We have some exciting news to share…the ability to add video clips in your Virtual WalkThru Video! But there is more…not only can you upload a clip of a fountain, a boat skimming across the water, or whatever you want to showcase on an individual tour, we also added the ability to upload Agent Bookend Videos to your profile, and then add these videos to every WalkThru Video, just by checking the box! Posting to the MLS? Don’t worry, you can just have your bookend videos show on the branded tour, or if you make the bookend video generic (without any of your contact info, name, etc…), you can include the bookends in both the branded and unbranded videos.
See our How To Video to learn more on how you can create a really custom video for your tours[pb_videoshowcase group=”8″]
This is also an example of how you can embed the whole virtual tour into your website!
While we believe a great photo with animation to simulate movement is a powerful tool, a video clip can evoke emotion up and above what a photo might provide. So give it a try. It’s FREE!
Here is an interesting blog post from comScore – 2012 U.S. Digital Future in Focus a report detailing how fast the tablet market is growing, and how it has zoomed passed the growth lines of other tech tools. According to PewInternet, the number of eReaders and tablet users DOUBLED between mid-December and January of 2012. Wow…a popular holiday gift, it seems.
PEW Research Center
As it stands now, there are over 35 million tablets in use in the United States, some 19% of adults own some kind of tablet. Mobile use is also increasing. Companies like Zillow and Realtor.com also report a significant number of users over the weekends come from mobile devices. According to comScore, 20% of holiday shoppers used their smartphones to check prices while at a brick and mortar store. This includes scanning bar codes and QR codes, those funny looking square boxes we have on our property fliers. BestBuy and other retailers are starting to incorporate the use of QR codes more and more at the point of sale….so could QR codes be hitting the mainstream?
Luckily, FloorPlanOnline has tools to meet these growing demands. We recently launched our exclusive iPad Tabbed Tour. You can see most tour content, including the interactive floor plan, video and more, just by opening the tour up on your iPad. You can even connect your iPad to a TV connected to an Apple TV to show it off on the big screen. Pretty cool. Read more on that here. P.S. it works on other tablet devices too.
We also serve up a mobile tour for smartphones so the user can see basic listing content, including an image of the floor plan.
Finally, we automatically create a QR code for each listing. You can easily add it to any flyer and it is available as a download under marketing tools in your account. This helps reduce paper costs by allowing people to scan the code on your flyer in a flyer box for more info.
We are also exploring more advanced mobile tools….so stay tuned!
If you would like to see the comScore report, please see this video.
New help videos have been added to our help video library. Click here to see our Help Videos. I would like to highlight two videos that are very common customer care issues. We hope the videos will help!
First, how to download and save photos to your computer, for use on your MLS or for your own marketing brochures. Click to see this video. Note, we are very interested in helping make your life easier…we do automated tour linking, and in a few cases, we upload photos, to the local MLS. If you would like us to pursue this with your MLS, we are more than happy to do that, but you first need to contact your MLS and see if they allow it. If not, ask them if they would be willing to work with us to do automated tour linking and photo uploads. If they say “NO,” go higher up the chain…. 🙂
Second, how to customize your tour and flyer colors to match your branding. We suggest using the browsers Firefox or Chrome because both of these have free plugins you can install that will tell you the color code of anything on a web page. Just click the video to see how you can customize the colors to exactly match!
FloorPlanOnline has been producing free YouTube videos for all your FPO tours for quite some time now. You might be thinking to yourself that YouTube is of little value since there aren’t many people going to YouTube to look for their next home. Think again. The real value of having a video of your listing on YouTube is it has tremendous Search Engine Optimization benefits.
FloorPlanOnline YouTube videos get your property (with the branded tour link back to your listing) listed typically on page 1 of search engine returns when you type in the address. And unlike being on Trulia or Zillow, the viewers are directed directly back to you and your tour where you can engage directly in lead capture, not to some page where there might be 3 other agents waiting to take your lead.
If you pay Zillow to enhance your account, you still benefit…but if you do not, there is no way you can get the lead.
Plus, the tour will show up with the YouTube video icon (like at left), and video we know is one thing that attracts users to click. So you have a higher chance of people clicking on your YouTube video listing and ultimately getting back to you, vs a large real estate portal site.
Adding the new voice over tool (just launched this year) to FloorPlanOnline Videos, further adds to the seo power. Google now listens to the voice overs, traslates and indexes the content!
So, if you want the potential to capture the lead yourself and your listing noticed, just add YouTube to your profile. We will automatically upload the video to either your YouTube channel, or ours. If you do not have a YouTube Channel, you can create one, or we have a Get Social service where we create the YouTube Channel and Facebook business page for you, can connect all of your tours into your accounts. Yes, we also have a Facebook app where your featured listings show in your Facebook business page.
We are pleased to announce several new enhancements to the FloorPlanOnline marketing system:
1. Enhanced iPad Tour Viewer
2. Separate Photo & Video Editing
3. Voice Over | Custom Audio Upload capability
Details for each enhancement are below.
Enhanced iPad Viewer.
We have completely re-written our tour viewer for the iPad which features your tour content in a very clean user interface. Now, you can get a fully functional tour experience, including the video and the interactive floorplan tour on your ipad! Just point and click your way around the floor plan with ease, just like the regular PC experience. It is also optimized for the screen orientation. Hold your iPad in landscape mode, and the content tabs are on top and the content layout is optimized for that view. Rotate the iPad to portrait mode, and the tabs move to the side and content shifts for that orientation as well. We believe it is the most advanced and useful tour viewer for the iPad. Plus, if you have an Apple TV device, you can even play the video on your TV! How cool is that?
Suggestions. In order to make the iPad tour look its best, we suggest you add a marketing description, complete the property details, and add features. We have a details tab that really showcases the property details. We even include the PDF of your flyer and printable floor plans. For older tours, video might not be viewable on your iPad tour due to a different format needed to display the video on the iPad. This can easily be added by just going into your account to the Manage Tour page, then click Edit Tour, then Edit Photos/Video. Hit Save and Close, and your video will get processed by our video server. We have already recreated over 1000 videos for tours going back to the end of October. So if your tour does not have a Video tab on the tour, just go in and edit it, or email us and we can re-queue all of your videos. One other point. There is no RoomPlanner tab on the iPad. This tool is built using flash, and there is a lot of development work to port it over to the iPad….so until that happens (or flash comes to the iPad (likely never)), the RoomPlanner will not be on the iPad version.
This enhancement is included at no additional cost for any active tour, and one reason it took us awhile to implement, so it works on all older tours! Try it – just go to www.111anystreet.com on your iPad. Note…this tour also works on any computer. There are a few tweaks we want to do, but eventually, it can also be your default tour template for the PC as well. Click here to see the PC version on your laptop or desktop.
Separate Photo & Video Editing.
We now have a way for you to separately edit which photos show on the Photo Gallery and WalkThru Video views. It is all done through the same edit page – we just added another check box to show a photo on the Photo View or Video view, or both. When you upload, all photos are added to both by default, but you can adjust what shows by going to the Edit Tour option on the Manage Tours page. With this (and the custom audio tool mentioned below), you can further differentiate the photo and video views.
Suggestions. We highly recommend you keep your video between 1 to 2 minutes in length. Most users will not sit through a 5 minute long video…but if you highlight the best photos taken, add descriptive text, and now, even add a voice over, you can really make your video a multi-media marketing piece that makes you and your listing stand out. And don’t forget, you can easily and automatically add your listing video to either your own custom YouTube channel (or your company’s channel provided you give us the login info) or just upload it to our YouTube channel. It is FREE, and it is a great way to get additional search engine (“SEO”) benefits. For example, once your video has been uploaded and indexed by Google, the listing video typically shows towards the top on page 1 of the search results. Just this little feature can show your seller that you are working hard to sell their home and differentiate it from all of the others.
If you like the Dashboard view on your tour, pick a different photo to start the photo or video view, and now you have 2 different images on the Dashboard view in the 2.0 tour.
Voice Over | Custom Audio Upload.
This is something that has been asked for over the years…and we now have brought it to fruition! You can now upload your own voiceover to the video so you can describe the property in your own way. Google is now indexing video text, so this also helps with the SEO of your tours, and you. Plus, since we upload your video for free to YouTube, it gets better indexed by Google, since they own YouTube. Read more on that here. You can also upload a file with your own music. Just go to Manage Tours, select Edit Tour and then Edit Video. You will see the button to upload the custom audio file. Right now, we ONLY accept MP3 file types. There are lots of free converters online if you have the file in a different type.
A word of caution: While you in theory can upload your own music with a voiceover, the music industry is on a war path about copyright violations. Using music on a virtual tour is for a commercial purpose that requires a license from the copyright holder. All of our music is validly licensed by companies the create or manage the music. Therefore, if you have your own music you want to use, just make sure you have a valid license to use it. Real songs from real artists generally mean big money for a right to use – like thousands of dollars….so if we do find “brand-name artist” music being used, we will be forced to remove the file. They have ways of electronically monitoring websites, and you do not want to have to pay fines or get sued…Neither do we….
Some exciting news on the flyer front. First, we are working on integrating with a printing partner, so you can get your flyers printed on high quality paper and sent right to your door. We will also work to integrate with select printing companies, like xpressdocs and Merrill, so you just send the PDF or even the images to them. Please contact us if you have a specific request as we are just starting to look into what is possible with other printing companies.
Custom Flyers!
We also now support a completely custom flyer option for your account or company account. Starting at a $399 set-up fee, we can create a unique flyer design for you and your company, that can be the default flyer template for all of your tours! Click here for an example of a custom flyer created for Haring Realty. All Haring agents have to do is add their text, pick which photos they want, and the rest just happens. And because we produce a high quality PDF, it is print ready. It is a huge time saver for agents or agent assistants. We are taking requests…just complete the form below with some basic information.
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Plus, the tour will show up with the YouTube video icon (like at left), and video we know is one thing that attracts users to click. So you have a higher chance of people clicking on your YouTube video listing and ultimately getting back to you, vs a large real estate portal site.
