Storytelling in Real Estate

Every town, community, neighborhood, home, brand and person has a unique story. If you’re not telling those stories or highlighting them through the lens, your competition just may.

Earlier this month in New York City, at the Inman News Real Estate Connect, Marc Davison of 1000 Watt Consulting and our very own Christian Sterner, had a fireside chat about The Art of Storytelling. They opened the entire session up to the audience as well in order to help give more folks a perspective of how some of their fellow real estate practitioners were telling stories via quality filmmaking.

But How do You Tell Stories?

This was a question asked by the audience. Well, not everyone can. Some people just plain ol’ suck at it.

Painting a picture through the lens of a camera is an Art. When it comes to real estate, there are a number of ways to paint this picture.

One example, as Marc mentioned during the session, is to take a common question from your customers and answer it on camera. One such question that many of their clients customers from New York City had was – How is the commute from Westchester to New York City?

To answer that question, Houlihan Lawrence, along with 1000 Watt and it’s team of filmmakers, created a script and storyboard which eventually became a fantastic community video for Westchester County and anyone who wondered what it was like to commute from Westchester to New York City. But ultimately, I think that video painted the perfect picture and really showed in a great way, What it’s like to live in Westchester?

Hope you enjoy the panel video on Storytelling.

Update:

Chris Brogan just let the cat out of the bag – Make Video Better

“I’m fairly convinced that video will be an important part of 2012 because of all the mobile and tablet devices that are now out-selling their laptop and desktop brethren. Yes, there will still be a place for text, but you are now a magazine and a TV station, so get thinking about what your TV channel means.”

View the complete set here on Facebook >

View the complete set here on Facebook >

That’s precisely why WellcomeMat teamed up with filmmakers over at Gotham Photo Company to capture the essence of Agent Reboot at last week’s inaugural 2012 event here in NYC. Thanks to the folks at Inman News for allowing us to film the event!

What is Agent Reboot?
Agent Reboot presents all of the latest tools and technologies for your business, but in a way that starts by asking the question, “What’s my strategy?” Twitter, Facebook, blogging, video, etc. all incredibly powerful communication tools; however, you will never see the results your looking for until you set goals and determine a strategic plan to meet those goals.

This is Agent Reboot…

A few quotes from the video:

“Agents are very excited about technology and they want to know what the newest technology is. So what we’re covering at Reboot is that if  you don’t understand the people, opportunities and strategies… the technologies aren’t going to be a big part of your business. If you understanding who you’re targeting, how you’re going target them, and you spend a lot of time coming up with strategies. Maybe even spending money on strategy and not product – that’s kind of the concept.”
- Chris Smith, Chief Evangelist, Inman News and Contributing Editor, InmanNext, @chris_smth, @inmannext

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“Reboot’s like a cleanse for real estate agents. It’s how we restart our year and get our business going and think about the new things we’re going to do different…   So that we can hit brand new goals or brand new levels in our business. The entire event is filled with some of the greatest minds in real estate, some of the smartest agents, the people that actually trying to survice. The brokers who are trying to figure out the solutions on how they can recruit more agents or how they can get their agents to do more deals. Everybody’s here and everyone’s paying attention.”
- Ben Kinney, President, Home4Investment Real Estate Team, @benkinney

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“What agents can really expect from Agent Reboot in 2012 is a real high level strategic discussion about what they should be doing. And we hope the conversations start happening where they’re thinking about… Is this good for my business? Is this going to generate more leads? Is this going to make more money in the coming year? We’re just really excited about the direction of Agent Reboot.”
- Katie Lance, Director of Social Media, Inman News and Contributing Editor, InmanNext, @katielance, @inmannext

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- Performance based video strategies

- Halstead ProperTV

- Houlihan Lawrence HLTV

- Naked man real estate video

If you’re attending Inman Real Estate Connect today, be sure to check out Innovation track 4, “Mastering Video” beginning at 2pm today. This track features five sessions covering everything you need to learn about real estate video.

WellcomeMat Co-Founder Christian Sterner will be joining 1000 Watt’s Marc Davison at 3pm for a fireside chat, “The Art of Storytelling“.

More info here: http://tinyurl.com/7s6xrjd

RE Barcamp NYC 2012

Here are a few notes I took down during the conversation (#REBCNY):

• Contrary to statements made in 2010 and 2011, 2012 is the year of real estate video. Sandy Edry an just about everyone else in the audience agreed.
• Videos of neighborhoods and communities are like catnip for consumers. People searching for local info about your area will find your videos and then find you.
• Along with providing great service, there is no more powerful way for a real estate agent or brokerage to stand out than by posting quality videos of the areas they represent. In these cases in best if a professional shoot the footage.
• Video evokes emotion and helps tell the story of a property or place. Maybe you should see for yourself.
• A home stager in the crowd expressed interest in using video to showcase before and after examples of his work. Group consensus was that he should use photos for the before and show video for the after.
• It’s ok to try video just realize it’s easy to shoot, the hard part (READ: time consuming) is in the editing. If you do shoot your own videos, HD Hat can edit them for you at a very low cost. Focus on what you do best and let the pros handle the rest.
• According to Mark Passerby owner of HD Hat, by 2014 90% of all content will be displayed via video. The actual quote is from Cisco stating 90% of all web traffic will be video, however I have to downplay this one a bit. Each time you watch a video you are churning through more than 10x the data (2-500mb) than text (1-30k) and or photos (60k-300k). Presuming traffic is a reflection of data packets (information flow), this is a slightly disingenuous stat. Nonetheless, compare how much video you watched in 2007 to 2012. BOOM!
• Mark also makes some killer attachments for the iPhone and iPad. If you are considering shooting your own videos, be sure to check out his hardware here. I was practically drooling over this iPhone lens wide angle adapter.
• Vince Collura of Gotham Photo Company mentioned clients are paying anywhere from $550 and up for video tours. Hinted [not verifyied] that on occasion the seller may be supplementing a portion of the cost for video production.
• One of the first to NYC brokers to use video (if not the first) Doug Heddings Founder of Heddings Property Group pays about $550 / video and has ever since he started way back in 2007. Oh and here’s his virgin real estate video. Doug only shoots with professionals.
• Where you put your videos matters.
• Someone asked me if you can embed a video channel on your Facebook page. Answer is yes and here’s how.
• The quality of real estate video is getting better and some might say… sexier.
• Video can be used in many different ways that do not always require a professional. For example, imagine your client can’t leave work but he/she wants to see the washer and dryer OR the backyard. You could pull your iphone out and quickly show a specific feature in realtime. At times convenience trumps quality.
• Different strokes for different folks. Try both out and see what works best for your business. Just get started this year.

Lastly, over the course of our panel some very nice things were said about WellcomeMat. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Our team has been eating, sleeping and breathing real estate video since 2005. We’re thrilled to have you join the movement!

If you’ll be attending #rebcy on Monday, we hope you won’t be camera shy. Together with Gotham Photo Company, we will be documenting the entire day through the lens of a camera.

As the leading real estate video publishing platform and filmmaker directory, we are working with our top filmmakers nationwide to cover real estate events. Our filmmakers will tell the story of what actually happened at the event in a documentary type manner.

To get a glimpse of what to expect, please check out this video from the last real estate event we attended:

The theme was all about Creating Unique Content. You can read my summary of the event here. I wonder what topics will dominate at #rebcny?

A little birdie tells me there might be a few sessions on video and filmmaking, so please bring your questions.

Thanks to everyone at team #rebcny for having us. We look forward to seeing each of you next week!