Social Media Trends 2021 for Your Land Business (LA 1536)
Social Media Trends 2021 for Your Land Business (LA 1536)
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Hi.
Steven Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California.
Steven Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about how social media trends in 2001 can benefit your land business. Which ones are good, which ones not so much, and how we use them.
Jill DeWit:
Yup.
Steven Butala:
Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It’s free, and if you’re already a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord.
Jill DeWit:
Yup. Hey, Land Academy, Arturo wrote, “Hi, Land Academy. This inquiry is for someone well-experienced in this business.”
Steven Butala:
That’s Jill.
Jill DeWit:
Right. That’s hilarious. “My name is Toro and for the next success chapter in my life, I’ve been looking for an effective and efficient way to buy and sell real estate without having to get a real estate license for quite some time. The Land Academy strategy appeared to be a good fit for me, and I’ve been binge learning mostly all day, every day since I first heard it about a week ago. I’m keeping my expectations low, but hopeful.” That’s funny.
Steven Butala:
That’s me.
Jill DeWit:
“So, I’m going to follow Stephen B’s advice from a podcast in the ebook by asking tough questions before I plunk down any dough.”
Steven Butala:
Good for you.
Jill DeWit:
This is really good, yeah.
Steven Butala:
Outstanding.
Jill DeWit:
“Thank you for the opportunity, and here are my questions. Number one, how many members are there currently in Land Academy?”
Steven Butala:
About 500. I’ll just take them as we go here. About 500. That’s where we keep it always, intentionally.
Jill DeWit:
Yep. Do we close up enrollment and stuff now and then to-
Steven Butala:
We don’t play those games.
Jill DeWit:
… stuff like that. We do sometimes, but yeah, we’re not here to sell 5,000 and say see ya. Nope. “Number two, what is the average yearly number of members who have canceled their membership?”
Steven Butala:
Less than 1%.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t know, but it’s low. Yeah. It’s amazingly low.
Steven Butala:
We have a less than 1% annual attrition rate.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. And the people that come back is awesome. It’s always life got in the way and then they come back. “Number three, what is there no one-on-one beginner mentoring program for the people … What is there one-on-one”-
Steven Butala:
Why.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, “Why is there a one” … Oh, it is now. “Why is there no one-on-one beginner mentorship program for people who like this type of mentorship?” We do now. It started in 2021 and it’s called Career Path. This is good.
Steven Butala:
Otherwise, there’s discord. And the reason, we’ve tried these things in the past, and if you get matched with the wrong person, there’s all kinds of stuff that goes on. Honestly for the price and what all this costs, we can’t manage programs like that. We could charge you a lot more. That’s not what we chose to do. Jill’s right. Career Path is what you do.
Jill DeWit:
Career Path. “Number four”-
Steven Butala:
By the way, this person is a member now. Arturo already joined.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. I figured. Okay. Well, hopefully they’re going to do Career Path too. That would be awesome. Okay. “So I’ve read the land investment forum that you need three things to get started, a website, a phone number and a mailing address. So in addition to joining Land Academy and the mailing service fees,” like getting mail out there basically, “what are the other average startup costs associated with curating things like selling the first parcel of land, creating and maintaining a website and other things I would no way of knowing about.” I’m sure everybody had a lot to say about that.
Steven Butala:
There’s probably 50, no 25 responses to this.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, exactly. What was I going to say too? I mean, so we cover, just so you know, you listener sidebar, we hook you up with all the professional things that you need. You do the other things like how great you want your website to be, and little services like that, how you’re going to answer your phones. We have all the solutions for you, but it’s your business. You run it how you want kind of thing. “Number five.” And then other than there’s one of our affiliates. There’s a couple of different affiliate coupons out there. “So are there other discount codes that are available?” I’m sure. We’re past that. The specials and things come and go. “And then number six, the last question is specifically for whichever moderator may be reviewing this”-
Steven Butala:
That’s us.
Jill DeWit:
“In your personal opinion,” oh, I’d love to know, but we don’t know this one. “What is your least favorite thing about the BuWit family of companies”-
Steven Butala:
That would be me.
Jill DeWit:
… “that you would like changed, but you firmly believe will never change?” Yeah, that would be Steven. Just kidding. “Thank you and best wishes.” I would love to know. So I wonder whether there’s, other than I’m trying to think what someone … Like more time with you. I would think that those people are like, “I’m doing the best I can.”
Steven Butala:
Here’s the thing, and I can tell, I’ll tell you Toro, you’re going to be great at this because the way you’re asking questions and how direct you are, and you want answers. If you carry that sentiment all the way through this career, you’re going to do great. I love your attitude. I love your directness. And you’ve got to just constantly keep digging deeper at stuff. So I think it’s great. Here’s the thing about money and Land Academy and education, if you look at any other source of education, and we talked about this on Monday, this is an incredible amount of value that you get on a longterm basis. Jill and I set up Land Academy, you have other choices to get education about buying and selling real estate out there. Jill and I choose to teach to the top, the people who want to make this their career, not people who are interested in waking up their kids to lick stamps whenever-
Jill DeWit:
And send out 20 a week or 20 a day.
Steven Butala:
One of our competitors teaches that, so it’s kind of a escalated hobby. You just do it and see what happens. We get a lot of people joining Land Academy from other types of land groups because they decided they want to do it as a career, and they’re just not getting what they need out of those environments, which is fine. They have their place, we have our place. As far as money goes, and there are a lot of people that piped on on the money part of this, like how much does it really costs? Jill’s always said, look, you need about 5,000 bucks to do this. I think it’s closer to-
Jill DeWit:
I think five or 10.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, 10, maybe 20.
Jill DeWit:
I want you to not stress when you start out. Have the money to do the mail and get everything going and buy a bunch of property.
Steven Butala:
And here’s my final point, and I’m sure Jill has some too. You’re starting a business here. You’re not going to get every single tiny little dot your I and cross your T handholding here. We’re not going to tell you which website service to, where to post your website.
Jill DeWit:
You’re an adult.
Steven Butala:
You can ask that stuff until you’re blue in the face on Discord, and you’re going to get 10 people who said, “I had a great experience here. I had a terrible experience here.” That’s why we’re a group of professionals that help each other. And if we did that, it would all change next month anyway. GoDaddy used to be the place to post a website. It’s not now.
Jill DeWit:
There’s all kinds of solutions.
Steven Butala:
So it’s my job to keep up with how to buy and sell land and which tools to use. It’s not my job to tell you which phone number service to use.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. I tell you. And the one thing too, I want to make sure, hey, Toro, I want to make sure you’re coming in with your eyes wide open. We’re going to queue everything up. I can’t make you answer the phone. I can’t make you pick a county or send out mail. So I’m going do my best to inspire and encourage you and help you and be here to answer your questions, but that comes from you.
Steven Butala:
And I’ll tell you this. I learned this recently with our, because Jill and I personally teach the Career Path portion of this. There are certain people, whatever reason we really attract engineer, people like you. I can tell you’re very technical and you want to get everything lined up perfectly in the beginning. It’s just not how it is. Get the mail out. It’s going to be a bloody mess if you do it right. You’re going to be embarrassed at the initial product.
Jill DeWit:
Then you fix it and move on.
Steven Butala:
And you can just head right into it, answer the phone and make-
Jill DeWit:
Make a deal out of it.
Steven Butala:
… lemonades out of lemon until it’s just regular for you to … and then you start hiring people. So you can’t just lay … This isn’t just Land Academy. This is everything. I said to somebody socially. Jill is fearless. I don’t know what, if anything, she’s afraid of. We’ll send out 10,000 mailers. She’ll answer the calls, and we’ll do like 20 deals. She doesn’t know what’s on the other end of the line. She answers her phone all the time, constantly answering the phone. And we have a lot of people that do a lot of stuff for us now, both in the education companies, in the land companies, but they all-
Jill DeWit:
I still like to.
Steven Butala:
… have a lot to learn from Jill about fearlessly, just heading … I’m more of a technical person. I’ve got to lay it all out. And I’ve learned from Jill socially and professionally, let’s just see what happens.
Jill DeWit:
Thanks.
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, the social media trends for 2021 and how they relate to your land business. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit:
So, this came about of a conversation that I had with a Land Academy ladies group, when this airs, it will be last week. Someone was asking where the heck are you guys? What’s your number one selling place? So, it was a really good discussion, and it’s what was interesting to me is how things change and sometimes quickly. So you’ve got to really be open to it. So, what am I talking about? Well people were saying, “What’s your top places of selling? I heard you say Craigslist. I heard Facebook. I heard Google My Business. What are you talking about?” And you have to be on it and be open and try new things. So one of the trends that we talked about the other day I wanted to share with you here is, first of all, Craigslist, several people on there said, “Yeah, I’m not so into Craigslist right now. I haven’t had great experiences. It’s hard to get things on there and it’s not the right buyers too.” So some people said, “That’s not even on my posting place right now.” And I’m like, “Noted. Got it.”
Jill DeWit:
So I hadn’t been using it for a while because where I’m doing it is really MLS focused and agent focus and higher dollar amounts. I’m not going to put something on Craigslist for $80,000. Eight maybe, not 80, because I don’t think that’s where those people are. And you’re going to learn and develop and understand and ask questions and talk about. So number two, Facebook Marketplace, that was still a huge yes. Still a lot of people are finding, as best they can. It’s very hard to exactly track where your buyer comes from or where they first learned about you. But as best they can, they can say, “I know I only put it on my website and I know I only put it on Facebook Marketplace and I already had all this inquiries.” That’s as far as I got.
Steven Butala:
We’re getting reports back from the people that are at the tip top performers in Land Academy, that, “We only sell property on Facebook Marketplace,” which is a huge statement because we do all kinds of other stuff.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t want people to do that though. That’s not my thing though.
Steven Butala:
I don’t think so either, but I’m just saying, I’m reporting the … because I’m really surprised by that.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. The people that I talk to are still using multiple things. That’s one of them. Because also Facebook and Instagram, they go hand in hand. It’s easy to transfer things and post things and cross whatever post, because it’s owned by the same people. But I want you to be open to and be trying things. And what was so cute, one of the people, Katherine, you’re so sweet. Katherine’s like, “I don’t think I’m doing it right, but I’m playing with Google My Business and I’m making sure I get out there who we are and get traffic to our website.” And she said, “I’m sure I’m not doing it right.” But you never know what might come of that. So that’s my final point here, and I’ll let you talk, which is try them all, see what works, see what doesn’t work and be open to change, because it will. Who knows? 10 years from now, Craigslist might change, or not even 10, two, and it might be the place that people go to buy stuff. I don’t know.
Steven Butala:
There’s two basic schools of thought about commerce and social media.
Jill DeWit:
Commerce?
Steven Butala:
Commerce, yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, sorry.
Steven Butala:
That’s how you say it in Michigan.
Jill DeWit:
Oh. I wasn’t sure if that was the right word. I’m like, it’s either a word I don’t know or it’s commerce.
Steven Butala:
Don’t you love when your life partner corrects you? I wait for that all day.
Jill DeWit:
Well that’s okay. I got a good one that I want to bring up later.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, go ahead.
Jill DeWit:
We’re going to make lemonades out of lemon.
Steven Butala:
Is that what I said?
Jill DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Butala:
I reversed it? You got to call me out on that right away.
Jill DeWit:
It was kind of funny. I thought, where do I bring that one back in?
Steven Butala:
Maybe it’s Freudian. Maybe take a great situation, just like me-
Jill DeWit:
I want to make lemonades out of lemon.
Steven Butala:
Take a great, beautiful situation like lemonade and turn it into lemons.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, exactly. That was good.
Steven Butala:
There’s two schools here on social media. Number one, it’s all hand to mouth. I call it hand to mouth. I got a great property, I bought it for a great price. I’m going to sell it for a great price. I’ve never logged into Facebook. I’ve never really done anything with the social media. I’m going to sign up today and I’m going to try to sell my property. And believe it or not, that works, but in a very limited way. And I would not recommend it unless you have some crazy dynamic personality like Jill, or a child or a grandchild who really understands social media. Number two, which is my way, my favorite way, which is what this all is. We’ve got 1500 shows on multiple platforms. We have Land Academy itself that gets branded all the time. We have an internet presence and it sells real estate.
Steven Butala:
Do you need the level of presence that we have? No, not at all. I’ve always wanted a radio show and now I have one, and that’s the truth. It really started with that, not so much selling real estate. But I don’t think it’s going to hurt anything for you to start down the path and talk about real … If you have property in Arkansas, like a couple of days ago, start talking to people about real estate in Arkansas online, or provide some content about some stuff that you know about real estate, or anything else for that matter. People will eventually start to follow you if your content’s any good at all, and you start down the path of building trust. And I think it’s good.
Jill DeWit:
That’s really good.
Steven Butala:
As a sales person, I’m asking you, do you see value in that?
Jill DeWit:
Of course. Well, that’s not my number one focus though. It does help. It can help drive some traffic. I’ve seen people write beautiful blogs and things like that about solving water issues and things about property. I think that’s kind of cool. And they put the links in their postings and it drives them to their website. And I think that’s brilliant too. It’s an extra push. The main thing is I just want you to get it out there, know it’s shifting. And it’s probably the most work I think that we do in everything here. If you’re running this business by yourself, the most work you’re going to do, so you have your hat, just you’re prepared like Toro, so you’re ready. It’s going to be selling, and it’s not selling, it’s getting the pictures, writing the description, posting the property. That’s the most time consuming piece of the whole thing.
Steven Butala:
I’ll tell you what I see a lot of people make a mistake doing, and it’s because this methodology of selling real estate has been drilled into our heads since before we could speak. Get a piece of property and post it on the MLS and forget it.
Jill DeWit:
Right, walk away.
Steven Butala:
And just wait. And that’s the worst thing you can do. Nothing will crash fast … Assuming you have the mail figured out and buying real estate figured out. You’re answering the phone and you can talk to people and get a deal done it. And from an acquisition standpoint, which most people can do in the group, which really I think is the easiest part of this. Then becomes, it’s not hard, it’s just time consuming to go out there and actually sell a piece of real estate versus listing it and waiting. Please don’t list and wait.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven Butala:
That should be the title of this show.
Jill DeWit:
I’m trying to think of another funny thing that you could tie it into that, but it’ll come to me. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on the Land Academy Show is called, well it’s Jack Thursday, and I’m going to talk about the five rich people personality traits that seem to be consistent. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, that’s cool. I can’t wait for you to talk about that article. I haven’t read it yet. I look forward to tomorrow’s show. If you need access to any sort of ownership or property details, including owner phone numbers and FEMA flood map overlays, please check out parcelfact.com and neighborscoop.com, created by investors, that’s us, for investors like you. We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information.
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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