On today’s episode of the engaging marketer, I’m going with something a little bit different Instead of a normal interview episode, I’m going to share a recording from a clubhouse room that I guested in a couple of weeks ago. I was invited by one of our clients, Sunil Popat to appear in their Clubhouse room for We Talk Property, where I was interviewed by a number of property investors and property experts on digital marketing for the property sector. Julie Hogbin, one of the moderators of the room, kindly allowed us to share this as a podcast. Please check out the clubhouse room We Talk Property, it’s absolutely fantastic for anybody in the property industry. You can listen to the interview over on our YouTube – here’s some of the best bits from the talk.
Sunil: You mention that you started the business a while back, do you have any property background or are you just interested in helping property people?
Darren: I started in digital marketing by mistake, as most people in my industry tend to do. I wanted to be a film director initially, I went to Cannes Film Festival with a script that we tried to get funding on. Nothing really came of that, but the websites I was building to help promote the film seemed to come naturally to me and, as a result of the work I was doing online, I got found by a marketing manager for the company now known as Game. I’ve worked for a lot of marketing agencies around the UK, some of them that don’t do things the right way for their clients. We set up Engage Web to help clients do things the right way.
In terms of property, I’ve been in property myself since around 2012, with buy-to-lets. I’ve got buy-to-lets dotted around the country because I tend to buy houses and then not sell them, it’s almost like a collecting habit I’ve got. I work with three different letting agents personally, which is annoying, so I see a lot of the bad things letting agents do – I’ve got some horror stories actually, I don’t want to frighten anybody that is into property, though. Also, we bought our own commercial building up here in the North West for our business, because we were in a rented building for many many years; it was very cheap, very economic, but it didn’t allow for growth so we’ve bought a two-story building which allows for much better growth if we wanted to expand.
Anthony: At the moment, if you look at social media, there are lots of platforms these days if you look at Instagram, Facebook TikTok, etc., what’s your advice to people in that regard? Do you go on all of these platforms? Do you concentrate on one or two? What your view on that?
Darren: It’s always good to look at new platforms that are coming out, so that you can be first on what is going to be the next big thing. So if a new platform emerges, try it out, have a look at it, don’t ignore it. I personally left TikTok far too long, because I thought ‘that’s not me, I don’t want to do that’ and there’s probably a few people in this room right now that are thinking ‘I’m not touching TikTok’, but I went on TikTok probably two months ago, and I’ve already had just under a million views on videos on TikTok, and I haven’t done one silly dance. It’s about giving people information that they want to know that is entertaining. So, try out a new platform, don’t be afraid of it, because you think it might not be for you, but in terms of placing your effort on platforms to grow a business, you really want to be looking at where your target market is. I speak to a lot of businesses who say they don’t like Facebook, they don’t want to use Facebook, but if your target audience is on Facebook, then it’s something you’re going to have to use.
Anthony: On that point about using multiple platforms, what’s your view on scheduling software?
Darren: That’s a good question. We don’t personally use scheduling software, because I believe it throttles the reach. We have done tests with this and found that it has, but I know some people say that it doesn’t and they swear by it. Facebook has an inbuilt scheduling platform, Instagram has an inbuilt scheduling platform, LinkedIn is trialling scheduling now. It also helps, of course, to have a team around you. I’ve just come back from Orlando for two weeks, the whole time I was in Orlando, I was still posting on social media, using my team. They were posting and we were getting leads through social media as a result of it. We’ve got guys in the office that are able to follow these up because stuff’s coming in, because stuff’s being consistent on social media, so if you’ve got a team that can do this for you, it is the best way to do it. But using external scheduling software isn’t something we like to use because I think it causes too many problems.
Anthony: So Darren, question then: the world of social media, is there a secret sauce?
Darren: Haha, yes. The key is if you want people to engage with you and see what you do, they need to be engaged with. If you’re just going on LinkedIn and you’re posting posting posting posting, that’s not really going to work – you need to be engaging with the people that you want to be interacting with. If you just go on Facebook and post post and don’t interact with anybody, you’re just shouting into a vacuum. You need to be engaging, you need to be seen to be interacting, you need to go into groups and help other people. The more you help other people, the more they’ll see you. iI’s about giving value and helping people rather than just going out there and preaching, because that doesn’t work.
Anthony: If you were to give people who are starting out on social media advice right now, what would your three top tips that you would give people?
Darren: Brand consistency is important. If you are on trying to get into social media now, you want to try to get the same username, the same image, the same brand header, the same description, the same message, the same links across all of them so that people know who you are. Consistency of content is important. There is no point just going out there and posting on LinkedIn and then doing nothing for two weeks, or posting on Facebook and doing nothing for two weeks. You need to be consistent. Next thing I’d say is that you can schedule in advance. Using Facebook, you can do it, on Twitter you can do it, on Instagram, you can’t do it on LinkedIn yet but you will be able to soon. So you don’t actually have to be there at eight o’clock every morning doing it, you can save your time by doing everything say on a Monday morning for an hour and schedule the whole week ahead. Keep interacting with people – when somebody comments on your stuff, reply to them, do not leave any comment, any engagement unanswered or unreplied to, because the more you interact with them, the more they’ll interact with you.
Craig: I was going to ask the question about how you monitor people’s reviews on social media.
Darren: That’s a good point with reviews. Quite often we’ll get companies come to us and say ‘can you do anything about a negative review on Google’? You can appeal a review on Google but it’s very rare Google will do anything about it unless it’s got sexism, racism, hate speech or something in it they’re probably not going to touch. What I would say is don’t worry about having a negative review on Google, it is expected, it is natural, but as you say, replying to the reviews is important. If you are not replying to reviews, particularly a negative review, then it does look like that person’s got a genuine problem with you. Social media is very much about social proofing and it’s about how you deal with things. Clients are not always happy, it’s about how you deal with it that matters.
Omar: Is producing short-form video content still the best strategy in terms of raising awareness and engagement? And also, how do you see YouTube’s future in the next five years?
Darren: YouTube is actually the second biggest searched website online, behind Google. YouTube has always been massive, and it will continue to be so. YouTube wants longer content because that’s how it makes its money, with the ads. It wants stuff that’s going to be 10 minutes, 15 minutes, an hour, two hours, because it can fit the ads into them. Short form content is important in the right place, whereas your long form content has its place elsewhere. YouTube is all about the long form because of the advertising, short-form is your TikTok, your Instagram, your Facebook reels.
Sunil: Is there anything else you’d like to leave our listeners with today that they could probably do very quickly to gain some traction?
Darren: I think one thing that’s probably a good thing to do is, when you’re looking to put stuff out on social media, it’s very difficult to know what to write about or what to talk about. One thing I suggest that people do when we run our social media and content workshops here at Engage Web is something called Google Alerts. You can sign up for news alerts for specific keywords within your industry so if you create alerts on things that are related to what you do. So if you’ve got a business that people talk about, it’s worth putting your brand name in so you can find out when it’s been mentioned online. Unfortunately, there’s a Scottish footballer with my name and my spelling, so for the last few years he’s been cropping up quite a lot, annoyingly. But that’s definitely one tip I would suggest, to use Google Alerts.
I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion I had with the folks over at the We Talk Property clubhouse community. Thank you to Sunil, Julie and all of the attendees who contributed to a great talk about the relationship between digital marketing and property.
As ever, make sure you’re subscribed to the Engaging Marketeer podcast on all of the relevant podcast platforms, as well as our YouTube channel.
