Creating a Real Estate Video Channel on YouTube
If you haven’t realized yet that online video is a force to be reckoned with… check out this graph from a recent report by Hitwise.
During the week of February 3, YouTube’s traffic surged above the combined traffic to all of the television network websites. [emphasis mine]
I find this amazing - especially because, in general, I find YouTube saturated with a ton of garbage and weighed down by terrible navigation. Furthermore, their site wide search is basically unusable - unless I have the exact URL of what I want to watch, trying to find content on YouTube is next to impossible. (This is something I’m hoping their partnership with Google will fix shortly.)
Nevertheless, those traffic numbers don’t lie and this an impressive statistic.
One way YouTube can fix this situation is to to silo their videos into different channels. Not unlike how a traditional cable provider does really. And they’ve already begun to do this, like the deals they’ve made with NBC and the
National Hockey League (Go ‘Nucks!).
So it begs the question then, who will be the first to roll out a real estate video portal on YouTube?
Existing real estate video sites like RealEstateChannel.ca are a natural, more polished evolution of the homes channels you often see high up on the cable dial of your local cable provider. But they don’t even come close to offering the potential reach that YouTube does.
It seems to me that any of the Realogy brands (Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Sotheby’s etc.) might have the cachet (and deep pocketbooks) to pull this off. RealLiving would be a good candidate too - it shouldn’t be too hard to repurpose the videos they’re having produced by MLPodcast (see Real Estate Video is Here to Stay, Video Podcasting Maybe) so they could fed into a branded YouTube page.
The secret to creating a successful real estate video portal will be to make sure the videos are placed in the proper geographical context (state, county, neighborhood) and figuring out a way to present viewers with the most relevant videos to them individually (i.e. extensive filtering options).
For more on this, read The User As The Center Of The Universe: Integration Of Real Estate Video And Geolocation by For Sale By Locals
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14 Comment(s)
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- From What More Might Mean: Real Estate Video And YouTube « For Sale By Locals: A New Real Estate Approach | Jun 26, 2007
John Schroeder | Mar 5, 2007 | Reply
This graph is definitely interesting. Consumers want to see what they want to see and they want it on their schedule. Kind of like the whole blog idea. All the real estate information that you want…oh and by the way you can email or call me for any assistance.
I would hope that Google can sort out YouTube. Like you say there is just too much junk out there. A lot of good material gets buried by the thousands of videos of people lip synching to Beyonce. Nothing against Beyonce.
It will be interesting to see YouTube try to morph from a free for all into a useable business application. Hopefully it can do this and still keep all of the 18-69 yr old viewers.
Ahmed Anies | Mar 5, 2007 | Reply
This will a very effective way in the proccess of real estate marketing because YouTube now is wided taht it can give you what you want
Also video is stronger than text , it’s seems to be in flesh meeting.
Ahmed Anies
( Egyptian Real estate Agent )
( Egyptian Real Estate BLOGGER )
Phone: (002)+ 016 1334420
Email: info@egypt-realestate-agent.com
site: http://www.egypt-realestate-agent.com
matt | Mar 5, 2007 | Reply
Funny, when I try to search Youtube, I have the hardest time. I thought it was just me. good to know someone else has a hard time navigating. I also agree that the rating system sucks and garbage is all over the place.
There are a lot of sub-youtube-sites that only display the top content, which I find myself going to more.
On-demand cable will bring the networks back. I can see in the next few years, on-demand, user generated TV shows becoming popular…remember “Wayne’s World?”
Incredible Agent | Mar 5, 2007 | Reply
Joel, I had this same thought a few weeks ago. There is a widely speculated rumor that Google is creating a TV product that will distribute all the tv shows to users whenever they want as many times as they want. Who knows if that will work with the big media companies, but why wouldn’t it work industry by industry for user generate content? This shouldn’t be too hard. I took a quick look over there and they allow for channels to be created and you can tag your favorites. Unfortunately I couldn’t get to the channel I created and I don’t believe the tags feature is integrated very well with the search. Believe me I’m not criticizing them for having bugs. I have my own share of those to worry about. However, I don’t think it would be a far leap for them to develop something like this. It’s a no brainer for just about every industry.
Steve Jagger | Mar 5, 2007 | Reply
The RealEstateChannel.ca is doing very well with their site and their TV channel.. and lately they have started loading all of their content to YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=RealEstateMedia
We even see agents now creating their own real estate video channels on YouTube. Ian Watt of Century21 has done that - http://www.ianwatt.ca/TheSpotOnUrbanRealEstate.php
Christian Sterner | Mar 5, 2007 | Reply
Wow…nice chart! Up and to the right…just like it should be. Quality of the video experience, and search will remain a problem for them. Tags just don’t cut it in the real estate space.
Leon Ng | Mar 5, 2007 | Reply
Thanks Steve,
Yes you can find our Youtube page here:
http://www.youtube.com/realestatemedia
ForSaleByLocals | Mar 6, 2007 | Reply
Thanks so much for the link , Joel.
At the end of the day, the most important issue is the interactivity of the audience watching the video in terms of interested buyers or lead generation. We’ve been in close contact wih others that use YouTube quite a bit - from what we’ve seen, there seems to be little correlation between video views and direct activity on YouTube (calls, emails, blog/website referrals, leads generated). This may not be true in all cases but is common among those that we know.
We can directly contrast that with known activity on our site. We have a growing and active audience. March has us starting out at an average of over 4000 page views per day and over 1650 video views per day (up from 1800-2000 daily page views and 600-800 video views two months ago).
More importantly, we also have evidence that calls/emails to us and to the company involved with the video rise directly with the total video views. We know that our clients have sold properties directly as a result of our website. We are working on ways to more tightly formalize the lead generation from our site. The total video view data are information which we have been tracking for some time but just started publishing.
The technology can’t blind us to the fact that those that trust us (or any other site for that matter) with their video content want to sell properties. If propagation of video content isn’t selling properties, then there isn’t a value-add for the client. Given that reality, we’d rather make content and propogation decisions that create a smaller, demonstrably active audience over a huge and inactive audience.
ForSaleByLocals
REAL ESTATE CHANNEL | Mar 6, 2007 | Reply
Welcome to the “real” REAL ESTATE CHANNEL - a global video on-demand IPTV network launching April 1st at http://www.RealEstateChannel.com based out of Universal Studios, Orlando, Fl.
As you said above, “The secret to creating a successful real estate video portal will be to make sure the videos are placed in the proper geographical context (state, county, neighborhood) and figuring out a way to present viewers with the most relevant videos to them individually (i.e. extensive filtering options).”
…our business-generated sales, promo, direct response, educational, profile videos will be searchable by real estate catagories and geographic relevance…and we also just signed one of the largest TV program licensing deals in North America this year so that will will also have over 1,200+ actual HGTV type TV shows in our video library to stream on demand by show genre/episode (real estate, gardening, decorating, maitiance, etc…TV shows). See static demo IPTV video page at; http://www.RealEstateChannel.com/demo3
Check it out in April…
John Schroeder | Mar 6, 2007 | Reply
It will be interesting to see how the Real Estate Channel does. It seems like having some licensing agreements in place is the right way to do it. I wonder if they will have local affiliates. Having the ability to embed the videos that I create on my own site is a pretty cool feature that WellcomeMat allows me. I guess that there needs to be one/or a few national video “channels” along with some local ones. Real Estate by nature is local/regional.
sharm el sheikh real estate | Mar 15, 2007 | Reply
YouTube…now it’s a famous trade mark and most who wants to see vedio he can find what he want through YouTube in all fields…
sharm el sheikh real estate
info@redsearealestatesharm.com
http://www.redsearealestatesharm.com
Cory Lerner | Mar 19, 2007 | Reply
Your ideas for using YouTube will no doubt come to fruition - are coming to fruition. I’m trying to figure out how to extrapolate into related real estate industries like mortgage and title and inspections and appraisals. Let’s face it - seeing someone talk about rates ain’t gonna cut it. And yet……
Great stuff. Thanks.
Dan Hamilton | Mar 22, 2007 | Reply
I’ve had a YouTube Channel for a few months now. It’s fun and all, but until I am more experienced and have more material to post, it’s missing all of it’s potential. See it at http://www.YouTube.com/HamiltonHomes
Johan | Oct 28, 2007 | Reply
Hi
While searching youtube may be a problem. The real strength lies in the fact that Google likes youtube and when you do know what you do with keywords, tags and titles Google index your video withing 24 hours and include the video on the first page for those keywords.
Johan