Your energy is a luxury item, and you’re about to stop wasting it on random content that goes nowhere. (Yes, we’re channeling our inner Taylor Swift here because that woman knows a thing or two about being intentional with her time!)
In this episode, Chelsea and Kayla are sharing the ultimate monthly checklist to help you get organized and see results from your marketing efforts. If you’re tired of logging into Instagram and thinking “what should I post today?” or feeling like you’re doing so much and gaining so little, you’re gonna want to click play on this episode immediately.
Your Marketing Needs a Checklist
Every time Chelsea went to Florida with her family, she found herself making a checklist for all the things they had to pack, until one day Mark was like, “Just save the list this time.” And now the list is always ready to go and she can just follow it, without wasting mental energy.
And if that metaphor’s not enough for you, here’s another: Even the best chefs in the world write down their recipes not because they don’t know them, but because they want to save their energy to actually make the dish really good instead of trying to remember what spice they used or how much of a certain ingredient they need.
Having a checklist is like Chelsea’s packing list or a chef’s recipes. It keeps you from getting distracted and helps you focus on things that are going to help you see results faster, instead of just throwing content spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks.
So without further ado, here is your checklist:
- Media List
- Signature Posts
- Photo Drops
- Shareable Local Posts
- CTAs
- Weekly Story Strategy
- 1-2 Emails a Month
- A Marketin Community
Let’s dive into each one.
1. Build Your Content Confidence with a Monthly Media List
A media list is something we give our Modern Agent Social Club members every month. It consists of 9-12 pictures they can recreate of themselves in their towns, of their desks, all of those things.
The whole point is to give yourself this bank of content that you can turn to for quick ideas, instead of having to come up with everything from scratch every month.
Here are some examples from the media list:
- A girl sitting sipping out of her coffee mug (could be wine, green juice, your Stanley)
- A flat lay of an outfit with your laptop, lip gloss, essentials
- A selfie where your face isn’t in it (maybe looking down with a hat on)
You don’t need hundreds and thousands of photos, but if having a few fresh photos and B-roll clips every month saves you a ton of time and headspace.
2. The Power of Signature Posts
Have you ever found an account and you saw one video or carousel that you liked, then you scrolled back through and found one that’s similar? And then you find yourself sending them to your sister or friend saying, “Oh my gosh, follow this girl. She always shares X.”
That is signature series style content.
It’s like an anchor piece of content. The month is brand new, and your first piece of content is this signature thing that you repeat every single month. You may even start repeating something weekly, or call it a series for a longer period of time.
We’ve all seen accounts that go “new construction, my local favorite, buyer tips, luxury listing, house for a flipper” — all random stuff. Even if the graphics look beautiful, none of it feels cohesive.
Signature series content makes your content less random and scattered and way more intentional. People know exactly what they’re going to get, and that’s why they want to come back. You want your account to be like the party everyone’s talking about, the one they’re definitely coming back to.
3. Turn Your Camera Roll into Community Currency with Monthly Photo Drops
Let’s talk photo dumps (we hate that word too, so maybe call it photo drops, receipts, weekly receipts, proof that you lived your life, your recent camera roll, whatever you want).
This is such a good signature post to do either at the beginning of a month showing last month, or at the end of a month. What we love about it is that it’s one of the easiest kind of content to implement the content cocktail: one part real estate, one part local, splash of personality.
It can be as simple as making a carousel using real photos you’ve taken with your phone all month.
Variations:
- A day in the life (snap photos for one day, share at night)
- Things I’m loving lately
- My recent screenshots
- Things I’ve saved or pinned
These posts are conversation starters that get you in community with people.
4. Create Shareable Local Posts That Actually Get Shared
Every Friday on the Modern Agent Instagram, we create shareable agent posts, and every single Friday we get questions asking if we have these in the membership. What these look like is beautiful photos (sometimes celebrity photos or scenes from movies) with relatable text overlay that make agents go, “That’s me.”
Here’s an example: “The summer I wrote off 37 iced coffees. The summer my kids saw their mom grow her real estate business. The summer I helped clients navigate this market.”
But our posts are for agents. You want to make yours for your ideal followers, which means you’ll want to put a local spin on them:
- “The summer I wore out my local pool membership”
- “The summer that ice cream from [local spot] became a food group”
- “The summer [lake name] became a happy place”
This is your community currency. Having these posts keeps you active in your market in a really fun, relatable way. At least once a month, create one of these shareable local posts.
5. How to Create Effective CTAs
Pick one call to action for the month because it’s going to help make everything you post very intentional. When we say call to action, this is part of the content cocktail, by the way (the garnish!).
This means having an end slide on a carousel that introduces a quick blurb of who you are and what you want them to do next. This can always switch based on your focus.
Maybe right now you want to focus on getting people to book a buyer consult: “Book a mini consult” becomes your CTA. Or maybe it’s fall and you want to grow your email list, so you promote a fall guide.
Here’s a full example: “If we haven’t met yet, I’m Chelsea Peterson. Your no-fluff, always honest, real estate go-to girl in and around Lake Country. I’m offering five mini consults this month to help you get all your questions answered. Spots fill fast, so DM me and let’s get a date penciled in.”
You could use the same carousel end slide for months in a row. The key is having that intention and directing people where you want them to go next.
6. Your Weekly Story Strategy That Gets People Sliding into Your DMs
Once a week (put it on your calendar so you definitely do it) pick a part of your business to share behind the scenes of. Could be a question a client asks, an email you got, even a screenshot of a text from a client saying “I think this is the one, let’s write an offer.”
On the following slide, address how you help that person or how someone would work with you. Then give a direct call to action: question sticker, link to schedule, link to your email list.
Every single week when you repeat this, you’re continually reminding people who might’ve seen it last time when they were picking up kids from school and quickly swiped away. Your stories are where your warm people are, so people are gonna be more likely to opt in there.
Alternative idea: Do a weekly Ask Me Anything. Maybe ask a friend to ask a question to get it going or write in your own questions, so your followers can get an idea of what kind of question they can ask you.
Another easy option: The results-driven story strategy. Take a photo (bonus points if you’re in it) and share something you recently helped a client with. Example: “I just helped my sellers get ready to list and shared this showing prep checklist with them. They said it made their life so much easier.” Slide two: “Do you want a copy? Comment checklist and I’ll send it to you.”
Remember: Your energy is far too precious to wake up every day thinking “I gotta post something and I don’t know what.” Pick one thing, spend two minutes on your story, and watch it move the needle in your business.
7. Why 1-2 Emails a Month is Non-Negotiable
Pick a day of the week you’re going to send these out. Please try for every other week. If not, at least start with once a month.
We do encourage you to go for two though. If you’re sending one email a month, you’re only giving people 12 opportunities to connect with you all year. If you’re sending every other week, that’s 24-26 opportunities for someone to raise their hand and say “I’d like to participate” or “I want to talk to you about this.”
Think about your inbox on an average day, all the junk email you get. On busy days when you can’t breathe (much less read emails), your email is going to get deleted or overlooked. So the more you send, the more chances you get of getting read.
A lot of the setup stuff is simple, and once you do it, it’s done, so don’t let that get in the way! And the actual sending can be simple things like “this is my recommendation” or “I tried this new restaurant” and you tie in real estate somehow using the content cocktail. You could even repurpose a post you spent time on for Instagram.
The point is we don’t want to put all our eggs in the social media basket hoping someone sees our content. We want control with our email list.
8. Find Your Marketing Community and Stop Doing This Alone
There’s so much power in being in a room with people who build you up, who are leading the way, who are trailblazing with you. If you can surround yourself with agents who either have gone before you or are doing things alongside you, that headspace is gonna free up and you’re not gonna feel quite so alone building something you’ve never built before.
You could even do a Zoom call with a good Instagram agent friend. Go through this checklist together: What’s your signature post gonna be? What’s your email about this month? You could come up with the same topic and both write your own emails. It makes everything more fun when you’re not doing it solo.
We don’t want your marketing to feel like mental gymnastics. We want it to feel simplified. Our hope is that this checklist makes you go, “Okay, wait a minute. I think I can actually do these things.”
If you’re committed to making a change, start here with this list. If nothing else, you’ll look back 30 days from now and be like “I did more in the last 30 days than what I did all summer,” and that’s how you keep the snowball effect going.
Remember, your energy is a luxury item! Stop wasting it on random content and start investing it in systems that actually work.
This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz.
