Full Transcript for Why This Realtor Filmed a Bikini Video at 49 (Brand Trust)

pretty pinpointed to being, you know, probably a woman in her mid 40s to early 60s that she books the vacation, she researches the Airbnb's, she wants certain things in a property. And so I really try and focus on that client avatar when when I'm doing a lot of my marketing. Tamany At The Simple Touches: So I'm gonna ask you the number one objection I get when I'm trying to talk to agents about choosing a niche. And you said you wanna focus on luxury. So did niching down to luxury on Instagram affect other types of clients reaching out to you, AKA first time home buyers, sellers, et cetera? Melissa Hladyniuk: It didn't really affect me. do have a lot of conversations with people that see me on Instagram and they'll say like, I really want you to list my house, but you only work with luxury. And for me, that's just a door opener because the conversation has started, right? So I can say to them, no, I don't only do luxury. I would be happy to list your property. I just like to showcase all areas. it hasn't really affected me. But a lot of people will even say, you know, will you go and work in Corpus Christi? Well, technically North Padre Island is Corpus Christi. It's just a suburb. And so of course I'll go over the bridge and work in Corpus Christi. But for me, it's just a door opener for people. I like what you're doing on social media. Would you consider working with me, even though I'm not considered luxury? Tamany At The Simple Touches: And I mean, that's a perfect example of would you rather have these like super cold leads just like, you know, kind of ghosting you or Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah. Tamany At The Simple Touches: would you rather have people being like, would you please work with me? I Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah. Tamany At The Simple Touches: mean, those are two completely different leads, completely different conversations. So you are a perfect example. Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah, I've always tried to have kind of like a, maybe I salespeople, think there's like two types. There's hunters and there's gatherers. And I think hunters are phenomenal at Tamany At The Simple Touches: Thank Melissa Hladyniuk: what they do. I am more of a gatherer. I more want to be a magnet for like the type of client that I want to work with. And again, not just luxury, but you know, just people that align with me and my personality and me being me. So I like having that draw, I guess. Tamany At The Simple Touches: 1000 % I love the hunter-gatherer thing. I I think I think about it very similarly, but I use attraction marketing Melissa Hladyniuk: Mm-hmm. Tamany At The Simple Touches: So like the reason I feel like I do so well on Instagram is my Personality like I'm not a salesperson. I hate being pushy. I hate all that stuff but with Instagram, you know, I can really be creative and attract like you Melissa Hladyniuk: Yes. Tamany At The Simple Touches: just said like be a magnet for who I want. And then the conversation is completely different. It's not, you please buy this? It's, hey, will you please work with me? mean, completely different vibe, which I really appreciate. Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah, I prefer that. It's just more me. I'm very much like that. Tamany At The Simple Touches: you Melissa Hladyniuk: I don't want to be begging for your business. Like you either like me and you want to work with me. And if not, there's 2,500 agents here that you may align better with. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Exactly it. Melissa Hladyniuk: Thank Tamany At The Simple Touches: So early on, did you always feel confident on camera or is that something that came with time? Melissa Hladyniuk: Definitely did not feel confident. it was something I wanted to do, especially in my market. When I got my license, I, I actually went and worked at before I could work in the United States here. I had to wait like three years until I was able to work here. And so I actually went to work at a local brokerage and I was trying to help agents there with their marketing and with their specifically their social media. and so it was always a conversation of you just have to do it. And I look back at my earlier stuff and it's hilarious. I should actually repurpose it more and kind of make reference to it, but I certainly was not comfortable. I was stuttering. My husband used to make fun of my hands that I would, I forget you would call them like sparkle hands or whatever. little things that you... Tamany At The Simple Touches: Thank you. Melissa Hladyniuk: let go as you get more natural. But I think people really appreciate that raw organic, even if you do screw up. So again, it helps with that, that draw to people. Tamany At The Simple Touches: thousand percent. It's way easier to connect to imperfection than perfection. Totally. Melissa Hladyniuk: It's relative, we're all imperfect. Tamany At The Simple Touches: I feel so I feel the same way about like editing the videos. I don't know if you personally edit yours. I feel like you Melissa Hladyniuk: of Tamany At The Simple Touches: might have a team because your videos are so awesome. Melissa Hladyniuk: Okay. Tamany At The Simple Touches: but when I edit, like, especially when reels first came out and like Instagram's always making changes because they're trying to catch up with TikTok and blah, blah, blah. I would post it and then I'd watch it. I'm such a perfectionist attention to detail. And I would be like, I should have done that. Or, no, like that didn't turn out how I wanted it to turn out, but it's not like I would delete it and redo it. I would leave it and then just do better the next time. Melissa Hladyniuk: Absolutely. And spelling errors in some of my captions and I would catch it later, Tamany At The Simple Touches: Thank Melissa Hladyniuk: but it was a good engagement piece because people would be like, you spelled this word wrong. I'm like, thanks for pointing that out. That was a test. You win the prize. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah, that was honestly like

huge when I first started doing reels as people would be like, just so you know, you spelled that word wrong and I'd be like, thank you, but like, I'm not going to redo it. Melissa Hladyniuk: Or you use the wrong word. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah, but like you said, it's a door opener. Anytime somebody is approaching you or DMing you, that's a win Melissa Hladyniuk: Mm-hmm. Tamany At The Simple Touches: in my book. Melissa Hladyniuk: Agree. Agree. Tamany At The Simple Touches: So your videos are so fun. Melissa Hladyniuk: Thank you. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Many agents think if they're fun, quote unquote fun online, they won't be taken seriously. Why is that incorrect? Melissa Hladyniuk: think again, that's just the personality coming through. And one of my brand pillars is my sense of humor. That's really important to me. Tamany At The Simple Touches: with. Melissa Hladyniuk: So, you know, I think it's not true just because I think you should be who you want to be or who you want to come across as. And it's not for everybody. I know my brand style is not for everybody, but I just want to put out there something that like I enjoy. I watch a lot of stuff that's not real estate related that I take and I adapt it to real estate because I think it's hilarious. So I think it just holds people's attention longer. It's hard to keep them on there for seven to 10 seconds. So if I can do that by having a guy dress as a pirate and run through a house carrying a sword, I'm gonna do that and it gets engagement. So I think you just have to lead Tamany At The Simple Touches: You Melissa Hladyniuk: back to who your client avatar is and then build your brand pillars around that. And if sense of humor is one of them, then I say, go balls to the walls with it. Tamany At The Simple Touches: love that. Are you comfortable sharing your other brand pillars? Melissa Hladyniuk: Sure. Yeah. So obviously real estate is one of them, my sense of humor lifestyle, and that's like the Island lifestyle. And then I call it edutainment. So educating people on not only real estate and real estate buying like from home inspections to title work to that sort of thing, but specifically in a vacation home market, talking about 1031 exchanges and you know, some potential tax deductions, contact your CPA for more information. those are my four main brand pillars and I try and stick to them as much as possible. It helps with content ideas to think about like, what haven't I done in a long time? So yeah. Tamany At The Simple Touches: when you're planning your content, you kind of just like cycling through, so pillar A, B, C, D, restart? Or do you have another strategy? Melissa Hladyniuk: I would tell you I have no strategy. I try and keep those those brand pillars top of mind. But it really changes from week to week. I might just come up with an idea. If a new listing is coming up that I didn't really anticipate and we've got to get a video going or get something out there quickly or a new opportunities kind of fall in my lap. I try and just capitalize on that. It's really, really chaotic and I drive my videographer nuts sometimes when I'm dropping a script in front of him about an hour before we're supposed to film. And I'm like, Hey, can you get a costume or do you have a guy or I'm sure I drive, I'm insane. But, you know, sometimes those, mean, one of the videos that, actually went viral for me on Instagram, that was one that there was no planning. I thought it was going to be super boring. And it took off and for no rhyme or reason. And so sometimes I think it works to your benefit to just not overthink this stuff. Don't follow me for tips. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah, it's. It's funny because in my experience and with everyone I've talked to, I feel like the people who are quote unquote doing social media well are very similar to you and they're like, I don't have a strategy, but I think you do. You just haven't really like sat down and written it out. Like you have things that you think about when you're doing your content and planning and all that stuff. But I'm very much like you. Like I don't like, let's say like batching content. because Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah. Tamany At The Simple Touches: it doesn't feel like timely, it doesn't feel like exactly what you said, like if something happens I want to make sure that I talk about it. So that's, it's interesting that you're like, I don't have a strategy because I think you do. Melissa Hladyniuk: It's probably in my subconscious somewhere. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Right, right, right, right. Okay, so can you give me an example of a quote unquote fun post that actually brought you a high quality content, a high quality client? Melissa Hladyniuk: Let me think here. I'd probably have to lean into the video that went viral. It was the, is Mel one where I'm like tripping and talking about short-term rentals and what you should be doing to use an agent that knows how to invest in a short-term rental. But from that video, when it blew up, I didn't really know what to do with it. And so, bunch of, I was getting new followers. It was getting shared by this marketer in Brazil. I couldn't figure out why all these people from Brazil were starting to follow me. And I was getting messages in my inbox and stuff and trying to reply to them and everything. so ironically, I missed this one message, this one DM. And my videographer, Andreas, said to me a couple of weeks later, Hey, Tamany At The Simple Touches: Mm-hmm. Melissa Hladyniuk: I had this I reach out to me, he's, yeah, that's the one. He's in Tulum and Tamany At The Simple Touches: you Melissa Hladyniuk: he wants me to come down because he saw your video, thought I did a great job. So anyway, he's like, I'm gonna go and hopefully I'm gonna get to film with him. I'm like, Andreas, that's amazing. I'm so glad that took off for you. So Andreas goes down there, meets with the developer there and does some work,

comes back and he's like, Mel, I gotta tell you. this guy actually reached out to you and you never replied to him on Instagram. And I was like, what? my God. He's like, yeah, like he wants to work with you. And I was like, my God, my God, I can't believe that this happened. And so luckily I connected with Akil and went down there and I'm going to be representing Amari, which is in Tulum. It's this luxury. resort development there. they've got a whole new, Amari Uptown is the first one and then Amari Cosmos is to come. But it's been not only a great business opportunity, but I've made a really great, like, I want to say friend connection where we relate on so many things, whether it comes to real estate, social media, God, we're talking about AI together now. And it's just been such a great collaboration. So there's some big things to come from there. So I would definitely say That's been one of the biggest connections that I've made through one of my videos. Tamany At The Simple Touches: That's something that I'm really leaning into in 2026 is this networking collaboration piece. Like you never know who they know Melissa Hladyniuk: It's so true. Tamany At The Simple Touches: or know the context that they have access to. Like you just never know. And so now when people are like, Hey, do you want to collab? I'm like, heck yeah. Like let's figure Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah. Tamany At The Simple Touches: out what that looks like. And it looks different for everybody because the dynamic is so different each time. Melissa Hladyniuk: Mm-hmm. Tamany At The Simple Touches: that's something that I totally didn't expect. to be an opportunity when I started leaning into Instagram so heavily. Melissa Hladyniuk: agree. And a lot of agents, well, a lot of people, they don't want to do that collab because you feel like you're giving up something like your secrets or something like that. like, you have no idea. I don't care what brokerage you're from, where you're from. If you want to, like, ask me a question or sit down and share a creative criticism or anything with me, I'll take that opportunity. It's huge. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yes. Melissa Hladyniuk: Thank Tamany At The Simple Touches: I'm so glad you said that because I know agents who are like exactly what you said, I don't want to give them my secrets. I'm not going to accept this post that you're a collaborator on, blah, blah. And I'm like, any collaboration is going to be beneficial for you because that's more eyes on your brand. Like, why would you say no to that? Melissa Hladyniuk: 1000 percent. Tamany At The Simple Touches: So logistical question because I know a lot of agents struggle with this. How did you find Andre? And was he already familiar with real estate? Melissa Hladyniuk: So he, I've actually worked with several great Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah. Melissa Hladyniuk: local videographers, through kind of me evolving and developing on social media. And so I was actually wanting to, I was working with a different videographer. I wanted to do a short biopic, embarrassing enough, it's never actually come out, but I'm going to repurpose the content at some point, because it's really, really good. But anyway. So I was working with another videographer and he ended up having to move back to LA. His wife was expecting a baby. And so he introduced me to Andreas and he's an aspiring filmmaker. So I think that's where I really benefit from my love of movies and his love of movies, even though they're two totally different styles. We've worked together to... take real estate and make it more fun. I'm sure that sometimes I overwhelm him a lot. did this one video Sabrina Carpenter style and I'm like crawling across the couch and I'm like, look, Andreas, just go with it. I know this is like so uncomfortable for you, but I'm I'm channeling my inner Sabrina here. And he's like, okay, Mel. And thank God his wife is his best champion and like. Always like, Mel, you're so good. This is great. And it works out. But I'm sure sometimes he's just like, what is this girl doing? I made him watch like Sex and the City episodes and stuff for a video and it's just not his cup of tea. But that's how we got introduced. Tamany At The Simple Touches: I think that it's very interesting that he's an aspiring filmmaker because Instagram does really well with storytelling. Melissa Hladyniuk: Mm-hmm. Tamany At The Simple Touches: And so that is something that I think your videos do really well is Melissa Hladyniuk: Thank you. Tamany At The Simple Touches: it's not just like here's information. Like it's an actual storyline almost like these many little mini videos, right? Mini movies. And my favorite, my personal favorite are like the parodies of music videos or movies or episodes or whatever. I think those are so cool. Who comes up with that kind of stuff? Is that all you? Melissa Hladyniuk: It's all me. Yeah. Again, just trying to show who I am and what I enjoy to find that relatable follower. It's all me. like I said, that's where, but I mean, I will say Andreas, he'll share a lot of content with me that isn't necessarily real estate. And he's like, this looks cool. We should do this. So there's definitely a collab there, but a lot of the music video and the movies that I choose are more. my liking. And I mean, we did one listing video where it was like, the house was like built in 1985. Original owners lived there for 40 years, built it everything. And I was like, okay, Andreas, we're going to do this video where I like walk, when I walk into the house, I'm like walking back into 1985 and like this music and this should be on. he's like, how, um, Oh, what did he say to me? He's like, um, were you, were you, I how he phrased it. He was like, were you in high school in 1985 or something like that? And I'm like, Andres. I'm like, I know I'm old, but come on, man. I'm no, I was seven or eight. But he was like 30 years old, right? Like this guy could be my

kid. Yeah, but here it does. Tamany At The Simple Touches: I think too, like, yeah, I think what I was thinking about when you were saying that is like the movies that you choose or the TV shows, that's another way to build your brand, right? Because if you're looking for, you know, a 40 year old woman, Sex and the City is like a great match, right? So depending on what you want or think exactly what you said, things that you enjoy, you're going to end up attracting people who like similar things and that's going to be a way easier person to work with than someone who is a complete opposite. Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah, I do have to say I shifted. used to do like very, I did horizontal long format. was more using it towards YouTube, the hi, welcome to 123 Smith Street, that sort of thing. And those work. They're great. Don't get me wrong. I think I was getting so much more engagement from Instagram that I realized going vertical shorter content. there's been pros and cons to that because I really, I had one of my luxury home builders say to me like, I don't want that crap. Like I don't want you doing the, you know, movie stuff. don't want, he's like, I want the long format two, two and a half minutes talking. He's like, and so I have to take that into consideration as well, because obviously it's, it's what the seller wants. I work for them. So having that feedback is still good. It's not my favorite thing to do, but I try and channel my inner Bridget, what's her name? Sorry. Channel my inner Bridget Ramey out of Austin because she does fabulous long format, you know, luxury videos. So I just had to channel that. Tamany At The Simple Touches: That's interesting. the seller that didn't want the fun videos, were you connected through socials originally? Melissa Hladyniuk: No, not at all. He was referred to me because he wanted someone that did more marketing and specifically social media marketing, but he doesn't really have a huge, like he doesn't look at it at all. So he was really leaning on someone that was already doing it to, you know, propel his listings through marketing. but yeah, he likes what he likes and I'm fine with that. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah, well and even though you say no it didn't come from social media like I personally would argue it did because if he was looking for somebody who's Melissa Hladyniuk: Someone's on. Tamany At The Simple Touches: already doing videos right like you are doing the videos so that's probably why your name came up in that conversation and he even though he maybe didn't like that for his property he liked it enough to still hire you. Melissa Hladyniuk: Absolutely. Yeah. He was just caught in that evolution period that I had because I was the first listing that I did for him. I was still doing that long format style. And then it took him another year to build another house. And so by then I was like, Hey, by the way, we're going to do this, you know, this video. He's like, no, not happening. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Well, I mean, that's a cool conversation that the sellers get their input into, which is kind of a fun way to set you apart. Melissa Hladyniuk: Absolutely, yeah. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Now, how long has it been since you've made that switch from YouTube to Instagram, The Focus? Melissa Hladyniuk: it's, I would say one, yeah, it just coming up on a year. and that was, since Andreas and I, started working together that I, I switched over to the vertical format and just this more short form, format. and I mean, through, I've not ever paid for followers, but my organic growth since starting with Andreas. is over 3,000. I mean, for me, that was great. I think I was sitting around 3,000 or 4,000 followers when we started, and now I'm almost at 7,500, so. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah, 3,000 in a year is really good growth. Melissa Hladyniuk: Thanks. Tamany At The Simple Touches: And that's something I always talk to my real estate clients about is technically like you're not trying to get a million followers because those are not, you don't have a million ideal clients who want to move where you are. You know what I mean? Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah. Tamany At The Simple Touches: So I think that's incredible growth for a year. Melissa Hladyniuk: I'm happy. Tamany At The Simple Touches: My question for you would be, since you kind of stopped leaning into YouTube, Have you had any leads, opportunities from those long forms that have been sitting on YouTube? Melissa Hladyniuk: No. And I will say I didn't, I haven't maximized my YouTube channel to its fullest potential. I've, I really focused on like, again, we talk about bandwidth in our industry, right? And being able to do so much and Instagram is so different from YouTube and all the... So I've really focused on Instagram. The reason that I initially used YouTube for those long format videos was because I could create that URL, drop it into a QR code, and it went on all my listing brochures. So that was the easiest way to get people to scan that. But I certainly didn't maximize my YouTube channel. That's a part of my goal this year is to lean into... actually using it to its fullest potential now that I feel like I'm in a pretty good flow with Instagram. And of course, Instagram feeds to Facebook, so I feel like you get a two for one. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Wow, okay, so you saw a lot of good things there. The reason I ask is because YouTube is more of a search engine, right? So like Instagram, TikTok, they all have kind of a shelf life for the content unless it goes viral, right? So they kind of like go, go, go, level out and then drop after a certain number of weeks, days, whatever. Whereas YouTube stays. And so I was just curious, all this effort that you were putting into these long forms, have they paid off yet? And according to you, it's a no. my personal opinion, like I know I feel like everyone's like, I want this beautiful, like vertical, I'm sorry,

horizontal house tour that's like super luxurious and all those things. But I just think our attention spans as a like as people Melissa Hladyniuk: Yes. Tamany At The Simple Touches: has decreased so much with the short form content that personally, I don't think it's even worth it anymore. Melissa Hladyniuk: I agree. I completely agree. think that, you know, YouTube is a space for a lot of things, but I don't necessarily think it's just your place to plop Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah. Melissa Hladyniuk: a two, three minute listing video. People are not going to stay engaged. I have a hard enough time when people do a traditional listing video that's only like 30 seconds long on Instagram. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah. Melissa Hladyniuk: So it's just about using, like I said, using YouTube and doing long format for more purposeful education in your business, I think. My goal. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah, I feel like those long, yeah, well, I feel like those long form videos, like you're checking a box, right? Like, okay, we made the listing video. Okay, but Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah. Tamany At The Simple Touches: what are you going to do with it? Like nobody's going to watch it. Melissa Hladyniuk: Exactly. Yes. The only thing it's really helped me with is because we do work with a lot of outside agents. So we'll have agents in San Antonio that have a client interested in a vacation home down here. And so it is a great opportunity to send them a link and say like here before they make the commitment of driving down here and me having the vacation rental blocked off so they can tour it in person, watch the video and then, you know, tell me if this is something I still want to move forward with. So that has benefited for sure at a distance. So, but not in terms of like the actual conversion, I wouldn't say. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Now you know you can do the same thing with an Instagram video. Melissa Hladyniuk: with the URL. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Mm-hmm. Melissa Hladyniuk: Yes, sending that. Yes, absolutely. I just think my short form one, I Tamany At The Simple Touches: Super. Melissa Hladyniuk: mean, I still send them, but sometimes they're caught up in watching the pirate run across the screen, maybe, I don't know. Tamany At The Simple Touches: I love that. Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah, so anybody who's listening who may not know, because it's not super user friendly, if you go to one of your posts or reels and you click on share, and if it's not there, there's usually three dots that expands your menu. But if you click on share, there should be a button that says copy link. Then you can take that. You can use that as a URL on your newsletters. You can make a QR code out of it, put that on a mailer. So just like you would with a YouTube video, you can also do that with your Instagram stuff. that's something that I have done. If I had like a really good educational video, I would Melissa Hladyniuk: You Tamany At The Simple Touches: post it and then maybe like a week later, I'd take the link to it and put it in my email newsletter and be like, hey, in case you missed it, this. Yeah. like that you can keep driving traffic to it just like you would a landing page, I would love to know a creative risk you took that felt super scary, but it paid off. You Melissa Hladyniuk: Probably, we did one, Andreas and I, we were first working together, that was from Legally Blonde, where she's doing her university interview video. And she's in the hot tub. Tamany At The Simple Touches: I think that's one of the first ones I saw. Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah, I mean, I'm not ashamed to say like I'm going to be 49 this year and putting on that sparkly bikini and getting in front of the camera was definitely a risk. It paid off. I'm not going to say in terms of necessarily converting a listing. I don't have a metric for that on that particular video, but I can tell you how many other women and female realtors have reached out and said like, you inspire me to have that body confidence and just get in front of the camera and talk and, you know, let my guard down. Like if you can do that and feel okay with it, then like I need to get my butt in front of the camera. you know, just supporting other women, that's a big platform of mine. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Would you do the same thing again if you had the chance? Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Poor Andreas, just gotta prepare him for it. Like, this is what we're doing, buddy. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Now is Andres doing the editing too? Melissa Hladyniuk: So he does, you'll see obviously a mix of videos on some of the stuff I make myself. But any of the, what we committed to was doing one video a week. And we were both, he actually pointed this out to me in October that we didn't miss a week from the time that we started together in early February last year. We stayed on par. until December. I think we kind of jinxed ourselves, but you know, the holidays and such. but that was a commitment that we made and fulfilled pretty much 95 % of it for the year. Tamany At The Simple Touches: awesome. So you're filming once a week it sounds like? Melissa Hladyniuk: Yes, with him. And that's all the professional editing that you see. the other stuff where, you know, I've got little video clips kind of leaping in there. I'm just doing myself through edits. So it's kind of a mix. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Which I think is important because yes, it's nice to have all these beautiful professional videos, but the more like scaled back raw sitting down talking to your camera videos, those are the ones where they're really gonna start to trust you and build rapport with you. And then the other ones, the more professional, like funny, whatever, those are more for to get to the masses so the right people can follow you. Melissa Hladyniuk: Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, posting consistently,

you Tamany At The Simple Touches: good. Melissa Hladyniuk: know, I try and put something on there every single day. So I can't do that professionally. Financially, I can't do that yet. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah, of course. Well, and like I said, I don't think you should. Like I think there is something to be said about the variety, even in what you're saying, but the quality of it. Because if Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah. Tamany At The Simple Touches: it's all professionally done, that might turn some people off who are like, she's too fancy for me, or she doesn't have time for me. Right? Like I feel like that peeled back stuff really starts to build the rapport and then trust. Melissa Hladyniuk: Absolutely. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Okay, so we're gonna do a little, let's see, what do want to do next? We're gonna do a little reverse takeover. So Melissa Hladyniuk: All right. Tamany At The Simple Touches: it's your turn. You can ask me whatever you'd like and we're gonna take a couple minutes for this. Melissa Hladyniuk: All right. Let me think. Well, I want to, I'm going to go back to a point that I made about like, not being able to focus on every single platform. What is your Tamany At The Simple Touches: Mm-hmm. Melissa Hladyniuk: priority, like your preferred platform, but then what else do you see important or how do you stretch your bandwidth to expand on all of Tamany At The Simple Touches: Great question. I think this is a super common worry for anyone marketing on social media. I did what you did and I've tried all of them, right? Like I've tried... YouTube, I've tried TikTok, I've tried Facebook, I've tried LinkedIn, and based on the data, my personality where I like to create seem to mesh best with Instagram. And then also my ideal client is 35 to 55. And so I don't know how many of the Gen Xers are on TikTok per se, right? There's some obviously, but the majority, the data shows the majority are on Instagram and Facebook. So like you said, two for one, which I liked. But once I got Instagram kind of in a groove, like you said, like I had my structure, I knew what I was doing that gave me more bandwidth to play with TikTok. to play with YouTube. So Melissa Hladyniuk: Right. Tamany At The Simple Touches: I always suggest doing one really well and it will get to a point where you're like, okay, got that under control. It's consistently bringing me followers and leads. Now I can start repurposing content or making new content for a different platform. And I'm just now, I'm six years in, just now getting to the point where I can film different content for different platforms. Before I was literally just taking the same piece, throwing it everywhere because that's all I could handle. But now I'm able to, okay, the podcast goes on YouTube, then the clips go here, and then TikTok's a completely different piece. I got to film something different for that. So it's a lot of work for sure, but don't overwhelm yourself. Don't try to do it

all at once. learn one really well and then you'll know when you're like okay I'm ready to take on a different platform. Melissa Hladyniuk: Okay, now that resonates with me a lot. When you were repurposing, so I just recently started putting stuff on TikTok. One of my colleagues was like, I just got two new leads this week just by putting that over there. So I'm like, okay, here we go. I change up my captions, but I use the same Tamany At The Simple Touches: Mm-hmm. Melissa Hladyniuk: video. How do you, when you... transfer from Instagram over to TikTok, do you change it much and why do you do that? Tamany At The Simple Touches: Great question. And this is something I'll be completely transparent. I'm just starting to kind of test. So I'm not the expert on it yet, but Melissa Hladyniuk: Mm hmm. Tamany At The Simple Touches: something I recently started doing was throwing my ideas in chat, TBT and being Melissa Hladyniuk: Uh-huh. Tamany At The Simple Touches: like, what do you think? Or how can I change this for TikTok? And it will straight up tell you like, this is what you need to change. And so I've been playing with that a little bit. just trying to learn the trends because I have, I don't know, maybe like 35 K on TikTok. And the way I started, literally, had, you know, my Canva Hacks for Realtors series, maybe had like around 50 videos there. And one day I was like, I should try TikTok. So I literally just started downloading them, part one, part two, part three, part four, and throwing them over there. And that's what grew, got me going on TikTok. so I definitely think there's value, especially if you're creating quality content of throwing it over on tick tock, even if it's not quote unquote optimized for tick tock. and I think, you know, it's all about the data and watching and being like, this one didn't perform well. This one did. What's the difference? The other thing that I have noticed or is my theory is with Instagram, there's like levels. So you. can be at like the initial level where 200 views on your reels is normal and Melissa Hladyniuk: Right. Tamany At The Simple Touches: then our average, right? And then you'll move up to 500 and then you'll move up to a thousand and then 5,000 and so on and so forth. Whereas with TikTok, I feel each video has its own chance of going viral. Melissa Hladyniuk: Interesting. Tamany At The Simple Touches: You don't have to be posting for years to hit a level for it to go viral, right? Instagram's starting to change that a little bit because they're noticing how many people like the way TikTok does things. Melissa Hladyniuk: Sure. Tamany At The Simple Touches: But that's when my experience with Instagram is there's like these levels you have to pass, which is kind of frustrating, but also Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah, yeah. Tamany At The Simple Touches: nice because you're like, OK, well, now my average is going to be X, you know. Melissa Hladyniuk: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, I've got you open the door, so I'm going to follow it. What are your thoughts on AI and using it to help with the consistency and deliver to multiple platforms? How are you using it? That was a lot of questions, actually, I just realized. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah, no, no, no, no. It's a great question and it's super timely. The AI twins, I'm not into it. You know, I think the way I explained it, I don't know, in a reel somewhere or something, was there have been these like generations of Instagram where there's kind of like, for lack of a better word, like half ass content. Melissa Hladyniuk: Sure. Yeah. Tamany At The Simple Touches: And so when like in 2015, yeah 2015 when I first started marketing on Instagram the quote-unquote half-assed content or the I ran out of time content was Screenshotting these really blurry like quotes from like Pinterest and throwing them over on Instagram That was like, you know, it did. Okay, it didn't go viral, but at least you posted something, right? Then it turned into once Canva kind of became a thing, it turned into making your own. So they weren't so blurry. Then I feel like it turned into. like the reels, would say like faceless reels, like Melissa Hladyniuk: Mm-hmm. Tamany At The Simple Touches: reels that were just, here's the property, call me kind of thing. Melissa Hladyniuk: Right. Tamany At The Simple Touches: And now I feel like it's going to be these AI twins. Melissa Hladyniuk: Mm-hmm. Tamany At The Simple Touches: And the whole thing with video content, why it has performed so well versus static content is you can know, like, and trust someone 10 times faster from a video than a picture. because you get to see their personality, you get to see their facial expressions, you get to be like, their energy, like, I feel like I would vibe with that person. And so you're taking all of that away with an AI twin. Like the AI twin may look like you, but it doesn't have like the soul behind your eyes. It Melissa Hladyniuk: Right. Tamany At The Simple Touches: doesn't have your quirks when it talks. It doesn't emphasize words like you would. And so I just feel like it's a way out. Melissa Hladyniuk: Mm-hmm. Tamany At The Simple Touches: And if that's the only thing you're going to post, I don't know that social media marketing is where you should be spending your time. Melissa Hladyniuk: For sure, for sure. Yeah, I mean, it is a full-time job. Social media marketing. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah. Yes, it is, but I'd rather be doing that than door knocking or cold calling any day. Melissa Hladyniuk: without some business any day. Tamany At The Simple Touches: How do you feel about the AI twins? Melissa Hladyniuk: I am just getting introduced to them. I think that there's a way to, I do think there's a way to use them to, again, expand your bandwidth. I don't know that I've completely figured out what that is. I'm a huge fan of Carrie Sauve, who's like the AI queen. I listen to all her podcasts. I do agree with you

on, and I think also. And I might be wrong. I wonder if AI generated content versus real content is going to get picked up as well with the algorithms. I've kind of questioned that as well. But I think there is an opportunity to leverage it somewhat, but I think you have to be really, really careful in how you do it. I do agree with you. And I haven't figured out what that balance is and it's if it's a large percentage or small, but I think it will have a place. think it's something that I'm going to have to embrace in my content. just, again, I don't want to lose the authenticity side of it. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah, I feel like, you know, perhaps once they're in your ecosystem, using an AI video to explain something, I think that's fine. But if Melissa Hladyniuk: Right. Tamany At The Simple Touches: you are truly trying to find new from Instagram or any of these platforms, I think you're kind of kicking yourself in the foot by taking this AI way out. Melissa Hladyniuk: Mm-hmm. Tamany At The Simple Touches: I will say, the second part of your question was how am I using it? So I just started doing this because I'd say like, I'm not afraid to say my platform has been stuck in the 90,000s for two years. Melissa Hladyniuk: Okay. Tamany At The Simple Touches: And there's a little bit of my ego being like, well, this worked back then. It should still work. I'm not giving it up, right? And of course, that's why I'm not growing. So I've known for like a while that I need to change something. So what I did over Christmas and I had one of my best campaigns ever is, you know, like I said, I would run my idea by chat. I would post it. Then I would screenshot the analytics and like kind of tell it what I did and give it to it and would be like, okay, so now we know blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's stuff that I wouldn't have thought of. And then it would Melissa Hladyniuk: right. Tamany At The Simple Touches: say, try this next. And so instead of just like posting something and being done with it, I would actually post like three or four videos back to back to back all about the same thing, each one getting a little bit better. And that's something I've been thinking about testing is instead of cycling through my pillars, like Monday is pillar A, Tuesday is pillar B, Wednesday is pillar C, taking a week and doing all of them about pillar A. And Melissa Hladyniuk: Okay. Tamany At The Simple Touches: then taking the next week all about pillar B. And I haven't tested it like a lot yet, but Melissa Hladyniuk: interesting. Tamany At The Simple Touches: that's kind of what I've been noticing, especially with TikTok. If some, like if you have something going viral about whatever it is, right? and they click over to your page, they want to see more about that thing. But if you're constantly changing the topic, it's like, oh, OK, never mind. And I'm leaving. So that's just something. I don't know if it works or not, but yeah. Melissa Hladyniuk: That's

a really, really great point. Yeah. Yeah, I find, um, I find the AI to be a gap closer for me. Like when you have a really chaotic, busy brain and you can input in there what you, what you're looking for or what you want or what you want to do for it your point for it to come up with like those like, and have you thought about this and thought about this? It's just, it really, it's helped me in that way big time in all parts of my business. Tamany At The Simple Touches: it's helping in helping. thousand percent. A thousand percent. Yes, my brain goes a million miles a minute. And so I will literally just open up a new chat and put on the like voice feature and just be like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, And it's really good at taking all of your thoughts and like organizing it and being like, okay, here's the action stuff, which I really appreciate because I feel like the more I work on social media, the crazier my ADHD is getting. Melissa Hladyniuk: Absolutely. Absolutely. I am with you. And I think I have like a small crush on my, I've got like the British sounding advanced voice mode. And sometimes I'm just like, if you're going Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah! Melissa Hladyniuk: to order a hamburger, how would you do it? Just talk to me. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yes, I have the South African one and he's always like, okay, Tammany. I'm Melissa Hladyniuk: Okay. Tamany At The Simple Touches: gonna tell you this straight with no fluff. Every time it's like about to lecture me, it's like, take a deep breath. Melissa Hladyniuk: They're so kind. Tamany At The Simple Touches: I know, know. Well, and it's trained to me, right? Like it knows that I get like really anxious or whatever. So it's always like, okay, take a deep breath. We're going to go through this together. You're not alone. Melissa Hladyniuk: very supportive, consoling. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Yeah, yeah. I love it. Melissa Hladyniuk: Amazing. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Okay, where can you have some cool new things coming out? So tell me a little bit about that and then where can everyone find you and learn from you? Melissa Hladyniuk: So lots of exciting stuff in 2026. think the one thing that I, the biggest thing I learned from 2025 is you cannot rely solely on real estate production for your income. my 20, Tamany At The Simple Touches: Mmm. Ooh. Melissa Hladyniuk: yeah, I mean, it was, it was a challenging year. I mean, I was thankfully still blessed to have really great clients and have a great year, but very much like you when you're used to always excelling and you know, exceeding every single year. was kind like, wow, I kind of did the same as last year. But 2026 is all about generating multiple revenue streams. And one area that I noticed, again, my market, this little barrier island that I live on in the Gulf of Mexico, it still has a very small town feel to it, which is wonderful. That's what I love about this community. But both North Padre Island and Puerto Rances, we've got So many amazing small local businesses here. We're very minimally franchised here. so a lot of these very much like us as entrepreneurs, wear so many different hats. And as I mentioned before, marketing is a full-time job. So these smaller businesses, like they haven't really had the opportunity to learn about marketing, learn specifically about social media marketing. and the expense that's involved and there's so much to it and they just want to run their businesses. So with being such a big vacation home market, I figured I could partner with some of these smaller businesses for brand partnership opportunities. So I'm launching two new websites. One is NorthPadreIslandLife.com and the other one is Island Life. as well as islandlifeporta.com. That's our well-known nickname. So these smaller businesses will have an opportunity to partner with me and have their business featured on my website. If they don't have their own website or Facebook page, which shockingly a lot of these businesses don't. Tamany At The Simple Touches: Mm-hmm. Melissa Hladyniuk: I was just doing my brand partner or sorry, my referral partners. update on my own website. And my God, there's so many businesses that don't even have a website on their Google My Business page. So that'll be a benefit for some of these small businesses is to have a sub domain link through my website that they can share. As well, I'll be Tamany At The Simple Touches: thousand people. Melissa Hladyniuk: leaving marketing materials. Any of my home buyers and sellers here that own vacation homes, investment properties, their properties will be featured. on these websites. And so when their guests check in, they can click the preferred businesses here on the island, as well as in Port Aransas, and be able to be showcased to those businesses as well. We can do different contests and giveaways, and maybe they want to run promotions, that sort of thing. So I think it's going to be a huge asset to some of these smaller businesses to get a level of marketing that they just can't either take on financially. or if just they don't have the time or even the interest in doing it. So I'm excited for that. It's a big undertaking, but I think that there's a huge need for it here. Tamany At The Simple Touches: I love that for so many reasons and that's one thing that has been one of my favorite pieces of quote unquote having a large following is when I meet a fellow business owner, because I'm in a couple of networking groups that I like truly believe what they're doing. I'm like, okay, how can I leverage my audience to support you? Like that's Melissa Hladyniuk: Yes. Tamany At The Simple Touches: the whole. And I've done it for a few people and because I know what I'm doing now, I just feel so grateful to have this opportunity to give to other business owners. So I just absolutely love your idea and I'm excited to see it come to life. And then the other Melissa Hladyniuk: Thank you. Tamany At The Simple Touches: thing you said was multiple income streams and there are so many ways to make money. once you have an audience, especially a niche down audience. if you guys want me to do a full episode on that, because I think we could talk about that forever, let me know in the comments because I'm more than happy to do that. Where can everybody find you online? Melissa Hladyniuk: Well, being that I'm Mel cells Island life, pretty much if you type that in there, you'll find my website, is www.melcellsislandlife.com on Instagram, Mel cells Island life, gosh, even on my Peloton Mel cells Island life. You, I know I'm not going to stop there. Yeah, I probably be on there more than I, more than I am, but pretty much Melville's Island Life anywhere and certainly look for those new websites that will hopefully be launching here in the next couple of weeks. Tamany At The Simple Touches: but thank you so much for your time. Melissa Hladyniuk: Thank you, it was a pleasure meeting you. Tamany At The Simple Touches: You too. Melissa Hladyniuk: Can't wait to see more content,