Organic Marketing That Generates Leads | Matt Muscat

FULL AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION: 

Justin Stoddart 0:01
So the big question is this. How do we those of us in the real estate industry with crazy amounts of ambition? How do we think bigger than the building of our own empires? How do we simultaneously see success and significance, income and impact? My name is Justin Stoddart. And this is the Think bigger real estate show. Everybody again today, welcome back. Today, we’re gonna be talking very specifically about how you can take your organic Social Media Marketing and be sure that it’s not just filled with material, but it’s actually producing leads producing business for you. So stay tuned, this episode is going to help you again game direction and get results from your organic social media marketing.

You again, today, just coming off a long weekend, Memorial Day weekend, many of you worked and maybe didn’t feel like a weekend. Here we are. Today we’re going to be talking very specifically about how you can leverage the power of social media to be working even while you’re not working to be sure that the content you’re putting out there is actually doing some good for your business. Today, I have with me a special guest out of Michigan. His name is Matt Muscat. He is out of a lending space, but trains real estate agents all across the country on how to get results from the organic social media. Matt, thanks for coming, coming and being on the show with us today. Thanks, Justin. Appreciate it. Yeah, pleasure, my friends. So let’s get right into this. If I talk to this really quickly about your background, again, you’ve met with over 2500 agents really auditing their social media, helping them to improve and refine it anything else the folks at home should know about you today.

Matt Muscat 1:37
Yeah. So my whole my whole goal is that I think most most Realtors lenders, salespeople in our space rely on hope marketing, as in, they hope that because they’re cool, nice people, when their clients are ready to buy, sell, invest that they’re going to call them. And although that’s cool, and it works for a lot of people, it’s not strategic. So I’ve been meeting with five to 10 agents a week for the past 11 years. That’s how long I’ve been in the space. And my goal is to help people come up with specific strategies they can use on off social media or anywhere else that will predictably get them more business. So to jump into your actual question, Justin, on social media, you need a strategy. That’s the most important thing. You can’t just say, Hey, I’m going to use social media to get business and you can’t just hope that people will respond to the things that you’re posting. That’s all the shouting, what’s more important, it’s have a strategy and to stick with it. So the easiest strategy that I that I give agents and lenders and salespeople is to really harness the strength of the algorithm. And this works on Facebook and Instagram, specifically, it’s the same algorithm. And the idea is to post minimum three times a week, one post about real estate, specifically, one post about you personally, something that will that will get other people interested in you, and one post about the community. Those are the three pillars I tell everyone to focus on. That’s step one, and you can Google what to post there’s actually a good book out there called what to post. It’s on Amazon. But what I recommend doing is sending out 10 to 15 Social media messages that could be Facebook, Instagram, to people going down your list separate from ATC, what that’s gonna do is you can click on their profile, see what they’ve been up to recently message them about that topic that is going to if they respond to guarantee that they see the posts you do that week, because most people don’t realize you post something, and not everyone sees it. Unless the algorithm feels like you’re good. You’re in it’s good graces that day. So by using this message strategy, in combination with the three posts minimum, you’re going to start to see the total number of likes, comments, messages, and leads go up exponentially,

Justin Stoddart 3:41
that you and I are speaking the same language all too often. I believe people see social media as a megaphone. As I’m going to talk at people to convert them to liking me conversion doesn’t happen in a silo, it happens in conversation. And the only way to really make social media turn into a conversation is to be social, and social does not mean talking at people. So I love absolutely what you’re saying. I think that’s a very simple formula, something that that that I wholeheartedly endorse exactly why, why I was super interested in having you on the show here today. Because again, you see a lot of people trying very hard at social media. Now some people have said I don’t want to do social media, I believe those people are on their way out, let’s be honest, right? They’re going to be forgotten even that older generation spends a lot of time on social media if you’re not taking social media seriously, you’re out there’s a whole group of people that are trying very hard and they’re not getting the results that they want and I think what you’re shaping here is is a very simple format by which people can implement and do and actually get results right start Yeah,

Matt Muscat 4:33
I think to like the number one reason people don’t use social media is number one, they don’t know what the hell to say. They don’t know what to post they don’t know what to do. So if you want to break it down, like what should you be posting about I said community something about yourself? What does that mean? And so I tell people when you’re posting about yourself personally, I like to challenge people to come up with like three to four personas so like the fact you’re a realtor is probably not the most exciting part about you unless you’re the only realtor someone knows or unless you’re on Million Dollar Listing then you know like being a realtor is the coolest thing you do. But for the average person, it shouldn’t be the defining moment of you on social media. So for me, I post about real estate marketing, that’s the business stuff that I post about, like watches wine and traveling with my kids. So those are like my three personas. And you never know which persona, someone’s gonna latch on to on social. And so by by making sure that you’re always in a given month posting about all of those different topics, all you have to do is to get someone to engage with you. And then they will start seeing your other stuff as well be interesting, but also be interested. And on the be interested part help to see what other people are posting about and message them about those topics. No, you know what it’s like, if you’re a realtor, or a salesperson, and you message someone about real estate, or about something random, like, Hey, how’s it going, they’re just waiting for the pitch, like, they’re just waiting for you to go, like, you know, furniture, salesperson and pounce on them. So it’s way better to reach out to them first about whatever they posted that you clearly know that took the time out of their day to post about, because then they’re going to respond, and then you start to get all that algorithm juice building.

Justin Stoddart 6:00
That’s super simple, and super beautiful concept, right? There’s two, I believe, real benefits of social media, right? One is that you create a brand for yourself, people start to recognize you, they know you, they see you as some sort of authority on the topic. Right. The other one is that you actually build relationships when done correctly. And too many people focus on the one of like, pretty fancy stuff all the time. But they people don’t watch their stuff. And why because the algorithms aren’t aren’t liking them, because all they do is talking to people. And the second one is that they aren’t correctively reaching out, actually find out what other people are interested in. Right? What’s What’s the famous adage that that we all have heard over and over is that people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care. And really your strategy here embodies both of those, yes, you are sharing things that you know, but you’re also showing how much you care, right, which not only serves the algorithm well, but it also serves the human soul. Well, there’s nothing that there’s nothing that would make people want to listen to somebody more than someone who is knowledgeable and also has an interest in the things in the things that are you right that are that are personal to me and endears people to you. Like the mind is stimulated. This person knows what they’re doing. And the heart is stimulated. Because they’re like, and they know me, right? They know their stuff. And they know me, and I think that combo is is deadly in a really good way.

Matt Muscat 7:10
Yeah, when I think the other you mentioned earlier, Justin, that like all these people that don’t want to use social are going to be on their way out. And I think what those people need to realize is like, you don’t need to use social for fun, it’s totally okay, if it’s like not your personal hobby, I get it. Like it’s not my dad’s hobby. However, it’s just work like in real estate. So often we forget, like, we don’t have a boss, setting our agenda, like show up at 8am Do these things. But you can be your own boss and just put time block social media into your calendar as a business activity. Now the second piece of it is assuming you’re the kind of person most people in real estate, like to have conversations, if you make your social media activity more about the other person, it will probably be more fun to you. And once you start getting some business off of it, you’ll probably like it. I mean, I can tell you things I didn’t like doing five years ago, like maybe working out that are now my favorite thing ever to do because I feel great afterwards. And because they see the results, sometimes it just takes seeing the results to make to make yourself want to do it a little bit more.

Justin Stoddart 8:07
You know, it’s a great point, because we don’t like to do this stuff that we think we’re bad at, right. And I think when people see themselves online, it’s like, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I don’t have a purpose, there’s no clarity, is it working? Is it not forget it, I’m just gonna do what I’ve always done on the notes, calls and pop buys. I’m gonna do those things forever, because they’ve worked. Now they might with that generation, but I believe that if you’re going to be relevant moving forward, you’re going to need to go beyond that right? You’re actually going to have a presence in the in the digital space. And I think what you’re helping us all to recognize is that just because you’ve been bad at it in the past doesn’t mean that you have to be bad at it forever. It’s probably just we’re not good at right. It’s it you haven’t actually had a strategy that’s workable that actually produces some sort of result.

Matt Muscat 8:45
Yeah, I mean, realistically, like, you know, most business and real estate, like the number one form of marketing is getting face to face. But that’s a time constraint. Number two is picking up the phone. But social media follows people forever. Like it’s like it’s like networking with a save button. It’s like you and I meet each other. Justin made a great time on this podcast today. If I don’t friend you on social media, it’s almost like a kill the relationship day to like, and that does it’s like a Rolodex with a save button. So if you have a cell phone, and you’re adding a contact, take to the next level and add them on social right then and there when it’s not weird, because why wouldn’t you want that person to stay in to stay engaged with you? Number two, like if you have a team if you have an assistant if you have anyone, the number one thing on that list should be the minute you get a lead the minute you talk to someone and have a conversation, who do I it’s adding that schedule to your tasks to your schedule? Who do I need to friend on social media now? What platforms do I need to find them on? And how do I start engaging them on this social media channel? Because you almost want to create what I call like a social media safe zone. If me and you add each other and we never talk we’re not going to talk ever. It’s very unlikely unless one of us is ultra extroverted, which we probably both are. But for the average Joe out there, we find each other you find someone random, you’ve talked to him for a while and you never talk to each other. It’s almost like you wasted your time adding them in the first place. You need to cultivate it. It’s like farm you gotta like, you gotta give it some love.

Justin Stoddart 10:02
So good. Let’s go a little bit deeper on your three categories. Yeah, it’s want to go depth in depth, give our listeners today some very tangible takeaways, what they can do with this right? So you said three different categories. Number one, I’ll start with something personal. Right. So it’s personal about about you, right? And then something that’s family, personal interests, hobbies like that, right? Correct. Okay. Number two would be something about it. Let’s Let’s speak on behalf of real estate agents. So if you’re a real estate agent, right, what would be you said something that’s not so generic that hey, I’m a real estate agent, right? But give me something specific that you would say,

Matt Muscat 10:38
yeah, so example. Realtor, I work I work with who’s done a great job on this name is Ryan, he does a series it’s a series that he does on Facebook, his term called things a realtor sees so he’s up showings all the time, you have to like use what you have, right? Like what you actually have in life as your fodder for social media. So he’s going through houses all day, he’s a realtor, he sees something really cool in the house. It doesn’t like it not a picture of a kid not you know someone’s dog, we’ll post a picture of like a 1960s furnace like one of those octopus liquid things. It’s all crazy. And you’ll post Does anyone recognize these I saw this in the house in the historical district can’t believe these things are still around awesome house for more information on the listing, call me. But he generates a lot of buzz because they’re weird, interesting photos. Don’t just post like the photo of the front of the house. That’s what every other agent posts in the country post the cool like, what is the coolest thing that that house has to offer? And what can you say about it? I think one of the number one mistakes is that people share all these pictures without actually giving you their spin on it like a picture without like, for me a picture without like a description is kind of like I don’t know, my brain doesn’t know where to go with it. Like, I want you to tell me why it’s cool. And kind of like prompt a reaction from it. So histories is things a realtor sees I’m sure anyone out there could copy it, he wouldn’t care. We’re not all competition. We’re here to help each other. But I would you know, when you’re at a showing, he sees me cool. Take a photo. Look at also think about ways to involve other people that you know, in a non braggy way, brag about how hot the market is without saying the market is hot. For example. Every time you you close, close a house, don’t just post the house and brag about your closing post a picture of you with declines at the closing table. So you have a reason to tag them, right, make it a party and show the excitement and then tell the story in your post of how you got there in this competitive market. Because there’s a lot of buyers out there, there’s very few buyers actually getting to the closing table because they’re not working with you. They’re not working with a qualified real professional who can get them to you know, sit the endzone.

Justin Stoddart 12:38
I love that example, oftentimes use a similar example is that people love reading People Magazine, because it’s about people. It’s about stories, right? Reader’s Digest, same thing, right? These are things that compel people to want to listen. Because whether or not you’re in real estate market, like if you’re in the real estate market or not, at this moment, you are interested in human stories. Now, maybe you’re selling real estate, maybe you’re not either way you you grab everybody’s attention, because you have a compelling story about people. So not only did it as you mentioned, because you get to tag other people and get their added audience, but you also pull in people who aren’t necessarily interested in inventory waste went from 1.2 to 1.3 months, like most people don’t care, they just don’t. And if that’s all you do is a stats viewer, I think you’re losing a lot of people when you’re not tied in how does that apply to human life? How does that apply? To me? What like, who are some people that were impacted by this? Now? That’s interesting, right?

Matt Muscat 13:27
Well, you know, you actually, it’s super fun, because you just mentioned stats, right? And I think like, stats can be super boring. But if you if you haven’t done much on social, super, super hyper local stats do play really well, you just have to find an interesting way to do it. Like you can’t just be the words, it needs to be a picture of the area, maybe design in Canva. And talk about the stats on a monthly basis. Stories on Instagram specifically, are an amazing place for stats because it doesn’t clutter up your stories with like boring stuff. It’s just like one little blip that everybody sees. And if your association, if you’re a realtor in any kind of association, almost all of them put out stats on a monthly basis, grab it from them once a month, have your assistant or you or someone design in a pretty way and share it out in an interesting way. That’s almost always one of the easiest things you can go for. And they do pretty well if they’re designed.

Justin Stoddart 14:18
So that’s part two, right? Something personal, something business related, and then something community related. Right? What’s the third one? What have you seen that people do from a community post standpoint that tends to catch tends to get people’s attention?

Matt Muscat 14:32
So there’s definitely ways you can do this in a way that that’s like all the effort really hard work, right? Like so we will do a business of the month. So every month, we actually send our videographer into a local business and we let them tell their story in a really cool way. And sometimes we do a promotion with them, where it’s like, hey, the first 100 customers we have that goes in he’s gonna get free coffee. Those do really well especially if you tie it with promotion, but otherwise, just getting that business and ideally to business. Maybe one of your past clients owns where you doing like a double favor to someone. Those can work Excellent. Otherwise, go to your local local newspapers website, whatever that is, and find out what new developments are coming into town. I mean, being you, as a realtor need to be the master of your community, not just the master of the housing world, like you need to be the one that can sell your community and sell the neighborhood you’re working in. So if there’s a new coffee shop moving into the area, if a high school is undergoing a major renovation, like these are all the things that you need to know about. But also, as you talk about them, you position yourself as the local expert, again, I don’t care why someone is reaching out to me on social or in real life, I just want to be top of my I want to be top of mind around my community, because that obviously already makes me top of mind as a real estate.

Justin Stoddart 15:43
Now too often I agree with you, Matt, is that people will talk so much about the boxes that we all live in called houses, you know, that oh, look at this, it’s a bigger box, it’s a smaller box is a newer box is an older box, as opposed to like, what does life look like living in this part of the world, right? And you can like take someone and again, bring it back to story, right story is very compelling. And all we do is talk about these structures, right, three bed, two bath, like it’s, it’s gets a little boring. Whereas when you say, here’s what life looks like living here, here’s where you can walk to, right, here’s the commute, here’s this the all of a sudden, you put people living there, and they can start to see and feel themselves there. And they see you as an expert who brought life to this particular box, if you will, right. What’s crazy,

Matt Muscat 16:23
too, because I had this feeling that like most people, I think were around the same age, right? Like 20s 30s, young 40s, most people in that age range, we don’t need realtors to necessarily find us a house on the internet. Like if a house is already on Zillow, I can probably find it myself. What we want though, is we want realtors to really be the community expert that can tell us what we’re not, we want them to tell us the questions that we’re not asking and obviously negotiate the sale. But when you start posting about what’s new in the community, and you’re showing that you’re knowledgeable, even people that have lived in the area for 30 years, they’re not as up on things as you are, they don’t follow what’s happening. So for you to be that person makes you shine in a whole in a whole different way. And the other thing to remember is that realtors are better poised than any other profession on the planet to be connectors. And when you have clients that are moving here from out of the area, or from even out of you know, from a different state a different city, even they want to partner with you so that they can get some of those connections. They need roofers, they need plumbers, they need new churches, new volleyball, leagues like new, what new whatever they need you to make those referrals, and the more referrals you make, the more referrals you’re gonna get.

Justin Stoddart 17:33
That’s awesome stuff. Matt, let’s talk now about the other component, which is reaching out to people, right. So obviously, you have everyone here should have a CRM, and they should have some sort of view. And I would say prioritization, that not everybody that CRM is of equal value to your business as others. Therefore, having those prioritized by their propensity and their history of referring you and being a part of your business, those people should get priority, right. And from that group of people, you’re simply having some sort of methodic strategic system through which you’re reaching out maybe and you said 10 a week was that the system that you recommended,

Matt Muscat 18:07
so So for social media messages specifically, I typically like to tell people try to do five a day during the business, I love it, if you can do a minimum of five social media messages per day, for the average person with 1000 friends on social by the end of the year, you’re hitting all of them two to three times. So that algorithm is constantly refreshing itself. Now, same thing, though, if you go to their profile and haven’t posted in two years, delete them and make room for someone else. Yeah, it’s you don’t have to message someone if you know, they’re not a social media user, maybe send them a text. But the biggest thing, like you mentioned prioritizing the people in your database, the biggest thing is just having a record of when your last contact with them was and having information in there, that’s going to spark what you’re going to talk about, right. So like in my database, you’re gonna go in as hosts, the Think bigger real estate podcast, we’re going to talk about your interest after this, and I’m gonna get to know you a little bit better. All that information is going in. So every time I call you, I have something to talk about. And then what I do is every Monday, I write down a topic of the week on a little sticky note, keep it at my desk. And the topic of the week is if I really don’t know what I’m gonna say, that’s the most important thing happening right now. So this week, I’m telling everyone, hey, you need to make sure you call every buyer that you worked with in the last year that couldn’t find a house because right now inventory is up 20% From the past month, like we haven’t seen inventory this high in eight months where I am. I want every realtor and lender I work with to make sure that they are ultra ultra engaged with all those people who fizzled out because now is the time that they can they can really take advantage of this market. But that’s this week, you know, next week will be something else. You know,

Justin Stoddart 19:36
I think that really gives people a great reason to not delay. Typically it’s like to reach out to somebody hey, how’s it going? It feels like an awkward pickup line. It feels like this like right, but when you go hey, how’s it going? You are wasting my time. Totally, totally. And it’s like when you go to their timeline, you can see what’s happening in their life. Hey, congratulations on this. Hey, that’s so exciting, beautiful pictures of your family. How are you guys but you always have all I’m in the back of like, here’s why I’m reaching out. Right? Here’s an important message that I have to share. I think that hopefully sheds people from some of the reasons of not doing this of not actually reaching out and connecting with people, right? Because nobody wants to connect for no reason. Right? That’s what people who don’t have anything to do do. Right. That’s the last I want to look like where to be purposeful at all times. I love it. All right, I got time for one more question, Matt, which is the signature question of this show. And it is this you are a big thinker, you help others to think bigger, help them to better utilize their time, their space on social media. What does Matt do to continue to be a big thinker? What do you do to continue to expand your possibilities?

Matt Muscat 20:37
Yeah, that’s a great, that’s a great question. So I heard this thing 10 years ago, it was it’s a theory called job crafting. And the the idea behind it is that every single day, you should look at the parts of your job that you enjoy doing the most, and then figure out a way to spend 90% or more of your time on that one thing. Because when you do that, if you enjoy what you’re doing more, you’ll tend to do it more. So every single week, Friday afternoon, I’m not I’m not doing emails Friday for three if there’s not a drink in my hand and a person in front of me, I’m not super effective. So I look, I specifically look at my calendar at what I enjoyed the most that week and what I enjoyed the least. And I try to get the things that I enjoy the least off of my plate for future weeks or to figure out can I hire someone for this? Can I outsource this? Can I just not do it period? And the things that I enjoyed the most I look at what can I add to that strategy that would help me convert more based on that. So quick example that I’m super into pickleball right now, it’s a weird sport. It’s a ton of fun, I love it. And I want to play I want to get paid to pay to play pickleball so what did I do? My office decided to set up a charity pickleball tournament, we’re gonna invite we invited 100 realtors to it a couple of recruits that we had to they’re all coming this Thursday, I get to do my job, which is entertaining and getting in front of real estate agents and lenders. And I get to do that while playing my favorite activity for an hour. What are you into? Is it wine? Is it golf? Is it something? How can you inject that more into your business in a productive way? The in a productive way is like the key part there.

Justin Stoddart 22:06
I love it. Love it. What a great answer. Matt been such a pleasure to have you on the show today. Where can people learn more about you? Obviously. What’s what’s the best way for us to connect with you.

Matt Muscat 22:14
So if you want just the information on like, how to how to do some marketing, check out my book on Amazon. It’s called the tangible action guide tag for shorts. Otherwise, hit me up on Instagram at Matt Muscat88

Justin Stoddart 22:27
Good stuff, buddy. Appreciate you coming on and sharing your wisdom today. I look forward to staying connected with you continue to learn together appreciate every much. Listen to everybody listening here today. My final request is this. There are three simple words and they are go think bigger. Matt, thanks for helping us do that today, my friend. If you enjoy this episode that I have a very special invitation for you. I have created a private Facebook community called successful real estate agents where the focus is going beyond success having both a successful business and a significant life. If you’re not yet a member, go sign up now.