Online Real Estate Technology

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!!!!

Hello, I’ve been threatening to do this for months and now, and today,I’ve taken the plunge and recorded my first video. I’m currently in Perth WA doing some seminars for domain.com.au and after spending today talking about the impact of social media and how you can use this tool to drive additional leads and prospects as part of your office marketing, I was inspired to record my first attempt. So sitting in my hotel room with a nice glass of red wine, thanks Katie at C21, here it is. Now I’m no Mel Gibson, so please remember, it’s been recorded on my web cam at 6:30 in the evening, but it goes to show that no matter where you are you can still use this technology to communicate with your customers.

I’ll improve on this, I hope, lol, but at least it’s a start.

As a follow up piece to my post yesterday regarding the power of real estate videos, ABI research have found during some new research that the number of people watching on line video through a browser has doubled in the past year growing from 32% a year ago to 63% today. This has been driven by the amount of rich content available in ad-supported format on portals and via social networks, along withincreasing demand from people for video in both short-and long-form on line content.

“Consumers are changing their on line habits quickly,” says research director Michael Wolf. “Broadband speeds have continued to increase at the same time that Hollywood has decided on line distribution is a legitimate monetization opportunity that will increase total return on their video assets, and expand audiences.”

When asked if they watched long-form content in the form of TV shows or movies on line, close to half of those under 25, and 53 percent of those 25-29 said they do so once a month or more.

Older viewers are much more likely to have experimented once with on line shows. Seventy-five percent of those over 65 who watch on line video said they have never watched TV shows or movies on line.

“Today’s younger consumers are developing habits that will mean drastic changes for the video entertainment market,” said Wolf. “Many consume a large percentage or even a majority of theirvideo entertainment through on line distribution today, and we believe that this trend will continue to accelerate as more efforts are made to put this content on various non-PC screens.”

So armed with those type of growth results, it’s not hard to see that video will soon be demanded by the property searcher who requires a more intimate view of the property and even for the agent themselves.

Little point to remember, over 33% of users of the real estate portals in Australia say they are looking to list their property with a real estate agent they find on line, so why not use video to boost your profile on line?  

Source: http://www.abiresearch.com/home.jsp

You’ll hear me sprouting about this subject and I’m quite passionate about agents embracing video, see this earlier post: Using Video in Your Real Estate Marketing as an example of this. I’m passionate about agents using video to promote listings, their profile and their offices and as I’ve mentioned before, this is portable content, so you can take a simple video and share it with the world. When you create an account with Youtube for instance, you create a channel, and you can post videos here to share with consumers. Using video in your listing presentation to promote how you market your clients property is also powerful marketing. I receive in my letter box, at least 5 pieces of marketing material each week and all go in my bin, but how about dropping a office profile on DVD in my letter box?, now that would be a point of difference, more importantly share this with me on your own web site.

All of this is of course leading somewhere, and here it is, research now coming out of the US on the growth of video is staggering, so if you ever needed more incentive to start adding video to your listing tools and properties then this is it!!

For example: 134 Million people went on line to watch on average, 81 videos each, from a total of 11 Billion viewed. In figures released from comScore:

• 71% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video
• The average online viewer watched 228 minutes of video
• 18-34 year olds were the heaviest viewers watching 287 minutes each
• 82.1 million viewers watched 4.1 billion videos on YouTube
  • 49.8 videos per viewer
• 46 million viewers watched 481 million videos on MySpace
  • 10.4 videos per viewer
• The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes

Youtube ranked the highest with 98% of all videos viewed on line.

With these types of numbers starting to impact the habits of consumers, it won’t be long before this starts to impact us here in Australia. So my question to you is, why wait, start to implement this as a strategy for your office and take advantage of what is just around the corner. If you are not sure how to do this and would like some help, then just send me a comment and I’ll answer any question you have on getting this up and running in your business.

Also check out my earlier post about video increasing the perceived property value Property Videos Increase Percieved Property Value  and you can download my podcast on this topic here : http://mikeandrew.podomatic.com/

As a follow up to my previous post, I’ve included a link to a great web site that features an article on “Web Video Marketing – Best Practices”  The article goes in to some detail about why you should be using video, not only for your properties, but also for your office marketing. There are some great tips and advice for you and highlights areas where you can market your video.

Here’s the link to the article and I hope it creates a real passion in you to start to adopt video in your marketing efforts.

http://www.reelseo.com/video-marketing-best-practices/

Ever thought about posting videos to youtube? maybe putting your corporate office video and property videos on youtube? well check out Century21′s US based youtube channel, I’ve spoken about this in an earlier post, for some interesting ideas and thought starters on using the social network sites to distribute and promote you, your brand and product. Youtube is not just for the backyard video though, it is now becoming a very powerful tool in the distribution of educational videos, music videos etc. Even University’s are using it, companies are promoting on it and you should too. Why not start vlogging, the video version of a blog,and then promoting this on youtube. Start promoting yourself in the digital age and by uploading to youtube you will start to market yourself to the new generation of on line researchers.

I’m about to start looking at vlogging and I’ll start to create video versions of my podcasts as well as look at including interviews with industry professionals as part of my strategy. But I thought today I’d show you some very interesting uses of video…. So don’t say you weren’t warned!!!

First up is Century21′s “Agent of the Year”, now here is a very interesting approach to marketing a home:    

And if you really liked that!!! Here’s a more conservative use of the medium:

As I’ve mentioned before, video is portable content and you can use youtube to distribute your little gems.

Quite simple really, so why not start today? Why do you think Google paid $1.65 Billion for it

I was chatting today to a number of real estate agents in Mackay in Qld and in discussions after my presentation, up came the old chestnut of press vs on line and how much is or should be, invested by real estate agents in either medium. Well it got me thinking about a recent Yahoo survey of on line real estate users in the US and a snapshot of that survey is outlined here for you:

You can now check out my podcast for Using Video On Your Property Listings: 

http://mikeandrew.podOmatic.com/entry/2008-08-21T00_16_06-07_00

Have Fun, I did putting it together

Well just as you are getting used to the “new” technology of blogging!! along comes another update on this called Vlogging. This is where you get to put video to your blog, now if you are like me and have a good face for radio!! then you may shy away from this, but if you really want to add some new zing to your blog then this could be right up your alley, the team at MyTechopinion.com are running a competition for agents to try vlogging, so if you think you can create a video that answers the following question: What technology product or service has made the biggest impact on your real estate business? And why?Then have some fun and enter the competition, Heres the link and good luck if you decide to enter, come to think of it, I might even give it a try myself. Although I’m not exactly the Brad Pitt of the real estate industry!!