Category Archives: Social Media

Six Social Media Tips for the Trainer

When I started my first Facebook business page for training at HER Realtors eight years ago, I did it to learn the ins and outs of Facebook so that I could teach it to agents. Social media was already a marketing tool utilized by a few agents to gain business and stay in touch with their sphere of influence. More and more agents wanted to learn the tool, so I took the plunge and constructed the page.

Much of what I learned back then has been updated as Facebook has changed over the years. I’ve added LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram to my repertoire of social media channels that I teach. I’ve had the benefit of learning from social media experts for real estate such as Katie Lance and Marki Lemons-Rhyal, too. It became apparent to me early on that teaching social media is only part of the story. I began to use social media to promote training internally and now in my business generally.

There are many resources out there to guide you in your use of social media: Books, articles, webinars, videos, and infographics. I’ve written about using social media for the marketing of training previously. I’d like to pass on just a few tips and techniques that I have learned while using social media to promote training:

Use video: Get over yourself and create videos to teach, inform, and entertain your audience. Create a playlist and promote the playlist in your video as a way to get people to pay attention to your content. Use a captioning service such as Rev to get captions and a transcript. Add the captions when you post the video and include the transcript in the comments. There are several reasons to use captions, but my favorite is that the majority of people watching video on Facebook do so with the audio muted. If you add captions, people are more likely to watch. Don’t forget live videos, either!
Create and use a Content Grid: To answer the most common question I get (“What do I post?”), I tell agents to create a content grid with categories and descriptions of the types of content you can (and will) post. Then, when you sit down to create your posts, refer to the content grid for ideas. You will begin to post interesting content on a regular basis (because you no longer need so much time to generate ideas) which will get you noticed more often.
Repurpose your content: When you spend time creating a video or blog post, don’t just use it once, post it on multiple channels. When I create a “Real Estate Quick Tip” video, it gets posted first on YouTube, then later on Facebook, and then the next week on LinkedIn. The transcript could also be the basis of a longer blog post, or I could use bits and pieces for shorter posts.
Share carefully: Most social media sites don’t like you sharing links that send people to another website. They sometimes punish these posts by not displaying them in people’s newsfeeds or on their timelines. It may be a good idea to share an article or video, however. One technique is to create the post, then place the link to the article or video in the comments. Tell people in the post to look for the link in the comments.
Use hashtags and tag others: Most social media sites favor content that is searchable (via hashtags) and engages others (likes, comments, and shares). To get more views of your content, use hashtags that will make it searchable and tag people when appropriate. When I share an article, for example, I tag the author. This gets their eyes on the post and they will probably “like” it which means all of their connections/friends/followers will see the post. The more engagement a post gets, the more often it will appear when your people view the social media channel you posted in.
Monitor views and responses: The benefit to using social media to promote your training is that you can access analytics to tell you how many people are seeing your content and what type of content your audience favors. Use the analytics available to you on Facebook to also determine what time of day you should post. These free tools are on all the platforms I use, and I check them on a regular basis to determine what sorts of posts get the most attention (hint: videos and pictures rate highly!).

There are many ways to promote your training programs, and social media can be an important tool in your marketing tool bag. Consider where your audience hangs out (LinkedIn? Twitter?) and how you will get them to see your content (do you ask them to like your Facebook page?). If you’d like to see examples of what I do to create interest for my training on social media, like my Facebook page, subscribe to my YouTube channel, or connect with me on LinkedIn!

How to Use a Video Challenge in Training

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What’s the first thing you think when you see yourself on video? (Be honest!) It’s generally not a positive experience and that’s why so many professionals shirk from using video as a way to promote themselves and their businesses. It’s expensive to hire a video production company to make you look good, so why bother?

Video can be a great way to get the word out about your business. It’s also showing you as a human being, someone who’s approachable and relatable. Most social media platforms favor video, too, so it can help boost your visibility online. Who wouldn’t want to have more visibility for their business?

The problems arise when you try to figure out how to use video without hiring the production company or buying the fancy equipment. Most of us have the tools in our pockets, yet we fail to understand how we can use them to our advantage. I was in that situation last year. I wanted to learn how to create videos that looked decent but didn’t cost much but my time and effort (no money in the budget for the production company!). I learned about Niamh Arthur’s 30 day video challenge and decided to take the plunge. I knew I needed to learn the techniques before I could adapt and teach them for my audience of real estate agents.

Once I learned how to use my smartphone and laptop to create some decent videos, I started creating “quick tips” for consumption by agents and anyone else interested in learning the practice of real estate sales. These videos serve to teach aspects of a real estate business and to demonstrate that it’s not so difficult to make great-looking and -sounding videos with minimal equipment and skill.

How can you get independent contractors (in this case, real estate agents) to use video for their businesses so they capture more prospects and clients? I decided to use a video challenge to teach the techniques and get them used to creating video.

My first task was to decide how long this challenge would be. Considering the sometimes short attention spans of my audience and the demands on their time that a real estate business makes, I decided make the challenge three weeks long and have the agents record 15 videos. This allows for “catch up” time on the weekends when there would be no videos to record if the participant had recorded the weekday videos. There was no requirement to record each day. Instead, participants could record as many videos on a given day as they needed to to catch up to the group if they were behind.

Next, I had to decide the topics for each of the videos. Most days, the participants had to record a video that was relevant to their businesses. However, it is important to have several topics that are more general (tell about yourself, what’s one thing you can’t live without for your business, etc.). These topics are designed to get participants talking on camera instead of worrying about saying the right thing to a potential client. I devised a topic list and a schedule to organize the challenge in a meaningful way.

With the topics developed, it was time to record the prompt videos. Each day, participants would get an e-mail with a link to the video for the day. These videos were posted as “unlisted” on my YouTube channel so that only those with the link would be able to view them. I considered how to record the videos and decided to “batch” record them. In other words, I prepared my topics, made notes, set up my equipment in an office, and recorded all 15 prompt videos, three “weekend edition” videos, and introductory and conclusion videos in one day. Two of the videos required additional screen-capture video and editing because they taught the fine points of posting video on YouTube and Facebook, and creating playlists. One video was shot outdoors to demonstrate how moving your location can spike interest. Because I recorded them in one day, I changed tops and accessories to give the illusion that they were recorded on different days.

With recording out of the way, the next steps focussed on completing any editing, posting the videos to a YouTube “unlisted” playlist, and creating the e-mail campaign in my CRM to have the instructional e-mails delivered on schedule. Participants were given instructions in each e-mail about how to post their videos and to watch other participants’ videos and give feedback. I created a closed Facebook group where participants could post the YouTube links and watch each others’ videos.

One important step not to forget is to promote the challenge to potential participants. I used video here, too. I created a video to explain what the challenge was and how it could help an agent’s business to learn how to create videos. I shared that video through e-mail, company newsletter, and my Facebook business page. Agents were prompted to pre-register for the challenge, but they could join at any time as long as they understood they would have to record several videos to catch up with the rest of the group.

It’s important to remain flexible with people who are participating in this type of activity for their own benefit. There were no assessments and no consequences for not completing the challenge. I did have a benefit to completing the challenge to help convince participants to complete and post all 15 videos. I held a live webinar that was open only to those who completed the challenge by a certain date. During the webinar, I taught additional techniques and gave away prizes such as smartphone tripods and clip-on microphones. The webinar was recorded and made available to the participants who couldn’t attend it live.

Once you have created the challenge prompt videos, campaign e-mails, and Facebook group, you can present the challenge multiple times to different groups. The key is promoting the challenge to attract the most participants possible. In very large challenges, the participants are placed in smaller groups to facilitate feedback and camaraderie. My group was small, so all were able to watch each other’s videos and provide feedback.

I gave positive feedback as often as possible and corrected glaring mistakes as gently as I could. Most participants got the hang of recording their videos within a few days and went on to create useful videos in the course of the challenge. I specifically designed several of the prompts to be topics they could use for their businesses immediately, if they chose to do so.

A video challenge can give learners a hands-on approach to learning how to create and use video for their businesses. Success is measured not by the quality of each video, but by the progression of the acquisition of skills and the completion of the challenge.

Social Selling is Not Just For Marketers

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Not long ago, trainers could depend on students showing up to class because they got a flier or a printed newsletter with a list of upcoming offerings. Their manager or boss told them about the class and they dutifully filled out the registration blank and sent it in to the training department.

Today, that printed promotional piece may never be seen, ending up instead in a recycling bin or trashcan when it is discovered after the class took place. Today’s trainer needs to be an effective marketer utilizing various channels to “get the word out” and attract participants to the seminar, class, or webinar. Social media gives trainers another channel to reach the people who need training. It’s also a way to build trust in your programs and the credibility of your message.

I started using a Facebook business page several years ago as a way to learn how to use Facebook for business so I could teach others. What started out as an experiment has turned into an effective way to promote our training programs. HER University is both an example of what real estate agents can do with their own Facebook business pages but also a tool for the training department to get more agents to our programs. Here’s a sample of how I use the page to market training at HER Realtors:

Events This is probably a no-brainer, but the ability to create Facebook events and invite people to them is one way to draw attention to special training programs or classes. The event has a link to register through Eventbrite (more on Eventbrite in a future post), information about the speaker/trainer, and all the basic details. As we near the date of the program, posts about what participants need to know or other helpful information is added. If available, I post videos and pictures to the Facebook event also. I encourage people to share the event to help broaden the reach, but ideally it should be promoted.
Sharing and tagging When we hold a special event or program, I and others share to the page about it with one or multiple photos and tag participants. This doesn’t necessarily get people to the event or program, but it heightens awareness of what we’re doing. Participants will often share these posts or comment. (I or one of my colleagues always respond when someone comments on a post).
Class Posts Any time we want to try to get more registrations for a class or webinar, it goes on the Facebook page with a link to register for the class/webinar. It’s not enough to just post information about a class or webinar, people need to have a way to contact someone or register for the class. And don’t forget pictures or video!
Video We create videos with quick tips or other information that our agents might find useful. Posting these videos helps demonstrate that the page is a resource for information. I used to post the YouTube link to the videos, but now I post directly to the page. This gets more attention and organic reach.
Interesting Information In addition to the information about upcoming classes and programs, we regularly post information about the company and real estate industry for agents to share. This is intended to help get the word out about topics we think they need to know or would like to know, but it also serves to give agents something to share on their pages. Creating content can be difficult for some of them despite our efforts to teach and reinforce best practices.
Private groups Sometimes it makes sense to create a private group for agents participating in a multi-session program. The private group becomes the place they and the instructor(s) can communicate and share their progress. The private group becomes a place for social learning also.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of what a Facebook page can be used for to promote a training program. To be truly effective, I believe you need to put some of your budget towards boosting posts and advertising the page. Training is a recruiting opportunity in real estate, and the more agents at other brokerages know about a company’s programs, the more attractive it might be to affiliate with the company. This is likely true for other industries as well. Engaging managers on the page is helpful. They can help get the word out and have a presence on the page, too.

Facebook is not the only social networking site that’s useful for promoting a training program, but it’s relatively cheap (or free) and easy to use.