Agent Strategies: Video Blogging for Visitors

In this week’s Agent Strategies we chat to Ian Watt, a Canadian real estate agent who is laser-focused on marketing luxury condos in Vancouver. Part of Watt’s strategy is to publish three video blog posts a week, and we asked him how he manages to stick to this schedule.

“I post my videos on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and they are usually quite short - never longer than a minute or two,” Watt explains. “With uploading and a short edit the entire process takes 15 minutes - everyone has 15 minutes.”

Even if making the videos doesn’t take up much time, there will still be plenty of agents out there wondering what the point is in creating them in the first place. Watt answers this by saying his videos are “an icebreaker and a solidifier for relationships”.

“When people come to my open houses they feel like they already know me. After they leave the open houses and maybe see my videos a couple of months later they think ‘Right I remember that guy.’”

“Imagine that video for real estate is just like video for dating sites,” Watt adds. “If you had a dating profile online and you had a static photo with generic information, people would never get a feeling for who you are. However, if you posted a video three times a week, all the people who see your profile would either say ‘Yes I want to date him’ or ‘Not a chance.’”

“It’s the same thing with real estate,” Watt argues. “People are either going to say ‘Yes I agree with Ian and his opinions’, or they will never ever work with me - saving me a lot of wasted time.”

Watt goes on to say that plenty of people ask whether the videos actually bring him new business and that the answer is a resounding “yes”. However, he emphasises that video blogging is not about making your website a place for entertainment or a magazine-like resource.

“What I am trying to do is be the answer to every Google search in regards to real estate in downtown Vancouver,” Watt says. “If they type in ‘Vancouver condo foreclosure’ perhaps my video will be indexed and help them answer their question. In the meantime, they will perhaps think ‘Who is this guy?’ and come to my site. It’s more of a long tail approach to marketing.”

For agents who are camera shy, Watt suggests approaching videos from a different angle. “Perhaps get behind the camera, do narration and voiceover and let the property be the subject,” he suggests. “There are a million different ways to do video, but the important thing is that your video must help a buyer or a seller learn something they didn’t know before, while at the same time boosting your profile.”

Do you have a real estate marketing strategy you’d like to share? Get in touch with us at [email protected] and we’ll feature you in the next instalment of Agent Strategies.

Agent Strategies: Video Blogging for Visitors

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