The PROPERTY DOCTORS, Sydney Australia Novak Properties
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The PROPERTY DOCTORS, Sydney Australia Novak Properties
EP. 1383 MAKE AN IMPACT: SERVING YOUR COMMUNITY & INSPIRE THROUGH SOCIALS
MORNING MINUTES WITH BILLY DRURY, MARK NOVAK AND SPECIAL GUEST JOHNATHAN CREEK
Step into the world of effective video marketing in our latest episode as acclaimed social media expert Jonathan Creek joins us to discuss harnessing the power of content creation. As businesses navigate the ever-changing landscape of digital marketing, it is crucial to understand how to connect authentically with audiences. Jonathan emphasises that social media should not only serve as a promotional tool but also as a means to foster genuine community engagement.
Discover how the rise of AI is influencing content strategies and learn tips on leveraging this technology without losing the human touch that builds trust. In this insightful episode, we dive deep into the importance of creating meaningful content that resonates with your audience’s interests rather than clinging to outdated follower counts. You will walk away with valuable insights on how to utilise the changing social media algorithms to your advantage, ensuring your marketing strategies are not left behind.
If you’re ready to elevate your digital marketing game, listen in and take these lessons to heart. Join the conversation by subscribing, sharing your thoughts, and leaving us a review.
Next time I'll do the intro.
Speaker 2:Okay, guys, we've got a social media video expert online. We want to teach people, help people, help our community on how to do content when they're doing videos. We've brought Jonathan Creek in live. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1:I'm the ringleader, so let's get up, mr Creek. Good morning guys. Thanks for having me on. I love being on here. I love this show.
Speaker 3:We love plugging you. Love is a really strong word.
Speaker 1:You're the um plug is a strong word we summarize you in the two words video expert, content expert, I think I think I think content strategist, a lot of my work now is about strategy and and I just enable, I empower other people to um create their own. That's the key now. You can't be a small or medium-sized business and afford daily. You know, have a. You can't afford to have a media crew following you around all day. So I empower people and how to make their own. And then the key to get keep it going and keep it successful is the strategy behind it. Most people just go out and post when they've got a spare moment.
Speaker 1:It doesn't work like everything's evolved. It's more sophisticated. If you guys at novak, you guys are um leading the way, probably the longest running real estate show on the internet let's just say um, but you think back to what you used to do at the start compared to what you do now. Everything has evolved. It has to be more sophisticated, it has to have a plan, it has to have a strategy and, yeah, you guys are an example of having multiple people within your business all creating one big 24-hour news channel, almost well, it's super, super, super localized our stuff, so it used to be national real estate news and now, if people want local related real estate news on the northern beaches, they got it, they got it.
Speaker 2:Hey, can you tell me about what you said off air? That was really interesting, about how it's changed, um, what tiktok's doing, what ai is doing, then you've seen biggest shift you've seen in social in the last 12 months it's the biggest shift in social in 10 years.
Speaker 1:Wow, don't underestimate this. This is we're in a gold rush period again. So if you think back to 2014,. Success came from the people who attracted the biggest audience. You remember those Facebook pages where it's hey, if you like this page, you go into the draw to win an iPad. And they just ballooned their audiences and it didn't really matter if the people were even interested in what you were talking about. They counted as a number in your crowd. So when you posted content, it would get blasted out to a percentage of those and obviously, the bigger the percentage, the more people it reached, so the more chance you had of them interacting with it. And if you've got a certain level of interaction, then platforms like Facebook and YouTube would then push it out to other people with similar data sets.
Speaker 1:What's happened since the TikTokification of the world is? Tiktok said well, we can't compete on that because we're new. Everyone's already got their followings, so we're going to change it. We think the world's different. We're not going to use what we call the friends graph, which is how many friends you've got to determine the success of a video. We're going to change it to the interest graph. So what are people interested in? What are people? We're going to listen in on your phones, we're going to watch what you search, we're going to see where you go in shopping centres and then we're going to send you content that targets those interests, that data. So they're using data to serve you the content. So now what we've got is we've got a world where someone with 100 followers has just got just as much chance of making a video that gets a million views as someone who's got a million followers making a video that only gets 100 views.
Speaker 2:They have leveled it leveled it, a detail where they're following you around listening to what you're saying. That's scaring me no, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:If you're a marketer, everyone's listening if you've got a phone they're listening in.
Speaker 1:It's real, it's real. I mean, look, I'll give you an example. You go to your local westwood. It's beyond phones, it's, it's actually everywhere. So a they track your phone not by the phone number but by the serial number in the phone, so they know who you phone not by the phone number but by the serial number in the phone. So they know who you are based on the serial number of the phone that your sim cards link to. And then they have all the data, addresses and stuff.
Speaker 1:But if you walk into a westfield and you see those vertical tvs that they have down the walking aisles yes, all right, have a look at the top of one of those next time they're there you'll be the weird guy looking right up the top, but that's okay. There's a little camera up the top of those and what those cameras are doing is they're checking people's faces. They're looking at people's faces as they walk past and if they don't look happy enough, it changes the music and the lighting in the center, because they know when people are happy, they spend more wow, wow, this is some freaky, freaky stuff wow, this is how deep it goes, and you know we're only at the start of ai.
Speaker 1:Ai is revolutionizing all this stuff now, um, and so it's only going to get better and better and probably a little bit more intrusive and more intrusive, but it's going to get more accurate and I don't like it, like it, people don't like it, but they like it they like it when it works for them.
Speaker 1:They don't like it when it doesn't. Now, here's the thing I'm a positive, I'm a glass half full. I'm a glass half full, guy mark. I'm a glass half full, guy Mark. This has got so many great applications, but there's one golden rule with AI and content that I'll never break and I don't think any business ever should is never let AI replace the most important relationship you have in business, which is the face-to-face, person-to-person relationship. Use it to do all the back-end stuff, use it to give you some ideas, use it for inspiration, use it for extra thinking like an outside opinion, but never, ever, use it to be a clone. Now we're getting to the point where, probably in the next 12 months, we're all going to be able to have clones and you could just do this show just by typing words into a computer and the clones will just read the script as if you and I are here. Now the biggest mistake you're going to make is, if you build a clone, don't call it your own name. Give it another name, make it another character. Call it jonathan too, or mark mark the great, the incredible agent, second most incredible agent, or billy, the kid jury, so that people can tell the difference.
Speaker 1:Because the moment you start using this stuff to fake relationships with people people, humans are pixel pirates. Right, they can look at a screen and go there's something not quite right about the eyes or there's something not quite right, you know. You look at video games. They've been trying for for decades to try and make a real-life video game that looks like real-life people. It's never quite there. The moment you're doing that and your customers go oh, they're not real, this is fake. You're toast, you're dead. The trust levels are gone. They're never going to trust you, ever again Find a new client. You are burnt. So AI has its applications, but it's a powerful force that you have to use carefully. That's my opinion.
Speaker 2:Hey, jonathan, with building in the community and socials and stuff. Genuine question have you seen people sort of pay their household bills through socials? What I mean is, if it's a business and you've taught them how to do socials, have you seen their business thrive, survive and make money? So you know, I look at people in the area and say, yeah, no, I don't really think it's going to work for my business, I don't really think it can pay bills. This is your call. You must have witnessed incredible growth in businesses through social incredible in the scale of socials is incredible.
Speaker 1:The biggest trap is people don't give it enough time to work. They want it to be the quick fix hack. Hey, I made three videos last week and I didn't get two listings I'm out of. I'm going back to letterbox drops. All right, my opinion is like I'm not a social all-in guy, mark, I'm an attention all-in guy. Where can you get the most attention?
Speaker 1:And I've seen people, I've seen real estate agents, triple their GCI just by introducing the tool of social media into their mix. So they do a bit of everything, but they add social media into it and it's the fuel that then amplifies everything and then everything else amplifies social and you get this almost like the recycling symbol. Everything sort of works together in harmony as long as you get your strategy and your messaging right. And that's where most people fall over is they just think social media is this thing where we just post and they just treat it like an afterthought and they never really integrate it into their mix, they never integrate it into their daily, so they never end up being consistent enough to allow the algorithms to trust you. So first I mean, you've got to to win business, you've got to get your customers to trust you.
Speaker 1:But for social media to work, you've got to get the, the platforms to trust you that you're going to continue to make content. Then they'll give you and serve you the customers, because they know that you're the guy or the girl who consistently talks about real estate in DY. And so when they're listening to people sitting down on the street or the kebab shop and Jenny's talking to Betty and says my husband's left me, I'm going to have to sell the family home, I need to sell that and I need to buy a house to live into, the algorithm's listening and it's going who creates the top, most trusted content around real estate in DY? It's really doing that. It does it 100%. Are you sure? Yep, 100%, it's the only way they survive the best content wins.
Speaker 2:Sounds logical, sounds creepy, but people would like it. But it's really happening 100% happening.
Speaker 1:I'll give you this challenge both of you. I love that you're sceptical on this. Have a look at your Instagram professional dashboard. Have a look at it. Have you got a picture of it in your mind? Everyone who's watching this go and do this. This proves it beyond belief. You've got a picture of it in your mind, everyone who's? Watching this. Go and do this. This proves it beyond belief.
Speaker 2:You will have more than 50% of your exposure on your content will be to non-followers. What am I looking at? Oh, John, it's right, my God. Why is there cars and girls on my? That's not right. It's right, my God. Why is there? Why are there cars and girls on my, on my? That's that's not right.
Speaker 3:That's targeted.
Speaker 1:They know what you're doing. They know what you're talking about, mark, so you might want, when you go out at night, you might want to leave your phone at home, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's Lisa Novak post about DY. What, what content is serving the community best at the moment? Can you nail it down to a couple of things that businesses are doing well and it's being received?
Speaker 1:I think, Billy. I think this is a great question, because most people go into content. Most people go into creating content to just make it and promote themselves. They treat social media as a distribution tool like TV and ads. It's not.
Speaker 1:Social media is where you build a community and, even though followers don't matter anymore, you build a trust, and the main aim for social media should be being known for what you do, where you do it. Now you can reach people who can potentially be your customers in the future. Without even talking about your product, they just end up knowing that you're a car salesman or you own the local Lebanese restaurant or you sell real estate. By being a servant to the community, it's one of the best strategies you can be out there is you be the news reporter or the travel agent for your local patch. You become the listening post that we used to have in primary school where people can go and say I love the suburb where I live or the suburb where I want to live, I love my community, and then you unselfishly just provide information Like you will get further by actually promoting other people's business through your socials than you'll get promoting your own business through socials.
Speaker 2:That's interesting yeah.
Speaker 1:You go and interview the local fruit shop owner. He's talking to people every day. He's probably got 300 or 400 people going through his shop, yeah, and so he knows the ones who are just about to downsize. He knows the ones who are just about to make a real estate decision. But if you go to him and interview him about what business is like, mark, you used to do it with the with the shoe fixing guy. Yep, he, yeah. I'm sorry, I can't remember.
Speaker 1:The guy was awesome uh, yeah and he'd been in that place for like 60 years. Right, he knew, he knew the neighborhood, yep, and people knew him and so they feel familiar. And then, as a the byproduct of you doing that interview, it's pretty easy for people to then learn oh, that's Mark Novak. He's a real estate agent, yeah.
Speaker 2:And people enjoyed the story, they enjoyed the watch, they learned, they felt good, they thought about their granddad. There were so many other things that spun off from that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think the key is this thing right. So there's the big mistake. Most people, a lot of people, use social media just to advertise, so they just post in real estate house tour videos. I just sold this sticker, which is fine, but you need a mix. Then other people just use it like a community group, chat group and it's like I'm just dealing with my friends and family and catching up with people. I used to go to school with the magic actually happens in the middle. It's a blend of both. You sort of the best ads in the world are the ones that aren't actually ads.
Speaker 2:But they're still ads.
Speaker 1:They're still ads. But there's another value on top of the fact that you're coming from a particular business and you're just educating people that what you do where you do it and that's marketing. The more people who know what you do where you do it, the better your result's going to be.
Speaker 2:Let's take an example, you do training like this for real estate. You do it for all industries.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, real estate estate finance a couple of other private businesses. Pharmaceuticals yeah, any business that can uh, any business that can benefit from reaching more people uh, it works.
Speaker 2:I mean, this just works when do you hit your head on the wall when you see like is it video, only video content that you do no, as I said earlier, mark, I'm an attention guy.
Speaker 1:I don't care how you get the attention, as long as you get the attention. But video at the moment works the most.
Speaker 2:Well, it's the one where you look at something and you just go oh no.
Speaker 1:The one that drives me mad the most is the typical real estate. Yeah, they walk out the front double doors and they say welcome to 123. They've already. Yeah, let's, let's, I'll picture, I'll draw the whole video for you and you go. Yes, I know what he's talking about. The video starts with the camera in the gutter of a road and the european car drives down and parks and then the door opens and the foot comes out onto the nature strip and there's a leather shoe with no socks and they walk into the house. And then the next shot is this sweeping, stabilised, sort of stabilised shot where they go welcome to 123, wombat Crescent, let's walk there. And then they walk through and they go laminated stone benchtops, swimming pool, four bedrooms, blah, blah, blah, and it's just so smooth and swoopy. I feel seasick and I'm like there's no actual real connection in that.
Speaker 1:And the chances that anyone watching that video, the chances that anyone in the first 2% of people who get served it because that's it, and if you don't get any engagement within the first 2% of people, the video just gets shut down. The chances that 2% of the people who get served that video want to buy that actual house at the time is about, as me, hitting a golf ball to the moon. So how should you do it? How you should do it is you need to interact in the community as if you're a real person. Let it be a bit bumpy, let it be real, relevant and relatable. Like, don't try and people overthink their ideas. Just turn up to work, turn up into your community and say what's happening today that I can talk about. Get shit done, just report it.
Speaker 1:Even if you're just doing it in the car on your phone, if you're just walking down the street, even if you're at an open for inspection and you haven't got too many groups through, just stand on the front lawn and talk about an issue. So you've got to. What you've actually got to do is you've got to find a problem driven by a desire that your customers have Are they first-home buyers? And they can't find somewhere to get into? Are they a mortgage broker who can't find people who need health checks on their mortgage so that you can refinance them and do a transaction? Are they a pharmacist and people think that you're too expensive compared to the big yellow and red one down the road?
Speaker 2:So instead of opening up with your name, you open up with that issue, that problem.
Speaker 1:I never say my name's in any of my videos.
Speaker 2:They're on your socials. It says the name already.
Speaker 1:They know who they're watching and if they don't, they just click on it. So I mean I have this conversation with Lisa a a little bit actually, because she starts with hey guys, and that's her catch cry. It's almost her brand and I remember years ago I tried to change her and say, hey, I need you to not do. Hey guys, I want you to change it, I want you to be more personal. And she's like, no, but hey guys, it just, it gets me well, it's relaxes her. It's like a starting block for a hundred meter sprinter. You know that's just how I start. And then everything else just rolls. And it was a really interesting psychological conversation, because I've got a psychology and a sociology background, so I was trying to break that mold.
Speaker 1:The the greatest opening line for all your videos can is and you're hearing it on podcasts a lot now is great to see you again. And it's because it does this. Most people say hi, mark Novak, here I just wanted to talk to you all about whatever, and then all of a sudden you've just positioned yourself up on stage talking to 100 people and they just think they're in a crowd with everyone else. Lisa's made that a little bit smaller. Hey guys, hey, to a small group of people like she's, in a social setting, which is good. They're still relaxed, the one that I just gave you. Hey, great to see you again. I'm talking to you one-to-one and the human brain goes Mark's talking directly to me or Billy's speaking directly to me, and in the next eight seconds you can hit them with a curiosity loop based on a problem that they have. They're hooked and they're not going anywhere. They're hanging around for the answer.
Speaker 2:John LeCrete. Thank you very much for all this today. How do people get you?
Speaker 1:They can just hit me up on socials I'm all around it or virablecom, as you can see below there, yeah, I'd love to chat to anyone. It's a fascinating place that I'm obsessed with.
Speaker 2:How do you chat People? Do you do like a one-off workshop sesh or do you do like a? How does it cost?
Speaker 1:so we take, we tailor from everything from 90 minute sessions just to give your whole team a refresh and bring them up to speed and give them ideas. Then we can do uh, we do. We can do three sessions which are a bit more intense, and we do everything from storytelling to positioning, to presenting, so you get better presenters, so they're more confident on camera. And then we go through the big one, which is six months of work, where we and this is probably the most popular way that we work is we sign up for six sessions, we implement it. We're the bad guys. We hold your team accountable so that you know, once they're bought in and we're and the payments are happening, we make sure that they do it, that they're're not just lip-servicing and they're disappearing and not doing anything with it. We help your business grow and own the space.
Speaker 2:You teach people how to talk.
Speaker 1:I could teach people how to talk, yeah.
Speaker 2:I guess that's what you're doing effectively, like if anyone's selling out there and they need to be taught how to cut through and really make a difference with less amount of words and understand the psychology of people you're doing. Yeah, I love what you do.
Speaker 1:Love what you do, I love you and warren buffett says you take any business. You take any business and improve its communications and you'll improve the profit by 50 love it it.
Speaker 3:That's a great way to start.
Speaker 2:You're improving communications. Jonathan Craig, thank you very much for coming on today.
Speaker 1:Thank you, guys. Hopefully you got something out of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, big time, big time, and we'll hit you up on Viroballcom websites there, yeah bridge out.
Speaker 2:Guys hope you enjoyed today. Jonathan, thank you very much it, jonathan. Thank you very much. Billy, thank you very much. Have a good day. See everyone. Have a great day.