Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / From Views to Value: How to Turn Social Attention into Trust That Converts

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From Views to Value: How to Turn Social Attention into Trust That Converts · Mortgage Marketing Radio

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  And what's up, my friend Jeff is in for welcome to this episode of the mortgage marketing
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  radio podcast. Hopefully you can tell this is just me raw off the cuff. No fancy editing. It is
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  Friday, May 23rd. We're heading into the Memorial Day weekend. And so it's just a solo episode
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  with what I'm thinking and going through and working on right now in my business and sharing
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  some of those thoughts and insights with you and hopefully that you can maybe garner some value
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  and apply whatever is relevant for you in your business. And let's make sure to take a moment
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  out this weekend to honor and remember those who have served as that is what this Memorial weekend
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  is really all about. So before I get into this week's topic, which is on the difference between
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  attention and trust or the ease of attracting attention versus the value of that attention.
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  I'm going to give a shout out to one of our members and our myogen classes platform. Shout out to
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  West Terrell West up in Bay Area, California. West recently joined our program and wanted to
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  scale his reach and engagement with real estate agents to accelerate his referrals, build his
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  personal brand and attract versus chase agents. And here we are just a few weeks in and West has
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  taken taken it by the rains. He's gone out there and really taken action. And I want to just
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  acknowledge him for that because you know, some people come in and people do various things at
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  different levels. Some people do nothing. Some people sit and wait. Some people overthink,
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  you know, procrastinate. But not you West shout out to you. So West contact is local board of
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  realtors about hosting classes. And here we go. West has six classes with his board of realtors
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  that they are going to promote. And so West will be doing kind of a summer series over the coming
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  weeks. And the upcoming class is going to be presenting. The first one is the 90 day CMA,
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  which is a pretty cool strategy we got from Man Jimmy Burgess in Florida, which is how to use a
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  video CMA using Google Earth and how Jimmy did this and now shares it with agents across the country
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  where Jimmy got 11 million in listings in 90 days and sold 9 million of that. And so what we do in
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  our community at major classes is we share those concepts and ideas with agents. We teach them how
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  to fish, right? We show them this idea. We lay the groundwork and the framework out for them so
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  they can simply go swipe and deploy and execute this idea and get listings. And it works. It gets you
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  appointments, it gets you invitations to brokerages, team meetings, et cetera. So stay tuned for more
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  results from West coming up because his first class is Tuesday, June 10th. Now that sounds at all
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  something of interest to you. You look, we're not right for everybody. But if you want to learn more
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  about what we do and you are closing at least three loans or more per month, and ideally you've
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  been in the business at least three years, well, then this might be a fit for you. And the way to find
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  out is you check the link in the show notes and you book a call with yours truly me. We have a
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  conversation and see what are our two options is right for you in our platform. So once again,
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  check the link in the show notes. And perhaps we can have a further conversation. Okay. That said,
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  let's get into this concept I've been thinking about for quite a while now. And it's really,
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  you know, starting with this premise, as I said a moment ago, the ease of attract. There's a lot
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  of people talking about attention right now, right? There's a lot of people talking about view counts
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  and going viral and look how many views I got and things like that. And there's a lot of people
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  who teach the viral method, right, the secret hack for going viral. And you know, our industry,
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  right? What we do mortgage real estate. I'm not sure that that's the right message to be giving.
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  And I talk with a fair amount of content creators, some at a very high level, some who run very
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  large YouTube channels, some who have very large followings online, you know, hundreds of thousands
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  or millions of people, some who all they do is their whole their whole life is all about
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  creating content and understanding algorithms and what works in the hook in this and that. And
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  and that's all well and good. That's for my own learning and understanding and for the testing
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  that I do at various levels. But back to my original point, we're talking about the ease of
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  attracting attention versus the value of that attention. And a lot of that I've been thinking about
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  lately is, you know, you think about these platforms that we're all posting on, right? Whether you're at
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  Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, wherever it's at social media, right? As you guys probably know by
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  now, that is what's called rented land, right? If you don't own that land, you don't control it,
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  as we well know, those platforms can make changes that can be significantly impactful.
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  Oftentimes in a detrimental way to our audience and to our content and things like that,
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  sometimes these platforms can go away. In case in point with TikTok, we'll still see what's
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  going to happen with that, right? But let's start at the top of the frame of the funnel here.
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  This is a lot of what I talk about. It's actually what we do in, you know, my age and class
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  community is step one for you. Now, you tell me, right? Do you need to create more awareness?
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  Whether it's amongst your, you know, referral partners in your local market, whether it's from
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  consumers, whoever it is that you're trying to quote unquote attract, right? You've got to create
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  awareness, AKA attention. And there's a lot of talk around attention. And I'm going to get into
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  it a moment about like, what's the value of that attention? But getting attention for the
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  sheer sake of just getting attention in my mind is not enough. Or it's not really the point. I mean,
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  yes, it starts with we've got to become known, right? We're in a business that requires us to
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  become known. So back to we talk about awareness. How do you create awareness? Well, let's talk
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  about that in today's world, right? In the social world, we've got very three different ways to
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  create awareness, right? Writing, audio and video. And I've done all three of these. So writing,
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  right? You can write posts on X and LinkedIn, maybe threads, audio. You can do podcasts,
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  video. You obviously we've got short form and long form video on the various platforms.
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  And so that's like top of the phone, right? And there's various
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  stages of trust that are built because the first step is to get awareness, you know,
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  quote unquote attention, right? And the next stage is what do you do with that attention?
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  Because attention for attention, sake, doesn't have a lot of ROI. I mean, you can get attention
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  for a moment by showing up in somebody's feed, right? And then that attention is gone. And what
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  I'm trying to really focus on for myself and the people that I work is let's, yes,
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  create attention or awareness. But let's make sure we're focused on moving that to the next stage,
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  which is trust. And then ultimately the final stage, which is transaction, right? And the process
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  I've been going through is identifying which of the options are best suited for me when it comes
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  to creating awareness. And so, you know, I look at writing on LinkedIn. And yes, you can post
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  videos on LinkedIn as well. I look at this podcast, right? I've been doing this podcast for over eight
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  years, three hundred and seventy five plus episodes. Now, and then there's the social platforms.
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  There's video, right? The Instagram, YouTube, et cetera. And a lot of that in terms of discovery,
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  let's call awareness also discovery. That is obviously something that requires a set of skills
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  for us to be able to build and grow and expand over time. But what I've been thinking a lot about is
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  this is moving from a discovery platform or an awareness platform to trust. And so moving from
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  rented rented platforms being platforms you don't own social media to owned platforms.
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  An example of an owned platform would be email a newsletter example of an owned platform would
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  be a podcast like this. And I would say that if you're really thinking about becoming a modern
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  mortgage originator and being able to convert attention or awareness to transaction, then you've
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  got to have a process in place to move people further down, right? From awareness to transaction.
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  In that middle ground, if you picture a funnel, right, it's going to be on a non rented platform.
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  It's going to be on a platform ideally that you own and say what you will email is still the
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  war horse, right, for transaction. And so as you're thinking about this, I don't know. Do you have a
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  newsletter? Do you have some type of a way to engage with people beyond the stage of discovery?
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  You know, I mean, DMs is kind of one example of that. But you don't, again, you still don't own that.
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  You're not taking them off the rented platform. And as I've continued to, you know, kind of experiment
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  and learn a lot and go to different conferences and events and sign up for coaching on various things
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  when it comes to content and building my own platform, et cetera. If you think about the ease of
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  attracting attention versus the value of that attention, you know, picture a graph, right? And
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  you've got this access on, you know, on the left side, you get a bar straight down on across the
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  bottom, you got to write a typical kind of access there. X, Y, access, right? And on one side,
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  the left side of the bar, you've got the value of attention. And the underneath, you've got the
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  ease of attraction. And I would say that the easier attraction is, the less valuable it is.
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  So if you can build a lot of attention, right, on a social platform, how much value does that have?
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  And if so, let's take TikTok, Instagram, and let's take this chart, this graph that I kind of,
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  you know, visually think about this in your mind. And if you think about the ease of attracting
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  attention, things like TikTok, Instagram, and then the graph goes up further, it gets a little
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  bit harder on LinkedIn, a little bit harder on X, harder on YouTube, harder email, harder
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  podcast. So what I think about a lot, I'll think about a lot with my podcast is a podcast is not a
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  discovery platform. Podcasts do not have a great search functionality. There's no algorithm that
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  puts you in front of people. Podcasts is, podcast growth is hard, word of mouth, right? You posting,
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  you doing whatever you're going to do to create awareness, but it's very difficult to build your
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  podcast audience unless you're a well-known big name celebrity and things like that.
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  And a podcast has a different purpose and need, but I will say this is that a podcast is one of the
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  best assets for building value of attention, otherwise building trust. And then let me work
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  backwards from there. So we talk podcast at the top of it. Why? Because it tends to be long form.
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  Like if, you know, people listen to you for 15 to a minutes to an hour to three hours, like,
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  that's a lot of time on brand, time on you. And we know that's what builds trust is time in
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  gate, time on brand, time with you, right? You listening to this right now. Some of you might have
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  been listening for years, some of you might be brand new, but by the sheer fact that you and I engage
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  for whatever time this is together, you get a sense of who I am, my personality, my style, my
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  preferences, my values. And so that creates trust. It's a more time on brand. It's partly why we
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  talk about teaching classes in person, by the way, is it's time on brand, right? Face to face,
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  you're never going to replace that connection and trust building at scale of face to face.
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  Email working backwards would be the next right phase of ease of attraction being more difficult.
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  I mean, to get somebody to give you their email address, right? You need a good reason.
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  It's not super easy. Like people don't don't want your friggin, you know, PDF and your free
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  guide and your three hacks and things like that, especially now with the advent of AI. And people
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  don't need more information because every piece of information in the world is pretty much at
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  their fingertips, but they need this context. What they needed is your experiences, your stories,
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  your expertise and a way to, right, build trust over time that has a higher of value is email.
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  And let me work it back one step further. YouTube, YouTube, long form content. Yes, it has shorts,
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  but the real right foundation of YouTube is long form content. And myself personally is I'm actually
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  pivoting some of my, I can't be everywhere and be great all at once, right? So I can't be great
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  on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, right? All these things great all at once without a big team.
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  So that's why I'm in this place and sharing this with you right now is if I'm looking to grow my
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  awareness, discovery, attention, and most importantly, trust, what are the best platforms for me
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  personally to do that? For some people, you know, you're going to have your own answer to this question.
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  But once again, I'm thinking as a loan officer, right? And if I'm a loan officer and I want to
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  yes, increase awareness, right? I want to build an audience ultimately, but I ultimately,
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  really, the goal is to build trust so that people want to transact, do business with.
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  And so the question for me personally is based on what I do. What is the best place for me to
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  focus on for discovery? Now, podcasts, as I said, not great for discovery. What's better for
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  discovery? Something like YouTube. Why? Because it is the second largest search engine in the world.
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  And people are searching and YouTube has a recommendation algorithm and things like that.
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  So there is a benefit there to putting content there for the purposes of discovery, right?
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  Let me take take X. I'm personally not on X at all or Twitter. I don't know if some of you are,
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  but from the people that are better educated than me on on X, it's not what it used to be. When
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  it was Twitter, it was actually really great for discovery. Less so now and let's take LinkedIn.
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  LinkedIn, obviously, is seeing a bit of a resurgence. Several reasons for that, but LinkedIn is
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  probably the last place if you are somebody who prefers to not be on camera and do writing. Well,
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  LinkedIn is a place you could definitely do that. LinkedIn, I would say, is not great for discovery.
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  There are certain things you need to do on LinkedIn to grow your following, grow your engagement
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  and things like that. And remember, and I'm spending a lot of time actually studying LinkedIn
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  right now. So look for more to come from me on how to leverage LinkedIn if that's your place, your jam.
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  But once again, LinkedIn is similar to other platforms where your content is gone the next day,
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  essentially. Yes, you can have posts that continue to expand and grow over time.
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  And there's a certain science to that and art and science, but I'll dotted line back to YouTube
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  as to that's another benefit to YouTube in particular is you have content on YouTube that can
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  continue to get engagement views for months and years after you post it. And so stay tuned for
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  me to be doing some more interesting things with YouTube that you might be interested in.
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  Keep listening to this podcast or check your email for some additional announcements coming on
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  that. And then Instagram, right, Facebook, right, we know what the game is there, all that fun
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  stuff and then TikTok. So anyway, we're going from least valuable or least value of attention,
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  I should say to most value of attention and we're going from easy to hard. And I just want you
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  to think about that where because you got to choose and decide where you spend time and what's
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  your purpose, what's your goal for even being on social for a lot of you. I know it's you want to
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  create an audience, you want to find clients, you want to build a personal brand, you want to attract
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  people to you, right? And that's all awesome. And some of you do this already well on Instagram
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  or other places that I'm not leaning into personally or choosing, let me say this, I'm not
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  choosing it to be my primary focus for some of the reasons that I discussed. Okay. So what's your
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  thought? I mean, I would love to hear your response to this. Where are you going to be focusing
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  your time? What's your thought on building attention, right? And the value of that attention versus trust.
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  And where you're going to decide to put your your time and effort and resources in. If you're in
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  this game for the long haul, right? And how are you? What is your process to move that awareness,
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  right? That you get from whatever discovery platform you're on and to move that awareness from
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  borrowed to owned relationship platforms. As I mentioned, podcasting email, those are two
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  relationships platforms. And with email, specifically, I mean, you know,
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  something of a tangible newsletter, not just random emails with interest rate updates.
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  And then ultimately, the final stage is right, moving people to transact. What's your process for
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  that? And where do you need help? So if you listen to this podcast and you want to respond to me,
• 15:46
  you can, if you're listening on Spotify, you can leave a question or a comment there. And you can
• 15:51
  also follow me on the socials on LinkedIn, on Instagram, whatever your preferred social is,
• 15:56
  you can find me, my name, my podcast on there. Let me know. And then ultimately, you can also
• 16:04
  in the link below, there is a link that says, ask Jeff a question. And it's a link who could just tap
• 16:10
  right now on your mobile phone and you can leave me a voicemail. And I'd love to get your feedback,
• 16:13
  your thoughts, your questions. Where do you need more help and guidance on that? Just look for the
• 16:17
  link in the show notes. It says, ask Jeff and I'd love to get your feedback because I want to
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  riff on this more. And if you think this is a topic, we should pull pull this thread even more
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  and go deeper on this conversation. Let me know because that's why I do this. So anyway,
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  that is kind of what I'm thinking about here today. I'd be curious to know how it's jarred your
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  thoughts. As I said, leave me a note, leave me a voicemail. And if you like this episode,
• 16:41
  leave me a review. As always, make sure you take care of yourself. Be smart. Thanks for listening.
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  I'll see you on the next one.