Hey there, you’re listening to the Katie Lance podcast. It’s episode 106. And in this episode, we are going deep talking about Facebook video and YouTube video specifically for real estate agents and brokers. So if you have wondered how you can leverage video on Facebook and YouTube to grow your real estate business, you are in the right place. I had a great interview recently with my good friend, Julie Ziemelis. She is a lifestyle vlogger and expert in the real estate space in Kona, Hawaii. We had a great interview over on Facebook Live, and she really kind of took us behind the scenes and talked about how she has built this really kind of an ecosystem of content. She has authored a few books. She has some amazing communities over on Facebook. She has got two different YouTube channels that she works with her husband, Eric, and what’s really amazing about this is the amount of business that this is generating the amount of referral business that this is generating for her and the amount of business that this is generating with a lot of the real estate folks that she has had the pleasure of interviewing and highlighting.
So she has a really unique perspective. I have known Julie for years and years. She is the real deal. Again, if you’re struggling with video at all, maybe you’re nervous about getting on camera. Maybe you’re not on video at all. Or I know that there’s a lot of you who have been dabbling in video for quite some time, and maybe you’re getting like 20 views, 10 views, two of them are your mom and your best friend, where are you? We’ve all been there. So listen up to this great conversation, make sure you check out the show notes at the end because we’re going to drop some links and you’re definitely gonna want to make sure that you connect with Julie. All right, here we go on with the show.
You’re listening to the Katie Lance podcast. If you’re an entrepreneur, social media geek, real estate pro a mom, or maybe all of the above and ready to level up your social media game, you’re in the right place.
Everyone. Welcome to our Facebook Live today. Welcome, welcome, welcome. My name is Katie Lance, founder and CEO of Katie Lance Consulting and the Get Social Smart Academy. And I am so excited. We have a really awesome show in store for you guys today. I am so thrilled to welcome a dear friend of mine to the show today. We are going to have a great conversation about video, YouTube and Facebook and all kinds of good stuff, Julie, my good friend. Welcome. Welcome. I’m so happy to have you here today. Aloha, Aloha. Exactly. We planned this. I had to plan this a little bit later than we normally do because you know, I didn’t want you to get up at the crack of dawn. I know you’re Kona here. I am six o’clock in the morning. Exactly. Exactly. So let me give Julie a proper introduction. Um, I, I have a sort of formal introduction, uh, that she has given me because she’s a rock star, but I also just personally, I have to say, I love Julie. I have, I have been connected Julie. You’re like one of my first people I met, like in the world of like RE social media technology. I first met Julie. We were literally just talking about this 30 seconds ago before we went live. I first met Julie probably in like 2009. It was like at a bar camp. I didn’t know anything. I remember walking in. I was like, these are my people. And like, that was like the beginning of so much of honestly what you see today. So yeah.
A bunch of people who didn’t know what they were doing, getting together to figure out how we can make it all work. Right.
Totally. Totally. So, uh, let me give Julie a proper introduction. Okay. So Julie Ziemelis. Julie is the founder of Ziemelis Communications and founder of 365Hawaii on YouTube. She has been blogging for almost three years and creating a weekly Hawaii lifestyle real estate and moving videos for a year. Her and her husband now have over 4,000 subscribers over 10,000 views on many of their videos and have parlayed their biggest success into a real estate referral business, garnering five closings a month. Julie is also the author of three Hawaii based moving and real estate real estate lifestyle books. She’s got two private Facebook groups with over 1500 members, each a popular lifestyle blog, 365 Things to Do in Kona with over 25,000 fans. And again, she’s awesome. She’s a rock star and she’s here with us. So welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Julie has not been easy either my friends. I know. Well, I’m, I’m thrilled to have you here today. Um, and just so excited to have our conversation. So let’s, let’s get, let’s get it kicked off here for people who do not know you. Um, can you tell us just a little bit about your business, what you do, like who you serve, just kind of give people a little, little backstory of what you do and then we’ll get into talking about video.
Okay. So, um, my background is, um, I got my degree in public relations and so I’ve always been a writer and a promoter. And then, um, I’ve always loved real estate. So those two to come together as, um, my career, um, I worked in four real estate associations in the Bay area as a communications director. And so part of this has been working with realtors for 25 years and I know their pain points. One of the things that I used to do is I used to teach social media, uh, to realtors as well. And I started bringing in some people who were doing video, and this has been Katie as you know, how many times people have been saying use video. It’s the thing. Right? So, um, so, um, we’re in the Bay area doing, um, you know, some work, uh, you know, I was, you know, having my whole career and then we moved to Hawaii and I had met a gentleman named Dale Chumbley, uh, right before I left, uh, in one of these rebar camps where people learn about social media, 365 experience.
So he actually picked it up from one other person, but then he was kind of the second guy and he said, you know what? People love lifestyle. And this is before the whole storytelling and marketing was even a big thing, right? If you can tell the story of your neighborhood and you can tell the story of your city, and you’re the one telling it, it’s going to be a good day. So he had created like this 365 things to do in Vancouver, Washington, and he’d already had like a couple thousand people following him. And he said from that he got all these leads in real estate. And so when I moved to Hawaii, I’m like, you know what? I’m going to take that guy’s ideas. See what happens. I create 365Hawaii.com as a blog, and then 365 things to do in Kona as a Facebook business page.
And, um, and that’s what I was gonna tell your people. But if you ever want to do this, you play to the masses of none for a while about 50 people for about a year. But then all of a sudden, because they hold, hold on. It says here that you play to the masses of none for a while. That is a nugget right there. Okay. Cause you know what? You just have to keep going. You have to believe that eventually this is going to work out because it does it does people love these things. There’s three 65 things to do in Austin, San Francisco, Silicon Valley. This thing has gone nuts with realtors across the country with lifestyle blogging because people don’t want to always hear about a house. They don’t want, always heard about the real estate industry. What they want to know about is the town they want to live in or the town they do live in and you become the expert.
So what the funny thing was, I came to Hawaii and I started teaching realtors on how to do some of this stuff. And I call myself a little bread hen because I might go somebody, somebody should start a lifestyle blog about Kona and start interviewing small business owners and telling about life here and stuff like that. And nobody was doing it, Michael, then I’ll do it. And so then I started doing more of it. And then, uh, I said, you know, you guys should be writing articles about, you know, tourism stuff, as well as real estate steps that the tourist who might end up moving here eventually will see that you’ve been writing about this forever. I started doing it. So then that’s when I said so much should write a book about how to move to Kona. Okay. I’ll guess I’ll write it. And then I wrote a book about, um, the nuances of the crazy stuff, about moving to an Island about real estate.
And so I went cheap, cheap, cheap. I was working at a brokerage and I said, let me put together all the blog posts, I’ve written to make a book out of it and they hook yeah, you have at it. So I wrote a book guide to buying real estate on the big Island of Hawaii. And that has been amazing. So I would say that between the video and having little things to throw out at people, to get them, to see that I have created myself as an expert in the field, um, that really has helped and making an ebook. If you just write a little bit and you create something, can you know this? As long as you’re creating something, somebody obviously thinks you’re an expert because everybody else is doing nothing, do something with the video is, uh, then, um, that was all rolling along.
And I was doing a video. The first way I was doing video was I was taking my phone and I basically was creating a, something called the 365 Kona moment. And anybody can take this idea, do it in your own area. And I would do 30 seconds of what it was I was looking at. Now we were talking about this in fact, that you might think, well, you live in Hawaii, you’ve got the ocean, you’ve got whales spouting. You’ve got Palm trees blowing. Yeah. Okay. Every community, cause I’ve seen this throughout the country has something special that you can video and all you gotta do is pick up the phone. And then what I would do is I’d take that 32nd video and pay immediately from my phone to Facebook. And then all of a sudden, you know, I have great content. I look like I’m the expert then?
Uh, one of our, um, uh, guys that I also met through the real estate network, uh, Scott shank came to visit us. And this was three years ago, almost like today. And he said, you guys have really done a good job showing people the active lifestyle that you live, create a video channel and be a lifestyle expert on the video channel. And he’s like, Oh, and I’m like, you know what? That’s not niche-y enough. It doesn’t really go to real estate. And he said, no, people are visiting. People want to know about the area. You guys are going to kill it in search engine optimization because people are looking on YouTube more than they’re looking at, say on Facebook. And at least you own your content on YouTube where everything I’ve spent on Facebook for the last 15 years is not mine. So, and it’s not searchable on Google.
So one thing is nice about YouTube is that it’s searchable on Google and you can share those links everywhere on social anyway, is a bugger because when I put my video from YouTube on the channel, it buries it. If I do it natively and put it up on Facebook, I get three or 4,000 views sometimes on some of the things I put out. And then when I put something it’s connected to YouTube, wow. 85 people like it. So I know that they’re doing something totally. So that now that there’s an, you know, I’m kind of, ADDL Taylor, Facebook fans are women between the ages of like 40 and 65 on YouTube or watching us are men. And it’s interesting because both sides have to, you know, decide what they’re gonna do for real estate, right? And women are the planners. So I have more women who love Hawaii, who are planning a trip here, more men deciding they’re moving to Hawaii and they get their wife involved to start watching your videos.
So that’s the demographics right in there that all of the work I’ve done on Facebook has been advanced plastic. And I have a bunch of fans over there, but for pure, I am getting more referral business from that YouTube channel that we’ve had for three years, then 10 years on Facebook. So again, it starts with that whole, we cast this huge net by doing this, you know, just lifestyle, adventure experience. And then we always end is kind of like the, the Katie Lance experience at the end of the video, I say, so if you’re thinking of buying or selling real estate, our website.
And I drag them over to the website. So, and um, one of the things that we started doing is we had created this whole thing and I was taking it to my three 65 Kona website, which is more again, of a lifestyle real estate. And I realized I need to direct them to a real estate website. So, um, this last summer I took the advice of my friend, Katie and I talked to the woman that was basically doing kind of what I wanted to do. And Tacoma moved to tacoma.com and created moot, moved to, uh, Hawaii three 60 five.com. And, um, we put, you know, all of our good stuff about how to get a contact, a realtor, um, she’s got like a search tool. So I said, you know what? Let’s figure out a way to get search tools. So we put in, um, home bot on our website so people can search the open web. And then also, um, we created a blog part cause I’m a writer. So I’ve got my blogs. But what I do is after we create our videos, I embed the video in the blog post. I write a little bit more for SEO and then put it on the website. So what people are finding us on the YouTube channel through SEO and what’s happened too, is we’ve gotten enough videos. Now people will constantly say it to us. We sat down and binged 15 hours.
Yeah. I feel like we know you as a real estate. Thank you. And that goes to your point of, you know, it’s this ecosystem. And when I, when I was thinking about our interview and our conversation, I was looking at, you know, all the different content you’re putting out. And I think a big takeaway for everyone watching is that it’s not just a video on YouTube. It’s not just a video on, on, on, on Facebook, but you’ve created this. And I keep thinking of the word ecosystem. I’m not sure if that’s the ecosystem.
Back to what you’re saying. It’s like, you know, and I’ve said this for years and years, social media is rented ground. Right? We don’t, we don’t own it. So the fact that you have taken your knowledge, you’ve written some books, you’ve got it in different places. You’ve got it on Facebook. You’ve got it on YouTube and it’s become this net. I think that’s what you said. It was like, it’s a net, right? And so you’re catching one demographic on Facebook. You’re catching maybe a different graph, demographic graphic on YouTube. And it’s this, it’s this layered approach. And it doesn’t happen overnight. You know,
Years ago, years, years, years ago when we first got here in 2005, I mean, that’s, how long has it been going on a woman either said she was creating a channel on YouTube. Yeah. I’m like, Ooh, YouTube channel. You can create one in what Katie, five minutes, you can create your own YouTube channel in five minutes on our headline and put yourself up on your, I mean, again, we, we have now bought some different kinds of, you know, video equipment and different kinds of cameras and things like that. But even if you just use your iPhone,
You’re doing something
I’m telling you guys, I watch Gary Vaynerchuk all the time and his whole concept of show up and do something that you’re ahead of 95% of the people in the business. Um, let’s go, I want to first kind of talk to you about YouTube and then we’ll get into some Facebook stuff. So let’s, um, first talk about YouTube and I bet a question up on the screen here. I’d love to know like what type of content are you posting on YouTube? And I already know the answer, but I want you to share. And as you’re sharing, I’m going to pull up on the screen for those of you watching live, um, two of Julie’s YouTube channels and we’ll drop these links in the chat. So you guys can check those out and kind of peruse some of the videos. So let’s talk about that because you do have two channels, like what’s, what is that all about?
What’s, let’s talk about your content. So the two channels that we created, one is the three 65 Hawaii. And that one was the one we started three years ago and started doing that, like running around the Island, doing kind of lifestyle stuff. And, um, that was first started with, um, uh, the, um, just take people to like, you know, beaches and places like that. And I was doing like the five top beaches on the big Island of Hawaii. And that one is that we had over 50,000 views on it. And that was in my bathing suit and I’m in my fifties. So if anybody could do anything, please do. So the other one is the three 65 real estate minute. And we actually created that, um, about four years ago, three and a half, four years ago. And we’ve been working with about three or four good real estate partners in Kona.
And the one that doesn’t mind being on video, and this is fun. You guys, I have two really pretty ones young, and she’s really pretty. And she hates being on video, right? Who is older than me, who goes, you know what, if it makes money and I can show my, your expertise, put me find a video camera I’m in that guy. We had given him millions of dollars of real estate leads because he’s the guy who keeps showing up when people say, I want to work with Lance. So again, you guys, I see how this is working. So with that channel, we started doing videos around like things that were happening in Hawaii, like the law, the zones and the bog and things like that. They’re kind of like Hawaii specific because it’s so weird that people just want to know more about that. And we started with like, some of those only have like a hundred views on them.
Again, we just kept going and then you started hitting more topical things like the market. And then what really started making it pop. And again, this something you guys can do, it’s not that hard to do. Almost like what me and Katie are doing. You starting having a conversation on Facebook live, and then you take that and you stick it on YouTube. So I started interviewing, um, Lance every month for the real estate market update. And we’ve been doing it for about two and a half years. Every month we sit down, like I sit down and give me the statistics and we just have a chat about the market. And, um, then we put the videos. This are like, I mean, we’re talking 29 minute videos, 30 minute videos. Like a lot of these interviews, the interview we’re doing right now, it’s, you know, it’s not a two minute interview.
So this is a longer form content, which might differ in the world of YouTube tends to help to keep it short. People have a short attention span. They don’t, when they really want to learn something like, you know, 40 minutes, if something it’s going to change their life or make them save money or big amount of jail. So that’s not true when you really want to figure something out, you will binge watch it. I want to move to Hawaii. They’re going to say it’s so hard and so weird. So difficult. I want to learn all I can. So we just been shoving content in there. And so people by the time that they go through most of this stuff, not only are we educating them, so now they’re better leads because now my realtor partners don’t have to tell them about all this stuff. They’ve self-educated themselves from all those videos I put on that channel. So, and again, it keeps going back to, it’s not just about me. I’m kind of the interviewer, the people I bring on the screen and I’ll tell you guys, there’s another one I interviewed my friend Delania she hates being on video, but I said, you’re going to do this. And our video chat was about buying a condo in Hawaii.
She had two leads within the course of 10 days. One was $650,000. And the other one was I think a 450. So for her to sit there and talk to me for 40 minutes, she made two deals right off the bat. And now that view the views on that, if you it’s, it’s near one of our last ones is how to buy a condo, thousands of views. So now she looks like she’s the conduit expert in Kona. Yeah. I sat her down for 40 minutes and she talked about what she knows on the, on the, on the internet. So if you’re, even if you’re a realtor and you have like a little team, like, um, I know that a lot of realtors have, you know, two people or three people on their thing and you put two or three people on and you go back and forth on what’s happening with the market or your expertise.
And you bring in a mortgage person, talk about mortgages. You talk about title, or you talk about, um, one of the things that really, really big is people who now feel like they’ve been priced out of the market are trying to buy land. So then we’re talking about land. We’re talking about what’s it cost to build another blah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. I love that. Um, so let’s go, let’s get into, uh, views and subscribers, because I feel like, especially on YouTube, this is, this is something that comes up a lot. And I remember feeling this, like, I’m like, no, one’s watching, like putting this stuff out there, like seriously. And so I find, and I don’t know if you’ve experienced this. I think YouTube, it takes time. Right. And like all of a sudden for me, it was like a snowball. It’s like, Oh, now I’m getting about a hundred views.
Now I’m getting a couple of interviews. Like, you know, and then, and it just sort of, Oh, I’m getting a few more subscribers. Like, it’s this sort of slow burn, slow burn, snowball, slow snowball. Right. But then once it hits, like, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s what happened with three 65 things doing Kona. I remember I was playing to a party of 50 and then all of a sudden people started telling people about me. And then all of a sudden it’s, you’re sharing it. And the next thing you know, I had 500 and that’s when I did that speech in Waikiki with you. Yeah. Back in 2012. And then all of a sudden I went from 500 to a thousand and then boom, I was like 2000. Next thing I know at 5,000 nixing, I’m celebrating 20,000. I mean, it just starts to go like that. And that’s what happened with our YouTube channel too. As soon as YouTube, the algorithm starts seeing that you’re consistent and that people watch what you’re doing, then they start putting people into it. And so we had to hit a thousand subscribers to monetize the channel. And I’m telling you, that’s not the way to make money in this world. We make, we make $350 a month.
Isn’t it amazing because I make money from YouTube. And again, and again, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not, you know, anything to write home about. Oh my gosh. Like what other platform is paying me? Right.
Dozens of hours of content on Facebook, on the shoot myself. I’ve been, you know what though, again, you guys, this is one of the things too. The, the, the Goodwill that I’ve received back from the Facebook information has just been like, yeah, you don’t even know me. Like just all the free stuff, free events, friends. It’s, it’s been fantastic. So, um, but with the, um, with YouTube, um, Eric started because we’ve got to buddy and we watch the analytics and we’re seeing what’s going on. So, um, after we hit a thousand subscribers, it was like at like YouTube kind of said, okay, now you’re real. Now we believe that you actually are going to do this thing. And then all of a sudden it starts going out to more people. And then we hit 2000 subscribers and then almost immediately we hit 3000 and now we’re at 4,700.
So it’s like, it’s as growing faster because not only do they put you out there more to people that are maybe searching for Hawaii, or, you know, it’s been like, we, we get this big burst of people saying, I love what you do. Oh my God. They put out another video. Yeah. And then I use those links and I put them on my social channels. And then we get the next wave. And then YouTube likes to see that a bunch of people looked at to begin with. And as soon as they see that, they say, there’s something here that we want to share. So then it starts to go out into the masses. So, and again, it just takes time.
Yeah. And I put the, I put two buddy on the screen there. We use that. Also. There’s a free version. There’s a paid version. That’s, that’s also a great, a great resource, for sure. So yeah, no, absolutely. That’s a great comments, by the way, for those of you who just joined us a little bit late, we are talking with Julie. Zima is all about YouTube and Facebook and video. And those of you watching live, this has been helpful so far tag a friend let’s, let’s let a colleague or friend know that we’re in this conversation, tag a friend, or feel free to share out this broadcast, share it out on your page or your group. Uh, you know, Julie’s dropping some really good nuggets here, all about videos. So we are,
I know sometimes my realtor friends will say, well, of course, you’re doing this. You’re not selling real estate. And I go, you know what, though? Eric is, it’s going to get, he has his license and you can jump into this thing. Full-time because of all the work that we’ve done to create this thing. Now, he feels great that we’re going to have a bunch of bleeds. Um, as we’ve mentioned, five deals a month for the escrows, I’d like to show you, my board is only, or we have like five deals like a month. We have deals that people are coming in June. They’re coming in July, August. I, Oh, I’m a year out. Um, so we have filled this pipeline full of business too. And we’ll our dreamers. And again, I, you know, if you live in Ottawa, Canada, you might be thinking, well, who the heck really wants to move to Ottawa? Well, you know what, there’s a bunch of Americans trying to get.
It was beautiful. I had no idea till I visited there a few years ago is a gorgeous town.
I’ve never been there either. And there’s some reason why I might have to go there unless I’m being transferred, or even if I want to visit and I’m searching Ottawa and you keep coming up as the guy. And you’re saying, these are, this is a great restaurant here and meet my local business owners. And that’s another thing too, that the two things I keep pushing is support local businesses. That’s especially when we go through sessions or go going through pandemics, you look like you’re the guy that’s out there supporting local. You win. And then also I do a whole thing about ocean conservation and make sure, you know, you’re wearing restate sunscreen. Don’t touch the turtles, come with a low HOD. When we first started out, it was very, um, like, you know what, don’t come with bad attitude. And then we got more and more fans because he goes, Oh yeah, she’s telling him how it is. And our last studio that we just did. I mean, I full on went there. We were not coming with, you know, this much money in your pocket. And when you did like, you know, bid out, don’t come, Oh my God, you’re the most honest person out there. Realtors don’t talk like that. And like, you know what, because they want to hear the truth. And this is how it goes across all marketing experiences with products, whatever people just want to know the truth.
Yeah. And you guys who are listening live, or if you’re listening later on the recording like this, this is huge. What Julie’s saying, like lean into your, your opinions. Like it’s okay to have an opinion.
Yes. Everybody’s going to like it. You’re going to, you might have some people
Like, forget that I’m on subscribing. I don’t like it’s, it’s all good. But the flip side is that people who appreciate your opinion, like they’re the one that’s what the business is going to come from. So, no, I love that. Okay. So let’s, we’ve talked a lot about YouTube, which is huge. We, we could probably talk another two hours, but let’s, let’s segue. Let’s talk about, about Facebook. So I’m going to pull up a, a, uh, a question here on the screen here. Um, so let me know you, you’ve kind of touched on this a little bit, as far as your, your strategy with Facebook. Is it similar than YouTube different? It sounds like some of the video content you’re definitely, uh, sharing on Facebook, but how, tell me a little bit about your, your Facebook stuff.
Okay. So the Facebook strategy is, and again, when the three 65 Kona experience, um, people were like this, I cannot come up with a piece of content every single day, with 365. You don’t need to do that. You know? I mean, there’s days where I’m doing something fun, like I’m whale-watching, or I’m doing something really crazy that I’m like, I can’t stop posting. I’m a frigging free. I have a social media free. But when people like, is that when I’m doing something and if you, if you know what, again, this is my thing. If I see something as beautiful, I’m going to capture it and I’m going to share it. And people come to my, my channel because they know they’re going to see something different, unique, creative, or interesting or education. So when I go to restaurants and you know what, I, I don’t know if you guys, if you guys love dogs, take pictures of dogs and talk about dog parks.
Yeah. I eat enough food. I go out to enough restaurants. I’m not a foodie, but I know people like pictures of food. So I have my food. And then I say, here’s the restaurant. This is why I think about the menu items. Here’s the food you might want to try. It was abuse. People are even people who live here. This isn’t just for tourists. These are people who live here, want to know what’s the skinny on like everything. So we had a new shopping center. It was going up with your drone over the shopping center while it was being constructed. Um, I’ve gotten to be really a second part of our, the Conan brewery is like expanding. They’re putting a new tasting room out there. So every couple of months I go out there in front of the brewery and goes, this is what’s happening with construction now.
And we’ve had thousands of views on that. So again, everybody’s got a town that they’re living in and everybody’s got a town, but there’s something going on. And so my strategy is just to capture it. If I’m doing the three 32nd, this is your three 65 Kona moment. Yeah. That’s the stuff like we have like a sand beach. We have a beach that the sand comes in and out of seasonally. So here’s your, you know, your sand and your sand update today needs, I’ll say, Hey, surf update. We will look at this crazy surf. Um, but in terms of just, just, you don’t need to like live in Hawaii to do that. I’ll also, um, like I said, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll go through a construction area or I’ll say, Hey, this is a new restaurant. Um, or like, especially during the pandemic, Hey, these guys are open for takeout.
Um, they’re safe. Here’s there. They’re putting tables out in front of the restaurant. Now look a thumb. This is, you know, people like the video, people love video. So I do a mix between still images and video. And one thing I liked about video on, uh, Facebook is that it tells you how many views you’re getting. And that urge to do, to keep going. Once people start tagging their friends and start sharing it out, obviously the going up and it’s all about if you make it interesting and you don’t spend too much time on it, opportunity to somebody in Hilo three 65 Hilo. And we’re teaching her how to be just better. And sometimes she’ll just go too long on the subject and then you lose. So on Facebook, it’s not the same as YouTube. Yeah. It’s quick for too long. It’s got to click.
And especially now with faster video, 30 seconds is really all you’ve got for people. And you know what? You can say a whole bunch in 30 seconds, look at Tik TOK, how much they can get into one, not even a minute. Right? So, and again, it just keeps showing expertise and it shows them that you are somebody who cares about your community. That’s it just keeps coming off. No matter what you’re saying, you catch up, it looks like they care about their community. And that you’re a real person and people want to do business with people. They actually look like they get to know through video. So people are like, doesn’t the reason Eric says, sell real estate. They’re like, well, we want you to show us houses, exactly transaction. So I love that. And I want to, um, just ask the question, Kristi Kennelly, who, um, is awesome.
She was on one of our podcasts a few weeks ago and I love her. Yes, she is payments. We love Kristi. I, if you guys haven’t watched the interview, I did with Kristi, we talked about, um, getting more confident on camera, which is a great add onto this conversation. So I will, I will post that link here in just a minute, because that’s a, that’s a great, uh, interview that we did, but I love this question. She asked, she said, do you push everyone to watch her, watch your YouTube channel on socials? Or do you post native files to social better to try to push to YouTube? This is a great question, right? And we talked a little bit about this. So I’ve done videos for Facebook because they love it. They’ll just sit there and put that stuff all day long. But you know, we talked about this.
If I put a link from YouTube onto Facebook, they do not push it. It just dies. And so what I’ve been doing also is I’ve been trying to trick the system. So what I’ll do is I’ll bury a, a YouTube channel link into a blog post and put a really great headline and then tell people, Hey, we did this, go check it out. And it likely will come to the blog post because I watched the analytics and then they’ll watch the video. So it’s like this like secondary, you know, experience. And once you can, if you’re doing anyway, as soon as you’re putting something out that they’re learning something or getting something new we’ll read, and the video people will go right to video and women read and watch video. So if you’re doing the blogging thing, and I know a lot of realtors don’t write on my realtor, friends will say, if I was a writer, I wouldn’t be selling real estate.
Um, that’s why this is like a multi-pronged approach. If you just want to talk at a camera. And like Kristi says, cause she’s got a big personality and video, um, and you just want to do something like this and you think that you’ve got, you know, boom, boom. And you’re getting your friends in to talk about, you know, what’s happening around your community. Yeah. We don’t have to write a word. Basically. You just maybe do a little bit of a way it is you’re talking about, and you’re sending it out. You can be dyslexic and you’re fine. Totally. I love that. I love that. I saw a question come through, um, Ellen Jaffe Jones, who also does a lot of great video. She does a lot of stuff on Facebook live. She says, it looks like you have a sophisticated photography. Do you hire that out?
So David it’s so fancy. So I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you to tell you. So, um, and this kinda goes back to my husband is shy. He’s dyslexic. He really is, but because he’s on video more often now he’s becoming a better person on camera. It’s all about just keep doing it right behind me with Stan. Um, we started doing this with just, I photography, we, he had a little kid, a gimbal and stuck the camera on a gimbal to keep it from jumping around because I do that sometimes for my people started thinking, Oh, it’s called the cat mic. It has the mic. Um, so he would have the cat mic sticking out from the phone with a gimbal. And we went to Maui and we got in there and they’re like, Oh, are you bloggers? And we’re like, well, yes, we are something for us.
And they go, sure, we’ll upgrade you to an OSHA front room because we spoke up because you get free stuff too. If you look at your blog. But then as soon as we started actually getting more subscribers, he started saying, you know, I want to be a little more serious about this. And then you can spend a bunch of money on. So, and so in fact, he’s bought some cameras that were kind of lower end and they weren’t, they weren’t doing okay if we’re going to do this, I want to do it really well. So then, you know, $1,500 on a video camera go pro, he’s got three drones. Now he’s learning FTB and he’s doing the free VR, right? All, all the stuff. Then all of a sudden, if you actually do like to do this, it does turn into a hobby. And then the hobby becomes a thing.
And so what we started doing was, um, we started just doing like, let’s do a five burger to go to five beaches today. We’re going to film five beaches. Then it turned into the pandemic and people were saying I’m stuck at home. So, because we were not as affected by the pandemic as on the big Island and we have so much open space, we start just going out to beaches and doing hikes to be alone. And we started videotaping all of that. People were trapped at home and that really helped our views because we’re able to go on these little adventures while they’re trapped at home. And, um, and then from that to you guys, this will be never happened to you, but this rental house with this amazing view of the ocean, to me, it’s like, it’s crazy. And we set up the video camera and we started doing live sunsets every night.
And we did it every night for five months and people loved it. It became kind of like a video podcast and we’re just talking about life and we got 2000 views and believe it or not, we actually show three or four different houses from that to people say, you know what? Being trapped in pandemic days. I really thought the whole time I was watching you guys, I really wanted to move to Hawaii. I read all your stuff. It’s going to be I’m coming next week. And he’s like, well, I can’t wait to stand on your one eye and look at that view in person because you guys brought Hawaii to me. So again, if you connect with your audience in whatever creative way that you think that that’s going to happen for you there’s I love the forest. If someone put out a video camera on the forest and I knew they were doing that, like everybody, every Saturday morning and talking about real estate, I got a chance to see a pretty forest. Yeah. Right.
Huge. It’s absolutely huge. Oh my goodness. Well, I know we could keep going on and on and on.
I mean, you’ve shared so much, so this is interesting. Debbie says, should we purchase a YouTube channel? Yeah. It’s free. You don’t have to purchase it. Actually. I love
That. She asked that because I think a of people who aren’t familiar, we love people who aren’t familiar with YouTube. They think, well, how did these people start their YouTube channels? Right. So anybody can start a YouTube channel. Just go to, you can go to Google. You can even Google, how do I start a YouTube channel? Like it walks you right through what I’ve watched you write through it. It’s like three or four easy steps and it’s totally free. And I, and I, I do love that you asked that because I think there’s probably a few people that are like, I didn’t want to ask that, but it’s that there’s a field or YouTube channel and you must be somebody special. It’s like, no, I went on the internet for five minutes and I set my just like Facebook is set up a Facebook page. Instagram. Absolutely. So anything I didn’t ask you, Julie, like any other tips or anything that you were like, gosh, I really wanted to say this. Like, anything else that we missed that you want to share with our they’re waiting for my flip phone.
Do you remember back in the day they had those little video cameras, they were called flips, right? Yes. Yes. That’s how I started. I remember I had a flip phone because people like to see stuff. Yeah. People love to see stuff. I mean, I just go right back to that. You guys, people love video because they like moving. They they’d like to be in your team. And especially now in the, in the, in the age of what’s happened with stay at home and what Netflix is doing, content is King and people want to see something different. And they’d like to see people who are natural and authentic and doing something that they can say, Hey, that’s in my town or that’s the, I want to go. And if you can actually bring them to the experience by showing them stuff that you might think is like, it’s a park who cares? You know what? People love nature. They want to see what’s a lifestyle, an area, food parks, um, you know, w what’s there, you’re doing your, your town. I mean, really content is all around you. And one thing I loved by Katie is she’s always constantly telling you how you can go about putting content on the internet.
Exactly. You’ll never run out of ideas. Yeah. Are blooming it’s spring take video. Totally. Uh, so for all of you who are watching live, or if you’re watching the recording, definitely connect with Julie, I’ve got three 65 kona.com and she’s got a number of links. I put a bunch of links in the comments below, and we always record this. We’re going to send this recording out. If you’re on our email list, you’ll get a link to that. So feel free to go to our website, Katie that’s dot com sign up for our newsletter. So you don’t miss it. If you want to it, we’ll send out all the links and all that good stuff. Julie, this has been so awesome. I love that. You just came and you just like, you brought it, you shared so many really great tips for our audience today. I, I know you guys seriously, Eric and I are like, you know, a is now we go out every weekend and we do these adventure videos.
And then we do once a week, we do the information once pink one and get started, and then you can branch out, right? Yeah. Pick one and get started. And I would encourage you guys, you know, listen to what Julie said, because she made a really great tip in there about how she shares her content on different channels. And I feel like I preach that drum all the time. Like it’s not just one and done, right? Like Julie will take a video and she puts it on her blog and then she’s got it on Facebook and like
Graham. Yeah. And that sort of thing too, Katie real quick before everyone leaves is that once you take a video, if you’re seeing something interesting, take one this way and one this way, right? If you take it this way, you can put it on Instagram and you can put it on your stories on Facebook, take this way. And you put it on a business page, your fan page. And that’s how you get started with this way too.
Oh my goodness. Well, if you guys have any other questions for me or Julie, feel free to put those in the chat. Julia, if you have time, I know you’re a busy lady, but if you have time, maybe you can hop back in later and answer any questions that, uh, that we might’ve missed. Uh, that would be, that would be awesome. Yeah.
You guys know of anybody moving to Hawaii, all the information is that a move to Hawaii, three 60 five.com and you’ll see our videos. You’ll see our content. And you guys, obviously I’m like this, take it. If you see an idea that I’ve put out there on any of my stuff, please go for it. Even if you’re in my market, I don’t care if there’s enough for everybody, everyone does their things themselves. And so there’s, you know, taking it.
I love that. I love that. It’s like, yeah, take it right. Because, because people they’re not you. Right? And so we get inspired, you know, uh, from, from lots of different, lots of different people. And I love that. You’ve always, I feel like you’ve always come from this place of abundance versus scarcity. It’s like things come back to you.
I tell them also another place they should check out Nicole Nicola, who we both know Nicole, she does, she’s been doing she’s inspired me. She was one of the first person just to videotape everything. She’s got live life Livermore, live, live life, little more thing. And she does a little videos and she puts them on Instagram and she’s so she’s a realtor actually showing houses. And she has her real personality check her out. And also a guy named Jeb Smith. And he is from Southern California and he’s on YouTube. And he just looks at a camera and talks about the market. And since the pandemic started, he has like grown like 20,000 views on this one. And he shows up every week and he gives the update on what’s happening. And he’s so real. Get some ideas from that guy too, because he’s crushing it. And uh, and then, you know what, again, it’s, it’s, it’s taking what you see other people are doing and creating something on your own that makes you authentic and your original self. And that’s what people are looking for.
Exactly, exactly. Right. It’s one of the things we talked about the beginning for those, we can miss the beginning, we talked about this, like Julie’s got this ecosystem, right? It’s not just like putting up videos on YouTube and Nicole does the same thing. It’s like when you become a little bit bigger than just one video here, one video here, it’s, it’s your brand. It’s in a lot of different places. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s all stuff so much Katie, as he tells you how to like actually set split your time. So you’re not wasting time on social, right on Monday, posted on Tuesday.
That’s what it’s all about. That’s what it’s all about. So, uh, and for those of you listening, who are just ready to get your arms around social media in general, if you feel like, oh my gosh, there’s a lot happening here. Feel free to check out our Academy. You can go to KatieLance.com/academy to find out how we can work together and how we can help you get smarter about social media, because she helped me. Will you help me? So it’s a it’s reciprocal for sure. So, all right, my friend, thank you so much. I so appreciate it. Thank you everyone who watched live. We so appreciate it. Good to see my friends in the chat box. I know, I know I’d love it. If this was helpful, feel free to share this out. Also. We want to, we want to share the load. All right, guys, until next time. We’ll see you later. Bye for now.
