If you missed part one in this series, you can read it by clicking here. In part one of this series, we established that in order to get started with real estate video, you first have to develop a video content strategy, commit to high quality video, and hire a professional videographer (which can be done at a cost-effective price).
Part Two: Steps 3 and 4
Now that we’ve established video content is an even hotter trend in online marketing in 2016, and that you should create high quality video content, let’s talk about what you need to do after you’ve created your video content.
So, what do you do after you’ve created your video?
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Select the Right Platform to Host Your Videos
The next step is to choose the right platform to host your videos. Likely, when we mentioned a video platform, you immediately thought of YouTube, so our next piece of advice will probably shock you.
Don’t use YouTube as your primary platform to host your real estate video content.
YouTube sells ads, which means the longer you use YouTube, the more ads it will display. The more ads it displays, the more revenue it generates.
Here are a couple of points to note about YouTube:
- You have no control over which ads YouTube displays on your videos, which could be a bad thing. Think about your brand image and reputation.
- Ads will pull a viewer’s attention away from your content.
- A 2016 study by Shareaholic shows that YouTube does a very poor job of referring traffic back to your website. On average, YouTube refers approximately 0.4% of people back to the publisher’s website. This means that if your content is on YouTube, it’s really not driving traffic to your website, which means it’s not a very good lead generation tool.
We’re not saying to ignore YouTube, but you should choose to use a business-level video hosting platform that sets your website or domain as the publisher of the content.
This will ensure search engine traffic is directed back to your website and generating leads for you.
If all of this sounds confusing, here’s a quick way to know if your video will drive traffic to your website. If you’ve placed it on a platform, click the share button on your video. If the share link includes your domain, it’s directing people to your website. If not, it’s directing them to another platform.
If the goal of your video content is to drive traffic to your website and increase your lead generation, then you need to make sure your video platform is actually doing that for you.
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Promote and Distribute Your Videos
At this stage in the process, you’ve developed your strategy, you’ve had high quality videos made, and you’ve loaded them on a platform, so they can be easily viewed.
Now, you need to generate a substantial amount of views from a real estate audience. Getting viewership is the distribution part of your strategy. How do you do that?
First, make sure that your videos are embedded throughout your site, not just on one page. Put brand videos on your home page, about page, property pages, service pages, etc.
Make sure your videos are also on a prime and easily seen place on your website. It really is all about location, location, location.
Once you’ve done this, search engines will recognise your website and domain as the publisher of the content and you’ll get the SEO benefits from organic searches on Google and other search engines.
Second, drive additional viewership by including click-to-play images in your real estate email marketing newsletters. According to Get Response, emails with videos receive 96 percent higher click rates than emails that don’t contain video content.
Third, promote on media platforms beyond Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Google+. While these platforms will get you easy traffic, these sites are not necessarily where buyers and sellers are actively looking for real estate agents. Get your videos onto business-level, qualified sites where consumers are. These might include online property magazines, third party real estate search sites, luxury estate sites, etc.
And, there you go—four simple steps on how to get started with real estate video. To recap:
- Develop your video content strategy
- Commit to high quality videos and hire a videographer
- Choose the right video hosting platform
- Distribute and promote your videos on sites and platforms where intentional buyers and sellers are
For more helpful real estate tips and information like this, check out our blog. You can also follow us on Facebook.
At iProperty, we provide leading online property management and real estate software, responsive websites, and more.