Many agents I speak to are a little hesitant to go down the path of producing Real Estate Videos, Their hesitation, and righfully so is that they have no idea about what to do once it has been produced. My advice to any agent wanting to use online video marketing is “Investigate your options” It probably isn’t your best option if you only want to play it over and over on your laptop.

A succesfull campaign means broadcasting it to the largest audience you can reach. So here are a few ideas to certainly get you on your way.

Youtube – any digital format video should be uploaded here, it’s free and optimized correctly will rank very competitively in the Google Search results. This is free

Email – Inlcude a link to your video in your email marketing This is free

Real Estate Portals – Nearly all portals allow for a video link to be embedded into the listing.  This won’t cost you anymore then what you are already paying.

Your own website – A no brainer and an extra benefit to the SEO of your own real estate site. You may need to check with your web developer to see if video can be incorporated into your site. If it can’t, then it’s time to upgrade

Print Media using QR Code – This is the link between your printed marketing and your online marketing. QR readers are available for most smartphones and users only need to scan the code to link them directly to the video on youtube. To download the QR reader for your iPhone click this link. Here is a link to the QR App for your Android Phone. Another QR Reader for Blackberry.  And offcourse we can not forget the QR Reader for Windows Phone 7. Once installed you can use the image below to test it out. Just scan it using your smartphone camera straight of the screen or print it and scan it of the paper. There are alos many sites where you can produce QR Codes for free. I use bit.ly.

Real Estate Video QR Code

Social Media – Broadcast to your fans and followers using facebook, twitter, linked in, Google+ Anywhere really where you can place a link or a video.

Window Display TV or in house video – It’s a nice touch to have a screen set up in your reception area or window display which can loop through current listings.

So there are a few ideas to get you started, if anyone has any more great ideas then please share them by placing a comment in this blog post.

Who will be the new star of online real estate video marketing?

It’s important that when we embrace new technology we do it right. Real estate videos are becoming more and more popular. Great? Well it is. But only if it’s done right.

There is much to consider when you decide to embrace video marketing for your real estate office and/or for your sellers online property marketing. In this article I would like to share some tips about optimizing your video content for search engines, real estate video SEO, aka VSEO.

The 4 steps to a succesfull real estate video SEO campaign are simple;

1. Select an Impressive Thumbnail – The thumbnail is a screen shot of your real estate video. It is what is displayed on web pages. You should review every second of your video and choose a frame which is the most compelling.
2. Host your video – Your own website and blogs are obvious places to host your video, however the most obvious place on the web to host your real estate video is youtube. Youtube videos have the best chance of high ranking in search engines. There are however other sites where you can host your video. Some of these are listed below;
   • Hulu: premium programming from the leading content companies, mostly TV and movies.
   • Metacafe: short entertainment videos.
   • Videojug: how-to videos, expert advice and tutorials.
   • Vimeo: a community of positive individuals with a wide range of video interests.
   • Google Videos, Yahoo! videos: online video platforms by major search engines.
3. Describe your video – It is impossible for search engines to understand what your video is about without it have the appropriate attributes. All videos loaded to Youtube should include:• Video Title Tag – A short descriptive and optimized headline which best summarizes the content of your real estate video
   • Video Description Tag – A more eloborate description up to about 160 words. Emphasis should be made to include all keywords selected for marketing your video
   • Video Tags – Much like keyword and phrase tags, just use the words and phrases you think people will use to find your video.
4. Broadcast your Real Estate Video - Last but certainly not least, your real estate video needs to be promoted, this should be done accross every platform you have access to like your facebook page and twitter profile, to your blog and agency website. Most real estate portals accept video as part of your online real estate marketing requirement. Setting up a youtube channel is also certainly an option you should consider if video is to be become an integral part of your real estate marketing.

I am looking forward to seeing lots of real estate videos published on the web over the next year. please feel free to forward your link.