, they say they won’t. But regardless, I think Zillow really does act to really help agents more than than and I know that not everyone agrees with that. But I am a fan of Zillow. Actually, they used to be a sponsor of my show, and I used to have them on the show all the time. So I’m a big fan. Yeah,
Tara Meier 8:05
it’s it really, it was a great company to work for, I learned a lot about culture and, and just like how to operate at a in a high capacity. So I really valued my time there. It’s unfortunate that it ended but you know, that’s things happen for a reason.
D.J. Paris 8:19
Bad timing, that not you but the it was just timing with the market and everything and, and it wasn’t the only company the only, you know, company like that to go or division of a company like that to go under pretty much most of them did. So it wasn’t exclusive to Zillow. But um, so So you pivoted you, you were doing that, and then that ended. And then where do you go from there? Yeah, so
Tara Meier 8:42
then I was picked up by another prop tech company actually called the orchard and I was the general manager and launched the Phoenix market here. And they also went through a wind down. So I was there for about a year and a half. So my, my tenure in Prop tech lasted about four years. And then I was like, Okay, I need to do something different. And maybe I just need to go back into real estate. And so I was kind of playing with that and trying to relaunch my, my indie career, at the worst time, probably possible. You know, while we were kind of going through these high interest rates, and everything of 2022 and 2023. And then I was actually approached by or I followed a friend of mine, Aaron Lacey, who’s also an MTD for my home. And he had, you know, kind of sent out an SOS like, I’m looking for somebody who’s really into marketing and can help me kind of grow what I’m doing here. And so I, you know, reached out to him was like, Wow, this sounds really fun. And I don’t know if I have like the chops for it, but I’m willing to give it a try. And, you know, it just made sense, because it was like, even throughout my entire like real estate career. That was the thing that I focused on the most was the marketing technology piece. I was in charge of doing the websites I was in charge of, you know, doing all of the lead gen of setting up our online presence of doing all of these things. So I have a knack for it and a passion for helping others. And you know, I’m also this kind of side by side side hustle, but I’m also a crossfit coach. And so I Yeah, so I love helping people like just lifting them up and and helping them navigate, you know, complex, complex things, whether that’s you know how to do a snatch or clean and jerk, or navigating how to figure out how to put together a Facebook post. So I,
D.J. Paris 10:30
I have one CrossFit question for you. I don’t know that this is a CrossFit move necessarily. But I in fact, it’s funny, I was telling Tara, I gonna have to leave at two o’clock. And the reason I have to leave is I have a personal training session, not not CrossFit, but I do like a weightlifter workout. But when I was going to ask you, because I’ve only seen CrossFit people do this. And for everyone else who’s listening, like shut up, get to the real estate stuff. But I just want to ask one quick question is, can you do a muscle up? Is that is that a? Do you know what a muscle up is? Those are insane. You can do one?
Tara Meier 11:01
Oh, yeah, I can do them on the rings. And I can do it on the bar. So
D.J. Paris 11:04
so so I want everybody to know what Tara just said, mean, she is the strongest person to have ever been on this podcast, because she will tell you, it is one of the hardest things you can possibly do as an exercise. And literally I’ve had on NFL football players on the show that cannot do that. So that is incredible. So you are a very fit person. That is incredible.
Tara Meier 11:26
Athlete, yes.
D.J. Paris 11:28
Yes. Oh my gosh, that is amazing. You guys, if you don’t know what that is, Google muscle up, it doesn’t look as hard. Just give it a try. And if you could even anyway, alright, let’s get to the fun stuff. But the reason I’m saying this is my trainer just got her did her first muscle up ever it took her a year to get there. So and she’s like the strongest person I know. So that’s really, really impressive. So discipline is not a problem for you is guessing
Tara Meier 11:53
no, it is not a problem. I love trying to figure things out, whether it be you know, a muscle up or walking on my hands, or you know how to get somebody to look at my, my website. So
D.J. Paris 12:06
let’s start with online presence. So realtors, I agree, most of them have little to no online presence with the exception of, Hey, I just sold this home, or I just listed this property and I’m gonna throw, you know, pretty boring post on Facebook or Instagram. That’s usually about it. Let’s talk about what agents can do in 2024 to really provide value to their followers on social media, because and I want to get your opinion on this, I believe the best way to really garner interest is to, you know, provide some sort of content that isn’t all just about look at how great I am. But more about here’s some maybe questions or some answers to questions that you Mr. or Mrs. Follower might have. Or here’s some content that you just would find interesting. So I’d love to get your overall philosophy on online, you know, branding, especially with with social media. Oh,
Tara Meier 13:04
gosh, yeah. So, so much to talk about there. So first and foremost, my, you know, online presence is, is probably the most important thing that a real estate agent can do. I mean, you know, 90% of people are going online and Googling you whether you are a referral or whether they see a postcard come in the mail, they’re going to be Googling you. They’re going to be checking out who you are, what you stand for what your online marketing looks like, before they decide to pick up the phone and call you. And so by the
D.J. Paris 13:36
way, also, also your friends are going to do the same thing. So don’t assume that just because you work a referral based business, meaning your clients refer or it’s your sphere of influence, those people are also going to search you.
Tara Meier 13:49
Yeah, yeah. And that’s, that’s, you know, a common misconception right now is that referrals will just pick up the phone and call and that was maybe true five years ago. Now on average, it’s taking them two to three weeks of research before they actually decide to pick up the phone and call. So online presence number one is showing up consistently so that it’s not confusing, you know, all of these online platforms like zillow.com, Redfin, realtor.com homes.com, they’re all going to create profiles for you, whether you like it or not, because they are fed from the IDX feeds. And so it’s important that you go in and you take control of what people see from you. And so that means updating, adding a profile, photo photo, if there is an opportunity to showcase a banner, like in realtor.com, you should do that. Make sure your bio is up to date and accurate and not outdated, and also ensuring that all of your links work to your various platforms. Google business is one that’s, you know, I think way under leveraged right now for real estate agents. And it’s so important because you could drive all of your reviews there and it’s the first thing people see when they go Will your name and there’s a lot of ways to optimize it for hyper local type content. And we talked about content, you know, whether you’re posting it on social media. So if you’re into doing Facebook, YouTube, tik, Tok, Instagram, all of those, I think it’s great. I personally don’t think that you need to be an influencer on any of those platforms in order to have a successful business. But what I do think you need to do is you need to show if you decide to show up on one of those, you need to be present, and you need to engage on a consistent basis. So you know, we look at different platforms like they are going to give you kind of either a positive result, a neutral result, or a negative one. And profiles that you have kind of out there, like maybe you have a Twitter or now known as X platform that you’ve had for five years, and you don’t do anything on it. It almost kind of gives that like negative Wow, does she open get
D.J. Paris 15:57
rid of it? Get rid of it, if you’re not using it? Because nobody likes to see last post? 2018 you’re like, well, it just, it just appears that you’ve abandoned something, right?
Tara Meier 16:08
Totally, totally. And, you know, you know, there’s there are certain, there are certain things that are good about having some of those platforms, but like I said, if you’re not on there consistently using it, posting consistently, then get off of it. And then with regards to content, I’m with you. Like I think that, you know, gone are the days when just posting a house for sale is going to be exciting. I mean, I’m to the point, I don’t know about you, but if I see it, I just scroll right by, and now people, people want to, they want to be entertained, they want to be informed, they want to be inspired. And so you really kind of have to identify your audience. Number one, that’s probably when you venture into this content producing realm is you need to identify who your audience is going to be. And that includes like uncovering like, what are there? What are their consistent struggles? What are their problems? What are what do they want to know? What are they asking online, and there’s a ton of different resources for you out there to kind of figure that out. Like chat, GBT is a great resource. You can you can use it to help you identify your audience in your niche. Or if you have a niche, like what are some of those common questions that you can maybe answer in some of your posts? And so So identify your audience that’s probably like, the biggest thing Yeah, yeah. So
D.J. Paris 17:38
I just jumping in just because you said a lot of really great stuff there. So here’s what guys if you’re like, Well, I, I sort of don’t know my audience. What my target audience is, well think about if you’ve worked with clients in the past, who did you enjoy working with the most? Was it a certain demographic, maybe an age range, maybe a certain type of buyer or seller first time versus maybe an investor or whatever you enjoyed, you know, and you can literally then type that into chat G but for if you wanted to work with first time homebuyers, for example. And I would want to know what’s the average age of a first time homebuyer Okay, well, that you can ask chat JpT that, and then I would say, hey, chat, GBT. What are give me 10 common concerns that a first time homebuyer has or hear 20 questions that a first time homebuyer may have, or what might a first time homebuyer be searching for on Google or Facebook or Instagram or YouTube. You can literally just ask these questions to chat GBT. And it won’t always be perfect answers, but you will get a lot of good data that way.
Tara Meier 18:39
A ton of good data. And I would say don’t be afraid to reiterate your question, the original question that you asked, because so many people I hear, you know, like, yeah, I answered a couple of questions. And it kind of came back with gibberish. Like you have to there’s a science and an art to the prompt. You have to tell it who you are. So I’m a real estate agent in this specific area. I want to know what, you know, what homebuyers first time homebuyers are struggling with in the Phoenix area. So and then give me 10 or 10 ideas for content to use on social media. So you have to be very specific. Otherwise, it will, you know, go off and who knows what kind of direction? Yeah,
D.J. Paris 19:21
but it is really cool too. Because if you think like, Okay, if one of the questions comes back with chat up saying, hey, neighborhood selection, or suburbs selection is one of the biggest challenges for new first time homebuyers like, Oh, that makes sense. Well, guess what, guys, you can now create content going. Here’s how people choose neighborhoods or here’s or here’s let’s do a tour of a neighborhood or, you know, the content is really endless. What you really want to find is how what really all you’re doing is answering the questions first time homebuyers or whatever your demographic is past.
Tara Meier 19:55
Mm hm. And I love that when it gives you the 10 ideas and then you say okay, I want to live Write on number one. And then it’ll give you like 10 More ideas or you can break it up into like a script for YouTube. You know, you can just continue to get more and more granular as you go down the chat until you get like, you know, get to the gold I guess. For
D.J. Paris 20:16
anyone who’s looking for the free version of chat, GBT? Yes, you can you can Google it and find it. I personally, if you’re not going to pay for it, you don’t probably have to at this point. Down the road. Yeah, there’s going to be some additional functionality you want to have access to, but I personally, I never search on Bing, but Bing, Microsoft owns chat, GBT. So inside of the Bing app, they have the chat. GBT is in there. And it’s pretty well updated, I think to 2022. So it’s pretty current with information. And you can literally just speak to it. So if you don’t have the Bing app, download it just to use it for chat. GBT. That’s sort of my pro tip. Sorry, territory.
Tara Meier 20:53
Awesome. No, I love it. I love it. I think that I was at the end of my gonna answer all of your questions.
D.J. Paris 20:58
I think so. Yeah. So so the idea is, you know, now now we’re really talking about AI. I was telling this to Tara. Just before we started, and I’ll make this very quick, because this is really about Tara. But I found a really cool application for AI. This this weekend, I was set. I wonder what’s a AI knows about my condo. And I just put in the building. It was built a few years ago, and it knew everything I just wrote, tell me everything you know about and I gave the address. And I go, Oh, my God, agents could do this before every single listing they have they just on their way, you know, use the Bing app, talk to it, say tell me everything you know, and let’s say it comes back with nothing. Let’s say it’s like, I don’t know anything about this home. Okay, fine. Then say give me five fun facts about the neighborhood or the city or the suburb or that whatever. You can use it to get information that you know, or give me things first time homebuyers in this neighborhood might be curious about or, you know, where’s the nearest grocery store, things like that you can get really, sort of, you could just ask it things that you can then use in your conversations.
Tara Meier 21:58
I love that one of my favorite features of chat, GBT, I actually have the paid version, just because I do a lot of training on it. But with a $20 a month version, you get an option to upload a photograph. And you can upload a photograph of the listing that you’re doing, and it will give you like, you don’t just ask it for a listing description for this property that I’m uploading a photograph of, and it will give you give such a great description of not only the architecture, but it will also go into what is surrounding it, because there is I believe the metadata that’s attached to the photos. Sure, yeah, yeah. So
D.J. Paris 22:34
that’s really smart. So it’ll know that it’ll know the coordinates of that most likely, if you have your, your, your, your metadata in there, and then it will just look for for other information, kind of, oh, that’s brilliant. I love it. Yeah,
Tara Meier 22:46
and I’m sure it takes into consideration to other listings that are around the area. So it kind of like you know, triangulates, all those different things and just really gives you some really juicy stuff.
D.J. Paris 22:57
So for $20 a month, if I was a brand new agent, and I really didn’t know much about architecture, or I hadn’t learned that yet. I would before every listing, just upload one picture and say, Tell me everything you know about this particular photo with everything that you can, you know, surmise, and this way guys would say, Oh, this is a Tudor home and, or whatever it may be. So Oh, that’s such a great suggestion. I love that.
Tara Meier 23:21
Yeah, yeah, any you know, and it’s not just limited to like, kind of listing and everything, like AI can really help you craft like a really compelling bio, it can help you build your brand. You know, it can help you draft copy for your websites for you know, all of your social media posts and everything like that. So I use it all the time. And you know, I will say that, yes, you definitely have to, like look it over. But as far as like getting, like the creative juices kind of flowing and making, you know, getting things started on the path to creativity, like it is a block remover, like so, use it, it will, it will change your world.
D.J. Paris 24:02
Yeah, it really, it really will. I think ultimately, over time, there’ll be applications developed into it that are very assistant focused, where you’re going to be a it’s going to know you it’s going to know your schedule. It’s going to know you know, your you know, your challenges, and it’s ultimately going to start you know, helping you but now for now you can just manually ask it everything. And as Tara was saying, you know, you can start talking to it and telling it who you are, hey, I’m a realtor. I’m this age. I have been in the business this long. The more specific information you give it, the better answer, it will it will give you and I’m looking for first time homebuyers in this area. What you could even ask it, what suggestions do you have for me to find first time homebuyers in this area and it will give you it will give you all sorts of suggestions. Let’s talk about so what I think what most agents know about AI today is listing descriptions we know we can throw or listing description that we write in, or we don’t even maybe AI will write it for us. But if we have one, we can have it write a more persuasive one, or you know, and you can even tell it to avoid fair housing violations. So you can always say, Please rewrite this in a more persuasive way or more emotional way or, or whatever. And please make sure to avoid, you know, fair housing violations. And it’s, again, you want to double check everything, but you can add that in at the end. Mm
Tara Meier 25:27
hmm. Yeah, for sure. The other I mean, it, you know, it’s not limited to just listing descriptions or branding, even if you are utilizing like a CRM, and you want to put together some kind of open house campaign, or, you know, texting strategy, you can use it to, you know, navigate that as well and come up with, you know, email templates, texting templates, anything like that, that you want to add into your CRM in order to you know, nurture your clients. So,
D.J. Paris 25:56
yeah. And also we you can use it let’s I know, very popular thing for agents is doing some doing webinars or seminars where you’re, for example, Hey, I’m gonna help you buy your first home or, you know, from renting to buying what why you would consider that are investing in real estate or whatever the particular topic might be? You can have chat, GBT, right, you not only, you know, descriptions, for every every slide, they can actually create the slides for you as well. So it’s really very, very cool. If you’re like, I’m not good at graphic design. I don’t use Canva or Photoshop. Yes, I mean, you still may have to tweak some things, but it can put a pretty decent first draft together for you. Yeah,
Tara Meier 26:38
for sure. For sure. One of the, you know, things that have come up recently, like with the team at my home is, is putting together kind of seller, seller education classes, and like, you know, initially those types of things, they seem like a really big elephant to have to swallow at the, you know, right off the bat. And so, it, if you start it and do it systematically, you can really, you know, any take it just one step at a time, you can develop an entire like course, to, to teach on, do the presentation, and then also put together a marketing strategy to help people bring people into your classes. So, you know, it’s, it’s just, it’s very holistic, I mean, you can just do the whole, the whole thing, and it makes it very doable for just your average, you know, average individual who needs to generate some business and make some contacts.
D.J. Paris 27:32
Yeah, if you if somebody’s you know, if ever if our listeners are thinking, Okay, I want to create great video content on social media this year, but I don’t really want to write the scripts, and I don’t, you know, it’s hard for me to come up with topics. This is what you can use chat GPT to do as well. Say, Hey, create a create a 62nd, you know, script for me, specifically talking about, you know, X, Y or Z. And, and then give me five different versions of that, or five different, you know, five different examples altogether. And literally, that’s your script, or at least a good first draft for a scripted, you just saved yourself hours. And now you just have to turn your phone around and hit the record button. Yes,
Tara Meier 28:15
yes. And you know, you have so many resources out there as real estate agents with regards to market data. And, you know, everybody wants to do a market update, but nobody want knows what to say. Or sometimes in some cases, you may not even know how to interpret some of the data that’s coming through. And so use things like chat GBT, or even cloud AI is a really good one for consuming large amounts of data. So you can get some like 10 key takeaways on like a really hefty document. And then you can ask it to generate you a scripture just like he just like Did he was saying and it will even go into as much detail as giving you like the cutscenes and what should be incorporated like on on screen as far as text is concerned. So it does it just it saves you so much time and leaves you way more time to actually connect with people and your families? Like I mean, this is going to be like the biggest time saver I think and we’re really going to see some some leveling up. I feel like in the real estate industry, thanks to AI. Yeah,
D.J. Paris 29:12
do you want to be at the front part of the curve here because once everybody understands how to utilize it, it becomes a little bit less significant for the individual agent, because everyone’s going to be utilizing these tools in in different ways. But you really want to be at the front end of this because this is the time to really explore AI. I would love to also Tara ask you okay, we should mention by the way, Tara does consulting and coaching for real estate agents. She talks a lot about audit, marketing, automation, branding, AI systems. This is her specialty. She is a marketing guru. So if you’re interested we have caught Tara’s contact information in the listing description. Please, please please reach out to her and she can let you know what her different training and coaching are. shins are terrible. Let’s talk a little bit about batching content, because we know like, in an ideal world, I’d film a video every two days, and maybe a 62nd video on on, you know, Instagram or Facebook. But we know that that’s pretty difficult to do when things are flying at an agent, you know, at any given time, and maybe every two days isn’t realistic. So could you batch the content? And do you recommend sort of batching versus individual, you know, doing it every two days or so.
Tara Meier 30:30
I personally love batching. I have tried both ways. Both, you know, doing it on the fly, and trying to, you know, juggle a million things at once, you know, even just like when in my regular job, I mean, I have other clients and everything that I have to work with too, just like real estate agents. And I have to set aside like two to three hours a week for planning, and, and recording. So I may have a day where I do just kind of like the plan, I find my audio I do, you know, kind of all of the background, you know, write out my caption and do my hashtags. And then I have another day where it may just be super simple. And then the recording is just like one and done. And I’m, I’m scheduled and I’m and I’m done for the week, I love that it makes my week so much less stressful. And so if you can do that, I, I highly suggest it you could use anything from you know, Google Sheets to organize kind of your plan for the week, to tools like Trello or Asana, both of those are very easy to use and free. Actually, all of those are easy to use and free. I personally like Asana, I have tried everything else. And that’s the one that kind of works best for me and for what I need. And, you know, it really just takes a lot of the pressure off of the posting piece too. Because I mean, how many times have you gotten to a point where like, Oh, I’m gonna do this real and, you know, and, okay, maybe I don’t want to post it after all, or a post it and then you delete it because you’re like, Oh, it was really embarrassing. Or I didn’t think it was going to do well. If you schedule it, and then you just don’t think about it, and you just let it go. You know what I mean? And you kind of you just have to be okay with some are gonna flop and some are not. And, and, and, and batching really helps I think not only with time saving, but also with like your mindset as it pertains to getting content out.
D.J. Paris 32:29
Yeah, and also to, let’s remember everyone that just because you post something on social a video, for example, a very small percentage of your audience is actually going to see it. So it’s not like every single person you know, is going to watch this video and then have a judgement about it, whether it was good or bad. You know, it very, very small percentage. So don’t worry too much about, you know, that part of it of like, oh, my gosh, this isn’t perfect. I don’t think anyone’s expecting perfection out of your content. I think what they’re expecting is good quality information. curious to get your thoughts on them.
Tara Meier 33:03
Yeah, no, I 100% agree. And you know, it’s important to kind of come up with some guidelines for yourself with regards to what it is you’re going to be posting just to kind of keep your guard rails your bumpers on, so to speak, so that you don’t get too far off. And, you know, law lands. And, and it also makes it easier to plan that way, you know, and people want information, they want it, like I was saying earlier, they want to be entertained, they want to be inspired. And so coming up with some common themes for yourself that makes sense and resonate with who you are and who you want to be as a brand is going to be an important first step even like back when we’re talking about you know, creating and identifying who your audience is. Because you can’t please everyone. And so, it’s important that you’re talking, you know, you have to narrow down who it is you’re talking to, and not care about who you know, like like you’re saying your your friends and your sphere. Yes, they might see you but only only a few of them will and you know the the reason that you’re doing social media and you know, reels or Tik Tok or anything like that is to reach new followers. And so you want to be speaking to them. And if you don’t raise your hand and be yourself and let people know what it is you do, then they’re not going to find you.
D.J. Paris 34:20
So I have a question about personal revealing personal details about your own life versus just professional details. Right? So we could we can talk we can have a brand that is exclusively, I provide great information about buying and selling homes, real estate stuff. And I also know a lot of agents want to show parts of their personal life as well that people could find maybe interesting because it shows what that agent is passionate about. For example, you’re you’re a workout person, a CrossFit person. So I’ve seen agents who are CrossFit people post you know, little Quick videos of their workouts, do you have an opinion? And again, everybody’s temperature around sharing private, or personal, you know, sort of information is as different. So obviously, there’s no correct answer. But what’s your overall thought on professional content versus personal content.
Tara Meier 35:19
So I think a good mix is always a good idea. People, they want to know the person behind the profile. And I think how much you share is really your choice and dependent on how much how comfortable you are doing that, and whether that’s something that you feel is important. So, I mean, I’m, I try to be a mix, you know, I kind of think of like stories is kind of my place to engage with the people and share kind of, you know, silly memes about my husband or something like that. And then, you know, I tend to kind of keep my reels a mix of personal, inspirational and business. And I think, you know, it’s important to share who you are outside of business, because I don’t know, I personally, I built a lot of my business around CrossFit, when I was actively selling, and had I not done CrossFit and not like, let those people know what it was I did, then I probably wouldn’t have been as successful as I was. So people like to connect with, like people. So show who you are and what you do outside of just real estate. Did
D.J. Paris 36:29
you end up working with CrossFit people who would be attracted to a she’s a CrossFit person, I saw our videos. So they would start to think, Hey, she’s like me, I want to work with people who are into similar things to me. Like I imagine he probably did work with CrossFit people.
Tara Meier 36:43
I did. Yeah. A lot.
D.J. Paris 36:46
Yeah, it’s funny, I used to, when I used to see Realtors showing their workouts, I always always was like, I don’t really get it, like, Do people really care. And then I sort of like watching people work out now, like, I don’t know why, even if it’s just for a few seconds, there’s something kind of inspiring about it for me to remind me to continue on my physical health journey. But also, it’s like, oh, that person’s, you know, really disciplined. And also, and I’m not saying everyone has to work out in fun, like workout videos, but whatever it is, you’re passionate about any part of your life, you can feature it. And, again, that might just speak to somebody who also has those same passions, and is like, God, I wish I had a realtor that was into some of the same stuff that I’m into. Or I’d be more comfortable with a realtor who was into some of these, you know, I’m a, if you were like a big Harry Potter fan, I’m not. But if you were, I would be talking about I mean, that’s an old thing, but whatever, whatever a newer version of Harry Potter, that’s your thing? I would I would talk about it all the time on social media, if that was your thing, because you’re gonna attract those people who have that same passion.
Tara Meier 37:48
100%,
D.J. Paris 37:49
do you have an eye? Do you have a suggestion for a mix of personal and professional? So in other words, hey, here’s some information about buying and selling homes, or I just bought, you know, I just had a client do this or that. And here’s what I got going on in my personal life, do you have like a suggestion for a mix of maybe what percentage should be each? Yeah, I
Tara Meier 38:08
personally think that it’s like, you know, two thirds, you and 1/3 business, especially for real estate agents, you know, and it’s, it’s more like, who you are with a sprinkle of real estate, kind of in there. And if you can relate what you do on a daily basis, like maybe you’re at the park working, and you’re like, hey, getting work done, while I’m, you know, watching my kids throw, throw a baseball or something like that. So, you know, there’s subtle ways for you to do it. on a consistent basis, it’s just kind of figuring it out and making, you know, you have to just do it is really the strategy, you have to just figure it out what’s gonna work for you. And, you know, make sure that you’re paying attention to the analytics and the the data that’s within the system. So you can kind of see what’s getting, you know, the most engagement and maybe what’s not so you can shape your content. That way
D.J. Paris 39:01
we can we talk a little bit about digital advertising and beyond like, we’re talking about creating content. Do you have specific thoughts on agents who are thinking about doing Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads? Or Instagram ads? Any specific? Have you seen agents have success with that? Or is that is that a tough mountain to climb? Just curious, your thoughts?
Tara Meier 39:24
Um, yeah, so you know, Facebook ads, bulk of the population is on Facebook. I mean, it’s got the biggest audience out there. And so if you are just going in and boosting posts, posts, like randomly, like, you don’t have any strategy behind who it is you’re trying to target. I think you’re pretty much like throwing spaghetti at the wall, just kind of seeing what, what, what sticks. There’s, there are ways to be much more strategic about your ads that you’re doing on Facebook, Instagram. And you know, and I’ll talk about LinkedIn in a second. But with regards to Facebook and Instagram, there’s a lot of ways to kind of layer your farming So if you are farming specific areas, you can layer some digital ads on top of that. So utilizing phone numbers and email addresses that you may have from your farms, you can create custom audiences and target them in more than one way. So you may be sending them a postcard in the mail. So they’re getting that. And then they’re also starting to see you online. So they’re like, oh, my gosh, this person is everywhere. I think that that’s probably the most strategic way to do any kind of Facebook or Instagram ads at this point, especially for real estate. It’s just being, you know, strategic, you could even you know, download your, your contacts from the cloud, and Google and you know, so that way you have like your sphere, and some people that maybe maybe maybe you’ve worked with in the past that you may not have contact with anymore. So there’s a lot of ways to do them.
D.J. Paris 40:47
That’s a really good point, too. So basically, what Tara was saying is, you can take your CRM and export all of your contacts and upload those into Facebook as a custom audience. And what Facebook is going to do is try to match those email addresses and the names with accounts that they have. And it isn’t going to be a perfect match, always. And it might not find everybody, but it’s going to find a lot of people. And if you upload all your clients, for example, you probably wouldn’t want them to receive an ad that says, hey, buy your buy your first home, right? Assuming that these are people that have already bought a home, right, they might want to get up, think about are you looking to upgrade to your next property, you can make a specific ad for that or looking to make a change, that kind of thing. So you can get really granular about this. And there doesn’t have to be a million different buckets. But there may be a few buckets of you know, this isn’t yet a client. This is a client that I’ve already worked with. And you can have different ads going in this way. And guys, I used to Facebook used to come on my show every single month corporate and talk about and they would say do not Boost Post, do not Boost Post, if you’re a realtor, they would literally just tell us to do, it goes back a few years, but the head of the real estate department and Instagram or Facebook would better would say do not boost posts, guys, you want to be way more strategic. And so Tara can actually help you with all of this stuff, too, and help you figure out what your audiences are. It is a little complicated, but she can help you get get set up that way.
Tara Meier 42:12
Yeah, 100%. And with regards to LinkedIn, So LinkedIn is actually has been named like one of the like, you know, top things to do for 2024. As far as ads are concerned, you know, there’s a lot of opportunities there, particularly with people who are doing like commercial, and agricultural things that are more business to business. But also on the luxury market. Like there’s a lot of contacts you can make, you can do some some targeting, with regards to job titles, things like that, to kind of make your targeting a little bit more specific and segmented. And, you know, I personally have not run any ads on LinkedIn. This is just kind of done my research. So I’m excited to dive into it on my own and see what it could do, some of my colleagues have been working on it. And they’ve been just, you know, singing its praises. So if you have not taken an opportunity to check out LinkedIn for your marketing efforts in 2024, that’s definitely something to start keeping an eye on.
D.J. Paris 43:16
And it’s also the social media platform that I think realtors use the very least, it seems to be not used at all by realtors, and it is used by literally every other industry. So this is a place where I would spend a lot of time for example, if you had a client that worked at at a corporation in your local area, I would go into LinkedIn and see if I could find like the head of HR for that particular organization, if it’s big enough to have that, or the owner and say, Hey, I just worked with one of your, one of your employees, I help them, you know, buy, sell or whatever. And I would love the opportunity to come and bring lunch for the audience for the office. And you know, reach out and do a free webinar about you know, working with a realtor or whatever this is what you can use LinkedIn to do is you can actually find this information and use it in a hyperlocal way. So it’s not just about making as many connections as you can on LinkedIn, which is great as well, or posting great content to LinkedIn. But you can actually use it for research and development to find opportunities for you to reach out to, you know, because every every corporate person I know they use LinkedIn, they love LinkedIn, they use it. Realtors don’t usually use it. So don’t be don’t be fooled into thinking oh, no one uses LinkedIn. They do. It’s just realtors.
Tara Meier 44:29
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I’ve I’ve used it more in the last like four years than I ever thought I would. But it’s amazing, like the number of connections that you can make on that platform. You know, it’s great to just stay up to date on a lot of different market trends because that’s where it’s a great place for you to also share your insights as far as like what you know about the market. So just be strategic about what you’re sharing there. And, and I and you join groups. There’s there’s all kinds of things on there for you to put participate and engage. So,
D.J. Paris 45:01
yeah, I’m a big fan. We’re actually streaming live to LinkedIn right now as well. So we streamed, yeah, we streamed out to all the major platforms. And and that’s guys, you know, that’s kind of what you want to again, the whole point is, should I be on Facebook? Should I be on Instagram? Should I be on LinkedIn? Tick tock? Where is your audience hanging out, that’s where you want to be, where and also what you enjoy, like, if you hate LinkedIn, don’t, don’t do with it. If you hate tick tock, don’t be on tick tock, because it’s not going to work for you as well. You want to be on something that you feel comfortable with, but also that your audience your your preferred audience is hanging out at how do you know where your preferred audience hangs out? Ask them send out a survey to all of your clients and say, Hey, I’m working on my marketing strategy for next year. Just curious, where do you spend the most time? What you know what, what social media channels, if any, do you spend time on that will tell you we found out in an organization that I saw that I helped that unrelated real estate, that LinkedIn was the number one place, I would have never guessed that I would have guessed Facebook. But for this organization with 1000s of members, LinkedIn was the clear winner. And we wouldn’t have known that had we not asked. So we put a lot of our resources into LinkedIn at that point. So great, a suggestion there is just reach out to your audience and say, Hey, can you help me I’d be curious on where you’re spending a lot of time. And that’ll give you some guidance. So Tara Meyer is our guest. And I want to make sure that we tell everybody that she is a coach she can she is a digital strategist. She is also a marketing strategist, and most recently AI and she’s a systems person. So for example, if you wanted to learn how to deal with transaction management, and maybe not have to do all of that, all that work, she can help you figure that stuff out as well. She’s a systems person, and she’s very, very effective. So if anyone out there is like, gosh, I would like to work with someone like Tara, maybe she could help you know, take my marketing strategies or my systems to the next level. Or just learn more about AI and automation. Tara is your person so you can find her Tara meyer.com You can also follow her on Instagram underscore Tara Meyer underscore will have links to that, as well as her LinkedIn profile and all of her social channels as well as YouTube. We will post all of that in our link in our description. So please, please, please follow her. Tara, I want to thank you so much for coming on our show. This was really great. We I counted 10 different suggestions that you gave throughout the interview. So guys, if you miss some of them, please go back and re listen. And the best way you can help us is just tell a friend about the show. Tell another realtor that struggling with I mean everyone’s struggling right now guys, it’s just a tough time to be in real estate. So everybody needs as much help as possible. Do do a good deed tell a fellow agent about the show that helps us grow. Also support our sponsors and support Tara follow her on Instagram, LinkedIn, reach out to her Tell her how much you appreciated her her appearance today and also maybe reach out to her about coaching. She would love to chat with you. So, guys, on behalf of the audience. Tara, thank you so much for being on our show. I know how busy you are. And thank you for spending time with us and on behalf of Tara and myself. We want to thank the audience for sticking around to the very end. And thanks again for supporting our show and telling a friend. We will see everybody on the next episode. Thank you so much, Tara.
Tara Meier 48:24
Thank you for having me. It’s been a blast.
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