Adding video to your agent site also allows you to reach out and connect with more potential clients. While a text-rich website is important from an SEO point of view, adding video to your site enhances the user experience, which is an important factor in the success of any website.

Real estate websites are sometimes “dry,” even a little boring. By adding video to your site you can add an entertainment factor that your visitors would appreciate. As a result, your website will be more “sticky” and visitors will stay around longer, browsing.

Since we believe video can greatly enhance realtor websites, our real estate websites are equipped with a YouTube plug-in that enables you to easily place a YouTube video on any page of your website. Our built-in YouTube player allows you to add video to your website either in the media panel or in the body of any website page.

Adding video to your website using our YouTube plugin is easy, and it makes your website interactive and fun for your visitors. Take advantage of this free tool – it’s a great way to improve your agent website.

Agents – Engage your Visitors with Video is a post from: Properties Online Blog

Real estate videos are hot! They are one of the fastest growing marketing trends for real estate professionals. Perfect for a social media and for an Internet savvy generation, real estate videos provide buyers with a rich experience, they beautifully capture and highlight each listing, and – when included in a single property website  – they deeply impress sellers and help you win listings.

Here are our must-dos for creating a great real estate video:

Keep it short

Attention spans on the Internet are SHORT. People are busy and don’t have time to watch anything that’s longer than a couple of minutes. The ideal real estate video is about one minute long.

Add a soundtrack

The right soundtrack gets people in the right mood and will help them enjoy the visuals included in the video.

Include still images that highlight different angles

The idea is to get an almost three-dimensional feel of the house, and including a sequence of photos of the same room taken from different angles is a great way to achieve that. The real estate video software will create smooth transitions between the photos and zoom in/out effects, so you don’t need to worry about that.

Add captions

While you shouldn’t include too much text in a real estate video – after all, this is about visuals, it’s important to include a few captions that highlight the most important information you would like to share about the property.

Most importantly, don’t forget to have fun! Creating a real estate video is a wonderfully creative process, and one of the best ways to truly showcase a property. The final outcome is always so exciting to watch. Play with your options, have fun, write short descriptive captions, and the end result will be fun to watch and to share online.

Real Estate Videos – The Must Do List is a post from: Properties Online Blog

Still marketing your listings with flyers and print ads? While these no doubt still work, you should not be missing out on the amazing power of the Web! Using Web tools to market your listings, when combined with traditional marketing methods, will expose your listings to a significantly larger number of prospects and can help you land listings.

There are many ways to market your listings online, including posting them on your agent site, creating a single property site for each listing, and using social media channels such as a blog, a Facebook business page or a Twitter account.

One of the more exciting ways you can market your listings is by creating a real estate video for each of them. This takes advantage of the “fun” and “cool” aspects of online marketing and has a great potential of becoming viral and being shared by many users.

Creating a video for your listings is easy with the right tools. A site such as Virtuets, for example, enables you to create stunning videos for each listing, using still images, music and special effects. You select the genre and the soundtrack that best fits the property, and the Virtuet engine does the rest.

These engaging videos are included in each single property website and will help you land listings by impressing even the most discriminating sellers. The videos can also be uploaded to YouTube, embedded into your agent website or blog, and posted on your Facebook business page.

Step into the 21st century by using one of the richest media available to agents. Impress sellers and buyers alike, and create a name for yourself as a social-media-and-tech-savvy agent. Don’t allow yourself to be left behind!

Market your Listings with Video is a post from: Properties Online Blog

In two words: use technology!

While flyers are still an integral part of running a real estate business and promoting new listings, and lawn signs are also a great way to let local prospects know a home is available, technology can help you reach an audience that is far bigger than the audience you could reach using traditional marketing methods.

Here are a few ways you can take advantage of modern tools to blast your listings in ways that were not available to agents just a few short years ago:

Promote them on your agent website

An agent website is your digital business card. But it is so much more than that. It can be so rich in content, in articles, blog posts, photos and testimonials, that it beautifully demonstrates your knowledge, your expertise, and the value you will bring to clients. Use software such as Real Estate Sites to make building the site a snap and to include important features and tools to make it search engine friendly and to highlight and publicize each new listing.

Create Single Property Sites

A single property site is usually the first Google result that someone will get when they search for a listing’s address on the Web. It’s one of the best, fastest, most cost-effective ways to drive more traffic to a single listing.

Get Social

Social media allows you to reach out to prospects in real time, telling them about an exciting new listing and encouraging the to share it with their friends. Social media is inherently viral – postings of interest are reposted, shared and re-tweeted and so are exposed to a large audience.

Get Visual

Creating a video for each of your listings maximizes the “fun” and “cool” aspect of modern technology. Post the video on your site or on your blog, share the link in social media, and people will love watching the videos – and sharing them with their friends.

Get Mobile

Make the most of the mobile trend and drive more traffic to your listings. Make sure people can easily access your listings from their smartphones by including a QR code on your lawn signs and on your print media, and make sure your website is mobile-friendly.

Technology is giving you the tools to drive serious traffic to your listings. Are you making the most of it?

How to Drive More Traffic to Your Listings in 2011 is a post from: Properties Online Blog

For many years Real Estate agents have struggled to create professional, engaging videos for their listings.  The expense of having a professional video shot has always been cost prohibitive and the quality for most do-it-yourselfers usually leaves something to be desired. Virtuets seeks to solve these issues by enabling real estate professionals to create property videos that won’t break the bank.

This December, Properties Online will be releasing their new product called Virtuets. Virtuets allow real estate professionals to create stunning videos for each listing using still images, music and a whole lot of pizzazz! The agent can select the genre and music that best fits the property and the Virtuet’s engine does the rest. Agents can share the videos on YouTube, blogs or Facebook!  Additionally, they can burn each Virtuet to a DVD for safe storage. These engaging videos will impress even the most discriminating seller. The company plans to release this new product as an added value service for their website products ListingDomains.com and RealEstateSites.com but will also launch a stand alone version in 2011.

-Amanda Cornelius, realinventive.com

New Video Posting Tool for Real Estate Agents is a post from: Properties Online Blog

There are several ways to make your property site more interactive and fun for your visitors. We have included all of them in our Listing Domains single property websites.

Add Music to Your Site

Music can help set the stage and invoke an emotional response from potential buyers. Choose from a large selection of music loops. Since some internet users prefer silent browsing, we always give them the option to silence the music.

Add Video to Your Site

Video adds depth and interest to a website and makes it far more interesting and interactive than a text-only website. Now you can embed video directly into your Listing Website. You can include many types of videos, including YouTube video, Google Video, TurnHere Video, WellcomeMat Video and more.

Add Audio to Your Site

An audio message makes visitors feel welcome and turns internet browsing into a more personal experience. You can add an audio message to each and every property website. Use audio messages to direct your prospects to important features of the property and invite them to stop by your open house. All you need is a microphone – our program does the rest.

Enhance Your Property Site with Music, Audio and Video is a post from: Properties Online Blog

Why only 12 seconds?
Because anything longer is boring. The scientists at the 12seconds dodecaplex have conducted countless hours of research to determine the precise amount of time it takes for boredom or apathy to set in during typical Internet video viewing. Their patent pending Electro-Tear-Duct Prongers have determined that exactly 12 seconds of video is the ideal amount of time to keep anything interesting. Are you buying this? I am

Applications for Real Estate Agents
How about a 12 second video of each room – immediately uploaded to Twitter? How about a 12 second market report? Any other ideas out there?

Tweet 12 Seconds of Video from your iPhone! is a post from: Properties Online Blog

How do you think this compares with Zillow or Trulia?

Google Maps and Real Estate is a post from: Properties Online Blog