Podcasting technology for real estate websites, and Realtors novice to the experience, is rather simple for beginning the process. Once you have your feet wet creating your podcasts on real estate news, great new listings or insights on the housing markets financial picture, you will appreciate what you might like in the way of technological upgrades. The best part is that podcasting technology works equally well on PCs or Macs – no new computer needed (unless this is the excuse you were looking for to upgrade to bigger and faster).

In a nutshell, the podcast simplest hardware set-up is use an external microphone plugged into your computer. With the use of software, you record you podcast and store the file on your computer’s hard drive. After recording, make any edits (to cut out a cough or statement you wish you hadn’t said) and save the audio file in the MP3 file format. Then using another software, possibly one on your computer or stored on your website server, upload the MP3 file to your website and create any links on your web page or blog entry to link to the MP3 file.

Breaking it down, first is the microphone. By all testing, an external mic captures the sound of your voice better than the ones provided with the computer. For software, keep it simple and download the free Audacity sound recording and editing software that works on Macs and PCs. As a Mac owner you may already own Garage Band, which does the job admirably well also.

Once you understand the basics and you cotton to the idea of using podcasts as a part of your real estate Internet marketing strategy, you can move into more professional recording devices. For under $250 you can get a professional low impedance microphone, small 4 input mixer board and headphones. Sennheiser E835, Shure SM 57 or 58, and Audix OM-2 all have good mics for around $100 – $150 (check Ebay!). A favorite mixer is either the Mackie or a Behringer – they both have excellent small mixers for great prices. The benefit of using a mixer is you can easily mix two mics and record interviews with other brokers, Realtors players in the local real estate market. Mixers also give your the capability of mixing in music at your intro and exit to add spice to your podcast. Then add a decent pair of headphones – unless you have them already for your stereo system.

Work with your real estate web designer or webmaster to make sure your blog is set up with the necessary plug-ins for podcasts. IMCD Web Design uses a popular blog platform that easily works with podcasts, so if you are already working with one of the industry greats, your segue from blogging to podcasting should be a seamless evolution.

When judging the need to podcast and learn something new, remember that pollsters were surprised to find the many baby boomers are listening to podcasts – they are not reserved for the teenage non-real estate buying markets! Contact IMC’s Realtor website sales team to see how quickly you can boost your sales leads with a real estate web design that incorporates both a real estate blog and podcasting capabilities.

Part 3 of 3

Similar to radio shows, creating effective real estate website podcasts is more than creating a recording. Effective real estate website podcasts draws upon your judicious use of adjectives to describe real estate markets and the effect of changing economic news. Unlike videocasts, which have pictures and video to help illustrate your remarks, podcasts rely on your descriptive language to paint the whole picture and get your listener involved. Podcasts are one more Internet marketing tool to boost the visibility and helpfulness of your real estate website.

Podcasting mirrors the marketing principles found in writing for blogs, article managers and web pages. Start with as riveting and attention-getting a title as possible.

Many people may be downloading your podcast or getting it sent to them on an RSS feed so your title will be a large determinant as to whether they play your message now, later or never.

For the body, review your real estate scene and go with news; education; tips for selling, investing or buying; reviews of local attractions; or a commentary on the real estate economy. Don’t be afraid to be opinionated! People may love or hate what you say about the local economy and real estate market, just don’t be lukewarm and boring. With something out of the ordinary, listeners will tune in to see what you have to say. Best length? Stop before you start repeating yourself. If people can trust that every time they get your podcast that they will get a nugget of information and you won’t waste their time, they will check in more often.

Just as in real estate sales – ask for the sale! Create a closing that is both a call to action and a reinforcement of one of your real estate services. Any facet of real estate news can be creatively brought around to selling the sizzle on your services. For instance, this blog entry on podcasts is part of an overall online marketing campaign for real estate web designs by IMCD Web Design.

Whether you write out your podcast (and double its use as one of your real estate blog entries) or simply jot down your ideas in an outline form, do a dry run. For beginner podcasters, a little practice helps you get an idea on your timing and how many topics you can cover in 5, 10 or 15 minutes. If you find that using notes causes you to stumble or get distracted, simply go over it and then talk without notes as if you are talking directly to a customer. Remember to smile, people can hear the smile in your voice.

Subscribe to your own podcast so you hear what your real estate website visitors hear. Do you sound professional and focused on your message? With a little practice you will begin to sound like an old pro. For tutorials, listen to NPR radio shows to see how the news folks provide news and information with the descriptive language, knowing their audience can’t see the things on which they are reporting.

Once you get used to podcasting, you find more areas to use the technology in your real estate company. Training, company updates and recording important meetings for missing staff are just a few business areas made easier with podcasts.

For more help on your podcasting skills, stay tuned to Part 3, where IMC web developers bring home the technology needed to create your own podcast. If you need a boost in your real estate website’s visibility on the search engines, contact the IMC web design team to get your real estate website going by the website developers who know how to help you generate sales leads.

Part 2 of 3 – To be Continued…

Podcasting is on your real estate website gives you greater ability to sell your Realtor services beyond the scope of the website. Podcasting, a name created by blending “iPod” and “broadcasting”, is simply a way of creating and posting audio files that can be played on an iPod, any computer or MP3 player. Audio files are stored in the MP3 format, a universally accepted portable file format that compresses the audio file for a smaller memory footprint without degradation of the sound.

By using an entry on your blog or a web page on your real estate website, you can make your podcast available for your web visitors to listen to or download. Without any attendant video, podcasts allow your visitor to play your pre-recorded message while reading other areas of your web page. Note: podcasting is only used for audio recordings – video recordings have been named “vodcasts” and take longer to download due to their larger file size.

Podcasting has the added component, similar to real estate blog entries, of building RSS subscriptions. Your real estate clients can receive your podcast file as soon as you post it. Besides the RSS subscription, software, such as Apple’s iTunes, can automatically retrieve and store podcasts.

With the MP3 file format, you can allow your website visitors to download the podcast to their computers for loading on their MP3 players or burning a CD. By making the recording portable, your clients can play your podcasts in the car when visiting the neighborhood or property you talk about. Your listener is not tied to being on their computer to play the podcast. This portability factor allows your podcasts to move your Internet marketing beyond the confines of the computer to a greater level of accessibility for your real estate market.

Podcasting is similar to having your own radio show with the additional benefits of no need to obtain government licenses, adhere to strict federal regulations, constantly find show sponsors or be limited by broadcasting signal strength. With your real estate websites up and operational, you are already your own sponsor and the world is your broadcast area. Any “commercial break” you take will be to extol your real estate services and to reinforce your businesses brand.

Though podcasting may be a new technology for many real estate agents, the simplicity of recording a talk, its portability, and growing popularity, may quickly drive podcasting to become a more heavily used Internet marketing venue. IMCD Web Design has found that online marketing with real estate websites follows traditional marketing trends. The wider you cast your marketing net online with a content management system, blog, targeted Realtor marketing web pages, feature listing tools and IDX web solutions, the more web visitors and sales leads you gather. Podcasting joins this list of online real estate marketing tools. Next, marketing secrets for creating an effective real estate podcast.

Part 1 of 3 – To be Continued…

It usually the few intrepid real estate agents who benefit from early adoption of real estate website technologies or figure out how to best apply new technology to their marketing plan. When the Internet was in its infancy in 1995, of the almost 24,000 websites on net World Wide Web, 4000 were for real estate companies. These were 4000 brokerages that placed their marketing out ahead of the change in buying habits. Now, when most home buyers are searching the Internet, the early adopters have a strong competitive edge since Google gives points for older domain names.

By 2002, 31 percent of real estate companies had adopted Internet marketing. 10 years after the World-Wide Web’s arrival 3 out of 4 real estate agents had established their personal websites. Late adopters, though facing an obstacle of a very competitive field, also have a benefit of connecting with real estate web design companies, like IMCD Web Design , who have real estate website packages with proven performance records of generating sales leads.

The nature of technology is to always create a new gadget that less than 20% of a given market sees a business use for. Social network websites like Facebook started out a website for college students and now is attracting millions of users as parents find business uses for the technology. Even Congress is using social networks and video posting websites to stay in communication with their constituents. If Congress has adopted it, it is well past time real estate agents should be able to find productive uses for podcasts, video-on-demand web postings and online community-building strategies as adjuncts to their real estate websites.

IMC recognizes the commercial benefit to early technology adoption and creates real estate web designs that are expandable to include content management systems that allow agents and Realtors to blog, podcast, vlog (posting videos on their blogs), and post virtual tours.

With newer technologies making relationship building over the Internet easier, many technologies can be adapted to the real estate industries greatest need – building and filling the sales funnel. Call IMC’s web design specialist to upgrade to a real estate website that can support your desire to use the latest technologies to increase your online marketing results.

A step up from creating real estate website marketing podcasts is to add video to your multimedia blogging. “Vodcasting” or “Vlogging” is web-speak for video posts or blogs that use simple digital video technology to create short online videos for their real estate website. Real estate agents can easily create short video presentations of a new property listing or a short video guides for potential clients who are buying or selling a home. These video-on-demand real estate productions add to the 24/7 information content of your Realtor website.

For educational purposes, vlogging is a way to reach the MTV generation and people who learn better by hearing than by reading. With a little practice, agents can learn to ignore the camera and just chat as if they were face to face with a client. A good vodcast contributes to building your “expert” standing in the viewers’ mind and you website’s credibility.

For marketing purposes, the ability to create short videos expands your marketing reach into highly visited sites like YouTube. By also posting your listings’ virtual home tour videos on YouTube with a links back to your real estate website, you both add an incoming link and promote your property to an audience with a proven affinity for video presentations.

IMCD Web Design offers real estate agents an easy-to-use blogging platform with the capacity to host vodcasts. By allowing real estate web visitors the ability to download a vodcast, they can view it later. The Featured Listings option allows real estate agents to promote their properties both with static photos, slide shows and video virtual tours.

In the Internet’s technology driven marketplace, vodcasts are a cutting edge tool for gaining a competitive advantage for your real estate website. Call IMC’s sale team about improving your real estate online marketing campaign with a real estate blog with vodcast capability. Meeting customers with the information that helps them narrow their property search benefits both real estate agents and their online clients.

Fujifilm FinePix Z20fd digital camera has technological improvements that benefit real estate agents with websites in several useful ways.

Where the FinePix Z20fd really stands out is its Dual Blog mode for your real estate website that automatically re-sizes any still image or movie so you can easily post the images or movie to your real estate blog. The compact blog-ready image is also small enough to be sent by email to your home buying clients or property investors.

Real estate agents have to work with a wide range of lighting conditions form interior and exterior property shots to the need for high resolution balanced with uploading acceptable image sizes. The Z29fd has the features that benefit agents in these conditions.

As with many digital cameras, it is small enough for Realtors to slip in their pocket. It has the traditional memory card storage plus an additional 45 meg in-camera storage for times when the memory card is full. Its 3X optical zoom takes in most applications, however, jumping up to the pricier Z100fd allows an increase to 5X optical zoom.

For an extra edge in making your property photos as professional looking as possible by reducing image blur, the camera uses Fujifilm’s Picture Stabilization technology – faster shutter speeds and higher sensitivity. This technology also makes it easier to shoot acceptable low light indoor photos of room interiors. Helping with handling various lighting conditions, FinePix Z20fd has 14 different scene positions for automatically adjusting from bright sun to low light night scenes.

For building a virtual home tour video, the FinePix Z20fd has a Successive Movie mode that allows Realtors to use in-camera software to stitch different videos together into 60 second sections. The 2.5″ LCD view finder helps viewing pictures, especially in cases where the photographers where glasses.

Ease of use also figures in its ability to transfer images wirelessly to any IrSimple(TM) enabled cell phones, projectors, laptops and photo kiosks.

With all the different leverage points real estate websites offer with blogs, vlogs, featured listings with room for plenty of property images, and the growing popularity of virtual tours for moving homes for sale quicker, digital cameras are a must. The well-priced Fujifilm FinePix Z20fd digital camera could well become one of your potent Internet marketing tools.

Due to the travel time in a Realtor’s day, technology that helps improve your real estate website communications capacity can lead to more business and better ability to serve real estate clients. Below we review some of the latest technology tools that can make a real estate agents life easier.

Portable power sources to extend the life of your cell phones or computers come in an array of sizes from the 10w APC Mobile Power Pack, the midrange Duracell or Xantrex Powersource Mobile 100 to the Tekkeon MP3450 myPower. Two of these portable battery backups have both the 120 volt receptacle and USB ports for most devices. Additional adaptors for most cell phones or portable electronic devices come with the Tekkeon MP3450. For adding to your laptop’s mobility, online reviewers found that the more powerful Tekkeon MP3450 had by far the longest battery life. For keeping your cell phone, iPod and Bluetooth devices going, the APC model garnered very good reviews for its very compact size, light weight, adaptability to devices, speed of charging and its lower price. A debatable aspect of the APC is the need to hit a reset button every 10 to 20 minutes to keep the recharging going, but on the other hand, it doesn’t waste juice and holds it charge for a long time.

For real estate agents using a Blackberry device to keep up with emails while on the go, the new Bold has doubled the speed of the processor over the last model (the Curve), has a high resolution display and has the fast 3G access and WiFi connectivity. Similar to the iPhone, Realtors can use the Blackberry’s Internet and graphics capability to show clients featured homes for sale listings. For Realtors who don’t need to ask directions because you are never lost, there is a GPS added to the Blackberry. This way, you are not only not lost, but you can tell where you are!

Last on our list are the noise-cancel ling Bluetooth wireless headsets. Recently Aliph released their Jawbone 2 that comes with a bit of a caveat: Buy it from a place where you can return it if it does not fit. If it does fit, then Aliph’s noise canceling technology developed for military uses comes in very handy. The headset automatically regulates your voice volume based on the background noise. The latest incarnation of the Jawbone is half the size of its predecessor. The key to the Jawbone 2’s effectiveness is if the ear piece fits such that the voice activity sensor rests on your cheek. The other model to consider is the BlueAnt Z9. Reviews found this phone to be the standard to judge others. The BlueAnt allows you to connect it to more than one mobile device, so if need be, you can switch back and forth between two cell phone conversations. Fans of the BlueAnt Z9 also like the two year guarantee. With both phones, the major benefit for a Realtor is being able to call (hands-free) from your car without the road noises intruding into you conversation with your clients.

Finding technology that helps real estate agents connect better with clients often can mean helping move your presentations or sales along. If you can use your Blackberry to show clients your Featured Listings on your IMC Agent Select website, that is making the most of your portable presentation resources.