In this video, I’m going to share with you some of the biggest tips that real estate agents can do to make the most out of YouTube in 2021.
Katie Lance here, founder and CEO of Katie Lance Consulting, the Get Social Smart Academy and author of the book. Get Social Smart. Its episode 228 of the Get Social Smart Show. And in this video, I’m going to share some of the most important things that you can do to stay relevant when it comes to YouTube. If you are in real estate, stick around to the end, because I’ve got a great bonus for you. All right, let’s dive into the show. I’ve got three big tips. I’m going to share with you today. Tip number one, optimize and update your YouTube channel. Now, if you’re new to YouTube and you might be thinking, okay, I don’t even have a YouTube channel, Katie. Well, here’s the good news. It’s quick. It’s easy. Go to Google, set up your free YouTube account. It’s super easy to do. However, if you’re like a lot of folks myself included for years and years, I had a YouTube channel and I felt like the YouTube channel was, it was just like an old library.
It was like the place where I put videos when I was done, but I didn’t really do a whole lot with them. So if that’s you, it might be time to kind of dust off your YouTube channel. And so we want to update and optimize your YouTube channel. There’s a couple of quick things I’m going to recommend that you do first off, you want to update your cover photo, right? So update that cover photo. You don’t want to have something cut off. It’s a little bit of an odd shape. I love to use the templates in Canva to be able to create a YouTube banner that is similar to what you might have on a Facebook cover photo or somewhere else on social media. You also want to look at your about section. I cannot tell you how many times I go to an agent or brokers, YouTube channel and their about section that’s blank.
So you want to tell me where you work, what market areas do you serve? What cities, what state, and how to contact you. What’s your website. You can look list all of your social media handles your phone number, your website. That is super important. Also when it comes to optimizing your channel, you want to make sure that with any of your videos that you’re posting and we’ll get more into this. And just the second that you really have a detailed description, right? This is really important. So don’t just put a word or two, don’t leave that part blank. This is really an opportunity to tell me, you know, what’s that video all about, put your contact information and make it easy to find you. So create your channel. If you haven’t done it and optimize it. If you haven’t done it already. And by the way, before we go any further, if you’re even wondering why in the heck is YouTube so important?
Well, YouTube is the number two search engine in the world. It’s owned by Google. And one of the best ways to generate business through social media is through YouTube. So that’s the reason why, if you’re wondering, tip number two, create your video plan, creaky your video plan. And when it comes to creating your video plan, we want to think about content and frequency. Now I can tell you from experience. Remember the, one of the first things I said was that my YouTube channel used to be like that old dusty library. So how did I change that? Well, about four years ago, I distinctly remember sitting down with my team and they came to me and said, know what, Katie, you should create a show. I was like a show. And what happened is kind of a light bulb moment instead of just posting videos every once in a blue moon or when I felt like it, I made a commitment to post on a weekly basis.
Now we’ve been publishing videos every single Wednesday for basically the last four years without fail. And the reason why we’ve, we’ve been able to do that is we had a plan. So I really believe in this idea of putting together an editorial calendar. And if you’ve never done this before, I know it sounds a little intimidating, but where I would start is to think about all the questions you get asked all the time. Think about the last six to 12 months worth of clients. You’ve worked with, make a list and next to their name, you might write down all the topics that came up as you worked with them. Maybe they were out of town, buyers or sellers. Maybe they were renters and they weren’t quite sure if they should get into the market. Maybe they were investors. Maybe they didn’t know how to find a lender.
They weren’t sure why they should pay for staging. All of these things that come up. And you might think to yourself, gosh, if I get asked this one more time, guess what? That’s a great piece of content. So we want to make a list of content ideas. I love using Google spreadsheets. It’s free. It’s easy. Google sheets are simple and easy to use. We actually set sit down once or twice a year and list out about 52 topics worth of content. And so what that means is then when I’m sitting down once a month or so to batch record of my content, which I also think is a big, uh, a big tip, a big thing that you can do when it comes to YouTube videos. If you’re just going to record one video, why not record three or four, especially if you got to do hair and makeup, right?
So to do that, you have to have them mapped out. Now I will say just because you’ve mapped out an editorial calendar doesn’t mean that you don’t reserve the right to make changes, right? You know, a year or so ago when the whole world was on pause, um, with COVID and everything happening in the world, we took a look at our editorial calendar and we realized we need to change things around. So there’s nothing wrong with changing things, changing things up, but by having a plan makes a huge difference. So you want to get your editorial calendar together. You also want to decide on when are you going to publish YouTube rewards consistency. So you don’t have to necessarily post a bunch of times during the week, but get yourself onto a routine. We publish every Wednesday because that’s what works for us and our team, but get yourself into a consistent routine.
And once you decide on your day, then you can work backwards in the side on when are you going to film and who’s going to edit and who’s going to publish and all those moving pieces. And by the way, one of the best ways to drive traffic to your YouTube channel is just to tell people about it, to tell people, Hey, I’ve got a new show coming out. It’s going to be every Wednesday or Monday or Tuesday. So get yourself a plan. That’s huge. Tip number three, create your distribution plan. Okay. So you’ve got your channel optimized. You’ve come up with a content plan, but now how do you get people to actually watch your videos? I think that there is this like myth out there that once you put it put a bunch of videos on YouTube, people are magically just going to find them well over the course of time, that happens, right?
There’s like kind of this snowball that happens once you get the ball rolling, but either way, you still, you still have to tell people about your videos. So what I recommend is use your other social media channels to drive traffic to your YouTube videos. One of the things we do is, you know, we’re really active over on Instagram. So when we publish a YouTube video, we’ll take a short clip of that video. Maybe a one minute video, we’ll post that on Instagram. We’ll put the YouTube link in our bio on Instagram. And then that video has a call to action to click the link in our bio to watch the full video over on YouTube. Also with Instagram stories, I might do an Instagram story that said, Hey guys, we just created a great new video about X, Y, and Z. It’s over on YouTube, messaged me for the link.
And so, regardless of where you’re at, whether it’s Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter, Pinterest, use your other social media platforms and drive traffic to your YouTube videos. I would also say by the way, as you’re having conversations with clients, this happens to me all the time, clients and prospects, email me, they have questions, right? And I’m sure this happens to you all the time. You’re answering questions about the market and the local community and, you know, buyers, sellers, things like that. Once you start to create this body of work, this library of content on YouTube, not only can you answer people’s questions, but you can also say, Hey, and by the way, here’s a video that we created. That’s also really helpful as you think about X, Y, and Z, right? Oh, you’re a first-time home buyer. Here are a few of my tips and oh, by the way, here’s a video we created about that.
Not only does that really cement you as the expert, but it’s a great way to drive additional traffic over to your YouTube channel. All right. I promised you a bonus. The big bonus is this. When you’ve got your YouTube videos, I would highly recommend that you share your YouTube videos with your email database. Now, if you’re not doing email marketing, that’s probably a whole nother conversation, but I’m sure a lot of you are sending out emails to your email database. And if you’re not yet, I would definitely encourage you to start building your email database. Social media is rented ground. We all know this. We don’t own social media. So building an email list is a great thing to do. It goes with you wherever you go. And when people opt into your email list, they want to see your content. They want to see what you have.
And so one of the things we do is every Saturday in our email newsletter, we will always include a link or two to some of our recent YouTube videos, right? So if you’re doing videos about buying and selling the community, different tips, maybe you’re highlighting local businesses. And easy thing to do is once a week or even once a month, send a newsletter out to your database. How that can be really simple and include a few links to those YouTube videos. And it’s a great way to drive traffic back to your YouTube. All right, after you’ve done all that, it’s all about rinse and repeat, right? Keep in mind with YouTube. It is a marathon, not a sprint. We’ve been at this for many years and it doesn’t happen overnight, but get your plan together, get consistent. Get that distribution plan in place. Remember done is better than perfect.
Many of you’ve heard me say this before. A lot of times we like to wait. We like to wait until we have all the equipment and everything in place start now, you know, how do you get better at doing video? How do you the better with YouTube? You start, you start and you develop that muscle of video and you get better and better. Now as you’re listening to this, I’m sure a lot of you are like, okay, I really need to get my arms around a YouTube strategy. So I’m so excited to announce. We have a great YouTube workbook. I would absolutely love for you to download it’s specific to real estate. And it’s going to give you tons of tips, tools, and ideas for really how to make the most out of YouTube, how to get more views, content ideas, and so much more.
You’re gonna want to go to KatieLance.com/YouTubeWorkbook. Check it out, download it. And if you’re watching this over on YouTube, guess what? I’m going to ask for you to hit that subscribe button and the bell button. So you get notified when we have new videos out each and every week. All right. I would love to hear from you. Are you on YouTube? If so, drop your YouTube channel in the comments below. I would love to check out your channel and until next time we’ll see you soon. Bye for now
