The benefits of consistently sharing content on social media platforms

For years I’ve been encouraging anyone who’ll listen to invest time in growing their personal brand.

Some of my clients and members have taken my advice, become masters of the craft and reaped the rewards. 

If you don’t think there’s any value in doing it, here are a few of the benefits I’ve received:

📰 Commercial real estate agents have read my LinkedIn newsletter and then asked me to become members of our Top Performer program.

🎧 Commercial real estate principals have listened to Commercial Real Estate Leadership, contacted me and then been onboarded as private clients.

🎬 Event organisers have viewed my videos on YouTube and then booked me for speaking engagements at industry events.

Look, I’m certainly not the best at creating content.

But I have been consistent with it since I started CRE Success in 2020.

And being consistent has produced a compound effect.

Because a personal brand grows in value over time.

It’s uniquely yours – so no one can take it away from you.

And you don’t need anyone’s permission to get started.

If my modest results have given you a spark of inspiration, here’s what I would do if I was just getting started:

✅ Post consistently - keep going before you see the green shoots!! 🌱

✅ Be authentic - don't pretend to be someone you're not. 🪪

✅ Engage with your audience – start conversations and respond to comments. 🗪

Your personal brand can be an appreciating asset – it’s your job to invest in it so it grows more in value!

Episode transcript

When you see politicians or someone going for an important job or athletes who have had something in their social media past come back to haunt them. 

Well, I recently had something from my social media past come back, but it came back in a good way.  

And I want to tell you about that in today's episode. 

Hello, welcome to episode 189 of commercial real estate leadership. I'm your host Darren Krakowiak.  

And if you've got a desire to maybe just work a little bit less than you're currently working now to deliver more value to your clients and to see your business grow more than it has over the past year, then you're in the right place. 

That's what we're here to help commercial real estate principals to do. Thank you so much for choosing to spend some time with us today.  

And before I get into today's topic around the importance and benefit of creating content and how it can come back to you, I want to give you a little bit of an update about one of my clients. 

If you've been a listener to the podcast for a while you'd be familiar with, or if you're on Instagram and you follow anyone related to commercial real estate, you're probably familiar with, and that is Daniel O'Brien.  

And Daniel last week opened the first interstate branch of X commercial. 

X commercial Victoria opened last week. And this is a big milestone for the X commercial business.  

If you go back and listen to the previous episodes that I did with Dan, episode 18 and also episode 129. 

In episode 18, he was still working within a franchise group. He was a business owner, but he was a franchisee. 

And by episode 129, he'd built up the X commercial brand. He had, I think, five offices by that stage.  

And he said that he wanted to have 10 offices in New South Wales, and then he might start looking into state at Brisbane and also in Melbourne. 

Well, the opportunity came knocking partly as a result of the content work that he does on Instagram. His channel is @xcommercial_ on Instagram.  

And last time I checked about 33,000 followers. And it's just been a game changer for him when it comes to building his empire and also building his personal brand. 

And the wonderful thing about building a personal brand is that it's something that accumulates in value over time.  

It just keeps on getting bigger and bigger and it's an asset that no one can take away from you.  

And I've seen other people in the market sort of replicate the type of content that Dan is producing. 

And by the way, Dan doesn't own that style of content. I think he's just probably been a source of inspiration and motivation for others to start doing that.  

But the thing is that they're not copying him because no one can copy him because he is who he is. And no one can take away his own uniqueness and who he is. 

And the personal brand that he's building is something that is going to, I know, continue to bring him and his business more opportunities into the future. 

And just a little side note, I actually am going to be featured on his Instagram channel this week as a special guest.  

And there might be a couple more videos that you'll see me pop up on. And just to show you the power of these channels, Instagram.  

And I think sometimes I've probably been guilty of talking more about LinkedIn and underselling the opportunity on Instagram. I think I've mentioned before that it is a bit of a blue ocean and that there's not many commercial real estate agents who are using it effectively. 

So, therefore it is an opportunity and most people are on it. But he's really shown how effective it can be.  

And one way that I saw how effective it could be is, and this is before I was even featured on his channel, but Dan mentioned in one of his videos, and he didn't even mention my full name.  

He just said, "Oh, my coach, Darren focuses only on commercial real estate clients." 

And just as a result of him mentioning that, I got inquiries from commercial real estate principals and a couple of new clients off the back of that.  

So, it really does show the power of social proof and of someone else mentioning your name on social media. 

And this also happened to be a good recently. It was kind of a blast from the past. I said before, like things coming from the past and perhaps coming back to haunt you.  

Well, this was a comment that I made on a podcast about three or four years ago that someone in the United States, his name's Clayton Collins. 

He used one of the quotes that I mentioned in this podcast interview as a hook, which is the hook is, "The president is never president before he's president." 

And the point of that quote is to say, "Hey, before you've actually stepped into a new role, you're not experienced at doing it." 

But that's the same for everyone. So, you've got to kind of just embrace the opportunity and take on the responsibility that you've been given. 

And as a result of Clayton tagging me in that post, which was a nice surprise when I saw. And I started to follow a little more closely.  

And he did a great post a couple of weeks ago where he talks about how in one of his first jobs, the advice that someone gave him was to have like 50 coffees with people to get out there and meet people. 

And that reminded me of some advice that I used to give to my team. And the way that I did it was we printed out these lists, and it was meet 20 people in 20 days.  

And some of the team members moaned and groaned about the, I guess, requirement to get out there and talk to real people. But then they started to enjoy it, and they obviously started to see some benefit from it. 

So that led us to upping the ante. And we then said, let's make it meet 100 people in 100 days.  

And then we gamified it, like who can get to a hundred first and who can get the first deal off the back of the meetings that they've done.  

They don't all have to be with potential clients. That can be people who can bring you clients. 

The point is, is that conversations lead to conversions. So, if we have more conversations, that's likely to lead to us doing more deals.  

And one thing that I'm noticing more from people I'm speaking to in the market now (and I'm sure you've noticed it as well), is that in the current market climate, it's harder to get deals done. 

Things that previously took, you know, a week and now taking two or three weeks.  

And that's partly just because people aren't returning calls or aren't meeting their commitments or keeping their word.  

And one thing that I think you can do to help move things along is to have a stronger relationship with the people who are helping you to get deals done. 

Whether that's your vendors or peripheral service providers or the people that your clients use, this, their service providers that are critical to the overall deal progression process.  

So, why not get in front of them and also build a relationship with them? Because I think people are less likely to ignore people who they have met in person. 

So, in a recent episode as well, we heard from another client, Simon Borham, who talked about his strategy, which was to go and meet at least, I think he said two people a day for a cup of coffee or sit down with, (was it two people every day or two people every week) I can't remember.  

Anyway, so he had a similar strategy and that's led to him doing more deals. 

So, the point of the episode; the takeaway for you is to set this challenge for your team.  

Start with meet 20 people in 20 days, up the ante to meet 100 people in 100 days. Explain to them why you're doing this because the market has slowed.  

Because we can't just sit back and wait for inquiry to come in. In the current market, we need to get out there and make things happen and build relationships with the people who can help us to make deals happen as well.  

So, my tip for you today is to get more of your team out there speaking to people because you can't do it all yourself.  

And getting your team out there, getting them the practice in speaking to people will help them have those conversations which will ultimately lead to more conversions. 

That is our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening, I will speak to you soon.