A beginner’s guide to video marketing for the property sector

Video is becoming the most popular way we consume media online, and it’s only set to grow. By the end of the year, Google has estimated that 87% of all web traffic will be video, meaning that you’ll be falling behind your competition if you’re not using it. Social media has accelerated this shift towards video marketing, with Facebook reporting over 100 million hours of video consumed per day in 2016.

With that in mind, we’ve put together a starter guide so that you can get cracking with video production and marketing without breaking the bank.

Plan your content

One of the things that makes video so great is the versatility of it. You can do anything with it and people will watch it, as it’s instantly more engaging than a wall of text. This doesn’t mean you should create a 10 hour video of paint drying! All your content should be planned beforehand and then created.

As with blog posts, look at what questions are being asked around a certain topic and ask yourself if you can answer them – then instead of writing a blog post, set up your camera!

Look at your FAQs on your website, can you answer these to camera? If so, do it!

Have a smartphone? Film a video tour of your scheme/development/campaign topic and host it on your website.

Has something happened in the property sector? Look at what topics people are talking about on social media and answer them, or offer comment around them.

Follow the golden rules of filming

Like any content production, there are golden rules that you should follow when creating a video, especially if you’re using a smartphone.

Always landscape

This is the big one – the one that should be followed at all costs.

You should always hold your phone landscape, like you would when you watch a video. Vertical video records in vertical dimensions, meaning that when you produce your video, it will be in the wrong resolution. A video needs to be visually appealing, and landscape is much more appealing to the eye.

Focus

Just like taking a picture on your phone, when you have your subject in frame, tap on the screen to focus. If your subject is out of focus, your video becomes at best annoying to watch, at worst unwatchable all together.

Try not to zoom

We’ve already mentioned that smart phone cameras have come on leaps and bounds, but unfortunately, digital zooming hasn’t. When you zoom you reduce the stability and quality of the images.

Get the right tools

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

One of the main reasons why people in the property sector haven’t invested in video marketing is that the cost and effort it took to produce a video that looked professional was too high.

The good news is that the rise in video consumption and the advances in smart phone cameras has lead the way for the development of a suite of low cost or free video tools that you can use to produce gorgeous videos without a traditional editing suite.

The below represent some of the easiest and best ways to produce video content for a range of different video styles:

iMovie – Great all-round video editor – FREE

Apple has officially made its default video editing software FREE for all users.

If you have not used it before it can seem a little daunting to master, but the core functionality is pretty straight-forward, and if you do feel stuck, there are hundreds of iMovie tutorials on YouTube, such as this one: https://youtu.be/gqNXhDEFgEk

It’s also has an iPad and iPhone app that offers some of the same functionality on the go.

YouTube Director for Business – Great for a variety of phone produced videos – FREE

This app focuses on making it incredibly easy to produce professional looking videos directly from your iPhone (unfortunately there’s no android version yet).

The app comes pre-loaded with templates that you can use to create different types of videos, pre-loaded animated titles that you can edit, outlines of where to frame subjects and even a shot-by-shot guide to follow.

The videos are then uploaded directly to YouTube, meaning your editing time is significantly cut down. Find out more here: https://www.youtube.com/yt/advertise/make-video-ads.html

Power Director App – Android equivalent to iMovie – FREE

Offering a lot of the features that iMovie offers Apple users, the Power Director App is a really slick platform that allows you to edit videos quickly, directly from your phone or tablet.

That’s a wrap

Video isn’t going away, it’s only going to get bigger and more integral as a part of marketing your scheme, your business and yourself. So it’s important to jump in and start doing it.

Any hesitations need to be left at the door – you need to be able to get in front of the camera and start talking! The more you do it the more natural it will feel.

When you upload the video to your site, it’s a great idea to include a transcript underneath in text format. By doing this you allow people without access to sound to read the content, and you get the SEO benefit of all of your keywords.

If you’d like any further information on video marketing for the property sector, or any questions about livestreaming, get in touch with us at Roland Dransfield via or website, or chat to us on Twitter.