Agent First Summit – Giselle Ugarte
Giselle Ugarte joined us at our Agent First Summit last week to chat about the power of social media and short form content! Giselle is a force! She’s a professional online communicator, with a background in social media marketing, performance coaching, podcasting, social media influencing, multimedia producer, and more.
Giselle has been featured on Business Insider, MTV, Yahoo, and Buzzfeed. She is also the founder of Action-Forward, created to help influencers and executives use the power of social media to reach their audiences.
Giselle came to speak with the Agent First Group about the importance of social media, specifically “short-form” content. The world is quickly headed in the direction of shorter everything, and real estate agents have to keep up!
The Four Types of Short Form Content You Need
There are four main types of content you should be posting to EVERY platform.
- Introduction/reintroduction. Post regularly (about once a week) to “introduce” yourself. There are bound to be people who don’t know who you are on social media and you want to make sure they can easily figure out who you are.
- Connection–ask lots of questions. You need to ask your audience questions as often as they ask you questions to build a relationship with them.
- Value or a lesson. Provide your audience with a reason to see your content. Prove that you are a credible expert and can give them something of value.
- Sell without actually selling. You have to sell, but you don’t want it to be obvious or pushy or you’ll drive people away.
You want to embrace the power of your phone. Everyone is addicted to their phones these days, but you shouldn’t be ashamed of it. You should use the power of that phone to engage with people all the time.
Get on there and start creating content that will attract people to follow you.
The Three Reasons People Follow You
There are three main reasons people get on social media and follow you:
- Because they see themselves in you,
- They see someone they love in you,
- Or they see someone they aspire to be and/or a problem solved in you.
People want to connect. They go to social media to find friends–people they would actually enjoy talking to. To reach that audience, start out by thinking of a specific person you want to reach and work with. Consider the kinds of questions they ask you:
- WHAT do you do? (Some people may not really understand your job.)
- What’s it like to work with you? (Do you have a family? How often will you respond? Will your kids be with you? Are you on your phone all the time?)
- What is the process like? (How does it work to sell a home? What do I [as the client] have to do? What will you be doing?)
These are the questions you need to answer to bring clients to you. Make it clear to them who you are and what you can do for them.
Think about who your client needs you to be. Some clients like to know the numbers, some clients work emotionally and may need extra support, some clients just want to get through this as fast as possible. Understand who your client is and what they need from you every day. Then, prepare to share online how you can be that person.
How To Create Short Form Content
When you create short form videos, create a soft landing–don’t be there just to sell, be there to interest them in more of your content. Draw them to your social media sites and websites. You need to make sure people know who you are within about 10 seconds when they come to your site–do they know at first glance who you are, who you serve, and what you do?
It takes 21-24 touchpoints for people to actually make a buying decision. You need to make sure when people go to your social sites they can see enough of you to begin to trust you and consider working with you. Make sure they know what you look like, what you do, and why you do it. By the time they actually call you, they should feel like they already know you.
You want to provide value in a short amount of time–keep it around a minute a majority of the time. Provide text on your video for those who don’t watch with sound. Keep your answers short and simple–you aren’t an encyclopedia! People want short and powerful answers, not tons of boring content.
As you get going, you can always keep bringing content back around. Most people new to your platform won’t scroll far on your page to find answers to old questions, so you can repeat the important questions and answers regularly. Bring content that invites engagement, because seeing others engage encourages more people to engage and your audience will continue to grow.
To truly engage with people, you want to be real. Use your face, use your life! Share your struggles with adversity, share your personal life, your disabilities, your strengths, your mistakes and successes. YOU make the content unique.
People want to know you more than anything else. When they know they can trust you, they’ll be much more inclined to work with you because they know they can trust you and wouldn’t mind hanging out with you while they take the huge step to buying or selling a house.
Now Get Started!
You can get started any time. If you want to hop on TikTok, you should do it now! Your audience will be new on TikTok, but with the location services TikTok provides, they will likely be local. This is the moment to get onto this new platform and start working.
Don’t be afraid–you’ll probably mess up at first, but that’s okay! Embrace it, because your viewers will realize you’re a human they wouldn’t mind talking to. Always remember that there are three main reasons you want to get out there and make content:
- Consistency
- Connection (know exactly who you’re talking to)
- A desire to make the world a better place
Your content should address the people you want to talk to. Know who you want your audience to be and talk to them with a desire to make their world better. Think of a question your audience wants to see answered and go answer it! If you can do that, you’re sure to succeed.
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