Tech-Turkey Tip: How Share/Email/Embed a Video

Great truth about (some . . . many . . . maybe most) Great Realtors:  We tend to be all thumbs when it comes to technology.  We want so badly to be right there in the thick of Google/Facebook/YouTube/LinkedIn and so on, but somehow that chromosome was left out of the cocktail shaker when were were hatched.  Oh, sure, we could learn this stuff, if we could only find an hour a day.  Unfortunately there hasn’t been one of those for, well . . . years!  So we continue on, trying to type the Gettysburg Address using only our thumbs! We are indeed, Tech Turkeys!

Now therefore, I’m going to drop in an occasional post on how to do the simplest (though for some the most frustrating) electronic tasks.  First up:  Video!  Which usually, but not always, means YouTube.  Let’s assume there is a great video on YouTube you want to share.   Let’s assume it’s this one:

Assuming you found this video somewhere other than on YouTube, i.e. on Facebook, click the play button.  When you do, a navigation bar will appear at the bottom of the video.  See it there, on the video just above?  Go ahead and hover your mouse over the YouTube logo.  See?  It lights up and says ‘Watch on YouTube.’   If you were to click on the logo it would take you to this video’s YouTube page.  It would look like this:

Look below the video, and below the title, where it says ‘Share This Video.’  There are logos for most Social Media sites there, starting with Facebook.  If you wanted to post this video to your own Facebook page and share it with your friends, you’d just click that button.  It would open up a Facebook window with the video and a place for you to comment.  No need to hop out of YouTube, it all happens right there.

Now look below the logos.  There is a URL highlighted in blue.  That’s the link to this video on YouTube.  If you wanted to email the video to someone, you’d right-click on that link and select ‘Copy.’  Then, go to your email message, right click in the body and select ‘Paste.’  You’ll be sending a link to the video because emailing video is . . . well, it’s a mess.  Video files are so big, most email servers will reject them and even if they get through, the time it will take your recipient to download and then play the video will be irritating to say the least.  Send a link as outlined here and your recipient can stream the video almost instantly from the Internet.

By the way, you’ll notice an ‘Email’ tab above the Social Media icons.  If you are logged in to YouTube, you can email a link directly from there.  However I find it just as easy to copy/paste the link as outlined here.  That way it doesn’t matter whether you are logged in or not.

Also above the Social Media icons you’ll see the word ‘Embed.’  Click it and you’ll see something like this:

The code highlighted in blue can be used to place the video on your website or blog.  Again, just right-click/copy the code, then go to your website or blog editor and right-click/paste.  Notice below the highlighted code there is a drop-down menu for Video size.  You are given a handful of options here and should pick the one that will fit the page into which you are pasting the video.  In this screenshot I’ve selected 560 x 315 because the web page into which I want to paste the video has a column width of exactly 560 pixels.

And that’s enough for now.  You don’t want to know the history of video compression and which codec is best.  You just want to know how to share one, right?  And that’s it!  Ciao.

RE-Targeting

How big is your target market?

How often to do you touch your target market with marketing?

What share of the listings are you taking in your target market?

These are all good Help-U-Sell questions.  Our success has always come from geographic target marketing.  We always begin with a serious marketplace analysis.  We look for those pockets in the market with higher turnover, with 4% – 5% being acceptable and more than that being exciting.  Then we hit those target households hard, with simple, easily understood marketing pieces.

All of that changed when the market went into the tank.  When turnover rates plummeted because houses simply weren’t selling, when it became more important to have a ready, willing  and able buyer to work with than a seller, the targeted, rifle approach to neighborhood domination went out the window in favor of a shotgun blast spread over a much wider geography.  We were no longer attracting business from 5,000 – 12,000 households.  Now we were serving 40,000 or 50,000 (or trying to).

But here’s the thing:  it is not possible to target market to 50,000 households.  It’s just too expensive.  If you did a monthly EDDM outreach to that big a group you’d be spending about $15,000 and running the wheels off your car.

Instead, what you end up doing with a broader geography is trading on the name, the Brand.  A certain number of people in that broad geography already have some familiarity with your program, understand that you can save them money, and will reach out to you if they know you are close by.  These are the home sellers who contact you even if you don’t market.

It’s almost impossible to build market share on that.

This is a challenge to you:  put down the shotgun and refocus.  Do your market analyses.  Find the 5,000 or 7,000 homes in your broad area where turnover is highest.  Pick one and do it right.  Do a monthly EDDM there, crank up a Facebook and/or Google campaign.  Put out your blitz signs.  Faithfully do arounds and just listed/just sold postcards (remember: arounds are around someone else’s listing).

6,000 homes x 5% turnover = 300 sales.  Get 10% of that and watch your business explode!  Once your signs are prominent and you  have listings to market around, you can begin to pare the expensive initial marketing and expand into an adjacent target.

This is how we do it.

 

Microsoft Opens Up

Remember the early days of Microsoft?  at war with Apple in the marketplace and in the courts – each one racing to dominate the personal computer universe – allegations that this one stole that but from the other one and so on.  Seems Microsoft won that early round by focusing on its Operating System and making it available to PC manufacturers all over the world.  Apple kept its OS proprietary and bundled it with its own hardware, relegating itself to boutique status.

But that’s 30 year old news.  When Steve Jobs came back to Apple he took the company in a dozen new directions, and changed everything. Not just Apple, not just business in general:  he changed the world.  We consume music today completely differently than we did at the end of the last century thanks to his Ipod and ITunes store.  The IPhone has replaced the camera as the most widely used image capture device.  The success of the IPad at least contributed to Microsoft’s decision to make its current operating system – which, by the way, is a bit of a disaster – touch capable.

After years at the bottom of the barrel, Apple is more profitable than Microsoft.  The two companies were in a dead heat in 2010.  But look at what’s happened since:

ms

(The steadily rising red bar is Google.  The lion’s share of its revenue comes from its websites, largely via advertising.)

Today, Apple’s core business is not the Mac.  That bit of bundled hardware/software is responsible for only 13% of its revenue.  The IPad is 18% and the IPhone is 55%.  Apple’s core business is now in your purse or pocket!

Now take a look at Microsoft and where its revenue comes from:

70% of what they bring in comes from licensing!  Licensing what?  Well, Windows of course, but there are other things as well, notably, Microsoft Office.   In fact, in the fiscal year ending June, 2013, $16 Billion of Microsoft’s nearly $27 Billion in Operating Profit were generated by the MS. Office dominated Business Division.

Microsoft has a new CEO.  Satya Nadella took over for Steve Ballmer a couple of months ago.  Ballmer was a wild man (the bald guy):

And, he was very protective of Office.  He led Microsoft through a time when it – like Apple – held tightly to its products and property.  It was this protectiveness that enabled Google to gain so much so quickly.  They popped on the scene making their products available for free and also available for anyone to use and develop!

All of which takes us to this week, when Satya Nadella holds his first press conference.  He is expected to announce that Office 365 will become available for use on the IPad.  According to Charles Cooper at CNet, “The decision to make Microsoft’s cash cow available on a product sold by one of its arch rivals not only breaks with a long Windows-centric history, it also sends a signal from the new boss that more big changes are in store.”

The lesson from these tech giants is that the game is always changing, the bullseye is always shifting, and the nature of the business evolves.  Extinction occurs when we stand still and cling to what once was.

Spring Cleaning for Your Electronic Life

Most of us are online a remarkable amount of time.  Thanks to SmartPhones, Smart TVs, always on PCs and so on, often we are online and don’t even know it!  In casual Internet browsing, it is so easy to grant permission to various services and entities to access to your online account information.  It goes like this;  you really want to:

  • Read this article
  • See this video
  • Enter this contest
  • Get this discount code
  • See what your friend posted
  • And so on

But in order to do it, you have to grant some entity ‘permission’ to access your Google/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn account.   When you grant that permission, it’s not a one time deal; you are granting permission forever.  That’s why it’s important to periodically review your various lists of permissions and clean them out; and what better time than now? Call it Spring Cleaning!  You can probably accomplish this clean-up in 15 minutes or less and as a result,  you will be just a little bit more in control of your online life.

Start with Facebook.  Log on and go to your NewsFeed (click the ‘Home’ button at the top-right of your screen).  Hover your mouse over ‘Apps’ in the left column and click ‘More’ when it appears to the right.  These are all the apps you have granted permission to access your personal account information and your friend list!  Click the pencil icon to the left of each app you don’t recognize and/or don’t use, and click ‘Edit Settings’  then ‘Remove App.’  If you are like me, it’s gonna take awhile because each app has to be handled individually and there are probably many you don’t recognize!

Next, deal with Google.  Go to google.com and look at the top-right of your screen.  If you see yourself, you’re logged in and ready to proceed.  If you see a Sign In button, do so using your Gmail address and password.  Click on your little picture (or avatar) and select ‘Account.’  Then choose ‘Security,’ and under ‘Account Permissions,’ click ‘View All.’  These are all of the online services to which you’ve granted access to your Google account information, which can be huge.  After all, your Google account includes Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, Google+, Calendar and on and on.  Select each service you want to eliminate and click ‘Revoke Access.’

On to Twitter.   Sign in and then click on the gear icon near the top-right of your screen.  Click ‘Settings’ and then select ‘Apps’ from the menu on the left.  See what’s there and ‘Revoke Access’ to any you don’t recognize or don’t use.

Finally, LinkedIn.  Log in to your account and hover over your picture at the top-right of the screen, come down to ‘Privacy and Settings’ and click ‘Review.’  On the left, click on ‘Groups, Companies & Applications’ and then on ‘View Your Applications.’  Select any you want to eliminate and click ‘Remove.’

These are the Big Four most of us use on a regular basis, but there may be other websites and social portals you want to take a look at.  Usually these kinds of permissions are located under the Privacy or Security settings in your account.  If you get excited by cleaning up your online act and want to do more, why not take charge of who sees what on Facebook?  Here’s a post about that.  

 

‘Percentage Based Commissions Are Nuts’ Video

I worked with Robert Stevens and the Sarasota Help-U-Sell team to create a new video explaining why the old fashioned way to price real estate services is sooo off track, and why Help-U-Sell makes so much sense in today’s world.  I’m very pleased with it from a content and communication standpoint – I think it gets the message across pretty well.  And I’m delighted with the graphics packaging and presentation.  Design whiz, Theo did an excellent job of putting pictures and arithmetic to my words.

The real estate industry is so invested in the status quo, so utterly driven by structures and systems that have nothing to do with getting property sold, with helping people find their dream homes, that change is almost impossible for them.  For a big real estate company built on the idea that home sellers should pay 6% or 5% or 7% of the sales price as a commission to change over to a much more logical and fair flat fee system would be like trying to turn the Titanic on a dime (and miss that iceberg!).    Yet the iceberg is out there, looming, getting closer by the day and year.

When the percentage based ship goes down, consumers will win.  They’ll be charged for real estate services they same way they are charged for medical services or legal services or auto mechanic services:  Set Fee Pricing.  It will be fair and it will make sense . . . and they will save thousands.

If you are ready for tomorrow, if you’re tired of feeling taken even when your agent and broker do a good job, if you want to be delighted not only with the service but also with the fee, Call Help-U-Sell.  It is the modern way to sell your home.

Accessibility Toolbar