Once You Have Heard Their Story.

29 Oct Once You Have Heard Their Story.

"Once you have heard their story, there isn't anyone you couldn't love."  - Mary Lou Kownacki.

Good stories are an exploration, not so much of events but of the characters within the story. We are curious to know Who they are, before we care about what happens to them.

And it's not simply blockbuster narratives that we seek, but the smaller details of the way they look, how they talk and their perceived vulnerabilities. Essentially, we are looking for someone to love. Someone a bit like Us.

Yes, even estate agents & realtors.

Once we hear their story, told well, it has us in the palm of their hand.

What we get, though, from most real estate agents is a confection of boasting, second-hand information and digital stalking around the web.

The 'awards' won, the local 'expert' sharing market fluctuations and the insidious re-targeting - because we made the mistake, once, of looking at their incredibly boring website.

Add to that, those with deeper pockets that prefer to waste other people's and their own money on TV ads and social media that gets about as much engagement as a party in a monastery.

"What is a good engagement rate (and how to calculate it)? was a recent post I stumbled across by Lars Arboleda on behalf of NapoleonCat, a social media platform/management tool.

Turns out that "marketers should strive for at least 1% engagement rate. Instagram has the highest average engagement with 1.94%. A good engagement rate on Facebook is 1%, on Twitter it's 0.04% and on LinkedIn, anything above 2% is considered good, or excellent.

Then this imparted piece of wisdom:

"If your social media engagement metrics are performing poorly, you need to take steps to create more engaging posts."

Said differently, don't write non-obvious content, write obvious.

Stuff that people immediately understand and like/comment. That leads to 'engagement' - everybody singing from the same hymn sheet.

Obvious content is the art of speaking to what people already believe, whilst non-obvious content is the art of educating people on fresh ideas.

If you are an agent who likes things the way they have always been (the unsolicited door-knocking, the Facebook ads and the cold-calls), you are more likely to engage if I write about how effective those practices can be. Once you have heard the story, the search is on for something else, other than the mundane.

If, like me, you believe that is for the busy fools (10x productivity, hustle and grind), engagement drops.

One will get high engagement, one will get little.

Who cares? Not me. I'm not running ads, I'm not desperate for business.

2% engagement would mean that 98% of my audience ignores what I write. I'd rather stand on the street corner handing out leaflets than fret about whether my engagement was 2% or 10%.

"Throughout centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision."   - Ayn Rand.

Here's my vision, for those estate agencies that give a damn.

Story - Category  -  Personal Brand.

The story that only your agency can tell. Story that is remembered when all the ads/social media posts have been filed under W.P.B, or disappeared into the ether.

I often use the example of a first meeting with the then manager of a Winkworth, Ladbrook Grove estate agency branch.

Told me two stories about his work in the area and I remember them vividly - for no other reason than they shone a brilliant light onto his character values.  A maverick, misfit, much like myself and in that moment, an affinity that still remains.

Category Design that deals with ideology, not features & benefits.

For example, The Trusted Category of estate agency, as opposed to the one with most brand recognition.  How might an agency achieve that category leadership? Not through social media/advertising and hustling their worth, that's for sure. But then again, many agencies don't care about being trusted - they can simply tell everyone they are.

Personal Brand - an often misunderstood term. It's greater transparency, not greater visibility.  So an agent doesn't need more engagement, she only needs the right engagement. Better clients, not more.

There isn't anyone you couldn't love once you've heard their story.

If you can, write it yourself.

"It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think that you were born that way."  - Hemingway.

If you can't, or prefer not to write it yourself, here's how to reach me:

chris@andsothestorybegan.co.uk

www.andsothestorybegan.co.uk

mob: (44) 07369251435

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Chris.