Over at Agent Genius, Amy Chorew has a post up entitled “How One Company Conquered Video”. The post was obviously a nice plug for one of the principles of Coldwell Banker premier in Berlin Connecticut and a local video company, but it somehow set me off a bit.
Here was my comment on the post:
Conquered Video?
The local CB’s approach, while more progressive than most was likely a wasted effort. Fred’s right, these are lame. And Bob’s right. How is anyone gonna see these things?
What Coldwell Banker should do is this:
1. Work out a deal with Flip or Vado so that their agents can buy cameras at a discount.
2. Help each of their agents set up a Youtube account and understand how to upload videos from their cameras and do some very basic editing using Youtube’s built in features.
3. Assign each agent a theme to video around. Examples: Neighborhood Driving Videos, Interviews With Home Sellers, Interviews With Home Buyers, Featured Businesses, etc.
4. Give each company agent a Video Blog page (on a larger company Video Site) featuring a youtube gallery similar to the approach on display over at PropertunityKnocks.Com.
5. Make sure effective lead capture elements are built into these video blog pages.
6. Promote the overall video blog site to the public via a massive Facebook ads campaign.
The result?
Coldwell Banker does something that would accomplish a lot more for their agents (and the company as a whole) then working out some sleazy affiliate relationship with a vendor and taking a little something more from their agents.
Sorry for being skeptical here. But doesn’t it seem more like CB conquered their agents wallets here a little more effectively than they did video?
(I feel a little bad about that last part because I wrote it before my first cup of coffee. While it’s possible the local broker had an affiliate relationship with the local broker, it’s not fair to assume they did. Instead I wish I’d congradulated that broker for at least trying instead of being so grumpy. But oh well…)
The point is this. It’s now more possible for large Brokers to “conquer video” than it ever has been in the past. In my comment to Amy’s post I gave a sorta vague roadmap. But there’s a lot more I’m not talking about.
Dave, Gary, Jim… whoever personally gets in touch with me first can have first dibs at the rest…
Mike Stefonick says:
Ryan,
You really had some very good suggestions in this post.
I have actually done the community video by using my Olympus 7.2 digital camera mounted on a holder I bought from best buy for 19.00.
The molded prong has a suction cup at one end which attaches to either the windshield or the speedometer glass on my Porsche SUV.
So one can drive around and talk about the community. The camera records sound.
Or you can point the camera at yourself while driving and have the viewers see you.
It works great!
September 29, 2009 — 10:24 am
Kevin Schmidtchen says:
I am STILL skeptical about video. One day here in the near future it is going to work (I think), but none so far. To this point, I have not seen any real estate video that makes me think “Wow…that helps selling the home!!!”.
If you have…please send me a link.
To this day, big, well taken pictures and lots of them with a thoughtful detailed description of the home and area will trump any video I have seen to date.
September 30, 2009 — 12:55 am
Ryan Hartman says:
Kevin,
I don’t think it’s about selling an individual home. It’s about selling lots of them.
Now that everyone and their brother has an idx search on their site, video is your opportunity to offer local home searchers and sellers something different – A live glimpse at what’s going on in the area plus a taste for what it’ll be like to work with the agent doing the vid.
September 30, 2009 — 7:07 am
Greg Dallaire says:
Yeah when Ryan’s talking about video it’s not the typical type we think of. The slide slow type videos of homes with cheezy music and annotations are not really per say going to help sell a home.
Now giving a consumer the ability to interact with you through video in their private home and learn about whats going in your local real estate markets, restaurants whatever it may be gives you an opportunity to give them content that can build a relationship over time.
It’s all about generating leads and if a consistent flow of real estate information or info about the local community does it i’m all for it.
October 6, 2009 — 8:06 pm