Want to reach out and learn more about Digital Journey? You can email us at kaylee@digital-journey.net or check out our website, www.digital-journey.net.
Want to reach out and learn more about Digital Journey? You can email us at kaylee@digital-journey.net or check out our website, www.digital-journey.net.
Hey guys and welcome to Digital Journey. I am Kaylee Johnson and today we have with us Rich Brooks. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 2:
Kaylee, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:
Well, Rich Brooks is the founder and president of New Flight Media, a digital agency that's been in business for over 25 years. He's a nationally recognized speaker on entrepreneurship, digital marketing and social media. Rich founded the Agents of Change, an annual conference and weekly podcast that focuses on search, social and mobile marketing. He co-founded Fast Forward Maine, a podcast and workshop series for growing Maine businesses. So, Rich, you have done so much. We were talking before the show and I was saying Rich is actually one of the first people I came across when I started diving more into marketing and SEO and podcasting, so it's super exciting to have you on here.
Speaker 2:
Well, I'm glad that I was some sort of inspiration for you, hopefully the good kind. I love podcasting as a way of sharing ideas, just one of the channels I love. So I'm glad that you took it up because I think it's a great way to learn and to teach.
Speaker 1:
Yes, and to meet so many cool, different people, which I love.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely.
Speaker 1:
Go ahead and tell us how did you get to where you are today? What got you into marketing?
Speaker 2:
As I listened to your introduction I realized I probably have to update my bio. We just celebrated our 27th year in business. I started the company that I now call Flight New Media when I lived in Boston. It was just basically me and I was building websites and quickly I started to try and figure out this whole search engine optimization thing when that started to become more prevalent.
Speaker 2:
Of course, this is way before Google. This was like Yahoo, altavista and a bunch of other search engines most people have never heard of, but figuring that piece out. And then, years later, as I started to grow and I started to hire employees to do work, then all of a sudden we started getting into blogging and then to social media and then to paid search paid social. So right now we're kind of this boutique agency located in beautiful Portland Maine up here in the top right part of the country, and we work with a wide variety of different clients, including people in the real estate arena, and we just try and do everything we can to help them with their branding and their website, to drive qualified traffic to that website and then get people to convert, whatever that means for different businesses. It could mean different things.
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
And then in all my free time, I started this brand called Agents of Change that you referenced, and it is a weekly podcast where I think we just dropped episode 533 today.
Speaker 1:
So we've been doing it for over a decade.
Speaker 2:
Wow, thanks. And we have an in-person conference. We'll be celebrating our 10th annual in-person conference and we just did our first ever virtual summit, so we're just trying to find new ways of sharing ideas with people who are really interested, like I am, in digital marketing.
Speaker 1:
That's so much amazing, amazing stuff. So you said you work, you help realtors. What kind of? What kind of stuff do you help them see? How can they find their customers online? Is that what you're focused on?
Speaker 2:
Because we you know it depends on the client the realtors I have on.
Speaker 1:
They're like okay, I have a social media platform, or I have a website, but I'm not getting any clients from it, or it's just here. I'm pouring my time into it and they're trying to figure out is it worth it?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I absolutely think, to make a general statement that realtors are not putting enough effort into their digital presence and their visibility online, and some of them are very good at the social side. I do see the value in it. Organic social is a difficult game to play because the algorithms are always changing, which is also true with SEO. Most of our work has been more on the websites side of things and the SEO side of things.
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
Because I'm always like what is the customer journey look like to get to you? And then can we reverse engineer that for thinking about as a customer journey, like what are the roadside attractions and what are the information booths we can put along there so we can direct people to do business with us, assuming that we're the right realtor for them and they're the right type of client for us. And so that's where a lot of the work that we've done with different people both realtors, real estate agencies and people in property management as well just getting in front of the right type of clients when they're asking questions very often at Google, and how do we then get them to the website.
Speaker 1:
That can seem so daunting because Google is such a big world and there's so many different aspects to it. You know you have ads, you have different payments, you have backlinks, you have connecting with other people Even all those terms right there. I remember when I first started learning I was like what in the world? So what's one of the first steps you suggest to someone when they're working on search engine optimization?
Speaker 2:
There's always the it depends sort of thing. I prefer when people have their own domain, that they control their own website. That gives you the most control and power over it. But if I'm thinking about it from a search engine optimization standpoint the focus of today's conversation when I or when anybody looks at a search page, there's three main components the organic search results what used to be called back in the old days, the 10 big blue links. The local search results or the local pack, which are the three listings sometimes four if there's an ad in there that go side by side with a map so you can kind of see where the locations are. And then the sponsored links or the paid search results. All three of those will require different strategies, but all three are critically important if I'm a real estate agent and I want to get new business, new clients. So as we're thinking about that, I would say probably the low hanging fruit and the thing that I would first attack if I was just starting out or if I hadn't paid attention to this until right now, would be the local search side of things, because in some ways it's maybe not the easiest to optimize but it's the simplest to optimize for. So very broad strokes here.
Speaker 2:
But you want to make sure that you have a Google business profile, which is set up through Google and that you've claimed it, so you can prove that you have ownership over this business. And then you go in and optimize it, and that can be things like optimizing your title, your description. Upload photos photos of your office, photos of your people, photos of locations. Very often we're selling the location as well as just an individual property, so we want to get a lot of that in there. Videos You're taking videos as you're doing walkthroughs of houses that are your featured listings. Upload those as much information as you can to really create this robust area. In Google Business Profile there's a question and answer section that can go. There in your profile you can pose your own questions. You don't have to wait for questions to come in. So all of those are steps that you can take to improve it.
Speaker 2:
Another big feature of local search results is proximity to the searcher. You don't have a lot of control over that unless you have like a taco truck and you're just driving around to where people are. So there's not much you can do about that. It is what it is. But another thing you can do that will impact your visibility is get reviews. So when you're working with people they've had a good experience with you, either through an automated follow-up, or maybe you just reach out to them, ask them to go and leave a review on their favorite platform, be it Google, facebook, what have you? But those reviews are also signals to Google about what you're doing and whether it's good.
Speaker 2:
And if somebody says to you Rich, I really enjoyed the whole process of finding a house or selling the house and how you helped me with this, that and the other thing, have them mention that in the reviews, because if those are keywords that people might be searching for, that actually will help you.
Speaker 2:
So if you help them buy a condo compared to a house or land, get them to work that into the review, if you have that kind of input into it. And then on your website, just make sure that you're listing all those things. Talk about the towns that you serve. Those are basic things, but all of that helps you come up more likely for the searches in that local pack. That's going to be the fastest acting kind of thing. Or maybe paid search is the fastest acting, but that can be expensive. The organic listings are also important. But right before we got on I just did some searches for like real estate company near me, realtor towards me, which is a great exercise to do because you kind of want to see what results come up for different searches in your area and almost all the page one results and even that's kind of a misnomer because now it's a scrolling page are like Zillow and realtorcom and things like.
Speaker 2:
Yelp top 10 real estate agents. So they're almost all guides. So you'll have trouble ranking well for those real estate agents. So they're almost all guides. So you'll have trouble ranking well for those. But if you start thinking about creating content on your website that answers some of the biggest questions your audience may have what's the school system like in your town name Having content on your website like that can help for some of those types of searches. If you create original content and maybe do some first person research and I know this is a little advanced original content and maybe do some first-person research and I know this is a little advanced put it on your website that can actually encourage other people to put links to your site and that can also help either. Search engine visibility. That's a little bit extra, maybe not day one sort of stuff, but it's those kinds of steps over time, building up that trust at Google, building up that trust with your users that's going to help you with your overall search engine visibility.
Speaker 1:
That's great, and one thing we're all about at Digital Journey is saving time and being efficient. So a lot of things that you just mentioned can also be turned into social media posts. Have a frequently asked question post, have a post about what kind of restaurants are in the area, what the school system is like, put your videos on social media, and so search engine optimization it's not just is like put your videos on social media and so you know. Search engine optimization it's not just something that, okay, I have to take my time and do this and it's not going to do any good. You're really killing two birds with one stone. And because all of that can be so interconnected, you know, when you go into someone's bio on a social media page at least for me I look at their website, I look for their website, and if they don't have a website, I'm automatically normally a little more sketchy about it, because it's like, okay, they're just doing social media. Do they even know how to function in a business world? And so I think that's one reason why search engine optimization and making sure you have a strong website is so vital. Stop what you're doing, hold up.
Speaker 1:
The episode is not finished, but I have an important thing I need to ask you Are you wanting to grow your clients and profits in real estate? If you're like almost everyone else, your answer is yes, I want to. I have a weapon for you Social media. I know, I know it sounds basic, but social media can drastically help grow. But social media can help grow your clients and increase your profits, and it doesn't have to take hours a day. It doesn't have to be complicated. You don't have to pay someone $2,000 a month to do it. You or someone on your team can do it simply. I run an exclusive group coaching mastermind that teaches realtors how to grow their social media in a short amount of time without spending an excess amount of money. If you're serious about growing your real estate business, reach out to me. I want to help you. You can reach out to me at digital-journeynet and let's have a call. Let's hop on and see if you'll be a right fit, if you're serious about wanting to increase your profits. Now let's get back to the episode.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely, and it also shows that you're investing in your business. People don't give business cards like they used to when I was starting out, but I remember I would get a business card from somebody and on the backside it would say get your 50 free business cards. And then there was a URL. I'm like, if you're not willing to spend money on your business cards, like, how serious are you about this?
Speaker 2:
Filling out your social media profiles, filling out the information in Google business pro, having a robust website that doesn't look cookie cutter and has unique content from your perspective and your experience, those are all things that show people that you are not a fly by night realtor. And we all know that. There are the realtors that are in it like they're going to live, breathe and eat houses, and then there are the ones where, when the market conditions are right, they'll come in for a few months, maybe they do a part time, and then they disappear. And you want to position yourself as the expert, as the person who's going to know exactly what it's like to live in this town and all these things and understand the customer journey. So the more you can kind of fill out both your social and everything else, the more likely you are to win that business.
Speaker 1:
Well, and even going back to talking about cookie cutter websites, we want that human connection, we want that personal touch. And so when you can look at someone's website and say they put time into this, they did enough to maybe share a little bit about them on the website or their story, it automatically makes that emotional connection which is much more likely to attract a client than simply being very block formatted basics. You can tell it was run through an AI thing and it was just slapped up there. At that point it's like how much are they caring about me as the client or how much are they just caring about making a sale?
Speaker 2:
And that's a good point, because service based industries and both digital agencies like mine or real estate agencies those are both very driven by personality and, yes, there has to be expertise and you've got to pass certain tests or whatever. But the bottom line is, if there's two people who have equally good websites they've spent time in, but one of them is more in alignment with you, of course you're going to go with that person, right? So putting out that content both on social, on your website, and then in those in-between areas, like YouTube, which is his own search engine yes, that is a place where you can really both attract your ideal clients but also push away clients that might not be a good fit for you. Let's go find the clients that are going to be easy for us, like layups, and that's where putting yourself out there and creating this content is going to really help you.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. And I have so many realtors come to me and say, doesn't matter if I'm on YouTube and I'm like you can actually do amazing on YouTube as a realtor. They're like, are you serious? I'm like I love going through and watching videos on YouTube that show cool things about a unique house, or even just a serene video of a beautiful house with music in the background and maybe talking it through, and then you're connecting your name to that and even though it's on YouTube, YouTube is its own search engine practically, and that's where people find so many different things.
Speaker 2:
And you could create content around a certain neighborhood or around a certain city. Some of the things to do put that up to YouTube. You can take that YouTube video embedded in your website. Add some content, whether it's the actual transcript or just the highlights, the key takeaways from that. That's a blog post and that can rank, so there's a lot of different ways in which you can leverage this content, for both social and search, as you were saying earlier.
Speaker 1:
And that's perfect because realtors are busy, they're always going, and so the more options you have to tailor content. But to be able to use them across multiple different platforms and websites is a game changer and is amazing, so I want to thank you so much for coming on today. I know I learned a lot, and I know my listeners did as well. Where can they find you if they want to learn more about what you do and where can they reach out to you?
Speaker 2:
Well, if they like podcasts, they can check out my digital marketing podcast. It's called the Agents of Change. If they have any questions about SEO, you can go to our website, which is takeflightcom. If you have any questions about SEO, you can go to our website, which is takeflightcom. That's takeflytecom and I am the Rich Brooks on every social channel most active on LinkedIn, so feel free to just reach out and say hello. That's how Kaylee and I first got to know each other.
Speaker 1:
It is. We reached out through LinkedIn and it was great. You can make good connections there. So we'll have all of that down in the bio below and thank you so much.