Using mapping technology on real estate websites is increasing with the National Association of Realtors (NAR) finding that 42% of the agents use mapping more than 6 times per week. The most common usage is to provide directions to properties (71%) with aerial or satellite photos (53%) showing up as the second most popular feature.

87% of the agents using mapping features on their real estate websites find that the map-based searches provided “a more effective search utility”.

Google and MapQuest are two of the main sources of maps, however Microsoft’s Bing is still an active competitor. Bing recently announced the addition of the ability to embed a Bing Map on websites and they offer an aerial “bird’s eye” view of properties. This is currently limited to the major metropolitan areas, but it gives a more 3D view of a neighborhood over the straight-down images provided by satellites.

IMCD Web Design (IMCD) has many options in both the custom real estate websites and the semi-custom real estate web designs that allow real estate agents and brokers to integrate mapping features and IDX links into their personal sites. These allow website visitors to check listings and find them on a map without leaving the agent’s website. By providing information usually found on major listing or MLS websites in an agent real estate website, agents build their brand, keep their clientele and provide an appreciated service on their site.

The mapping feature enhances the resource information that 70% of the real estate websites offer, with schools topping the list of places searched for on the maps.

From the NAR’s research, of the 30% of agents or brokers who do not integrate mapping into their websites in any way, most of them want that feature and would add it if they had the technical know-how. IMCD realizes that agents are as pressed for time as are most small business entrepreneurs. We specialize in providing effective real estate websites with our experienced and technically savvy real estate web designers finding and providing the best solutions to your online real estate marketing needs – whether it is mapping integration, IDX solutions or improving the resources you offer your clients online.

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

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…

Real Estate virtual tours, slide show or video tours of your listed homes for sale, is fast growing to be the way to maximize the leveraging of your real estate website Internet marketing. Real estate websites quickly adopted the static photo presentation of listings that traditional advertising copy used. However, given the capability of the Internet to just as easily deliver audio and video files, the nature of real estate Internet marketing is quickly evolving.

In 1997, when professional real estate websites were still in the start-up phase, very few Realtors used video tours on their websites. Only 2% of home buyers bought a house as a result of seeing a video home tour. Ten years later, the Internet is a hotly contested marketplace with realty firms, brokers, and agents putting up their real estate websites.

In the competitive real estate website market, websites range from business card websites unseen on Google to custom web designs formulated for top placement in the search engine rankings. Driven by the market forces, video home tour use has expanded and attracts almost 40% more views than listings with only photos. This extra traffic translates into enticing one out of four home buyers into buying the listed home.

More relevant to real estate agents, is the fact that 9 out of 10 people using the Internet to scout out their next home find video home tours useful in assessing a home and narrowing their searches.

Besides the benefit of leveraging the power of the Internet for real estate agents in appealing to home buyers, virtual tours help land clients selling their homes. In the current economy, any marketing advantage to speed up a home’s sale is desired by home sellers. Over 90% of home sellers wanting the maximum exposure of adding property photos to a listing. Real estate agents stand the best chance of selling a client’s home at the best price since Internet homebuyers are willing to spend more than traditional buyers and have been found to spend more on homes whose photos or virtual tours where professionally photographed.

Leverage your real estate Internet marketing to the max by adding virtual tours of homes and property. Between the price of technology decreasing and the use of virtual tours increasing visibility and home values, real estate agents can find that using virtual tours improves their return on their Internet marketing investment. IMCD Web Design works with our real estate web design clients to create virtual tours or add their virtual tours to their listings of homes for sale. Each IMC website receives custom graphic design work to give our clients the best opportunity to capture a greater share of their online real estate market.

With the iPhone, Blackberry and Nokia new cell phone technology, real estate agents now have a great tool for virtually showing properties anywhere they meet a client.

Many cell phones have picture-taking capacity, but the iPhone, Blackberry and Nokia’s new phones allow real estate agents to create libraries of photos to show off properties in their listings. These are not grainy photos, but, in a benefit for real estate technology, very clear photos that easily convey the features of homes for sale in the best light.

You can quickly scroll through your entire collection or homes for sale images. With your phone images, you have the choices of e-mailing pictures to clients (yes the phones can go on the Internet) or adding them to your contacts. With iPhone, if you rotate the phone sideways, the image automatically changes to landscape mode, which comes in handy for outside pictures of homes. By using your fingers on the screen to pinch in, an image zooms in or zooms out. Nice for checking details when you are dealing with an approximately 3″ viewing screen.

Recently, one iPhone owner showed off a property, inside room photos and outside photos of house, garden and pool area. All the pictures were clear and left no doubt as to the quality of the property. All the photos were also taken by the iPhone!

All the cell phones have 2 mega pixel cameras as standard. That allows real estate agents to take very crisp pictures both for the cell phones’ screens and later when placed on the computer. This means that in the field of real estate technology, these “business ready” cell phones roll a real estate agent’s camera and computer (for emails, Internet connection and slide show presentations) into a very small package.

The Blackberry still dominates the corporate market, but with higher user satisfaction ratings, iPhone is making inroads into the commercial market. The mobile office keeps getting more mobile, smaller and able to handle several tasks. Now if our cell phones would just connect to a printer.

The good news is that real estate agents can edit their real estate video material with inexpensive, readily available software. Free programs such as MS Movie Maker and Apple’s iMovie can make entry level video editing very inexpensive. Some newer PCs come with Muvee editing software (Start > All Programs > Movie Technology > muveeproducer) or you can purchase it for under $100 online. Once you have worked with editing software, you are better able to pick a professional application, such as Apple’s Final Cut or Adobe’s Premiere Pro CS3, depending on what features you want or what platform (Apple or PC) that you want to use.

If you are editing your real estate video for YouTube, they recommend you encode your video in MPEG4 format, size it to 320 x 240 resolution, set your framerate to 30 frames per second (30fps), and use MP3 audio. Since YouTube’s player really uses a 425 x 318 resolution, you may only want to shrink your video to that size. The benefit of the smaller resolution is that the file size is smaller and uploads faster to YouTube. Unfortunately, if you send the video at the recommended size, YouTube “upscales” your video to the 425 x 318 resolution, which degrades the quality of your images.

YouTube officially accepts uploaded videos in AVI, WMV, MOV, MPEG and MP4 formats. Newer uploads are encoded by YouTube to support the AppleTV and iPhone.

When editing your shots, always place your best shots at the beginning of your movie. Given the “jump to hyperspace” nature of website visitors, they may never get to the end of the virtual tour movie.

When doing the voiceover, speak conversationally and clearly. Leave quiet time at the end of a view so your website viewer can view the shot while thinking over what you have said. If you do use background music to add a sense of continuity to the video, make sure it is in the background and not competing for your viewer’s attention. Your voice-over is your opportunity to replicate your walk-through skills of creating a picture in the viewers’ minds.

Visually, to keep the continuity, do not use jarring transitions. Simple transitions are more natural. Also you can do some sharpening and color correction before exporting. FLV compression (used by YouTube) tends to soften an image’s edges. Experiment with your setting to find the amount of sharpening that looks good. If you do add too much sharpening, don’t worry, YouTube’s encoder blurring images will save you.

With practice, editing and adding virtual tours to your real estate website will go faster and better. There is no better time to enter the video space of internet marketing of your real estate properties than the present.

In today’s competitive real estate market, virtual tours of homes for sale are fast becoming a real estate agent’s technology tool for capturing website visitors’ attention. Virtual tours can range from a slide show of a home’s interior and exterior photos to a movie of 180 degree or 360 degree panoramic view of different rooms in a house. Virtual tours can also be effective sales tools by capturing a 360 degree panorama of a house’s exterior and the nearby neighborhood, especially if all the neighbors’ flowering bushes are in bloom.

What does it take to set up a virtual tour? There are several ways to start using virtual tours in your Internet marketing program. The first decision to make is if the tour is a slide show or movie.

For creating slide shows, you (or your real estate website designer) can use Adobe’s Flash software. Less expensive software, such as GIF Construction Set Professional allows you to turn your photos into a slide show using animated GIF technology. This technology can also be used for spicing up the images on your website’s homepage.

Creating panoramic videos needs software to “stitch together” a series of still photos. One option is to use application service providers that hire the photographer, process the photos with their software, and post the panoramic pictures to sites like Realtor.com. Another option is to buy monthly subscriptions that allow the option of the real estate agent providing the pictures to a company that processes the photos and posts the virtual tours to various real estate websites. A third option is to buy the software, take your own pictures and create and post your own virtual tours.

Software such as PTGui Pro allows real estate agents to stitch together their photographs and make color and angle corrections. This ability to make corrections in the software comes in handy when you find that you forgot your tripod when you are at the house ready to shoot.

Just as with most technology, there are ways to get extra mileage out of your virtual home tours:

• Give CD-ROMs with the tour to the home owner to hand out to interested people;
• Send a collection of different home virtual tours to other real estate agents so they know what to expect when showing the house; and
• Have them available at your open house;

Virtual tours of the downtown shopping area and any of the area‚s picturesque city parks can also add extra pizzazz to a real estate websites.