I’ve been having a great discussion with Sylvia Sam (Sutton REALTOR®) about the marketing value of online video tours for a real estate listing.

Here are the two sides of the discussion:

• me: Make video tours. They show a home / listing much better than photos or a virtual tour.
• Sylvia: (paraphrased) Video tours create a security risk to the consumer and should not be used. What if the video tours are used to case out a home for a robbery?

To catch you up on the discussion so far:

1. I made this comment about the minimal acceptable quality for an online listing:
   • A video walk through – HD quality, plays right off the website.
   • 10 to 20 photos, high quality. Not pics of random things. Limited view of the seller’s clutter.
   • Information: bedrooms, bathrooms, property taxes and amenities. (that’s enough)
   • User friendly / focused website.
2. Sylvia made this comment from her extensive experience on a police board
   • videos and floor plans make it easier for a criminal to case and rob the place
   • a responsible REALTOR® should never put their clients at risk

So what do you think? Discuss in the comments.

Image courtesy of ibcbulk from flickr.

This is the follow up blog post to my presentation to Sutton REALTORS®: How To Really Use Social Media. Here is the talk part of my presentation, approximately 8 minutes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Presentation Materials

• How to Really Use Social Media Keynote Slides (PDF)
• Homework for How to Really Use Social Media (PDF)

Some Commentary…

Since I started my real estate technology training workshops I realize that REALTORS® seem to ask the same questions. I get a lot of questions like this “how do I use technology fad X”?

I use ‘technology fad’ because my top three questions are usually:

1. How do I use Twitter?
2. How do I use Facebook?
3. How do I blog?

However, what I think REALTORS® are really asking is this:

How do I get more leads from the Internet?

The answer is simple.

1. Have conversations with people (twitter, facebook, blogging). This is social networking.
   
2. Provide useful information for free. Blogging is the easiest way, but you can do an old school website too.

Just give me the answer…

I was having a coffee/one on one training with Leilani Fong (web/@leilanihomes) a few days after the presentation. Leilani is a REALTOR®, young, smart and enthusiastic about taking her marketing 100% online.

The enlightening part of the conversation is when she demanded, “just tell me the answer” and in frustration I blurted out “if I answer that you’ll just ask me more questions”. Since Leilani was the second person this week to essentially demand the answer from me I finally realized that explaining how the technology works was an ineffective approach to teaching.

Most people don’t care about how the pizza is made. They want this: order, pay, eat, satisfaction. Skip the process, the history and the culture and just give me the pie.

So what they are really asking is.. what can I buy to get online marketing?

Well that is fairly easy to answer:

1. Online ads. Banner ads, Google AdWords, advertise on yahoo, on other people’s websites.
2. A web site from a real estate website builder. They’re plenty of them.
3. Hire an online marketing company.
4. Hire a web developer, a graphic designer and have them work on your web brand.
5. Hire a content writer to write and blog for you.
6. Hire an SEO company to optimize your web site.

There are lots of company’s that provide those services. I’m know they’re more than happy to have your business. If you’re happy about their results that’s value. Why wouldn’t you do it?

Well, in my first presentation about how the Internet is Changing Real Estate, I said that the net has made communication cheap. It has made it accessible to anybody not just the people with large marketing budgets. So the point of taking your marketing online is to get the same number of leads for less money. You can do it yourself.

However, going online is challenging right now for people with limited knowledge. Training out there is limited and expensive. Getting somebody else to do it for you (just give me the pie) is expensive but it’s better than nothing. The return on marketing online just isn’t there for most people. Even more sad is that the results all still suck, consumers are still unsatisfied and REALTORS® are still confused. There must be a better way.

Maybe I should throw out the disclaimer that the opinions on this blog are mine and not my employers. (heh).

Is there something better?

Yes. I’m working on it. It’s not ready yet but the core values are (alpha version):

1. 100% online only marketing. Save the trees.
2. Training. Lots and lots of training and information. We enable. We’ve embraced technology and learning.
3. Better and more information. Set a new standard for quality and quantity.
4. Open data. Reciprocity and VOWs are user unfriendly. User unfriendly sucks. If you want this listing in XML, in JSON, in ATOM, just add .xml, .json or .atom to a clean URL. If you want all of our listings, here is a RESTful API. Steal from Twitter’s API.
5. More people makes the system richer for everybody. More is more!
6. For people who believe in the same thing. Don’t worry about catering to everybody.
7. Usability. Empower REALTORS® to do their own online marketing.
8. Valuable. Price is what you pay, value is what you get. I want you get lots.

This morning I was listening to a real estate website sales rep give a presentation on their website technology. It got me thinking that after all this time online real estate marketing still sucks. The reason it sucks is because everybody has essentially the same web site with the same set of features. 

This is the problem.  When a realtor signs up for one of these websites they’re getting in the back of the line of the long tail of real estate websites. Then spend money and time trying to become a hit where all the action is. This is how online real estate marketing operates. Great if you’re a hit. Terrible if you are in the tail. 

Becoming a hit is hard. It takes doing small simple things over and over. This amounts to a significant amount of work. This work is rarely ever done and is the reason why most realtor sites are in the tail. 

Here are the basics for becoming and staying a hit: 

1. Start by picking a real estate niche, like a neighborhood, and dominate the search results for that niche. The curve still exists but you can get to the head quicker and the tail isn’t as long. 
2. Generate good, informative content in your niche. This is where all those small things add up. Share your knowledge and experience. Creating good informative content people want to link to results in good search engine placement. 
3. Make your site is search engine friendly. SEO is more about making your content easy for search engines to see instead of using a whole bunch of keywords in meaningless content. 
4. When you’ve dominated your niche choose another one and do the same thing. 

Another great seminar from TED, Seth Godin gives a great talk about being remarkable, marketing to Otakus and the changing nature of marketing. Seth is my favorite marketing speaker. This talk is worth the watch:

Click here to view the embedded video.

It breaks my heart to see blogs with great content languish in utter anonymity, devoid of comments, saddled with a seven-figure alexa traffic ranking, and rotting in pagerank purgatory. Well, no more, I say! Here’s what to do…

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