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Pop Quiz: What is the 3rd biggest search engine?

Yahoo, Bing, AOL, MSN, ASK?

None of the above. It’s YouTube.

This is not surprising especially considering the largest search engine owns it – Google. This now means that as you use more video content on your website, you have to learn the best ways to optimize and distribute it. Hubspot provide an excellent guide to optimizing your videos, which will save me time as I want to tell you about your alternatives and why it’s worth choosing different platforms for different reasons.

If YouTube is the biggest and best why should I bother with the rest?

Here are some of your options:

• Wellcomemat – Real Estate specific. I am a fan but don’t like their search functionality. Maybe they will read this and change it! Union Street Media has a channel and some of our clients, which have had a big impact on search engine visibility and user engagement.
• Vimeo – High quality host that offers a good array of viewing widgets for your site especially with Macs. Serves the creative community well with shorts and artistic videos in HD. The free basic option only allows 1 upload a week though and most importantly NO COMMERCIAL CONTENT.
• Tubemogul – TubeMogul is a free service that provides a single point for deploying uploads to the top video sharing sites, and powerful analytics on who, what, and how videos are being viewed. It can distribute your video to all of these: Youtube, Yahoo, Myspace, AOL, MetaCafe, Google, Rewer, DailyMotion, Blip, Veoh, Crackle, Sclipo, Viddler and HowCast.
• Viddler – Very user friendly with a good variety of formats you can upload with, customize and distribute including social media APIs. I especially like the option to be able to use your own branded watermark instead of the platform as you see from YouTube or Vimeo. This of course is with the pay version. Drat!

Google’s new Universal Search is randomly placing thumbnails next to video search results, attracting the eye FIRST, even before the #1 search result. This new style of blended search results is the kicker for video. Whatever happens next, it’s clear that video SEO is finally starting to catch up to the rest of the web. With services like SpeakerText and YouTube captions emerging to help eliminate unsearchable content issues, the future likely holds more automated and accurate video-text mapping and perhaps eventually video editing with the use of cloud computing. There’s a thought.

Search Results for Union Street Media: A good example of Universal Search, where it’s not just about web site results anymore.

The founder is John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College. John believes the drinking age should be lowered to 18 so young adults in the 18-20 age range don’t resort to dangerous measures to acquire alcohol. The idea is that by teaching people at an earlier age how to drink responsibly, it will lead to better habits in the future.

John came to us needing a better website, and that’s exactly what we gave him. Watch him talk about his positive partnership with Union Street Media.

Check out the Union Street Media YouTube Channel to watch other happy clients speak about their work with us!

Recently we’ve compiled a video that highlights a few good words that some of our clients had to say about their experience with Union Street Media.

After you’ve signed up, check out all of Union Street Media’s videos and rate your favorites!

The news was rolled out by their founder here and you can learn more about what WellcomeMat does here and even see a few of our in house offerings on our Union Street Media channel.

We would be interested to hear from anyone that has used this application and their thoughts on its effectiveness, however  the app is currently usable only on the iPhone 3G.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The upcoming Media Convergence Conference in New York City, put on by The Economist, launched a video called Shift Happens, that helps put these changes in context.  They posted a fascinating video about the event here:

My favorite statistic: The average American teen sends 2272 text messages a month.

With numbers like that, and the often quoted 2008 NAR study that shows 87% of home buyers use the internet when making a purchase, I wonder how much longer people will continue to disproportionately spend money offline?

The presentation went very well. We received a great deal of positive feedback from participants from all over the region. Our friend and client Brian Boardman, a REALTOR® here in Burlington, Vermont chimed in to talk  about how a particular listing video help him get one of his high-end properties under contract.  It was a fun, engaging conversation!

Please contact us if you attended the session and would like a copy of our notes (or if you couldn’t make it, and would like a copy of our notes).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Inspired by a few videos we saw on our semi-annual trip to the Inman News Real Estate Connect conference, we also produced a video biography of Brian to help introduce him to site visitors.  We launched a new site, www.agentsdrivinghydrids.com, to coincide with Brian’s effort to encourage REALTORS to drive hybrid vehicles this summer as well.  If you’re one of them, please let Brian know and he’ll link to your web site.

Disclaimer: we have a good friend that works at the Burlington Free Press and do believe there is a role for print in the real estate advertising model.

This blog article on real estate advertising in newspapers from a veteran media executive is a must read for REALTORS undecided about the ratio of print to web investment. The article states that 6 out of 10 real estate agents think newspaper advertising is useless. However, 80% still buy print ads often just to appease the sellers they are representing!  This is consistent with the anecdotal reports we’ve heard from our clients.

We feel that REALTOR are the expert in their field.  With their knowledge of the market and trends, they are best qualified to know how to market their properties and to whom.  If the high quality leads are coming from the web then this is the sort of quality control that needs to be measured and communicated to sellers.  One client of ours has recently started offering sellers $250 back at closing if he never has to run their house in a print ad.  Think that’s crazy?  Try pitching it as your next listing presentation.

Brian Boardman on real estate marketing

Brian Boardman, the broker and owner of Hickock & Boardman  and a longtime USM client, spoke to us recently about the growing trend of moving away from print to web to market properties.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Getting into the ‘early majority’ phase

In 1957 at Iowa State College Joe M. Bohlen and George M. Beal developed a simple analogy called the technology adoption lifecycle, which examined a way to look at when people adopt a new technology.

A more in depth explanation of this curve can be found here, but this is basically how it breaks down:

Innovators:

Those that adopt long before most people are aware of the technology

Early Adopters:

Those that see the value in testing new technologies before taking them up

Early Majority:

Those who can get a competitive advantage over the next 2 categories by learning how to utilize the technology before the competition. this is the most important category to be in.

Late Majority:

Those that are late to the party and need to adopt to stay in the game but will find it difficult to gain an advantage over people that have been utilizing it earlier.

Laggards:

Those that risk falling way behind and even going out of business in some cases.

Real Estate Video

We won’t beat you over the head about using video as a marketing tool in order to showcase your listings and personality, but take note. Soon many more Realtors will jump on board and it will become the new normal. Now is a great time to get involved. Decide what your objectives are and the route you want to take either with a good local videographer or by yourself. It is not meant to distract from the efforts of lead generationbut could be yield good return on that time investment.

In a new era of ‘social’ media and more direct communication with buyers, it’s important to remember to be sociable without the appearances of a hard sell. Realtors are very much used to the meet-and-greet with prospective clients so a natural extension of this is to display these skills on the web.

When we here at Union Street Media talk to our Real Estate clients, we frequently hear that before the dominance of real estate websites they received many more direct calls from perspective clients. These days, they say, there are so many more barriers before that initial phone call happens. Many potential clients want to avoid the pressure of a face to face meeting and are more inclined to make contact via email and contact forms. In this sterile online environment, the opportunity for the broker to display his or her knowledge and personality is limited, thus reducing their direct impact on the buyer. In effect, there is so much more run-around before the broker and buyer actually meet and make a personal connection. This is where the video-bio comes in. If used correctly, the video bio can break down these communication barriers to get across the knowledge and personality that you just can’t achieve through email.

We are proud to present our own video bio for Brian Boardman here, which we produced in-house. Clearly comfortable in front of a camera, you get to see a more personable view of him and not just a slick advertisement.

What are the advantages to video bios?

Introduce your agent to prospective clients.

It allows Realtors to communicate their goals as well as offer a call to action, up front, and answer commonly asked questions. This can save time for both the Realtor and potential buyers. It gives the agent an advantage over competitors who aren’t using video – adding credibility and additional value to both buyers and sellers. It’s a real opportunity to demonstrate their inter-personal style and include former clients who can provide testimonials and talk a bit about their experience buying through a particular agent.

That’s not to say, however, that a video-bio should view like an infomercial which to certain demographics can be a real turn-off. It’s an opportunity to display some transparency with buyers and garner trust — not just pay lip service to it.

Long shelf life compared to listing videos.

The only thing that will tangibly age will be the broker. It isn’t time sensitive, so the value and relevance of the video will be preserved and not disappear after a few months. Once a house is sold, a video tour becomes obsolete. So it is valuable to have other types of video as a constant reference and link. This can be posted to various other real estate hub sites such a wellcomemat.com or inmantv.com as a constant branding tool and tag.

Calling card

Finally, this type of video acts as a calling card as people look around for a Realtor. To be able to point people to this kind of media is another time saver and might increase the likelihood of a face-to-face meeting. If you have a Facebook profile or a Twitter account, you can promote the video — and to generate typically honest feedback on the quality or effectiveness of the video from these sites.

So if you think you have the chops for being on-screen, consider the bio video as another valuable marketing tool for you.