In this instructional video, Tony Ray Baker, a veteran real‑estate agent, walks viewers through a comprehensive, multi‑channel contact strategy to decide whether to incorporate social media into their marketing mix. He recounts his own grassroots start in the 1990s, emphasizing relationship‑based growth through referrals, snail‑mail, phone calls, texts, and email before adding social media. For each channel he provides concrete frequency recommendations (e.g., snail‑mail 12 × year, phone calls 4 × year, texts 12 × year, emails 12 × year, social posts 365 × year) and explains the purpose behind each touchpoint. He stresses the importance of nurturing a “top‑150” list within a CRM, using personalized, value‑added content. When it comes to social media, he advocates daily posting and suggests starting with Facebook and Instagram to reach both older and younger client segments. The overall message is that the right approach is the one that fits each business, but a balanced, consistent presence across multiple channels—including social media—is essential for staying top‑of‑mind with clients.
Chapters
Hey, welcome to Marketing Made Easy. Today we are going to answer the question of social media, use or not use? And I think this becomes a question for a lot of people, especially if you've been in business for just a little bit of time or, you know, a long time and you haven't jumped into social media. So I'm hoping to answer that for you today. Just remember, please, that the right way is your way. It's not my way, it's not somebody else's way, it's what you decide to do with your business. So I'm going to give you a little look at my business, and then you can decide for yourself if social media is right for you. Let's talk about contacts. So for me, I built my business on by referral, and so I didn't have a penny. I mean, seriously, I was eating smack ramen, and I was almost in a refrigerator box when I started in real estate in the '90s. And so I had to do everything grassroots. I couldn't afford paper ads, they were too expensive. So my whole goal was just to build the business off of nurturing and fostering those relationships with the people that already like, know, and trust me. So that's where I— this is where this plan comes from. So let me show that to you. So some of this didn't exist back then, like email, so I'm adding that in now for today. So for me, it was all about contacts and snail mail. Was one way to contact clients, and then phone was another way. So that would be phone calls. And then eventually text messaging came to be, so text messaging became another point of contact for me that I figured out we could do some really cool stuff with text messaging. And then of course we have emails, and social media is now really the newest— not new anymore, but it seems like it is probably the newest of all of it, and the most misunderstood probably right now and the biggest thing we can all learn. So snail mail, that can be postcards, newsletters, thank you cards, birthday cards, any way you make contact through snail mail. This is probably one of the most important ways to talk to your clientele now, and the reason is, is because bills, if you think about it, bills were all received through the mail, and then we all hated mail and we hated junk mail. But as email took over, what happened was is that email started taking over our bills as well. So now we get a ton of spam, a ton of bills, and a ton of stuff in our emails. And if you can get a nice card in the mail, handwritten thank-you card or something like that, a newsletter, actually that is doing far better as far as a marketing piece than a lot of this stuff is. So don't forget your snail mail. It's really great for fostering those relationships. Snail mail you should make 12 times a year. This is all yearly contact. Sorry, yearly contact. And the— so you want 12 times, so that's only once a month. So if you've taken my newsletter class, then you'll know that we do a monthly newsletter. There's ways, other ways of course, to contact them through mail, like birthdays and stuff like that, but I don't count those in the 12 times. So snail mail should be something that you really have automated and regular that's going out to your clientele. Phone calls, that's pretty simple. You can make phone calls for any amount of reasons, but when you have 100, 200 clients, you want to make sure you've got them scheduled for at least 3 times a year. So that's every quarter you're going to be making a phone call and checking in, saying hi, seeing how the kids are doing, how the dogs are, whatever it is. You're going to be checking in with your clients. Text messaging, I use the text messaging for holidays, and I use the text messaging for invites to little events like a quick happy hour, but I really think you should use text messaging on a regular basis. So I'm gonna say 12 times— we use it 12 times a year, so that's once a month you're gonna do some sort of text to your clients. I don't recommend blast texting, it's very obvious. So when you're working with a CRM, you want to really look to nurture this top 150. That means it could be 80, 90, 100, I don't care how many that is, but we call it your top 150. That's the people that you really have in your CRM that you're gonna keep an eye and make sure that they're following this information. Emails. Emails should be 12 times. This is really simple, but you need to make sure they're of value. So that could be an email newsletter, which— so for our newsletter, for example, it's cocktails and recipes and food recipes and fun places to visit. We like to travel. That's what all this is. I don't know if I— can you see that? Can they see that? Gonzo's behind the camera right now. A little bit. So these are different places that we visited around the world. It's one of the goals on my list, if you see over here, it's one of my goals is to visit Europe at least twice a year. And so emails, we give them information on great fun things to do, places to travel, great craft cocktail recipes, stuff like that. We know our clientele, so they fit with the kind of stuff we like, because like people hang out, right? One of the great things about working with your own center of influence So social media, we do this daily post. So we do 365. So that's 365. Whoops, look, I just took 10 days off. That's awesome. 365 days a year we are social media posting. So here's the thing I want to answer that question. Our clients, I want them to see us and be with us wherever they go in their lives. So right now we catch them in their mailboxes. We're catching them on their phones with texts. We're catching them in their email box. But, you know, a mass majority of our clients are in social media world. And so the key for me is, is that we're actually there as well. So we use this because this same group is here and here and here and here and here. Right. So all that group, we're getting in front of them in all different ways. So if you're on social media and you're in my social media platform, a friend on Facebook, You're going to see me doing my daily things, maybe waking up and taking a picture of a cool flower that just bloomed in the backyard, or maybe you just saw my pictures of Canada when we were flying over ice glaciers. The point is, you're seeing Tony Ray Baker doing fun things in my life, and that's where I say yes, the answer should be use social media. It doesn't have to be business-related. It can be business, personal, both, whatever you want, but you should be You know, realize that you need to use social media in some way. So I'm going to encourage you to take the time. If you don't have a Facebook account, get on there and get Facebook set up. There's great classes out there for how to use Facebook. If the other thing to think about is to know your platforms, there's so many of them with Pinterest and LinkedIn and Instagram. So think about where you are, where you like to play. That's probably where your friends are as well. If you want to be on a couple of them, I would probably suggest that you do Facebook and Instagram right now. That's two different, um, that's two different groups of people. This is probably an older generation and this is probably a younger generation right now. And younger people need to be on both as well as older people need to be on both. Focus on one, maybe get that one started, and then that one can bleed over into this one, or vice versa, depending if you've already been there and you need to go this way. So I hope that helped. I hope you have a great day. I'll be doing more of these classes, hopefully, and we'll be telling you different ways for marketing made easy. And watch for my classes at Tierra Antigua at the— this coming— this fall. Thanks.
