Are You an Accidental Content Marketer?

Excellent, expected. The inspirational Business Advice Podcast. Hey, hey, hey guys. Welcome to Excellence Expected with me, Mark Aswith.

Now, I've got a very special guest today. I'm going to tell you a little story. They say that content is all about telling stories. So let's open up with this one.

Flash in mind back to April, 2015. And I went to Las Vegas, New Media Expo. And I was kind of this Englishman. I would not say New York, Englishman in Vegas.

You know, I'm kind of tall and gangly. I'm going to tell you a little accent. And they say that we stand out. Well, it seems I did stand out and attracted an extremely, extremely good friend who taught me everything I ever needed to know about, well, everything American.

And in fact, in a couple of weeks from the day to this recording, which is the 20th of July, this guest will be taking my first ever baseball game. I'm going to a baseball game, guys. And today's guest is chaperoning me. And it gives me masses of pleasure.

We're going to talk about what we're talking about in a second. But I'm just going to bring this guest on because she is fantastic. Ramona Rice, how are you? That was like the best introduction I've had yet.

Well, we've not finished yet, but I'll go downhill. Because you know the show normally, like you listen to the show. And we normally go through the whole, this is what we're going to talk about. And this is just as much more fun because you normally give me all the grief for English.

I figured the more ammo that I give you, the more fun this will be. That's true. Yeah, I need to watch myself. I might get all of UK really upset at me when I go what with certain terms.

So like faucet. I don't know what faucet is apart from something that you tell me exists. Fine. So let's get to the problem then.

So you guys listen out there and obviously, Ramona yourself, you know what the deal is with excellence expected. We are here to define, challenge and conquer a problem for people in a small business. And the challenge today, we are going to define accidental content marketing, what that is, and how you can conquer it as a small business person. So Ramona, before we do that, you actually do two things, don't you?

And you've got, you've got a Deja was in smart real estate marketing, which I articulated terribly then. And you also run fantastic podcasts called sports galpal. So before we dive into content marketing, tell the listeners why they should believe you. Well, I'm actually the communications manager for a really large, independently owned, realistic company in Virginia, which is why I live in the States.

So we have over 600 real estate agents and most agents are entrepreneurs themselves. So I help with the corporate branding, corporate social media, corporate public relations. And then each individual's real estate agents, social media plans, they can utilize me and I can coach them and help them through that. So through that, I got so many questions and so many companies don't have an expert like me in house, where an agent can go to and feel safe and go, how do I do this?

I started smartrealestatemarketing.com, which is a blog and site where real estate agents can go to learn about content marketing and how it specifically handles for the real estate agents. And then we met, and that's why I went to Las Vegas was the company sent me out there to learn about, you know, new media and things like that, because I blog regularly, we're thinking about starting a podcast that brand. And so while I was there, it was Mark's fault. We were at dinner eating sushi under the elbow, a pack flint, because he was above us because we were mere peons, we're on the floor.

And he was like on this table above us. I think Jordan Harbiger was also at that table if I do a call. Yeah, it was. It was, I think they, I was going to say they accosted us at the door, of course, but that's probably not true.

They were still in the queue before, as in, I remember sitting there and it was kind of this awkward thing. So it was like, oh, hi, Pat, nice to meet you again and Jordan, good to see you. And then they kind of sat us really close together. So it was like, oh, yeah, have a good meal.

Have a good meal. And then instantly you've seen them again. It's, this is kind of odd. And it was, it was, it was a good day.

It was a good day. It was a good sushi as well. And that's, yeah, that led to a podcast, didn't it? That it did.

So while I was there, Mark asked me my Twitter handle from, from me personally, is Sports Gal Pal. And in 2012, I started a blog explaining sports from my perspective as a woman's perspective. And I kind of abandoned it and Mark says, well, that would be just a smashing podcast. You should do that.

And I'm like, sure, yeah, I'll do that. Well, while I was at New Media, I kept asking people and they're like, yeah, you should do that. And then the last day of the conference, I met Pod Vader, who is head of content at Block Tech Radio. And then I went to Mark after him with Jay and I said, you know, Pod Vader.

And I'm like, Mark is this guy really good? Yeah, he's really should do it. So it's Mark's fault. I have a podcast.

So it's a sports gal pal. And it's been now what two months and I just recorded my ninth episode on this week. So it's kind of exciting. It's a really good story.

It was a real whirlwind. You kind of went there, obviously, for a completely different reason, learned everything that you possibly could and then came away with the podcast of your own as well. It was a fun weekend, fun week, actually, wasn't it? And now I think it's really good to see you.

I can show you guys really, really well. And it's a really interesting angle, which I think is what got Pod Vader really interested. And it's very interesting to see an idea come so quickly and get implemented so quickly. The reason that I say that is it seems as if that's kind of what you did with smart real estate marketing.

I'm really curious. I want to dig in a bit more about how did how did you manage to convince your boss, if you like, the blog and even a podcast in the future is a good idea because that takes a lot of time. It does. I'm really lucky.

I work with a great company that really believes in entrepreneurship because, you know, we have three owners of the company who were entrepreneurs themselves. They have not sold out to like a larger real estate corporation. You know, we are, you know, we're here in our area. So we know our area and so they really believe in entrepreneurship.

And one of the things that the big thing was that I'm just not allowed to sell to my realtors already helped. So that's the only rule other than that, they want me to get out there and spread this word because it makes better real estate agents, but also they see the bigger pictures that it helps their brand because they can say, well, we have this person and she's a national expert on this and you get access to her for free. So it's a win-win for both of us where I can grow my career goals and they allow me to be very entrepreneurial within my job. And I think more companies as, you know, this younger generation is starting to come up, we want to be entrepreneurial, but we don't necessarily want to be entrepreneurs by ourselves.

We want to be within our roles and our jobs. So I think you're going to see companies shifting to this kind of model saying we're going to allow you to have freedom and time to do these side projects as we see the benefit for us. So they've been really supportive, not only with smart real estate marketing, but also sports and the job how, which has been tremendous. That's amazing.

That is really, really good. It kind of, it kind of makes me think back to where I was when I was sort of 23 and wanting to do this kind of thing. But first of all, being in the UK and especially the north of the UK, if you try to do anything like that, the instant answer would have been, you can't do this on company time, sunshine. What is this?

Do that in your own time? And that the fact that you, not only for one of the better word are allowed to do that, but you're encouraged and they see the value of you being positioned and by proxy, then being positioned as the experts, that just blows my mind. It's amazing. Yeah, it's just really smart in their part.

And again, I hope more businesses, well, not in our industry. I want us to stay ahead. But for other industries, this is a great model. You have talented people who are passionate about other things outside of what they do.

But if you encourage that, it makes better camaraderie. We have better companionship amongst our employees. And again, with the Sports Angle, it actually gives me an opportunity to talk to my principal owners and my vice presidents about things that are not related to work that are on the same level. So it's been really helpful and it's been fun.

So yeah, I'm really, really lucky. It's really, really good. I really like that. It's sort of begs the question from my perspective as well.

Why content marketing? So why did you guys choose the medium that you chose? And what was the reaction of everyone around you in the business, especially the kind of, I guess, the more traditional marketers, if there are any at your place, you know, why did you choose that medium and what was the reaction from the company overall? Well, I was hired by this company in 2013 specifically for this.

And basically the bullet points of the job, like listing was they wanted to do social media, publications and special projects. And that was it. So I got to build my position within the company. And again, that's lucky.

And I just got really lucky to have an amazing boss, you know, our creative, you know, head of marketing who said, you know, we're going to let you run with this and we're going to get you whatever tools you need and education you need. And we've gone with it. And we started small. You know, we took baby steps.

We focused on one platform at a time and very quickly we started seeing like results now, social media for Rosenwambel.com, which is received about an average of 80,000 unique pay views a month. It is the number three refer to our site. Social media is right behind organic and direct traffic. So that's a real testament to, you know, the amount of content we're producing.

And also the fact of how real estate itself has changed. And I know this is all over the world. You know, people look for houses very definitely that they did even two years ago with the, you know, growth of different platforms and the way they're doing that. So it's really important for us as a company to stay with that trend and stay ahead of that trend.

So we are giving the product and the content really is the houses. It's the listings. So how do we make those better? How do we make the pictures better?

How do we make the descriptions better? How do we make it easier for people to find the house they're looking for or the real estate agents or the information they need? Because when you buy a house, it can be very scary. There's a lot of steps you have to go through and unless you're doing it every day, it can be really overwhelming.

So our content marketing strategy for the brand Rosenwambel is that we want to provide education and value to our potential clients because we want them to understand the process so that when it comes time for them to buy a home, they already trust us. And the other thing that it allows us to do is recruit better real estate agents because we're providing them with, you know, how do you know, really list a house on Facebook and do it well or Twitter? How do you utilize these new platforms in a way that's going to bring you leads and success and keep you in front of your customers? So it's kind of a too-prong kind of approach to that.

And I think more companies, the more that they utilize content marketing, will see better, stronger results. I completely agree with that. And it seems like you guys have got that pretty soon. It seems like you're doing fantastically well at that.

And I just want to swing that back around to the issue that we're here to challenge today, which is overcoming being an accidental content market. So that's a curious term. I've never heard that one before. What is an accidental content marketer?

It is when businesses try to do social media the way we would use our personal social media. And what I mean by that is this too often when you especially solo entrepreneurs, because you're so overwhelmed with everything you have to do to run a business. And when it comes time to post or do anything on social media, you're like, Oh, no, I have to post something on Facebook because I haven't posted today. And so you randomly find something that maybe has to do with whatever it is you're selling or trying to achieve.

And you post it out there and you hope for the best. When you do have a content marketing plan, it means that every single post, every single tweet, every single blog, every single video has a purpose behind it. And the reason why you're doing it, it makes it much more effective to, you know, get to the audience you want to enter into measure results. I think that's a really interesting point about having the strategy and the plan and everything that goes along with that.

And just before we dig into that, I think that warrants a good solid discussion. One of the things I just want to pick up on is if you do go about this in kind of a shotgun money, if you are one of these accidental content matters, which I think at some point, we probably all have been, especially in the early days, not quite knowing what to do with these things. What are some of the results that you can see? What are some of the negatives that come with doing that?

Well, one of the biggest negatives is that you're not going to grow a strong following. And what I mean by that is, you know, it's not necessarily the number of followers you have. That is never, you should never judge the success of your content marketing base and the amount of followers you have. You should instead and, you know, measure the success on how many sales or how many signups or how many of the goal that you had for whatever program you're trying to market, you actually receive.

That's the ultimate goal. So if I only have 10 followers, but all 10 of them sign up for my program, that's a successful campaign. But if I have a million followers and only 10 people sign up for that, something went wrong. So when we are accidentally, you know, posting things, what happens is that we're not doing it consistently.

We're not doing strategically and we're not reaching the people we really need to reach. Oftentimes, entrepreneurship is really about you solving your customers' problems. But if you're accidentally posting the stuff, the customers that need your solution aren't going to find you. Yeah, completely get that.

You're not actually going to be solving any problems either by kind of shotgunning that one. One of the things that I think will resonate with people out there, especially people in small business, are wearing all these different hats and, you know, they're trying to do so many different things on a day to day basis is why do we end up like that? Why do we become the accidental content market? Have you got any insights on why we end up like that?

I just think that we don't think about it. So when we're creating like posts or marketing, all we're thinking about is, OK, I have to create a post rather than going back to the reason why we're creating it. You know, I know I need to post on, for example, for Sports GalPAL when I produced an episode, I know that I need to do a certain number of steps to get it onto Twitter, to get it onto Facebook, to get it onto Instagram, to do all the different things I need to do. But I need to remember who are my audiences on each of those platforms?

What am I trying to achieve out of this episode? What is my goal? If my goal is to get more subscribers on iTunes, then I need to be very careful about my verbiage and I need to think about that. So if I'm just randomly posting about the episode, I can't do that.

Instead, I'm just rushing away. Here's my latest episode and I'm not giving the client or the potential listener any type of real value or reason why they should believe in what I'm saying. You see so many posts on all sorts of social media that are just self-centered as well. And that's one thing that I just want to pick your brains on because we all do it.

I promote the show, I promote various other things through Twitter. I also have a bit of banter, I've just as we tweeted this, actually, I tweeted you a picture of myself saying, what's the force it? And that's the kind of personality you guys listen and you can look that up. That does exist.

And one of the things that really kind of gets me and I think it gets a lot of people is when you see businesses that are so obviously accidental content marketers. And the instant thing they do is go, we have a sale on, we have this, we do this, we are the best at this. Is that something that you as a business strive to stay away from? How do you kind of mix the promotion with the value?

Well, for Rosenwambel, some of the things that we do is we try to highlight things that have nothing to do with real estate. So every Monday, for example, we do our Happy Monday post. We do a various motivational quote. Often it's to get the real estate agents geared up for another week because again, we got to keep them motivated because it can be really tough to be a real estate agent.

That has nothing to do with real estate. It does not link back to our site. It does not link back to any place that they're going to search property. Instead, it just shows that we're real people.

We highlight our people. We highlight our internal customer agents and we highlight some of the things that they do, whether it is, we have one thing that we do called Ask Gin Live where we have a new homes expert and she goes out into the field every week and does a Twitter chat. But one of the things that she's done is she's really passionate about dog rescue. So she's found a no kill shelter and she brings a dog out to every site visit she goes to every single time that she does that within two weeks.

The builder of that house will pay the adoption fees. Every single dog has been adopted. So that has nothing to do with houses at all other than people like dogs. But it has to do with the fact that she is passionate about something.

And she's saying, I love this so much. I'm going to corporate my job and we're showing Rosenwambel as we support our people outside of them just selling houses for us. We have a line in our market that says we believe people are more important than houses. If you show your customers that you believe that they are more important than whatever product or whatever search you're trying to sell to them, they're going to be loyal to you.

You know, great examples of this are Starbucks. Starbucks is one of the best social media companies in the world. And they're so smart because they've created a ravenous tribe who is consistently not only devouring their really overpriced coffee, but devouring their social content. And I think that's important.

I think that we could do more examples like that where, you know, we put the emphasis on the customer and why we love our customers. If you do that and you bring them invite them into the conversation, they're going to be your best brand advocates. Anyway, they're going to tweet about you. They're going to post about you.

They're going to do your work for you. They're going to sell you to their friends. So it's more about trying to get your customer and the person you're trying to reach engaged in your brand and talking about them because people love to talk about themselves. So if you do that, well, you're going to have really successful social media.

You can't do that by accident. Once in a while, you may throw something up there and it sure happens to answer that, okay, that worked. You know, sometimes things happen last minute and I get that. But for the majority of your post, you can have a plan of how you're going to attack them and where you're going to put them.

Yeah, I think that resonates so much with so many small business owners as well. And the one thing that I take from that personally is that so many people in business are kind of scared for one of two reasons of putting out content that isn't directly related to either themselves or their sales or the promotions. And I think personally, I think the scared for two reasons. One, they're scared that we're a business.

That's not what we're supposed to do, which is crazy. And two, they're just scared of the time it will take to think of something like that's something that is interesting to the customers. But what you just suggested there, that takes zero effort on the part of anyone creating content over and above that, what they would have to do to create something anyway. You know, it's not extra effort.

It's just different and it's better value. It's more fun. It's more interesting. So if there was if there was something that you could say to someone sat there, I'm acting man, you sat there in a small business wanting to try something like this.

How could they convince their boss to let them try? And I know that's a curveball, but I figured with friends that you want to spot. That is tricky. Sometimes you got to be careful and maybe it's small bites.

So maybe it's just something as simple as again, like the quotes, no one can get offended by quotes. You know, it's find some really general inspirational ones and do those and then show your bosses the return, see how many more followers you got or how many more likes or engagement you got. And then it would be add some other things. You know, again, the thing with the dog and the agent who's doing the live tweet, that's a whole big project and that took a long time to get to.

We had to first convince the bosses to let us do the Twitter chat in the beginning. But once they started seeing the results from it, I mean, it was huge. So the biggest thing is that you have to have some data, find out if your competitors are doing something similar because the minute your competitors are doing something, your bosses are going to be more likely. Yeah, we want to do it.

I can't tell you how many times now we've got local real estate companies going, what is Rose and Womel doing and asking us. And we're like, we're just being ourselves. The other thing is that you can't be afraid of some personality into your business. So, you know, people are like, oh, if I post this, maybe I'll spend like because we don't do cat rescue.

Maybe we're fending the cat people. Well, we love cats too. It's just the dogs are either the transport and too, you know, it's one of those things where if they get that offended by it, we don't want them to be our customer anyway. So you have to be willing to let go of maybe some potential customers to get the right customers to you.

That is a massive, massive point because I think we had this discussion internally, but the MSUD not too long ago and we said, listen, what kind of business do we want to work in this director's? What kind of business do we want to work in? Ultimately, it has to be profitable, but bloody hell, it's got to be fun. You know, we've got to enjoy it and we've got to let the personality shine through.

So I think that's such an important point. And another important point that you mentioned is results, engagement, likes because so many small business people, because they're so busy, all they're focused on sales. How can you start to figure out what goals you should be tracking, what results you should be looking at and what really is a positive outcome for a social media campaign other than sales? What can people start looking for?

That's a really good question. Some things that we look forward to pin you on again, the on different campaigns that we're running is engagement. So how many people are liking the post, commenting on the post, sharing the post, sharing is really, really important because it means that someone liked what you posted and put it on the post. Put it out there so much that they're willing to share it with their peers and their sphere of influence.

And when people do that, it's basically them saying a brand thing saying, I enjoy this brand so much, I'm going to share their content with you. And that's a huge kind of testimonial to your company. So if you're getting that, you're doing something really good. So if you're not getting those things, something to look at is, you know, what time of day are your customers online?

I always tell people when you're starting out, let's say you're starting out with zero followers, what you should do is post breakfast, lunch, dinner. What I mean by that is post something when they first go to work because most employees, I hate to say it when they go into work. I'm paid to log on to Facebook, but most of them just do it anyway. Suppose something like right about that nine o'clock hour, post something around lunchtime to keep them entertained and then post something around eight o'clock.

The kids are in bed. People cannot watch TV without having their smartphone or their tablet in front of them. So have something there. You know, if you start out doing those things, and then see when your customers respond to different messages and also do some A.B.

testing. Sometimes I'll post something on one day of the week and then I'll change the photo, change the title. It's the same piece of content and then I posted a different time of the week or a different day and I see which one did better. So it helps me kind of see, okay, when does my audience want this piece of marketing versus that piece of marketing?

So that helps too. Yeah, that's fantastic. I think the insights that you mentioned, it's so important around getting. It writes when it comes to talking to the people, trying to understand a little bit about their behavior.

You can go a long, long way. So I completely agree with that. That's such a good point. And I'm actually going to hit you with a quick fire question.

In fact, two quick fire questions. The first one is we all know about blogging, but what are some of the other types of content that people can quickly create? They could do a call out for testimonials. So get your ravenous fans who love you so much to write testimonials about you on whatever platform.

So if you're a restaurant, you need to be on Yelp. If you are a recruiter, get some testimonials on your LinkedIn page, you know, get some testimonies that you put on your website. Testimonials from your clients are going to be the number one piece in so many businesses. Skip that, get testimonials.

That is it's ridiculous how many people don't do that. And it's something that I'm really terrible at. I'm really, really bad at it. And it's amazing that when you ask people trip over themselves, people really, really want to help.

If they like you, man, they like you, you know, and you end up with a ask me for one sentence testimony. And it was like two sides of a fall and a nice bottle of whiskey through the post. You know, it's really amazing to see what people are willing to do for you. So I think that's really, really interesting.

And the second quick fire question is you mentioned some of the platforms in there outside the big three, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. What are the platforms should people be considered? It depends on what you're selling. So for Rose and Womble, because houses are what we sell Pinterest is huge for us.

And we actually have more followers on our Pinterest page than any other platform. We also have more followers than a lot of national companies do. So that's really exciting for us because, again, beautiful images, cell houses. So depending on your, your niche or where you are, you know, that depends.

So for example, for any type of housing, sellable goods, if you're targeting women, you want to be on Pinterest. If you're skewing younger, you may want to check out Instagram. It's fast growing. But also don't discount.

Some people are like, Oh, I don't want to do the big three. They're saturated. Figure out a nugget. You know, that's unique to you.

So for us for Facebook, it's super saturated. But what we did was we decided, you know, we're going to only focus on our core customers, which is really getting agents. So my audience actually for Facebook is actually to recruit more agents and keep our agents happy. So a lot of my postings is about them and things that they can share with their clients.

So it's not necessarily to get outside external customers for Rose and Womble. That certainly helps. But my primary goal is actually for recruiting agents, which a lot of people don't realize. So it's okay to utilize Facebook and that aspect where technically you would want to use LinkedIn for that.

So it's okay to like use Twitter, like, you know, to find Facebook followers. It's okay to do that, you know, think about it in a new way. But Pinterest is huge. LinkedIn is huge.

And if you're in any type of housing industry, house, H-O-U-Z-Z is huge. It is quickly becoming a very popular social media network for anybody in the housing industry. If you're in decorating decor, it's really fascinating. So I would definitely check that out too.

Love that. Fantastic. Never heard of that one. Check it out guys.

How's dot com will stick back to show us. Ramona, you know, the time that we've arrived at the famous excellence expected actionable takeaways, which I'm saying with like a sinister English voice. I feel like I've been more English because you're on the show. I feel like some kind of weird butler.

We didn't explain. I'm from the land where we kicked you out. So I'm actually live near Yorktown, which is where Cornwall has signed the treaty, surrendering America to Americans. And then I actually went to college who, and I went to a college that was created by Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence.

So I may find a mark throughout all of Vegas doing this and he just took it with a smile. Very British of you. So on the inside, I was like, I'm going to gamble you out. So I didn't get that.

I never managed to get the deed to book. Next time, I'll get you. I love it. Right.

So the accidental content marketers out there. What are three things that these guys can do to start seeing better results and stop being the accidental content actor? Actionable tip, number one, please. OK, every post needs to have a goal attached to it.

That's a curious one. Now, I'm going to just ask you to dispel a myth here because that seems like it could be a lot of work. Is that true? No.

Interesting. Very interesting. So what are some examples of some of the goals? So specifically, let's say you put in a Facebook post 9am catching the people that are just logging on at work.

Obviously, that's what happens, of course. What kind of goal might not be? Well, for example, at that 9am post is really reminding them, hey, we are in real estate. We're your local expert.

We like you. We're here with you surviving your Monday. That's honestly, that's the goal for that post. It's just a reminder.

Hey, we're with you. Other reminders can be something as I need people to get back onto our website so they can learn about FICO scores because I need people to have higher credit scores in order to be able to qualify for mortgage or I want people to sign up for this newsletter or I want people to buy this particular product. I've worked with DaySaws where specifically was we were targeting specific, like the type of some massages or facials with certain specific posts so we can measure exactly how many people booked appointments or purchase certificates. So every post needs to be related to something you're working on.

So it doesn't necessarily have to be based on sales. I like them to be based on sales because that's the clearest way to see if you're getting your return on your investment of time and money because social does require some money sometimes. But what it does allow you to do is if you have a goal of, I need to get my brand out there, I need to be seen by the people who need to see me. And that's where those kind of funny Friday or cartoons or maybe just sharing some, you know, behind the scenes video, it may not link back to your website or may not link back to where they're going to purchase, but it does allow people to see who you are as a company.

So that's a goal. So every post and that's where the accidental thing happens because if you have a goal for every post, that means when you're actually creating the content, you're already thinking about, okay, I can get 10 different tweets out of this one blog post. So that's the way you need to think about it. That's really, really good.

And that just that completely blows the old myth out of the world. That doesn't sound hard. It actually sounds really well thought out, but actually you can do that pretty quickly. I think that's really good.

Really, really good. And actually, but number two, please, the content calendar is your friend. The dreaded content calendar of doom. Yes, the content calendar is your friend.

I find this really, really hard. Some kind of lazy with this sort of stuff. So I'm going to take a lot from this tip. So how can people get started with the content calendar?

Because it sounds like a big old task. Does it need to be that? It doesn't. It's just a matter of mapping out that you can be as crazy as I am and actually put on there, you know, the times things are going to really release and you can do that if you really want it to.

Don't do that. Instead, it gives you a map to go, okay, on this Monday, I'm going to talk about this topic. And these are the three things I'm going to talk about. And so I'm able to get like, you know, 10 tweets out of that, two Facebook posts and LinkedIn posts, whatever it is.

It allows you to kind of have a map. So if you get your content calendar as a map to your social media, it allows you to then one, see where too many post stars so you can spread them out and get more consistency for your audience to hear your voice and see your message. But it also allows you to see, you know, plan for things like, you know, holidays. That's a perfect time for brands and companies to reengage their customers because people are already tweeting about, you know, whatever holiday it is.

So like I already have Thanksgiving and Christmas already scheduled for my brands because you know what? They're on the same days, practically every year. So go ahead and do that, take an hour and get that done. Then we don't have to think about it.

So that's why content calendars are really important because it allows you when you have some off time or let's say like this week, I was kind of in and out of the office with some stuff. So I couldn't post as much on the fly. So it allowed me to schedule things beforehand. So the content calendar frees you as an entrepreneur to focus on what you really need to do, which is getting sales.

So if you're utilizing the content calendar well, what it does it allow you to, again, think about what you're going to post ahead. So that you have those goals. So it kind of is a two process step. It is a really, really important thing.

I have to have an even nice socket it. I do try my best to adhere to it. I find it really, really difficult. But I'm just going to throw in there a WordPress plugin.

If any of you guys use WordPress for your blogging off or any kind of using WordPress as a platform. If you like, there's a fantastic plugin called WP editorial calendar, which allows you to schedule things up on a more visual basis. That is just fantastic. And to be honest, it's bailed me out.

So it bails me out every time I post something being honest. So you should check it out. It's fantastic. Love it, Ramona Supersoff.

And let's get to actionable tip number three, please. You need to invest in automation and you may even need some virtual help. That's curious. OK, so let's break this down.

So the first bit, automation, what does that look like? You need to invest in either a platform to help you schedule social media posts, whether it be Hootsuite, Buffer, Edgar. There's a thousand of them out there. Those are the kind of big three.

My personal preference, I like Buffer a lot. I also like Hootsuite a lot. I think HubSpot is another one. But what it allows you to do is again to schedule things out so that you can see it on a calendar view.

And so like, again, you can schedule, for example, we have a testimonial Tuesday segment for Rosenwambel every Tuesday. We schedule out. We highlight one of our agents, one of the testimonials they have received from clients. And so those are already planned six weeks in advance so that I'm not doing it day off because I'm maybe in a meeting on a Tuesday.

But my social media followers don't know that. They just think, honestly, I'm changing computer and posting things all day long. So automation allows you to do that. So and it doesn't mean that I can't post things on the fly.

So if I'm at a meeting and it's something cool is happening with the company, I'll take a quick picture and post it on Facebook instantly. That's OK. But what it does do is it frees me up to if I have a heavy week of meetings or meeting with clients, then I'm still posting things because oftentimes of entrepreneurs, real estate is really bad about this. When they're in the middle of working with clients, they're not filling their sales funnel.

So when they're done with these clients, they're completely empty and scrambling, oh, God, where's an exhale going to be? Entrepreneurs are very much that way as well. So if you're doing these kind of automated things, it will allow you to keep that sales funnel full and keep people coming in. And then virtual hop, what I mean by that is it is OK for you to hire out some of the stuff.

You know, as long as you understand what your brand voice is, because every brand sounds a little different on social, it's OK to find a virtual assistant to schedule all these tweets for you. It's OK to hire ghost writers for your blog if you don't want to write them. It's OK, like Rosenwambel, we actually have another company that handles our Facebook ads because I'm too busy to deal with them. So instead we decide it, let's invest the money.

It's a little more expensive. But it's worth it because it frees me up to do better things for the company. So it's about strategically deciding, you know, where am I going to spend my time and my money? And if I can use a little bit of money to free up some time, that is well worth it.

So don't be afraid to hand off a portion or even some of your social media to somebody else. Notice I didn't say all of it. You can't do that. Even me, Rosenwambel didn't hand off their social media.

They hired somebody to be in-house so that it's exclusively for their social media. And I think that's important. So you can't just completely abandon it, you know, with a VA. You can't let them be at their own devices.

Instead, you have to give them guidance and tell them what you want to do. Your voice needs to still be in there. But it's OK to hire help to do a lot of this. I think that's one of the big problems that a lot of people face is a kind of I guess the hand over and not only that, but the understanding that it's all right to hand over to someone.

I know I struggled with it in the past and it's kind of a control thing. You know, this person might not do it very well. They don't get the company. They don't understand how we talk, which is absolute rubbish because that can all be taught.

So I think that that on its own is such an important thing to remember for people. And the automation, again, is so, so advice like I can't imagine you being able to put serious content marketing or a social strategy, strategy together without some kind of automation. So check those tools out, guys. Edgar, sweet, go on.

Sorry. And it's so cheap. I mean, it's so you can get like a monthly fee. I think like I think for Buffer for Sports Gop out, I think I pay like 15 bucks a month, maybe 10 bucks.

That's fantastic. I mean, because I use it also for the smart real estate marketing. I have a Facebook group for that on called Real Estate Marketing Brainstorm. If you're a real estate agent, you can join that private Facebook group.

But I schedule all the groups stuff with that. You know, I'm not doing that daily because I have other things I have to do. So seriously, if you do nothing else today, go out and sign up for Edgar or who sweet. I am not affiliate.

I will not make any money recommending these products, but they will save you so much time. It's like your light bulb goes off and you're like, Oh, my gosh, I can do this. So yeah, completely get that. And I just actually started using Edgar a few weeks ago because the reason I like that one is that I'm terrible with batch processing things.

I love Buffer and I love Hootsuite, but I found that I was still getting behind on the publishing schedule. What I love about Edgar is that you create this continual library, which I think is really, really good for people like me. They're a little bit, a little bit lazy with stuff like that. Yeah.

And there's definitely different processes and things like that. And I'm continually on real estate, you know, smartolistainmarketing.com granted it's skewed towards real estate agents, but any person need each rate content marketing can get expert advice there. So feel free. You can tweet me out towards gal pal.

I will answer these questions. I'm about various different things because, you know, he helps me understand why my eight year old is really into green arrow. So, you know, this is important things. A mom needs to know.

So that's what I mean, you know, ask for help. I will give it. I have no problem sharing what we're doing. That is actually really a really good place to ask you where people can connect with you online other than at sports.

Yeah, I'll have on Twitter. Yeah. So that's honestly, I live there. There's several places that they can, they can connect with me.

If you're a real estate agent and you do want some one on one guidance, you know, that Facebook real estate marketing brainstorm is fantastic. We've got, we've got right now, we just started like two weeks ago, honestly, with this Facebook group. We have 150 realtors already and it's growing every day, which is amazing to me. So if you're in the real estate industry, all over the world, join that group.

You will be able to brainstorming a great ideas and take away from there. You can also reach me on sportrealestatemarketing.com and sportsgal pal.com. So I've got several places where you can reach out. Make sure you do reach out.

Otherwise, you're going to get a bar. I do a view on Twitter just like I do a bat my accent. That's not true. She's the most courteous Twitter ever.

I love it. Fantastic. Roman, that's been an amazing episode. That is packed full of well, everything that I need to know, everything that listens out there needed to know about stopping being an accidental content.

So thank you so much for that. Oh, no, it was my pleasure. And we're going to see each other podcast movement. Yes, we are.

I'm excited because I could explain what a foul ball is. Do you have no idea about any of this baseball stuff? But when I get back, yes, I'll be the baseball king. I'm actually you're recording the live podcast there with a good friend Jonathan.

Oh, can I tell you about that? Because that's wonderful. Oh, my gosh, I'm terrified of this one. So Jonathan from trivial warfare is a mutual friend of ours and he's convinced me and three other sports podcasters to come on his show at podcast movement and he's going to ask sports trivia questions and I'm supposed to answer them.

And it's terrifying and it's revenge because he had me on his podcast a couple of weeks ago. And I did trivia and his friend who co-hosts with him actually won and Jonathan, I think, was a little upset about that. So I'm very concerned to be perfectly honest with you. His co-host knows everything.

We did myself and Lev, my co-host over at the DC Universe show, did one on Saturday with him. And that guy knows everything. He's forgotten things I will never, ever know. He's like the brainiest guy on the planet.

So don't feel bad about losing. We lost as well. We lost like, royally, we lost. But it's a fun show.

Like everybody, it's fun because I can have my kids listen to it. There's a lot of like, unfortunately, Mark, they don't really like your podcast because they're bored because they're not business people yet. Well, when they get older, you wait and see. This content is evergreen.

That's right. They're like, why is mommy on a podcast? I mean, I get that question a lot. You know, so I can't wait to you relaunch your DC podcast because then he'll want to listen.

He'll be like, no, mommy, we must listen to all of it. We need to know why green arrow went back to Seattle in the early nineties. Yes, we do. Sure.

I'll bring out the geek, doesn't it? I love it. Well, Ramona, that has been amazing. Thank you once again.

And if you guys listening out there, don't forget everything that myself and Ramona have spoken about will be available at excellence-expected.com. Whilst you're over there, as usual, you can pick up your free copy of the essential 14-day guide to cutting your working hours and increasing your impact. It will help you stop hulking out, which is what Ramona says it did for me, which is amazing. So check that out.

You're going to like it. And until next time, don't forget the more you expect for yourself, the more you will excel. Bye bye.