Building BAM, we’ve definitely made some content mistakes that I want to share with everyone. I think this will be a good lesson for anyone who creates content, whether you’re in real estate or not.
First: YouTube.
For five years, we put every long-form video on our BAM YouTube channel.
This included:
- The Over Ask Podcast, the marketing podcast I hosted with Matt Lionetti
- BAM interviews with Byron Lazine and industry executives
- “Marketing Mondays” which were marketing monologues I delivered every Monday for about six months
- Hot Sheet, Byron’s live housing market updates
- The Real Word, Byron and Nicole White’s podcast on industry news
- The Walk Thru Podcast (the marketing podcast I hosted with Jason Cassity and Dan O’Neil)
- Plus random lives, webinar uploads, Shorts, event trailers, and honestly probably more stuff I’m forgetting
Our thought process was simple: get as many subscribers as possible, and there will be something for everyone on that channel. Whether you wanted housing news, marketing tips, agent strategy, or industry updates, we had you covered. Kind of similar to our BAM Instagram account.
The Problem
Basically, we packed our entire media company into one channel.
Just typing that out makes it seem insane, and if you know anything about YouTube, you know this strategy does not make sense.
Here’s why:
Say you subscribed to the channel for Hot Sheet because you wanted your daily dose of housing news. Then the next thing that pops up is a Walk Thru marketing video with me talking about how to hook your green screen videos.
That particular consumer is probably interested in one and not the other.
They ignore the marketing video, which tells YouTube, “this person isn’t interested in this channel anymore because they don’t interact with most of the videos.”
We organized everything into different playlists, but we were constantly confusing the YouTube algorithm and consumers as to why they should subscribe.
Who should YouTube show these videos to?
- Agents who want marketing ideas?
- Agents who want housing news?
- People who watched a webinar replay?
- People who want industry updates?
The biggest mistake we made was thinking “more content” automatically meant more value. But on YouTube, clarity wins. The algorithm needs to know who your content is for, and more importantly, your audience needs to know why they should keep coming back.
In hindsight, we should have caught this earlier, but we were too caught up in growing the channel and subscribers because we wanted to become the most subscribed media company in residential real estate, which I think we achieved.
The Solution
Now that we got our heads out of our asses, we have started doing what we should have always done:
Creating separate channels for each content theme:
Today, I’m going to break down how and why we separated Byron and my channels.
The Byron Lazine Channel
This is agent strategy. Scripting, positioning, and everything agents need to make their first $100K in real estate.
He’s already at 11,000 subscribers and his last video is one of our best-performing pieces of content in BAM history.
Why?
Well, because the content is amazing and super high quality, but also because this channel has a specific focus.
You know what you’re going to get every time he uploads.
That gives people a reason to subscribe.
The Broke Agent Channel
I started this a month ago and I’m about to crack 600 subscribers (help me get to 1,000!).
This is my channel focused on content marketing and social media tips for agents.
Every week I switch between monologue-style Content Lab videos where I break down what’s working right now, and “Show Me How” episodes where I bring on an expert to teach ME something about content, marketing, or AI.
This week I had Haley Ingram on and she did a full-blown Claude 101 tutorial for agents.
Make sure you’re subscribed for weekly marketing videos.
Simplicity Wins
The point of all of this is to explain that simplicity wins in marketing.
An email with one topic.
A post without too much text.
A YouTube channel with one theme.
A webinar or training focused on one specific skill instead of trying to teach a million things.
It’s taken us a while to learn this because we always want to pack as much value as possible into everything we create.
The problem is sometimes adding more value actually makes things less valuable because people don’t know what they’re supposed to take away. Information overload is real.
YouTube specifically rewards consistency and expectations. When someone subscribes, they are basically saying, “I want more of this.” If “this” changes every upload, you’re making it harder for the viewer and the algorithm to understand your channel.
Separating these channels may end up being one of the best moves we’ve made.
Learn from our mistakes.
If you want more agent strategy and scripting, subscribe to Byron’s channel here.
If you want marketing tips every Thursday, subscribe to my channel here.
If you want housing market breakdowns and inside industry podcasts, subscribe to the main BAM channel here.
Hopefully this helps with your own marketing.
Specific newsletters.
Specific accounts.
Specific content.
Give people a reason to come back.
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