berman.mykajabi.com/about-page">Michelle Berman-Mikel the CEO & Founder of Beyond the Method™ and Berman Media PD talks about how she got involved in social. Michelle discusses what do realtors get wrong about their Instagram and also how often should agents post and what should they post. Michelle also breaks down the types of posts they arrange for their clients for every day of the week. Last, Michelle discusses the importance of using media to connect with prospects.

Please check out berman.mykajabi.com/">Michelle’s Beyond the Method – online course and her Coffee and Questions Podcast.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Michelle Berman-Mikel can be reached to set up a call here.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and Apply Design (get 15% off of your first purchase using real24).

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Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00Today we’re talking with one of the top Instagram prospecting coaches in the country for realtors. Get excited and stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by apply design Welcome to a revolution in real estate presentation brought to you by apply design the leading Virtual Staging solution tailored for forward thinking realtors. Now in today’s fast paced market making a lasting impression is everything. With applied design you unlock the full potential of every listing, transforming empty spaces into stunning buyer attracting homes all with just a few clicks. And in just a few minutes. Choose their DIY staging available for as low as $7 per image, or save time with their auto staging feature for as low as $10.50 per image plus experience their service firsthand with a trial image absolutely free. Their intuitive platform empowers you to bring visions to life ensuring your listing standout Captivate and sell and for listeners of keeping it real apply design is offering an exclusive 15% off your first purchase. Simply use the code real 24 That’s our EA L two four at checkout. Elevate your listings enchant your clients and achieve faster sales with apply design. Don’t let your properties blend in make them shine with applied design. Your success story starts now visit them at apply design.io Again, that’s applied design.io remember your first impression is the only impression. And now onto the show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with Instagram prospecting coach Michelle Berman. Before we get to Michelle, just a couple of quick reminders first support our sponsors. We love them. They’re the reason we can do these episodes and pay our staff so please check out their services and products consider investing in them. We vet our vendors, our advertisers and only pick ones that we know are actually going to help your real estate business and second, leave us a review let us know what you think of the show whatever podcast app you might be listening on us to right now. You know let us know what you think and we read every review and comment helps us make the show better and better. Alright guys, let’s get to the main event Instagram, let’s talk with Michelle Berman.

Today on the show our guest is Michelle Berman. Michael and Instagram prospecting coach for real estate agents. Let me tell you more about Michelle. Now Michelle is a nationally sought after Instagram prospecting coach, speaker and owner of Berman media PD. She’s also the creator of beyond the method, which is an online course that teaches realtors and loan officers how to tap into the brains of their ideal clients and leverage the data it provides to actively prospect on the platform of Instagram. Her specialty is helping agents see the platform as a viable lead source so that they could scale their relationships but also build credibility in their local markets. Michelle is also the host of the coffee and questions podcast. And Michelle is an expert in understanding and utilizing psychology to help people tap into the power of Instagram and its ability to be a lead generation source for your business. To learn about Michelle’s course and all things Michelle visit her website Berman media pd.com. I will have a link to that in the show notes and also follow her on Instagram which is Berman media social br M A N. Berman media social link to that as well in the show notes. Michelle, welcome to the show.

Michelle Berman-Mikel 5:20Thanks so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here. And I’m so excited.

D.J. Paris 5:24I’m so excited to have you. We rarely ever talk about Instagram, and I am not particularly skilled at Instagram myself. So I am excited to learn along with our audience. But tell me more about you. How did you get involved in social?

Michelle Berman-Mikel 5:39Yeah, this is my absolute favorite story to tell. So thanks for starting with that question, for sure. But I actually got into the Instagram space way back in 2014. So when that when that started, at that time of my life, Instagram was much more about sort of the influencer space, right in the sense of, you know, not necessarily holding a pretty hot product and getting paid to do it. But more so I was the broker between the large brands and the Instagram accounts that we were placing content on, or buying ad space on. So really what happened was I was sort of in the middle of these huge brands trying to promote product, trying to drive website clicks and trying to drive views. And honestly, at that point, buying things off Instagram wasn’t really a thing yet, you had to go to a website. So I was in between the brand and in between the accounts themselves. So in that process, I personally purchased several large Instagram accounts to do this on my own. So I was selling ad space of my own, I was working with the brands to create all the ads writing all the copy, deciding on which pages to put their content on to hopefully drive sales. And what I learned in the process was really, really quickly how to see through the crap, right? Hope I can say that that way, but fake views, fake likes, fake everything that’s on the platform, right? Yes, it was my job to sniff it out. Because if a company was paying me a large sum of money to help them produce more money, and we put we chose that Instagram page to put their ad on and it didn’t produce anything, then that ultimately fell back on me. So in the process, I just had to really be able to sniff that stuff out. So with that being said, I got very good at understanding what worked, what didn’t work, what kind of content was going to resonate with an audience and what wasn’t, what kind of copy was going to actually get someone to take action. So long story short, I face planted into the art of human psychology and sales psychology and have those two worlds merge. Fast forward to today, I run a very large Instagram prospecting company. So we specialize in teaching real estate agents and loan officers how to actually actively prospect on Instagram, versus what a lot of us know as passive prospecting, right, which is, traditionally what Instagram has been, which is sort of this platform of just post content, make good videos, write good captions, make sure you show up in your stories consistently. But then you just sort of sit and wait for inbound messages. So you’re sort of living in this reactive space. And I have spent the better part of you know, close to five years since launching beyond the method, trying to flip that upside down and showing people that Instagram is not just a placeholder for great content, it’s a platform that can actually replace a lot of the outbound prospecting that you have to do or that real estate agents tend to do in the form of like cold calling, and, and all kinds of other things. So that’s the fast way to go from 2014 to today.

D.J. Paris 8:47This is real, I’m really excited to dive into this because I, I really only know to look at Instagram, from a research and development perspective from an agent. So an agent can follow all of their clients and their prospects, and learn about their lives and then use that as reasoning to reach out, Hey, I saw you went on vacation, I saw the picture of that fancy dinner you made. So that’s and that is not about posting content. And so I’m really excited to learn more about sort of best practices with content and also relationship building. But the only thing I know to do with Instagram is be like, Oh, I saw somebody did this and maybe I could reach out and develop, you know, a stronger relationship that way. But there’s so much more, of course to developing a content calendar really thinking about what kind of content somebody can somebody can produce and promote that actually drives business in a way that’s authentic and and not salesy. So yeah, let’s talk about it. Well, maybe the first thing to talk about is what do Realtors get wrong about their own Instagram accounts like what are they doing that you just go gosh, I if I could wave a magic wand and tell them all not to do this, what were what are they doing that you wish

Michelle Berman-Mikel 9:59they Oh my Got, how much time? Do we have DJ all the time. There’s a handful of them. And I’m gonna do my best to keep it Switzerland as far as how I would describe this. But there’s really two big ones that jumped out at me as someone who spends all day every day consuming real estate agents content on Instagram. First and foremost is they’re leveraging boilerplate templates, right? So what that means is that they’re using services that are producing the same type of content for every person that’s using the service. And the problem with that is for you as the real estate agent, right? You’re like, Yes, this is easy. It’s cheap. Cool. Now, I don’t have to worry about it. I checked my social media box. But the problem is that there’s no person there. There’s no brand built into that. There’s definitely no like, who is Michelle? Or who is DJ invest involved in that content. And the problem with that, for me as a consumer is I’m not hiring you as a real estate agent, because your content says that you’re the top 1% in your area. I’m hiring you because I like you as a human. There’s something psychologically that’s connecting us, right? Oh, you’re into CrossFit, too. So hi, my husband runs ultra marathons. Wait, so it is mine. Right. And now we’re building this like very intentional and very authentic relationship. And then you as the real estate agent, I hire you as the vehicle to get me from, I want to buy a house, but I’m, too I now own a house. But I’m choosing you because I like you, and then you just become the mechanism to get me there. Right. And so I think real estate agents think that Instagram is a place for them to show off. And it’s it’s sort of overproduced, and it’s like this big giant production of content. And I have had, in my almost 10 years, I’ve probably had a videographer follow me around like maybe three or four times on one hand, right? So 95% of the content that I produce on a daily basis is from my phone. That’s it, right? So

D.J. Paris 11:59so we’re so we’re just about understanding correctly, we’re talking about, for example, the kinds of boilerplate content that Realtors often will fall back on is closed, closed sale, or I just won this award or I just got, you know, I’m in the top, as you said, 1%. I just again, it’s it’s achievement here are all my achievements, or, and you’re right, that doesn’t really speak to what I mean, anyone other than your parents might want to see or your maybe your best friends. But

Michelle Berman-Mikel 12:30yeah, boilerplate content. Also, second, to your point there, DJ, because yes, absolutely. But the second part to boilerplate content is, if you’ve ever seen those sort of stock images that go out, sure, right, where if you’re, if you’re paying, you know, 150 bucks a month, and it posts on your behalf, and all it does is slap your photo on it, but it’s the background is a kitchen that’s not of one of your listings, or it’s not like that type of stuff, right? It’s very unauthentic. It’s definitely not organic content. And it’s usually when rinse, wash, repeat, right? So I have a friend that I’m talking to on Instagram right now. And he recommended another person to me, and he’s like, Hey, you gotta go look at this guy’s Instagram. And then you gotta yell at him. Because I know him. So tell him I told you to yell at him. And I was like, What are you talking about? And I pulled up his Instagram, and every single piece of content was one of the stock templates. And the only personal photo on the entire account with over 200 posts was his profile photo. That’s it. So that’s the problem, right? It’s like if I click on this gentleman’s account, I’m like, Who is this dude? Right? It’s just says his business business business or quote template. So

D.J. Paris 13:41should should we think about Instagram as Yes, a way to demonstrate what we know and maybe some of our achievements, I certainly feel there’s a place for that. But most importantly, would you define Instagram as a way for people to get to know me or the agent as an actual individual both professionally and whatever degree of personal somebody wants to expose

Michelle Berman-Mikel 14:07Absolutely 1,000,000% And there’s certainly a great point there that you just mentioned that I don’t want to skip over which is you know, how personal Are you willing to get you know, I have a private coaching client who he is not comfortable posting his children on Instagram. I have no problem with that right? I have a two and a half year old so any of you guys who see my Instagram you’ll see him he’s the best thing ever, but I love talking about him I love posting about him. But not everybody is that comfortable? Right? When you when you have things like hunting or shooting right like my husband is medically retired Greenbrae so we shoot a lot like we have we have we own several guns in our home. And for me, that’s just part of who I am. But that’s not going to go on my Instagram, right like maybe a video of my husband and I going to the range for like a date night, but I’m not going to be posting other content related to the gun piece right now. But

D.J. Paris 15:00is the reasoning for that that is the reason for not posting gun content because you feel that’s a fairly polarizing topic or,

Michelle Berman-Mikel 15:10but at the same time, I’m not going to diminish who my husband was, and the fact that he serves or served our country. And is, is that incredible shooter like, and we have a lot of fun going and doing it. But it’s also like another big one is the religion piece, right? Like, can we use? Can we use that in our content? Yes or No, right. But I have clients who, for example, they’ll say, like, Michelle, we love hunting. So how can we post about hunting without it being this polarizing thing. And what I always say is, maybe we don’t post a dead animal, but maybe we just post pictures in front of our car in our camo, right, like getting ready to go. So there is certainly a way to be able to talk about anything and everything that you want to talk about in a way that is designed to be comfortable and consumable. But Instagram as a platform as a whole is designed to be a place where someone gets to know me as a human, and gets to see how credible of a XYZ, I am, right? In this case, we’re talking about real estate agents. So I don’t care as a consumer, if I’m your first house you’ve ever sold, or your 100th house you’ve ever sold. Because if I don’t like you, I’m still not going to hire you. Even if everyone is saying you’re the number one person. So that’s where the active prospecting piece of what I teach specifically comes in, because in order for me to determine, as a consumer, that you’re the real estate agent that I want to hire, there’s some some sort of qualifications, if you will, that are going to make me feel the need or sort of the urge, if you will, to reach out to somebody via social.

D.J. Paris 16:46That makes sense. I’d like to ask a few other questions that I that are coming to mind that Realtors often ask me about social and I’m not an expert at all. But one of the questions and I know this isn’t an easy, quick answer, but how often to how often to post or write. And we’ll start with their how often to post. So I know this is part of your program. And by the way, we should really be plugging Michelle’s program because she goes through this in step by step details. But beyond the method, it’s been around for five plus years, she updates it all the time. And you can find that at Berman media pd.com. And we’ll have a link to that. But as far as sometimes agents are like, gosh, I don’t have all this time. So what what is your first sort of answer or response to somebody going? How much? How much time is this going to take? And how many posts should I be doing?

Michelle Berman-Mikel 17:37It’s such a big question. And it’s so loaded, what I what we do for our clients, we have a 30 day calendar, right? So we post 30 days out of the month. For me personally, if you can see my content, I post once every two or three days on my grid, and I am in stories constantly. So stories is for me personally, as someone who’s you know, on Zoom, I don’t even know how many times a day way too many hours by end of our monthly zoom report would be really bad. You know, like your phone tells you like your screen time report, it’s up 60% or whatever. Yeah, I would be worried or nervous to see my Zoom one. But so for me my focus and my emphasis is on my stories consistently every single day. And then my feed content is very intentional. It’s very planned. It’s very thoughtful, and like it just be real, right? Like, if you don’t have something to post that day, then don’t post it. But at the same time, you can strategize and build that out to the place where like in my phone, I know what my next four or five pieces of content are already right now, it comes down to do I have time to write the caption, right. So today I wrote the caption and was able to get it out. And so that’s why there’s a new piece of content out. But for our clients when we are helping do this for them, or when we are coaching it for them. We tell them 30 pieces of content on a monthly basis. But more importantly, that 30 pieces of content is or what’s important about it is what it is broken down into, right. So what are the four categories that make up the 30 pieces of content? Because I believe personally, that there’s this big sort of 8020 rule that’s floating around in the social media space. And I by no means am like saying, you know, these other individuals are not correct. I’m just simply saying that our strategy is a little bit different. In the sense of, of 30 pieces of content a month 15 of those are personal. So half of them are Who am I as a individual, right? And then the other 15 are broken down into three different categories. Each of those three categories are business related. But you have three different categories of business. So you’re not shoving one specific conversation or one specific type of content down somebody’s throat multiple times a month, right? So that 30 pieces of content if you’re producing 30 consistently What I will say is, if we’re doing it for you, you’re gonna get 30 a month. However, if you are the one doing it, don’t stress out over, oh, it’s been two or three days in between, just stay consistent with your calendar of what kind of content you should be producing. And having that in place, like I know what’s coming next, I just have to be able to get to it.

D.J. Paris 20:20And one of the cool things about Instagram that I think often gets forgotten was we tend to link Instagram and Facebook together, they’re obviously same company, and, you know, one sort of birth the other in a sense, and we tend to think of them as similar platforms, they’re really not, because what you can do an Instagram are one of the major advantages is people can find you very easily. And they can find you through demonstration of some of your hobbies, your interests, your personal stuff, as, as Michelle, as you were saying, and so you know, through hashtags through through content, you can actually find other people that are into the same stuff you’re into. And guess what people who share experiences people who share hobbies, passions, they tend to want to work together. So this is it’s fun. So whatever it is that agents do, maybe in their off hours, even as boring as it may be, if you’re into reading, like that’s okay, that that for some people. I mean, I don’t think reading is boring. But I understand that read writing content about it, you can say, well, how do I do that? Well, you could do a video of a book review of something you just read, that really blew your mind. Or you could just talk about this the best book I read this year or whatever, there’s lots of fun ways to take someone’s passions and interests and produce really easy content, for sure.

Michelle Berman-Mikel 21:39For sure, for sure. And that those hobbies and those interests, that is how you prospect that knowing that about you about yourself, is how you prospect. So you, you actually sort of started to say a DJ without even probably realizing that you were but those hobbies, right? Like if you’re into reading, right, I’m super into reading I my husband and I love our quiet time when my son’s asleep on the weekends. He’s still naps for a solid two, two and a half hours. So we get our books out. And it is like quiet time. Don’t touch me. Don’t talk to me like we are reading, right. But it is our favorite time, I just finished the fourth wing series, Rebecca Jaros, who came out with those two books. And I’m now reading the Left Behind series, if anybody’s familiar with them, but I’m a diehard reader. I love real books. I don’t I’m not a huge audible person, I’d much rather hold it in my hand. But what where I’m going with this is when you are actively prospecting on the platform. So many times I hear people will say, How do I do that? Where do I start? Who do I interact with. And there’s really some structure to that. So the way that I teach this quite simply, is it’s five days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, each of the five days are associated to a specific category. And that category is designed to help you talk to the people that are ideal clients of yours that also share those mutual interests. So I’ll do this as fast as possible. And I know we won’t have time to like dig into each of the categories specifically. But Mondays, for example, is following day. So what that means is you’re actually interacting with the people who are following you, not the other way around. Right? So for clarity, when we open Instagram, and we look at our accounts, or when we open it and we see our grid or our feed, right? Both of those are going to show us people that are already I’m sorry that we’re following, right. So we’re going to see the same people that were normal or used to seeing, right, but if we flip that upside down, if I have 10.5 1000 followers, right, and I only follow 1400. I’m not worried about the people that I’m following on this Monday day, right? Because I already know that I’m consistently interacting with those people just naturally. So on Monday, I’m focused on the 10 and a half 1000 that are following me that I don’t know, right? So if I’m scrolling that list, and I’m like, yeah, here’s a realtor. I don’t know, here’s a loan officer, I don’t know, right, I am initiating contact with them. So I’m gonna go to their account, I’m going to see if they have a new piece of content, I’m going to see if they have a new story up, and I’m going to create engagement. There’s some structure around how many and all of that, but I won’t get into that. And the beautiful thing about Monday, is, if you’ve ever heard of like the one two or three degrees of separation, right, we all know the person would somehow based off of that up to six degrees, or I guess six degrees of separation Max is how far we would have to go before we even know somebody, Instagram literally hands that to you on a silver platter in this sense. Because even like you and I getting connected DJ, how did that happen? Right? You interviewed somebody that I knew. So I clicked on her profile, did the suggested accounts button, got this big drop down of all these other accounts and then boom, here’s this, keep it real podcast with DJ and I’m like, Oh, well, I go on podcasts all the time, right. So here’s an opportunity to create a relationship and that relationship was built on via all I did was interact with a realtor that had started following me that I didn’t know. Right. So that’s, and here you are. I mean, here we are right um, which is beautiful. But so Mondays is really easy in the sense of Mondays focus is on the people who are following you, they’re there for a reason, right? Give them a reason to stay by being interactive with them. So that’s what. So

D.J. Paris 25:23just just to make sure I understand. So Mike, I think this is gold. This is so important. So Monday’s, what we’re doing is we’re going into our feed we are looking or we could go into our follower list, I guess, what would be the best way to figure out if we follow the person or not? Is it literally just one by one? Or do you have like a special word, we’re only

Michelle Berman-Mikel 25:42focused on the people who are following us in this case. So what you would do, however, many people are following you, and mine is 10 and a half 1000. Right. So I would literally just click on that number, and I would just scroll through the list go down. And we have a tracker, it’s a big, really, I kind of lovingly say it. It’s a very sexy Excel spreadsheet. But really, it’s just a big Excel spreadsheet. But it’s all color coded and pretty and whatever, right. But on Monday, you’re going to end up adding anybody that you interact with, you’re going to add their name to that list, and then you have a tab specifically for it that will grow. Because obviously, you’re not going to be able to interact with every single person that’s following you every Monday. It’s not reality. So yeah,

D.J. Paris 26:22so the the reason and the reason that we’re interacting with our followers content is the people that follow us is because they are going to notice that we’re interacting, and we’re talking about engagement, like writing content, comments on their posts, maybe sending them would a DM categories, classify or Okay, so any any content, any contact with their content or themselves. Yeah.

Michelle Berman-Mikel 26:48And keep in mind, right, like, if somebody starts following you, and you don’t know them, they obviously are following you for a reason something created the desire in the other individual to start following you. But if you don’t show up for them in any form of reengage, right, meaning if you start following me DJ, and I just let it go, and I just never go to your profile and engage back with you. You’re sort of kind of a lurker follower and you’re like, Oh, well, I’m following Michelle. But now I don’t really know where and eventually you might stop following me altogether. Right? So how do we create a stick factor? And then how do we create an opportunity to have a conversation with someone as it’s happening, sort of striking, while the iron is hot, if you will, or the concept of that when someone starts to consume us? Now, we’re not saying to somebody, like if you start following me right now, I’m not going to go and send you a DM and say, hey, thanks so much for following me like absolutely not, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to engage like a normal human, we’re going to go look at your content, see if you’ve posted something that I can resonate with, and then I’m going to re I’m going to react or respond to that.

D.J. Paris 27:54So yeah, I think you were you brought up a really good point. So what we’re what you just talked about is the dreaded linked in connection, because what happens sometimes when we accept a Yeah, we know this, you accept if you accept somebody, I don’t know what they call it, the more connections I think, in LinkedIn, when you accept a connection friend, so to speak, you know, sometimes you instantly get those automatic DMS inside of LinkedIn saying like, Oh, by the way, I want to sell you X, Y, or Z, or be your service provider. And nobody likes that. Literally. So if you if someone follows you don’t just write them a DM, thanks for following me. Would you like do you need a realtor? That is not how humans interact? And it is not how people I mean, maybe once out of 1000, you might get lucky, but everyone else will just be turned off? Because that’s not you haven’t demonstrated that you are interested in getting to know that person at all.

Michelle Berman-Mikel 28:44Well, and that ties into the second big mistake that from your original question. Like we just magically got to this place where I feel like it’s perfect to bring this up. Don’t have an automated message in your DMS. Yes. And I get so many of them, right like if I and I just got one right now while you and I are recording live, I got one where I sent a message a while back and literally just got an auto responder. So she obviously has many chat or something timed to send out an auto responder at a certain time. Some people have on set automatically so as soon as they get a message, they automatically send out an auto responder. So for For context, right let’s say for example, DJ you posted in your stories, a picture of you holding a Dutch Bros that you went and got in the morning on your way to work, right? And I comment or engage back in that via story reply, aka DM right. So if I respond to your story, and I say oh my gosh, I’m a huge Dutch bro fan. I have recently been getting the protein coffee. What did you order question mark send in you then have an auto responder that kicks back and says thanks so much for reaching out for to me for all your real estate needs. Here’s my cell phone number please call me like I’m instantly turned off and I’m definitely not responding to you but you Even more important than that, you are not going to ever see my message, right? Because now Instagrams not going to tell you that you have an unread message. Right? So the amount of time that’s going to lapse between you even seeing that there was that message from me in the first place to you responding to me is going to be way too long for me to be to, for me to stay engaged, if that makes sense.

D.J. Paris 30:22It totally. Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. And I also think, too, that in this as, as a man, I can only think about this from my perspective, and maybe the male perspective is, you know, there is such a thing as called sliding into someone’s DM. So as men, male realtors, we should be mindful of that, you know, in particular females, I guess it never happens to me, I never get any, any unsolicited, sort of romantic things inside of Instagram, but women do and so can we just really quickly talk about if we’re going to DM somebody who follows us and, and we’re not as familiar with them, we’re going to send them, you know, Hey, I saw you got this coffee or this thing? And I’m really into the same thing. How do we do that in a way that doesn’t come off as flirtatious or non professional? Do you have any just general guidelines there? As a woman who probably gets those kinds of messages often?

Michelle Berman-Mikel 31:18Yeah, unfortunately, I do. And when my husband and I first got married, we’re actually about to celebrate five years. But when my husband and I very first got married, we used to make fun of it together, like I would get the messages, and then I’d run into the other room and show him and he would respond, and it would just be fun. But now it’s not as funny anymore, because I’m a mom. And you know, I’m very happily married. And it’s sort of just annoying. But here’s the thing I will say is when I can very quickly tell intuitively, when it’s a message that is worthy of my response, right? So if someone just says Hi, H i, and that’s it not responding, right? If someone is sending me a message saying, Hi, beautiful, did all of this obviously not responding? Right? If someone says, Hi, do you have a few moments for us to chat? Not responding to that? Right? Yeah,

D.J. Paris 32:09that’s the one. I hate that one, too. Hi, Michelle,

Michelle Berman-Mikel 32:12do you have room in your day to take on more clients? Like, obviously, you didn’t look at my profile? Like if that’s what you’re right. So I think the number one thing I can tell every single one of you guys that are listening to this and how to how to deal with that is use your intuition. Right? Men have it women have it, we have different versions of the same intuition. But you can tell right, and my my pet peeve, if you will, is when a lot of the older generation will say, Well, I just don’t want to I don’t know. So I just respond to all of them. I’m like, no, just because I’m 33. And you’re 50 doesn’t mean that I’m 50, I’m not going to have the same intuition that I currently have. Sure. Right. So I think it’s just a matter of like, using your intuition and allowing using

D.J. Paris 32:56your best judgment. Yeah. Yeah. And also as as men understanding, we don’t get those kinds of messages, but women do. So being extra mindful. I mean, literally, I’ve never once gotten one of those messages. But which is, which, you know, is just the different experiences that men and women have

Michelle Berman-Mikel 33:13fans on how you initially engage, right, and what you say on your side. And so there’s a message structure that we teach, I’ll give you give it to you very quickly. But story replies, when you’re doing a story reply, it’s designed to be in three parts. Now, any of you guys have ever read what to say, or the art of conversation, or any of these really, very, very good sales psychology books, is that is how I formulated all of this. So it’s not just theory, right? This is truly like how it actually works on a day to day basis. But a story reply in those three parts. So again, all of these three parts is one message, but that one message is broken down into each of these sections or segments. So part number one is acknowledgement. So what is the person on the other side desire by using social media in the first place, right to feel her to feel seen to feel acknowledged for who we are and what we’re doing? So if I’m responding to your story about Dutch Bros, and I don’t acknowledge the fact that you’re holding a cup of coffee or that you are holding Dutch Bros coffee, I’m missing the boat there, right? I’m doing you a disservice. And I’m doing myself a disservice in trying to build our relationship. So acknowledgement first, so I’m going to acknowledge quite literally, hey, it’s awesome that you got Dutch Bros. I’m a huge Dutch Bros fan, too. Then part number two to the message comes in, which is subliminal business play. So this has been tried and tested over and over and over again. And the best way to do this is to tie it into your clients or the fact that you have clients or the fact that you’re actively working. So what would that sound like for you right? Like and let’s pretend I am the real estate agent Michelle, and I’m prospecting new DJ in my DMS right so I see the story of you posting, are you holding Dutch Bros? I’m gonna say it’s awesome that you got Dutch Bros. I’m a huge fan of Dutch Bros as well. I’ve been getting the protein coffee recently, and then the subliminal business play might be. Dutch Bros is actually my favorite place to take clients for coffee before we go look at houses. That’s my civil middle business play. So I’m not prosper, I’m not selling them directly, right? I’m simply acknowledging the fact I’m bringing to light subliminally, the fact that I have clients, right? Yeah,

D.J. Paris 35:31so your your, your, your your telling, instead of selling, you’re basically talking about an experience that’s related to your business without saying, and you might be the next person that I want to take. You’re just saying, Oh, hey, I love Dutch friends, I take all of my clients there. Before we go, I’m so glad to see another Dutch brother fan out there or whatever.

Michelle Berman-Mikel 35:51And then And then the third part is ending it in the question, right, ending it in the form of a question. So my final segment to that message that I’m sending you would be something like what’s your go to order at Dutch Bros? Or how often are you? Are you stopping at Dutch roses? You know, I go three times a week and my husband hates it. Ha, right. So anything in the form of a question is designed to get engagement, right? So if I’m ending it in a question, I’m anticipating you responding to me, and then when someone responds, so let’s say you do respond, my job at this point is to keep the conversation going as long as I can, right? We all know that in sales, the number one thing that we need to do is capture attention for as long as possible, right, the longer we can keep it, the more likely we have the opportunity or will have the opportunity to convert it. So my number one suggestion in your DMS is live in the land of curiosity, meaning ask questions all the time constantly, never respond in the form of a statement, or something that is a rhetorical question, right? In that sense, questions that are designed to continue the conversation is key, because we have to get through the four to seven touch points. That traditionally is what a real estate lead takes anyways, to convert in the first place.

D.J. Paris 37:08And there’s also transition sort of ways to transition from the sort of the statement about the post into the question. So I was thinking, as you were saying that, you know, what I would probably add, if the roles were reversed, as I would say, like, hey, Michel, you know, after saying your Dutch Brothers, that’s awesome. I love Dutch Brothers, they take my clients there. Hey, funny timing. I actually am looking for a new order. I I’m kind of getting sick of my regular order. Do you mind sharing what you ordered? Would you recommend it or something like that? Where I’m Yeah, yeah. And I’m just sort of a little bit more, you know, slowly and gently squeezing us into, hey, by the way, tell me tell me something about you.

Michelle Berman-Mikel 37:51Yeah. And I love that. And that’s the thing about it is every single one of us, no matter who you are, you’re going to do it a little differently. But the beauty of it is that you have to do it the way that you would do it and that there’s no magic one to this question is the number one question if you ask it, everybody’s gonna respond, right? It doesn’t work that way. So being able to just be intuitive, I think is the key and most importantly, living in the lane of curiosity and your messages. And I think the biggest thing that I want to make sure we don’t miss is prospecting is not a if I get to it, I’ll get to it type of situation, right? Especially when it comes to Instagram. So I prospect on Instagram every single day, I don’t prospect in the form of cold calling at all anymore, zero, I haven’t had to cold calling yours. I’m very grateful for that. But and if you’re listening to this, and you do cold call, that’s you keep doing it, right. But designate a time of your day or time block it, which is I think the phrase that most people use, right time block a hour of prospecting in your morning or in your afternoon or if you don’t have a solid hour, you can designate maybe it’s a little bit in the morning and a little bit at night. Right. But it has to be a non negotiable and I think that that’s the problem with with Instagram right now is people are seeing it as if I if I have time, I’ll get to it when I get to it. Versus this is an opportunity for me to truly never have to cold call again. If I do it right, because I can build a relationship digitally first work through the touch points and then get on the phone with them. Hello. Never having that weird, gross cold call feeling ever again. That’s super intrusive, feels very invasive, you’re catching them at the wrong time. They’re like, why are you calling me who are you? I’ve already talked to five other realtors. Right? Like, we want to avoid all of that. And so avoiding that feeling is literally why I developed the prospecting part of the Instagram platform the way that we do it because I know how that felt many many years ago, and it’s awful. I don’t know anybody that enjoys getting on.

D.J. Paris 39:56No, it’s It’s terrible. So Monday is for reaching out to our followers and initiating some sort of interest in their activities, their passions and seeing if a conversation emerges from there, at the very least, even if it doesn’t, what we’re doing is demonstrating care and that we’re interested in someone else, and that we’re paying attention, which is the most one of the most flattering things that any human can experience is somebody’s paying attention to them, like you said, being seen being heard, most importantly, being acknowledged, and that’s through the content or the comments, or the DM is, Hey, I saw you did this thing. Awesome. That’s really cool. What do we do on Tuesdays?

Michelle Berman-Mikel 40:37Tuesdays, and thank you for pushing us along there. I intend to go on tangents when I kept asking No, no, no,

D.J. Paris 40:43I could talk about I could talk about it for hours. And I’m like, I got I better remember. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. Tuesdays are

Michelle Berman-Mikel 40:49Tuesdays and Thursdays are actually the same. So well, they typically have different categories. But the theory behind Tuesdays and Thursdays is the same. So what Tuesdays and Thursdays are is when you’re not at home, or when you’re not at work, where do you go? What hobbies do you have that you could potentially be having conversations with individuals about real estate, and I have a client, I’m gonna use her as an example. She is a plant lady, hardcore plant lady, every closing gift for every client is a really beautiful, real plant. Right? I told her, I was like, I can never hire you to be my realtor, because I will kill the plant. But I love it. I love plants. I have green plants all over my house that most of them are not real. But when she brought that up in that context, she was like, Well, how do I add? How do I make that a category where I can talk to other people about plants on Instagram, and have it be in my area? Right? And she was shocked at how fast I was able to find flow.

D.J. Paris 41:46It’s so easy. There’s uh, yeah, you could go to any any florist. You could go to any plant person that’s local. You could you could say, hey, let’s jump on an Instagram Live, I’ll promote your business will you promote? We can talk about real estate and talk about plants. I’m just throwing ideas.

Michelle Berman-Mikel 42:03You’re doing my job for me. Like that’s exactly what the idea behind it is. So when it comes to finding them, right, like, we did this together on a Zoom meeting her and I literally Googled plant shops in her area. She actually she happens to live in Connecticut. But so we googled plant shops, and the only thing that really came up was Home Depot and Lowe’s. And we’re like, no, no, right? So I showed her was a trick that you can do on Instagram. And I said, Sarah, go find your plant shop that you go to on Instagram. She’s like, Oh, I already know their account. So she goes to their account. And then in their profile, if you see the contact button, and then right next to the contact button, there’s this little tiny button that is a person with a plus sign. And if you click on that, it’s going to give you this huge drop down of suggested accounts. And Instagram is saying that based off of following this plant shop, you might like all of these, right? And we went through all of those, so many of them are either other little plant shops, coffee shops that also sold plants in her area. bloggers that blogged about plants in her area. I mean, like the list was endless. And she was like, Michelle, my town is so small, How is this even a thing? And I’m like, Thank you Instagram, because you just created a community for yourself in your hyperlocal market. Right? And I really want to hit on that in your hyperlocal market. Yeah, we’re

D.J. Paris 43:23not finding plant shops from all over the country, which anybody could do. And that doesn’t really necessarily speak to the local community. Correct,

Michelle Berman-Mikel 43:31right. But like Instagram, if by using that suggested button, right, Instagram is literally giving you what you are asking for, right, which is I want to find other people who are into plants and other plant shops or other bloggers or whatever, in my area. So to go back to your original question, and to keep the flow of the tracker happening, Tuesdays and Thursdays are designed to be these types of days right so you’re focused on Hobbies specifically, or things that you enjoy outside of work. Now this can be at home, right you can I have a client who’s really into homesteading, right? If that’s you, there’s a whole community for that on Instagram. If you’re into like knitting or arts and crafts, or if you’re a mom, right, I have a hockey mom client that I adore her. And she’s like, Michelle, I don’t do anything other than go to hockey, like every single day we go to hockey. And I was like, that’s a day on your tracker, because all of the different arenas that your son’s play in all of the different teams that have their own Instagram accounts, all the different small businesses that support the hockey community, aka SEL hockey stuff, all of the coaches that have their own Instagrams, right, the list goes on and on and on. And the beautiful thing about all of this, so Tuesdays and Thursdays, you can have different categories for each of the days, right? So if you have multiple hobbies or multiple different things, but the idea behind Tuesdays and Thursdays is that you are talking to people about things that you also share a passion for or an interest in. And if I’m commenting on if I’m my client, that’s a hockey mom, right if I’m Like, if I’m sorry, if I’m commenting on a hockey teams post about them winning a game or winning a match, right? Guess who’s gonna see my comment, all of the other moms or all of the other people that are into hockey that are probably following that Instagram account. And the idea is that they are going to see my comment, they’re going to see my interaction, they’re going to click on my profile, go and see if you’re doing it right that you are posting about hockey and that you’re posting about your kids being interested in hockey too. And now there’s this connection. And then the subliminal part of that happens, which is we’re showing all of our real estate content are showcasing our credibility through our testimonials and all these other things. But the connection is initially made via mutual shared passion or interest.

D.J. Paris 45:49Love, it’s we’re finding local people as best we can in our community. And just that little tip, that really cool tip that I did not know about is look for the little icon. So look for an account of a business or a page that that your Instagram account that you’re into, that’s shares your one of your passions. And then you can see a little icon you click on that, and it will show you suggested accounts that are very similar. And you can start looking to see if you can find also, you can other find other accounts in the area, you can also there are Instagram, you know, there’s search functionality to and Instagram. And so you could also start searching via certain hashtags. And obviously look for hyperlocal things like if you’re, if you want to find we do this here in Chicago a lot where there’s so many different neighborhoods and suburbs, that there’s all these, you know, for example, Mom groups that talk about activities for children, very common. And, you know, there’s certain hashtags for that, and, you know, etc. Okay, so Tuesdays, and yeah, that’s

Michelle Berman-Mikel 46:49the tracker when you build it out. And thank you for saying all that because you again, you’re you’re doing my job for me, DJ, good job. But uh, the the tracker when it’s built out, right, you have it broken into three categories. So you have hashtags accounts, and geo tags, and each of your days of the week is separated that way, with the exception of Mondays and Fridays, or Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, which we’ll talk about here in a second. But so Tuesdays and Thursdays, you have hashtags, you have accounts, you have geo tags, and then we teach a trick called the wormhole effect, which is simply if you click on one of those hockey pages, for example, you find the the hockey arena that your kid plays out consistently. And you click on their most recent piece of content, let’s say they have 30 likes, if you click on the people who liked it, you then start interacting with those individuals, right. So that’s the wormhole effect. With the idea behind that being you’re connecting with more and more people that are actively using the page or consuming the page and just getting your name exposed to those who are interested in the same thing in your area. So So

D.J. Paris 47:49quick question about that. So you just said something very powerful. So again, let’s say we’re, we’re our passion is being a hockey mom. And we are looking at the account for the rink, the arena that our child plays at. And we see all of the other, you know, hockey moms that might be following that Instagram account, how do you encourage people to interact? Because this is going to be people that don’t know you, but that have a shared interest? You’re both into hockey being hockey mom, and you’re going to the Serena, what would you say is a great point of engagement. How do you how do you sort of

Michelle Berman-Mikel 48:26it goes back to the exact same the same methodology, right? So the same three prong initial response, which is acknowledgement, subliminal business play, and then in the form of a question now, if that’s her story, replies, right, or DMS story reply, a DM is the same thing for those of you guys listening that that don’t know the terminology, they are the same, right? So if you’re responding to a story that ends up being a DM, but if you’re commenting on someone’s content on their feed, it’s a little bit different, right? It’s a little simpler, you don’t need to do a full three prong response. But you do need to do have acknowledgement, right. I will tell every single one of you if you are commenting on a piece of content, and your comment doesn’t stand out to me as the person that produced content or produced the piece of content, I’m not responding to you, right. So if you’re like awesome content, great photo, this is really cute, or your son is really cute exclamation point. It’s like that’s what everybody says right? And not to be facetious about it, but to simply say, in a sea of a bunch of comments, your job is to stand out. So if you see somebody’s posting of their son’s playing at the same hockey arena that your son plays, right, I acknowledge it. Oh my gosh, this is awesome. I had no idea that you guys also played hockey here. I’ve been coming here with my son for the last five years. Period. Right? And that could be something that’s going to stand out. Now if you’re responding to her story, that individual story that posted that photo of her boys in front of the hockey arena and you’re like, Well, how do you break the ice? Same concept right the three prongs were Have a reply applies, which is acknowledge subliminal business plan and in the form of a question. So your final question to that could be something like, I’ve been coming here with my sons for the last five years, how long have you and your boys been playing in this arena? And you can even go one step further. Like, when are you guys there? I would love to like say hi, right, like, say hi, yeah, you know. But it gets a lot easier when you have that shared connection or that mutual interest. And then the thing about that, which is funny is to your point, DJ, which is, there’s a degree of separation, where you even realize that you already knew that person without even realizing it, right? So you may click on their profile and be like, Oh, that’s the life of this person, or, Oh, that’s the best friend of this person that I’ve never talked to. Right, and it becomes so easy to start a conversation. So Tuesdays and Thursdays are that right? And I always say, it’s just think through that and your everyone’s like, Well, I’m really boring. I don’t do anything. No, that’s not true, right? You have interests, you have passions, even if you don’t leave,

D.J. Paris 51:04even if it’s a TV show that you watch it I was doing this the other day, I was watching the curse, which is a show on Showtime. And it’s one of the most uncomfortable shows I’ve ever seen. It’s purposely written to certainly activate someone’s anxiety and interpersonal sort of challenges. It’s, it’s, it’s really good, Emma Stone and Nathan fielder. It’s very, very good. But anyway, it’s very hard, I find it very difficult to watch. There’s a lot of symbolism in the show. And I go, I am going to the Reddit forum, or the Reddit group for the subreddit for the curse, and there is one. And I’m like, I think they’re trying to portray him as like a Jesus like character. And anyway, I wanted to see if my theory was was accurate. And sure enough, other people had the exact same theory. But you could do the same thing on Instagram, you can say I just saw the ending of episode so and so with, with this, you could even post content about it and say, I don’t really understand what the ending means. If anyone has seen this, if you have, you know, ideas, or you could search for other people’s content about that particular episode, say, Hey, I just found your content. I’m a little confused about the ending. Here’s what I think. But what do you think? I mean, it doesn’t have to be something you even go out and do. It could be something you consume, like, you know, like coffee, or a TV show or

Michelle Berman-Mikel 52:18book or anything. Yep. And the easiest. The easiest way to do it if you’re like sitting struggling thinking of ideas for topics is if you’re like you’re in Chicago, right? But Chicago is freaking massive. So the thing about that is five subsidies or five sub sub not subdivisions, but so five subsidies within the city. So I live in Clarksville, Tennessee, right, but my husband and I live in Sango, which is a subsidy within the Clarksville zip code. But here in Clarksville, if I were to say to a mom or somebody at the gym, or whatever. Oh yeah, we live in St. Louis. Everybody knows what that means. So if you go to Instagram, and you type in hashtag Sango, Tennessee that is going to come up. So if you’re going to do it on a Tuesday or Thursday, what I would recommend is pick your top five subsidies or cities specifically that you sell real estate in or want to find hashtags find geo tags, find specific accounts that are related to those cities. So here in 10 are here in Clarksville, we have a Instagram page called Local Clarksville, which is basically the page that shares anything and everything restaurants, mom’s stuff, bookstores, coffee shop, everything right for Clarksville, and that page becomes sort of the springboard to all these other pages that could give you ideas of who to be engaging with in different types of accounts. So Tuesdays or Thursdays, you could just do it what we call small business day, which is you’re using those five subsidies and just looking at their hashtags, looking at their geo tags, and then just go into town.

D.J. Paris 53:47So yeah, there’s a there’s a, for example, as a gene store I go to that just happens to be a block from where I live. And it’s really, I think, probably the only good gene store in Chicago, certainly one of few. And they have, it’s tough, it’s tough out there as a small business owner, and then all they sell are jeans. And yeah, they sell very expensive jeans, and you have to be into expensive jeans in order to like want to spend the kind of money to do that. So they are struggling like every other small business. So one of my first calls would be like, Hey, I know there’s other guys like me out there that probably don’t even know you guys exist. So I want to make sure that people know you exist because I love having you in my neighborhood. And by the way, I’m a realtor and I do these things. But what I really want to do is focus on promoting your jeans because I wear them I’m a big fan. Can I come in and do a quick, you know, five minute interview with you. Obviously, there’s no downside for the owner unless they don’t want to be on camera. Somebody will do it. It’s free. And you’re going to tag them. They’re going to tag you you promote it, they promote it. Everybody wins. You could do that. Yeah, twice a week. Easy.

Michelle Berman-Mikel 54:49Oh, easy, easy. And obviously the hobbies is the key focus with the small business sort of being that backup to that. But for sake of time I want to give you guys Wednesday, so Wednesday is what I call CRM day. So this is a very important day that I can tell you right now, I’ve been doing this specifically for beyond the method and my program for five years, and people still don’t do this, which I’m assuming that’s probably why I’m still in business, obviously. But but it’s I say that funnily but what Wednesday’s are designed to be a CRM day. So what that means is you are taking your database and your cold leads, right? So if you’re paying realtor.com leads, so flex leads, why Lobo, whatever red X whoever, right, you’re purchasing data from, find them on Instagram and find them. Oh,

D.J. Paris 55:36that’s brilliant, I never would have thought to do.

Michelle Berman-Mikel 55:41Right. So like in your Excel doc, on Wednesday, you have a tab at the bottom, you upload the CSV file out of your CRM. Now depending on what CRM you use, like something like follow up boss, right, for example, they will link a Facebook profile to that individual, it doesn’t link Instagram yet, for whatever reason, I don’t know, tell him to work on it. But it’ll link a Facebook profile, you can go look at that person’s Facebook, or try to find and see if it’s the right one, and then cross check it to Instagram. Now the reason for that is most of the time, a person is going to have the same profile photo on Facebook and Instagram that they would on one or the other platforms, right, we typically do that. Smart, that means that you’ll be able to confirm or deny this is the same person, especially because a lot of people, especially if it’s individual personal accounts, they’re private, right. So in order for you to send or follow them on Instagram, you’re going to have to send a follow request, they have to approve it. So if you’re going to do that, you want to make sure you’re following the right person and confirm that based off of seeing them on Facebook first. So on Wednesday, there, it’s two parts, right? You’re uploading your CRM, you got 500 names, 1000 names, whatever it is, and you’re working through the list, you’re finding them on Facebook, you then cross check, find them on Instagram, and every Wednesday, you just keep working through that list and make sure that you consistently are talking to the people that are on that list. So you take the first 45, then the next Wednesday, you go do the next 45, you just keep working through until you repeat at the top of the list. In the process of doing that, you’re obviously going to start having a lot of really good warm conversations. So eventually, that person is going to get moved off of Wednesday, onto another day of your tracker, aka Friday, which is what we call reengage day. And I know that this is getting somewhat confusing, but visually it’s a lot easier to see. But that’s what that’s what Wednesday’s are designed to be the cold lead part of it is if you get a if you’re buying leads in any capacity, right? Zillow leads is a great example. Because when Zillow calls you, or when you get a lead from Zillow, they’re just calling you Right? Like you don’t have time live transfer. And no like, Oh, this is Michelle from Michael calling me this is her Instagram, she has a dog, she has a two and a half like she you don’t have that access that fast. Right? So the beautiful thing about that side of it is when someone calls you like that you get this inbound lead your job as the real estate agent moving on from that are in moving on from right now to every conversation you have moving forward is on the phone with them. Let’s say it’s you DJ, right. And I you and I are you are inbound calling me. I’m the realtor. You’re the Zoli coming in. So I’m gonna say hi, DJ, this is Michelle Berman. Michael, great that you are calling Bubba ball go into my script, right? But then here’s where this gets important. At the very end of the conversation, it is your job to make sure you are connected to them on Instagram, right? So at the end of your call, you will literally say hey, DJ, this has been an amazing chat with you. I’m really looking forward to seeing you on Saturday when we go to your xyz property or on Friday when we go meet for coffee to talk about your house, blah, blah, blah, right. But before we hang up really fast, I want to make sure we’re connected on Instagram, because that’s my primary platform that is the primary place that I communicate with all of my clients. So what’s your Instagram account really fast? Yeah,

D.J. Paris 58:58it almost doesn’t even give them the option to say no, because you’ve already qualified it by saying, Hey, this is where I communicate most effectively and most consistently. So yeah, if you know, I wouldn’t even ask if you don’t mind. I would just say what’s what’s like, just like you said, I

Michelle Berman-Mikel 59:12had I had a client and I’m curious what your thought is on this TJ because I had a client who was like, Michelle, is it weird to say that, like, if somebody’s gonna think that that’s weird, and

D.J. Paris 59:21it can seem weird. Yeah. But the way that you said it was not weird, you qualified it. You explained why you were asking for it. And it was a perfectly logical reason. Yeah. So I think if you just said hey, what’s your Instagram? Then people can have all sorts of thoughts in their head about why are they asking for this? Are they are they flirting with me? Are they you know, who knows? But I think by saying by qualifying at the way you did, it gives really no reason for somebody to say no,

Michelle Berman-Mikel 59:50you’re just having a conversation with someone and you’re quite literally saying, This is my primary method of communication. I know we had discussed meeting on Friday for coffee. So I just want to make sure we’re connected there. So that if you have any questions between now and Friday, when I see you, you can message me. Right, perfect. So and then once that happens, once you start following them, or they start following you, they obviously get added to your tracker. So you can track that that individual is now following you so that you can stay consistently in front of them. Because I will say realtors are notorious for terrible follow up. I think everybody would say that, that they are, even if they’ve been in business forever, right? They’ll say like, my biggest weakness is not like closing the loop. Right, closing and working the lead until you get a hard No. And so that’s certainly a way to make sure that you can track it. But yeah, so that’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Friday is simply reengaged day. So what that means is quite literally reengage anybody that you’ve had a good conversation with. So if a conversation comes to a natural stopping point, which it will they all do normal, it’s very normal, you simply reengage them. And then the way that we do this is we track and we color code them, right? So if it’s the first reengage, if it’s the second, reengage, etc, we can track that. And then once we’ve gotten to four or five, really solid back and forth, and really solid touch points with that individual, then it’s our job to for the ask, right, your job is to get them on the phone or attempt to set an appointment, whatever that looks like for you zoom meeting, Calendly, Link, whatever, whatever that is for you. But you have to attempt to go for the ask at that point. And then Friday basically gives you the opportunity to stay in front of all of your warm leads.

D.J. Paris 1:01:32And then what are we doing on the weekends? Are we taking the weekend?

Michelle Berman-Mikel 1:01:35I don’t engage on the weekends. And that’s, that’s me personally, I want to tell everybody is the tracker that I’ve designed is Monday through Friday. If but it’s what I mean by that as it’s five days, right? So it’s five days designed Monday through Friday. However, if you want to do it Tuesday through Saturday, I don’t care. Right. If you want to do it Wednesday through Sunday, I don’t care. There’s no better day or worst day, it’s a matter of like what are the five days for you that are going to make sense. I also know that real estate agents notoriously are the busiest on Saturday and Sunday. So asking them to prospect and spend an hour in their DMS or an hour on Instagram specifically doing what I’m teaching is going to be harder, right? Mondays, there’s no reason most most real estate agents are used Mondays as their admin day or as they’re like, chill, I’m going to catch up day because of a crazy weekend. So but that’s just how it’s been formulated. But if your schedule is completely different, and everything I just said doesn’t apply to you as far as days, then do it do the five days on the days that makes sense for you.

D.J. Paris 1:02:38So just to sort of recap the the way that I think you’re telling people to approach Instagram is really as a connection tool, not as much of a consumption tool. So we’re either going to use it to unwind and sort of just have, you know, entertain ourselves with other people’s content. But for us, it’s for our for our business, we want to be super intentional and think of it as how do we find how do I find people who are into the same things I’m into? And how do I engage them on a regular basis so that we can share our passions and connect that way? And then we can naturally lead that into Hey, oh, by the way, I’m a real estate agents etc. Yeah, so so we really for the if we’re finding people we don’t already know, we’re really looking for shared interests. We’re connecting that way. And then we’re moving on.

Michelle Berman-Mikel 1:03:28At some point here connection. Keep that in mind. Right, right. Yes, thank you. Because a shared connection is equally as powerful as a shared connection. I’m sorry, as a shared passion or hobby, right? Yeah. Because some of my closest friends in the industry today, right? I don’t know if you’ve ever interviewed Kyle Draper DJ, but if not, you should write but Kyle and I became very good friends because we accidentally found each other on Instagram. And we’re like, hey, we were both on the same show. And now anytime I’m in Dallas, I am always having dinner or meeting up with Kyle. We’ve also spoken in events together. We’ve done podcasts, all the things right. And what’s funny about that, as I met Kyle during COVID, when clubhouse was really big at the time, so I heard Kyle’s voice went Instagram found him realize we had all these connections, and was like, Oh my gosh, I just gotta send him a message. So I did. Fast forward, you know, three plus years. Here we are. So I think it’s just as much about mutual interest or shared passions as it is actual just straight up connections, right and what those degrees of separation might be that could turn into a business opportunity or in your guys’s case on the real estate side, specifically a lead right like oh, you you worked with so and so that I know or Oh, I know the owner of that place. How often do you go

D.J. Paris 1:04:50Yeah, it’s funny I always think about this with because this podcast we interview mostly a top 1% agents from all over the country, and I work route agents. So if I were not hosting this podcast and some other buddy, somebody else was doing what I do, I would be calling those agents that, you know, were interviewed in my area that were featured on any podcast, whether it’s mine or someone else’s, and be like, Hey, by the way, I just listened to your interview with such and such podcast, you’re exactly the kind of agent we want. At our firm. If you’re ever thinking about, you know, this idea of, you know, using media to find people to find prospects to connect, is really just the way that we think of it mostly as a consumption model. I’m going to consume other’s content, or I’m going to just post you know, stuff about my business. We’re not really thinking about it so much in the terms of connections. So I love that that’s like, the major focus for you is how do we actually connect? And let’s we want to make sure that if you’re loving what Michelle is saying, and I don’t know how you wouldn’t be because I’m learning a tremendous amount. And I’ve had Instagram experts on our show for a long time. And I’ve not learned ever this much before. So if you’re liking what Michelle is saying, and you are, please go to please consider investing in beyond the method you can find that at Berman media PD, that’s Paul David so Berman media pd.com link to that in the show notes, of course, and learn more about this because Michelle teaches all of this and literally gives you a step by step sort of template and an idea of how to authentically connect with others on Instagram and turn that into your number one prospecting source and I am now thinking about it as from a recruiting perspective for agents about how I can do the exact same thing from a recruiting person you know, from from recruiting, and of course I can there’s no difference. So I am going to I’m going to consider taking this course but this we could talk for hours more but we don’t want to. Certainly poor Michelle is already given us a good hour and 15 minutes. So what we want to do is we’re going to we’re going to end the episode here but guys, if you liked what you heard the best two things you can do. First of all, go to Berman media pd.com Learn about Michelle’s program, follow her on Instagram as well. She She doles out all sorts of great advice and tidbits there that are always going to be helpful to you whether you invest in her program or not. That’s Berman media social on Instagram. But please consider investing in this program. Because if this becomes your number one recruiting source or recruiting i Sorry, I’m in recruiting mode. So this becomes your prospecting the same thing prospecting recruiting prospecting mode, this is going to be the best money you ever spend. Instagram is not going away. And this is still the number one platform that people are really wow. Yeah, it’s it’s the number one platform people are using that you are going to want to find for clients. It’s really the best prospecting tool there is for real estate agents. prospecting, I think I think Facebook doesn’t quite cut it for this. Facebook’s got its own great things about it, you can do wonderful things there. LinkedIn has some some great things. But Instagram is still kind of the place where you can find other people much more easily than you can and other other areas, other social platforms. So this is the the time that 2024 is the year to really get into Instagram. So Berman media pd.com is where you flirt about all things Michelle, and beyond the Method program, guys, it’s absolutely amazing. And the second way is let us know how much you liked this episode, because we got a lot more to talk to Michelle about and if you guys loved this, let me know. So we can have her back on the show more regularly, maybe she comes on as a as a repeating guest so that we can continue to provide this content to to you guys. So Michelle, I will not keep you captive any longer, you have been so generous, and really spilling all of the secrets that that you could and you know, 75 minutes, which is really impressive. And again, that really also speaks to who Michelle is as a person. You know, these these, she gave you really some incredible strategies, guys, by the way, you probably should listen to this episode a second time just to cover, go through and get everything and Michelle talks fast. I talk fast. But she had a lot of great content in there. So I’m not saying it to our view count by double, although that’d be great for us. But really, I’m doing it because I need to go back and listen to it again and make sure I’ve got a lot of these fundamentals down and then consider investing in Michelle’s program. So on behalf of our audience, thank you Michelle for taking, you know a good chunk of your afternoon to to talk all about Instagram. I’m so glad you found us and I’m so grateful to have you on the show. Personally, our audience I’m speaking for them as well and on behalf of Michelle and myself thanks to the audience. Thanks you guys for sticking around to the very end. We appreciate you again consider investing in Michelle’s program follow her on Instagram, Berman media social is her account and also a I’ll tell a friend to think of one other realtor that is thinks they should do more on Instagram. By the way, pretty much every realtor feels that way. So anyone you can think of that is looking to do more with Instagram this year. That’s basically everyone shoot them a link to this episode. That would be a huge thank you to me. And, Michelle, let’s spread the word. And also leave us a review. Whatever you’re listening to us on or watching us on. Let us know what you think of the show. We do read all the comments, even the tough to read ones. And we make adjustments because the show is for me, it’s not for Michelle, it’s for you. So let us know what we can do to continue making the show better and better. All right, Michelle, thank you so much. We will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks so much,

Michelle Berman-Mikel 1:10:41guys. Appreciate it.