Help-U-Sell In A Nutshell

Here is a slide show with voice over that will be combined with live video and turned into Flash for the Help-U-Sell Franchise Sales website.  It’s intended to distinguish Help-U-Sell from ordinary real estate to prospective franchisees.  I think the message has broader appeal, though.

The final will will have a talking head (me) running in front of this show, kind of like what your local TV weather person does in front of a moving map.  What’s here is just PowerPoint with voice over, converted into a movie and uploaded to YouTube (and then embedded here in the blog).  I did this not only to share the video and the information, but also to test what I’ve been squawking about so much lately: that YouTube video can be a valuable tool in becoming attractive to Search Engines.

Tami Patzer taught me (all of us, actually) that Google will index video uploaded to YouTube and will actually transcribe the voice track, turning it into searchable text.  This little video is packed with the kinds of phrases consumers and prospective franchisees might use in search strings.  Also, Google LOVES video (notice, next time you do a Google search, the prominent placement video is given on the first page of results) so, in theory, I should get more than my share of hits.

All of that is technical mambo-jumbo; but if you’re in business today – any business – and you don’t have someone paying attention to these kinds of issues, you’re missing the boat.  By and large, consumers are shopping online and your ability to be found online is directly related to your chances for success.  You have to use all of the tools and constantly add to your tool box as you build a solid online presence.

That’s one of the great things about Help-U-Sell that’s not mentioned on this little show:  the technical leadership the company provides to its members.  We not only own and host our own websites (no outside vendors to mess things up), we have designed them to be easily customized, optimized and localized by our offices.  We also hold weekly tech webinars where we continually upgrade and enhance our members’ knowledge about doing business in the Internet age.

Cue the Cocktail Party Music

‘So, what do you do?’

‘Well . . . do you remember that big real estate sales commission last time you bought or sold a house?’

‘Urgh!  Don’t remind me!  I think the Realtor netted more than I did!’

‘That’s not all that unusual today.  . . But, me?  I’m in the equity preservation business.’

‘What?’

‘I help people have great real estate transactions at a fraction of the cost – which helps them hang on to their hard earned equity rather than turning it over to a salesperson.’

‘Oh, you’re a Realtor.’

‘Yes, Realtor with a twist.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’m a Help-U-Sell Realtor.  We are a Set Fee Real Estate Company.’

‘Set Fee?’

‘Yeah.  Instead of a fat 6% or 7% commission, we charge a low Set Fee.  It usually saves thousands of dollars over what the other guys do.’

‘So you’re a discount broker?’

‘No, I’m a different kind of broker.’

(puzzled look)

‘I do everything they do and a number of things they don’t do, but my business is organized differently.  I’m leaner, more efficient and I use technology to produce the same results they do at a fraction of the cost.’

‘And it works?’

‘Let me put it this way:  Last year the average agent in our MLS closed 4.75 transactions.  There are just four people in my office:  me, my  assistant and two agents who work with buyers.  Together we closed 74 transactions last year – which works out to what?  18 each or something.  Sure it works.’

‘Damn.  Wish I’d met you six months ago.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘My home’s on the market with Acme Realty right now.  One of my neighbors works for them.  Anyway:  it’s not working.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Over on Elm.’

‘Oh, the two story? . . . with the fenced yard?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘I showed that last month.  Yeah.  I had an out of town buyer.  I remember he liked it all right but he was really wanting something with a basement — which is what I eventually sold him.’

‘Oh; so it goes.’

‘What I remember is the price.  You were right at the top of the market, probably a little above it; and with prices still dropping (slowly now, thank goodness), it didn’t compete all that well with others on the market.’

‘That’s why it’s not working out with my agent.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I haven’t heard much from her since the listing was taken, but I’ve told her a couple of times I think we need to lower the price.’

‘What does she say?’

‘She says she doesn’t think that’s the problem and that she’ll do some research and get back to me . . . which she hasn’t done.’

‘Well, it’s your listing.  You control the price and terms.  Maybe you should start telling rather than asking.’

‘What I’d like to do is cancel the listing and try another agent . . . maybe you!’

‘I really can’t talk with you about that while your home is listed.  When the Acme listing ends I’ll be happy to talk with you, but right now – assuming the listing is still in effect – I really can’t go into that with you.’

‘I wish there was something I could do.’

‘There is.  Call your agent, set an appointment to meet with her – at her office if you prefer – and have her pull a new Market Analysis for you.  Then set a reasonable price.  And remember:  if you’re basing your today price on the prices of similar properties that closed 90 days ago and more, you’re probably setting it too high.  When pricing today, you really have to anticipate and reflect the trend.’

‘Have you got a card?’

‘Sure.  Here it is.  I hope you can work things out with your agent and I wish you luck.  If things don’t turn around, I’d be happy to talk with you.’

Big Brother: 1984, 2011 Style

Does the idea of someone hiding secretly in your living room, peering out through a little hole in the curtains, watching your every move, taking notes, gathering information they may use against you in the future creep you out a little?  Are you starting to recognize a pattern in the results your Google searches retrieve?  Does there seem to be a theme to the ads on your Facebook page?  Cue the eerie music, and start looking over you shoulder because there is most definitely a Ghost in Your Machine.

Eli Pariser is out with a book today (The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You) describing the discomfort if not the danger of the new ‘highly-personalized’ Internet.  Since 2009, Google has gathered information about your online behavior and used it to tailor your search results.  Facebook has been doing the same and at this point most sites that serve up information to you are following suit.  The idea makes great sense from a marketing standpoint:  if they know what kinds of information you routinely seek, if they know what kind of advertisement makes you ‘Click’, they can serve up more of the same to you eliciting even more clicks.  It is the ultimate in targeting, something we Help-U-Sell folk know all about.

So, if you are a tea party Republican and visit sites espousing those views and your friend is an eco-friendly liberal and surfs accordingly, when you both Google ‘Obama’ at the same time, you’re going to get very different results.

And that’s the danger.  The Internet (read: Google) is serving us a diet made up not of truth, but of what we want to see.  And it is a very personalized offering.

I am particularly disturbed by this because if flies in the face of so much I’ve said about the glories of unlimited access to information.  Let me see if I can quote myself . . . ‘Instead of sending troops to Afghanistan, we should be flying over and dropping smartphones on the people.’  I guess if we did that and the people immediately started surfing to sites that espouse hatred for the West, Google would establish that pattern and serve up more of the same; hardly  the eye opening and broadening effect we might want.

We had so much press about polarizing rhetoric several months ago, particularly after Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was  shot.  There was a plea that we turn down the volume, crank it back a notch, become more civil to one another.  Now I understand how the language could have become so rigid, so harsh, polarizing.  Thanks to the personalized Internet, each side of the debate (any debate) was being buoyed by the constant reinforcement of their own point of view.  If all you see is what you want to see you can become pretty rigid in your thinking.

After all, tolerance is a virtue and it is born of empathy – the ability to walk in the other guy’s shoes, live in the other person’s skin for a moment.  If all you’re getting is a recycling of your own opinions, how can you ever know what the other guy thinks or feels? How can you ever empathize?  How can you become tolerant?

I guess the point is this:  you can’t rely on Google or Facebook or any clickable source to serve up truth.  If you want truth, you’re going to have to do it the old fashioned way:  you’re going to have to dig.  You’re going to have to go out of your way to understand the opposing point of view.  Bias is everywhere and on the Internet, the bias is YOURS.

Packaging Rising Interest Rates

Sometimes the way you say something is just as important as what you have to say. Case in point:

Wednesday, on the Help-U-Sell Broker Roundtable call, we were talking about fence-sitting buyers. There seems to be a lot of them out there today, people who want to buy but who are afraid to pull the trigger because they think they may miss out on another drop in prices. We were commiserating along the lines of, ‘It’s such a shame, because rates ARE going to go up soon – everyone knows this – and they’re going to miss out by not buying now.’

It seems the ‘interest rates are going to rise’ news has not been powerful enough to motivate many. They hear numbers (4.5% could become 5% and 5% could become 5.5% and so on), but the numbers don’t seem to move them.

Finally the wise voice of Jack Bailey rose amid the clutter.

‘I don’t talk about rising interest rates,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t mean anything to most folks. Instead, I talk about lost purchasing power.’ Suddenly he had everyone’s attention.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Maurine Grisso, ‘How do you do that?’

‘I just show them what a 1% increase in interest rates would mean in terms of the house they’d be able to buy. If they are comfortable with a $1,500 a month payment (that’s the comfort payment) and that means with their available cash they can buy a $200,000 house – which in my market is probably 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, I just show them that a 1% rise in interest rates would drop the home they’d be comfortable with to about $170,000, which would probably mean 3 bedrooms instead of 4.’

It was one of those lightning bolt moments. Of course, people don’t think about rising interest rates in this way. Rising interest rates are one step removed, maybe two; they are abstract. But how much house I can have is real, tangible. Jack was simply packaging the truth in a way that those on-the-fence buyers would absorb. It was brilliant.

Everyone on the call was scrambling to locate resources to create some kind of chart illustrating this. My Google search turned up a chart that focused on how much less you qualify for when interest rates rise. I thought it was good and sent it out to a few people.

Maurine Grisso called me to say, ‘close but no cigar.’ She pointed out that what was important was not what you qualify for (most people qualify for a higher payment than they want to make!), it’s what you’ll be comfortable paying for. Her plan is to continue to work on numbers and charts but to take it one step further, to actually show examples of houses in her marketplace at each of the levels.

This little gem was just one of several that came out of Wednesday’s call. Dan Desmond wowed everyone with a video addition to his website and also with his very productive buyer offer. More on that later. The point is, the call rocked – and it’s been rockin’ for some weeks now. I don’t know what’s gotten into the gang lately, but the ideas they’re coming up with are something special; and you really ought to be in on those calls.

Can We Be Honest About Virtual Tours?

Well, they certainly are pretty, aren’t they? And they’ve become very easy to do, too.  You just take a bunch of pictures, load them into whatever tool you’re using, set them to pan and zoom and add a little light music and wha-lah!  You have an impressive goo-gah for your website.  Your seller will be proud!

And I think we’re all missing the boat.

First, if your pan and zoom virtual tour is on your website and you also uploaded all of the individual photos used to make the tour (and you should), why would anyone watch the tour?  A visitor has far more control just clicking through the photos.  Second, the kind of tour I’m describing here adds little in the way of search engine optimization.  Yes you can load up the description with keywords, but that’s only going to take you so far.

There is another way to do a virtual tour that is not only more interesting to website visitors but also far more interesting to search engines.  Begin by shooting video.  Yes, video – moving pictures, not pictures that move.  If you video tape yourself walking through the house describing easily overlooked features as you go, you’ll be creating something new and of value for your website visitor, not just a re-packaging of what ‘s already there.  Plus (and this is the most important part), when indexing your site, Google will actually transcribe your audio track, turning it into searchable text.  If your walk-talk is loaded with neighborhood references and key words, you will up your chances of potential buyers finding your listing online.

Shoot your video, pull it into your computer and do a little editing, add titles and even a soft music track if you want and then upload it to YouTube.  YouTube will give you a little code to embed the video into your listing so that it can be played right there.

Here’s another idea for using video on your listing:  why not let the Sellers lead you through talking about what they like most about the house?  I know that’s pretty radical.  But we Help-U-Sell folk have always championed the idea that things usually go well if buyer and seller are allowed to talk to one another. Why not start that process early by humanizing your seller on video?  Once again, Google is going to transcribe whatever you upload  which will be very beneficial from a search engine standpoint.

So far we’ve talked about using video to market your listings and make you more visible on the web.  But why not broaden the focus?  Why not take the half dozen or so key neighborhoods in your area and do a video profile of each.  Create a script, describe the demographics and amenities, shoot video of typical housing and area infrastructure.  When Google transcribes that kind of video, it’s going to find reference after reference to the local market and your ability to have people find you on the web will go up significantly.

Is there a learning curve?  Yes, of course.  The first such tour you do will be the hardest.  It will get much easier after that.  Here are your steps:

  • Get a video recording device.  You probably need something more than your cell phone.  Most decent still cameras today shoot video as well and mine (a Panasonic Lumix) shoots better video than my actual video camera!
  • Learn how to record, how to take video off your camera and onto your computer
  • Choose and learn some editing software.  Windows has Movie Maker and if you search you’ll find many more, some free.  I like Pinnacle Studio.  At $80 +/- it is feature rich and easy to use.
  • Go to YouTube.com and open an account.  Its free.
  • Shoot and edit your first video, save it to your hard drive (probably as an .AVI file) and then upload it to YouTube.
Mike Klein at Help-U-Sell Prescott has done a good job of using video.  He has several informative pieces about the local market and home buying realities.  He’s also using the pan and zoom tours I’m kind of bashing here.  And truth is:  they’d be fine if instead of just music they had a voice track loaded with carefully chosen key words.  Here is Mike’s YouTube channel:  Help-U-Sell Prescott
Although this is not a Help-U-Sell agent, here is an example of an off-the-cuff video tour.  I think scripting might have helped here, particularly in weaving in key words and neighborhood specific references – something that is very important for Search Engine Optimizaiton.

Accessibility Toolbar