As more of the real estate market migrates to the Internet to view property, the bar is being raised on the visual information real estate website’s provide. Being an early adopter of the video technology has a great upside for your real estate website and internet marketing strategy - less competition, more visibility. Besides virtual tours on your own real estate website, using video to sell property on the Internet has ventured into the free for all world of YouTube.

Even though YouTube is known for postings of amateur videos on an astounding array of subjects, it has become an avenue for showcasing real estate. The reason is simple, less competition on keyword searches. For example, to use the keyword search “colorado springs real estate” on 21-Feb-2007 on Google shows 526,000 results. The same search on YouTube.com brings only 337 returns. On Google Video, the keyword search brings 523 returns, which also includes the YouTube videos.

YouTube.com, the free video streaming service that lets people view and share videos online, also has a feature that lets real estate agents embed their YouTube real estate video on their websites. By copying code provided by YouTube, Real estate website designers can easily place YouTube videos into the layout of your real estate website. This allows real estate agents to maximize their video advertising investment.

Recently, YouTube announced an upcoming feature that benefits real estate agents - a new analytic tool that gives agents the ability to see where their viewers are located geographically. Hopefully the analytics will go so far as to present a differentiation of embedded views vs YouTube views, bounce rates, average time spent on the video, as well a list of embeds driving views to your video. These analytics should be similar to website page tracking software.

A 40 second video can feature the attractive selling points of a property with a voice-over as well as prominently positioning the agent’s contact information. By simply changing the voice-over track, real estate agents can use the same video for both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking website visitors.

As more Internet users change to high speed connections, videos will be faster and easier to download, thus paving the way to the growing use of video presentations becoming the new standard for property descriptions.

As video presentations of communities and real estate property become more the standard for real estate website property presentations, real estate agents doing their own filming may want to review some filming tips from the pros. The camera is an unblinking recorder and often little technicalities can ruin an otherwise superb shot of a home for sale.

The first step (similar to writing) is outline and plan your shots of the real estate property. This keeps the time it takes to video the property down and doesn’t leave you short of material when you are editing. After videoing several properties, this outline can evolve into a simple checklist. By turning your outline into a checklist, you can check off and keep track of the property shots as you take them.

In your planning, think about any “perspective on the property” shots, such as a nearby tech park, school or playground. These features can quickly enhance a property’s value beyond the intrinsic value of the house itself. Something about location.

The second tip in filming is to expand time. Did you suffer through the Super8 home movies that were shot trying to get as many vacation shots on one reel? Maybe that was the forerunner of the fast edit music videos. To video a home for sale, avoid “ocular whiplash” and mimic a live presentation by consciously holding a shot for 9 to 10 seconds. Turn off the part of your brain that says “Alright, enough already” when it seems like a long time, but only 3 seconds have passed.

Similar to holding a shot, always video more than you need. With more material, you are better able to pick the best shots and have a very good overall presentation. Plan for a two and a half to five minute video, depending on the property and the file size you want. You can always create a 40 second overview video for YouTube or Google Video that directs the viewer back to your real estate website for the director’s cut version.

Use a tripod. Shaky videos inherently are agitating and mark your shots “unprofessional”. When buying a tripod, test it to make sure the panning (side to side movement) is very smooth. Cheaper tripods may have a stutter step panning that ruins the smoothness of a pan shot.

Frame your shots. Between your video appearing on a small screen and your large nature of the property, make sure your perspectives are correct. Don’t make something look too far away or so close that you don’t capture the entire house or room.

As with any new skill, practice first. Video your own home or office. While editing you can see how lighting affects shots, how furniture placement may change the feel of a room or that next time you will look for the dead plant or odd sock that appeared in the shot. Also check real estate videos online with a critical eye. Note what type of shots made you like a property and what shots left your mouse click finger itching for exercise.

The National Association of REALTORS (NAR) created an online e-Pro course to train Realtors from the ground up on the best and most efficient use of the Internet. The e-Pro course also covers how the Internet continues to change the traditional world of buying and selling real estate.

Why did the NAR feel the course was necessary? The NAR has consistently surveyed Realtors and home owners to keep a close pulse on the real estate industry. From their studies they found:

• Communications with clients has shifted from the telephone to e-mail;
• 80% of home buyers turn to the Internet for their information;
• Information that was once the domain of real estate brokerages is now available on the Internet;

The e-Pro course comes in 4 modules. The first module takes a beginner from dim awareness of the Internet and computers to full knowledge of what the Internet, domain names and hosting services are all about. The way the education is done familiarizes Realtors with communicating with email, autoresponders and through online forums. Online forum communications skills are necessary to utilize that avenue to get your website’s address and your expertise out in front of a larger real estate focused audience.

The second module comprehensively covers all aspects of using email in a real estate marketing campaign. From email, Module 3 moves to understanding the world wide web and real estate websites in particular - what to look for in website design and content to the basics of search engine optimization.

The fourth module finishes the course off with an in-depth study and planning for your own real estate website. The course also educates Realtors on the auxiliary technologies used by real estate websites, such as digital cameras and virtual tours, which add the attention grabbing highlights to a website.

Many real estate agents are, of course, familiar with computers and the Internet (hopefully since e-Pro is an online course), but most learned by hands-on training. This comprehensive course can help fill in the missing pieces that will help real estate agents get the most out of their ability to email and understand their real estate website in more detail.

Internet Marketing Consultants has found that Realtors who have the e-Pro training are quickly able to understand and work with their real estate websites. This translates into a real estate website whose owner understands the “why” and “how” to keep the website updated with current information and helpful web links.

Best of all, each modules have reviews and exams, so when a Realtor is finished the course, they have really integrated the course and are able to put it into action. After the course is over, e-Pro Realtors can still access the listserv discussion forums. As Benjamin Franklin said, “The only thing more expensive than education is ignorance.”

Your real estate website’s neighborhood news tool helps make you a more valuable, visible and trustworthy real estate agent. With a few adjustments, it can make you invaluable. Just as in real estate “location” is important, in your website “positioning” is the key to high returns.

How to adjust your neighborhood news tool? Improve its perceived value. To improve perceived value, consider these three questions:

• Is your news specific to your real estate market, instead of generic information any buyer anywhere could use?
• Is your information specific to the buyers and sellers in your market, and
• Can the information you offer be found anywhere else?

Create an evaluation. Instead of offering a “this is what you can find in this neighborhood” information, evaluate schools, coffee shops, or tech centers. Make sure your real estate website gives both your insight and the insights you glean from area residents and business entrepreneurs. Quotes add both local flavor and third party credibility to your news. A little bit of controversy (as long as it doesn’t alienate your market) is a time honored advertising technique to getting attention. (I know honor and advertising aren’t two words you usually put together.)

Show you are active in your market. By giving news such as a new business opening, a school adding a new program or tracking successful “alumni” of a neighborhood, you convey the idea that you have your finger on the pulse of the neighborhood. If you are in a military market, add news of troop deployments or coming home celebrations.

Introduce a neighborhood through the eyes of a recent satisfied client. Report those items that attracted your client to the neighborhood and what makes them happy about their move. This conveys two marketing items at once: that you care about and like to help your clients and seeing a neighborhood through the eyes of the client has the power of a testimonial.

Turning the articles you post on your neighborhood news tool into invaluable aids for your real estate clients builds your “call to action” case to contact you, the knowledgeable and personable expert.

The portable real estate office technology just got smaller, lighter and more impressive. Fujitsu has unveiled their new travel laptop and a portable printer/scanner that, together weigh less than seven pounds! This allows real estate agents to take a full computer and printer setup on the road in one computer case.

At Macworld San Francisco Apple just announced its new MacBook Air ultra thin laptop which runs Mac OSX, Windows XP and Windows Vista (Business or Ultra) using Apple’s Boot Camp software or an emulation program like Parallels or VMWare. So now many real estate software programs can run on new Apple computers.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 scans up to 8 pages a minute and prints color and black and white at a respectable 600 dpi. Perfect for the real estate agent and mortgage broker is its ability to print legal size paper as well as the standard size. At just over three inches tall and deep by 11.2 inches long, this printer is the size of some laser print cartridges. NewEgg carries the ScanSnap for under $250.

The LifeBook Tablet PC boasts a battery life of 11 hours and Intel’s Duo Core Processor technology. The Fujitsu tablet PC has apparently learned from the Lenovo ThinkPad X60 Tablet PC, with its pointer stick mouse and shock resistant hard drive. As with the lighter tablet PC’s neither the Lenovo or Fujitsu has a DVD drive and both use the standard 12″ screen. Fujitsu has taken advantage of Intel’s ultra low voltage processors to gain the additional battery life, which is 6 to 7 hours longer than Lenovo’s.

For portable real estate website presentations and working on documents away from the office, the ScanSnap S300 and a tablet PC may be just the technology ticket to make your real estate office more portable. Now, if real estate agents could just get all their computer hardware and software to run under Apple’s OSX operating system, that would be a real estate technology heaven - light hardware combined with software that doesn’t crash.

Your real estate blog can benefit your search engine visibility, but there are several aspects of your blog to keep in mind.

Utilize your one of your real estate blogs key features: fast and easy to write and upload. You don’t need to be a master of HTML to use your blog. You can write in the template, proof-read your entry for grammar and use of keywords, maybe add a small graphic and upload. Choose topics of interest to your clients and add your expert

Be consistent with your real estate blog entries by creating them daily or several times a week. This consistency is what trains the search engines to crawl your site at more frequent intervals and more quickly affect your search engine ranking.

Make your keywords work for your site. The drawback of free blogs is that they are not integrated into your site. All your good writing and keyword usage is not building up your website with the search engines. Make all your real estate musings work to attract the search engines to your blog and your website. Your website designer can show you how to integrate a blog into your real estate website.

The three bywords of your real estate blog are: relevant, recent and rememberable. OK, so rememberable isn’t a word, but it is memorable and so makes the point.

Your real estate blog is one of your most cost-effective small business marketing tools to raise your real estate services’ visibility and add to your market. Your web designer can help you add a blog to your real estate website using one of the blog templates on the market. The help of a designer for the set-up phase makes your set-up trouble-free, faster and seamless. Also your designer can add a theme, plug-ins and graphics that will give your site both a professional look and tie it to the look and feel of your real estate website.

Internet Marketing Consultants, a real estate web design company, has found WordPress to be one of the easiest blog programs since it has well defined template and is intuitively easy to add articles and images. “The ease of use of WordPress is very important for real estate agents”, reports IMC’s John Naschinski. “WordPress Blog software makes it easy for non-technical people to quickly add articles and then go and view it immediately online is important. If creating a real estate blog entry turns into a federal case, agents feel their time is better spent with clients directly and only sporadically or never make entries.”

Earlier entries discussed the simple blogging rules of keeping your messages concise and the tone informal and casual. The following “best practices” will also make your blogging efforts easier and with more effective use of time.

Under your theme of real estate, work with your designer to set up the initial categories of your blog. It is better if your categories also are keywords connected with your website, such as: real estate markets and [your town] real estate.

Create a list of subjects relevant to your customers and for each subject list a few of your keywords or key phrases. Then set up a schedule for writing your entries. Match your writing schedule to the natural rhythm of your day. If you have a block of time on certain days, use that to create several entries that you can add to the blog over the next few days. Sometimes it works to use your “decompression time” when you get home to write a few paragraphs. Whatever works best for your schedule, set that up and stick to it. Your blog is better rated by the search engines when they track that you make entries during the week. Don’t forget to double check the spelling and grammar. A fast way to check is to use a program like MS Word, then save the file as a .txt file.

Google’s default time for checking a site is usually every three weeks. If it finds blog entries appearing on your real estate website made more often than that, it changes its program to crawl the site more often.

If you want the visibility a blog will add to your real estate website, but you do not have the time or writing skill, hiring a writer to fill in your checklist is also an option. This may increase your marketing budget, but as successful real estate agents have found out, getting the business that ranking high on the search engines causes is worth it.

Enjoy your blogging by keeping it fresh, fun and frequent.

Are you using your real estate website as your correspondence secretary, eye in the sky, or comparison shopper? Website technology has evolved to improve the information available on your website and also multiply the tasks your website can handle.

Use your real estate website as your secretary while you are on the road. When a potential home buyer or seller contacts your website, use the auto responder technology to send them an email. This is one of the multiple advertising touches to imprint your personal brand. Use it creatively! Your return message should carry your enthusiasm and personality as well as the traditional “Thank you”. And as always repeat the contact information. Your auto responder message is another potential business card that can be printed or forwarded to a friend. Innocently suggest the referral route by adding an official looking post script “If you have received this email as a forward, you have very perceptive and intelligent friends.” OK, its not that innocent, but it is leveraging your marketing using real estate technology, which is the subject of this entry.

Over 80% of real estate agents use a digital camera to capture images of properties. The obvious benefit of digital pictures is that you can quickly store, sort and upload them to your website. But another area that is rarely used is that it is easy to do minor edits on your pictures. One simple editing task is lighten areas of pictures that are too dark to see the house features - a common problem when shooting a house against a bright sky. Another is cropping - cutting the image to focus on the impressive part and possibly lop off the neighbors drooling Saint Bernard at the fence.

Image editing has become very inexpensive with the release of GIMP software, a freeware similar to Photoshop. The latest release has both a built-in help feature as well as a user manual to lead you through the steps to crop, lighten, enhance the color or improve the contrast in your photos! Freeware that improves your effectiveness is a boon for the mobile professional people and pleasing the population of real estate agents.

The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) found that the top way to improve your real estate website is to have many property photos with descriptions. Both buyers and sellers responded in a 2004 survey that pictures and the properties are the two most valuable features on a real estate web site. Virtual tours - video walk throughs of a house - ranked third.

The NAR’s second most effective website tool is the webpage for your MLS listings. Make sure this link is incorporated into your web design so that your clients don’t lose your website when they link to the listing site.

Google Earth and Zillow are changing the way people research property. In the ten years from 1995 to 2005, the NAR found that the buying trend shifted from 2% of the population to 77% of the population use the internet to search for properties. Decide how you want your real estate website to integrate with this fast changing and evolving part of the market place. Consult your real estate website design professional to see what they have found works with this budding opportunity.

In this day and age of visual and virtual marketing, your real estate website must stay up with the technology the same way you keep your physical office well painted and carpeted. The buying and selling public responds well to technologically helpful real estate sites that have the human touch shining through.

How much of your real estate office is really your automobile? Between house showings, meeting clients and checking potential properties, real estate technology has benefited from the trend to mobility. According to the National Association of Realtors, “The most popular devices Realtors® use in their day-to-day business include digital cameras, desktop computers and cell phones. The survey also revealed the growing popularity of smart phones or PDAs, which provide phone, Internet (website & MLS access) and e-mail capabilities.”

Cell phones (especially smart phones) are the obvious first candidate for an office mobility award. Firmly established for its ability to be on the phone with people anywhere and be your portable answering machine, the phone is now taking on aspects of a mini computer. The Internet is invading the cell phone home turf with tools for real estate agents like website, MLS access and Google Mobile’s “My Location” which mimics a GPS device. GPS devices use satellite signals to triangulate your position on the globe. The My Location technology can show you a map of where you are on your web-enabled cell phone using the geographical positions of nearby cell towers. To download this technology, browse to www.google.com/gmm or text “bluedot” to the number 33669 and download the application. This technology is now included with Apple’s iPhone (as of firmware update 1.1.3).

With laptops offering the same computing power as desktop models, The NAR found that since 2004 more Realtors® are buying laptops instead of home desktop computers. Real estate agents in the market for laptops now have an economical way to both go mobile adn present their real estate websites to prospective clients. Refurbished IBM Thinkpad laptops are a great investment! Long the standard in complaint-free, easy to use laptops, Thinkpads are now available for under $500 with 15″ screens (very readable), wireless (make better use of your coffee shop), and with one of the best keyboards around. The fact that it’s encumbered with a status symbol aura can’t hurt your image either! Of course, since it is portable, you can also opt for lighter laptops with 12″ or 13″ screens.

Another great portability breakthrough is the flash drive technology. These portable memory sticks act like mini hard drives that plug into your computer’s USB port. Once plugged in, they are ready to save any of your files. A flash drive’s memory capacity is tremendous. You can save folders full of real estate pictures, letter templates, and PowerPoint presentations. Any files you work with at home and work can be carried in your pocket. One gig to 8 gig capacities are basic sizes. The consumer wins in this technology market, since flash drive manufacturers abound. Look around on the internet and find the deals. Name brand providers such as Kingston regularly have 50% off sales on their drives.

The only office item still missing from your car is a portable printer. Printer technology has advanced with quite an array of portable machines. Some, like HP’s PhotoSmart printers only print 4 X 6 color photos, while the inkjet work horses, such as HP’s 460CB or Canon’s Pixma iP90 kick out high quality color images and print on standard 8.5 x 11 paper.

Phones that can be used to get maps, send emails and visit websites; computers that can present property folios and personal PowerPoint presentations; and websites that automatically maintain your new relationships - now you can be in more than one place at once. Well, virtually. Now, if you only had a chauffeur, think of all the work you could get done.