Home : Blogs : Fred Light - Real Estate Video Tours for MA and NH : Real Estate Video Tours | Real Estate Web Design & Marketing

Share your knowledge and the secrets of your hometown!

When most buyers and sellers are searching online - especially early in their search - the last thing they are interested in is a house salesperson!

What they are looking for is education, information, listings, and generally learning the process of home buying or selling as they casually sift through and absorb the seemingly endless amounts of information available online.

If you want to learn about cities such as Boston or Chicago or any other major city, it's very easy to find plenty of that online. But if you're interested in a small, residential community or a small neighborhood in a major city, it can be very difficult to find out ANYTHING about these small communities. (generally it's a short paragraph that came from the Chamber of Commerce site that every Realtor lifted for their site!)

One of the single best ways to make your website "sticky", to showcase a small neighborhood and it's quirky shops, neighborhoods and residents is to do a community video tour! Not only that, at the same time you are selling yourself... your knowledge of the community. Inotherwords, you're giving people what they want (information on the community) and at the same time, giving them an opportunity to meet and see you (what they don't want!).

The shelf life of a community video is essentially - forever! Over time, building a library of community videos can provide a rich addition to your website, separate you from virtually all of your competitors and at the same time showcase you as the community "expert".

It's a "win-win"!

Posted by Fred Light - Real Estate Video Tours for MA and NH on 07/27/2009 04:16 PM

Comments (42)

Community Video Tours in the Regional (Localism) Channel

community video tours

This post has been included in Massachusetts Information
Post is included in group: Realtors®
Post is included in group: Real Estate Video Tours
Post is included in group: New Hampshire - Real Estate and Life in The Granite State!
Post is included in group: New England Professionals
Post is included in group: MA REALTORS

42 Comments on Share your knowledge and the secrets of your hometown!

JUL

Fabulous. Just what I had planned.

Good post. Thanks for sharing and I hope you have a wonderful week ahead!

Fred - Really nice quality vids! I agree with you. Video is the way to go now and I have to get into it some more. Nice post!

These videos are great quality - but i can just imagine some agents grabbing their video camera and taking us through a Blaire Witch Project tour of their area...

I love doing photos and community profiles - also providing them with school rating info etc. Over time they'll come to you as an area source

Great post!

Hey Fred -- Fabulous idea. I bookmarked your page. I'm going to put this on my to do list and may contact you to see how to make this work perhaps using your services.

blogging, photos, now video who has time to work with buyers and sSellers. actually this is what will separate you from the rest

Fred, great post! Thanks for the information!

What an excellent post and the quality of the video is very good. I agree that it is important about show casing your area.

Fred, any kind of specialized niche neighborhood video is priceless for a local area and can be found and stays out there with search. Very good point.

Shoot, I can't get the video to work. It says block....

The Flip Camera has come in, really handy for this type of project. Keeping up with the project is the tough part. Especially, now, when our market has become busier. Thank goodness:)

It's a Good Life!

Fran

O.k., so how much does it cost to produce a video of this quality? What if I serve multiple towns? My marketing budget is a little tight given the current economic environment so I eed to spend my money wisely. Can you publish for all to see what the price will be?

Excellent advice! Thanks for the reminder about what "localism" really means!

Hi Fred ~ These were great! In some cases I thought when I saw the time that it would be too long but I found myself captivated until the end. The Roslindale video was my favorite - just super!

Liz

I wish I was in your area for you to make me a few videos. thanks for all the tips

John: They run $500 - which considering the lifespan of a video like this (essentially forever!)... it's not an unreasonable cost. Of course, I can't speak for other people in different markets, but at the present time that's what they run here.

A perfect example of how these can work. I did one several years ago for a client for Hollis, New Hampshire a town of about 7000 people.

A buyer from CA was searching for homes last December and found one on the MLS that he liked. It was located in Hollis, but couldn't find much information about that town. But he DID find this tour about Hollis, and ended up calling this agent to show him properties. The $1.5M sale just closed last month. He said that the tour is what clinched it for him (most especially since he was in CA and had really spent no time here and was unfamiliar with the different areas).

People buy homes based on location, location, location... and they buy into a community.. a lifestyle.

These are great videos and a great way to add stickiness. This is part of what Bob's contest is inspiring.

Good advice, but a question, not unlike one which has already been asked: on a tight budget, and limited time, do you a. collect various pictures of a community and plug them into Microsoft Moviemaker, or b. attempt to shoot a video using a digital camera and try to organize an otherwise random tour of the neighborhood? And, what do you do in towns that don't have smaller communities to focus on?

Those are pretty cool... and they can be a great resource to see what it was like back in the day, too.

What a great idea - instead of just having video tours of properties - do the town.

Thanks for sharing.

Looks like I will be filming some new videos tomorrow. I can't seem to find my flip camera. Great post and great information.

Fred,

What captivating images. Now I have to go figure out how to do this!

Mike in Tucson

JUL

Thanks for this post. .you have giving me great ideas for my future posts.. .

Yes, I could not agree more with you. Local, fresh, quality Content is KING. Also the more local you specialize your Website and your WebPages and the better you will do in term of traffic AND conversion. Cathy Chaudemanche-

Great post ! I'm not sure I would know where to begin at this point, but you've given me the vision .

Fred,

So many fabulous ideas that I now want to steal incorporate. Bookmarked for an ActiveRainy day!

Fred, I am working with a designer that does a custom map of 20 points of interest. Ity has the ability to add video to each point. I saw one at www.pegdelp.com in her communites and i am working on it now. You are so right.

Fred, Great clear video. Why does the video stop every so often? Do you walk around and use a video camera? I'm really interested in this.

I have just started doing this and the videos are showing up well on Google.

Deborah: The video stops or stutters for 1 or 2 reasons (or a combination of both!):

You're on an older computer with a processor that doesn't handle video very well. Anything newer than 2-3 years old should be fine.

You have a slow internet connection. People think that broadband means fast - it doesn't. Most companies tier their offerings and their least expensive "broadband" oftentimes is one step above dialup. (the big advantage is that you can use your phone at the same time!) If the video buffers, it means you're watching the video slower than you're downloading it. When it stops to 'buffer', it's actually downloading a bit more to get ahead of you! If you grab the slider and slide it back to the beginning and start over, it will probably play smoothly since you've got a more sufficient amount downloaded ahead of your viewing.

Another issue is a cable connection. You are sharing your connection with all of your neighbors! So typically in the evening when people get home from work they all hop online and your connection can slow to a crawl. You'll find it faster in the morning when everyone leaves for work. Same is true in an office with many computers that share one connection... you're sharing that bandwidth with everyone else.

If you have a recent computer and a decent broadband connection, you should be able to view them without any buffering though.....

And yes, I do walk around and use a video camera!

These videos are wonderful, would be a real boon for relocating folks to find. My daughter was recently looking into moving to CA, and couldn't find any community info, just 'real estate agents selling themselves'. For those of us concerned about the cost of doing one for each community we serve, it seems to me that ANY video would be better than nothing. If someone came along and produced a snazzy one that blew yours out of the water, you'd have to re-think. But until then, being first would probably be priceless. I'm gonna have to get a camera - maybe I'll find a post here on AR about which one to buy?

Cool videos. Since I have a short attention span, I try to make mine pretty short. You have given me some great ideas. Tere

Excellent Post! I love talking about and sharing my hometown, Dunedin, FLorida

Great information, we love blogging about the local area for the same reasons, people love it, it's great for SEO, and it gives people a chance to get to know us at the same time.

I like your idea, When I do tours for local businesses I try to make my town personal to them.

Very good idea. I write a lot of Localism posts just for this same reason. I don't do video, though.

Hi Fred - It's a great idea to use community videos. I first came across your websites completely independently of ActiveRain and bought a Merlin last month solely because you use one. I had never heard of it before I saw your video. I'm still trying to get the hang of using it, especially with respect to balancing.

JUL

Fred,

This is an excellent idea.

Sometimes some of the smaller sought after areas are just a few blocks by a few blocks.

Naturally, it helps if it already has a name.

Brian

I liked this idea. This is a great way to learn about new towns and places. I am planning to start a similar initiative on <a href=http://propertieshomesandmore.com><b>my Properties site</b></a>, with due credit to you of course. Thanks for this.

JUL

Perfect timing for the subject! I've been trying to determine what small town businesses to write about. I've found that I get alot of Internet leads from out of town that would really like to know more about what the communities I serve have to offer.

Your videos are fantastic! This is a great idea:-)

SEP

Amen. A house is and house but where is that house located is the key..the flavor. Why should someone that has never been to your area considering investing there, moving there. It's the fun stuff, events that happen in your unique area of the planet. Good post and new approach to marketing real estate...market the area and it can help sell the house, land, farm, whatever!

Leave a response…

Name:

Email:
(optional)

Comment:

What does the graphic say?