LandCo Vlog: Pond Restoration Project (Season 1 | Episode 1)

We are super excited to announce the release of our new LandCo Vlog.  This first episode will cover a recent pond resotration project that we tackled. We have been exploring the idea of a vlog the last few years but never moved forward because I didnt believe that we could produce a product that was up to the standards that we set for ourselves…from a quality standpoint.  But the last 12-18 months have been etremely frustrating from a business standpoint.From day one back in 2010/11, we have always had competitors follow our lead to a certain degree.  But this has exploded over the last few years.  It feels like both individuals and companies are following our every move…everything from following our business models to blatantly stealing marketing ideas and styles…it seems like it is something new every week. But this has pushed us again to explore new ideas and marketing concepts.  So we hit our tipping point in April or so and have committed the following months to purchasing the equipment and learning the tools required to produces a Vlog.  It was much more of a challenge than I expected.  And full disclosure, our first Vlog is not as good as I had envisioned in my head…but you have to start somewhere right.  I look at our old LandCo property videos from 2011 and can’t believe we ever released them…they are that bad.  Im sure these Vlogs will be the same…so away we go.

You can stop reading if you want…now I am just going to rant a bit about why we are doing this and how we are going to evaluate.  I came up with 5 good reasons to move forward with this project…

1) I fully admit that I am more of a marketing nerd than I am a hunting guru.  I fully believe in the power of video…from both a reach and conversion standpoint.

2) We are in desperate need of a pattern break.  We have been doing the same thing for the few years…which is a lifetime these days in the marketing world.  I believe that has resulted in us just sort of floating…kind of the status quo attitude.  And I am not cool with that.  It is boring and ineffective.

3) We needed a challenge…something that was outside our comfort zone. I believe if you always take the easy route, you will rarely get anywhere exciting. Tackling projects outside your comfort zone result in growth and learning. And make no mistakes, this is a challenge.  It scares me to death to stand here in front of this camera…which is like two feet from my face.

4) I believe Vlogs have the ability to show personality.  This one is sort of funny because the first few years, our goals were the exact opposite.  I felt that we needed to pretend to be someone we were to compete with some of the bigger more established brands.  Well, now we are that big established brand…and I want to figure out how to market more of our personality.

5) I believe that a vlog has the potential to serve as our primary marketing tool.  I am not downplaying the success of LandCo..what we have accomplished in the last 5 or 6 years has been incredible.  But I also believe that our success has created a situation where a lot of what we do is just noise now…it doesnt matter…it doesnt help us reach our goal.  You wouldnt believe how many times I end a day full of meetings asking myself what the hell just happened? I am hoping that this new form of marketing can purely handle our brand and we can focus on scaling what we are good at…impressing clients through the value we provide, managing relationships, and delivering incredible services.

Those are the main reasons we are moving forward with this.  There are a few concerns as well that we will monitor.  The main one being…the whole idea of vlogging carries the stigma of being narcissistic…you need to tune in and watch my life because its awesome sort of attitude.  I want to make sure that we separate ourselves from that.  This is not a personal vlog…this is a informational and educational vlog.  I have zero interest in broadcasting my personal life…I want to keep this focused on landco and our mission, our products… I fully understand that we will toe the narcissistic line but I want to stress that there is a fine line between being a narcissist and being fully confident in our brand.  I am 100% confident that our brand is the best option out there for land brokerage and land services.  I just am.  Its incredible how many people in our industry think they are experts because they shot a big deer or own a bobcat.  Its hard not to toe that line when you are super confident in your product.  But it is important to us that we dont come off as arrogant know it alls.  We will monitor that closely.

Second worry is that it wont be great.  It wont be up to our standards.  But heres the thing…we have been discussing how to do this for over a year.  We need to just start.  Im sure there will be bumps along the road.  Im sure we will look back at these videos in 2 years and laugh over how bad they sucked.  But we have to start.  So no more discussing concept.  We are now in the doing mode.

We plan on doing a vlog every other week for the remainder of the year.  Then we will reevaluate and get some feedback from our clients.  We hope that you like them and will provide some feedback over the course of this project!