ActiveRain and Kodak Contest: Video....The New Frontier Online

You've heard it for a few years, the rumbling of video as it makes it's major push toward being relevant online. In the last few years, the capacity for video has become the norm in most homes around the country. Gone are the days of 28K and 56K modems, replaced by the DSL, T1's and cable. On the horizon is the fiber optic network Google is prepared to unleash. With these increased internet speeds comes the proliferation of video online.

It's been steadily building for the last few years, but the wave of video is poised to wash over the real estate industry in 2011. Kodak and ActiveRain would like you to take advantage of video in your business. This contest will be about creating the best business video, and the best part is that everyone who participates will be a winner by simply creating a business tool that they can use in 2011 for their marketing whether or not you win the fabulous prizes!

January's challenge is to create a marketing video which focuses on some component of your business. We have a few suggestions for what your video can be about, but feel free to think outside the box and get creative and come up with your own concept.

The four major uses of video that agents seem to be taking advantage of with more frequency are:

1. Client Testimonials: A powerful way to capture the experience of your past clients, client testimonials can bring out the emotional aspect of the client experience. Many of your clients would be more than happy to get in front of the camera and say a few words about their experience working with you.

2. Agent Introductions/Agent Bio Video: You get in front of the camera yourself and give your 'elevator speech'. Quickly summarize what it is you specialize in and how you can assist the person watching. These can go a variety of ways. Some people will have fun with it and incorporate something memorable and funny, some will be 100% professional. It really depends on you.

3. Neighborhood Expose: Just as we write about different neighborhoods in our blog, we can also use video to introduce clients to a neighborhood. In fact, a video can really give them a good idea of the 'feeling' of the neighborhood. You know, if a picture is worth a 1000 words, a video must be worth much more!  Imagine taking 15 or 20 two-minute vignettes of different features, activities, landmarks and restaurants in your core neighborhoods, and putting them online for searching buyers and sellers to see your area!  Imagine having most of the video results on those searches be your video! 

4. Listing Tour: Recording a walk-through video of a home is a great way to give an out of town client a true feel for the home. It's amazing how few agents take advantage of this in a day and age when high definition video equipment is so afforable.

Using video can be a great way to create value for the consumer and seperate yourself from your competition. As recently as 10 years ago, video was an expensive arena in which to be involved. It wasn't practical to use video on a daily basis in your business. And had you tried, it wouldn't have been practical to expect many consumers would be able to watch with any regularity. Now however, with Youtube the second largest search engine behind Google (Yes, you read that right, Youtube gets the second most monthly searches online, more than Yahoo or Bing), a staggering number of videos are being consumed online each month.

Consider this; Do a Google search for a really popular keyword term like: Lady Gaga. Then look at the results on the first page. The results are a cross section of the relevant content. They give you text results, like you see for most searches, but you also get audio results (makes sense, she's a singer), image results and video results. These integrated results give you a much wider representation of the content available.

If you don't think Google intends to do this with more and more search results as the content becomes available, you would be wrong. They are already doing it with their most valuable assets, the searches that get done the most. You can almost guarantee they will start to do it with other searches in the near future. If they have good images and video content for 'Seattle homes for sale' it follows that they will work the video content onto the first page of results sooner rather then later.

If you are the agent that has created the "video tours" of your local neighborhoods ahead of everyone else, imagine how fast you might pop up on the first page of Google when nobody else has done it! 

Kodak will be sharing a lot of video educational content on its Youtube page for real estate, so please subscribe to their blog here on Activerain and also to their Youtube Channel.

Let's lay down a few rules........

1. Keep your video between 1 minute and 3 minutes. 1 minute could be a little short, but some of you are really creative and could put together a great video that's a little shorter. If you get too much over 3 minutes, you'll lose many people. If you have to go over, keep it to 4 minutes maximum or consider creating a Part I and Part II.

2. Videos must have been created after the announcement of this contest. We would like you to create something new for this contest.

3. Videos must be placed on Youtube. If Youtube is the second biggest search engine in terms of monthly volume of search, you want your content being displayed there.

4. Videos must be embedded in a blog post on your ActiveRain blog. We would encourage you to add text content in the post giving a written explanation of what is in the video.

5. Place a link to your video on the ActiveRain Facebook page. (This one is optional)

6. Put your post in the 'ActiveRain' channel and use the topic: Kodak Video Challenge.  In the post place the following text at the bottom:

"This post is written as a submission to the ActiveRain Kodak Video Challenge contest. I have the chance to win the KODAK PLAYTOUCH Pocket Video Camera, great for realtors looking to
create wide angle home tours and real estate marketing videos!"

7. Include a link, to the blog post with your video in it, in the comment section of this blog (this is what we will use to award points so make sure your link is in a comment on this post)

8. Posts (and therefore videos) must be submitted by Friday, January 28th at 11:59pm Pacific Time.

And lets offer a few rewards. Kodak and ActiveRain are bringing in  panel of judges, many of who, "walk the walk" with video marketing.  They will vote to determine the winner.  The criteria these judges use will be creativity, the potential to generate business, and how engaging is the video. Each video will be given a score for those three criteria and the judges scores will be tabulated to determine an overall winner. The judges will be:

• Jonathan Washburn from ActiveRain
• Drew Burks of WebRealEstateTools and YPN,  
• Nicole Nicolay (aka Nik Nik) from Agent Evolution,  
• Michael Krisa from ThatInterviewGuy
• Mark Passerby from HDHat
• SuperVlogger & HGTV Star Herman Chan from Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate 
• Mark Walser from Kodak,

A Special thank you to our judges. Also, at the conclusion of the contest, each judge will be writing a blog post in an attempt to give you some insight into what it was they liked about particular videos and why those videos were effective in their opinion. So this will be a great opportunity to get some insight into using video as a compelling marketing tool.

The Prizes:

1st Place wins:

• The brand new KODAK PLAYTOUCH 1080p HD Video Camera  ($199 value)
• Kodak's 23mm magnetic wide angle lens kit for the KODAK PLAYTOUCH
• Audio Technica ATR 3350 Lavalier Microphone
• QuikPod Handheld Tripod
• Free HDHat Standard video tour with Sync'd Narration and AVS, courtesy of Mark Passerby at HDHat (A $49 Value),
  
• A subscription to Real Estate Unplugged, courtesy of Michael Krisa. ($297 value)
• 7500 Activerain points!

2nd Place Wins:

• Kodak Playtouch Video Camera ($199 value)
• Video Stabilizer Bar, courtesy of HDHat ($39 value)
• 7500 ActiveRain points
  

3rd-10th: 7500 ActiveRain Points. ActiveRain T-shirt

All entries get: 3500 ActiveRain Points