Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

America is the land of systems and indeed much work can be done by using computers and automatic tools, but since they are available to many, I am afraid that the “people component” remains one of the single true differentiating factors. It can be the people using the system or the people that appear in your message.

The most “personal” type of media today is definitely video. It communicates the reality of the event just as it is, with all the characters involved, the surrounding scenario, the emotions and the comments. Some just don’t feel confident with this medium and don’t use it or use it occasionally. Yet it is very powerful and if the information or situation you provide has some unique value and can be attractive to the public you are targeting, you shouldn’t worry too much about the quality of lighting, the perfection or you speech or the steadiness of the image.

Some of the best video bloggers actually suggest to never edit your videos at all, but use intead the first take and just make sure you feel as authentic as possible. If you don’t feel like shooting straight video, there are sites that produce very neat animations starting from your still images. Animoto.com is one example, Slide.com is another one.

Animoto creates incredible animations with music you can pick from a set of available songs and you can also add your own music. There is a free service that allows to generate 30 second animations, or you can pay the basic subscription for one year and produce longer sequences. You can rearrange images and you can produce as many variations as you want of the sequence: Animoto will generate every time something unique with very high quality effects.

Slide.com produces free animations giving you also the tools for changing music, effects, images and adding captions to the individual files.

If you are comfortable with video, the two sites you should be very familiar with are Youtube.com and Viddler.com. The first is the biggest video sharing platform in the world, so you can get in contact with the widest population possible. But since you also want to stand out, Viddler has less people but more potential visibility, it seems also that Google treates it better in its indexing activity.

It allows you to produce some more sophisticated editing of your blog and Viddler’s editorial staff can give prominence to your content if it is of a very high quality, so empowering you big time. Remember that quality here has nothing to do with your ability to handle a camera and the lighting (although it is welcome), but with your ability to produce engaging and unique content.

Don’t forget to include the URL to your own site or blog in the comment section of each video you upload and possibly on the video itself , if you have the correct editing tools. You can also simply produce a welcoming image and have Viddler show it at the beginning of every video you have uploaded under your profile, and you can open as many profiles as you want (it is free).

And once you know what you want, you can always find professionals out there that can help you with your editing and posting tasks. TubeMogul.com for example can post the same video to multiple sites at the same time, provided it doesn’t exceed a certain size. Facebook is also a perfect area where to publish both your videos and your pictures.

Going back to the “The Art of Money Getting” by PT Barnum, let’s look at rule number 6: “Use the best tools”. I quote “Understand, you cannot have too good tools to work with, and there is no tool you should be so particular about as living tools”.

Here I have given you some general advice on how to add pizazz to your blog or to build a video blog, now you need to chose the people to have in your video and to work with you. That is going to be the most difficult part.

Roberto Mazzoni