According to a recent article on theSocial Media Influence website, studies are showing that user-generated videos like the ones on the top video-sharing site YouTube are becoming just as effective and are getting as many results as slickly-made, expensive video commercials. Online video-sharing sites are getting increasingly more popular every day, and the average internet user spends between ten and twenty minutes surfing YouTube per day. The web world is starting to respond to online videos more as a whole, so putting yourself on YouTube is important to advertising your name, your brand, and most importantly, your listings and community.
There are many reasons why you, as a real estate professional, need to have a video presence on YouTube. We’ve outlined a few of the reasons below:
- It’ll build your online presence even more! YouTube’s popularity is up there with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, so being on YouTube is a great way to increase your online presence even more. You can share your video tours on your YouTube channel and interact with users on their videos and the ones that leave comments on your videos. It’s just another way to drive additional traffic to your website, blog, and social networking platforms.
- Your listings will reach even MORE people. You might already have the Realtor.com app on your Facebook busin
ess page, the listings page on your website, and Tweetlister service for your Twitter account, but posting your video tours on YouTube will put your listings on one more website, and that will allow your listings to be accessible to that many more people. Another great thing about YouTube? People don’t have to be signed up for the site in order to use it. Anyone can go to the website, search a user or video, and find that user’s video or channel and watch the video. This way, if you link potential clients to your YouTube channel page from your website, they can watch all of your video tours WITHOUT having to sign up to be a member. This almost gives YouTube an advantage over Facebook and Twitter, and it also means that even more people can have access to you page, and more people can see your listings. - The “Channel” format allows you to advertise all of the listings you’ve made video tours for at one time. When you sign up for YouTube and start uploading videos to share on your account, you’re creating your very own “YouTube” channel. Your channel page shows all of the videos you have uploaded into your account on one page. This makes it easy for users to access your videos, and people can even subscribe to your channel and they will then receive notifications every time you upload a new video!
- You can create video playlists specifically for your listings. If you want to upload promotional videos, client testimonials, community tours and other kinds of videos, you can create playlists based on which category each video belongs to. You can simply create a playlist that’s titled “Video Tours” or “Listings” and put all of your uploaded video tours into that playlist. It’s like an iTunes playlist with videos! When a user clicks on that playlist, they can see one video directly after the other.
- YouTube has an application on Facebook, so your video tours can also be on your Facebook business page and accessible to your fans. The fact that you can put all of your video tours in one tab on your Facebook business page is
easy, convenient, and effective. In order to put the YouTube application on your Facebook page, you need to go to http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2513891999 and click “Add to my Page”. In order to put a YouTube tab on Facebook, you must have a business page. Facebook has recently eliminated all application tabs and custom tabs from personal profiles. After you select which business page you want to add the application to, a tab on your business page will come up that says “Video.” From there, you can manage which videos and favorite videos you want to add to your tab. You can add and remove videos from the tab as you please. This means that if you want to make all of your current listings accessible to your Facebook fans, you can add the YouTube application and they can view all of your video tours directly off of your Facebook. This is another great way for people to see your listings in more depth without having to jump from website to website.
To sum it all up...you might already have a YouTube account and/or you might browse the site regularly, but it’s important to recognize how YouTube can help you in marketing your listings, advertising your brand and showcasing your community. As online videos get increasingly more popular, it’s important to start using them to enhance your business!
Your real estate virtual assistant can easily setup your YouTube channel and manage this entire on-going project for you.
Happy You-Tubing!
Erica Lawrence
Operations Manager
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