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Tag: video (page 1 of 1)

November 1, 2010

Developing The Perfect Content Map For Your Real Estate Blog

by

Las Vegas Mortgage Blogger

Author website

Regardless of the recent debates about whether or not a real estate blog should be considered a solid foundation for a single agent to develop a realistic business model on, there are still many benefits of publishing content on a site you own… provided everything is organized properly.

I follow the CopyBlogger school of thought for designing strategic landing pages to ensure my target audience gets the exact information they’re looking for when they hit my sites for the first time.

While I do feature categories and tags in non-prominent areas of the footer or custom sidebars, I try to keep my main informational points of interest flowing from the top down in order to respect the time my readers have to spend online.

Homeowners and new buyers can easily get overwhelmed with the hundreds of details they may need to be aware of when it comes to the mortgage or real estate process.

One simple answer can easily lead them to five other questions that they didn’t know they needed to be asking.

Designed with the big picture in mind, your blog can effectively lead someone through their fact-finding mission in a painless and strategic manner.

Obviously, articulating this complex home buying thing in a manner that non-industry people can understand is great way to build trust with your potential clients.

Agents are obsessively consumed with “Personal Branding” to the point where buyers have to invest valuable seconds of their life on a site sifting through awards, testimonials, twitter feeds and media interviews before they can find a page that actually addresses their real needs and concerns.

However, I feel industry blogs have come a long way in the past five years.

But, we need to get better at focusing on homeownership education if we’re truly going to impact a positive change in our local real estate markets.

Here’s an example of my Mortgage 101 section, which has significantly increased in stickiness since I took out the sidebars and customized the page layout to serve as more of a site index with a purpose.

My ultimate goal is to be able to send borrowers and agents to my mortgage blog without Read more

June 15, 2010

Killer Real Estate Videos That Won’t Kill Your Budget

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Yesterday I put up a post on Marketing Videos and Real Estate.  My plea was for more creativity and less facts.  My point? An agent who gets creative and starts using video wisely might just take down the Goliath agent in their neck of the woods.  The very first comment, from Tallahassee Realtor Barry Bevis, got me to thinking.  He said: “Quality at a price is the struggle…  Without going “Hartman” I can’t figure out how to make a good video at a reasonable cost.”  I quickly sat down and jotted out a half dozen video ideas, then put the pad down and walked away.  When working with creative ideas, I usually find it’s a good idea to let them breathe for a while and come back later.  Often times, after rereading them, you discover even fresher and better ideas.  No such luck today though… you get the original ideas and all their rough edges. 🙂

The goal here is to throw some ideas out and have the genius that is BHB add a lot more.  If we’re lucky, this could turn into a “mini-library” of video marketing ideas for real estate agents temporarily running low in the creativity tank and staring at an empty screen.  For me, it’s all about latching onto an aspect of the house and then running a little wild.  Oh, and I love to steal already well-established ideas from the big boys.

VISA Take-Off #1 – there are a number of ways to shoot this.  Show aspects of the house that shine and do the voice-over: “View of the mountains, $10,000; Jacuzzi tub in your masterbath, $3000; and so on.  Then come in with the conclusion everyone knows: “Owning your own home, priceless.”  The key is what you show during that line: Young husband carrying beautiful bride across threshold.  Or, husband painting vertical, purple stripes in the living room while the kids nod approvingly. Or, an exterior evening shot of the house with every window warmly lit while we see the sights and sounds of a fantastic party going on inside.  Single site web address appears at the bottom of the screen.

VISA Take-Off #2 – Same idea, but a child’s perspective (especially Read more

June 14, 2010

Video Killed the Real Estate Star…

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

I love marketing.  I love the opportunity presented by a brand new marketing campaign to be creative and stand out from the day-to-day noise of everyone else.  Unfortunately, most agents don’t share my zeal for marketing.  At least, I assume they don’t; how else to explain the mind-numbing dreck I see every day.  Whether by email, on Twitter, over Facebook, online; even on flyers! (When there are flyers.)  Most agents seem to have attended the Detective Joe Friday school of marketing: “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Video affords us a new form of communication.  It includes multiple modalities that can reach – and interest – many more people than an equivalent, uni-dimensional form of communication.  Some people are predominantly visual, some auditory and some kinesthetic.  An email loses two of those groups, so does a radio spot.  But with video we can reach out to all three groups; we can create terrific visual, we can add sound and we can tell a story that creates emotion.  But even with all that going for it, there is still a limit on effectiveness: us.  In the computer world there is a maxim: garbage in, garbage out.  That can be true of video marketing too, but let’s give it a positive spin.  Here’s the maxim I suggest:

CREATIVITY IN, CASH OUT

I expect some might find that a little too crass, but never forget: the ultimate goal is skinnin’ cats.  In any case, my point is creativity.  Believe it or not, a marketing piece for a listing does NOT have to include all the details; that’s what the single site is for, right?  A marketing piece, and especially a video marketing piece, has as its purpose one real objective: TO STAND OUT FROM THE NOISE!  Be memorable, make someone laugh; if you’re really creative: go viral.  This serves the dual purpose of generating interest in what you’re marketing AND generating interest in you – the best damn agent that viewer has ever met.  Now that’s getting bang for your marketing buck.

Neither of the following two videos is about real estate.  Nor, really, are they much about their product.  But they are creative, they are memorable and they are viral.  Look at what Read more

March 2, 2009

Can a Little Mr. Roboto & Some Video Kill The SEO Star?

by

Retechulous...

Author website

Chris Johnson reached out to me last week by sending over a custom css file he had laying around for the totally uncustomized Thesis theme I had rolling on my personal site. I thanked him for the hand and did a little tweaking. Then he busted on me again a few days later for ignoring some really basic SEO rules o’ thumb. This time figured I’d save my reaction for BHB…

Why didn’t I waste any effort makin’ pretty or SEO ing PropertunityKnocks.Com?

The answer is really pretty simple: I’d spent the previous year or so working to generate leads via the web on another site by writing like crazy, looking for links, and doing crazy stuff with rss based plugins, but now I had a few secret weapons that were making lead generation a lot simpler.

Here’s what they were.

One of these. (A Pink One..Don’t Ask)
And this.
And of course…this and this.
And most most importantly, This!. (Credit where credit is due.)

And I used them twice a week, without fail, for a month or so. Consistently. Mondays and Thursday’s @ 9am, Mr. Roboto style.

The result? Leads. Lots of em. Warm inbound phone calls with questions about the “Propertunities” I’d featured. Plenty to sustain me with a comfortable income and eventual repeat investor business for years to come. (The videos were all of REO listings.)

But as is my usual MO I eventually got distracted, took another job, and gave up the Roboto video routine. And something weird but not totally unexpected happened. Even though I’d stopped taking videos and hijacking craigs list traffic, I was still getting phone calls weeks and now months later…”

So when Chris reached out with some friendly criticism it seemed like the right time to stop ignoring PKnocks and get it going again.

But do you think I went a little overboard?

Could it be that PropertunityKnocks.Com is now a national real estate video blog?

Take a look and tell me what you think. If you wanna join the fun, let me know and I’ll set you up with a page for your area and maybe give you access to feature Read more

November 9, 2008

It’s my video.. you can have the audio!!

by

Commercial Real Estate Broker

Author website

Having spent the better part of a year on a project (which is done), I’ve been a faithful reader but apathetic contributor.. partly because I haven’t had anything catch my attention (other than $1.5T evaporating from the market – something for another post) long enough to spur those creative urges.. but honestly I’ve been fairly lazy.. 

With that.. UMG, Universal Music Group, is taking my “views” off of YouTube! They’re not asking, they’re telling (email below from yesterday)..

 

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself help center | e-mail options | report spam

Dear Sean, 

Your video “The Tree is Gone” has been identified by YouTube’s Content Identification program as containing copyrighted content which UMG claims is theirs.

Your video “The Tree is Gone” is still available because UMG does not object to this content appearing on YouTube at this time. As long as UMG has a claim on your video, they will receive public statistics about your video, such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on your video’s page.

Claim Details:

Copyright owner: UMG
Content claimed: Some or all of the audio content
Policy: Allow this content to remain on YouTube.       

  • Place advertisements on this video’s watch page.

Applies to these locations:
United States

UMG claimed this content as a part of the YouTube Content Identification program. YouTube allows partners to review YouTube videos for content to which they own the rights. Partners may use our automated video / audio matching system to identify their content, or they may manually review videos.

If you believe that this claim was made in error, or that you are otherwise authorized to use the content at issue, you can dispute this claim with UMG and view other options in the Video ID Matches section of your YouTube account. Please note that YouTube does not mediate copyright disputes between content owners. Learn more about video identification disputes.

Sincerely,

The YouTube Content Identification Team

Some time ago, I put together some family videos with background music for the “rents” in Florida, and one in particular was about a 100-yr old oak tree that died in the backyard of the in-laws and had to be cut down.. So I filmed the “execution” with my background Read more

February 1, 2008

Up Your Marketing Game

by

Real Estate Rainmaker

Author website

What tips do you have to share with us to help everyone brush up on their marketing game?

Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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