WS508: How to Hack Social Media to Leverage Your Real Estate Business with Adam Adams

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:24.1] WS: This is your daily Real Estate Syndication show. I’m your host Whitney Sewell. Today, our guest is Adam Adams. Thanks for being on the show Adam.

[0:00:34.0] AA: Thank you for having me, brother.

[0:00:34.9] WS: I’m incredibly grateful for your time and having you back on the show. Adam was show number WS07. It was October 28^th of 2018. It’s hard to believe it was that long ago or that I’ve known Adam that long. But Adam, it’s been incredible to watch your success in – you’re going to showcase that today just by how much you just teach us and how much you give to the listeners and myself today. It’s incredible what you’re doing and how many people you’re teaching to grow their business and their brand, and you’ve definitely become an expert, one of the leaders in it, that’s for sure.

Adam started investing in real estate in 2005 after repositioning his first apartment community in 2007 from a two-million-dollar value to four million dollars in 12 months as a property manager. He bought his first multifamily apartment building. Since then, Adam has managed single-family fix and flips and holds over a hundred multifamily rental doors.

He’s the organizer of Colorado’s most active real estate group and he host a Creative Real Estate podcast. Adam, tell us a little more about what you’re doing right now and we’re going to jump into something like a superpower of yours today.

[0:01:40.5] AA: Perfect. Well, first off, that bio, did you just get that from my website because I have to update that. I’m at over a thousand now but –

[0:01:49.7] WS: I thought –

[0:01:50.3] AA: I need to adjust it. Yeah, just to resonate with a couple of audience members that know that I came from – where they might be right now. I started in 2005, I was afraid, I was afraid to get into it. Actually, I was like postponing it as long as I could. In college, my dad just purchased a piece of property for me. Then he gave it to me and then he made me pay for it. I thought that was a really inappropriate for a gift that you would get for Christmas, to all of a sudden, now I had to pay for it because of his taxes.

I don’t know if I would have ever really truly gotten into real estate investing if my dad didn’t buy that for me and then make me pay for it. It just can be overwhelming. When I finally sold that in 2007, that’s when I first read the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. My dad is a real estate investor, some people don’t know that about me. I grew up thinking like this was going to be my path, but I just wasn’t ready for it until I got that gift. I read this book in 2007 and it really opened up my mind.

I found out that Robert Kiyosaki was an apartment person, not a single-family person. Most people have no idea that he was syndicating apartments, and not buying single-family rentals, but when I found that out, I was like, “Well, I’m not going to just do what everybody else says to do. I’m just going to do what Robert did,” and so after the land, I got into apartment investing and started managing apartments, 2007.

You already mentioned that I doubled the value of an apartment as a manager and then I started buying my own. But, during the crash, I felt the crash while I owned a multifamily and I’ll tell you, multifamily is more resilient than single-family but it’s still not fun to own real estate when it’s going down and down for three years and your tenants or your residents are starting to have a hard time paying.

I was able to experience that, I live to tell another day, and fast forward, I guess, 15 years from the beginning, part owner in 1,400 doors.

[0:03:56.0] WS: Nice. I mean, you have helped so many people brand themselves and really create their own businesses and you know, in this space, you’ve really become an expert and it’s known by everybody in the space. You’ve become so knowledgeable. One piece of your superpower that I think we’re going to highlight today is just hacking the social media algorithms and why that’s beneficial, why that’s useful. Maybe you can back up a little bit and tell us like, why is that even important for a real estate syndicator to even know what that is or how to do it?

[0:04:23.1] AA: Okay, I guess any real estate syndicator, or almost anyone in business – if you’re running an MLM, boom, you need this today, if you were an engineer and you were trying to get your business to grow, this can be extremely valuable. You don’t have to be posting all the time on social media, so I’m not even trying to ask you to go so far out of your comfort zone that it’s not even you anymore.

I’m just saying that when you post on social media, there’s a few ways and a few things that I think we can get in on this call with to just allow you to get more traction. For instance, Whitney, you asked, what are we going to do if we’re a syndicator and using these things. I would say, if you’re listening, there’s a good chance that you want to raise private equity. There’s a good chance that you’re afraid to raise private equity. There’s a good chance that you don’t’ know how to approach it.

Let’s reverse the roles for you a little bit and allow you to start magnetizing or attracting this capital. You don’t need to be a salesperson, you don’t need to know how to jump out and whatever, you’ve just got to be able to start attracting and influencing passive investors that come to you and I’ve used social media.

I always hate bragging or making it sound like it’s a brag, but my Meetup group is like one of the top 1% of 1% in the world. I’m really grateful.

[0:05:50.6] WS: In the world.

[0:05:51.7] AA: Yes, in the world. Out of 225,000 meetups, I think in 60 or 30 countries, you’ll  have to look it up, this is all Googleable but out of 225,000, right? We are number six, and so I was able to speak for the top 150 Meetup organizers from around the world at Meetup HQ. But what I’m saying is, it’s not just because I’m good at Meetups. Like, being good at Meetups, still doesn’t mean that people can find your Meetup. Even if you’re the best Meetup organizer, doesn’t mean you’re going to have hundreds of people, you might still just have three people attending. That’s just the truth of it.

If you’re the best apartment investor in the world and you’re the best Meetup organizer in the world and you are bad at getting people into the seats, then you’re going to have three people. What I’m trying to state is that I use these social media algorithms to get butts in the seats. I use these social media algorithms to raise millions of dollars for my deals and whether it’s a 506(b) deal or a 506(c) deal which a lot of your followers, probably know the difference but I’m not saying that you’re posting your deal on social media. I’m not even saying that.

I’m saying that you start to attract capital, you start to stand for something and get people onboard with you. Just like you’ve done, Whitney, in your business. Yeah, that’s why it’s important, is because you can either spin your wheels and get no investors or get discouraged because you feel like you have to be a better salesperson or you can use this for your benefit to be able to get in front of more and more people.

[0:07:34.5] WS: Okay, I think most people listening are – or if they’re trying to be an operator or syndicator, they’re definitely trying to raise capital and trying to learn how to use social media. I like how you said it, “You have to stand for something and then you have to get people onboard.” People have to know what you’re doing, right? You got to let people know that you’re out there, doesn’t matter how good you are, right?

You know, as far as social media, I’d love to get into the hacking the social media algorithms a little bit or let’s focus on that because I know that’s a superpower of yours and it’s not something that’s talked about and I feel like very much as far as blasted out on podcasts. You know, maybe in your like secret areas and where you discuss it in a dark room, you know, I don’t know.

But today, I’d love for you to just highlight that a little bit for us to learn what that means and how we’re doing it wrong.

[0:08:17.3] AA: Okay, perfect. Mauricio Raul is going to be okay with me mentioning this. He’s one of my coaching clients. He is starting a podcast, it’s going to be top 1% podcast, and he’s using the social media to get there. With him, he was posting before we got into this, he was posting things like, “Here’s the five things that you need to know,” which obviously is important.

Here’s the first rule that we’re going to get into. The first thing that I taught Mauricio, instead of saying, “Here’s the five things you need to know,” which is already good. I need you to start asking questions. Do you know the five most important things? Or, what are the five most important things? Number one, stop the scroll. There’s something with questions forming everything as a question versus telling. I say, ask, don’t tell.

Whitney, you were in the military, so you know kind of what I’m trying to talk about. Don’t ask, don’t tell, this is, ask but don’t tell. It’s almost like the military. What we’re saying is, when you’re posting on social media, if you are telling everybody things, like using a period versus a question mark, people are going to scroll right past it. Here’s why.

The psychology says, I can read that in a split second, and I can think that I have an idea of what you’re saying and I’m going to scroll to the next. When everybody tells me something, I’ll scroll to the next, I’ll scroll to the next. As soon as you have a question, the interesting thing is, your readers, your listeners, your followers are going to stop the scroll.

Use questions to stop the scroll, that means, when we see the question, we get into our minds, we start to try to think of the answers. It is like a subliminal, hypnotist, right? All of a sudden, you’re like, wait a second. You’ve stopped scrolling and you’re thinking about this answer. That’s the first thing that I’ll mention to hack into the algorithms.

The second thing that I want to share with your listeners is the engagement. How to get engagement? What I’ll say is don’t post links. This is the first like most elementary thing and even with Mauricio and other clients that I’ve worked with that I say, you should never post a link. What they’ll do is they will grab a YouTube video and they’ll post that link and they’re like, “No, it’s not a link, I’m just posting a YouTube video, a direct link to the YouTube and that’s okay,” and I’m like, “No.”

The second thing that my clients will usually say is, “Okay, well, he said not to post it in the post but of course, how are people going to get to it if I don’t share it at all? I’m going to put it in the comments. I am smart enough to Google this and I googled it and I looked it up and Google said that if you put the link in the post, Facebook doesn’t show it to anybody, but Google told me to go ahead and post it in the comments. I’m going to just do that.”

The unfortunate thing is you’re not getting engagement even if you post a link in the comments. I want to go into this to really help the listener understand why this is so important. Somebody wants to post something like, “This is my Meetup group, okay? This is my meetup group, you should come be at my meetup group so eventually you could be a passive investor for me,” or something like that, okay?

They want to do that and what they’ll do is they’ll copy the Meetup link and they would have posted it as a post. Bad. Because of this, Facebook has a fiduciary responsibility to their investors, to their advertisers. There are people that pay Facebook to keep people on Facebook.

If Facebook sees that you’ve posted a link in the post, immediately, they have something, an algorithm that tells Facebook not to share this post with your friends. You’ve been wondering, “Why whenever I post my Meetup does nobody see it? I get like one comment or one like?” It’s because Facebook can’t keep pushing your stuff in front of people and having them click off of Facebook and go to Meetup instead.

Because now, they’re helping Meetup, they don’t want to help Meetup, they’ve got their own investors, they got their own advertisers, they have to keep people on the platform.

[0:12:35.5] WS: How do we get people to our website then if we can’t post a link? I mean, I guess they keep seeing this enough ‘till they finally look this up?

[0:12:41.5] AA: Okay, perfect. How do we do it? What you’ll do is you won’t put it in the comments, you won’t put it in the post, what you’ll do is you’ll – I like using some emojis like a hand pointing down emoji. I love that one. You’ll say something like, “I’ve got a meetup, it’s all about sales and marketing.” The person thinking, listening to this, got to be thinking about that to themselves, how do I word this to get people on board to wanting to do this. So, you are going to say something like this, “We have a meet up, seats are limited. So, if you want to come, comment below.” So here is the third thing. This is the third part of the second thing, what people will do is they will say to themselves, “Okay, so when they comment I should reply with the link still.”

No, you don’t do that, you’ve got to have the engagement. So, here’s what you do: You’ll say, “Comment below if you want to come, seats are limited” and then you point the arrow down. Then when they reply, “Hey I would love the link” then you reply with a question, “Awesome, happy to send you the link. Would you rather me send it to your email or just through the DM?” But you’ve got to reword it 10 different ways because you don’t want to just copy and paste the same thing.

You want to say the PM versus DM, do you want me to email you, or go to the Facebook messenger app? You want to just say it a few different ways, so that you’re not being flagged as spam. So that’s another thing, you ask them a question. You basically engage them, “Okay, you want the link, where do you want me to send it?” it comes across perfect and now they’re going to comment, “Yeah, just email me,” so if they say that then you say, “What email is best for this purpose?”

And so, you’ve turned one comment into six automatically and Facebook is going to say, “Holy moly, when Whitney posts he keeps tons of people on Facebook forever. Whitney Sewell himself stays on Facebook forever, so the next time this person posts something, I’ve got to push this instead of 10% of their fans, I got to push this to all of their fans because he’s engaging people.”

So that’s your way of helping Facebook hack the algorithms, so that you are engaging and not just drawing people away. Then if you email it to them, you email it to them at or you go into the private messages and say, “Here is that link that you asked for” and then you go back to the Facebook post and you say, “Hey I just sent that to your email, let me know when you get it. Hey, I just sent that to your private message, let me know when you get it?” All about these question marks is going to keep people engaged.

Now Facebook knows that you’re making them money. You are keeping people on the platform, so I think that’s just huge. If you can do this right, no more links, always questions, always engaging with your audience.

[0:15:35.2] WS: It sounds like questions are so important but a big thing for me is I hate having to spend so much time on Facebook. Honestly, I just don’t. It is not the best thing I know but I just hate spending so much time on there. You know, how much time should we be expecting to spend to really do this well Adam?

[0:15:50.9] AA: Well, good question. I mean me and a VA together, we pretty much put in 70 hours a week, just combined. We put in a lot of Facebook time. However, you don’t really need that. Here is the third thing that I’ll teach your audience right now and it goes along with what you just asked. You need to share with them that you don’t set it and forget it. That is the third rule is don’t set it and forget it and so when you are asking how much time should we spend, I am not saying that you have to spend 70 hours a week because I post dozens of times a week.

But if your audience member wants to post on Facebook, just once a month that’s fine so long as the time that they do post they don’t set it and forget it. You don’t want to just tell somebody something, put a comment in there and never look at it again. So, you can control how much time you spend, but when you post something you have to put forth enough time for the next day, you need to be able to go back to that a few times during that day and be able to spend a few minutes.

A few times during that day just keeping the engagement on that post, asking more questions etcetera. So when you post, you’re going to want to be able to spend some time that day and maybe the following day, following up. But if you don’t want to do this again for a whole month that is totally fine because once Facebook can see that you are actively doing this on an ongoing basis, Facebook is going to be able to say, even though it is only once a month, every time that they do a post they are engaged and they keep other people engaged.

They’re not posting links and taking people off of our platform, they are keeping people on the platform. So, Facebook, their algorithms start having your post going in front of more people automatically. So, like because I have been doing this more, sometimes I can post the same thing as you but even though we have the exact same amount of friends, the same exact amount of followers, it is not because I am cooler or something like this, it is because Facebook sees that I stay on. So, if you post it and I post it, mine is just going to go and get more traction automatically because I have a track-record with Facebook of doing this.

[0:18:03.5] WS: They rank people I am sure on how often you post and how engaging you are, right?

[0:18:08.2] AA: Exactly. I think those are the three main rules that can probably help the audience if they want to write those down and they will be able to get more traction in their business for free.

[0:18:19.9] WS: Yeah, questions, more questions, and no links, and don’t set it and forget it.

[0:18:24.6] AA: Yes. Exactly.

[0:18:25.8] WS: What about other platforms, Adam? I know you are very focused on Facebook but do you focus on other platforms as well or is that like, “Okay this is where I am going to spend my time.”

[0:18:34.4] AA: Yeah, I focus on meetup.com and Facebook, that’s where I put my attention. I have a lot of clients that want to be active on LinkedIn. There is more high net worth individuals on LinkedIn than there are on Facebook, just like if you look at it the average LinkedIn person has over a $100,000 of annual income and so it’s good to be able to use this. LinkedIn and Facebook have a lot in common, there is a couple of differences.

Number one, LinkedIn cares more about the consistency of you posting. So, if you are posting frequently on LinkedIn, you are going to get more mad props from LinkedIn because they are going to start helping you build an audience, but you’ve got to stay really consistent. On Facebook if you want to do this once a month, you’re still going to be fine right? So, there is one big difference.

The next big difference is hashtags. So, on Facebook hashtags don’t help you at all. In fact, they come across as spam but on LinkedIn, if you’re using hashtags there’s people that specifically are following that and LinkedIn is trying really hard to use those hashtags to get you in front of the right people. Same thing with Instagram hashtags, hashtags all the time on Insta, hashtags all the time on LinkedIn, but it’s really unnecessary on Facebook. The only time that I use a hashtag on Facebook it’s not because I want to get noticed.

It is because I think the hashtag is funny. I think people are going to like it because I did that hashtag, you know? I will put me and my sons, so I am a father and I love hanging out with my kids on every single Saturday or we go hiking on Sunday. So, I might do something like #sundayfunday. It is not because I want to get noticed about that. It is because it’s kind of interesting, Sunday Fun Day, oh okay, Sunday Fun Day but it works completely different. Facebook versus Insta and LinkedIn for those hashtags.

So, there is a couple of differences on Instagram, here is one interesting thing on Insta that isn’t so much so on Facebook and LinkedIn and that’s the geo locations. So basically, what you do is when you’re posting on your story, the story is this thing that stays there for about 24 hours. When you are posting on the story in Instagram, or even when you post a regular post, the things that you can do is you want to use those hashtags to get followed by people that follow those things, plus you want to geo locate.

So, if you are in New York City, you can actually get a whole bunch of people that are following New York City to come and see your post while you’re there. So if your goals is to grow your Instagram following, I grew mine, I don’t pay a lot of attention to Insta to be honest, but I think I went from a 100 or 200 followers to like around seven or 8,000 in a period of a year. I did this a little bit and so I wished I used my Instagram more, but if somebody is trying to do Instagram there is just a couple of tips, hashtags and geo locations and your stories are going to get you noticed. Oh, can I give you a last one?

[0:21:43.5] WS: Yeah, we’re about out of time, so quickly.

[0:21:45.8] AA: Okay, the fourth one that matters to your algorithms is private messages, direct messages, and it works on LinkedIn and it works on Instagram and it works on Facebook. So, if what you do is you go in and you private message the people that are commenting on your post or liking your posts, “Thanks for liking my posts, thanks for commenting on my posts or here’s that thing that you asked for,” Facebook is going to see that you engage with these people.

And they are more likely to put you in front of those people. So, message the people that you want to see your posts because Facebook is going to automatically start doing that.

[0:22:18.7] WS: Nice, a couple of questions, what about third party posting software that you can schedule and posts? What’s your thoughts?

[0:22:26.0] AA: Third party is probably a bad idea. It can make it easier for people to put out content but what I’ve heard is Facebook specifically looks for these third party, basically their thumbprint, their fingerprint what it looks like when it comes from them and they give less engagement to those people who are utilizing those platforms, they want it to be organic. So, it can make it easier for you, but I would prefer when I am working with somebody, I try to teach them to just go ahead and do it on your own.

[0:22:56.5] WS: What’s the top platform and probably for you it’s Facebook but maybe one method where it’s been most beneficial in finding investors?

[0:23:03.5] AA: For finding investors I like using Facebook, but I go into real estate groups and I will start engaging. I’ll just engage on other people’s things and I’ll comment, and I’ll just try to add value slowly. That’s been a super helpful way to get passive investors is going into someone else’s group and just adding as much value as you possibly can, coming from a real place of genuineness. You can’t be thinking of it wrong. It is super, super important but I’ve gotten a lot of past investors just from being on there.

I’ve heard a lot of people who are active on Bigger Pockets as well. I teach my clients to work on Bigger Pockets, but I am so busy on Facebook that I don’t do it. So, I’ve heard good things about Bigger Pockets especially from Joe Ferris as he talks about it all the time.

[0:23:51.1] WS: He does, well tell us how you like to give back and then unfortunately we’re out of time.

[0:23:55.9] AA: I am on the board of an autism group and so I often bring that group to build more awareness around autism. I have a son who is autistic. So, I sponsor them for free, I donate to them every single year, so that is the main way that I love giving back.

[0:24:13.7] WS: Awesome, Adam I cannot thank you enough for your time. I encourage the listeners to check Adam out, we’ll have links in the show notes. He is an amazing sponsor of the show as well. If you are looking to start a podcast or growing a brand, he is someone that you must know. Adam, how can they get in touch with you?

[0:24:29.9] AA: The best way is just to go to realbluespruce.com, hopefully that can just be in the show notes. They can click it, they can find out more about me, and learn about anything that we’re doing.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:24:40.6] WS: Don’t go yet, thank you for listening to today’s episode. I would love it if you would go to iTunes right now and leave a rating and written review. I want to hear your feedback. It makes a big difference in getting the podcast out there. You can also go to the Real Estate Syndication Show on Facebook so you can connect with me and we can also receive feedback and your questions there that you want me to answer on the show.

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[OUTRO]

[0:25:20.8] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to The Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Life Bridge Capital. Life Bridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Life Bridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.LifeBridgeCapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

[END]