In this episode of Survey Booker Sessions we speak with Christopher Watkin. Christopher is a prominent figure in the estate agency industry helping agents to generate more business through social media.
We discuss:
✅ Why talking job volumes isn’t attractive to customers
✅ The importance of the intent
✅ The key to storytelling
✅ How to get started with recording videos
✅ Why video content is so powerful
✅ Other types of content you can post
✅ The key to success with content marketing
View on Zencastr
Transcript
SPEAKERS
Matt Nally, Christopher Watkin
Matt Nally 00:23
In today’s episode, we’ve got Christopher Watkin, who helps loads of estate agents and 1000s of estate agents with their social media and has loads of advice for different channels and so on.
Christopher Watkin 00:48
Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me, Matt.
Matt Nally 00:51
Do you want to just give us a quick overview of what you help agents and letting agents with?
Christopher Watkin 00:58
I help letting estate agents attract new listings, new vendors, and new landlords to their agency to list their properties to them by using the power of content marketing to attract people to them as opposed to the old ways. Because I know a lot of people listen to surveyors so they can remember the old days before the bust of banks, that’s a technical term, went and bought all the estate agents in the 80s. And doing it without hard selling or trying to sell stuff because people don’t like to be sold to but are attracted by being an attraction agent. And this works in any profession. I’m a trained surveyor myself; I just decided never to go into the profession. This will work for surveyors, so it’ll work for anyone.
Matt Nally 01:51
For years now, you’ve obviously consistently put a lot of content out. And with agents and surveyors, they both got the same challenge in terms of being a non-recurring customer. It’s someone that might come in, maybe slightly different for letting agents, but on the state’s energy side, it’s a one-off transaction every so often. And so, it’s that same sort of challenge as to how you attract people and get them to know about you and fees and all that kind of stuff. But I think the first thing I see you post about a lot is the pie chart. What is it about that and sort of talking about, I don’t know how many jobs you’ve had, or reviews that aren’t useful?
Christopher Watkin 02:36
For the surveyors that are listening but don’t necessarily follow me on social media. Again, this is a trait that a lot of human beings do as well. But a lot of estate agents are quite egotistical in the way that they act as people, and I’m making a sweeping statement here, but the vast majority of them are. And egotistical people like to brag about what they have achieved. So therefore, there are an awful lot of estate agents out there. You will see it in two main forms. The first form is a Rightmove pie chart, and Rightmove produces this pie chart, which tells you how much of the marketplace you have in either listings or sales over a certain time period in a certain location. And estate agents love to put these pie charts out, saying, Look at me, I’m the number one estate agent in my town. And I have the biggest slice of pie. Now if you’ve got 50% of the marketplace, you go for it. But when we’ve got an estate agent saying, I’m the number one estate agent, and they’ve literally got 4% of the market, and their nearest competitor is 3.9, and the next one was 3.8. I don’t consider that particularly impressive. And again, I’d ask your listeners: what do we think of people who brag? What is your intent? And that’s a magic word with social media: what is your intent behind the post? and I call it the get or give question. Are you posting something to give? Or are you posting something to get? And I think someone bragging about their market share is not too interesting. Also, there’s the fact that the estate agents will take photographs of a house, and they will say I’ve exchanged contracts on this. That would be just like a chartered surveyor saying, I’ve just been around this house, or I’ve just received the instruction, or an architect saying, I’ve just put my plans in, because every single day, they never post about the person who’s paying the bill that we are. We are servants to the people who pay us. We are here to provide a service for the client in the case of Chartered Surveyors as making sure the bloody things not gonna fall down. In the case of an estate agent moving one person from one chapter of their life to another, I often feel that estate agents see the estate agency as there to serve them, not to serve the customers. Now, thankfully, chartered surveyors aren’t the eager type of person who is attracted to becoming a chartered surveyor or that egotistical, but they can still learn from it. You would never dream of a solicitor, an accountant, or even a surgeon saying, I’ve just sold. I’ve saved so many lives today. No. Yeah. It’s like the person at the party who talks about themselves all the time. What do we think of that person? We map what we think to the person who quite literally talks about themselves, but that’s what the estate agents do. People in their 40s and 50s say, I wasn’t brought up with this. No, neither was I. Neither were you. You weren’t born and learned; you had to learn to drive a car and ride a bike. And you’re going to need to learn how to do this. But all social media is what you and I would say face to face. But on a computer screen. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a different way of communicating. It used to be letters, then it went to telephones, then it went to fax machines, then we had mobile phones, and now social media is just a way to communicate. And you would never dream of going to the local Rotary Club or Freemasons Hall and start saying, hey, I’ve just done a home bias report scheme on four houses today, and I am brilliant. If you want content marketing or social media, as we said, it’s just a way to communicate with someone. The question is, how are you going to communicate with someone? What are you going to say that is going to attract people to you? Because nobody’s walking around saying, If my wife works out of me, I’m going to call that solicitor. And no one’s walking around, saying If I bought a house and there was a crack in it, I’m going to call that surveyor.
Matt Nally 07:34
So, I know you talk a lot about telling a story rather than just posting the status of how many jobs you’ve done.
Christopher Watkin 07:44
Do you know why that is the case? Matt?
Matt Nally 07:47
I imagine it’s on an emotional level. As a consumer, you can buy into or engage more with that topic.
Christopher Watkin 07:55
Stop thinking like a chartered surveyor. And that’s not proper human beings. So, here’s a question, Matt: why can you remember the storyline to Cinderella, all the nursery rhymes, or all your favorite films, but you can’t remember what your other half told you yesterday?
Matt Nally 08:20
I’ll get in trouble for that.
Christopher Watkin 08:24
let’s just dive in here a little bit. Why?
Matt Nally 08:28
I suppose it takes you back to a memory that music and rhymes and stuff like that takes you back to memories.
Christopher Watkin 08:34
This is the science behind it. Okay. So, you have two sides to your brain. You have the logical conscious side. And you have the emotional subconscious side. To give you an idea of the size of each. The conscious logical side of your brain, if you had to map it out in areas because we’re dealing with Chartered Surveyors, so very likely a little bit of area here would be nine-foot square. Your subconscious or your emotional side is nine acres.
Matt Nally 09:12
That is a huge difference.
Christopher Watkin 09:15
The way the human brain works is that everything comes into the conscious side of the brain, the logical side. The conscious deals with language, details, and things like that. It’s not very good at remembering things. It’s just a matter of giving me a problem, and I’ll solve it. But if it has to deal with anything or think, and more importantly, put things into memory, it then has to put it into the subconscious side of your brain. And then it has to convert and translate your consciousness into the subconscious, because the subconscious cannot deal with language. It doesn’t work that way. It deals with feelings. That’s your subconscious. I don’t feel right subconsciously. Now stories and, more importantly, the emotions behind those stories are stored in the subconscious. But it takes a lot of brain effort to convert that logic into a story. Unless it’s already a story. So that’s why the brain says, we’ll remember this because it’s already a story. It made me feel good. We don’t have to expend any brain power. Let’s get it straight into the subconscious. Perfect. You can remember Cinderella, your favorite films, and your favorite songs because, at the time, they felt good. So what happens is, if you remember the feelings, they stay there forever. And then, when you need to recall it, it goes back into the conscious mind unconsciously. Remember this one because they work together. And that’s why you remember. So, those who tell stories are going to win in this world. We think of Winston Churchill, we think of Gandhi, and we think all of them were just creating stories that we listened to and that made us feel differently about ourselves. So, for example, there’s an estate agent in Grantham, my hometown. So you put out a photograph with the word exchanged on it, and no one will share it nor get new comments. Tony RWBY put a photograph of his first exchange with his family outside. This is the first exchange of my business, and it actually affected four people’s lives. The person who’s moving on is now moved to Chance to be near their daughter and their grandkids; the person who’s moved in is now living three doors down from their mom and dad. I can’t remember who the third one was, and the fourth one’s family was me and my family. The fact is that I’ve set up my own business. And that had 200 comments, 20 shares, or more likes, then you can try a stick out because they were telling a story. So how could surveyors take that on board with regard to their social media posts? I did my time as a surveyor, doing my APC. I’ve got stories. You had to come in, the ship would have hit the fan. And they would have bought a house with wall-tie failure or whatever. And I would be creating stories. Not all your content is stories, but an important element of it should be stories. You could even say something about client confidentiality. Just to prepare, get a bottle of wine on a Friday night, sit down with a piece of paper, and go through your memory, all the things where, basically, if you have to interject, the poo would have hit the fan, just right. This is Megan’s 46th high street. XYZ village; just write the addresses down as you’re going and the wine is going. And then later next week. Let’s create a story around that particular scenario. And then, if you’re going to do a story, make sure it follows this pattern because all stories need to follow this pattern.
Matt Nally 13:52
What is the pattern you’d recommend for a story?
Christopher Watkin 13:59
Let’s go with nursery rhymes because they’re the classic stories. What does everyone else start with?
Matt Nally 14:07
I don’t know actually.
Christopher Watkin 14:12
Once upon a time. You can split these into three sections, right?
Matt Nally 14:15
I had Ring a Ring o’ Roses in my head for some reason. Couldn’t get to “once upon a time”.
Christopher Watkin 14:20
Let’s go with fairy tales. So, three sections: the first section, Once Upon a Time. So how would that look? Hi, my name is Chris Watkin, one of Grantham Chartered Surveyors, and I want to tell you the story of Mr. and Mrs. Miggins. Mr. and Mrs. Miggins are about to buy a three-bedroom semi in the north end of Grantham. They were looking to buy this because of their future home. And they were living in a two-bedroom terraced house on Victoria Street, but they’d outgrown it, and they wanted to move to the next chapter of their lives. You could turn Okay, let’s just put a pause. You say what the hell’s that we got to do with this—absolutely nothing. But it’s setting the scene, and you’re sucking in the people, making them think, that’s me; I live in a terrace house, and I’m looking to move out. And they’re coming to somebody, and they decided they wanted to move up to the mountains of the state. Now, most of the houses in the mountains of the state are Jolson three-bedroom semis or Foster three-bedroom semis. Now, this particular one had a lovely double garage extension. And the property that’s actually been on the market for six months because there were various cracks and people were just really turned off by it. It comes down 20,000 pounds. So, they got me in. So, there’s your stop. The middle one is shit hits the fan. The hero comes in and saves the day, remembering that the hero is not you, the surveyor. The hero is the client. The client got me in, and everyone has objections. If he says a 500-quid home buyer, that’s expensive, or 1000 pounds. So, they call me in. And I said, I’ll go around. Now, of course, when I told them that it would cost them 1,000 pounds for a building survey, they bought into that. But what I said was that I suggested that it was an investment in their property. And if it wasn’t, if there wasn’t, you know, if they bought it without it, they could lose 20,000 pounds if there was a problem, but if they did buy it and it was okay, by spending 1000, we’re going to get 30 grand knocked off, and then there might be other objections. So, the objections that people come up with to use your services, Chartered Surveyors, basically tell the story of them being worried about the fear. They were worried about the time they’re worried about whatever the objection is; you tell the story of how that potential client had that objection. And then how you got them over it, and they decided that they would go for it.
Matt Nally 17:17
It’s a clever idea to put the objection handling. But it works very well.
Christopher Watkin 17:23
Every story is the reason why human beings have evolved. Because our logical side does not remember stories, but our emotional side does, don’t go near the Sabre-toothed tiger because your grandfather got killed. So now no one’s going to get killed by the Sabre-toothed tiger. Don’t put your hand in the fire because your brother got burned. Section three is happy ever after. So, I went around to the house and noticed that it was just thermal expansion—absolutely nothing to worry about. And they moved into their house with a double garage and the granny extension, and they got 30 grand’s worth of stuff simply by using my services. And then you’d knock it out as my story of buying a house with a crack in it. My story about buying it could be clickbait, but it’s not clickbait. It’s eye-catching. So that’s one type of content you can do. But there are other types of content.
Matt Nally 18:39
I was going to get into other types of content in a moment. There are a couple of points you touched on there that I found interesting. One is sort of slightly separate, and that is who should do the video. So if you’re a sole trader, a single surveyor, It’s quite straightforward. You read stories and put your own information out there. If you are on the other end and you work for a corporate, do you still put out stories? Do you recommend that with the estate agents?
Christopher Watkin 19:06
It depends on what your bosses will allow you, but I think people buy from people, so it should always be you. In terms of your equipment. You already have a camera. You need a tripod; get one from Amazon; get one that’s half decent; for 30 to 40 quid, buy what’s called a tripod mobile phone adapter, which is a little thing that screws into the bottom, and you set your phone in, and then you have a wireless microphone. So, if you go to Amazon and type in iPhone, lapel wireless mic, there are some from China that are 14.99 pounds. One clips onto the bottom of your phone, and the other clips onto your lapel. Make sure you have that little fluffy thing on if you’re outside, and you just press record, and you’re just on air, so don’t worry about that. Just get it out; you might want to do a few takes; then, how do you edit it? There’s this new website which teaches you how to do video editing. It is “Google”, a new website, and you type in, how do I edit film? I taught myself how to do videos. I got an Apple Mac; it has a free piece of software called iMovie. Don’t do iMovie on phones or tablets; it’s not very good. But on a laptop or an iMac. It’s very good. And you basically go to YouTube, and how do I edit a film? You don’t need logos; all you need to do is crop the start and the end. That’s all you need to do. If you’re on Android or Windows, my recommendation is Adobe Premiere Rush. There are other different versions of Premiere, but you need Premiere Rush, which is 10.99 a month and is so intuitive. You could pick it up in minutes. The way it works is that all decent video editing software puts the film in like an old 35-millimetre film across the bottom. And you just cut bits out. If you cut bits out, you put in what’s called a transition. How do you find a transition? Go to Google and find out how they put a transition in on Google, in Adobe Premiere Rush. It really is that easy. You’ve got no excuse. As simple as that. And the reason video works particularly well is that there are only three ways you can communicate with a human being: the written word, audio, or visual, and visual is very powerful. Because people’s subconsciouses cannot distinguish between watching a screen and meeting someone, they cannot distinguish between the two. That’s why we feel like we know the superstars and the famous. We feel like we know them, even though we’ve never met them. Why? Because our subconscious, our emotional side, cannot distinguish between the two. So, people don’t like videos, and I get why they don’t like videos. So, you could potentially do a podcast. There’s an app called anchor.fm where you could set up a podcast. I did this live on stage in front of my clients. And I call it the Grantham podcasts, and I take a photograph of myself, type in “Grantham podcast,” and then dictate it on Apple. “This is a Grantham podcast. We talk about the bounce and the property market. And news and views are all mine.” I pressed return and then went to the voice memo function on my phone. Because everyone’s got a voice memo, whether you are Android or not, and I recorded the first episode of the Grantham podcast: “And today I’m talking about blah, blah…”. I did all that, pressed stop, and then went to my anchor app. And I basically uploaded that file onto Anchor, and within three minutes, I was on iTunes, Spotify, and loads of others.
Matt Nally 23:49
You’ve got some interesting posts about the number of people who give up very quickly. Was it a podcast? something like you’re in the top 1% after 20 episodes or something? But what’s the key with distribution in terms of, let’s say, you’re on LinkedIn or social media, like Facebook, for example, and a lot of your network is other surveyors, for example, how do you start getting that content out in front of a homebuyer or other agents?
Christopher Watkin 24:17
So, if you’re based in Grantham, it would be fair to say that I’ve just changed Grantham to the name of your town. It’d be fair to say that 100% of Grantham homeowners live in Grantham. Who were the only people who joined Grantham Facebook groups? people from Grantham. Join town Facebook groups, and then drip feed. Don’t share in the group, post in the group. So, if you’ve got three groups, don’t share in them; just physically go to each group. And as long as your post doesn’t say anything and you post as yourself and not as your surveying firm, it helps. The other type of content you definitely should be doing is problem-solving videos.
Hi, my name is Chris Walken. And if you’ve got a crack in your property, what should you look for? Now, if you have a property with a crack, why don’t you take a photograph or a video? And as long as you do it, you can’t tell which property it is? Let’s be honest, most cracks are normally thermal. So, if you’re ever in a property, do you have a crack like this in your wall and do a little selfie video with the crack over your shoulder? Hi, it’s Chris here. I just want to give you an update, saying that if you often see a crack in a property, it’s not always structural. In fact, most of the time, it’s just thermal. So, what we’re doing is having a look to see which way the cracks on the other corner go. And if a crack goes that way, it is more likely to be structured. But if a crack goes that way, it’s more likely to be thermal. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. So, if you ever see a crack in your property and you’re not sure whether it’s a thermal or structural thing, give me a call.
Matt Nally 26:08
And that type of thing is very easy to do every time you’re out on site. So you’re not going to build in separate time to do marketing and content.
Christopher Watkin 26:14
And if people say they haven’t got time, then I challenge them: go on to your phone settings; you will spend five hours a day looking at funny videos with cats sitting around on Roombas dressed as sharks; if you ain’t got time to do a video, then I’m sorry. Because I’ll tell you here and now that if you don’t do it, some whippersnapper, who’s just come out of Cirencester or Nottingham Trent Poly (it’s not called Nottingham Trent anymore), who has done urban estate surveying, or whatever it’s called, this week will do it and will become a dominant player in your town.
Matt Nally 26:47
We’re starting to see more of a more of a shift. It’s particularly people like yourselves, putting content out there start to see the benefits of the ongoing thing. But it’s the consistency.
Christopher Watkin 26:59
Starting is hard, but carrying on when you’re not getting any likes, comments, or business is even harder. It’s all about building trust. And the problem is that you can’t buy trust; you have to earn it. I interview people from the greater good of UK state agency on my sofa, and even after two years, my wife was questioning whether we should still be doing it as I was getting nothing back from it.
Matt Nally 27:29
How long did it take you to start seeing the traction of the content you were putting out?
Christopher Watkin 27:32
What do you call “traction,” the actual hard business, or “comments” or “likes”?
Matt Nally 27:42
The actual inquiries and business.
Christopher Watkin 27:45
This is the really weird thing. So, I’m a bit of a purist. I don’t know whether I get business from them directly. If I asked you, do you know the time when you fell in love with your other half? Do you mark the love that you have for your other half by a percentage each day? And the answer to both is no; it kind of grew into it. No, I don’t mark them every day, and time is the problem that people have with this content marketing, that you can’t actually measure it. But all I do know is this: I don’t advertise my services, but agents still come to me.
Matt Nally 28:32
One of the other things you talk about is people giving their opinion on market updates or talking about their local area. For surveyors, that’s just as relevant. So, if you’re going out and collecting keys from an estate agency, you can stop on the high street and talk about the local area and gain interest that way as well.
Christopher Watkin 28:51
If you type in local property market reports, and then my surname Watkin into YouTube, I’ve actually done some free training videos on how estate agents can do it. Guys, you’re a chartered surveyor; you should be able to do this with your eyes closed. You’re qualified, especially if your practice is general practice and you’re in the market. You could be talking about Hi, my name is Chris Walken. And today I want to give you an update on what’s happening to the three-bedroom semis in Grantham. If we roll the clock back a year, the average three-bedroom semi on the barbie gate would sell 495205 thousand. What’s the average Jelsa three-bedroom semi on selling doubt was selling for 205 to 215. Today we’ve seen a slight easing back in the prices. So now we’re getting 185. For something like this on the barbie gate. And then something like this on sunny days goes from more like 200 to 205. Now, that does mean that house prices have eased off slightly compared to what happened a year ago. But remember, most people move up market see your full bedroom detached house on the Sunningdale, which was going for 350 is now only going for 310 320. So, what you might have lost 10 on yours, you’ve gained 30 on the other end. And that’s the way to look at it. I’ll be back next, where we’ll give you an update on what’s happening to two-bedroom semi-detached houses. If you put that on there, it’d be like flies on what’s now or like a tramp on ships.
Matt Nally 30:25
And that takes seconds to do, whether you’re outside the property you’re surveying or on the High Street, when you’re picking up the keys for yourself. You can either chuck it on Anchor FM or upload it to YouTube. That’s just part of your routine.
One of the other things I was interested in is that you talk a lot about estate agents and how they can improve their fees or whether there’s a lot of competition on fees and that price, the bottom. I think surveying sees exactly the same thing. whereby there’s this constant talk about downward pressure on prices, whether it’s a home buyer, or a building survey. What are the keys to how you start to raise your fees and combat the fact that someone is half price?
Christopher Watkin 31:09
There are people out; I don’t know about you, but if you had a problem and you didn’t know anyone, you’d bring around a few plumbers or a few builders and say, I want an extension, or I want a patio down to become a quote. But if you’ve built a relationship with someone, or someone’s recommended you, because remember, trust is transferable, all of us have professionals, contractors, or builders that basically say, Come and do the patio, then you just say, What’s the price? I’ve just had my dresser painted. James, come and do it. I didn’t even ask the price. It does work for me; it came back, though I must admit it was a couple hundred quid more than I thought it would be. It’s a damn good job, but I didn’t ask him about the price; the fee wasn’t an issue because I’d already trusted him. And that’s the magic of content marketing: that you can get inside people’s heads before they need you. So when they do need you, they already think I’m going to call that guy out, that lady out, or agents out there that are doing this sort of stuff. And people have waiting lists. What do you charge? 2%. I only sell five houses at a time. So you have to go on the waiting list. And they’ll wait. Because they’ve already made the decision that they’re going to use that estate agent. You could have the same experience with surveying.
Matt Nally 32:49
So, by cutting out that you cut out the whole sales process by having put all the hard work in through the content previously.
Christopher Watkin 32:57
There’s a difference between selling something and getting people to buy it from you. The Porsche brands don’t need to sell Lamborghinis; people come to them and buy them. It’s the same with any service, then. If you’re just one of another’s chartered surveyors, the only thing they can judge you on is your price. If it’s all the two-minute spiel, but you’re just another two-minute spiel, but if you’ve been talking to them on social media for the last two or three years, they’ve already decided. So that’s how I would do it. The problem is that it takes time for that to work.
Matt Nally 33:47
Yes, it’s not an immediate return on investment.
Christopher Watkin 33:51
The one thing I’ve come to the conclusion in life is that most of us who were born in the 60s and early 70s, and I know you weren’t out there, but I’m going to give you the biggest tip I can give you in life. If you want to be successful, the shortcut in this world is the long game. Work hard, be patient, and you’ll win. It is as simple as that. It’s just that people will try Google AdWords for two months; that won’t work; Facebook adverts for two months; a leaflet for a matte one leaflet; that won’t work; social media rubbish; and probably leaflet through someone’s door, but the simple fact is you need to get inside their heads before they need you. So, when they need you, you’re already there. How do you do that? When you learn how to get someone to like and trust you, you have to be interested in them first, they become interested in you, then they get to know you, and they get to like you. And once they like you, they’ll trust you. And people do business with people they trust.
Matt Nally 35:05
One of the points you mentioned is that consistency is just getting started. And then you can refine the content you’re putting out, how good you are at it, or where you’re posting it. That comes over time, but if you don’t start anywhere, then you’re never going to get us out there.
Christopher Watkin 35:22
The big one is starting it, and if you’re not going to do video, do written word or do audio, do something, please. Then the next hurdle is you have a wobble at month three to six: I’m doing all this work, but I’m getting nothing back in return. See all the time, then you’ll start to get business in alternating time, and in that 18-to-24-month period, you’ll start to get busy from the seeds that you planted last year. And then what happens is that you get too busy, so you stop doing the content. When you start doing the content that still keeps coming in because of the seeds that you planted in the past, what happens is that the crop from those seeds tends to drift off after a few months. All of a sudden, you start to panic, and then you start doing the content again. But the problem is that now you’re planting seeds that you won’t harvest within another 12 minutes. So again, there’s another wobble, another potential wobble. If you can follow through with that wobble, The next hurdle that you will get to is that people will start blowing smoke up your backside. Because you’ve missed a property or Mrs. property, and it’ll go to your head, and you’ll suffer from hubris. And I see everyone on that journey. I am not aware of any other hurdles. But these are the hurdles that I’ve come across and everyone else.
Matt Nally 36:49
To help with that. Can you repurpose content? Do you always have to be new? Or can you take something you’ve done before?
Christopher Watkin 37:00
I do video interviews and lift the audio up and put the audio out. Or you could take the clips out? Yeah. So how do you do that? You listen to it. You write down the time when it didn’t lift out of that? And how do you cut it out? Again, use that website, YouTube.com.
Matt Nally 37:18
Do you find from the people you’ve worked with that the video is the hardest hitting and has the biggest impact over time, or does it take written contents place?
Christopher Watkin 37:32
Video is more powerful than audio simply because it’s visual as well as audio. The magic thing is that you’ve got to do what you’re comfortable doing. Now, if you can get over the fear of video. If you type in, how do I get over my fear of videos, there are loads of them out there. It comes back down to your caveman or cavewoman brain and the fear of being kicked out of the tribe. I won’t bore people to death. I’ve done some videos on it. You can go to my YouTube channel, Christopher Watkin on YouTube, and type in theory of video. I’ve done some videos on it. And it tells you, through science, why you feel the fear; you can get past just hitting the web publish button; you realize after 10 videos that, quite frankly, no one’s waiting for your videos, and there aren’t that many trolls out there. But if you can’t do that and you have audio, do audio; if you’ve got to do written, do written; but just do content, which isn’t trying to get something but trying to sell them something or give them something. And if you go with that mindset and intent, which is what we said at the start of the podcast, you’ll be on to a winner.
Matt Nally 38:51
So, if there were to be three takeaways for people in terms of content, would it be something like creating stories, doing it consistently and anything else, or do you try and do video?
Christopher Watkin 39:09
You do videos, and it’s Hi, I’m Chris Watkin from Chris Watkin Surveyors. And if you go tracking your video in your house, give me a call. You’re using video, but the intent is to get something, so it’s the right intent going out there to help people do the content, whichever you feel comfortable with. And more importantly, finally being consistent with it. Because it is the consistency over a period of 12 to 18 or 24 months. Let me leave you with this weird thought, which is that we’re filming this on January 23. Next month will be the three-year anniversary of the first lockdown. It might be March. Isn’t it weird that it doesn’t seem like two minutes ago, looking back? But if I said to you that you’ve got to do something for two years before you see the results, that seems like forever. And unless you are retiring in the next three or four years, then quite frankly, what other choice have you got? You can still carry out going hand to mouth, running around like a headless chicken, dealing with that competitor who will do it for 100 pounds less the race to the bottom. Or you can say no; I’m going to make a difference. I’m going to put the time in, I’m going to till the soil, and I’m going to play the long game. Just like the farmers used to it, human beings just went out hunting every day until some bright spark came back hunting because you have to put food on your table every day and decided for an hour every night to go until the sort of that field next to the river and spend one day for years and years getting rid of all the stones and putting a fence around it, collecting grass seeds, planting the grass seeds, and watering it constantly. And all of a sudden, that will debase him. He will pass through green fields a number of times and say that he actually saw that there was no point of going around the desert; we just walk into this field and eat grass because it’s always green and lovely. The farmer then closes the gate. The hunter doesn’t have to go hunting anymore. He just has to roll out of bed, and there’s a field full of wildebeest. That’s what content marketing is about. You’re all out there hunting the wildebeest. Why don’t you spend a bit of time farming, tilling the soil, making the grass green, playing the long game, and letting the buggers come to you? I say that the clients—I mean, let them come to want to buy from you. As opposed to you going out there and selling your soul on the altar of cheap fees and prostituting your surveying degree because some will do it for 300 pounds less when, in fact, if they choose you and want you, you could charge them 300 pounds more.
Matt Nally 42:08
I like that’s a lovely way to finish. Thanks for coming on today, Chris, and giving your insights. I know you’ve got your YouTube channels; if people want to check out all the content, what is it?
Christopher Watkin 42:22
Just type in “Christopher Watkin”. And there’s a YouTube channel there with 2,000 videos about how to be better estate and letting agents. A lot of surveyors could find that useful. And I also have a podcast with 1500 episodes called the letting and estate agent podcast. And again, that is just like the videos, but with the audio stripped out so it’s easier to listen to in the car or when you’re walking down.
Matt Nally 42:48
Awesome. Thanks very much for today, Chris.
Christopher Watkin 42:50
Thanks for your time, Matt, for what you’re doing as well.