Putting Video To Work For You On Your Website

Real estate professionals have long understood the power and effectiveness of video in selling property. Virtual walkthroughs and video tours immerse the buyer in the experience of the property, and result in shorter sales cycles, higher conversion rates, and better qualified prospects. Yet despite its effectiveness, the cost, complexity, and availability of video solutions has meant that very few properties ever benefit from the power of video.

In an era when many real estate professionals host their own websites to showcase properties, and where buyers and sellers alike are highly attuned to the online consumption of video, cost and technical complexity have been the major hurdles to the effective use of this emerging medium. But two important developments — video-enabled digital cameras and plug-and-play video service providers — are now putting cost-effective video solutions within the reach of all real estate professionals.

USING YOUR DIGITAL CAMERA

Whereas, even a year ago, capturing video meant engaging a professional production team to the tune of thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, today any individual with a digital camera can capture highly-effective professional- looking video footage, provided they follow a few simple rules.

Shoot with lots of light - Video is much more sensitive to light than still images, and the more light you have when shooting, the clearer, smoother, and crisper your final video will be. Daylight is best, but if you have to shoot in artificial light, make sure to work in conditions that are as brightly lit as possible.


Don’t zoom or pan - Zooming in or panning (moving the camera from side to side) tend to be very hard on the eye. If a horizontal pan is important to your shot, move very slowly and keep the camera as still as possible.

Keep the camera steady - Whenever possible, use a tripod or set the camera on a desk or counter. If you must hold the camera, lean against a doorway or brace your elbows to keep movement to a minimum.

Fill the frame - Try to fill the entire frame with the subject. Online video tends to be shown at sizes that are much smaller than the average television, so for maximum impact, get as close as possible to the subject matter.

Keep it short - Videos with a duration of two minutes or less tend to have much higher viewership and completion rates and tend to be more impactful than videos with longer durations.

GETTING IT ON THE WEB

Once videos have been created, getting them onto a website is the next important step. Agents should avoid using consumer sites like YouTube that have poor quality and encourage visitors to leave a site by clicking away. Instead, take advantage of cost-effective professional solutions like Fliqz (www.fliqz.com) that allow site owners to easily upload, manage and integrate videos while providing a highquality user experience.

Uploading videos is as easy as uploading a photo. Simply browse to the video of choice, and click the ‘submit’ or ‘upload’ button. It will take a few moments for the video to upload, and then a delay of a few minutes while the video is encoded to Flash, a video standard that allows videos to be seen by all users, without downloading, regardless of platform (Mac or PC) or browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari).

Once a video is available, including it in a site is simply a matter of cutting and pasting a short snippet of HTML, referred to as an embed code. Once pasted into a web page, this code will insert a video player which will, in turn, stream the video selected. Some solutions will also enable you to customize the look and feel of a video player, by selecting skins, adding watermarks, or uploading start or end screens to display before the video starts or after it has completed.

ATTRACTING TRAFFIC

Getting video onto a site is only the first part of a successful video strategy. Like any online marketing technique, there are three critical aspects to success: attracting traffic, maximizing engagement, and driving conversion. Following a few simple guidelines will help to ensure the maximum return on a video investment. The first goal sites should consider is traffic — attracting more buyers and sellers.

Video can be a powerful tool here, and offers two different possibilities for success: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and viral propagation. SEO has historically meant tuning text and adding meta-data to improve the likelihood that a search engine’s crawler will create a high score for a given page, raising the site’s rank in natural search. Search engine results now also include thumbnails of videos that click through to the site hosting the video.

Since few videos have been indexed to date, a site with video which has been indexed by a search engine has a high likelihood of getting a prominent listing. Due to an inability to parse Flash tags, however, search engines are unsuccessful at indexing videos using their crawlers. As a result, the only videos that make it into the listings are videos that have been submitted via MRSS.

Therefore, any site including video in their mix should create an MRSS feed and submit it to Google, Yahoo!, and the other major search engines. Many video providers offer this as part of their services bundle. Another traffic strategy, viral propagation, provides the opportunity for sites to disseminate their message into other sites, blogs, wikis, and forums to which they would otherwise never gain access, thereby creating hundreds, and potentially thousands, of new marketing opportunities and new points of entry to their site.

To execute a viral strategy, your site gives visitors the ability to repost videos they like elsewhere on the web. This is accomplished by providing a snippet of HTML code to the visitor (called an embed code) which allows them to paste the snippet, and hence the video, into any other HTML page. Successful viral strategies can account for up to 15 percent of a site’s overall traffic and thus bear serious consideration as part of any web video strategy.

IMPORTANCE OF BRANDING

Keep in mind that branding is critical in any viral strategy. Getting your video onto other sites and blogs is only effective if it both promotes your brand and links back to your site or displays your playlist within the player. The best video solutions (again, Fliqz is a leading provider) give total control over the look and feel of your player, as well as its associated behavior, guaranteeing that the brand is front and center at all times.

Beyond creating increased traffic, the next goal should be to increase interactivity for more effective buyer experiences. A video on the home page will attract as much as 80 percent of the overall activity on that page. Buyers who experience a video walkthrough tend to be better qualified and more likely to act.

CHOOSING A VIDEO PROVIDER

There are number of things to consider when choosing a video provider. The primary consideration for many individuals will be cost. Consumer video sites offer free solutions, but these should be avoided unless there is no other alternative. The quality offered is often poor, your site won’t benefit from search engine traffic, and you’ll be driving traffic away from your destination and to the hosting site instead.

Compatibility is critical, so you’ll want to make sure your provider offers in-browser streaming, does not require the end user to download any software, and is compatible with all major browsers and operating systems. Typically, this means a Flash solution, although Microsoft’s Silverlight is emerging as a standard as well. You’ll also want a solution that allows you to centrally manage your video assets, and that tracks plays, shares, and other analytics so that you can see where you’re being effective in your video strategy.

Other features to consider include MRSS syndication, email sharing, and player branding and customization. Be sure to understand the number of uploads and streams included, and the amount of storage you’re allowed. Fliqz offers solutions for as little as $50 - $100 a month, and offers you a standard of quality and range of features that are well worth the spend.

FROM LOOKERS TO BUYERS

At the end of the day, the defining measurement is conversion, turning prospects into buyers. For real estate, this is where video really shines. Not only is video a more immersive and compelling form on content when selling the experience of a property, but it is far more effective in driving actual conversion. Real estate sites using video report that buyers exposed to video are up to four times more likely to act than those presented with words and images alone.

Online video tells a story far more compelling than words and photos. Given its low cost, ease of use, and widespread adoption, video is a powerful tool that is changing the way both buyers and agents are experiencing property. Decreasing cost and complexity, combined with widespread adoption by consumers means that this is a tool that should be in the arsenal of every real estate professional today.