On this episode, Mike has on Austin Blomquist. Austin's focus in the contracting industry is eliminating the guess work for contractors and finding the most innovative and efficient way possible for contractors to get things done!
Austin has grown his social media presence significantly in the contracting industry! Austin shares with us how he does it and what you can implement into your branding to develop your social presence yourself in 2023!
ep 33
[00:00:00] Austin: Just be that guy that can answer questions, provide value, um, be a part of your community, and then just do more reaching out to other organizations instead of just doing the posts and waiting for people to come to you. Supply and
[00:00:12] Mike: demand is a fundamental principle
[00:00:14] Austin: of capitalism, and I really recommend using the right captions and the right hashtags so it can help get in that Google search.
[00:00:30] Mike: So, Austin, have you ever been
[00:00:31] Austin: golfing? Oh yeah, man, I'm a member at two different clubs. Mm.
[00:00:37] Mike: So maybe you know the answer to this question, why did the golfer bring two pairs of pants to golf? Mm,
[00:00:47] Austin: two different golf courses? Man, I don't know. .
[00:00:51] Mike: No, it's actually in case he got a hole in one.
[00:00:54] Austin: Oh bro. That's good. Dude. That's really. I like that one. I'm gonna have to use that .
[00:01:01] Mike: Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back, episode 33 of the Michigan Control Podcast, proudly sponsored by Ascend Digital. Wrap your set and the team over at Roofer.
If you need instant roof measurements and clean and pristine proposals, hit up the team at roofer. Say, we've got Austin Blomquist. He is, uh, internet sensation folks, uh, big on social media, short form video, TikTok and what have you. In fact, you can find him on TikTok, where,
[00:01:29] Austin: what's, what's your handle, sir?
At for TikTok? You can find me at
[00:01:32] Mike: roofer TikTok super intuitive. Thanks for coming, dude. I appreciate you spending some time with us.
[00:01:38] Austin: Yeah, thanks for having me, Michael. I've been, uh, waiting to get on the show and I'm happy we found some time. Yeah, no doubt. Um,
[00:01:46] Mike: funny. What you won't see in this broadcast is the fact that, uh, apparently there's some synchronization taking place between his cleaning lady and the, the cleaning crew at my office, because we both had vacuums wailing in the background about seven minutes ago.
So maybe we'll drop some uncut scenes. I don't know. I can't call. It's my show. I'll do what I want. Uh, dude. So short form video, it's important. Everyone says it's important, you know, you know, it's important. How important is it for a local roofing company to
[00:02:19] Austin: start doing short form video? Man, I'll tell you what, it's, it's not for everybody and you honestly shouldn't spend too much time on it, but it's good to be on social media for sure.
If you're a roofing company, I mean, you want to be on Instagram, you wanna be on Facebook, you wanna be on TikTok, Twitter, all that stuff. I think it's just important to have a strong, professional appearance and basically show the transparency within your. When I see, you know, roofing companies trying to go all in on social media, it seems like they're almost doing it to chase the wrong audience.
It seems like they're going after trying to target other roofing contractors, and I just see that as not really a good idea. I mean, you're not really gonna get any more homeowners to call for roof replacements if you're using captions that are trying to engage other roofing contractors. So I just think it's a good thing to.
But you gotta do it the right way and you have to know your why and you know, really understand what you're trying to do with it. But, um, I've, I've seen a lot of people get good results as far as recruitment on a national level. But as far as a roofing company that's just in a small little town, it's really hard to post this social media are these short form videos and get a lot of traction for just your local area.
You may get one or two people to say, Hey, that's my hometown, or whatever. What I find is that even the leads that I've gotten through my social media channels, um, they're not the highest quality leads. They're smaller houses. They're people that are in need, really want to deal. And really where I like to get my leads is like my Google listing.
Um, that's where 90% of my business comes from. But I need to have a good place to send those prospects so they can see who I am and what I. And so, um, you know, my roofer TikTok page is a lot different than how I would do social media for my roofing company. My roofing company's more like before and after pictures.
Um, you know, showing, you know, the crew getting new, getting lunch from me. Little things like that just to show that, hey, I'm a good dude, you know, we're doing good quality work. The crew's happy, they're smiling. Um, here's some big jobs, here's some little jobs. Everything in. That's pretty much what I think that the customer wants to see, if you're gonna want to try to get leads from it.
Uh, I just hate when I see roofing companies have their social media all salesy, like, get a free inspection, you know, hail damage in your neighborhood. It's just like so scammy and, you know, salesy that I think they're doing it wrong. And so I think it just needs to be a safe place for, for homeowners to come and view your stuff and just so see who you are as a.
That's my defense on it.
[00:05:04] Mike: Yeah, that's, those are really good points. Uh, so if I'm hearing you right, it can still be productive and still should be something that you do, but it really comes down to what your expectation is and, and maybe for, you know, the guy in the middle, a small town in Wisconsin, the aim shouldn't be, can I get to a million views on this piece of.
because you know, maybe he gets 300 views and he posts a video a day that's helpful to people in this community. And that's more of a branding player, right? It's not so much, Hey, I'm gonna get 10 hot leads today. But folks that are on TikTok and Facebook and maybe YouTube, if they're seeing that consistently, it's similar to, I guess, a brand impression on a billboard that they
[00:05:48] Austin: drive past.
Yeah. So like is that, yeah. So if I wanted to target like the whole entire United States with a video, Let's just say I'm using like the product. Equipper say that you have an equipper, right? And for your roofing company, you want to show your market that you have this cool piece of equipment. Well, if you're trying to market to the whole entire 50 states, you would say like, Elon Musk bought 20 of these.
Every single person is going to be able to relate to that. But if you're trying to just target your local, You could use something like Mayor Schwartel. We use the equipper on Mayor ShoreTel's house and everybody knows Mayor Schwartel in their little tiny town. So, you know, like use your captions correctly and don't go after the big, you know, the big market.
Go after like the small things and like use like, um, you know, prominent places in your area like churches or other. You know, monuments that people recognize and try to make videos by that and talk about things in your community because it's gonna use, the algorithm's gonna pick up those keywords and it's gonna be able to then show it to that market.
So, like for example, I'm working with this laborers union, it's like one of the biggest laborers union in North America. And um, I've been able to do lots of recruit. For them, just because they're, they're more of a, uh, countrywide company. And so like people are down in, you know, Tennessee or here, here or here, and I can kind of connect the dots because they have the systems in place.
Um, but even for Michigan, like I'll say like I'll tag like Lake Michigan because they're trying to do a lot of recruitment just for Michigan right now. So I'll use different hashtags like Michigan State or um, hard workers of Michigan, different things like that. That's really what's going to work to target that local area.
Um, right now it seems like it hits the major cities like, you know, um, Dallas, Texas, and then I got Detroit and then I got Chicago, Los Angeles, like, you know, there, there it's hitting the major cities, but I'm at like 33% Michigan. So that just tells you I've been really trying to target Michigan with this labors union, but I'm still getting, you know, uh, results across the board, across the country.
That's, that's kind of my answer on that question is you have to be careful who you know, what you're writing in your posts because it's really going to determine who, where that video goes and where it's shown.
[00:08:19] Mike: Hmm. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's a really good point. Now, how does somebody understand what hashtags they should be using?
You know, if it is a local guy or if it is a national company, like they want to up their s how do they determine what, what hashtags to.
[00:08:34] Austin: That's a great question. So, um, you know, like roofer or um, metal roof, those things are all oversaturated. Like maybe a year or two ago you could have used that and went viral, but you should use metal roofing, Michigan, um, commercial roofing, Michigan.
Like say I'm a contractor in Michigan, for example, right? Um, you're gonna want to use local hashtags like, um, iron Mountain, Y M C A, you know, like things within your c. Try to be number one for that hashtag. So like for example, I, I service this city called Houghton, Michigan. Well, I make posts that use that, those hashtags or the, the college that's there, Michigan Tech.
So that, that's kind of my mind thought as far as how I use the hashtags, I'm using it. If I want to target roofing contractors, I use roofing contractor as the hashtag. If I want to target homeowners, I'm gonna say, Michigan Tech because there's gonna be a lot of homeowners that are involved in that community that are following Michigan Tech.
And you know, that's, that's how I would approach it. I would try to find the hashtags that aren't overused and I would try to be number one for the most viewed video for that hashtag. So you're kind of there forever. Mm,
[00:09:53] Mike: smart. So let me ask you this. I'll play devil's advocate as somebody who doesn't know anything about anything.
Is it, do I just guess do I guess where, you know, my target market is, is there, are there tools that I can use to see, hey, these are hashtags that don't have saturation that would be, you know, intuitive and helpful to target. What does that look like?
[00:10:12] Austin: Um, usually when you see hashtags that have less than maybe 500 million views, any hashtags that are in the billion views, those are ones you probably want to stay away from because you're really not gonna be able to.
Kind of get any traction because there's so many other people that have made videos with those hashtags. Like my whole purpose is to be number one for that hashtag, like for my roofer TikTok page, I'm number one for metal roofing roof coating, shingled roof certainty. Um, I K O G A F. I've literally creatively took every one of those keywords for the roofing space and then kind of just dispersed it across all of my video.
And now I've been getting reached out by these manufacturers because what do they do when they go on TikTok? They, they look at the hashtag for themselves For I K O Roofing. Well guess who's coming with, with a hundred, uh, thousand likes on the video? And then the next video has like 500 likes. Nobody's been able to do what I've been able to do with these hashtags and um, it's gonna set me up for the future, like for the.
Hundred years as long as talk's around. I don't think there's gonna be anybody that's gonna be able to get a video about roof coatings with more than, um, more views than me. Like I've got into this space and, um, you know, I, I'm calling everybody out. You know, I, I pushed, oh, let's get it. I, I, I'm pushing you guys.
If you guys can do it. Let's see it. But, um, Yeah, man. That's pretty much my answer to that is, is find those local things in your community. Those, and use those local hashtags. Michigan Tech, you know, uh, Wagman's grocery store. Or you could even use like, fucking shout out to Wegmans. They're so good, man.
They're freaking great, you know, so yeah man, if, but let me, let me ask you this
[00:12:05] Mike: and dude, congratulations cuz it's no small feeds and obviously you've been working very hard at it. Um, you make it look easy. I've heard some people say, but I know that there's a lot of hard work that goes into. But you know, let's say, uh, you know, let's say I'm looking for homeowners and I just start typing in homeowner or Michigan.
Like I look by views, like that's the only thing that I look at. Or are there other things that can contribute to me connecting to the audience outside of just using a particular hashtag?
[00:12:31] Austin: Well, I think a lot of it, um, I've talked with the roofer helper about this subject actually, and it's like, how are you really gonna make social media.
In your local service area? Well, it's a lot of outreach. It's a lot of not just you posting a video, waiting for people to comment on your video and then saying, oh, I got a sale. It's more so being in your community. So what you can do is find, I keep bringing up the colleges because it's just relevant, because what you can do is comment in the comment sections and just be supportive for your community and then other people.
Are if you're, if you're commenting on the Y M C A and the library and this and this and that and this and that, and then the local people in your community are also looking at those organizations and they keep seeing Crown Roofing. Crown Roofing, crown Roofing, like he's super involved. Like it's going to, it's gonna spark that interest in their head to be like, wow, this roofing company is super involved with the community.
I'm gonna follow them and now I'm gonna going to remember them. So it's not so much commenting on. Posts of people in your community being like, oh, free roof estimates. You'll see that all the time. Like roofers doing that. Like they just want to get in these community groups on Facebook or whatever, and then they just spam their business.
And I'm like, man, that is not the way to do it. Just be that guy that can answer questions, provide value, um, be a part of your community, and then just do more reaching out to other organizations instead of just doing the posts and waiting for people to come. Um, because you're not gonna get leads that way.
I mean, you might get a few, but like I said, it's not gonna be your best lead source, um, marketing plan or whatever.
[00:14:11] Mike: Yeah. Lead with value. I think that's, uh, I think that's a really good piece of advice and I think that's something that a lot more people could benefit from. Quite honestly. It's interesting what you said about, you know, the number of, the number of, uh, people using the hashtag or, or the views on a hashtag.
And you know, kind of like how hard it is to cut through the noise. It's the same thing on Google. You know, if you've got 50 people bidding for a roofer near me, your cost per click's gonna be higher than maybe metal roof installation. And if you're looking to do more metal roofing jobs and you get a lower cost per click, you can likely acquire a lead for less money.
Maybe that's something you target, right? If that's your specific. You might lose some opportunities on roofer near me in that particular instance, but you might net up on targeting something more, more specific that costs less. Because there's not as many people competing for it. Right. Supply and demand.
It's a fundamental principle of
[00:15:04] Austin: capitalism. Yeah. So another thing is, is captions work the same way as hashtag, so it basically like TikTok and these other social media platforms, YouTube, whatever, they're basically like search engines, right? So when people search, let's just say roofing contractor Michigan, and they maybe go to videos just to see, Hey, I wanna watch some videos about some.
Well, if you make a short form video and you use the caption roofing contractor in Michigan, well it's, it's gonna help push that video to the top of those videos on Google, especially if you have a hundred thousand likes on that video. A million views on that video. So if you do, you know, make some videos for your, for your roofing company, I really recommend using the right captions and the right hashtag.
So it can help get in that Google search. Um, and, and like, that's, that's super key, you know, and it's worked for me too. Like when you search, um, roofing on, or roofer, you know, roofers or whatever it is on Google, if you go to videos, some of my videos start popping up because they're the most viewed videos for roofing related content in the world.
So, you know, that's it. It'll work if you can, um, have the. Marketing plan behind it. Um, but do you want to spend all your time making videos or would you just rather have a professional appearance and you know, get your leads other ways, cold calling and all this other stuff that may be better? You know, I'm not sure.
In Michigan it doesn't really work because I like my population is like 10,000 people in this small town. Maybe if I was in Colorado or Dallas, Texas or something, it probably would work better. I'm just telling you from my experience.
[00:16:59] Mike: So yeah, and I think that's, that's also an interesting point. But the interesting, what's more interesting to me is while it's not going to procure you more leads for your roofing company, this is gonna open up a ton of doors for you as far as opportunities are. , right, which will probably a lot of people would desire to have those same type of opportunities.
So I mean, I guess it wouldn't be terrible if somebody kept going viral using the strategies that you're laying out because you know, with eyeballs come opportunities, oh man, you heard it here first. I like that quote. With eyeballs come opportunities. Mission control podcast with you boy. Um, but honestly, right.
So whether it's brand deals or, or it's, you get reached out to by manufacturer, it's like, Hey, we want you to speak at these events. We want you to teach us whatever it is. It could, it could, uh, be fruitful. Yeah.
[00:17:48] Austin: It's just that, you know, there's not a lot of other contractors that have the passion that I have for this, and that's the problem is that only 1% of the contractors out there might be able to get a video over a million views and actually get it to do everything.
The majority is just gonna do it wrong. They're just, it's gonna be half-assed and, um, it's not gonna work. And it's just like, why would I tell people to spend all their time trying to chase that, you know, that crystal ball, you know, when really, even after you get there, the results aren't crazy, you know?
So if you want it as your image, I mean, yeah, with my following and the views I have on video. You know, people talk to me differently. If, if you're going, if you're a roofing contractor that wants to be an educator, somebody that wants to be, you know, like that influencer in the booth, going to trade shows talking.
Maybe you have a CRM or maybe you have a roofing product like mine and you're trying to build your personal brand, um, this could be a great way to do that just by showing people who you are, uh, what you do. Showing them satisfying roofing content, really the. I've been able to do so well compared to a lot of these other people that are having social media platforms that are just showing podcasts and different things like that is because people, it's not interesting enough.
Like people want to see, like, they want to get excited and, and get super engaged with this content and it's gotta add value and it almost needs to have that dopamine hit like right away as soon as they're watching that video, like, wow, this is super satisfying. I'm gonna keep watching. It's all about watch time, retention, how many people are following it, how many people are commenting on it.
So it's all about you're using the right captions and trying to almost it like I just sent you a link earlier about, um, let's see, we're having some audio problems. Um, I just sent you a earlier of pose. They're a $3 billion company, but if you look at their content, it's not like super professional. It's like, um, it's.
You know, and it's, it's what the viewer wants to watch. It's, it's not like, oh, get a bow's headset, the best sound quality. It's, it's super creative, super fast paced, super right to the point. Um, and that's how you gotta beat. You can't just be, oh, we're out here replacing a roof in Maryland after the storm.
Like, people are gonna keep scrolling, you know? So, Good
[00:20:19] Mike: for bz too. Cause a lot of old companies that are, they get kind of set in their ways historically, I feel like. And they don't think outside of the box. They don't get creative. So shout out to bz. We're gonna make a, we're gonna make a nice little clip here.
So should local roofers try to go viral?
[00:20:49] Austin: Yes and no is my answer to that. Um, I think that the actual roofing company could have their social media where it's just straight transparency, knowing that customer, their why, showing that prospect their why. Now when it comes to your sales reps, I think that this could really work for making your sales.
Super involved with your company, and it's basically gonna be like free marketing. So if you can get all this roofing content and tell your sales guys, here's this, you know, a thousand videos of all this roofing stuff, take it and chop it up, chop it up, and be creative. Um, one of the problems with TikTok and all these platforms is as soon as you have a business page, it just doesn't look good.
You know, the, it, it, I'm sorry, as soon as you have a business. TikTok and Facebook and all these other platforms, they don't want to give you the views. They want you to pay for that. But when you have a actual creator page, I've tested, like I've done this, I've worked with companies where I've had the business page and then I've had my personal pages.
And it's crazy the amount of engagement, um, you'll get on a personal page compared to an actual business page. So I think. You should create a community of sales guys that are wanting to grow their personal brand. How, how can you make your sales guys the next roof for TikTok where they're gonna be speaking on stages?
Um, you know, getting free products, getting boots for the crew. I mean, I've been able to do all of this just off of like 30 builds, 30 roof replacements probably was what I've built my content. You know, and then I, you know, I, what I, what I did was, is I repurposed the good performing content and uploaded it to Facebook, and now like, I'm making like $2,000 a month just off of Facebook, off of views, and I only post like four videos a month.
So it's like, if you can learn how to do that, why not make some extra money on the side and then show that you're super passionate about the roofing industry. Um, the thing is, is I don't. Why I like, I know. The thing is, is I know why I have so much passion for this. It's cuz of my product Snow grip. But a lot of these sales guys are these roofing company owners.
They don't have that, that passion for an actual product, maybe for their, for their roofing company. They have a passion for helping their local community. Sure. But they, it's, it's not big enough. The why isn't big enough. And, and the reason I'm doing this is, You know, a hundred thousand contractors to follow me.
So then I can say, Hey, here's my product, snow Grip, go ahead and install it. And then I have a hundred contractors hopefully out of that a hundred thousand that that'll do it. And then it's like, well, my mission has been complete. The whole reason I got on TikTok is to get people to know, like, and trust me so I can present my.
And I didn't do it in a salesy way. I didn't say, you know, get snow grip or get this or get that or get a free roof inspection. I just added value. I showed satisfying roofing content so other roofers could see that and be like, I love roofing. Everybody lo like if you're in roofing, you want to see other roofing related content.
And if you can have it where it's super professional as as far. Straight to the point and not any bullshit. Like, you'll see videos that, you know, um, sometimes I don't want to name drop certain people because I, I feel bad, but yeah, I'm probably gonna leave that out of there because . But I'll see, you know, companies that will upload, like their YouTube videos, their long form videos that are horizontal onto TikTok, where it's a vertical video platform and it just looks like.
It's super slow starting. The music's terrible. It's just not catchy at all. So I'm gonna keep, keep scrolling through somebody's page, but as soon as I get caught up on something boring, it's like I'm done with them. So I try to make my page where it's like every post is super engaging and people just stand my page and keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
Like that's the goal of what I've like, that's the goal of my page, is to keep people there.
[00:25:09] Mike: Mm. that makes a lot of sense. Time on page is important, right? Mm-hmm. , let me ask you this. What's the biggest mistake that contractors you see in contractors when making create, uh,
[00:25:22] Austin: creating content? Well, it's not engaging enough, so really there's like four pillars that I use for every video.
Significance, unusualness, prominence, um, or story. So if you don't use something like that, like if you look at how, um, journalists make news, they use those things like, um, you know, uh, fat Lady falls off of chairlift. You know, everybody's gonna look at that news line and be like, oh, what is this? What do you mean?
You know? Or, you know, Elon Musk bought a new, um, Tesla factory. It's, it's using prominence and then, Big numbers, you know, you could say, um, did you know that, you know, TJ McCormick did a good job on a video. He was like, there's over this much billion tons of shingles put into the, into the dump every year.
It's using big numbers. You have to use that significance, that unusualness the big numbers. As your captions. I see so many contractors that don't use any captions at all. You don't know what's going to be going on in the video. You need to tell the viewers in the first three seconds what they're going to get out of that video.
What, what's the purpose of this video? If you don't set the framework, then the engagement goes way down. So you have to figure out how to use something that's going to grab their attention, and then you need to keep their attention by showing satisfying, unusual. That's, that's my, that's my 2 cents on it.
But I just see too many contractors, just vertical screen or horizontal screen, it should be vertical. They don't use a caption. Their hashtags are terrible. They use an old song that was their favorite song, like, you know, hell's Bells from the eighties or whatever. It's like, man, nobody cares about this song.
Okay. Every song that I. For my videos, I don't pick, I pick based off of the performance of that sound. I sit going through my newsfeed for maybe sometimes 30 minutes, and I'm just listening to different sounds. I'm not even looking at the video. And then once I hear one that's super catchy, that differentiates from other videos that I just watched, I'm like, okay, that caught my attention.
Now let's dive a little bit deeper. Let's look and see how well this video has, or this music has performed for other creators. So I click on the sound and I go through all the creators that use that sound. I'll look at how many days ago did they use that sound, if they posted that. That sound on their video three days ago and they have a million views.
I'll say, okay, this is kind of a hot sound. This is kind of a hot sound. If, and then I'll go to another creator and then I'll see the same thing and I'll see the same thing and see the same thing. When you see a, an account with 2000 v followers with a, with a video that has 5 million views, it's probably be because of the sound that.
So I will study what's working and then I'll put it into my videos. So it's not like I just pick a song that I like, you know? And that's the thing is I work with these companies and they say, oh, these songs aren't very appropriate. I'm like, I didn't pick the sound. This is what's going viral right now.
Like I'm staying . You know, if it was my choice, I would be playing old school rap on all the, so on all my videos, you know? Yeah. I'd be like Mike and play old school Rap three six Mafia and Project Pat and like Juicy J would be all my stuff, but it's a little bit too much and the normal roofer doesn't really like that, and then the younger generation doesn't even understand.
So I just play what's going viral. You know, I, I do what's going viral. And those are pretty much, that's the basics to it. Um, you know, you, you really need to just have good content too. If, if we're like, like when we're doing a podcast, this isn't very entertaining. But if the guy's going up on a slippery roof and it looks kind of sketchy, that's gonna get you to stick around a little bit more, especially if you're a roofer.
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
[00:29:39] Mike: I'm sorry you don't feel entertaining. Okay.
Oh, this fucking guy. So
[00:29:50] Austin: should you swear your content? I don't think so. I, I try not to because you're, you're being watched by so many different people and you just never know what. You know, their beliefs are, and you know, what their, how they were grow, how they grew up. And so I try to just make it for everybody the best I can.
Um, you know, safety is one thing that I've been trying to do better on my videos. It's just a lot of guys about fault protection. And if anybody is in the roofing space, they know what it's like when you're running these jobs and subcontracting out the work. You guys just kinda come in and get out. Um, you tell 'em to wear the.
the really, the liability is on them because you subcontracted out. It's their workers' comp. But as far as a video standpoint, you know, homeowners don't know that these guys climb roofs every day and they're professional, um, rock climbers, , you know. So, uh, the thing is, is they, they get a little, like any roofer here has not a time where the homeowners came out, looked at the roofers on the.
And they're like, oh my God, they're not having any ropes. Like, I'm so scared. And then you just have to say, nah, it's, it's all good. Just go back inside, you know? So , um, it, you, you gotta be careful because if the wrong person sees it, especially like your competition, they might just get jealous and they might want to just look at your jobs and follow you around and report you to osha.
So, um, I would recommend wearing fall protection on any videos you do for your roofing. now for me, for like my roofer TikTok page, I don't associate my roofing company with any of it because I don't want somebody to get, um, mad at the content I posted for some reason, and then go to my roofing company and try to le leave bad reviews or something.
Just with the amount of engagement I'm getting in the views per month, I think it's better if I keep my roofing company out of the picture. And so if you're doing this to help your roofing, be professional in your personal content. But if you're trying to like, promote a product or you know, uh, a new CRM or whatever that you're coming out with, I think it's okay to be a little bit, uh, disruptive to get that engagement.
But you know, as you become more of an influencer, you want to be careful how you influence people. Like that's part of it is a leader is an influencer. now if I'm influencing everybody to say, oh, hey, it's okay to not wear fall protection and to say this on videos and over promise this. Well, if everybody starts doing that, I'm not making the roofing community a better place.
So I just recommend being careful with what you do when it comes to making these videos. It's really good advice.
[00:32:45] Mike: So we're fault protection. If you're doing videos and maybe even if you're not, try to get the , but especially. Um, so what are, what apps couldn't you live without as a creator?
[00:32:58] Austin: Um, honestly, I make, I do everything.
When I upload videos, a lot of people will. Use like Adobe or other, uh, video editing softwares, right. I just use Splice on my phone if it's a complex video, but most of the time I'm going into Facebook or Instagram or TikTok and I'm actually manually uploading that footage from my phone, and then I'm actually using their editing software.
What I, I was talking to Tim Brown about this because he will, Content like wildfire. Like he'll take a video and it's posted like two seconds later. I'm like, whoa, bro. You didn't even take a second to like think about the caption or anything. Like you just sent it up there. And I spend sometimes an hour in the editing process just on the TikTok platform.
And I think that TikTok rewards that. I think they have a timer where they're, they know how much time you spent making that video. They're, they're log, they're tracking your, um, your key log whenever you're typing stuff. It's like, it's, it's tracking everything. Um, it's tracking your engagement in the app even.
I've went as far as thinking that it's tracking what you're saying. It's listening to you through your phone. So let's just say, I mean, this is crazy. This is TikTok Conspiracy 1 0 1, but I've done, I've tested this where I posted a video. It was a funny video. Well, first of all, the video had a lot of laughing in it from my crew.
I think TikTok picked that up and they were like, oh, this is funny. We're gonna push it to more people. Well, I was like laughing on my phone when I posted, ha ha ha ha ha. Because I'm thinking that it might be listening to what I'm saying, . So you know, how many views does that video have? I mean, millions.
You know, millions. Millions of views for laughing in my. Or in my phone, laughing in my phone after I post the video just to see if it works. And it seemed like the engagement was crazy. Um, also, if you make a video and post it, let's just say like two hours later and not two months later, it's gonna perform way better.
For some reason, TikTok knows when that video was actually initially recorded. I really think it does. And. . You know, if you're posting, if it's wintertime and you're posting roofing stuff in the summer, it's kind of the wrong time. It really needs to be relevant with what's actually going on in, in today, you know?
So it's kind of a rant there.
[00:35:43] Mike: Dude, we're covering all fucking strategy, content, deployment, conspiracies. Mm-hmm. . I
[00:35:50] Austin: like that shit. Dude, the TikTok conspiracy man. Like I seriously think that when you're taking a video and you got Sprite, you got, um, let's say there's a, a Dallas Cowboys thing over here. It's picking up all that stuff.
There's like a green screen in, in your camera. When you upload it to TikTok, it's gonna, it's gonna pick up that Dallas cowboys things and then it's gonna target it to people who, like the Dallas Cowboy. Same thing with, um, who likes the Dallas Cowboys? I have no idea. I have no idea. I don't know how I thought Phil's mafia.
It, it, my, my business partner actually likes them. I think that's why I brought that up. Um, well he's not, he's not
[00:36:33] Mike: welcome on the show. , you know that.
[00:36:35] Austin: Do you ever use Google Lens? Yeah. So you can take a picture of something and then it'll search the web for it. . Mm-hmm. . Um, it's the same thing with the, the cameras through the city.
If they're looking for a red truck, they can use their artificial intelligence, their programming to just pick out every red truck that went by this intersection. So it's a, TikTok I think, is also doing that. It's, it's listening to us. It's picking up what's in the videos. It's using the captions. It's using the hashtags.
So I'm trying to paint a. for the algorithm, so then it knows what to do and who to push it to, if that makes sense.
[00:37:20] Mike: It does make sense. Mm-hmm. . So if I have a business page and a personal page, should I put more attention into the personal or the business?
[00:37:30] Austin: So I tell people this all the time. I say, Hey, just post about 20 good quality posts on your, um, your business.
just so it looks super clean. Professional tells your why of your business. When I see roofing companies going crazy and they're, you know, posting a million different posts and they just all look like trash, I'm not really gonna get connected. But if you have one video giving away boots to your crew, another video, bring in lunch to 'em, you have another video of a happy customer, you have another video explaining the roofing c.
I mean, come up with 20 video ideas of what your ideal customer should be seeing and then, you know, just do that. You know. But as far as your personal page, you can have a little more fun with it, um, and probably not have to worry about that too much because it's not like the customers are really looking at your personal page.
Maybe. Maybe they are. I don't know. It matters what you're really trying to do. Like we were talking yesterday, and it's hard to have this podcast because I don't know exactly what you're trying to do with the video content. Everybody's different. They're all trying to do different things. It's the same thing when you're doing a website.
Or whatever. The new marketing plan, it makes me so mad when people reach out to me and they try to tell me that I need more leads and I need to do this in my business, and I need to do that. And I'm like, dude, you haven't even taken the time to understand my business. So you're trying to sell me on something that is, I'm not ready for.
Like I don't have enough sales guys to take on more leads. Like that's, it's the end of the story. Why are you gonna sell me more leads if I don't have enough people to fulfill on those leads? If you would've just listened to. Then we wouldn't, you would've saved so much breath, you know, like , you know, just, uh, you know, that's what context is important.
If you want to work with me or Michael, um, we would love to work with you and help you, but we're gonna talk with you and understand what you're actually trying to do, and provide a plan for you that's gonna best fit your why and why you're in. And, um, I just keep bringing up this why thing, why thing, why thing?
And I just learned about it like a month ago. What's your why? I was like, oh, that's, that's, that's smart. Okay. What are your core values? These are things that I've been working on in the last year. The year prior, I didn't know any of that. You know, I just was living life. But now I'm trying to really figure out my intentions and make sure that I make my decisions based off of my core.
That's
[00:40:12] Mike: good, man. I think, uh, it's a great evolution to make and being self-aware, understanding why you do what you do is, is very important to understand well, what makes you tick, what makes you motivated, and how you can improve on what you're doing, where you're falling short, where you're excelling. Uh, and self-awareness isn't always recognizing the bad things.
I think that's important or where you're lacking. It's also recognizing things that are, you're doing well. , you know, the, the gains that you've made, uh, you know, whether it's over the last week, month, two years, 10 years. I look back to 10 years ago and I'm like, fuck, we got some big dubs over these last 10 years.
Like, you know, it is, it's, it's easy to, to look at all the negative things, but it's very, very important to understand the stride, the strides that you make and, and the impact that you're making in a positive way. So, yeah, man, that's, that's really good. Dude, I am incredibly grateful for you coming and spending some time today.
We're about out of time. If somebody wanted to explore working with you, how would they
[00:41:10] Austin: go about reaching you? I would say it's best to just email me roofer TikTok gmail.com if you're looking to get into roof coatings, if you need roofing leads, if you need crews. Basically what I've been trying to do is find the most innovative products and services for every function of the roofing.
So contractors don't have to go out and get confused when there's 20 marketing companies at this trade show, and they're all doing the same thing. Like, just tell me who to use. So I've been, you know, eliminating the guest work for contractors so they can get the solutions that, uh, they desire. So yeah, roofer gmail.
Do.
[00:41:53] Mike: Well, Austin, you're doing a lot of shit to benefit the industry. I'm excited to, to watch you grow and, and to further that impact. And again, dude, I'm really appreciative for you and I'm appreciative for the audience as well. Thank you guys for tuning in and, uh,
