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.)
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