Video content has been gaining in popularity over the past several years. In fact, people are spending on average 19 hours a week watching videos online.

And, in the real estate industry, the increased popularity of video content opens up new opportunities to help you get more leads, increase home sales, improve visitor engagement, and increase traffic to your website.

As a realtor, you are already familiar with virtual tours, or listing videos. You can improve engagement with these types of videos by adding some narrative or telling a story about your listing.

Here are a few other ideas on how to use video to connect with buyers and sellers.

  • Neighborhood guides and tours. These types of videos allow you to show people why they should move to your area. Talk about local businesses, popular places, beautiful scenery, and other attractions. Share your local knowledge and give people a unique insight into your community.
  • Community. Interview small businesses owners and prominent people in your local area and give them a shout out. Provide video clips of community events, parades, festivals, and other local celebrations. This is a great way for your viewers to connect you with your community and demonstrate your knowledge of the area.
  • Local market updates. Position yourself as an expert by giving updates on the current housing market and any interesting trends or hot topics in your local area.
  • Home buying tips. These videos could include seasonal home buying information, tips for first-time homebuyers, frequently asked questions, or things to do when looking for a second home.
  • Home selling tips. Demonstrate the special things you do for sellers, like home staging, and show them what a valuable resource you are. You could also discuss some home improvements that are beneficial to do before selling a home.
  • Promotional videos. Let your visitors see what sets you apart from your competition. If you’ve received an award or sponsored a local event or charity, tell them about it. Let your visitors get to know you. Show them the homes you’ve sold. Introduce your agents.
  • Testimonials. Interview authentic buyers, sellers, mortgage lenders, home inspectors, and others in your industry and let them talk about how great it is to work with you.

Optimize Your Video

Unfortunately, not all articles rank well on Google. Instead of just throwing these articles away, you can turn them into videos and publish them on YouTube. YouTube is the second largest search engine and has over 1 billion users, which amounts to almost a third of the internet traffic.

Since it’s owned by Google, YouTube search capabilities are very comprehensive. On YouTube, you don’t need to get great results or high rankings because most traffic will come from browsing and recommended videos.

To get started, you’ll need to have a good title with an intriguing headline and a custom thumbnail image. Use a colorful image and be sure to include relevant keywords in the filename, title, and description. Keep in mind that YouTube only shows the first 2-3 lines of the description before prompting visitors to click “show more”, so include any important links or calls to action at the beginning of your description. You’ll also want to use relevant tags. To figure out which tags you should use, do a search for your keywords, find videos that are ranking for those keywords and look at the tags they are using.

It’s critical to know that you only have 15 seconds to grab your viewers’ attention, so this is the most important part of your video.

Market Your Video

Promotion is the key to success! YouTube makes it easy to share and interact with videos. Sharing your videos on social media is a great way to give your viewers more insight into your video and engage with them.

Promote your YouTube channel and videos on your website. Add a YouTube follow icon to your website. This will not only help market your YouTube videos, it will also help drive more traffic to your website.

Create a blog post with some introductory context to your video. Be sure to encourage comments from your viewers and engage with those who leave them.

Share your videos with your relevant email lists. Email timely videos when appropriate and include other videos in your next email campaign or newsletter. Email is still a great way to keep your contacts engaged and informed. According to Inman, including video in emails doubles the click-through rate and decreases opt-outs by 75%.

Consider Live Streaming

Both Facebook Live and YouTube offer easy ways to stream live videos and post on social media, which allows you to communicate with buyers and sellers in real-time. Live streaming is a great way to engage and attract viewers. You might consider doing a live stream for first-time home buyers with a Q&A session, or a virtual open house. Live streaming, according to Inman, is an effective way for realtors to market themselves. This is time-consuming, so it’s important to make sure you have a valid commitment from buyers or sellers.

Now is the time to position yourself as a real estate video leader and embrace the wonderful world of video technology! Reach out to one of our strategists today to discuss your real estate digital marketing goals.