Online Real Estate Technology

It had to happen at some stage and here it is, a song and video about Social Media, not quite as serious and informative as my previous post and video about  Social Media, but I thought this great video would bring a smile to your day.

So please enjoy!!

During my research I’ve come across a great video that I thought I would share with you, the video was compiled by Socialnomics09, and is called Social Media Revolution: Is Social Media a Fad?

For those real estate business owners that have yet to consider social media as a business strategy then hopefully this will provide some insights into the On Line world of the future. This video details some facts and figures that are hard to ignore.

I’ve been like a voice in the wilderness promoting the value of a social media within the real estate industry in Australia so hopefully this video will add some weight to my voice.

If you do decide to adopt a social media strategy for your office, make sure you get someone who knows what they are doing, read my post on Fake Social Media Experts before you get fooled to part with your hard earned dollars by these so called experts, or better still, give me a call.

Please enjoy

It’s been a little while since I last wrote about the worst property videos on the net, so given that they are very popular with you the readers of this blog, lets have a look at another little gem sitting on the web.

This one is not strictly a property video tour, this is actually a demo from a company offering to do a video of your house for sale. This one shows you how “good” a property video can be.

There’s no soundtrack, no voice over and the opening shot is of a car, so ladies and gentlemen, rollup, because this is how “not” to film a property video demo. 

Thought I’d continue to share with you some of these little gems that appear on Youtube, proudly displayed by the listing Real Estate Agent. This one is a right little doosy, the property was listed at $17.5 million US and the agency responsible for this one is Hilton Hyland Realty Brokerage.

One of the owners of this agency just happens to be Paris Hilton’s father. At a price tag of $17.5 million, you would have thought the agent could have at least organised a proper video rather than use a slide show. The background music shows a certain flare, although I’m not quite sure what they were trying to achieve, the video is cheap and the agent looks cheap, to me at least.

It really makes you wonder why they bothered.

Have you ever wondered how far we have come with technology? Do you think that today we can communicate faster than we did 100 years ago? well this little gem may get you thinking about how far we really have come. 

Please enjoy

Other notable figures, you may be interested in:

• 78.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 309 minutes of video, or more than 5 hours.
• 98.9 million viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (59.2 videos per viewer).
• 48.7 million viewers watched 367 million videos on MySpace.com (7.6 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 3.2 minutes.
• The duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 10.1 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten.

Comscore Survey Results

These results are something the real estate industry in Australia needs to monitor, the use of video is now to the point that the industry really can’t continue to ignore it.

Here we are 19 days into 2009, and there are lots of interesting news & blog reports about the growing usage of the net and what tools are becoming popular with on line users.

I’ve been looking at various trends with technology this year and I’ve mentioned Twitter and other social media tools that real estate agents can get on board with to communicate and share information with consumers searching on the web. One of the tools I’ve been pushing for awhile is video, and readers of this blog will know, as I’ve mentioned so many times in the past, I’m a big fan. Not just of property video tours, but video as a tool to provide market updates, create and build an agents profile, share information with other like minded people, training etc and the list goes on.  I’m predicting that 2009 will be the year that more and more of the real estate groups will integrate video into their marketing mix and we’ll start to see more video tours on properties, and once main stream marketers start to utilise this medium more aggressively, that will open the flood gates.

A recent survey conducted by Permission TV revealed that over 400 senior marketers from advertising agencies & the media in the US will significantly increase implementation of their on line video initiatives in 2009.

The Key Findings of the survey were:

Here’s a graph with the findings: 

Some additional Findings:

• More than two thirds (64 percent) of respondents reported that strengthening relationships with existing customers and/or prospects is the primary goal of online video initiatives.
• When focusing on respondents from the traditional and digital/interactive advertising agencies, more than 90 percent are overwhelmingly confidentin their ability to recommend online video initiatives to clients.
• Digital/interactive agencies expressed more confidence in recommending online video to clients compared to traditional agencies; however, traditionalagencies claim more responsibility for driving online video initiatives than digital/interactive agencies.

Video in 2009, should be a high priority along with using social media in your marketing mix, but it won’t be good enough to start a blog and then not target it correctly or post one piece of content and expect it to  generate good quality leads, or make a home made video of very dodgy quality and then expect that to be viewed by the masses. No, all that will happen is you’ll end up on a blog like this one on what not to do. 

Social media including any public communication tool like video, needs a comprehensive strategy attached to it, so that your agency or business can really capitalise on it’s strengths.

Understand the target market you are aiming at, be aware of the way the consumer uses social media and play to it’s strengths, be very aggressive in syndication of your social media communications or projects and make it part of your broader marketing initiatives. 

Social media will not be for everyone and it does take time to work at it, if you are not sure about how to put this strategy together or are not aware of what social media you can use in your business, then contact me. I’ll help you put together a comprehensive communication plan that encompasses all the tools on the web, to drive leads and open up new doors for you and your business. 

Source: Permission TV Survey December 2008

Hello everyone, as promised I’ve now been motivated to add the Mike Andrew Real Estate Channel to YouTube and the address for this is here: http://au.youtube.com/MikeAndrewRealE…

Please check it out, and there is a little surprise there for you as well, just check out the video in my favourites “A Soft Place To Fall”, a little bit of me in a past life as a rock guitar player, I’m sure you’ll like the video, not real estate based but something a little different. I’ll be adding more videos to this in the next few days and weeks as I move more into vlogging, so please check it out and as always, please let me have your comments good or bad.

If you have been reading my blog for awhile or have attended one of my on line presentations, you will have gathered that I’m a fan of using video as a tool to market not only yourself and office but also your clients properties. Check out my previous post on this Research on the Power of Real Estate Videos .

Whilst I’m a fan I realise there are some limitations of the medium, and that is, in most cases the consumer needs to view the video in it’s entirety and hasn’t had the ability, well at least here in this country, to view the various chapters or rooms and navigate around the video like you can on a virtual tour. If the video of the property is longer than, say 90 seconds, I believe you lose the attention span of the consumer, but now available in the US and I’m hoping it won’t be long before someone does it here is Australia, if you do provide this capability please let me know, and I’ll include you in my presentation and free publicity, is a video tour that enables the consumer to jump chapters and view the areas of the property that are important to them.

Here’s a screen grab and link to the home page which will give you an idea on how the video screen shot appears and how you can then use the chapters to navigate around the property.

http://www.realtyflix.com/

Another great idea from RealtyFlix.com, is that you can film the property on your own camera and if you don’t feel comfortable about editing it yourself you can forward the full video to them for editing. Yes they charge a fee but it may not be an issue if you’re not familiar with editing software. The technology available now, is making the process of using and making video more and more accessible to agents and consumers alike. The growth in video on the web has been incredible over the past 12 months and will continue to be a powerful tool for real time marketing on the net.

YouTube founder Chad Hurley recently gave the following quote on where he sees the future of online video: “In ten years, we believe that online video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and accessible form of communication. The tools for video recording will continue to become smaller and more affordable. Personal media devices will be universal and interconnected.”

Experiment with video, read my post on Creating Cut Through In A Cluttered Market – Create Your Own Video Show!! on how you can use video, don’t limit your imagination, this medium is portable content and you can use it lots of different ways to market yourself.

Most of all, be creative and good luck!! See you at the Oscars.

This past week I’ve spent time in Victoria and NSW visiting real estate offices and I must make a very special mention of Bianca and Neil Brown from Century21 Wentworth Falls, I was in their office yesterday and spent what to me, was a very inspiring morning. Their desire, commitment and dedication to evolve their business on the net actually inspired me. During the morning the subject of video came up, including the use of video for an office profile, on their properties and vlogging, that’s the video version of a blog. My attempt at this just recently astounded me with the results that my little piece got from Viddler.com, Over 200 embeds and 50 views, not bad for a 4 minute piece recorded in a hotel room and then placed only on my blog.

So I thought I would go one step further with this and evolve the process and look at what a real estate agent could achieve with a weekly or daily video update. Technology has made this process so simple now that anyone can record a video and then load it to the web, and you don’t need any real skills to do this, just a camera or webcam and a computer. The idea of communicating in real time by blogging, podcasting and Vlogging is just starting to be utilised by real estate marketers here in Australia, although it is very popular with US based agents. I was chatting to Neil and Bianca about using video on a weekly basis to provide market updates and create a communication tool that could be syndicated via their own C21 web site and also tap into social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube and Itunes.

So lets look further into this and see where it could go, real estate agents could use it to provide information instantly to clients and buyers alike, provide market updates,even market their clients houses via these updates. Record your video after your weekend open homes and provide that information to your vendors or just report on the results of auctions on that weekend. You could even create your own real estate show using this method, interview local people and share information to your audience. Promote your show via your marketing on listings and traditional marketing, add it to your letter box drops etc, this all helps to create an audience for your show.

I know some of you reading this may think you have enough to do now without adding more work to your day and I agree this will not be for everybody, but just think of the niche you could create for yourself with this, being able to provide your clients with real time market information or use it to create a wider market for your business.  I’m going to put my own thoughts on this into action and start to introduce more video into my blog, I’ll add it to Itunes and Youtube as well and see how popular it becomes.

So after having this flash of creativity, I did some research on the power of video and during this research it led me to a Canadian Realtor by the name of Tom Everitt who is based in Vancouver Canada. Tom is a realtor who has created his own TV show and along with his wife Kerrie records and uploads videos to his web site daily. I’ve included one of those videos for you to see his profile after being interveiwed for the local TV news channel.

If after watching this video you would like to visit his web site and look at his videos, here’s the link for you. http://www.thinktom.com/

The concepts and ideas are limitless for this, so get your Video camera ready and start recording!!!!