The Importance of Selling Yourself Through Social Media

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and before we talk to today's guest who is really going to help us with all aspects of our lives, not just marketing, but also productivity. I'm very excited. I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host. You know him, you love him. Scott Todd from Scott todd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, if you're not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings, posting domination.com the landing. Scott Todd, are you ready to go?

Mark? I'm Ray, how about you?

I'm really excited. I really am. Just so everybody knows, speaking of automation, did you know that you could get paid in an automated way and if their ach, which is like their checking account fails, the credit card on file will actually charge it.

How do you do that?

It's almost impossible not to get paid with GeekPay IO. Get your first note for free at GeekPay IO. The only set it and forget it payment, automated system notifications. It's amazing and it's super affordable. It's actually a profit center if you do it the right way. All right, well, let's talk to our guest, Lindsey Phillips, CEO and captain of Smooth Sailing Business Growth, a content marketing company for life and business coaches, accountants, authors and other online entrepreneurs across North America. Her amazing team supports emerging entrepreneurs who are seeking fast paced business growth. Who doesn't want fast paced business growth, by the way? Nobody wakes up like, you know what, I really want to do this slowly.

Yeah. Slow or no growth, that's, that's the way for me.

Yeah. Yeah. So they realized they can't do it alone and they do it all and do it well. And they go to Lindsay Phillips to help with the strategizing, implementing of the content marketing sales funnels and all that good stuff. Social media, emails, lead magnets, online events. She helps you with her massive growth and she's going to help us massively grow businesses. Lindsay Phillips, how are you?

How's it going, guys?

It's going great. It's going great. So Lindsey, why should we listen to you? Right? What makes you so special and an expert in this area?

Well, my clients do call me a project ninja, a taskmaster. I've been given many names, but yes, I love tools, productivity hacks and anything to do with content marketing because really, you can't just throw up content like spaghetti up on a wall and hope it sticks and hope that someone finds you. You want to attract and acquire customers faster. Right. And content marketing is the way to do it. So we publish and optimize and promote so that we can get you there faster.

I love it. I love it. So in the content marketing world, what is some of the worst advice you see or hear given in your area of expertise?

What is the worst advice is that social media isn't really important. That it's kind of like a nice to have, not a need to have. That it doesn't really impact your business in a meaningful way. Bad advice is to not do email marketing anymore because no one pays attention to emails. Promo the heck out of your social media. When you are posting, make sure it's, you know, all about you and promoting. Yeah, I think that's probably the worst advice.

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. So when you say promo the heck out of you, what is. What does that mean? Like, people aren't, like, engaging in a conversational way.

Exactly. It's amazing how many people still put out social media posts that are, hey, here's what I do. Call me if you need, you know, new plumbing or, you know, if you want more taxes, less taxes to pay, you know, call us. We do this, this and this. It's like posts that are all about you and all about your business and what you do. You want to be more engaging. You want to be more serving and give them tips and show your expertise. Be more conversational and don't be afraid to show your personality. You know, if you check out my wall, I'm sure you will see a minion or two. I love minions.

That's interesting. Scott, what do you see in the social media world?

Well, I mean, like, I think that everything is different. I think that, like, I don't know, Mark, I. Maybe I'm just focused on the wrong thing here. But like, I think that in some applications, maybe where you have a store or you're building a brand or you have a, you know, you have a product that you're trying to market, then I think social media is a great thing, right. For us. I struggle with social media because, like, you know, look, we sell land, right? Like, it's, it's. I think it's great to like, like, and I do engage with, like, social media. I put properties out there, but I cannot, out of like 500 deals, point to like one property that I sold because of a Facebook ad or a social media post. Right. And so, you know, it's. I think it's one thing, but you Know, I think it's one thing to like build a brand on social media, but I don't know that it necessarily equates to dollars for me. Like, I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I need Lindsey.

Yeah, I think we need Lindsay. What are we missing?

For sure. Yeah. And I've heard that so many times before. And part of it is being top of mind, brand awareness, exposure. But it's also growing those relationship in the trust, like, and no factor. And I'll give you an example, and I've done this myself before. I'm looking for, I don't know, a company to help me do my bookkeeping, let's say. And if I go and search through Facebook on their website, I always click their social media links and see how active they are. If I've noticed that they haven't done a blog or that they haven't posted in the past three weeks or the posts are just all promotional, I think a, are they really a successful business? If I have an issue, are they really going to be there to support me? And then I just, you automatically have all those negative feelings. So therefore you're more likely to pass them up and go find someone that looks more successful and that they're active and they're engaged in their community and so forth. And same with, I was going to have another point, I just lost it. But likewise, if you're going to be doing posts where it's all about you and your product, you just don't feel that sense of like and trust. Whereas if you're posting, you know, things about yourself or sharing tips or ideas, and just even just having conversations with people, whether it's direct messages, comments, you're staying top of mind, you're maintaining that relationship with those people that are your potential customers or your potential clients. Or it even helps with client retention for those that you do have relationship with. And then also as a third point, if you are not consistent with your social media, then when you do post, you are less likely to show up in your prospects or your community's feed because of the algorithms that Facebook has.

So Lindsay, like, I, like, I hear what you're saying, but like, do you think, and I'm gonna challenge a little bit, but like, do you think that the way that you search is biased because of what you do? Because, like, when I go to search for a company, don't do that. Like, I don't go, like, I don't want to go on their Facebook page and like, find out about like whether they're, you know, enjoying an adventure. When I want to buy something, like, I'm going there, I'm looking for information, I'm looking for pricing, I'm looking to take action as opposed to, hey, let me see how social they are on their social media feed. Because if I have a problem, you know, I'm doing not going to social media. I'm picking up the dang phone, I'm calling them, or I'm going down to their business. Right? Like, that's.

But.

But. So, like, I look at that and I'm like, well, am I missing it? Because, like, do I have blinders on?

Or.

Or do you. Or is your approach a little bit biased because of what you do?

That's a good question. I mean, there are different types of people out there that, like, I know my dad, if he wants to buy something, he's going to research the heck out of it for months and. And then finally make this decision, right? And there's some people that just, like, you know, they find the first thing, they might check out three things. Boom, done, they want it, and they move on. So there are different types of buyers, and that has to be taken into consideration. But, I mean, I don't have the stats in front of me, but the amount of people that search for products, for things, for services, search through YouTube, Facebook, and obviously Google, and they make a decision. Especially millennials. Millennials are very research driven. They want to know that they're making the best decision possible and they do their due diligence and they're on Instagram, everyone's got their mobile devices, and that's how they check out reviews nowadays. Right. So people are definitely being a little bit more savvy with. With who they choose to work with or who they choose to buy with.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's interesting because I'm more like Scott. But it could just be, you know, we're in our 40s, right, and we're not actively engaged like my kids are. I mean, they don't even watch TV. They go on YouTube for their content. You know, Instagram and Snapchat is where they hang out. But they would even think about going to Facebook. That's like where old people go, right?

That's hilarious.

And so I think you're right. I think. I think it is a generational thing. It could just be the way that Scott and I shop. We're kind of like hunters. We're like, we're gonna hunt, we're gonna buy, we're gonna go, you know, versus you know, somebody that might be a little bit more methodical about it. Like, we're just, you know, we're kind of googling reviews and then arguing back and forth. Like, I actually shop with Scott.

What are we buying this week, Mark?

Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of fun. And then like, let's go look for some headphones. Yeah, yeah. But it's funny. Like, he'll look at reviews at Best Buy, where I'll look at reviews on Amazon and then we'll kind of compare and we'll like, argue. But that's not here or there. But I think that if you're a millennial, you'll look at Facebook reviews, but before you might look at a Best Buy or an Amazon review and that might have more weight for you. So I think it's interesting.

It's knowing too who your target market is. Right. And where they're hanging out and what they're doing, what their habits are. I mean, that plays a part of it as well. I mean, if you're in the corporate sphere, then you're gonna spend more time in LinkedIn than, you know, on Instagram type thing. So. So that does play into it. But just to not discount the importance of social media and that consistent presence and building those relationships online, because people are on there and that's how they're communicating.

Right? Right. You know, email marketing is getting this bad rap today. And I think it's because of fatigue, email fatigue, in the same way we had sort of junk mail fatigue. And the filters. Right. So Gmail's throwing you into a filter. When you say email marketing is not dead. How can we make email marketing be a little bit more robust, a little bit more engaging so that we're not filtered out and we are getting the attention? We are getting better open rates and better click through rates.

Yeah. And it's funny, with my clients, the email marketing has been extremely impactful. And part of it is knowing your audience, knowing what's going to hook them. The second thing is testing. I have one client where if they do like a newsletter that is more graphic, rich, it's got different segments to it, his audience prefers that where I have another client where he gets better results. If the emails are like very textual, it looks like someone emailed you from Gmail and they're very short and they even say, hey, hit reply if you have a question or if you want more information on this. So they don't have to click to another landing page, they just hit reply, give a phone number, and then the Sales team is on the call with them. So you do have to do some testing to see what's going to work for your audience. Having said that, some people are emailing every single day and have actually you will get a little bit of dropout right off the cuff, you know, in those first couple of weeks. But you know what, you're probably going to weed out some of the your non ideal clients. Right? But the ones that are staying on are engaged. More will respond, will get higher clicks. And the more that you email them, the more engaged they are and the more aware they are of your products and your services. That's not for everyone. It's sort of like a testing where I've had one client where we did do a lot of emails over a period of time and we got a lot of flak back and people were like, you know, up in arms kind of a thing. So you know, to dial it down. And you also check your opt out rates, your unsubscribes and all that kind of stuff. So testing is a part of it. So knowing what works and not and doesn't work. The second point I want to raise is nurturing. You know, you can't just, if someone does a download and they opt into your E list, you can't just then quickly jump to promoting, you know, a $5,000 event or big ticket item. You really need to invite them to a webinar or give them gifts of different content. You know, share your blogs, your podcast, whatever it may be to kind of foster that relationship. Make sure that you're indoctrinating them into knowing what it is that you're all about and nurture them throughout, you know, the time period before you, you know, go for the ask. I guess you could say yeah.

Scott, do you think that people are having a webinar fatigue in the same way that people might be having email fatigue? Lindsey's saying yes.

Yeah, I am.

You know, Mark, here's the thing. It's like, I'm like, I, I don't know, I feel like, I feel like the stuff that maybe this is just my opinion, but I feel like the stuff that you get from webinars you can find online, you don't have to sit through the whole deal and then you know what's coming. It's going to be the same formula that everybody follows it. Hey, now, I know what you're thinking. You know, I don't know why you're here, but if it's because X, Y and Z or abc, then do this and here's what other people have found. And oh, by the way, if you act now and in the next 30 minutes, you can take this amount of money off your, you know, your deal or it's not going to end there. But wait, there's more. It's just like the old, like, you know, sales pitch of the day and canon a new fashion. And so, like, what I do is when I see webinars, I'm like, I'm out, Mark. I mean, like, we can have fancy hands sit on the webinar first and bring back the key information, tell them to drop off when the sales pitch.

Comes, you know, and that's what I do. Actually, I can't last. Can't tell you, Lindsay, the last time I actually sat through a webinar, I outsource it. I have them take notes and give me the most salient pieces of information. And it's like, you know, it's great and it really leverages my time. But when you. So you're saying webinars, people have webinar fatigue. So what should we be doing to nurture and educate in a way that people will be more engaged?

What's really worked well for a couple of my clients is instead of calling it a webinar, call it an online training or a seminar or a workshop. It holds more value and it feels like it has more weight to it. Also, a lot of people are using zoom instead of, you know, your go to webinar and your traditional webinar with the slides. Zoom, as you know, is face to face. You can interact with the people. You're having a conversation and you're delivering material. So you don't always necessarily need the fancy slides. I know for me, you know, those kinds of webinars where the first third is, you know how wonderful I am. The second third is the meat of the matter, and the third, you know, last one is all the pitch. Right. And I myself cannot stand that. Having said that, there clearly are a ton of six figure, seven figure, figure eight figure businesses out there that are doing that model and it's working for them. You know, Michael Hyatt, Frank Kern, like, there's Amy Porterfield. Hers aren't too bad. Hers are a lot of good content. But there's a lot out there that do provide value. You just kind of, I mean, there is still crushing it and their sales will prove it. So I guess it depends on their audience, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think what you're saying is true. Like in Amy Porterfield, you're getting a Lot of good information.

He gives a lot of good stuff.

And I think that's the key. And same thing with like a Frank Kern. Like, I've, I've been on his webinars. I just like his way.

Yeah, totally.

You know, and Scott's a huge Amy Porterfield fan.

So.

Scott, do you want to gush?

No, no. You know, look, here's, here's the thing is that, here's what I wonder about, though. Like, Mark, you know, what all these people have in common, and like, what they're crushing it in is basically they're having my own warp view maybe, but they're having success with teaching webinars or online content creation to people, to like, to the masses. The fish. The hungry fish.

Right.

They're feeding the hungry fish. So they're leveraging. They're leveraging these webinars. Teaching people how to do webinars. It would be, you know, it's kind of crazy that they wouldn't see those six figure, seven figure incomes. But then how many people, how many of their students go off and do something that's not necessarily about, you know, creating online content or webinars? Maybe it's to sell like a board game and they, they flop. You know, I'm saying, like, it's. The webinar's not for everybody. Every type of product. I think, I think it's good for certain things. But, you know, you cannot sell, you can't sell everything through a webinar.

But it's a good way to leverage your expertise, your credibility.

It's a great way to teach the marketplace, too.

What's that?

It's a great way to teach the marketplace, to educate the marketplace.

And it's like there's no perfect formula that's going to work for every person in every business type. Right. You kind of. What feels right for you? What? How? You know, your audience. And testing. It's, you know, there's, there's different methods. You know, obviously podcasting videos. Live Facebook has been working a lot. Really well for a lot of people. Instead of doing webinars, they're just doing the live Facebook and then saving it on YouTube and putting it up on their website. So there's tons of different avenues. So it's.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fun to test. Yeah. So, Lindsay, let's get geeky. Are you ready?

Okay. I did tell you I was a tool nerd.

Let's get, let's get nerdy. Let's get geeky. What are your three favorite tools right now?

And why One of my favorite tools is TubeBuddy. I've done so many videos, and I had them on my podcast show, actually. So TubeBuddy is a way.

How do I spell tubebuddy?

So tube, like T, U, B, E. Oh, tube.

Okay.

I think it's for YouTube.

Okay.

I know it sounds kind of weird, but Tube, buddy. And it's so it's a way to create your checklist for uploading videos, how to SEO it, have better tags descriptions. You can have custom thumbnails. You can do competitor analysis. It's got so much stuff in there, it's insane. And it's super cheap.

Wow. I'm sold.

It is a good one.

The premier YouTube channel management toolkit.

Yeah, it's the best thing ever.

All right. I love it. So I'm getting that. What else?

There is Repurpose IO for those that do Facebook lives. I had Henny Mora on my podcast show too. He's awesome. So he has created this software that when you do a live Facebook, it automatically pushes it to your YouTube account and creates the video there, because otherwise you gotta do a bunch of backend stuff to get it off of your Facebook, which is a pain. And then it also strips the audio into Dropbox so that you can leverage that and create a podcast out of it. It's got a few other extra tools in there too, but it just automates that whole process.

Oh, you just said our favorite word.

Automate.

Automate. All right, I'm getting this too. All right. This is crazy. And your third favorite tool.

Canva, for making awesome graphics. You can even import your fonts. Your branding have a whole, like, template so that when you create graphics for your social media and your website and stuff like that, they're all perfect fonts, perfect brand colors, and it's super easy to use.

All right. Yeah. So Canva's great. These are great. These are great. Anything else that we're forgetting?

What other tools do I like? I do like simple podcast press, which is another one that Hani Mora created, and it will automatically create a post in your WordPress account. So it pushes from Libsyn, where you're hosting your podcast, and it pushes out the post and the player that's underneath, it has the audio player, but it has. You can, you know, customize it to make sure that it fits your branding, but it enables people to download it. Check it out on itunes or Stitcher or YouTube. But it also has a call to action built into it right underneath so that you can capture emails.

Oh, very cool. Very cool. Okay, one more. Because I just love it. We love this stuff.

I know. I definitely recommend any entrepreneur have a project management tool, whether it's Trello, which is super visible, like visual, and with like boards, and you can drag and drop things over Basecamp. I use teamworks because we have quite a big team and a lot of different projects and you can track your time in there, but it keeps you on track. And then that way you don't use your inbox as your to do list or archive and that you put it all in your project management tool to stay on track and stay organized.

Very good. Very good, Scott. Todd, we should have Lindsey on the, on the roundtable.

I mean, like, do we even need to do a tip of the week now, Mark?

I don't. I don't think so. I think it's. I think we're good.

I mean, these are great.

These are really good. Fantastic. And then Lindsey for, you know, let's just kind of get really, really kind of niche with our, you know, our group that sells raw land. Right. And so you've got a, you've got a sale, let's say. That is very visual. Right. And it's, it's a. It's, you know, we can do like weekly promotions. Would you recommend if someone was starting today with email promotions, Facebook promotions, or something else with this medium of sale.

I think you have to layer it. You need to have an online presence, but you need to connect. So if you are connected in Facebook or LinkedIn, you know, don't be afraid. Afraid to send direct messages. It doesn't all just have to go out to the masses. You can even. There's even chatbots where it's manychats.com and then it'll push out direct messages to your peeps that you're connected with to share information, resources, tips, and then obviously, you know, any property that you have for sale and even just communicating with them to keep that relationship going. Right? And then. Yeah, absolutely. Sending out emails, whether it's visual or updates, or even letting them know what's been going on in your business over the past week or so. It's just keeping those lines of communication going and staying top of mind.

Okay, very cool, Very cool. Well, I guess we're at that point now, Lindsay, where you've really given us so much great content and mentorship. I mean, Scott, do we even ask for a tip of the week? I know what I'm asking. Lindsay, I'm going to ask you for a book that you're gifting or recommending right now.

One of the books that really resonated with me when I was starting out is it's okay to Be Scared but Never Give up by Jim Palmer. And it's stories of, like, different entrepreneurs. And it made me realize that, you know, where things were not so great, or, you know, you sometimes you have that imposter syndrome, or, how am I ever going to be as great as this person? And just realizing that everyone has their own entrepreneurial journey, and you always have to start someone, and you move up and you have lessons and mistakes along the way. But even the greats that we aspire to, they, too, you know, have had trials and tribulations, and they were so gracious enough to share it. So I found that really inspiring.

Okay, very good. We've had Jim on the podcast.

Yeah.

So he's great. Scott. Todd, do you want to just pass? Because Lindsey gave so many tips of the week. Wait, you're on mute.

We could, but I'm not going to.

Oh, he's up to the challenge. I love it.

Mark, I really like this book. Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss.

Never split the difference.

Are you familiar with this book?

I'm familiar with Chris Voss.

But not negotiate as if your life depended on it. So a lot of people, especially negotiating things, they'll say, well, there's a number. I'll meet you in the middle. Right? Never meet in the middle. Like you said, always keep that tension in there. Always keep that friction in there. You know, you've got to ask for big things, and you got to hold your own sometimes. And I recently, I was actually helping a family member sell their house in terms of, you know, we were working through a realtor, but they were struggling with the negotiation of it. We had someone call up and they offered an amount. They offered, you know, 235. And the first inclination is, yes, let's take it. Let's take it. It's a good offer. And I'm like, hold on. The asking, you know, we were asking 250. Let's go back to 245. No one brings their first offer right off the bat. Right, right. And they disappeared. They vanished. The realtor wouldn't even call the realtor back. And they were kicking themselves like, oh, we should just taken it. We should just taken it. And I'm like, let's just hold. Let's just hold. Literally, two days later, you get another offer, and it was for 2:40. So, you know, $5,000 more. And they were jumping on it. You know, let's Take it. Hold on. Let's go through the process and you may not end up getting, you know, much beyond that, but we did get a little bit, slightly, a little bit more than that. But don't ever just take the first, the first offer and don't split the difference. Negotiate like your life depends on it.

Okay. So yeah, it's interesting because that's really a valuable book for our business because we're constantly negotiating on our buys, on ourselves. That should be like a must read. I'm gonna actually buy a bunch for boot camp for our boot camps.

I also use the same topic or techniques in helping my sister in law buy a car. And basically, you know, they gave her the first pass and I went in there and I. So instead of, instead of them just going to bring out the manager, she's like, I'll be right back. So she goes and gets me. So it was kind of a weird thing. So she brought me in and then they brought in their manager and I was just basically, you know, you know how car dealers are, Mark, they make up one price. And so on their website it was showing like this one price. And I'm like, well, we want the price for, we want the car for this price. Like, well, you know, you got to qualify for all these rebates. And you know, I'm like, well, nobody qualifies for all these rebates. That's a fake price. And the guy's like, well, you know, some people, you might, you know, you might qualify for all these things. And so he was trying to push the price up much higher. And I was still stuck on that much lower price. And classic, classic me, I kind of take out the pen and I write on a piece ofPaper, hashtag3fake price. And I flip it around to, I go, this is what you're dealing with. Let me go on Twitter and talk about your fake pricing. You're just as bad as the fake news out there. We got a very good deal.

Nice.

And when you think about it, kids are born with that principle, right? If they like will haggle you to no end to get that extra piece of candy or to stay up 15 minutes later.

Well, what's funny, it's true. And we lose it as adults, right?

Well, what's funny is that one of the things about negotiations is that you have to know, you have to know the person you're competing against or you're negotiating against, right? Competing, negotiating. You have to know them, you have to study them. And what do children do? They study their parents. They're like, man, if I ask right now, flame. Or they learn it, right? So they find the exact opportunity. They find a way to sell you, like, oh, yeah, you do need that. They find the weaker parent and they go to them first. They build the allies.

Hilarious.

They're geniuses.

They need to write. The kids need to write a book on negotiating.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That wouldn't be a bad idea. So for Chris Voss's book, audio or the hardcover?

I like the audio.

Audio. Okay. Done and done. Lindsay Phillips, Are we good?

I think so.

Well, we're not great because I haven't given my tip of the week.

Oh, wow.

Which is more. Learn more about lindsay@smoothbusinessgrowth.com Is that right?

That's perfect.

Smoothbusinessgrowth.com Clearly, Lindsay is an expert in all things content marketing, geeky tools. We're gonna have to have her back and just have, like, a geeky, you know, tool, tool session because we've got tons of stuff that we automate.

Awesome.

We do all that stuff. So I want to thank Lindsey Phillips. Smoothbusinessgrowth.com I want to remind the listeners the only way. The only way we're going to get the quality of guests like Lindsay Phillips from smoothbusinessgrowth.com is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got a rate, and you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of your review to supportlandgeek.com we're going to send you for free our $97 passive income launch kit. So please do that. It really, really helps. And it takes two seconds to do. If you don't know how to do it, just go to the landgeek.com iTunes review. Scott, we're all good.

We're good, Mark.

All right, well, thanks, everybody, and let freedom ring ring. All right, thank you.