Content Marketing Execution Made Easy with Katie Lance

Yeah, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, about an hour outside San Francisco in the suburbs, pretty close to where I am now. I’ve lived in a lot of different places, but my family’s here, and you just can’t beat the weather. I guess I’m definitely a California girl.

Well, my extended family is huge, but I only have one brother. My parents are a “Leave It to Beaver” type family—they’ve been married forever, and I feel very blessed. My brother’s six years younger than me. My dad, though, is one of twelve, so on his side, I have something like 70 or 80 cousins and extended family members. It’s basically a small army whenever we all get together, which is a lot of fun.

Yeah, it’s a little crazy. We actually try to do family readings once a year. I don’t think we’re doing one this year, but usually we do one annually, and it’s pretty fun. We also do a family talent show—it’s been going on for about 20 years, and it’s all in good fun. Some folks break out guitars; some do lip syncs or little skits. It’s really fun to see the kids get up there, and overall it’s just a great time. I think a lot of it came from my grandparents, who’ve passed away but really instilled the importance of family. Honestly, that’s how I think about my life and my business, and why I run my own business—because I want that quality of life and family time. It’s really important to me.

I try to. Don’t really have a choice, you know?

Oh, everybody at least one, probably have two.

Right now, my husband and I have two boys, ages 8 and 11, so we’re knee-deep in that life—sports, school. My youngest is in Cub Scouts, my oldest is really into baseball, so we spend a lot of time in folding camp chairs on the sidelines, shooting a gazillion videos on my phone. My husband volunteers a lot as a coach, and we try to do a lot of family stuff. It might not sound super exciting, but our kids are only little once, and time flies by. My oldest is about to start middle school, which is crazy. So we really focus on making the most of our time together—we love just hanging out as a family.

Yeah, it’s fun. It’s a season, like this fall season of your life.

Exactly, exactly.

That’s funny. I think I know exactly which Chevy’s you mean. I’m pretty sure I went there a few times.

I went to school in Long Beach—Cal State Long Beach. I wanted to get away from the Bay Area but still stay in California, close enough to drive home in six hours if needed, and be near the beach. Looking back, when I was 17, I thought, “Beach is in the name—must be a cool school!” I didn’t quite have the grades for UCLA, so yeah—Cal State Long Beach. Go Beach, or the 49ers?

Oh, that’s funny.

Communications. Initially, I was a business major, but I realized what I liked about business was marketing. The rest—calculus, statistics—felt like a whole other language. So toward the end, I met with a counselor who said, “You should switch to communications.” I literally switched at the last minute—like three semesters in. It was ridiculous. I kind of breezed through it and found my people. They said, “Where have you been the last four years?” It’s one of those degrees you can do a lot with. And it’s ironic now, because I’m a speaker doing a ton of stuff with our business. Our business is social media, which didn’t really exist when I was in college, but the communication skills you learn apply to everything. It’s priceless.

Well, I got a job in college working for Cutco, through Rector Marketing—lots of college kids do that. I sold knives, which was awesome. I worked my way through college selling Cutco, which, for those who don’t know, is a direct-selling company. We’d set appointments and go into people’s homes, kind of like Tupperware, but one-to-one direct sales. It was great for a college kid—I set my own schedule, made good money, had freedom, and got a ton of marketing experience.

Looking back, if you can go into someone’s home and sell them knives, you can do almost anything. I did that for several years, graduated, got into their management program, and opened an office. I did a lot of recruiting, training, and building a team—lots of different stuff. It ended up being my first big career after college and where I fell in love with marketing. I also learned important life skills, like building rapport and creating value for what you’re selling. Those basic sales skills are so valuable in everything, and I still use a lot of what I learned there in my day-to-day work now.

That wasn’t until 2012. There was a lot of time between college and my decision to strike out on my own. But I will say, working for Cutco really gave me an entrepreneurial mindset. As a Cutco rep—or even a branch or district manager—you’re an independent contractor, so it never felt scary to me. At 18 or 19, I was thinking, “This is amazing: the harder I work, the more I make.” That concept really clicked.

After leaving Cutco, I worked in retail for a while, then for a real estate company. Each position was a step up, as it often happens in life. At every job, I tried to treat my work like it was my own company—sometimes to a fault, where I had to remind myself, “This isn’t actually your company, you can turn it off now.”

My last job before going out on my own was at Inman News, which is like the Wall Street Journal of real estate—very well-known in the industry. I was hired for marketing and then quickly shifted to a social media director role around 2008 or 2009, when social media really started exploding for business. It was exciting because Inman had so much content, and I wanted to put it all over Facebook and Twitter. I worked there for several years, moved up in the company, and eventually reached a point in 2012 where, as I was having kids, I wanted more freedom and flexibility.

So I took the leap: I became a contractor and consultant for Inman, and started bringing on more clients. There was definitely some “fake it till you make it,” but I knew I was good at social media and at helping companies develop their online voice. I was passionate about it because I remembered how hard everyone worked back in my Cutco days—before email, social media, websites. Now there were so many opportunities to connect with people, and it felt so much easier.

yeah, I used to work with Rachel. That’s so funny. What a small world!

Your brother’s Justin? Oh my gosh!

When I saw that, I thought, “Oh, we’re definitely going to have some connections.” Rachel and Justin are best friends. I’ve known Rachel forever—she’s married to Dre. As a kid, he was in Sacramento; now they’ve moved somewhere else. She got her car when she left, so that’s that. She’s family. My brother obviously lives in San Francisco, worked at CreativeLive, and did other stuff. I knew he’d worked with you guys on some projects, maybe some video. So I just thought this was going to be…

Yeah. Some of the first videos I ever did at Inman were with Justin. That was my first time on camera, actually, so that’s…

Oh, that’s so funny.

I have to say it’s been an evolution. We’re heading into our eighth year in October, and like any company, we’ve changed over time. In the beginning, everything was about consulting for brokerages, franchises, and mortgage companies—helping them get smarter about social media and working with their leadership teams. Over time, things have shifted, and now we focus on three key areas: I do a lot of speaking at real estate and mortgage conferences, particularly on social media. We still offer consulting, but on a more selective basis, working closely with brokerages, franchises, mortgage companies, and builders. We don’t run their social media for them; instead, we do audits, help them build a plan, and even advise on hiring the right people. The other component is an online academy we created called the “Get Social Smart Academy” to serve individual agents who need training but aren’t in a position to hire us directly. It’s like a “Netflix for real estate social media,” where agents can find up-to-date resources in a field that’s changing all the time.

That’s probably my favorite part of our academy. When someone signs up, they can go month to month or for a year—whatever fits them—and it’s low key: no contracts, just sign up and get access to all our videos, webinars, and training. It’s like a Netflix for real estate social media. But my absolute favorite part is the community. We have a private Facebook group just for Academy members, and I’m there every week. I do something called Coffee with Katie, which is like what we’re doing here, except I jump on for half an hour or so to do a weekly Q&A. We also bring in special guests for interviews. It’s become a really cool community, because we have agents from all over the world helping each other. Someone might say, “Okay, I just tried this new app—has anyone used it?” or “This is my first video ever—what do you guys think before I post it?” People can be nervous about social media, not wanting to look stupid or make mistakes. They want a good presence. Having a group of people who are in the same boat is really valuable. I think it’s important.

That’d be awesome. We’d love to have him or her.

I really drill into my philosophy on social media, which is that it’s not the end-all, be-all or some magic bullet. It’ll never replace a phone call or a handshake or a handwritten note, but when done right, it builds relationships and can make them even stronger. We work a lot in the real estate space, but regardless of the industry, a good social media strategy can have a huge impact.

I think the challenge is that social media can be a big time-suck, especially if you’re an entrepreneur, small business owner, or in real estate. People get bored, hop on Facebook or their phone, and they’re just killing time. Or maybe they’re in an awkward situation, like an elevator ride. I wanted to address that and say, “Look, you don’t need to spend all day on social media.” I’m in this business, but I’m not online all day long myself. If you only have a few minutes a day, what does that plan look like? How do you connect with your prospects and customers intentionally to build relationships—since business is ultimately about relationships—and how do you attract the people you want to work with, rather than always chasing leads?

In our academy, we talk about attracting clients. Some folks will see you on Instagram or see your videos and realize they’re not your ideal client, but others will say, “Hey, that’s my kind of person,” and connect when they’re ready to work with you. They won’t call around; they’ll just come to you. That was the thinking behind the book: building relationships, being intentional, and attracting the right clients. Then we decided, “We should put all of this in a book.” I love books—I actually like to hold them, write in them, and mark them up. That’s how the book came about.

Yeah, the screentime report?

It’s primarily full-time residential real estate agents. We do have broker-owners, plus marketing folks, social media people, virtual assistants—maybe they work for an agent or a brokerage or handle property management. But I’d say about 70 to 75% are full-time residential agents or brokers. The main thing is that the people in our academy are generally relationship-focused, which I think is great, because buying a house is one of the biggest moments in most people’s lives—right up there with getting married or having kids. A lot of the people we attract genuinely love what they do. Maybe they send handwritten notes, call on your birthday, and send holiday cards, but now they’re at a point where they realize they need social media. That’s perfect, because the heart of social media is relationships—it’s not about spamming your friends to buy something. So I’d say that’s our biggest demographic: full-time people who emphasize relationships more than leads. There’s nothing wrong with leads, but it’s a different mindset, you know?

I often talk about creating “pillar content,” which is a bit more time-, money-, and energy-intensive. It can be blogging (for those who really don’t want to do video), but I personally love video—there’s nothing quite like hearing and seeing you. Podcasts are also exploding, and there’s live broadcasting (like Facebook Live). Whether you’re a big company or a solo entrepreneur, it comes down to choosing from blogging, video, live video, or podcasting, and committing to a regular schedule—maybe monthly at first, but ideally weekly.

Pillar content tends to be timeless, so in real estate, it’s not “How’s the market this week?” because that changes constantly. It might be “How do I get my home ready to sell?”, “How do I find a realtor or lender?”, “Should I stage my home?”—those questions you get asked all the time. If you just sit down with a pen and paper, you could probably brainstorm 20 or 30 questions people ask repeatedly. That’s a great starting point for content.

I’m partial to video because seeing and hearing someone has a lot of impact. We also teach the importance of batching your content. If you’re going to do your hair and makeup for one video, why not record five or six while you’re at it? After you create that “pillar” piece, you slice and dice it—turn it into something for Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. You can even share it again in a few months. You start with the big piece of content, break it down, and then fill in your feed with smaller updates, motivational quotes, and timely things relevant to your business.

I think people struggle first with figuring out what to talk about—then they worry if anyone even cares. “Is this interesting?” they ask themselves. But if your clients or customers ask these questions, clearly someone cares. If you can be informative, that’s really valuable, and if you can be entertaining or funny, that’s a bonus. Not everyone can pull that off, though, so focus on being the person who provides value. People may not need your service right this moment, but they see your content, and they might tell a friend or have a friend of a friend who needs exactly what you offer.

Another big issue is execution—people get hung up on the equipment, the lighting, and making sure everything’s perfect. They get analysis paralysis, thinking it all has to look amazing before they start. But done is better than perfect. Your first few videos might suck, which is fine—you just have to get out there. Even if you only have a phone, that’s enough. I do a weekly video show, and for the first 99 episodes, I used my phone. Only recently did I get a real light and a microphone. If I’d waited all that time, I would’ve lost two years of content. Sometimes you just have to get over yourself.

I’d also say a lot of people think everyone’s doing video or podcasts, which is true. However, most people won’t stick with it for very long. You’ve probably seen this: they’ll say, “I’m starting a company,” and then six months later, “No, that didn’t work,” or “I’m starting a podcast,” and do four episodes, then quit. If you’re someone who actually sticks with something, you’re ahead of the game.

Recently, I’ve been enamored with the New York Public Library. They’re doing amazing stuff in content marketing and social media. I was following what they were doing on Instagram, and they’ve actually turned complete novels into Instagram Stories, which is wild. Their mission is obviously to get people to read more and foster literacy. If you go to their Instagram account and check the highlights, they’ve saved these stories there. Right now they have around eight or ten full novels within their Stories. The first one was Alice in Wonderland, and then some other classics. You might think, “A book on Instagram Stories—what’s the big deal?” But seeing how they convert a book into an Instagram Story—how someone actually flips through it, reading it—is fascinating and beautiful. They’ve built a huge following of people who love New York, literacy, and reading. That’s definitely one to check out.

Full novels—just crazy, yeah. With their graphics team, they literally reformatted the entire story into a vertical format. There are a few little features, like a button on each page that says, “Tap here to hold,” because Instagram Stories only last about 15 seconds per page. So it prompts the reader to hold the screen, and there are also interactive graphics throughout. It’s a work of art—just beautiful. I was reading an article about the impact on their growth—apparently, they’ve gained tens of thousands of new followers from all over the world, possibly hundreds of thousands. People see what they’re doing, love it, and engage with it, which is really cool to see.

Crazy, right? I mean…

A big, audacious…

Exactly, exactly.

Here’s a proofread version without bullet points, preserving your casual style and removing repeated filler words:

I’d say the first tool I can’t live without is Asana. It’s spelled A-S-A-N-A. We use it for project management in our small but mighty team—my husband is my business partner, and we have three virtual employees. Asana is literally a game-changer, especially for content marketing. If we have a big piece of content, like our weekly video, podcast, or a webinar, we create specific tasks for each part of the distribution process. That’s how we slice and dice one piece of content into multiple formats.

Second, I’ve been obsessed with later.com for scheduling Instagram posts. I don’t believe in scheduling everything, but it’s helpful to have a queue for certain posts. I also love how you can reuse evergreen content a few months later—most people never do that, but there’s no reason not to if it’s still relevant.

Third, I couldn’t live without YouTube. It used to be a place where we’d just dump our videos, but we’ve really committed to it the last couple of years. It’s different from Facebook or Instagram, but it’s helped us build a community, reach people who’ve never heard of us, drive them to our email list, and connect them to our academy. It’s been a slow burn—we don’t have millions of subscribers, but I’m proud of the community we’ve grown. There’s a great relationship between Instagram and YouTube, too: if we post a one-minute teaser on Instagram that links to the full video on YouTube, it’s only one click, which keeps people engaged. If it’s more than that, they tend to check out.

That’s awesome. I love it. It’s just simple. I also love that you can write on your computer or desktop, which is easier for some people. Sometimes it can be clunky to do everything on your phone. It’s nice that you can save hashtags, too. I should be their ambassador or something.

If I could give any piece of advice, it would be: don’t doubt yourself. Don’t wait. Especially if you’re young—maybe in your 20s—and you’re thinking, “Who am I? I don’t have much life or business experience.” You have more than you realize. If you’re in college or just beginning your journey, it’s an incredible time. The landscape of social media and technology compared to 20 years ago is filled with opportunities.

I’d say start now. If you’re listening and want to get into content marketing, don’t wait for someone to give you a job. Just start with whatever you love: maybe it’s comic books, cats—anything you’re passionate about. Like Gary Vaynerchuk says, figure out what drives you, then create content around it: videos, graphics, you name it. If you really want to pursue content marketing, which I’m biased toward because I love it, it’s a great place to be. Give yourself that experience—don’t wait for someone else to hand it to you.

Gosh, there’s probably a few. I follow Social Media Examiner a lot. They’re doing great work. Michael Stelzner—I’ve been to a lot of their events and even spoken at some. They bring together a high-caliber group of people and educators. I also really enjoy following Darren Hardy, the producer and founder of Success magazine. It’s amazing to see how he’s developed his brand across so many different mediums—texting, audio, podcasts, videos, all kinds of content.

Something he said a while back that stuck with me is, “As an entrepreneur, what do you do that makes it rain?” That really resonated. As entrepreneurs, we tend to do everything—wearing 65 different hats. As our business has grown, I think about what I do that really makes it rain. I can do plenty of tasks, but should I be doing them all, or should I focus on what brings in revenue? So those are a few folks I look at.

Yeah, yeah. It’s a good reminder because I think it’s easy to get pushed into all the minutiae. It’s easy to get caught up in the little things, so we need to think about what we can hand off or outsource, or maybe just let go of. I think it’s easy, as entrepreneurs, to keep doing the same things the same way. But if something isn’t working, maybe there’s an opportunity to change it or make it better, you know?

Well, we started hosting masterminds last year. Our next one is in October—we’re taking it to Vegas and rented a big suite at the Bellagio to have some fun with it. I’ve wanted to do events for a while, but I’m cautious because events are huge undertakings. I’m sure you’ve been to a lot of them. We wanted to do something a bit different, so we created these smaller focus groups of 10 to 15 people, mostly agents and brokers who are ready to get their businesses to the next level. It’s not a giant ballroom, no sponsors, no sales pitch. It’s four days where we really dive into each person’s social media plan. By the end, they walk away with a 12-month roadmap—actually getting things done. We’ve all been to events where we’re motivated, but then nothing happens, so we wanted something different. We’ll probably just do it once a year, see where it goes. And eventually, I’d like to write another book—maybe update my first one. We’ll see. I have a lot percolating in my mind.

Yeah, we’re excited. It’ll be fun—we’ve done two so far. Feels like we’re getting into a good groove, you know, finding our cadence.

Well, my husband and I love to travel. We probably haven’t traveled a ton, just because of the kids, but we love the beach, and that’s one reason I love California. We actually just got back from a pretty epic trip—a cruise to Alaska, which was amazing. It was a bucket-list thing to not only take a cruise, but also see Alaska. That was a lot of fun. We also did a Disney cruise—we’re kind of big Disney fans. I’m a bit of a Disney nerd, so that was super fun. I also love to read. We converted our living room into a reading room because I realized I never really had time to read otherwise. Life happens, there’s so much going on, so I’m trying to be more intentional—especially with our kids. You strike me as the same way. If I can show them we have a “device-free room,” that’s a good start, but it doesn’t always happen.

Yeah, exactly. And then just being outdoors. Living in the Bay Area, the weather’s usually beautiful—although right now it’s hot. Still, being outside and enjoying the great weather we have in California is pretty lucky.

Probably, yeah. There’s a lot of this country I’d still love to see—so many great places in the U.S.—and then maybe do a bit of travel abroad. We love Hawaii, so I’d want to spend some time in Maui.

Yeah, exactly. It’s a bit of a balance.

Some people who know me really well already know this, but I’m a little embarrassed: I’m a huge Hello Kitty fan.

Yeah, I’ve got all kinds of Hello Kitty stuff in my office. Part of it might be because I don’t have any girls—I’m the only female in our house.

Yeah, like here we go. I’ve got a little notebook here, all Hello Kitty.

I don’t, but if I ever got one, that would probably be it.

Exactly. That’s probably what it would be.

Probably the best way is through my website, katielance.com We have lots of free resources there, and you can sign up for our email newsletter if you want tips, tricks, and strategies. All our social media handles are there as well. I’m pretty much “Katie Lance” on any platform, so if you Google me, you’ll find them.

Thank you so much, Shane.