Ian R: Welcome back, everyone to inspector toolbelt. Today we have on the crew from Inspector Media. They’re going to help us today with social media strategies and just some suggestions on what we can do as home inspectors to improve her social media presence. So ladies, first we have Mikayla Cox and we also have Daniel King.

Mikayla Cox: Hi.

Daniel King: How’s it going, guys.

Ian R: All right. Well, welcome. I’m glad you guys both made the time to be on the show. No need to be nervous. I’m going to ask some hard-hitting questions. Self-searching information we want.

Mikayla Cox: Absolutely. That’s what I’m here for.

Ian R: Social security numbers. Yeah, let’s just let us know everything about your deepest darkest fears. Just kidding. There could be nothing lighter than social media, social media was meant to be light and engaging. And it has morphed into kind of this huge thing. You guys have mastery over when it comes to the home inspection field. Before we get into that, tell us a little bit about yourselves and we’ll start again with Mikayla, what do you do over there at Inspector Media?

Mikayla Cox: Sure. Okay. Well, my title my fancy-schmancy title is Chief Operating Officer. I’ve been with inspector media for I believe, a year and a half, two years now, something along those lines. I pretty much take care of all customer service. I do a lot of the graphic design with clients, pretty much anytime anyone has a question or has something that needs taken care of? Chances are I’m the one doing it.

Ian R: Very nice. Daniel was describing you as the rock earlier, the company?

Daniel King: Definitely the glue, definitely the glue?

Ian R: How about you, Daniel, what do you do over there and at Inspector Media?

Daniel King: So I guess the title is VP of Operations, I really focus on the front end of everything. I handle, you know, the education portion when you know, home inspectors either, you know, raise their hand and says, Hey, can you help me with this, or they come from, you know, InterNACHI, through some kind of form that they filled out or just coming up to, you know, directly, you know, my job is just to kind of really focus on the benefits. Really, you know, I don’t specialize in the home inspection industry, but I’ve been in this space, you know, part of the home buying process since, you know, 2006. A majority of my career’s been working with real estate agents doing the same, somewhat the same as what I do here for, you know, Inspector media.

Ian R: Great. So you guys, both obviously have a lot of experience in our market you work directly with and under Nick, who owns the company. You guys know, what works and what doesn’t on social media for home inspectors, all across the board. We’re not talking about, you know, hey, I know what works in my local market, we’re talking the US, Canada, possibly other places, I don’t know, of what actually works in our industry. So tell me a little bit too, because Daniel, you actually help out or run BizVelop as well,

Daniel King: I don’t run it. So BizVelop is its a form. It’s a completely free form that Nick and Ben created, it’s got the built-in AI, a lot of resources, ask you questions, and based on those answers, you know, it’ll give you some articles and then ask another question and based off those. Anybody that says, Yeah, I’m, you know, it’s a wide range, you know, a lot of the home inspectors that come to us through the BizVelop form, are guys that are saying, yes, you know, I know social media is important. Can you have someone give me a call? That’s not it’s not necessarily saying, Hey, I’m looking for someone to do to provide a service, it’s that they’re looking for help, right? Those come to me, and they’re not just new home inspectors are also home inspectors that are trying to scale, you know, that are either saying, hey, what do I need to do with my brand to increase my prices? When is a good time to hire, you know, a new home inspector, and how to scale how to get that new home inspector, or they’ll just say, Hey, I’ve hired some guys? I need to make sure that I’m getting enough calls. What else can I do?

Ian R: Great. So I guess that kind of leads into one of the first points that I wanted to bring out, because I was talking with a home inspector, a couple of months ago when we first started talking about doing this particular subject on the podcast. He called me and he said, Ian, I think the social media thing is starting to get big. I thought he was joking. Like, yeah, it definitely is. Then he was serious. He’s like, I think we need to start taking advantage of it. I’m like, and I knew the guy really well. So I’m like, I think we’re about 15 years behind the curve on that one, but we can catch up. Then he kind of laughed because he was thinking, hey, it’s just Facebook, or, Hey, it’s just LinkedIn but their social media is just, it’s everywhere.

Mikayla Cox: Absolutely.

Ian R: Yeah. We’re all on it basically, in one form or another, whether we’d like to know it or not. It’s kind of like googling yourself. It’s kind of a little bit disconcerting. The information that’s out there on Yeah. You know, so in your opinion, why do you think a home inspector needs to, first of all, have a social media presence, and then maybe we can get into some of the nitty-gritty that can help home inspectors in their day to day with it?

Daniel King: Well, Ian, I was going to kind of tell you a little bit about this before, and then I’ll let Mikayla go. In 2006, I started with a company called House values.com, which sold out to Trulia, which is now Zillow today. You know, back in 2006, the big push was getting real estate agents to understand that paper advertisement was starting to die, not that they shouldn’t do it, right. Really knowing how to assess your marketing, you know, knowing how to assess what you’re about to get into. And that way you can assess what the ROI is. You know, if it hit what you were hoping for. So it’s kind of funny, you know, and again, it may sound funny, 2006, though, all the way to 2010. It was rather hard, especially during the crash, to paint a picture of what we think the internet is going to look like, for a business owner, especially. This is something that I always try to drive home with my home, it’s my home inspectors, if you’re offering a service to the community, right, as a business owner, but you’re not reaching the community, is there room for disconnect there? Right. And that’s how it was with real estate agents. And now today, obviously, fast-forwarding, if a real estate agent told you that they don’t do anything, as far as marketing or the internet, you know, it’s either because they’ve been in the business for 30 years, right? Or they’re just a real estate agent because they liked the title. Right? So what’s funny is now fast-forwarding, especially a lot of the newer inspectors that I talked to. I’m having somewhat of that same conversation day in and day out about social media, right. Social media, you know, as a younger, even for a home inspector to start a business 10 years ago, or even five years ago, it’s different. It was different than it is today. Right? It’s gonna be different in another couple of years. But the one thing that hasn’t changed is social media is growing, right. As our younger generation has gotten older, you know, we personally as individuals, we don’t get to decide, you know, what tools are the best use for business, we just don’t. As a community, we do, right. And as a society, we do. I do have a couple of crazy statistics that I found on NART, and it was Millennials now make up 43% of the homebuyers in this last year 43%. That’s an increase of 37%. Last year to 18%, the year before Generation X, they bought the most expensive homes at the median price of 320,000. So the study found that four out of five younger millennials, okay, four to five, were purchasing the homes four to five, eight, the younger, and then 48% of the older half. So and then for Gen Z.

Ian R: You can say it because I’m a geriatric millennial, that’s what they call us.

Daniel King: Okay, all right. Yeah, I think I made millennial by I think I’m at the cut-off. So I’m 37 I’m pretty Yeah.

Ian R: Oh, you’re a geriatric millennial, too. Yeah.

Daniel King: No, I should’ve said 36. Would that change it? So Gen Z is from 1997 to 2012. Okay. They’re buying power is growing. In the year 2026, they will have the highest percentage based on all the data coming up. They think that Gen Z will own 53% of the home buying. So my biggest thing about talking about these statistics is it’s like, this is kind of I’m going to take this old school. When I asked my real estate agents, I’m always like, you know, if you have your marketing budget, right, and you were to cut it in some pies, you know, some pieces of the pie, who are you trying to target? Right, because paper advertisement is targeting low-income and senior citizens now, right? So with a home inspector, you know, we’re going out for whatever the game plan is, whether it’s whoever, right, typically real estate agents, and homebuyers who we’re going after, right, who’s doing that who’s going to be doing that? out here in the future. So social media is, you know, to answer your question to kind of bring it back around and not kind of went off a tangent there. Social media is absolutely huge the good news is my experience our experience here as Inspector media, the good news is, most home inspectors are not using it to grow their business. So what that means is that there’s definitely probably a good opportunity, like the early bird gets the worm situation.

Ian R: I think that’s well said. Those are some pretty fantastic statistics that you shared with us. I think that paints the picture of what we’re actually talking about, you’re not enough home inspectors taking advantage of it. Some, some guys will say, Hey, I have a Facebook page, or, Hey, my niece started a TikTok, you know, and, okay, great. They have a tool, but they’re not using that tool. Yeah. So there’s a big gap and what are your thoughts on that, Mikayla?

Mikayla Cox: I mean, really, Daniel kind of hit all of the points that I would have made in answering the question. Yeah, it’s it really is a shame that more people don’t, the more inspectors specifically, don’t recognize the importance of it. And the argument that most people have with me when I’m trying to, you know, explain why social media is good, or whatever. The argument that I tend to hear a lot is, well, I just, I just don’t like it. And you know, it’s all this mess, I don’t belong. I’m like, you’re kind of defending my point in a way, because it’s like, you don’t like it because it’s so ingrained in your everyday life. Yeah. So that’s exactly why you should be using it.

Ian R: You know, I do have to put a plugin here for inspector media, we have worked with you guys since the beginning. We worked very closely with your founder, Eric, who we miss dearly. We have loved everything that you do, what you guys do for home inspectors is very specific to them. And very effective. It’s what’s called the top of the funnel. So we always talk about marketing funnels, it’s just a colloquial way of saying it. Hey, the bottom of the funnel, are they hiring you? How do you get people into the funnel down to that point where they hire you? You guys are top of the funnel, you’re capturing all these people. It’s like walking in, you know, 100 years ago, walking into the town square, where it’s all busy, and you’re just shoving people into the shop. Now it’s up to the shop owner. Okay, now I’m going to seal this deal and sell this. That doesn’t exist anymore. Everybody’s on their phone, even if they were in the public squares. They’re all on social media. So you guys do a fantastic job of that. So I do have to say that. I wouldn’t say it. If I didn’t mean we do social media posting. But we only do it for SEO reasons. So we’re not doing the same strategies anywhere near what you guys are doing. That’s also another point a lot of guys want to increase their SEO without doing anything with social media. In today’s day and age, that actually doesn’t really work. The Google algorithm reads Facebook into this algorithm, Instagram, and LinkedIn, we actually submit all everybody’s social media to Google so it can recognize, okay, it’s part of its structure data. This is where their social media is. Oh, okay, good. So that’s all on the back end and front end of websites. So if we want SEO,

Mikayla Cox: I described to clients a lot. I say this all the time, then I’m like, social media is almost in a way. It’s like an organic SEO builder. Yeah. So that’s, yeah, that’s right on the nose.

Ian R: Yeah, exactly. It builds traffic. Then it’s also built into the back end, technical stuff. Yeah. So for inspectors that often say, I don’t need social media. I really think Daniel’s statistics really showed why what person under 25 doesn’t have any social media. I haven’t met one yet. You know,

Mikayla Cox: Even the ones that don’t like it, Have it.

Ian R: Oh, yeah, exactly. Then even you go even older than that, you know, my mother. She’s gonna listen to this and then realize, I don’t know how old she is. I think she’s 69. She’s on social media. So are all of our sisters and brothers. You know, they’re going to be using things like Facebook, and the younger ones are going to be using things like Tiktok and Instagram. The geriatric millennials, we’re kind of in the middle. Me and Daniel.

Daniel King: Yeah. Sorry. And another thing to point out too, is that those statistics were for homebuyers, right? Well, we didn’t even scratch the surface of those statistics and what that looks like for young professionals coming into real estate. All right. So again, you know, my biggest thing is, who are we targeting? You know, because especially I totally, you know, there’s enough info on the internet that any anybody. You know that’s the great thing about social media, it’s free. Anybody can do it, right? You know, some people are gonna be better than others just because they’ve gotten used to it and, and what not but most of the time home inspectors don’t do it because it’s not something they grew up with, right? Or it’s not something that they, you know, want to spend time with or whatnot. I’m that guy, I can’t stand social media, my wife’s on it all the time and it drives me crazy. People think about what their dogs are wearing and stuff like that but what it’s done, what it’s done is it’s given us a tool that, quite frankly, has never been offered in business, you know, so freely. Yeah. So, Ian, I just want to mention, so I put together just a small just so that your listeners, if just one home inspector. He’s like, hey, you know what, I’m gonna try this out. Right, but they’re not sure what to do, I created just a little couple of links that I’ll send you so that you can post somewhere, you know, for the video. It’s one of the videos is how to social media, you know, prove my SEO, because, again, you know, a lot of home inspectors there, you know, SEO SEO ranking Google ranking, you know. So that was one followed by a couple of other links that can also show some important things that I feel that’ll definitely help if they want to at least try this on their own?

Ian R: Awesome, I’ll put a link to that in the transcript. So if you’re listening to this, look at the transcript of this podcast, and you can download that. Thank you very much. I remember you telling me about that. And I think that’s a fantastic resource. let’s get to the nuts and bolts because let’s say we are a home inspector that says I don’t need social media, or I don’t want it. I think we’ve blown that right out of the water, we need it. It’s the biggest marketing hammer out there. If you’re not using it, we’re just missing out. But now, let’s talk about the flip side of that. Some social media strategies. So I would recommend checking out Inspector Media. If we want to do it on our own, there are some do’s and don’ts that we want to really take into consideration because of what I often see, and maybe you guys see this. A guy will say, hey, you know, I already have a social media strategy, and I’ll look at it and I’ll be mortified. Like, I’m not going to be crude, but sometimes when they go into an attic, and somebody’s hidden, some inappropriate items up there, and they’ll take a picture of it and put a caption, and then it’s all over their business page. I’m like, geez, oh, my goodness, that is terrible.

Daniel King: Good for them for posting.

Ian R: Man. yeah, or like political stuff or polarizing information. Yeah. One guy was posting bad stuff about one national group versus another. This was a couple of years ago, and I’m like, Oh, my goodness, we need to keep it in a lot of ways. Vanilla Pudding. You know, somebody says even though a pudding you’re not excited, you know, like, Yay, this is controversial dessert but you’re also not offended. Why did you give me vanilla pudding? Let’s just say no, sir. Okay.

Daniel King: I would be ecstatic if you gave me vanilla pudding.

Ian R: Yeah, right. Yeah, most people are happy about vanilla pudding, but they’re not offended by it either. Let’s post that on Facebook. See you can argue that it’s like that. You put a rock on a picture of a rock on Facebook and say people argue about this. Then it’s eternal, is it a rock? Or is it a stone? Do you know? So let’s get into the nuts and bolts here. First of all, guys are always asking what social media platforms should I be on? I see a lot of guys, I saw one guy rocking it on MySpace. Like, I didn’t know that was still around.

Daniel King: I didn’t either. That was surprising to me. Yeah. So I’m like, Yeah, I

Ian R: think you’re a little behind. To add, maybe, yeah, minus and again, we’re not. You know, I’m the type of guy to where I was just saying before the show, I’m like, every time I turn around, there’s a new platform, there’s a new technology. Beon, our co-host of the show. He’s always like Ian, and let’s try out this new technology. And I’m like, I’m just tired. You know, so I get it. It’s not that. It’s not that, we don’t want to do it. But sometimes we just want to make sure that if we have to do it, we put our blows where it matters. So where does it matter in your guys’ opinion, what platforms should guys be on?

Mikayla Cox: I think in general, when it comes to social media marketing, it fully depends on of course, the market you’re in, like who you’re aiming for what industry you’re working in, but when we’re talking about home inspectors, it’s a little bit easier to get kind of specific. Where I’m going to say it’s not specific is that you also have to really take into consideration what your goals are as a brand and how you want people to look at you and view you and that’s kind of that point will be kind of a resounding thing. It will sound like an alarm or something It just keeps going off and saying that, because I think that is so important that every aspect of your marketing strategy needs to be thought out in the sense of how I want people to view me and view my brand. So when it comes to what platforms you should be using, every single platform has something that makes it unique, special, and different. MySpace is that it’s completely outdated. Don’t use it. You say something like Instagram, the thing that makes it so unique is that it is completely photo-based. None of the other platforms are really like that. Twitter, the fact that it’s so short and Clippy and you need to have quick information, you got to be concise, and you got to be entertaining enough that people are going to actually see your content. Facebook is much broader. LinkedIn is more toward professionals. My point is just that they’re all different. But if you know what your goals are, it’s easier to kind of make that decision. For those who are just getting started in the inspection industry, or just getting started on social media, as an inspector, my top two recommendations are always Facebook and LinkedIn, because that kind of covers all your bases. Facebook is a necessity kind of point-blank period, there is no industry where I’m going to tell you that I don’t think you should be on Facebook. LinkedIn, I think is really important just because of that networking aspect. You shouldn’t look at LinkedIn as your main form of income, and where you’re going to be, you know, getting a lot of business necessarily, that’s more for Facebook but I would argue that LinkedIn is such a good place to network. If you are a serious professional and want your business to grow, then you know how important networking is.

Ian R: That’s also where I find personally, a lot of agents hanging out. We’re targeting agents, they’re going to be on Facebook because you know, that’s where a lot of their buyer sets are often going to be. We were looking it up beforehand, it was like 2.8 billion people, active users monthly on Facebook. I mean, that’s huge. That’s over a third of the world’s population. On Facebook, do you want to skip out on 1/3? of the world’s population?

Daniel King: Yeah. To add to that, so with, with Facebook 80% of those people, are okay. These stats are in Google, these stats, also social media revolution, where I get a lot of my statistics, it’s a great channel to follow on YouTube, but 80% of Facebook users, use it from their mobile device, right? So another thing is to, you know, ask yourself, how mobile-friendly do I want my business to be? Is someone is searching for something that matches a service that I offer? You know, can they accidentally stumble across me, and again, you know, not doing what we’re talking about, is doing something, and what that something is, you’re doing a favor for your competitor, right, for the company that started their business before you that probably knows a little bit more about the business than you. That might sound a little harsh, but when we go to inspection conventions, you know, whether it’s Nathan’s you know, or iGo, or InterNACHI cheese, without fail every single person that speaking, you know, top earner, platinum, whatever, you know, it is at the time, always say the same thing. It’s I love my competition, you know, because they haven’t adapted to the change of times, something to add to Michaela something that we didn’t, you know, no one’s brought up yet is Google My Business, right? That’s huge. That’s huge. And it’s free, it’s free, it can be a pain in the butt to get started. But, it’s free. And if you do it correctly, you will be rewarded. And in fact, if you’re working on your local SEO, right, that is the place to start. And if you search for this, do a quick search, you know, in Google, you know, what’s the best way to improve my Google My Business page? Something very, very simple. Right? And they had their answer is if you set it up correctly, you will on average, earn seven times the amount of clicks Oh, yeah, easily, right. If you set it up correctly, as far as you know, strategies, you know, if we were to say, okay, you know what, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do this. This is the advice that I give my, you know, anyone that we’re talking to always tell him you know, find your strategy first of all if you’re going to start to do this, you know, roll up your sleeves and you know, rip off the band-aid. Okay? Get past the fear, okay? A little bit of fear is better than regret later down the road, right? You’re starting a business or you’re going a business owner. Fear is something that we should all be able to, you know, overcome. Get your strategy Who am I targeting and how do I pique their interest? You no consistency posting consistent, you know, if even if you’re just starting with Facebook be consistent, right? It doesn’t have to be mind-blowing, you know, it doesn’t have to be all that. Just have fun. Exactly, yeah. Have value, you know, have value and have value in the content. You know, maybe the value is, for this particular post. What are some things that first home buyers don’t know? Or what are some great that, you know, that’s a strategy, who am I targeting first home buyer? Boom. What’s a way to come up with that content? Well, I always tell guys, again, once you find out who you’re looking for, right, who you’re targeting with your posts because your posts should be very on purpose. If you’re creating something that says and just to make sure if vanilla, you know, vanilla, doesn’t mean Hey, guys, it’s a great day for a home inspection and calls that content. I’ve seen that, yeah, I’ve seen that content.

Ian R: That’s sugar-free pudding. That’s no, nobody likes that.

Daniel King: You know, also you can be entertaining, you know, you see, you see something it doesn’t have to, you know, be a Dave Chappelle joke, you know, and it also doesn’t have to be, you know, a, I don’t know, whatever joke, but inspirational content is great. Connection, right? Make sure that you’re trying to connect with who you’re going after. Yeah, those are the top strategies that we use.

Ian R: And those are fantastic strategies. And you brought up something that we brought out in a podcast last week about engagement, creating content that engages people, like have a little contest, or hey, you guys want to caption this picture? I always find if we question if we should post it, we probably shouldn’t. So going back to that inappropriate stuff, keep it vanilla, putting something that nobody’s going to be offended by. There was a guy years ago. He’s like, I don’t want any of this social media garbage and this and that. He’s like, Finally, he’s like, I got to do it. My wife says I gotta do it. And like, okay, he’s like, how do I start? I always tell guys, the same thing. You have to become a 13-year-old girl online. Yes, they’re posting all sorts of stuff all the time. They’re doing a little selfie. If there’s a dance, they’re doing it. I’m like, we had Bob Madewell on, a while back. He does this little dance he calls the Baba Looey. Everybody loves it. I like that it actually is kind of entertaining. There’s nothing offensive about it. He’s standing in front of this house, and you know, he’s tagging agents. It’s engaging.

Mikayla Cox: That is so fun.

Ian R: Yeah, people like that we don’t have so we don’t have to be goofy, right? If that’s not our Mo, okay, I’m not a goofy guy, but you find a mummified squirrel in the attic. That’s cool. I’m sorry, I’m gonna look at every mummified squirrel that somebody posts online. It’s like an act like a car accident, you can’t look at it. It’s engaging. You find a bullet in the roof, take a picture, you’re posting that online, you know, you find something cool. It becomes mundane to us as home inspectors, you know, I’ve seen so much stuff that I don’t even think about it. So sometimes we have to force ourselves to say, oh, you know what, that is kind of cool. Let me post that. So you have to become a 13-year-old girl.

Mikayla Cox: That actually kind of touches on a point I made earlier, where I was basically saying you want your content to reflect who you are as a person. And I just kind of want to reiterate that and express that even if you are uncomfortable with getting started with social media. Just feel like you know, that isn’t you that’s not the type of person you are. That’s okay. Eventually, you’ll figure out a way to reflect your own personality into the content that you’re putting out and into your own marketing plans. You know, if you’re a funny guy, and you are goofy, you know, do your dances and post memes, post jokes do that kind of thing. People like that. If you’re not, maybe if you lean more towards, I really care about educating my clients. Post videos of you talking about what you’re doing, and like explaining things that are wrong with the house, things of that nature. There are all different routes that you can take that are high-quality content that has value, but still reflect who you are as an individual and as a business owner.

Ian R: Yeah, well said very nice.

Mikayla Cox: Thank you.

Daniel King: That’s coming from 10s of 1000s of posts that she’s created.

Ian R: She knows what she’s talking about. I guess that goes back because you guys said post regularly. I get asked this a lot. How often should I post what a lot of home inspectors ask what’s your opinion?

Daniel King: I think every day, again, uncertain platforms. We don’t have to ever Today like Google My Business, you don’t need to. Yeah, every day.

Ian R: Algorithmically. That makes me sound fancy when I say algorithmically like I know what I’m talking about here. But if you do that Facebook will actually turn your post up more often. Yes, found that more regularly. More, yeah, it’ll give you more authority. So if we’re posting once a week, you might get, let’s say, hypothetically, 50 views of that one post. If you post five times a week, your engagement will go up and it’ll be 65 times per post. It matters. I just want to add to that, that there’s also what we call a customer journey. So what you’re posting matters not only to people who are on social media at the time, but I don’t think I’ve hired anybody without checking out their Facebook page, or even going to a restaurant before I looked at, they’re like, oh, they have a YouTube channel, I’m gonna look at this. People are looking at what you post, and we’re all very offended very quickly. We’re like, oh, I’m not gonna go there because they said this. We don’t want anything polarizing but we also want to have content there. I actually didn’t hire a mason one time, because he had a Facebook page but the last post he did was in 2017. I’m like, I don’t even know if he’s in business. So I moved on, he’ll never know the lead he lost. Yeah, right. Okay, so every day, if you can, what’s the minimum number? So let’s say we’re just getting into this, we’re getting our feet wet. What’s a good minimum amount? What do you think?

Ian R: What do you think Mikayla?, because I’m gonna say every day.

Mikayla Cox: Honestly, I think that there, okay. So if you’re getting started, maybe I would encourage you to take it a little bit slower just to get in the feel of creating good content. It is very easy to cross the line of worrying about posting so much that you’re no longer posting anything worth looking at. That’s also something I wanted to point out to any listeners that are like, Okay, I need to be posting constantly all the time. Yes, you should be posting every day but should you be posting multiple times a day? That is where things start to get questionable because maybe it’s not the issue of our people going to see the content, but it becomes the issue of whether people are going to unfollow you and block you if you become annoying to their feet.

Ian R: That is a beautiful point because I have done that to so many people. I’m like, this is your eighth post today and I am blocking you. I’m done. Yep.

Mikayla Cox: Yeah, that’s, that’s the thing you want to avoid. You got to kind of find the happy medium. I work oh, so I do. I mentioned this earlier, I do the customer service. So I’m talking to clients all day all the time. Everybody has different opinions and gets different reactions from their individual clientele, you know, from the area they’re in. So we always got to kind of figure out what works for each client but my point is saying that is I’ve heard from people that oh, the amount we post is too much for the people that I’m giving my content to, or it’s not enough. Really, don’t feel like you’re doing anything wrong by asking or like actually interacting with anybody that would see your Facebook page. So say you have your business page. You have a friend, you know who follows your page, ask them after you’ve been doing it for a while be like, hey, what do you think? Do you think I’m posting too much? Am I posting not enough? Who liked the content I’m putting out? There’s nothing wrong with asking for help, even if it’s from someone who’s an amateur that just uses social media? You know, for fun? I think it’s always good to ask more questions.

Ian R: Yeah, and I agree with you because a lot of times we asked other home inspectors, do you like this? Our favorite key phrase on this show is hydrostatic pressure. Like, you didn’t post enough about hydrostatic pressure, you should have a longer post. We’re not attracting home inspectors. They’re not our clients. So go ask the people to go after the 27-year-old who might be looking for a house. Hey, do you think I post too much? Ask the agents. Do you like the content? If we ask other home inspectors, we’ll get the wrong advice? Because they’re not because they don’t know, but because they’re not the clients we’re going for? You know, we don’t want their business. Yeah.

Daniel King: Ian, I’d like to ask you a question. Okay.

Ian R: Welcome to inspector toolbelt. With Daniel King.

Daniel King: Yeah, no, really, really because I love getting perspective, man. So you still inspect, Correct?

Ian R: I have not set foot on an inspection in several months.

Daniel King: So okay, so that’s recent, somewhat recent, right?

Ian R: Yeah. Yeah, we’ve just gotten so busy. The happenings or websites have blown up. I still have people inspecting but I don’t personally inspect anymore.

Daniel King: Did you ever offer or asked to follow other real estate agents or social media pages.

Ian R: In what way like asked, like, typically they leave it open so you can just follow them. I follow a lot of real estate agent pages. Yeah.

Daniel King: Okay, good. That’s good. There are certain things, you know, that I try to have guys do, right? One of them follows, you know, because again, when you’re going in, you’re doing your presentation, you’re dropping off your brochure, whatever it is that you’re doing, you know, that business card can be lost and forgotten, you know, the brochure can be lost and forgotten. But if you pull out your cell phone, right, and this is my question, when you think about this, if you pull out your cell phone and just quickly find them and make it a point to show, right in my mind, because I’ve been on the real estate side, real estate is so dogged on competitive. Every single real estate agent is worried about the other real estate agent in their office, having more followers. More views, more everything, right? So my thought is, when you’re going out and you’re prospecting in, I guess this is more towards the new home inspector, right? When you’re prospecting, make it a point to call your phone and give them a follower. You know, because there’s the first perk, right, that’s the very first perk of doing business. It may seem very small, minute. Right? What is that going to resonate with six months down the road when they see that you’re posting, and they see that you’re building your following? They’re now following you because you’re following them? That’s called Community Engagement. Right? So why not? Right? I mean, you’re gonna be going around painting the city anyway, so why not ask? Obviously, you can just do it anyway, but what happens there is they in turn, follow you, right? Now they see that you’re posting content very regularly. I call that the next man up theory because not only that, it gives you the permission of following up with them without having to call, Hey, you know, and still call, right, you’re not going to tell him it’s better not to, you know, prospect the way they do. Little things like that, if you’re going to start to jump into social media. You know, really focus on that following because that’s something that we all haven’t really spoken about yet is, that following because you can post and post and post and post and post, no one’s gonna see it unless, you know, people are falling, right.

Ian R: So I see your point, I’m going to raise you one. Following the agents and the offices has always been a fantastic tactic. So what happens in addition to that is, anytime I do an Office meeting, everybody in that room, I follow their page, and about half of them would follow mine back, absolutely. I’d engage with them and I think them online and tag their office, because their office will typically have a page to thank you guys for having me post a picture of all of them. Then other offices that I followed, and followed me would see that and they’d want me to come to another presentation. Anytime we had a new presentation, it would just spiral in a good way. They’re like, oh, he was over at Coldwell Banker. I thought he liked us better. Then the broker would jokingly say, I thought you liked us better over here at Keller Williams? Oh, that’s okay. Yeah, we’ll come to one for you. It just keeps rotating and rotating. Then, you know, when you’re engaging with people, they’re like, Oh, you don’t like being online or you don’t you’re not as a friend online. Then they friend me. Then I friend them back. It really is awesome, which actually brings up a warning that I have. So you guys probably see a lot of this. Guys follow real estate agent pages. And they just bug the snot out of them. Every time there’s a listing or like a great house, contact 123 home inspections, and here’s my phone number. Every post that they do, they’re just blasting them that just text the agent off because you’re stealing their thunder. What do you think is a good wait for a home inspector to engage? Instead of doing stuff like that?

Daniel King: Yeah, I got it. I got a really good one. I don’t mean to steal the show. I just, I’m super passionate about this stuff. I love it. I tell I tell all, everyone I talked to whether they’re doing it or they’re paying someone to do it, you know, their social media, every single home. This is just this is kind of in the same realm, right? A good way to engage with real estate agents. For every home that you inspect, go to the sidewalk, it takes maybe two minutes, your first time that you do this, go to the sidewalk, and take a picture of the home. Okay, and when you post it, tag the listing agent and tag the buyer’s agent. Oh, yeah, that’s it. By doing that you’re doing a lot and we could spend a whole podcast on why that’s important. But really what’s happening here, regardless of what your relationship is, with the listing agent or the buyer’s agent, what’s happening here is you’re promoting their business. Right? You’re putting them in front of, because again, A six-figure earning real estate agent, you know, the way they look at things is they have X amount of marketing dollars, which produces x amount of traffic views whatever or X amount of traffic to their website, which you know, is x amount of this right? They have their equation, right. When you have people following you in the community some guys have 1000s Some guys have hundreds, right? Obviously, this is just a nice gesture if you only have a few followers, but everyone starts somewhere. By doing that you’re putting them in front of more people in the community, right? You’re promoting their business. That’s another perk of doing business with you that they might not be getting from their current home inspectors.

Ian R: That’s beautiful. I’m glad you mentioned that, because that is exactly what I tell guys to do, too. Now, even if you had a say, was a rough inspection, and that listing agent is just reeling over you kind of hard for them to stay mad when you’re like, hey, you know, Tina Keller Williams, you know, it was great working, inspecting the house and working with you today. You can still do your job and that kind of actually helps calm it down. That is one of the best strategies and then it also paints a picture for people you’re posting and they’re just seeing house after house after house after house that you may be only done four but in their minds. Oh man, it looks like they did 100 houses last week. They must be really good. Now you’re painting the picture. Then when people look you up online, potential clients. Oh, wow. Yeah, he’s doing lots of inspections. He’s in the neighborhood, all that’s in the neighborhood on buying. There are a lot of reciprocal benefits that happen there.

Daniel King: That’s a great one for Instagram to go to follow up with. Do you know, what Mikayla was saying about? You know, visual, I look at Instagram, and I call that visual resume for the home inspector.

Ian R: It really that’s a great way to describe it. Yeah, yeah, like that. I’m gonna steal that though. That really is a visual resume, though, isn’t it?

Mikayla Cox: That in quotation marks, Daniel King.

Ian R: So I think we kind of covered some things, we want to avoid anything controversial. We have a policy at our company, we do not post anything, political, religious, or anything that could ever be in the scope of any imagination is controversial. Then avoid anything that’s overly personal, you know, to people’s houses and things like that. And keep a vanilla pudding. And make sure that your visual resume, pretend I think that’s great, you know, pretend like we’re would we put that on a resume with a job? Would we want them to see that?

Mikayla Cox: Can I add something to that actually, this is just another little warning. Not only should you be worried about what you’re posting being, quote, vanilla, but you should also be aware of what you’re interacting with. The stuff that you like, share, comment on, the people that you follow, that stuff is also available for people to see. So you’re talking about your business page, we’re talking about your reputation here, it is not just what you post, it is also what you interact with. So you should also be wary of those kinds of soldiers.

Ian R: That’s a fantastic point, because, you know, we all have our personal feelings on things. Yeah. You know, hey, I believe in this organization, and I’m pumped, and this is what I do, and I’m going to support them. Okay, but if that alienates 10% of our clients, well, that’s good. They’re going like okay, but they still had US Tender paid you to look at. Yeah, so keep that may be on the personal side of things, we want our business that’s a fantastic point,

Daniel King: The big bow to all of this, and none of us I don’t think if one of us said it, but really what we’re doing here is we’re really focused on the brand you know, this is the tool for the brand because this is where everybody is getting there you know, opinions or first interaction seeing logos getting feelings with your post, you know. This is that spot to really build that brand, especially for guys that are new. I talked to a lot of guys that we just signed up, someone you know that’s a huge home inspection business, multiple inspectors, and I was amazed. I mean, you know, he was doing social media, so like Hats off to him, but there wasn’t, there wasn’t much as far as a brand. Mikayla was one that pointed us out that when you focus on your brand, because again, a lot of the home inspectors that I talked to, they’re really really focused on today’s inspection, right? How am I getting one today? Who’s gonna give me one today and tomorrow, you know, that they look past really focusing on that brand, or maybe they don’t know what that brand means, you know, or how to build that brand, so to say. Yeah, you know, one one, my biggest piece of advice, you know. Based on the experience that I’ve had is guys get those inspections when they focus on brand, you know, that like running around, you know, looking at these lead generation companies, you know, I don’t know, some good, some bad, I don’t know. When we do that we kind of take our focus off of the brand, because we’re looking at right now, versus if you focus on building that brand, right, everything around, you starts to convert at a higher level, right, your website is converting your interactions with your real estate agents face to face. I mean, everything just seems to start, you know, flowing and connecting, you know, and so that, you know, again, brand building is probably our biggest focus, you know. When we get into, you know, doing social media as far as the purpose, and then all the other benefits, you know, from doing that, you know, kind of fall into place.

Ian R: So that’s actually a great lead into our last question two because we talked about that last week, Beon and I. That there are three basic columns to your marketing campaign first is going to be marketing, then advertising, then lead generation, advertising lead generation or dead-end roads, you get the lead, the lead has done. Advertising, you send out the coupon, whatever advertising, you have, send out the pamphlet, marketing is the branding that you’re talking about. It’s where we expand on things. So that leads me to the last question of why is it pretty much in my opinion, near impossible to measure ROI on social media, because I hear guys say that all the time, I had a guy shut down his Facebook page, shut down his Instagram, and he had all this stuff and all this content, and he just erases like, I never got one lead off of that. So why is that wrong thinking?

Daniel King: Well, that’s the issue. I think what, I’m gonna say this very confidently, because of the ROI. Man, I can’t even tell you how many times about this conversation.

Mikayla Cox: Every day, at least once.

Daniel King: In order to measure your ROI before you get into whatever it is that you’re doing. You need to assess that first, you know, what am I expecting? Right? Your ROI doesn’t necessarily need to be dollars. Do you know what I mean? I always tell guys, because we used to, like, guys just sign up, you know, and just Yeah, free, go ahead and sign up, you know, and then we figured out, we need to be having conversations, right, we need to be talking about in educating what this looks like. You know, again, your business owner first and home inspector second, right. Some of the best home inspectors might not have that part, as you can tell me, you know, that this developed form, is what I you know, work on a lot of newer guys. Even the multi-inspector firms do that form but going into it, right? What is this? What am I wanting out of this? You know, and then once you know, what you want out of it, you find out if that’s what it can do, you know. Once you find out that that’s what it can do, then you can correctly assess it. If you’re going to in this happened, I got this conversation all the time, you know, you’re not afraid to promote, right, you try this? And then you try that, and then you try that my hat goes off to you. I think that’s awesome. I think that you should I think every business should have a marketing budget. There should be just a little piece of pie that’s a risk, you know, to figure out what works, you know, what’s working and what’s not working. So with the ROI, right, don’t assess it after four weeks, don’t assess it after two weeks, right? It’s not a slot machine. You know, it’s, it’s something that you assess quarterly, right, and maybe even in some cases, depending on what’s going on in your market, maybe every six months, right. But for me, measuring ROI, I think is near impossible with marketing, you know, branding, and whatnot, because it’s hard to really find out what you know, who’s looking at what, right,

Mikayla Cox: If you’re asking what the ROI is, on your social media marketing, then you’re already asking the wrong question. You already don’t fully understand what the point is of social media marketing.

Ian R: Yes. That’s exactly it is not lead generation. That’s a completely different column under the marketing umbrella. If it’s like, well, I don’t have my logo on my shirt because I never got anybody to call me off my shirt. I’m like, Are you asking people when they call? Did you call me off of my shirt? You can’t put a price on that. You can’t put a price on having your logo on your vehicle, passing out a million cards, having a great website, or having a great social media presence because it’s all a customer journey.

Mikayla Cox: I love the logo on the shirt.

Ian R: That’s what it is, is brand recognition. Yeah. FedEx doesn’t ask, How many times did we get a call for a shipment off of the FedEx logo on our trucks? Why don’t we just it’s the same exact thing. It’s branding. It’s the recognition it gives us that we all often talk about the marketing environment. Everybody should come in and have that warm, fuzzy feeling of, oh, this is a nice brand. This makes me feel comfortable. They’re legit. You know, the same reason we grab Pepsi instead of a random brand that we’ve never heard of before when we go to a cooler, it’s branding.

Daniel King: Yeah, I’ll add one thing to that. I’ll give an illustration here. Let’s say you have John Smith home inspector. Okay, and you have, I don’t know, David Smith. Okay. John and David do the same thing but David, you know, he does social media, Right? They go out, and they get in front of real estate agents, right? David’s able to, you know, the first one goes around, and he does his presentations, he talks to real estate agents, none of them have really heard of them before, right? Versus the other guy that goes around, you know, he’s done social media well enough, he’s gotten in front of his community well enough, that in a number of times, that he’s actually running into real estate agents that have heard him or seen him or seen him or seen his brand, or content or something, and subconsciously picks it up, right, that conversion of that conversation between you know, he’s gonna have, you know, Inspector tool is going to have a much higher conversion rate. What’s hard about measuring ROI is if that guy says, You know what, yeah, I think I think I’ve seen you before, or I’ve heard of you before, he’s open to sitting down with you, that’s hard to measure. Maybe the illustration wasn’t the best.

Ian R: It puts more, puts more juice into your other marketing is basically what it is. It puts nitrous in your gasoline, how do you measure, you know, two guys doing the same other stuff? You know, one guy just has an advantage, because he’s already been there. Well, this has been fantastic information. I can’t tell you, we could go on, we could do three more podcasts on this, because Oh, yeah, I love this stuff just as much as you guys I think. Again, if you want to learn more about Inspector Media, go to Inspectormedia.com. We actually have a blog on our website that you can check out as well, that Eric had written for us a few years back, and we have one on yours actually, too. They do a fantastic job. Even if you don’t want to be a client. They’re just full of great information and always willing to share with the inspection.

Daniel King: Absolutely

Ian R: So Daniel Mikayla, thank you guys so much, and hopefully, we’ll get a chance to talk soon.

Daniel King: Yeah, thanks for having us.

Ian R: Thank you.

[Below is the list of resources that Daniel King mentioned in the podcast]

Social media University. Great channel for help
https://youtu.be/9ZmT7puLjqI

Does social media improve Google ranking
https://youtu.be/Oj3aJ2LGWwI

Google my business hacks
https://youtu.be/PEpEbY1773Q
Absolutely check out the links in the videos description

LinkedIn tips and set up
https://youtu.be/YQvUbIV3sW8

Bizvelop Video info
https://youtu.be/u65TRrk2bMM
Bizvelop form
https://www.nachi.org/bizvelop.htm

And, of course, Inspector Media
www.inspectormedia.com

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of inspector toolbelt talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at info@inspectortoolbelt.com.

If you’re enjoying the conversation, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. Our podcast is available on all major podcast platforms. For more information on our services and our brand-new inspection app, please visit our website at Inspectortoolbelt.com.