137 Creating and Posting Social Media Content - Kelly Borgen Nov 2 2022

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome to today's episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.

Greg Bray: And we are excited today to welcome to the show, Kelly Borgen. Kelly is the CEO of Get Community. Welcome, Kelly. Thanks for joining us today.

Kelly Borgen: Thanks for having me guys.

Greg Bray: Well Kelly, let's just start by helping people get to know you a little bit. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

Kelly Borgen: Okay, this could take the whole 25 minutes, but I'm gonna keep it short. I have most importantly probably worked in the building industry for [00:01:00] the last about 25 years. I pretty much started my career out of college. Other than temping around at an advertising agency called the Roxboro Agency, where I temped as their receptionist. Which turned into a permanent job and a 13-year career with them where I climbed the ladder and learned lots of different departments and learned a lot about the industry because Roxboro, if you don't know, only worked with home builders.

So, that was sort of my entree into the industry, and then I started in my own company with my brother and my business partner, Ryan about 11 and a half years ago, called Get Community, which is this company, and as you said, we're a digital marketing agency. We started in social media and just have grown our services over the last decade, and here we are today and I get to talk with you guys.

Kevin Weitzel: All right. Well, that's the business side of you. Let's do the personal side of you. So, let's go with one magical little tidbit of information about yourself that people will learn about you on our [00:02:00] podcast, that they won't learn just from looking up your bio.

Kelly Borgen: Okay. I like to travel, which you could learn by looking at anyone's bio I guess, but what probably a lot of people don't know about me that they're surprised when they find out is that about a year after I started my career at Roxboro, I took a leave of absence and I traveled Europe by backpack for four months by myself and probably was the big beginning of my love for travel. Heck, if I didn't learn a lot about myself during those four months. Probably shaped me into the person that I am today as far as being someone who can just DIY it, do it myself, figure it out, but it was an awesome experience, just hoofing it around Europe.

Kevin Weitzel: So, did you work while you were there, or did you have some crazy giant wad of cash in your backpack?

Kelly Borgen: Oh no. So, I worked for a year and I lived at home. So, I saved a lot of money, but [00:03:00] also part of my college graduation. Like, my uncle got me the rail pass. I think my parents had got me the tickets, and I just sat on those for a while. My uncle, at the time, he was way high up with a company called Cinemark. They're movie theaters internationally, and he was building that brand in Europe. So, he hooked me up with so many people that I got to stay with when I was tired of hostels. So, it was a very fun trip with lots of special experiences that I got to have.

Greg Bray: Yeah, the whole youth hostel thing in Europe, we don't have that in the US the same way. Where you can just kind of wander around and find a place to crash at night without it costing an arm and a leg.

Kelly Borgen: We really don't. Yeah.

Greg Bray: So Kelly, I do have to ask when people say that they're business partners with family members. I find that fascinating. Because your brother probably will never listen to this, you can be honest with us.

Kelly Borgen: He might actually, he might.

Greg Bray: How is that balancing the family and the business for you?

Kelly Borgen: It's funny because we just talked about [00:04:00] this at a party we were at on Friday night. I feel like someone asked us that same question. He said, and I don't disagree with him, it's probably been about 80% good, and we've had about 20% of issues. We don't agree on everything, which is probably a good thing, but I will say there's a little bit of the thing where it's your brother, I'm the sister. Like, we spend a lot of outside of the company time together.

So, maybe I would be harsher on more of just a business partner I wasn't related to. I don't know. I've been known to be a go-getter sometimes. So, maybe I would step back on that a little bit with my brother being my business partner. He has a master's degree in finance that I don't have. His brain works totally different than mine. Bring me on the new business and the marketing strategy all day long. Bring him on the finance and how does this business work and operate all day long. So, at least we have different brains. So, it makes us work together pretty well.

Greg Bray: All right. Good to [00:05:00] hear. You mentioned a little bit about what you do, but just give us a little bit more about Get Community, the services you provide, and who you're working with.

Kelly Borgen: So, we provide an array of digital marketing services. At the heart of what we do is social media and content creation. We create a lot of content at Get Community, and that is writing hundreds if not thousands of social media posts for our clients every month. Creating probably hundreds of videos every month. Not just long form, but all those little short-form videos you need to see in social media. Pretty much all content have some sort of video aspect these days. Email marketing. We do digital advertising. We handle all of our clients, you know, social media ads and lead generation, and banner advertising. We do a little bit of website development, but mostly that's for probably like a master plan community or landing pages that our clients might need to go [00:06:00] with a campaign.

So, that kind of stuff. Less of the traditional advertising. Like, I don't think that we have designed a brochure in our 11 years, and I don't really see us doing that in the future. We have started doing a little bit of like brand development, positioning, logo development, that kind of stuff. Which really just transfers to everything we do online, and we work with builders and developers and have since the onset.

You know, my first big client was William Lion Holmes, when it was William Lion Holmes, and that just goes to my network. It wasn't our intent to stay in the building industry like a hundred percent, but that is how it unfolded. Once I started my own company with Ryan, I had such a deep network from just being in the industry and growing my own career for 13 years that I just, I got calls. It was just kind of one by one. So, now we work with a lot of builders that you would know. We work with Toll Brothers and Shea Homes, Woodbridge Pacific, the Olsen Company, Trumark [00:07:00] Homes. We work with about 14 or 15 builders out there in the industry. Some big national, but we work divisionally with them, and then some just smaller private builders. So, we kind of run the gamut from small private to big public.

Greg Bray: So, you threw out a number there of a lot of social media posts. How do you, as an agency with social media, capture the voice of a client and keep that different from the other clients that you work with, make it unique?

Kelly Borgen: You know, It's not as easy as you may think. We have teams in our company. We have a big company. So, I mean not, we have a small, big company. We've got 19 people in the company. We have a very robust writing team. So, you know, we have four writers on staff that work on different accounts, and they each have their own set of accounts. They work within, you know, a team that goes kind of up from there.

So, we have video teams that just work on certain accounts. We have design teams that work on certain accounts. So, [00:08:00] at this point as we've grown, everyone's not working on everything, which I think is how the message could get diluted and start sounding the same. The bigger we grow, the more people we add to the team. We have like a brand guidelines for every one of our clients that we create once we onboard them. We have documents that just have so much information about what we can and can't say for each client that our, all the teams refer to before content goes out to the client. It's important to us at the onset with the new client builder to understand who they are, what their brand is, what their voice sounds like.

I just think that by working with so many builders and being in the industry for so long, I have a good understanding myself of who's who in the zoo. I understand that Trumark's voice is different than Brandywine's voice. They're just a completely different builder with a completely different team. So, you know, we [00:09:00] work closely with those teams to understand who they are and make sure that their content is in their brand voice.

Greg Bray: Let's dive into just some real specifics. How often should a builder be putting social media posts out there?

Kelly Borgen: So, I'm going to say that that's different for each builder, and it depends on who you are. You know, take a Shea or a Toll who you're working with a division that might have, I don't know, 20 or more neighborhoods selling at once in one region, and they might have a lot to say. So, we can post a lot more with that builder. There's a lot to talk about, and as I'm sure you know, lot of that content is boosted to the exact market who you're trying to hit. So, everyone's not seeing the same stuff 'cause you know, organic is very hard to get a lot of eyes on that organic content.

So, we're writing content for whoever that demographic is, and then there's builders who might have just one or two neighborhoods selling at one time. So, there's not a lot to talk about. That to me is the case where maybe we're [00:10:00] just gonna post twice on Facebook per week, maybe two or three times on Instagram, but you just don't need to be hitting people over the head with the same content over and over. So, I think the strategy is different for everyone. There's not like one size fits all strategy, for sure.

Kevin Weitzel: Do you have any builders that let throw just a complete lefthanded curve from a righthanded pitcher kind of situation? You know, like where you can throw just some crazy content out there to mix it up.

Kelly Borgen: Yes.

Kevin Weitzel: Whoa. I gotta find out who these builders are 'cause that's who I want to buy from.

Kelly Borgen: We have some clients that are willing to just try new things and do what the market is asking for. It's hard to do that, and they do a very good job at it. If you're willing to try new things, which will be like probably a theme in this conversation with social media. You've got to try new things. We have some clients do very well with just being super out there, and then we have builders who would never, [00:11:00] and we would never probably pitch it to them.

Like, we might sort of feel 'em out and understand that's never gonna happen, builders where everything has to go through the legal department. We're never gonna get to do anything crazy with those builders, but we still can do a very good job for them. So yeah, you get those more private builders willing to just shake it up and try new things and have a lot of fun with their social media.

Greg Bray: How far in advance, when you talk about getting approval from the legal department for a social media post, how far in advance are you guys working on these calendars and ideas and putting this content together usually?

Kelly Borgen: So, in a perfect world, we would be working about 30 days out, but that is not how it is. We start working on content about 30 days out. Like, this is what we want to plan for next month. We're about to hit October here, because in my world, September was gone months ago, or weeks ago. So, we're about to hit October, which means we are going to [00:12:00] start planning for all of our clients' November content as soon as kind of October 1st hits.

We probably send them like a week's worth of content at a time, 'cause otherwise, it's too much. They won't get to at all and everything changes. So, everything always changes. There's lots of changes we have to make, but with legal, we probably try to get it to them with at least a week's notice for us that we want to published by. They're pretty good at turnaround, I'm not gonna lie. Like, they have become a legal machine for their company, and that's what some of their legal team does is just approve social media posts, I think. It's a big part of their job. So, they're pretty good on turnaround. I can't give them a hard time about it, 'cause for the most part, they get back to us within a few days.

Greg Bray: What are your recommendations on content reuse across social media platforms? How much can I take the same post and repurpose it versus needing to be unique and different, you know, between the different channels?[00:13:00]

Kelly Borgen: Yeah. There's been a lot of changes in social media over the years making it harder to repost the same content. We don't repost a lot of the same content. I'll tell you some of the things that we repost most frequently are probably Instagram stories because those live for 24 hours and we can just grab those off the shelf. It's still relevant, and you don't see it in the feed exactly. Like, you never see it again, right? It's just, it's up and it's gone. So, we probably repurpose that the most.

Otherwise, we will take some things that we think can have a long shelf. We have a system where we're looking at performance to see how it performed. If we feel like it's content that we could repost, did it also perform well? Is it worth reposting, and we might repost that now and again?

We pretty much generate new content. We would most likely write something fresh for that piece of content. It might be the same idea, but newly written. Maybe post photos in a different order or change the graphic a [00:14:00] little bit so it doesn't look exactly the same. Builders are like ever-changing. So, I feel like there's some things that make sense to repost, but their needs week to week, day to day sometimes, are changing. So, it's not always easy to just repost the same content.

Greg Bray: Sometimes when I talk with builders that are trying to create content, especially the ones that are trying to do it in-house and don't necessarily have somebody dedicated, they struggle to actually get ideas. Like, what should we even talk about? Where do you guys look for those what should we talk about ideas, and help builders kind of identify that they're doing things that maybe are worth talking about, even though they don't give themselves credit sometimes?

Kelly Borgen: Yeah. I can see how that would be very hard if you don't spend a lot of time generating ideas like we do. This is something that probably makes us really good at creating social media. One, we have a team of people who gets together regularly [00:15:00] on each account to generate ideas. What can we be talking about?

We used to look at a whole year and sometimes we kinda will look at the whole year and things we want to talk about. What can we go through seasonally and have generalized big picture topics that isn't this neighborhood just opened and there's three new floor plans, right? That's always going to be sprinkled in, but what is the more like lifestyle, overarching theme? Like, we'll sometimes look at themes.

I think more interestingly, our clients probably don't even know that we do this, but this would be good for them to know. Twice a year we do a creative circle with our whole company. It doesn't matter what you do in the company. You are going to turn your brain off on that way and turn it on in a creative way, and we will spend half a day as a company. Really it's different every time. Last time, I think the creative team, we've got a creative director and art director, they put this on.

It is to help generate ideas for all of our clients, but they just did those big white sticky notes all around our office for [00:16:00] each client. There was like a set of three and we were broken into teams that had a specific timeframe that we were to be thinking on, and we only had however many minutes to rotate through the clients. So, by the end, you know, we had three big sticky notes for each client that filled out a year's worth of ideas that would be a fit for this client.

Everyone in our company base knows who we're working with. They're all like, in some way, touching the different accounts or seeing what they're doing in social media, and we're looking at everybody else's, you know, in the world social media all the time. So, it's a pretty awesome experience that we put the team through. It generates tons of ideas. Some we can't use ever. Some are way better for other clients, and some are perfect. So, then like quarterly, the team gets together to go through what are those ideas. How can this work? How can we really like execute on this and then we pitch those to our clients at different times throughout the year and roll that into all of their content?

Kevin Weitzel: With all that prep [00:17:00] work, you know, I'm always amazed at how many builders I know, and I've heard them say this, that oh, we have a part-time person that can just knock these out, and they don't understand the strategy and the rules that are constantly shifting for the various platforms that are out there. Can you speak onto some of the nuances that you know, maybe a Facebook or a TikTok would have?

Kelly Borgen: I mean, ultimately I think that's why we get some of our clients is for that exact reason, is 'cause you think it can be done in this amount of time and then you realize it's not competing as well as it should out there in the marketplace. You know, we look at trends. Annually, we do a trends report, but we look at trends, especially like media trends quarterly, and our media department, our media director, is very good at understanding what's working and what's not working. So, this is kind of even part of our quarterly analytics packages that we put together, but we're pretty good. We're not the best.

You know, we hear from other people listening to a podcast like yours. [00:18:00] Oh, that's a thing, but at knowing what's changing and that it's coming. It's coming down the pike and we're gonna not be able to deliver this kind of content anymore. We like, have to change, and then we have to roll that into our clients or let them know in our monthly newsletter that goes out that this is changing. We need to, act by this date. Those kinds of things we do try to stay on top of, but yet it takes a team of people to do.

Kevin Weitzel: With all the different companies that you represent, do you get noticed by any of the platforms? Like, do you get a call quarterly from Mark Zuckerberg where he is like Kelly, I just want you to know that this new thing is coming out and you make sure that you do this for your clients?

Kelly Borgen: Yes. So, not by Mark himself. I'm waiting for that call but by many of his people on his team. Yes, we are like whatever status on the Facebook Business Meta platform. So, we have reps that will reach out to us for our clients and let us know either that we're doing a bad or good job and we should change what we're doing on the advertising side or here's what's coming down the pike, let us help you plan 'cause they offer [00:19:00] those kinds of services for agencies like ours.

Greg Bray: Kelly, you mentioned the idea of posting things like, oh, new community, new floor plans, things like that, and you used the word sprinkling those in. So, what is it that you're wrapping around those? What's the rest of it about? If it's not about our product, what are we talking about as a builder?

Kelly Borgen: I think we're talking about like who we are as a builder. What kind of product are we building? What can I expect when I walk into a model home? What's the experience gonna be like working with you and how can you educate me on this process and what it is that you do? So, and then there's also lifestyle because if you're buying a home, you know, and a lot of people don't go for lifestyle, but if you're moving even from Santa Ana to Irvine, which you might very likely do. Doesn't mean you really know what's going on in Irvine.

Like, you know that they have good school districts. Okay, well that's part of the lifestyle. So, we should [00:20:00] be talking about that, but what's right around your neighborhood? What's it gonna be like to live in these different communities? I think those are the kinds of things that we need to be sharing because we are trying to sell that. We're trying to sell that town. We're trying to sell your home in that town. What's the location like, and to me, that's all part of the style. So, the more we can bring that into social media, the more engaging it is. It just is.

We're looking at social media as like entertainment platforms these days. It's changing all the time. So, if you're just putting a static post out with, let's say, a rendering. Hey, this is coming soon. That is not going to get a very high engagement as something that's just more entertaining. We would be probably looking at even that floor plan or that rendering and being like, Oh, how do we make this more interesting? Can we make a video out of this some way? Can we put big copy words over it? We need music. Everyone's gonna score right by that. So, the more that we can be educating people, they're doing all this research anyway [00:21:00] online, we should be feeding them that information. Which to me is like lifestyle. Like, I would want to know all of that as a buyer.

Greg Bray: When you have a new builder that you haven't worked with before, and they come say Hey Kelly, can you take a look at our stuff and give us thoughts on how you can help or what we could be doing better, what are some of the common mistakes that you see builders making? Of course, these are the ones you haven't worked with yet, right, because once you work with them, they don't make these mistakes anymore.

Kelly Borgen: They don't do that.

Greg Bray: Yeah. So, what are those things that you're looking for when you kind of analyze a new account?

Kelly Borgen: So, I think a couple of like common mistakes that I see a lot that I still see that kind of surprises me is posting the same piece of content on all your platforms. I could go to many builders today and see that the exact same post is on their Facebook as their Instagram. By the way, that graphic does not work on Instagram if it's created for Facebook, and probably on their Twitter. Probably on, maybe even on their LinkedIn. [00:22:00] So, that I think is a big problem because you're just not serving that audience. It's just not gonna work for you. You're not gonna get what you want. You're gonna think social media doesn't work. I get it 'cause that doesn't work.

Another thing I see a lot is a lack of consistency in posting. So, you know, it might be six weeks you haven't posted and then you post five times. That strategy, it also doesn't work. It doesn't work for the algorithm. They're not gonna push your content out when you decide to post five times. You know, if you're like a small builder, you probably don't have big advertising budget. So, that's not going to help you either, but at the same time, even if you have $25 to spend, it's worth it to spread that money around and boost that content to the right people. I don't see that being done in a lot of cases and it's important to the strategy.

An organic strategy is tough right now. You have to have really entertaining content or know that your consumers/buyers are coming to look at your social media and [00:23:00] that's important for you, but otherwise, we want to attract people with the content. So, it kind of needs to be boosted to that audience of who might potentially be a buyer to be performing for you. I mean, those are kind of just two big things, but another thing would be just not trying things, not trying new things, just sticking with the same old static photo copy post. That's also not gonna work for you today.

Greg Bray: So Kelly, where does video fit into all this? You talked a little bit about video earlier on. You guys do some of that. It's a little more work to create video, or a lot more. Is it a lot more?

Kelly Borgen: A lot more work.

Greg Bray: How critical is video to the strategy?

Kelly Borgen: It's everything. You have to have video. I think a few years ago, I remember we've looked at stats for video for years. Every year seeing what's changing. At one point, I'm pretty sure the Zuckerberg put out that Facebook was gonna be 100% video, and that was pretty shocking, and I don't think that they're 100% video. I don't think they like reached [00:24:00] that, but they're not far off now that they own Instagram.

Instagram is probably, I don't know, 90% video. I'm sure there's a number. I don't know what it is. It's all video and it's everything that you see in your feed is video. You know, they want to be an entertainment platform and Instagram is a big driver on the analytics side. It's a big converter, and it works, and video works and we see it in the stats. We see it driving interestless leads.

We try a lot of different kinds of video, and it's not the same for everyone. You know, this video for Toll is not gonna work over here for Woodbridge. You have to test. You have to try a new video, and the more you can have any kind of movement in your post, the more likely it's going to get engaged with. That's kind of what we're going for on social media, not reach necessarily, but more like engagement and generating leads to website. We're always trying to get [00:25:00] people to go to your website as much as we can. Not always, but many times. So, video is transforming our business.

We have grown a team from, Ryan, my partner, he used to do all of our video. So, he loves that. He loves the tech. He has the skills. At the very beginning, it was just him and now we have four including him 'cause he tries not to do video anymore, but he can jump in there and edit. He can go out and shoot. He buys all of our new cameras. We're about to get that new Matterport camera that's coming out. So, he makes sure we're on top of that. He helps to train the team, but we have three videographers full time and they are full time and then some busy 'cause we also have a supporter that comes in every now and again to help editing or go shoot when needed. I don't know the percentage of video, but it's gotta be high for us. It's gotta be like over 75% of content have some sort of video that's going out with it. It's so important. It just performs [00:26:00] so much better.

Greg Bray: Well Kelly, we appreciate the time you've spent. Just a few more questions here before we wrap up. When you guys are looking at what's coming next, especially in the social media world, what are you watching for? What's the new thing on the horizon?

Kelly Borgen: We just had our first trends meeting for 2023 to have this very conversation. One of the things I thought that was interesting that we talked about was, you know, we're still gonna talk about short form and the evolution of short form, 'cause that is like huge and it's not changing. It's changing but it's not going away. It's a huge trend and it's going to be different next year, but I think audio and the rise of original audio is like a big one that we're looking at 'cause that's a game changer for us right now.

Using audio is sticky, but you want to use trending audio because that's what's working, and so I know we are talking about right now, how can we create our own original audio, so we don't have to even deal with it. How can we take these trends and create our own? You know, we can do it. We have all the tech but it's [00:27:00] like a new thing for us. You know, we see everyone else doing it, but to roll that into an agency and like deliver that to multiple builders and make it unique and different.

I think that's something that we are really looking at. We're seeing a big change in, and then there's like way down the road. You know, there's Meta. We've already done a whole podcast on that. A whole company all in meeting. We've talked to some of our clients about it, but that's not like a next year thing. I don't think, but that's in a few years, that's potentially gonna change the game, the metaverse.

Kevin Weitzel: I'm still blown away the answer for 2023 of trends was not big old sideburns.

Kelly Borgen: I'm growing some. I'm working on mine right here now.

Greg Bray: She hit entertaining video, Kevin. I'm sure, I'm sure you could work those into an entertaining video.

Kevin Weitzel: I can work those in there.

Kelly Borgen: Yes. I mean, entertaining video. Well, like what a shift. Like, for home builders to have to be entertaining in their video. It's not easy. We have to work really hard to make that happen.

Greg Bray: [00:28:00] Well, Kelly, again we appreciate your time. Any last pieces of advice you'd like to share with the audience today?

Kelly Borgen: I think the biggest thing for me always is we have to try new things. Like we have to try it. It might seem scary or stupid or whatever, but we have to try it and see if it works for you. It may or may not, but then you know and you move on. Trying different things for different neighborhoods, even on the same social media. Like, it might work, you know. Or texting. Texting totally works, but it might not work for a certain neighborhood, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work for all of your neighborhoods, you know?

So, really looking on the analytics side and understanding, I tried this. It didn't work, but it works for over here. Okay, let's do it. Don't just give up 'cause it didn't work one place. So that for me is, well, can we try it? Well, can we allocate a little bit of money towards it and see if it works? Sometimes it does and it really changes your game and it's worth it in the end.

Kevin Weitzel: And if all else fails, you can always just revert back to puppies and kittens.

Kelly Borgen: Always. Can we get a puppy in? Let's do it.

Kevin Weitzel: You know, we're [00:29:00] B2B and we find, and it's funny 'cause a lot of the things you're saying resonate very well with what we've learned. Just the school of hard knocks. But we've found that number one, we get about a two to one conversion ratio show of Instagram over Facebook. Which is crazy. We did not see that coming, and two, any post that we have that has puppies or kittens or flowers or something like that in it, we get crazy more interaction with. Like, lots more. Those lifestyle pieces get tons more interaction. It's nuts.

Kelly Borgen: Yes. People love it. I don't even like cats, but right now my TikTok feed thinks I do. So, I'm getting a lot of cat content and I'm actually, I'm okay with it.

Kevin Weitzel: Puppies and kittens.

Greg Bray: Yeah. The internet was built on cat videos a long time ago.

Kelly Borgen: It really was.

Greg Bray: Well, Kelly, if somebody wants to reach out and get in touch, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

Kelly Borgen: The best way is go to our website, getcommunity.com. There's tons of lead forums on there. We've done our job there. You can reach out in many different departments. My email is [00:30:00] kelly@get community.com, and that's Kelly with a Y. Yeah, hope to see you on the website.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you so much again, Kelly, for sharing your time with us today, and thank you everybody for listening to the Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you.