Tony Grey | Real Estate Video Professional & Software Consultant

You Don't Need to Navigate to Vidlisting.com...

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Sun, 17 May 2009 08:38:15 -0500

No need navigate to Vidlisting because we are bring our functionality to wherever you and your customers are. We had planned on releasing this feature last week but we pulled it back for a week so that we could add more functionality (we listen to feedback from our beta testers!).

Here is an Active Rain exclusive preview of what we plan to release...look for the full release announcement on 19 May 2009 on http://blog.vidlisting.com

Within the next day or two, you'll be able to manage all of your real estate content directly from your Facebook account. Here is a preview of what you'll see when you add the Vidlisting Facebook app when its released on 19 May:

You'll have almost all of your Vidlisting member content management available right at your fingertips from within facebook. You'll be able to add content (uploading via Vidlisting and adding documents/web links/Real Estate Shows/YouTube videos as well as manage content already in your workspace.

You've made a significant investment in building your facebook community. There's no need to make publishing real estate video or document content hard - simply click the small publish icon to popup the above form, type in your comments, and click "publish". Your content is now in your facebook news feed for all of your friends to see.

The image above shows the video upload form that you'll use from within the Vidlisting Facebook application. Although uploading real estate video right from facebook has never been more simple, you'll have access to all your content regardless of where or how it was entered into the Vidlisting platform (any corporate branded upload form, converted from an email attachment, mobile browser upload form, or the regular Vidlisting real estate video upload form).

If you have content stored on youtube or Real Estate Shows, there is no need to reupload it to Vidlisting. You can simply add it by pasting the full link of the video or real estate show into the media link form field. Within seconds, it will be available to share from within facebook.

Many of the content management tools available from the member area of Vidlisting.com will be available from within facebook. The above example shows the Folder Connect functionality which allows you to associate a folder full of any type of supported content (video, PDF, Office files, Youtube, web links, images, and Real Estate Shows) with any video in your workspace. Really powerful stuff...but all of the tools associated with a given content type such as a property, podcast, document, etc. will be available from the first version of our facebook application.

We'll also be adding the powerful Vidlisting syndication tools and corporate features in the version that releases after this one. As a result of this work, corporate members (and members of their corporate group) wont have to enter Vidlisting at all. They'll be able to perform 100% of their content management from their own branded tools on their website or from within facebook.

Hopefully, this shows why you won't need to navigate to http://vidlisting.com to take advantage of the Vidlisting platform. the version of our platform on facebook may well be the tool that you need to help you manage and syndicate your real estate content to real estate customers throughout the world.

Thank you to everyone that has been helping to beta test the facebook app. We have lots more functionality coming that will free you from our portal without losing any of the powerful benefits.

Tony

PS - we are available for building facebook apps if your real estate organization is looking for custom functionality in this area.

Also Recently Released:

A Simple Mobile Scenario: Converting Real Estate Video Using Email Attachments

A Simple Mobile Scenario For Real Estate Video: Using Email To Convert Video

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:24:42 -0500

Think about the following for a second:

You have a cell phone or other mobile device that can capture video. You want to visit a property and take video. Imagine having the video automatically be viewable on your own website while you are still onsite after just sending a simple email.

What Vidlisting tools are needed to help you do this?

- Email video processing: This tool is ideal for mobile scenarios. You capture the video on your cell phone and send a simple email from your phone with the video as an attachment to process the video. The video conversion begins immediately and autiomatically when the email is received - there is no human intervention required. We've posted an example of email processing of real estate videos on our blog. Since it's just an email, this approach also works right from your computer as well.

- Custom Video Player Page: This is a optional video page that you design yourself in minutes and can easily add to your own website. You only have to configure the page once and all of your converted videos are automatically sent wherever you've placed it on your site. The converted video will not only automatically be viewable on your website but will also be automatically indexed by Google. Here is an demo video about custom player pages. The video actually plays on a custom video player page and demostrates just how quickly they can be configured.

This has to be the quickest, easiest, and least technical way to process your real estate video content and have it appear on YOUR website without any manual cutting and pasting.

Tony

....Only Available At http://www.vidlisting.com

More Than Just A Flash Player: Understanding Successful Real Estate Video

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:54:18 -0500

Dont let anyone fool you - real estate video is advertising. As such, success in advertising is measured by a set of fairly concrete metrics - namely some combination of views, leads, and sales.

This post is an overview of the factors that contribute to those advertising metrics. By knowing the factors, you can then make informed choices as to how to best get the successful results that you need with a minimum of effort.

THE MODEL

Most people only think about and judge real estate video in terms of the flash video player. There is much more that should be considered as part of a successful real estate video strategy. I've included a slide that we've been using in our Business Value of Real Estate Video that gives a broad view of those factors. The training goes into far deeper detail than this blog post.

Each of the areas should be considered individually. I'll start from the bottom of the chart (that's you the real estate guru) and work my way to the top (that's the customer).

EXPLANATION OF THE MODEL

Creation/Receipt: This factor is all about the supported content types and codecs as well as ease with which new content can be brought into the system. The most supported types means more usefulness and less work for you. Can content be brought in from a mobile device?

Interaction: This factor is about the mechanics of organizing and manipulating the content within the system. The ability to flexibly organize and group content is key to being able to get in front of prospective buyers.

Collaboration: This factor is about the ease and effectiveness that others in your professional work circle can share content and communication among themselves or from the customer. The ability for other stakeholders to easily gain access to content and collaborate about it can increase the effectiveness of that content once it is public.

This factor is also built around communication back from the buyer. Collaboration in the customer context is key to the leads portion of the views=>leads=>sales cycle. Anyone else see the problem when the collaboration tools around lead generation point to your web developer or videographer rather than you?

Syndication: This factor is about the ease and breadth of making your content available to others. Automatic syndication is key here - the more manual the cutting/pasting, creation of podcast feeds, uploading craigslist ads, or moving of content in group networks is, the less time that you have to engage in your core compentency: finding new customers and selling them properties. Higher quality syndication tools leads to greater discovery of your content by well qualified buyers. Syndication is key to the views portion of the views=>leads=>sales cycle.

Discovery: Discovery is the first real customer facing factor. It isnt just about where customers are finding you online, it's about how they are finding you, absorbing your brand, and being brought into your fold. We believe that real estate agents dilute the investment in their own brand, SEO, and website when prospective customers consume content away from the organization's own website or Google indexes their content on a different site. Discovery is key to the views portion of the views=>leads=>sales cycle.

Presentation: This factor is the most visible representation of real estate video. At Vidlisting, we believe that the presentation of real estate content should be on the agent or brokerage website. You've made the investment there and search engine should be indexing you there as well. That said, the prettiest video player in the world is useless to you from a business perspective if it is never found or discovered by prospective buyers. If you think that features on a video player are important, ask yourself this question: "when was the last time that you DIDNT watch a video because of the player that was used on the site?"

Hopefully, this provides an starting point for thinking about how important your real estate video platform is as part of supporting the views=>leads=>sales cycle. If you or your organization wants a deeper dive into this topic, contact me at tony@vidlisting.com for online or classroom based training.

Tony

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Tony Grey is a technologist and real estate video buff. His mission is to lower the barrier to real estate video by making deceptively powerful and innovative tools for REALTORS to use in their online marketing. These tools are in each of the above areas in this post. For instance, he just launched a way to upload and convert real estate video using email and has built a online real estate educational website on the Vidlisting platform collaboratively in use by the National Association of REALTORS.

He is available for consulting and speaking engagements on a variety of technology topics.

The Platform: Applying Broader Multimedia Technology To Real Estate Use

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Sun, 10 May 2009 06:24:18 -0500

We've just admitted it. The multimedia content management platform that runs Vidlisting.com supports far more than just real estate. but what does this mean for you?

Before we answer that, let's understand what a platform is and how the popular term has been misused. A platform allows developers to build applications that take adavntage of the functionality built into the platform itself. Basically, if you cant build an application, website, or functionality on top of it, what ever you are using isnt a platform. Many companies start with an application and decide later on to try to turn it into a platform. This approach is hardly ever successful.

Your operating system is a good example of a platform. Internet explorer is a platform that actually provides a good part of the functionality that allows ANY windows application to quickly and easily connect to the internet.

But I digress..

Our platform is capable of supporting delivery of multiple types of content that has been located within any distance on a point on earth. Thats a pretty hefty capability that allows us have a rich multimedia feature set that does things that even youtube cant do.

In addition to real estate, we've been spending a lot of the past 2-3 months using our platform to solve problems outisde of real estate. This means that we now have a set of functionality that we can now find uses for within real estate.

Here are some examples of the benefits that this "outside work" brings to us:

- Web Developer Program: We've been working with web developers at our customer sites in an increasingly formal way. We've been working to quickly bring them up to speed on how to best interact with our platform. At the same time, their questions have driven many positive changes that now are part of the real estate platform. We'll soon be ready for a formal developer level as part of our paid membership levels at Vidlisting.com

- New "Out of the Box" Features: Our customers outside of real estate have different needs, viewpoints, and ideas for the online space. They've come to us with feature recommendations that frankly we never would have thought of. Example: a customer in the wireless space needed the ability to process video from an email attachment - our platform now supports that and will appear as a real estate feature in the next few days.We get so many changes from outisde of real estate that we often have a hard time keeping up with driving the customer driven features across the broader platform.

Stay tuned as you see more of these positive things transitioned from other industries into real estate use.

Tony

Join Us On Our Real Estate Video Blog as well

Tony Grey is a software developer and online media specialist working for a real estate video site that builds cutting edge real estate video and content solutions in multiple languages for use in real estate websites and operates multimedia-enabled websites for real estate brokers and associations. He just launched an Real Estate Educational Media Library website which is a collaborative online real estate education site between MediaDev, S.A. and the U.S. National Association Of REALTORS®. He also is focused on bringing a set of multimedia programming interfaces (APIs) to website developers through his online multimedia and marketing platform site.

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Real Estate Videos That Customers Don't Want To See

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:51:26 -0500

If you had a customers looking for an important video of yours, how much content that they dont want to see would they have to look at?

Somewhere along the line, aggregation of real estate video content has been confused with choice. This was figured out long ago by the listing sites. On a listing site or even your own website, your customer in the market for a 3BR house likely would not have to wade through 1BR condos as part of their search results...and vice versa. So, why do we make customers wade through a giant unorganized pool of video content?

There is a phenomenon going on in these times where everyone wants to have a video strategy - property videos, profile videos, community videos, and the like.

Think of it this way, as the amount of video content grows online, how easy is it to transition from one of your videos to another without seeing everybody else's video content? since most video hosting sites bring Google searches to their own site instead of yours, potential customers that somehow found you via the search engines now have to again search through lots of video content to find more about you or your properties. This approach may well be in the best interest of your video hosting provider...but...is it in your best interest?

As you personally add content beyond a few videos, your customers can start to drown in your own content.

Be that person for a moment that is right on the verge of becoming your customer. You've found the perfect property, now how easy is it to learn about the neighborhood or about you as the agent? Does "choice" now mean that you as your own customer have to search through your other 25 videos in your channel, or worse yet, hundreds or thousands of other people's videos in some sort of network?

There is a set of customers that come to your site looking for the same thing on a regular basis. Figure out what those customers want and then provide it until they tell you that they want something different.

The solution seems so easy...

Tony

Enterprise Real Estate Video: Putting An Organizational Twist On Video Podcasts

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:10:13 -0500

WHY ARE VIDEO PODCASTS TREATED LIKE REGULAR VIDEOS?

Every wondered about makes a video podcast different from a regular uploaded video? Sometimes the answer isn't that obvious.

Individual video podcasts are often thought of as chapters in a video series about a related topic. Podcast are intended to be streamed out as a series that your viewers can watch later. More often than not, the series is syndicated to iTunes or to subscribers using an RSS feed.

Quickly try to think of the podcast features of your favorite hosting provider?Do they even have any? or are they just treated like like a regular video that someone has to search for in a channel or "network"?

LOTS OF THIRD PARTY PROVIDERS TO HELP YOU MANUALLY CONFIGURE FEEDS

There are plenty of companies online that will help you manually identify, organize, and create a RSS stream for video podcasts. but there are two problems with this approach:

- It's a manual approach. Your time has value...and most required you to update with each video that is added to the feed. Never mind creating one, does everyone even know what a feed is? If not, what then?

- The individual video content is only related inside the newly created RSS feed. There is nothing that creates an actual link between the individual videos in the series in a way that doesn't involve RSS syndication.

A BETTER SOLUTION

What if there was a way to upload your video podcast directly into a podcast series that creates a tangible relationship among the videos (beyond just a captered title) and also creates an autoupdating RSS feed for iTunes and your subscribers?

As part of vidlisting's Month Of Code where we are releasing a new feature every business day in April, you'll have the opportunity on the evening of Monday April 20 to be part of the revolution that is changing how people think about online video content. Here is a brief preview:

Create Related Video Series: You'll be able to upload videos right into a new series that you create or have already created.

Create auto-updating RSS feeds: The series will "automagically" update two RSS feed for that series (FLV and itunes ready H.264) as well as a general feed that spans all of your series. You wont need to manually create a feed at a third party website. Just upload your video as a podcast. Once your video is finished converting, the Vildisting platform will blast the new video content out to subscribers. It's really that simple.

Display Related Videos In The Series on Website(s): you'll be able to group related videos even outside of your RSS feed. on Monday, you'll see how the vidlisting site and any of of your websites can automatically display the related video podcasts as part of the video being watched. The videos autoupdate as soon as a new video in the series becomes available without a feed being required. As a side note, Vidlisting members at te Developer and Corporate level will also have access to a developer application programming interface (API) that can work with the related videos as well.

OK...the title of this post talks about "enterprise" and "organizational". So far, we haven't talked about anything that is specifically organizational in nature. So, what is the organizational twist on Video Podcasting?

Other Org Members Can Contribute To A Podcast Series As Part Of Their Upload: This is an amazing powerful enterprise level collaboration feature. Now, you'll be able to make all, some, or none of your video podcast series available for video contributions by other members of your organization. They'll upload a video podcast as normal at our real estate video upload page or from within the Vidlisting member page. Using a simple dropdown box, they'll be able to add their video podcast content to any previously created podcast series across their organization for which they have permissions will be available for them. Just like regular members, they can create their own series as well. This feature will be available to all Vidlisting members of any membership level that are part of an organization created by a corporate level Vidlisting member.

Think of the possibilities here with collaboration on video podcasts uploaded from anywhere in the world. You'll avoid all of the manual issues with assembling, reconverting, and/or reuploading content in order to have it be part of the podcast series. These are just some of the ideas that immediately come to mind:

- Brokerages can have different agents in different offices relating video content about communities

- Local associations and real estate boards can have staff or members contributing their expertise to build podcast series

- Real estate portals can associate members in online groups with series and build group based podcasts or even build podcast series in multiple languages using local contractors to translate anywhere in the world.

I'm really looking forward to seeing your comments and thoughts on the concept both now and when the video podcasting platform features go live on monday evening. It's great to be in the Rain...

Tony

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See Also:

Enterprise Online Features: What They Are And What They Aren't

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:03:35 -0500

"Enterprise" is the one of the current buzzwords du jour in the internet space. Every online vendor and their brother is touting their enterprise features. But what does "Enterprise" really mean?

- Has An Output That Meets The Needs of Customers And The Organization: The outcome or results of interacting with enterprise software should help meet the information needs of Customers as well as the information needs/productivity needs of the organization and its partners.

- Is Organizationally Focused: Enterprise features should allow sharing and branding of content as part of simply using the system. When members of an organization interact with the feature, they shouldnt have to worry about changing the branding or implementing sharing. A set of business rules should cover the needs of most of the branding and sharing needs for the organization's membership. Ideally, an organization can license or self host a private version of the functionality on their own servers, if required.

- Remains Simple When Used In Volume: Enterprise functionality should be focused on delivering only content that is contextually relevant to what the customer needs. Many features that work well for individuals simply fall apart when used in a situation where more than a few people are sharing content.

A good example of functionality that doesn't work for customers but is often touted as an "enterprise feature" is sharing video content in a single channel or network. Imagine a real estate office that creates a channel or network and starts to upload 20-30 new videos per week. Unfiltered dumping of content into a channel quickly can become a mess for customers.

- Shouldn't Require Working With Website Code: After the initial implementation, enterprise software should handle all required code changes as part of using the system. When you only have a few people working in a business, everyone can have access to the blog or website code without issues. However, when many people potentially have to make even small changes to website code, the risk of a problem rises geometrically.

Imagine a large brokerage that implements a video strategy and then finds that they need to cut and paste an iframe or cut and paste HTML code into craigslist for for every property that they have. Yikes, there isnt anything enterprise about that.

- Simplifies Business Processes Instead Of Creating More Work: The costs of identifying and implementing enterprise software are ideally offset by the benefits that the organization receives. The use of the software shouldnt create more manpower requirement or continually distract employees from their core business because of the need for manual intervention. Content should just "show up" whereever and whenever it is required.

A example of a system that saves time and effort is Vidlisting's ability to upload a video right into a branded widget and/or right into a listing on the organization's website without any cutting and pasting in either case. The video content simply shows up with the right branding and in the right location.

- Allows Easy Setting Of Rules For Access Control: Enterprise content management system should not be public by default or accessible in any way if in a private state. The methid for changing access to content should have the capability to apply broad rules across thousands of pieces of content or focused down to one or two pieces of content. Ideally, the organization can also apply restrictions in specal cases that lower levels can't overturn.

- Allows Collaboration In A Way That Makes The Whole More Than The Parts: Enterprise content management systems add value to the content and allow organization's members to add additional value through colaboration. Vidlisting has released a virtual folder feature for instance that lets members share and collaborate on content (see the demo video ).

Hopefully, this post provides some things to think about the next time you read about enterprise features. If you dont have a large organization, enterprise features likely wont benefit you much. That said, enterprise features online do provide a powerful value-add and cost savings for organizations with enterprise needs. if you recognize any of the above as a unfilled need, that's likely you.

Tony

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Make Important Decision Making Information Available To Your Buyers As Part Of Your Video Marketing

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:10:30 -0500

So, you want have a listing on your website, blog posts about your listings, photos hosted on an online hosting service, video of the property and some documents on your hard drive that describe the property. How can you integrate these into your marketing startegy without having to hire or become your own web designer?

Click to watch the video

Vidlisting has rapidly become the most full featured real estate video site and has created a new tool that connects a very simple online folder in your Vidlisting member area with a video. Using only a few clicks, you can drag and drop all kinds of content into this folder and have it "automagically" made available to your video viewers. It works with many different types of content:

- PDF documents

- most Microsoft office files

- Videos hosted on Youtube

- Real Estate Shows

- Any URL web links (such as for hyperlocal blog posts, listings, or community descriptions)

- Vidlisting hosted videos

You can watch the 4 minute video demo of this amazing functionality to see just how simple the functionality is to use. Anyone can do it. Here is a quick summary:

- login or register for free at http://www.vidlisting.com/realestatevideo/jointheclub.asp

- Add the content to be displayed to your member workspace (if not already there)

- Create and name a folder (if the folder you want dont exist)

- Enter the video configuration area for that video (by clicking on the small red circle on your video icon)

- Click on "Connect A Folder"

- Select the folder with the contents that you want tosyndicate or display

- Click the "Connect" button

That particular folder's contents will now be displayed with your video. It's that easy!

No more cutting, pasting, or adjusting HTML/CSS code. your content just appears where it is most needed by your buyers. Want to eliminate content - just drag it out of the folder.

Think of the marketing possibilities with a completely personalized set of documents, videos, and links for your buyers. You'll completely differentiate yourself from your competition - this features will work on your own website as well.

Give it a try and let me know what you think...

Tony

Design And Create A Custom Embeddable Video Widget For Easter

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 06:49:52 -0500

Everyone loves special occasion themes for various holidays. Did you know that you can design and create custom embeddable video widgets and apply them to all, some, or just one of your videos?

Since many people are celebrating Easter today, we've created a short 4 minute demo video that shows just how quickly and easily you can make a one-off Easter themed design for a video widget. The video isnt edited at all and is captured in real time. The possibilities are endless for you and your business as there is no limit to the types of designs that you can make using our system.

(Click To Watch The 4 Minute Video)

The custom widget design process is simple:

- Upload a video using http://upload.vidlisting.com.

- Register as a member and enter the Vidlisting member area

- Click on the workspace link and find your video there after it is done processing

- follow the instructions in the video

You can alternatively apply a design and your logo to youtube videos, Real Estate Shows, or documents that you have added to your member workspace. Be sure to choose "this widget only" for the scope of your design changes or all of your widgets will have the same design. Although we think that it works properly, please note that this functionality is beta - there may still be a bug or two in it.

Once created, you can embed the video player into blogs or websites. Have fun creating new designs and enjoy your Easter holiday!

EDIT: Just for fun, I'll change the design of the widget every time I answer in comments... :)

Tony

Have content on your hard drive that buyers need? Want a sneak peek at what we are releasing on Monday? see the 4 minute preview video of how you make documents available along with your property videos. You'll be able to syndicate your non-video content anywhere on the web just by dragging and dropping items into and out of a workspace folder...coming soon...

See Also

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The Future Of Real Estate Video

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:06:40 -0500

All of us often wonder what the future holds for various technologies. Those that morph and adapt can survive - the rest will fall by the wayside. Real estate video in particular has unique needs that aren't being realized and forms the future of this niche medium.

Real Estate Video Needs To Expand Outside Of The Flash Video Player

Think about how you are receiving information today from a real estate video. The message is only contained in the video itself. If a site visitor chooses not to watch the video, you gain zero value from the player itself.

The future of real estate video lies in the ability of the flash video container to become of the overall message delivery. A video could then serve as the means of delivering a variety of content about the listing, about the community, or about local services that an agent ("YOU!") can provide. All of this can be delivered to a distant site and made available to the visitor whether or not they choose to view the video.

Real Estate Video Will Become Aware Geographically

If all real estate is local, the future of real estate videos means that a video has to not only know where the content is that is being viewed but also what is geographically close to the video. real estate video can easily become a true aggregator of local content because it knows what's around it (other listings, community information, local businesses, etc.).

The real estate video of the future will have common upload mechanisms that hared be shared by a given community. The content will then be syndicated and have value added by other local neighbors, businesses, local leagues, and civic organizations.

A more detailed view into what's coming: Local and Community-based Real Estate Video and GeoTargeted Real Estate Content Library

Real Estate Video Will Become Contextually Relevant Once Discovered

Your real estate video widgets will also become aware of how the site visitor discovered the widget. The widget then will become an way for brokers and agents to provide contextually relevant information based on the context of what the viewer is looking for. A properly built widget system of the future will even be able to recommend content that might be more correct for a given user.

A more detailed view into what's coming: Content Discoverability and Local Neighborhood Video

Real Estate Video Will Become Far More Personalized And At The Same Time More Organizational

The design and branding of widgets will increase in importance. Widgets branded for a video upload site or a videographer will no longer meet the needs of organizations.

As the number of videos within a real estate organization grows, the tools to manage video content will become more enterprise oriented. Today, most sites upload videos into a very public video channel which when packed with more than a few videos is difficult to manage. Organizations will increase their demand for videos that remain accessible only when the organization decides to make them public or accessible to only a subset of people.

A more detailed view into what's coming: Uploading Real Estate Videos Into Listings and Organizational Widgets (see RAMB's branded video widgets)

The example links are only what is happening in each of these areas. There is still much more work to do and a lot of companies are trying to add to the collective body of future progress. Please share any thoughts that you may have as to the future of real estate video in the comments.

Tony

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Are You Giving Away Your Branding To Your Video Provider?

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:39:04 -0600

Do REALTORS give away their hard earned branding when uploading videos?

Think About It for A Second:

- Does your embeddable video widget have your name/logo on it or your hosting provider's name?

- Does Google point to the video on your own website or on your video hosting site? Who gets the benefit of that link - you or them?

- do you have 100% control over the video widget that you use in terms of the colors and additional content that you want to present to users?

What Is Changing?

You'll have the following available to you within 48 hours by becoming a member at http://www.vidlisting.com

- you'll have a fully customizable embeddable video widget. you'll even be able to create "one off" video widgets that are different from your default widgets. this is more than just some text and a photo wrapped around someone else's branded video widget. This will be your video widget - however different that you want to make it.

- Best of all, you'll be able if you want to redirect viewers back to your own website to view the video. You've made the investment in your website, why not send video viewers there?

- You'll have 100% control of the metatags on your video player for each and every video that you upload. This means that you'll be able to initially change title, description, and keywords and we'll include other optimization capabilities after launch. The only place where Google will index your video will be on your website even if your video is shared 1000s of times.

In short, we've completely automated all of the custom branding work for widgets and video player pages that we've been doing manually since early 2007. By automating, we can now make the branding and SEO benefits available to Vidlisting customers during their trial period as well. Any videos that you upload into custom branded widgets during will always be available to you even if you continue as a free customer.

We are currently involved in soliciting feedback and user testing with various bloggers and others. We expect that we'l be live with these features by Friday, 6 March 2009. See you then!

Tony

Check out the growing list of enterprise real estate content management and real estate video features designed specifically for real estate organizations, portals, and brokerages.

Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome With Help From The New Educational Media Library

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:56:17 -0600

Change is all around us. Everyone wants to know what to do next in today's challenging economic times. What specific tools, tips, and techniques should you use that can help survive and succeed in this market.

The Educational Media Library is an online real estate resource for REALTORS, investors, and anyone that wants actionable information about how to deal with the changing factors in real estate that impact their own local business. The site is a cooperative effort with the National Association of REALTORS and features an ongoing series of live webinars, recorded educational video content, and interviews with thought leaders from around the world. Whether in live webinar format or recorded video seminars, you'll be able to select from top notch speakers and topics that interest you right from your own computer.

We are on Twiitter as well. Follow us at @EMLUpdates.

The Live Webinar Series

Webinars seem to be the flavor of the month. Rather than take an approach to live webinars which is promotional in nature, the Educational Media Library series of webinars focuses on "cut to the chase" information that you can immediately apply to your own business. You won't be pitched or sold on other products as part of the webinar. it's all about you during these hour long webinar series...speakers will also take

The following two live webinars are already scheduled:

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Move Over Baby Boomers-Women, Minorities and Gen X and Y Are Taking Center Stage

Speaker: Stefan Swanepoel Thursday, 29 January 2009 11AM Central time Click For More Information

TOMORROW! Reserve your seat now!

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Thriving in a Multigenerational Market

Speaker: John Tuccillo Thursday, 19 February 2009 11AM Central time Click For More Information

The Recorded Video Seminar Series

Real estate video sessions give you an advantage of being able to pick and choose your sessions without the need to pay event fees or hotel. This means a significant cost savings to you and you'll have some of the best seats available at the session. These are professionally recorded video sessions that are just like being there from start to finish. Depending on the conference where they filmed, video sessions range from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours. You'll definitely get your money's worth with these videos.

Just a few of the recorded video seminars currently available include the following:

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Sales drivers for Florida property in 2009

Speakers: Carla Rayman, Teresa Kinney, Bill Cowie, Garret Kenny Click For More Information

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Strategies for Social Web Marketing

Speaker: Justin Alridge Click For More Information

----------------------------

America and the Foreign Buyer

Speaker: Lawrence Yun Click For More Information

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International Business Tools for Success in International Real Estate: International Forum

Speakers: Adrian Arriaga, Deborah Boza, John Tuccillo Click For More Information

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AND MANY MORE..... check out the entire catalog of available content at http://www.educationalmedialibrary.com

Enjoy!

Tony

Check out the growing list of enterprise real estate content management and real estate video features designed specifically for real estate organizations, portals, and brokerages.

International Real Estate Education - Learn From International Experts

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 07:12:39 -0600

There is a new website that we have just launched an international real estate education website (http://educationalmedialibrary.com) as part of a cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Association of REALTORS. The site is designed to provide investors and agents with the most current ideas from real estate thought leaders from around the world. The content consists of live webinars from well-known international real estate experts as well as high quality recorded sessions from seminars throughout the world.

We expect to start uploading additional content in English as well as translated content in Spanish, Portuguese, French and German this upcoming week. Translated content will all be dubbed rather than using subtitles. Russian language content should be available on the site by February 2009. Here's the best part: International content will be made available in English as well...you'll have unprecedented access to first hand area experts regardless of their language.

If you have any interest in learning more about international real estate, you can register for free at http://educationalmedialibrary.com

International Real Estate Education - Learn From International Experts

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 07:12:10 -0600

International Real Estate Education - Learn From International Experts

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 07:11:04 -0600

International Real Estate Education - Learn From International Experts

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 07:08:09 -0600

A Case Study In Enterprise Video Features For A Local Real Estate Association

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:22:02 -0600

Lots of people think that the only way that a real estate organization such as an association or brokerage can manage their video content is using a channel like you see on popular video upload sites. but, what happens when you have an entire team of people uploading videos?

We'll focus on three areas of a real estate video solution for a local real estate association in this blog post:

- Custom Branding

- Broad Access

- Tight Control

Below, we'll walk you through the video management features that the we are developing in conjunction with the REALTOR Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches (RAMB) to bring a new set innovative and effective features that will attract new visitors and delight current users of their website and blog.

RAMB Custom Branding

The video widgets that RAMB uses in their upload system is branded exclusively for RAMB based on the look and feel of their existing website. The design goes beyond a simple pasting of their logo into a standard video widget. Have a look at what RAMB uses for their video widget:

From the user perspective, when a visitor clicks through the branded widget, they view the video on the RAMB branded player running within their own domain (http://miamire.com). It all looks and feels as if they have videos self hosted on the site without any branding from our or any other company.

Broad Access To Branded Video Widgets For All RAMB Staff Members

Any RAMB staff member can upload a video directly into the branded RAMB video widget. There is no need to actively manage the list as people come and go. RAMB staff members can either use the RAMB branded password protected upload form that will be located on their own website or they can use the standard upload form at http://upload.vidlisting.com.

Additionally, RAMB staff can upload PDF documents, Youtube videos, Microsoft Office documents, or Real Estate Shows into RAMB branded widgets.

Tight Oversight And Control over RAMB Branded Content

if you are skeptical so far and thinking that there arent very many differences with most video upload sites, the oversight and control element is the big difference maker between organizational (or "enterprise") features and those that you find on most upload sites.

RAMB has visibility of all uploaded videos: after a video is processed, a RAMB admin is immediately notiifed of all video uploads made to the RAMB branded widget as well as who uploaded the video. The admin can preview the widget information, the video, and can edit/delete content not considered suitable at any time.

RAMB video content also resides on a special RAMB tab within the Vidlisting social network. This special tab is only visible to RAMB staff so that they can quickly access a RAMB uploaded video if needed.

Up to the minute viewing and click through statistics for RAMB videos will be made available to the RAMB admin regardless of who uploaded the video. This gives the admin a view across the entire organization of where RAMB video content is located on the web and how is being consumed.

Not All Uploaded Videos Are Immediately Public: only those videos that RAMB chooses to make public are available to be publically viewed. The association can then upload video content and make decisions afterwards if they want that content to be made public.

RAMB Staff Can Change How RAMB Widgets Look And Act: RAMB widgets are only modifiable by RAMB staff. Other users of the Vidlisting social network that place RAMB content into their workspaces wont be able to modify the characteristics that RAMB has configured. The only configuration choices available to non-RAMB staff will be the choice of standard size or the smaller sidebar sized widgets.

So as you can see, the REALTOR Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches has a wide range of features not available through standard video upload sites. They maintain their branding, broad access, and control over their content as any organization should. You can see a number of their uploaded videos in RAMB branded video widgets at http://blog.miamire.com/categories/international-partners

If your organization is interested in this type of value add for your website, feel free to contact us at 360-362-1032 or tony@vidlisting.com

Tony

Things YouTube Cant Do: Upload Video Directly Into A Online Listing On Your Own Site

Defining "Enterprise Ready": A Guide To Online Video Platforms For Brokers, Agencies, Associations, And Listing Portals

How To Use Local Video To Drive Traffic To Your Own Neighborhood Pages And Not Your Video Provider's Site

Videographers: Why Limit Yourself To 100MB Uploads?

Understanding The Real Estate Video Space

How To Use Local Video To Drive Traffic To Your Own Neighborhood Pages And Not Your Video Provider's Site

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 04:14:41 -0500

Local pages are a great way to build a sense of community and, as an agent or broker, farm that community for business purposes. Video is a great way to add content to these types of pages because you aren't asking people to write blog posts or take a lot of time to create local content - they'll just upload the videos for ball games, church events, local meetings, and neighborhood business videos that they create during the normal course of neighborhood life.

That said, it all sounds great until you realize the following:

- someone has to cut and paste all of that great local video into the neighborhood pages on a timely and regular basis

- visitors may have videos in different formats, different players, and not have the expertise to fit within the technical limitations of upload sites

- Video upload sites like Youtube and Wellcomemat generally focus the SEO benefits for your videos to driving Google searches to their own sites and not your site

How can we call neighborhood or local video "local" if the Google search results dont even point to a local page with your content on it?

Vidlisting has a way that you can quickly add an upload widget to any of your neighborhood pages, have the Google results point back to your local neighborhood site, and provide a common format of your choosing. You can even self host the converted video on your own server.

There is only one step for your visitors to upload local video - it cant get any easier. They use the special upload widget that we provide and only requires adding one line of HTML code to your pages where you want your neighbors to upload video. Our code then converts that video and automatically sends (or FTPs) the converted video back to a directory on your own server. The video can then automatically just "appear" where it is supposed to on your neighborhood pages with your site retaining all of the SEO benefits.

We can even add an admin approval step that lets you quickly review uploaded content and select "approve" or "disapprove" for the content. Videos can be enabled or disabled with one mouse click. Its that easy and the entire configuration process takes about 10 minutes.

There is no better way for a local group of people to have a common way to upload and show local video content that can be actually be found in search results on your pages. Best of all, you wont be spending time cutting and pasting video embed codes

If you think that this approach might meet the needs of your neighborhood or group, contact me at tony@vidlisting.com to help you get started.

Edited to add a link so you can the configuration and the actual widget used: http://activerain.com/blogsview/666985/Free-Yourself-From-Your-Video-Upload-Provider-How-An-Org-Can-Self-Host-Video-Without-Headaches

Tony

Defining "Enterprise Ready": A Guide To Online Video Platforms For Brokers, Agencies, Associations, And Listing Portals

Things YouTube Cant Do: Upload Video Directly Into A Online Listing On Your Own Site

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:28:58 -0500

As good and as much fun as YouTube is, it doesn't give you a lot of benefits that are specific to real estate and helping you grow your real estate business. Even real estate video companies provide few (if any) benefits to make your life easier in terms of time and cost savings for using video - they talk a lot about the video but never say that you still have to cut and paste video into each of your listings. Could a broker or agency with dozens or hundreds really invest the time to do that?

If you have a sizable or growing number of listings, this process of finding and pasting the embed code can be a lot of work...and many agency websites are simply not set up to give access to the code required for agents to do their own cutting and pasting.

Imagine if you had a system where any agent in your office or any agent that is part of your agency could quickly and easily upload a property or commmunity video directly into a listing that they posted. Or even better, show a link to the correct community video from a central video library of videos made by your team of agents. Videos that are uploaded can come from any source - contracted or self-filmed with a flip camera, mini-dv or professional HDV camera.

What If I told that we can do the same things with PDFs or Office documents?

Vidlisting.com has a system that can be quickly added to any broker or agency website that lets individual agents within an office or agency upload videos for listings that they have filmed or that they choose from a central library that other agents in your office have filmed. This system is live today on a number of broker websites.

Here is an example of how one broker has chosen to implement the system:

As you can see, the agents require almost no technical knowledge to include videos in their listings. The video automatically knows where to be displayed. Videos with narration in multiple languages will have the correct languages displayed within the listing.

Everything occurs within the agency or brokers domain and is branded for you. We can even set things up so you control 100% of your SEO and when your video listing is found by Google, the search result points to the player page in your own domain and not vidlisting.

If you are considering using video in your organization but dont want to cut and paste video embed codes all day long, try our extremely reasonably priced solutions. You get video widgets and a player page exclusively branded for you or your broker/agency, a fast solution that will let you or your agents upload videos or documents directly into listings, and a custom branded upload page within your own domain.

Youtube, Wellcomemat, and none of the others have the ability to upload videos or other media directly into your listings. Best of all, your customers will thnk that you are hosting videos on your own server when actually we are taking care of all of the headaches for you. Give us a try - call me at 360-362-1032 and ask for our individual or corporate packages (lets multiple agents have all of the above fun and advantages)

Tony

Updated ActiveRain Profile

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 13:45:19 -0500

As I started working early this morning (yes, on a sunday), I noticed that my ActiveRain profile was more than a bit dated - there was information there from 2006-2007 and not a lot of information from 2008.

I took the time to update the profile and wipe away a bit of the dust.

Enjoy!

Tony

Defining "Enterprise Ready": A Guide To Online Video Platforms For Brokers, Agencies, Associations, And Listing Portals

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:02:33 -0500

All real estate video platforms are not alike. If your video platform provider is geared to uploading and converting videos, places videos on their own site for the search engines to find, and is more concerned about branding themselves or other third parties, it isnt "enterprise ready".

Some key factors when considering a video platform for your organization (whether local, state, national or international level in focus)

- Branding: An enterprise video solution will "know" where a video is being watched and be able to apply the correct branding to that video. The branding choices should be 100% configurable by the organzation. Members of a given organization should able to upload on their own branded upload form or, if the organization self-hosts, their own video, be able to upload right from their desktop. An enterprise video hosting provider should be invisible both from a customer and issue perspective - that is what you are paying them to be, right?.

- Contact Information: Enterprise video solutions should "know" who the primary sales contact is for the properties or the service involved. When a prospective customer makes contact, the contact should be with the listing agent or org member that uploaded the video. Can a provider really call themselves well positioned for providing services to an organization when the contact emphasis is focused on having potential customers contact your videographer? I dont believe so, your customers dont think so, and you likely dont think so either.

- Hands-Off Maintenance: Enterprise ready video platforms should not require organizations to cut and paste their player as the primary means of managing content. A national or regional level agency, large brokerage, association, or listing portal could easily have dozens or hundreds of videos being posted each week. Cutting and pasting embed codes for these videos, having to constantly select content to include/exclude, or having to cut and paste flyers into other websites such as Craigslist isnt the mark of a good organizational video solution. Hiring new people or adding hours to your web site support contract shouldnt be a result of implementing a video strategy - making more money and not spending more money should be the goal.

- Automation and 100% Control of Distribution Channels: Related to Hands Off Maintanence above is the ability to automatically scale your distribution capability while maintaining 100% control over the channels that you want to pursue. If you dont want your videos to be distributed to a certain site for whatever reason, you should be able have granular control over your choices.

- Easy Implementation of Services Within Your Own Domain: By definition, an organization or enterprise solution should run within your domain and be branded for your organization. Organizations with a healthy investment in their own website likely will want to redirect viewers to that website after having encountered abranded video widget on a different site. Another example would be SEO benefits; most video platforms provide some SEO benefits. However, it's difficult to say that a provider is enterprise ready if the SEO benefits provided are primarily geared to finding your videos on their own website. We think that the emphasis should be on providing SEO benefits that help searchers discover your videos on your own website.

- Dealing with International Customers and Changing Ethnic Demographics: The larger the organization, the larger the requirement to support the changng ethnic demographics within the US as well as supporting the needs of international visitors. It's highly likely that your international visitors wont be finding your videos via your local MLS for instance. A truly enterprise ready solution will be able to provide options to assist these customers easily find and consume your content as well.

- Value Added Services For Orgs That Want To Self Host Video Content: The right organizational video platform partner will provide a set of services for smaller organizations that want to look like they host their own videos. But what happens when that organization grows to a point where they want to self host their own video content on their server. The enterprise video platform partner should be able to grow with an organization and be able to provide a set of value added services such as conversion options to an organization that wants to self host.

Hopefully, this list can help your organization establish the right decision criteria to move forward with a video solution that actually is organizationally ready. The list applies equally to brokers, agencies, local/state associations, and listing portals. All of the above factors aren't some vague promise of a future release, they are available TODAY from Vidlisting.

Tony

tony@vidlisting.com or 1-360-362-1032

Twitter: @Vidlisting

(Vidlisting is currently providing or consulting on organizational video platform and /or delivery services to the National Association of REALTORS (NAR), REALTOR Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches (RAMB), several national level real estate associations outside the US, and many US & international brokerages and listings portals. We have "straight-shooting" real estate video and software professionals that are available for services, hands-on or online training, or strategic consulting to help you develop a video plan, find the best online solution for your requirements, or simply to assist your technical team quickly implement your video strategy.)

Videographers: Why Limit Yourself To 100MB Uploads?

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:22:15 -0500

We've always wondered why there is a limit of somewhere around or just over 100MB for video uploads. It isn't a technical limitation - it's a service provider enforced limitation (one of those "..to better serve you" things, I guess).

As a videographer and as a member of the Vidlisting social network, you'll have no such limitation at such a low file size. We've tested uploading files as large as 2GB without issue on our completely automated real estate video upload and conversion system. So, if you have a video interview, podcast, or other lengthy real estate oriented video that you just cant get below 100MB without it looking like it had the blur filter applied and have the patience to upload it, try http://upload.vidlisting.com.

Vidlisting also has a lot of other video platform features that Youtube, Wellcomemat, Zipvo, and Mixpo dont have:

- Mouseover Video Previews: mouseover video previews are generated automatically as part of the video upload process

- Custom Widget Branding: we can provide completely custom widgets and uploaded pages branded for you or your company

- Redirect Viewers To Your Own Website: you'll have the ability to redirect viewers (or those that find your videos via search engines) back to a custom player page on your own site to watch videos and completely control the SEO for that page.

- Custom Video Narration: You'll have the ability to add video narration to videos as part of the upload process (perfect for Real Estate Show videos). It literally is a checkbox on the short upload form. We can even translate your video narration into Spanish and/or Portuguese

- Self Hosting Services: For those that want to self host videos we can automatically perform conversions and send converted videos by FTP to your own server for self-hosting.

- Real Time Communications With Prospective Buyers: Prospective buyers can communicate with you right through the video widget...they'll always contact you no matter how many times the widget as been embedded by others

- Extra Content And Information on Widgets: You can put extra content onto widgets to prode more information to interested buyers or sellers. The extra content can be PDFs, Microsoft Office files, Real Estate Shows, Youtube videos, web links to blog posts, or other vidlisting videos.

- Transcripts That Can Help Your Buyers And Search Engines: You can simply cut and paste a transcript into the upload form and it will be available for your visitors to read and also be indxed by the search engines.

- New Website Features Added Regularly: No need to wait for a twice yearly or so "big release" to try and have access to new features. We have our own in-house team of programmers always working to improve our system.

- Get Actual Paying Work: Though others brag about the size of their videographer network, we actually provide paying gigs to our teams of professional videographers throughout the Americas on a regular basis. We could just accept and recommend anyone with a shiny new video camera, a shingle to hang out, and the most points on our website but we dont as very little of our professional real estate videographer work gets posted to our website - it is done for others on their own sites. The ideal candidates will have a depth of experience outside of real estate video (preferably in a commercial video or film environment) and be willing to be guided by our well tested production standards as there is also no editing involved on your part. Send me an email (tony@vidlisting.com) if interested.

- Widgets That Work in Wordpress.com Blogs: If you have a wordpress.com outside blog, we have special versions of normal and sidebar video widgets for you. These versions of widgets auto-update titles, sizes, and (soon) designs just like their normal counterparts. They are just as easily "embedded" into any blog that removes widget code and even report views and clickthroughs like normal widgets

Think for a moment about what you are getting from your current video hosting provider in terms of features that you cant get on Youtube or Facebook. Think about the views and new features that are actually focused on driving business to you rather than increasing the number of videographers to them. and then see what we have to offer...

Tony

Manage Listing And Informational Videos Submitted By Multiple Agents Or Site Visitors Without Ever Cutting And Pasting Embed Codes Again

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:29:49 -0500

Imagine being a real estate brokerage, association, or portal site that really wants to get involved in adding videos to strengthen your presence online . You have agents or members that have taken the time to learn about video and now you want to leverage the strength and brand of your site to share that content externally.

Oops....first you realize that someone has to be available to cut and paste embed codes into the website for all of those videos. And then you realize that, unless you invest in self-hosting the videos on your own server, any SEO value of a video widget points back to the hosting site rather than the page where the video is played. As far as we can tell, this is true for Youtube, wellcomemat, mixpo, any of them....

Where is the benefit to your organization with this approach? Answer: there isn't.

At Vidlisting, we've taken a far more organizationally focused approach. While cutting and pasting videos works well for the occasional video, it simply doesnt work for an organization that has a significant amount of changing video content. We've focused on helping orgs find beter solutions to the shortfalls in the Youtube-like channel managemnet process rather than on a flash video player. As a result, we have developed an easy yet powerful set of virtual video content management tools for organizations that mean you'll never have to cut and paste video player embed codes again...even if you are a listings portal or regional agency getting dozens of listings a day or more.

How Does Virtual Private Video Conversion And Hosting Work?

Virtual Private Video Upload means that your agents or member will use code branded for and running under your domain but delivered from our servers. Vidlisting handles all of the upload and conversion details of your videos and also delivers the converted content to your own player pages running in your own domain or widgets that you have placed in others. You'll control all of the SEO so that when your video is found in the search results, points to a page in you own domain and not Vidlisting.

Videos are uploaded right into listings or widgets and available immediately after processing on your own player page in your own domain. We are doing this on several international broker websites and their agents simply upload listing videos and the video "automagically" knows whch listing and where in that listing to appear - since Vidlisting does video projects in multiple languages, the correct language offerings for videos also is dlivered to the pages in the example above. We also have real estate asociation that are putting their own content and member content online with all of the advantages that Vidlisting offers (large videos that start immediately when clicked and generally dont pause or buffer). Vidlisting has also developed video content management solutions to help organizations that do want to self host videos on their own servers but dont want to have to build a video conversion capability.

How Much Work Is Involved To Put On My Broker Site Or Listing Portal

It's fast, easy, and a growing number of real estate association and broker websites are using our approach. The whole technical part of the process involves adding five (5) or so lines of code to your web pages. We had a major local real estate association up and running in less than 30 minutes of time with the web developer. After that, you do nothing else with enbed codes. Also, note, that doing the design of your widgets and player page usualy takes a day or two on normal workload days.

How Much Does It Cost?

We are offering a 10% discount from now until the day after the NAR conference if you mention this blog post in your email. Pricing includes custom design/configuration of your player page and widgets as well as video uploads/conversions for all content uploaded to that domain.

Normal pricing for a corporate membership starts at a reasonable $1200/year per supported domain (or about $100/month). With the NAR conference discount, the total price works out to $1080. We accept almost all major credit cards. This is far less than the cost to an organization for building out and operating a self hosted video site. Your members or customers might never know that you aren't.

Tony
If you are on the staff of a real estate association, brokerage, or listings portal, call or email me now: tony@vidlisting.com / 1-360-362-1032

If you aren't, but want your organization to have these capabilities, forward the link to this blog post to someone that is

How To Add A Custom Video Widget To A Wordpress.com Blog

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:34:28 -0500

Know someone that has a Wordpress.com outside blog that wants to be able to embed custom video widgets there without having to upload the videos again to Wordpress?

Did you know that there is now a way to upload real estate videos and podcasts to a site and get access to code that works on Wordpress.com blogs or other blogging systems that block certain types of code without doing anything special? Our example is likely best demonstrated on a Wordpress.com blog:

http://forsalebylocals.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/initial-examples-of-our-vidlisting-video-widgets-for-wordpresscom-blogs/

Click the above link to see the widgets in action on a live wordpress.com blog. The new widgets do the full range of things that normal videos widgets do - they report back the location of the widget, the number of times rendered, and the number of clickthroughs. They also autoupdate on the page when you change the title, photo, language of content, or the size of widget. Soon, we'll add all of our different non-branded designs.

You can see examples of the regular widgets side by side with their wordpress counterparts here: http://vidlisting.com/beta/e.htm

Making video content discoverable means getting your content where others cant while still providing marketing feedback. The new widgets work with Real Estate Shows and Youtube videos too.

I'm unaware of any other video hosting sites that are making this capability available. This feature is live at Vidlisting for all newly uploaded videos at http://upload.vidlisting.com - we plan on backporting the capability to existing videos over the next week as time as resources permit.

Let me know if this feature is helpful or not....

Tony

A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor (Vidlisting.com) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:53:43 -0500

Cutting to the chase: as of today, you can preview any member video uploaded to our real estate video site by simply moving your mouse over the photo in the widget. Below is an example: (just move your mouse so that it hovers over the widget)

Note the video in this widget is an out of date video and is only for the demonstration

Creation of the video preview happens automatically as part of the regular upload process. The member uploading the video doesn't have to do anything special to make it happen. The video uploads and converts just the same as any other. The difference is in the widget that is created.

Best of all? No more separate uploads of photos with your video.

The example widget also demonstrates how easy it is to show "extra content" with your featured video. Within seconds, you can add PDFs, Microsoft Office files, Youtube videos, and even Real Estate Shows to your video widgets to help your prospective customers have the right information that they need to make a buying decision

With membership, Vidlisting widgets also feature the following:

brand free widget designs (no Vidlisting logo)
the ability to confure widgets to play videos inside the widget or to redirect to an easily installed player on your own website, under your own domain name, and with the custom look and feel of your website (example: RAMB Video Widgets And Player Pages Branded For Their Association )
A communications icon located right on the widget that initially opens to a form (to prevent SPAM) but after the first response allows real time communication with prospective customers interested in your services. No matter how many times the widget is shared, the leads come back to you.
MLS ready widgets and player pages

We also have a entire cluster of conversion servers so you never have the day-long (or more) waits that some other real estate video hosting services require. If you haven't tried us in a while, why not see the improvements that we've made at the Vidlisting Video Upload Site - you'll get all of the above plus you dont even have to register to convert videos.

Let me know what you think...

Tony

Tony Grey | Real Estate Video Professional & Software Consultant

You Don't Need to Navigate to Vidlisting.com...

A Simple Mobile Scenario For Real Estate Video: Using Email To Convert Video

More Than Just A Flash Player: Understanding Successful Real Estate Video

The Platform: Applying Broader Multimedia Technology To Real Estate Use

Real Estate Videos That Customers Don't Want To See

Enterprise Real Estate Video: Putting An Organizational Twist On Video Podcasts

Enterprise Online Features: What They Are And What They Aren't

Make Important Decision Making Information Available To Your Buyers As Part Of Your Video Marketing

Design And Create A Custom Embeddable Video Widget For Easter

The Future Of Real Estate Video

Are You Giving Away Your Branding To Your Video Provider?

Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome With Help From The New Educational Media Library

International Real Estate Education - Learn From International Experts

International Real Estate Education - Learn From International Experts

International Real Estate Education - Learn From International Experts

International Real Estate Education - Learn From International Experts

A Case Study In Enterprise Video Features For A Local Real Estate Association

How To Use Local Video To Drive Traffic To Your Own Neighborhood Pages And Not Your Video Provider's Site

Things YouTube Cant Do: Upload Video Directly Into A Online Listing On Your Own Site

Updated ActiveRain Profile

Defining "Enterprise Ready": A Guide To Online Video Platforms For Brokers, Agencies, Associations, And Listing Portals

Videographers: Why Limit Yourself To 100MB Uploads?

Manage Listing And Informational Videos Submitted By Multiple Agents Or Site Visitors Without Ever Cutting And Pasting Embed Codes Again

How To Add A Custom Video Widget To A Wordpress.com Blog

How To Help Your Visitors Preview A Video That You've Uploaded