Making the Most Out of Your Video Tours

We talk a lot about how valuable social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. are to networking. But one that may go unmentioned (but not unnoticed) is YouTube. Having a video tour of a house is not a new concept by any means, but getting the video out there is much easier than you think and you can then embed this link in your blogs, on your social networking sites and the like, to maximize on viewing potential.

Why choose YouTube?
YouTube is by far the most well known place to go for video searches. It exceeds 2 billion views a day and  these videos are embedded in tens of millions of other Web sites each day. They can also appear in Google search results, so if someone drives by the house you are marketing and Google’s the address, they can come across your video of the home “123 main st. video tour” and find out more about the house and how to contact you.

When to post?
Many studies have shown that YouTube traffic is higher on weekdays, as opposed to weeknights, which is to be expected as many more people are in front of their computers Monday through Friday. It also is noted that the peak viewing hours are between 2pm and 6pm. This means that you would want to make sure if you are submitting a new video, it is done on a weekday between 12pm and 1pm (to allow for some lag time between posting the video and having it actually appear on YouTube).

Added Bonuses
YouTube recently introduced newer video editing features. Instead of just posting your video, and then having to delete and re-post when edits need to be made (losing any marketing efforts you had done to create more traffic), you can edit videos while keeping the same id and view counts. YouTube also acquired Picnik last year to allow you to add different effects to your video (think old-fashioned color, black and white or cartoon). These types of edits can be beneficial to agents or brokers who would like to enhance different colors of the home or simply stabilize shaky camera footage. If you make a mistake editing, you can always just revert to the original.

Have any of you used YouTube or any other video sharing sites and have some good advice for making the most of it? Let us know!

This article was written by a contributor to Homefinder.com. To view the original post - and for more wonderful content - visit the Homefinder.com blog.