Kathy Dove's Blog

Effectiveness of 12mm Wide Angle Lens

Kathy Dove (David Dove Photography) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:31:32 -0700

My husband and partner, Dave Dove, put together this demonstration of the effectiveness of a 12mm wide angle lens for real estate photography http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7pt_KavWoQ. It is a solution for those hard to photograph rooms that are either too small or too big for a typical point and shoot camera. We use the 12mm lens on most of our tours and stills.

YouTube

Kathy Dove (David Dove Photography) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:27:12 -0700

We are now posting real estate virtual tours that we shoot on YouTube. We were asked by one of our Realtors if we could do this and found that it was relatively easy to convert our virtual tour photos to YouTube videos. They're accessible on YouTube through a number of search options including the house address, city name., and the David Dove Photography Channel. This gives realtors an additional way to reach prospective home buyers.

Who Is Marketing With Virtual Tours

Kathy Dove (David Dove Photography) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:49:12 -0800

We are currently photographing more virtual tours for businesses and apartments than for homes. These commercial customers search out virtual tour photographers on the internet where they find us to shoot their properties. I don't know why more realtors don't use virtual tours to sell their homes. It is our experience that those who add a tour to their marketing sell their properties faster. I'm sure the principle of turnover of inventory to improve profits is as valid in real estate as it is in retail sales and improving turnover would be a universal goal of realtors.

Valuable Google Webmaster Tools

Kathy Dove (David Dove Photography) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:13:01 -0700

Every time I log into my Google webmaster tools, I learn something new about our website. This Google feature for webmasters is outstanding. This afternoon I saw that we had a site map error and I was able to correct it immediately. We also had a page that the Googlebot was not able to crawl, so again, I corrected it immediately. The tools tell me which pages the Googlebot had trouble crawling and provides help into what to do about it. It also tells me when the bot last crawled my site. The statistics available include down-loadable stats, query stats, and page analysis. I could see when we came up number one, number nine, or number two-hundred and twenty-three in specific searches. I saw that we were on the top six of searches for virtual tours in Indianapolis, Louisville, and Kentucky. It tells me if pages were indexed and if there were any URL or HTTP errors. It shows me what external links go to my pages. I can set the Googlebot crawl rate. Google let me add the Webmaster Tools as a tab on my home page so I can access the data quickly. This tool provides an incredible amount of actionable information about your web site, and all you have to do is register your URL. I've used Google Webmaster Tools for over a year and believe it is one reason so many clients find us on the internet. I highly recommend it!

Signs Of Optimism

Kathy Dove (David Dove Photography) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:56:16 -0700

After a really slow winter, we have had several calls these past two weeks about virtual tours. Two were from homeowners selling their property themselves, one from a growing local brokerage business, one from a small city, and two from apartment complexes.

Virtual Tours are an excellant marketing tool for cities and apartment complexes as well as homes, so we targeted some in our marketing efforts. It's beginning to pay off with inquiries and tours.

Kathy

daviddovephotography

http://www.daviddovephotography.com/