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Links & Show Notes

• NAR Statistics on Video Marketing (mentioned in this episode)
• Shaheedah’s first YouTube video (mentioned in this episode)
• TubeBuddy.com (video marketing tool mentioned in this episode)
• Shaheedah’s YouTube channel
•  Shaheedah’s YouTube course: YouTube for Hyperlocal Real Estate Agents
• Shaheedah’s Facebook group: YouTube for Hyperlocal Real Estate Agents
• Join our Facebook mastermind for The Walkthrough listeners
• HomeLight’s Agent Resource Center
• Follow and listen to The Walkthrough: Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | YouTube

Full Transcript

(SPEAKER: Matt McGee, Host)

Right now … at this exact moment … there are thousands of buyers and sellers searching YouTube and watching videos. Probably TENS of thousands. They’re researching a new city to move to. They’re learning about different neighborhoods in the city where they already live. And indirectly, they’re starting to know, like, and trust the real estate agents whose videos they’re watching.

Hi, I’m Matt McGee, host of The Walkthrough.

Over the last few years, YouTube has become one of the most consistent sources of leads in real estate. So why aren’t you consistently posting videos there?

Shaheedah Hill is a veteran agent in the Atlanta area. She’s one of the most successful agents on YouTube and teaches other agents how to mimic her success.

Today’s episode is an encore presentation of Shaheedah’s appearance back in June. If you’re struggling with the confidence to get in front of a camera and press that big red “record” button, this one’s for you. Shaheedah’s gonna talk about how to overcome six of the most common fears you have about making videos.

A couple notes: As you listen back to this episode, you’ll hear me mention that Shaheedah has 109-thousand YouTube subscribers. Today, she has about 130-thousand. I also mentioned in June that her videos had been seen about 5.6 million times. That’s now about 7 million views.

Most importantly, at the end of the original, I mentioned that Shaheedah’s YouTube class would open for registration in the fall. The next installment of her class will open in December, so you’re in perfect time to check it out and sign up. You’ll find a link to the course in today’s show notes.

Those buyers and sellers are on YouTube right now. You should be, too. Here’s an encore presentation of our episode – overcoming your fear of video with Shaheedah Hill.

Matt: Sometimes a simple question can change your direction. Back in 2018, Shaheedah Hill was a real estate agent and a teacher. It made for a lot of long, long days. One day, her kids asked a question.

Shaheedah: “Mommy, can we please not be the last people, kids, to get picked up from the afterschool program?” Because school got out at 2:00 or 2:30, and I was picking them up like at 5:59, and the afterschool program stopped at 6:00.

Matt: Shaheedah made her kids a promise. She said, “Give me a year and I’ll be able to pick you up on time.” But what then? Shaheedah needed to find a way to make real estate her focus. No excuses, all in.

Shaheedah: So I tried Zillow for about two months. I think I was paying $500 a month, and I wasn’t getting any, like, really good leads from Zillow. So I was $1,000 out of, you know, that I felt like I wasted. I had one lead from the two months. And so I said I’m gonna try YouTube because it’s free.

Matt: That was 2018. Fast forward to today, Shaheedah Hill has 109,000 YouTube followers, 109,000. Her real estate videos have been watched more than 5.6 million times. As I’ll explain in just a moment, YouTube, pretty much, is her business right now. But don’t forget, step number one was a simple question from her kids. Today, Shaheedah is here to help with your first step.

We’re gonna listen to her first YouTube video because I think it offers some great lessons. We’re gonna talk about six common fears that agents have about making video, and she’s gonna help you conquer the ones that are holding you back. Listen, the best time to start using video to grow your business was five years ago. The next best time to start is today. This is “The Walkthrough.”

(INTRO MUSIC)

Hey, there. Hello. My name’s Matt McGee. Welcome to “The Walkthrough.” This is a weekly podcast. We have new episodes come out every Monday. This is the show where you’ll learn what’s working right now from the best real estate agents and industry experts in the country. At HomeLight, we believe in real estate agents. We’re here to explore how great agents grow their business, stand out from the crowd, and become irreplaceable.

You’ve heard the statistics. Seventy-three percent of homeowners say they are more likely to list with an agent who uses video. Fifty-one percent of home buyers use YouTube as their number one search engine. You know video works, you know it can help you generate leads and convert leads, but you still have reasons for not doing videos. Shaheedah Hill is one of real estate’s biggest video success stories. She got into real estate back in 2003, but didn’t start doing video marketing until 2018.

I already gave you some of her YouTube stats, Shaheedah gets a constant stream of leads from her YouTube channel. She takes on a few select clients in the Atlanta area, but she refers most of those leads out to other agents. Now that income, along with sponsorships and advertising on her videos, plus the YouTube course that she teaches to agents like you–well, add it all up, and you could say that YouTube is her business.

But Shaheedah isn’t here today to talk about how to make real estate videos or optimize your YouTube channel. No, our goal today is to help you stop making excuses and conquer your fear of video. On today’s show, we’re gonna listen to Shaheedah’s first real estate video. It offers some really important lessons. We’re gonna talk about how to overcome six of the most common fears or excuses that you have for not doing video. So without further ado, let’s get started. Here’s my conversation with Shaheedah Hill.

(BEGIN CONVERSATION)

Matt: What do you remember about your first YouTube video?

Shaheedah: I remember that it was almost like the last day of school. Okay. And we may have been coming off of a break of some sort, like a winter break or a fall…it was not a winter break, but a fall break. I remember it being a break. And I also remember saying, I need to talk about something that I already know about. And I was a teacher, so I knew how schools were rated. My first video was “School Choice”.

So basically, if you move to a community and you don’t like the school, what are my options to move to another school? So I knew that pretty much off the top of my head because I’m a teacher. So I went with what I was most knowledgeable about. I had a Samsung Android phone. I did have a tripod. Had no lighting, had no anything else. I didn’t have a microphone. You know, whatever was built into my phone.

I had a phone and a tripod, and I said, “I’m gonna film this video.” I stopped by… I said I’m gonna make sure it’s like on location because I felt like a news reporter. So I said, “I’m gonna do it on location.” So I, like, went to… it wasn’t the school that I worked at. I went to a school in my neighborhood, and I took out my tripod. I parked my car like right in the front. I took out my tripod. I put up my phone. Mind you, teachers, I think, were in the buildings. It was after school, but teachers were kind of still in the building. They were looking at me. I was looking at them. I said, let me just do this as quick as possible.

I said I’m gonna do my video, and I’m gonna get this information out, and I’m gonna film it and I’m going to get back in my car. So that’s what I did. And I filmed the video about “school choice” or “how, you know, school choice worked in Georgia”.

Matt: Now this is an audio podcast, so listeners, you know, we’ll link in the show notes to Shaheedah’s YouTube channel, and then you can, like, do a reverse thing and go back and find the very first video. But Shaheedah, it’s like 2 minutes and 20 seconds long. Do you mind if we just play the audio from that video right now?

Shaheedah: No, I don’t mind at all.

Matt: Okay. So let’s listen. This is Shaheedah’s very first YouTube video. This is the audio of it that she was just describing:

Matt: Okay. So that was the very first video that you posted on YouTube. Shaheedah, I heard a lot of wind in the background.

Shaheedah: A lot of wind. It wasn’t very clear. It wasn’t a good video, to be honest with you. But I would tell you this, I posted on my…the first place I posted it after I posted it to YouTube was my Facebook page. Like, my personal Facebook page. And people were like, “I didn’t know that. That was so great.” You know, the information at least to my core group of people, they were interested in the information. And so they were like, “Oh, this was so great. This was so great. I didn’t know that.”

And so that’s what maybe prompted me really to do the next one, even though the quality wasn’t that good. And that’s a lesson learned that if your content is good, then people can overlook the quality of your videos. So you have to start, and then you have to get better over time. Focus on giving value. And I think, even in that two-minute clip, there was value because a lot of people weren’t aware of that at the time. So they watched it, and they overlooked the quality part of it.

Matt: I mean, that’s the biggest takeaway for me when I watched it. I was like, this is a great example of the idea that your video does not have to be perfect.

Shaheedah: Exactly. It definitely doesn’t. Doesn’t have to be.

Matt: And you said, you mentioned, that you got great reaction to the content and I was really impressed in there. Like, you gave out some statistics. There was, I think, a House bill number that you referenced. There was some websites that you referenced. And it looked to me, like, I don’t think you had a script for any of this. How did you remember all the details?

Shaheedah: I didn’t have a script from it. Because I’m in education, I knew like, you know, the acronyms. I knew, you know, some of the details. However, so I didn’t forget, I put the information in a Post-it Note and I taped it to the tripod. So like I taped, like, House Bill 251, like, I taped that to the tripod just in case. Hopefully, it didn’t blow away, so I remembered. And that’s something, even when I did my videos in the future, I didn’t have a teleprompter or anything, I would take, like, my main points and have it on a Post-it Note. And I would tape that Post-it Note to the tripod.

Matt: That’s fantastic. And I love too…and I really do hope listeners will go watch the video because at the very end of the video, you have the most proud look on your face.

Shaheedah: Right. I was. I was like, “I did it. I did it.” And I didn’t punk out because, literally, and a lot of people hate on-location shoots, because people are looking at you, like, what is this lady doing with this tripod and this camera? But you really just have to do it. So I think I had a sense of accomplishment that even though people were staring, people were driving past me, the wind was blowing hard, I finished it and I recorded it.

Matt: And then, obviously, you kept doing more videos after that because of the good feedback that you got. Tell me, how did it impact your real estate business once you started doing this?

Shaheedah: It wasn’t, honestly, immediate. I would say I was maybe seven videos in, I’m not sure, before I got my first phone call. And, you know, at the time, number one, all my earlier videos, I had my phone number on there. Like, I wasn’t set up… I was like, “Let me give this a try.” But I never really thought this is gonna be like how I’m gonna generate leads for my business. This is going to be like one of my major revenue sources, because at the time I didn’t have that many examples of agents on YouTube generating leads.

So it wasn’t until maybe seven, eight videos in, I got my first call off of a first-time home buyer program that we have in Georgia. And when the young lady called me, I was just talking to her and I said, “Well, how did you find out about me?” She’s like, “I’m watching you right now on YouTube.” Like, she literally was watching my video and then she called me at the same time. She’s like, “Oh, you’re on YouTube.” And that light bulb at that moment went off to me. And I said, well, if this one lady…and she was a nurse and the program helps, like, nurses or public service people.

And I said, “Well, if this one lady saw me and she called me, I need to do more videos so more people like her will find me and call me.” Because that was my confirmation that it worked.

Matt: Before we did this interview, I got on Facebook and posted a question in probably three or four different real estate groups. I asked agents, “If you’re not doing video marketing, why not?” I wanted to find out what objections agents have toward making videos. And there were a lot. Oh my gosh, I ended up with about 40 or 50 replies that I broke down into about five or six common themes. At this point in our conversation, I asked Shaheedah to do some objection handling and she kindly agreed.

So listen now as Shaheedah responds to some of those objections, those fears. If you’re not doing video marketing, if there’s some fear or excuse holding you back, this is for you. Let’s conquer those fears.

So number one is “I’m afraid, I’m self-conscious, I don’t like how I look on camera”. What would you say to that?

Shaheedah: I say the way you look on camera is how you look in person. Because a lot of people…we’re in a business that we’re face-to-face with clients, right? So people in real estate have to kind of know that they’re gonna be dealing with the public. And there’s a misconception that you look a lot different than you look in person. For the most part, how you look on camera is how you look in person. So if you’re not afraid to talk to clients and to do listing presentations in their home, or to give your card out when you see them in the community, you need to be not afraid to do the same thing on video because honestly, you look the same. You look the same. You really do.

Matt: One of the other common objections was “I don’t have enough time. It’s tough to make it a priority with so many other things to do”.

Shaheedah: I think if you have any, if you’re in real estate, you know, we’re in a business where marketing is a part of that. And one thing about video is it lives a lot longer than your paper business card that somebody’s gonna throw away or the postcard or that sort of thing, especially YouTube videos. That video that you do, like that video about the school choice, somebody can still search for that video and find my video, which is going to be harder for somebody to find your printed copy or for them to…people don’t wanna answer their phone anymore, right?

So whatever other marketing that you’re doing that’s taking up your time, you probably could get…if you spent more time on video or prioritized that, it would be more valuable to you than other lead sources or other marketing that you’re doing. And I think a lot of times, I tell people you’re batch recording. You could batch record and batch recording means you sit down and you do multiple videos at one setting. So if, you know, your goal is to get one video out a week, you could sit down and for four hour,s one time a month, do your videos for the month. So I think people think it takes a lot more time than it actually does.

Matt: One of the other objections that was very common was “I don’t know how to shoot/edit videos. I don’t know what gear I need”.

Shaheedah: Okay. Everybody that has a cell phone knows how to shoot video. That’s number one. So if you have a cell phone, you know how to shoot videos because everybody’s done it once. If you’ve taken a picture, you’ve taken a video, okay? And once you do that, pretty much, you could hire an editor for pretty cheap like on some of these sites like Fiverr. Or, the basics of editing is trimming. Trimming out like the beginning, trimming out the end. And maybe like if you make an error, you’re trimming, like you’re cutting out those parts.

But there’s not…at the very beginning, like you said, with that video, I didn’t edit anything. You know, I might have sat outside that…I probably recorded it twice outside of that school that day, but I didn’t edit anything. And probably when I first got started, all I would do is trim. So I would record it until I got it right. Or till I got it 100% right. Until I got the majority, you know, of the content out and did it well enough that I was willing to post it.

But, I think that’s a misconception that you have to be, you know, this great editor and this great videographer and all of that kind of stuff. You need to be able to make a video with your phone. You already know how to do that. And then you need to be able to trim a video. So it starts at the very…like, they don’t see you turning on your camera. They don’t see you turning off your camera. So you’re gonna trim the beginning. You’re gonna trim the end.

And if you have to record it twice to get the majority, what I’ve heard from people before, they don’t like perfection. When the public are watching your videos, they really don’t like perfection because they wanna see you as a real person. So if you mess up a little bit, I generally leave those in. Unless it’s a factual error, I typically leave it in. Or like a major mishap, I typically leave in small errors.

Matt: Let me do a couple of more of these objections that the agents said in Facebook. One of them, which I thought was kind of interesting was the agent said, “I prefer reading articles instead of watching videos.”

Shaheedah: Okay. As real estate agents, we need to prioritize where the people are. So even if you like to read articles versus doing a video, the majority of people at every age, my parents are in their seventies and they’re on Instagram, they’re on Facebook, they’re on YouTube. So you need to prioritize where the people are, not where you are. personally. And the people are on video. They’re watching videos on Instagram. They’re watching video at every age.

They’re watching videos on all of these platforms, and you need to be where the people are. And I would’ve never thought my 70-year-old mom and my 75-year-old dad would be on Instagram. But because they have a lot of time in retirement, they’re on it more than I am.

Matt: Yeah. You can’t let your personal preference for one type of marketing dictate…you can’t assume that everybody likes the same thing you like.

Shaheedah: Right. You have to be where the eyeballs are, and the eyeballs are on video.

Matt: Exactly.

Shaheedah: And think about like all the newspapers that have gone out of business, the magazines that’s stopped publishing, all of those things because people are like that’s not where the people are right now.

Matt: Let me do two more objections and then we’ll transition. One of them was, “I think it’s too late to start now. I feel like I’ve missed the boat on video”.

Shaheedah: Okay. I think that’s definitely, definitely not true. You can see a lot of newer YouTubers that come out. They’ve just started in 2022, and they already have subscribers. They already have views and they’re getting leads. And the big difference is all of the niches aren’t filled. There are people that are waiting to be served. And because there are not enough agents serving their niche, they find the closest person that’s going to fill their needs.

And that’s true of me. I’m in Atlanta. I have people in California, “Could you be my agent?” I’m like, “I’m not even licensed in California.” So there’s a missing component because they don’t have, perhaps, maybe a first-time home buyer agent that’s really speaking to them in California. So, there’s still a lot of needs that are out there that are not being served, definitely not being served by knowledgeable real estate agents.

And I think a big part of that is, I don’t know, the average real estate agent’s probably in their fifties, and the younger agents that are less knowledgeable than you are on these platforms giving what information that they have, and you’re missing the boat because you have all of these years of knowledge. But because you’re not on video, they’re going with a less knowledgeable Realtor that happens to be on these platforms.

Matt: One last objection. And this was a really common one. And I think this will open up some bigger discussions that we should have. The objection was, “I don’t know what to say. I can’t come up with ideas for relevant video content”.

Shaheedah: So, you’re definitely going to, at the very beginning, figure out who your audience is going to be. And then you are going to figure out…you know, and that’s in any…even if you weren’t doing video, part of your marketing should be to narrow down who you want to serve. And once you figure out who those people are, you will figure out what are their pain points? What are their questions? What can I help them with? And that’s just not in video, that’s in marketing, period.

Like, every person in marketing, if you’re trying to sell something, you have to find who your ideal client is. You have to find out who your ideal person is. So that’s who you’re talking to, right? Once you figure out who you’re talking to, then you figure out, okay, what are all their pain points? What information do they need? And you start giving that person or that audience that information, consistently. And they begin to trust you, they begin to get to know you, and they wouldn’t even dare hire anybody else or call anybody else other than you when they’re ready to buy or sell.

Matt: Are there any specific tools that you use to help you develop ideas for content, or does it all just start to come naturally and flow as you start making videos?

Shaheedah: When my videos came out, so I would use like my own clients and what they were asking me, and I would use TubeBuddy because TubeBuddy has…that’s one of the sites that you can use to find out what people are searching for in that group. And any comments that were left on my videos, those were potential topics that I would address next. I also had a Facebook group, so you know, that I would put in the description of my videos. So they would join that group and ask me questions there. I would grab questions from that area.

Also, anything that was going on in the news that was relevant to my groups. And not just general, you know, real estate information, it had to be relevant to the audience that I was serving, you know, that kind of content. So news stories, my comments, actual questions that people were asking, Google Trends, you can look on there to see. You could put in, like, your city, your town on Google Trends, and they will say what people are searching for in your area. So, all of those things together I used to like decide what’s the next video I was going to make.

Matt: And the tool you mentioned is called TubeBuddy. I think it’s tubebuddy.com. And sort of the underlying message, Shaheedah, that I heard from you there is that try to focus on content that buyers and sellers are searching for on YouTube.

Shaheedah: Yes. When you’re starting out, I wouldn’t do a video that people weren’t searching for. You’re going to probably waste your time in that area. And I think, a lot of agents begin their first video with just some random maybe house tour, or random, “I’m, you know, Jimmy, from RE/MAX, and I’ve been in real estate for 10 years.” Nobody’s searching for that and they don’t care. So, I think your first video should be something that people are searching for.

Matt: Quick interruption. I was right. That tool Shaheedah mentioned is at Tubebuddy.com. It’ll help you understand what YouTube users are searching for. I’ll link to that in today’s show notes so you can check it out. Now we just covered six common objections to doing video. Did you hear yourself in any of those? I hope so. And I hope you’ll think about giving video a try.

If you do…no, wait, you do try video, the rest of this episode is for you. As our conversation ended, I asked Shaheedah just a few more questions to help you get started.

Matt: How often should they post a new video?

Shaheedah: A minimum once a week.

Matt: Minimum of once a week.

Shaheedah: Minimum once a week. And I would say, you know, you could increase that once you feel more comfortable, maybe to twice a week. But at the beginning, just do one a week so you can… I wouldn’t even batch record when you start because you’ll be able to learn from each new recording, especially once you’re able to get like data from YouTube. If you go ahead and do a lot of videos and then post them, you can’t improve because, you have, you know, you made four videos, they’re all bad, right?

So if you make one video at a time at first, one a week, then you can say, “Okay, that went okay.” And post it anyway. Even if you don’t think it’s perfect, go ahead and post it with the goal of improving for the next video.

Matt: What is more important, quantity or quality?

Shaheedah: Definitely quality. Quality, quality, quality. Because part of the YouTube algorithm is if somebody’s starting to watch your video and they turn off of it because either whatever you promised them in that thumbnail is not accurate, or, if you just, if it’s not good content, they’re gonna get off of it. And YouTube is not going to promote…if it’s an 8-minute video, and they only watch it for 30 seconds, there’s a disconnect there. Whatever, you know, they came to you to click on for wasn’t enough value to keep them watching. And that’s a problem. So you really wanna focus on quality over quantity. Definitely, definitely, definitely.

Matt: Let me go back to my consulting days again. I used to talk to my clients about the value of being consistent in their blogging, does the same thing apply in video?

Shaheedah: It does. It does. So you want to make sure because YouTube, their whole algorithm is that they want to recommend channels that have enough content to keep people on the channel, right? So if you’ve done like one or two videos, YouTube doesn’t trust you enough. And a lot of people stop too early. They do one or two videos, “I only got four views. I only got five views.” YouTube doesn’t trust you. To be honest with you, they don’t trust you.

So you have to…I would say at least, if you are not getting traction after three months, 12 videos, [you’re] either doing it wrong or your content’s not good enough. So either one, either your strategy is not right or your content. But if you just do like three or four videos, it’s hard to tell, you know, why you’re not doing well. You have to be consistent, I would say, at least for three months and at least 12 videos.

Matt: I’m so glad you said that because one of the other objections that I remember reading was someone said, “Oh, I did three or four videos, and it didn’t work. So I gave up.”

Shaheedah: Yeah. You cannot give up. It’s kind of like you’re trying to lose weight and you’re like, “I walked around the track two times, and I didn’t lose any weight and I just stopped. I just gave up.” You have to give it more time, especially if you’re…even if you’re doing it right. If you’re optimizing it, you have titles, you have thumbnails, and, you know, you only have two to three videos, YouTube doesn’t care about your channel, to be honest with you, because you haven’t proven to them that you’re willing to do consistent content. So they’re probably not gonna promote it until they see that you’re consistently putting out content for your audience.

(SHORT MUSIC TRANSITION)

Matt: Little known fact: I have been wanting to do an episode about conquering fear of video since way back in Season 1. So huge, huge thanks to Shaheedah Hill for helping me make it happen this week. And thanks for sharing such fantastic information. As I mentioned at the beginning of the show, Shaheedah teaches a course to help agents like you generate leads and grow your business with video through YouTube.

Now registration just closed for the current session, but Shaheedah tells me it will open up again in the fall. So what I want you to do, take a look at today’s show notes for a link to get more information about that course.

Let’s do our takeaways. Here’s what stood out to me from Episode 87, “Conquering Your Fear of Video with Shaheedah Hill”.

Takeaway number one: If your content is good, people will overlook the quality. We listened to Shaheedah’s very first YouTube video. You remember hearing that? The quality of that video–I mean, it wasn’t CNN or HGTV level, right? But the content was great, and her audience loved it. The key, Shaheedah says, just start doing videos and let yourself get better over time.

Takeaway number two: We talked about six common fears that agents have when it comes to making videos. Things like, “I don’t like how I look on camera. I don’t have enough time. I don’t know how to shoot and edit videos. I like articles instead of videos. I think it’s too late to start now. I don’t know what to say.” Shaheedah offered some great coaching for every one of those. Too much to recap here, but if you relate to one or more of those fears, remember, go back and listen. You can do this.

Takeaway number three: Don’t do videos that people aren’t searching for, especially in the beginning. It’s like our SEO episode from about a month ago. YouTube is a video search engine. So make videos that answer the questions people are searching for.

And takeaway number four: Don’t give up too soon. That’s another common excuse. “I tried it and it didn’t work.” Shaheedah’s advice is to post, consistently, one video per week and give it at least three months. So, a total of 12 videos. At that point, you’ll be able to see what’s working and what’s not. And those are your takeaways this week.

If you have any questions or feedback about something you heard on today’s episode, there are a couple of different ways you can get in touch. You can leave a voicemail or send me a text. The number to use is 415-322-3328. You can send an email. The address is walkthrough[at]homelight.com, or just find me in our Facebook mastermind group. Go to Facebook, do a search for HomeLight Walkthrough and the group should come right up at the top. I would love to see you in the community.

That’s all for this week. Thanks again to Shaheedah Hill for joining me, and thank you for listening. My name’s Matt McGee, and you’ve been listening to “The Walkthrough.” At HomeLight, we believe in real estate agents. We’re here to explore how great agents grow their business, stand out from the crowd, and become irreplaceable. Go out and sell some homes. I’ll talk to you again next week. Bye-bye.

(SHORT MUSIC TRANSITION)