If you like technology,  the arts, green initiatives,  and helping charity, you need to go to a BarCamp. 

If you hate stuffy, formal conferences that cost hundreds, or thousands of dollars, you need to go to a BarCamp.

 

 

This is a video of Bar Camp Charlotte III (BarCampCLT).  The generally informal nature of a BarCamp is what makes it so special.  At the start of the day, there is no schedule, there are no speakers, and entire day is driven by the participants.  The events are (usually) free, and breakfast and lunch are provided.  All paid for by sponsors who totally “get” the concept.   

 

People in the audience are encouraged to pitch ideas to discuss.  After 10-20 pitches are introduced, the audience goes and votes on the pitches they would like to attend.  The pitch topics with the highest number of votes are selected, the schedule is drawn up, and then multiple sessions commence for one hour long periods. 

 

You’ll usually have a choice of anywhere between 5-10 sessions to attend per hour depending on the size of the venue. 

 

It’s informal, its democratic, its fun, its progressive, its great networking, and it’s a great way to learn cutting edge stuff. 

 

So check out the video and leave a comment.  Tell me what you think.  If you liked the video, please let me know by sharing it on your favorite social networking sites (lots of share icons below). 

 

For more info on BarCamps go to http://www.barcamp.org/ For more info on Charlotte BarCamp go to http://www.barcampcharlotte.org/

If you missed my session on 4/6 at Virtual Real Estate Bar Camp (VREBC) on “Full Motion Video For Real Estate” I spoke about the benefits of doing videos of your listings, and how the videos are not just about getting the house sold.  The benefits of video go way beyond selling the listing.  Video sells the agent, and video (when done correctly) has tremendous SEO benefits for the agent’s website. 

 

In addition, I discussed the “HOW TO” of getting started with video.  That topic is covered in much more detail in this blog article.

 

I had such a great time speaking at VREBC and I hope to get a chance to do it again.  I made a promise in my session to share the code, (and the how) to generate a Branding Wrapper to display with embedded videos while they play. 

 

When I checked my email, I had over 75 requests for the code, and therefore decided to do this video.  Please check out the video for the specifics, and then look further down for the code. 

 

 

And,  here’s the code:

 

[Editor's NOTE :  I originally tried to place the code here.   However, when I tested it by cutting and pasting it into an HTML editor, it placed so many wierd special characters in the code that it did not work.  For that reason, please email me  for the code (I give you my email address at the end of the video - I don't include it here because I don't want to get inundated by spam-bots).  Please put "Show Me The Code" in your Subject Line.   Thanks!]

 

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.  I had many emails that said, “I can’t believe you give this information out for free”.  I do it because I love teaching, and I want to help agents market themselves, and their properties better. 

 

If you find this (or any of my other blog articles) helpful, please follow me on Twitter, and become a Fan of Amazing Video Tours on Facebook.  Also, please share this info with others using the share icons located below the last paragraph of each of my blog articles. 

 

 ————- ©2010 – AmazingVideoTours.com – All Rights Reserved. Amazing Video Tours is Charlotte’s Premier Real Estate Home Video Provider for Realtors, and other individuals with property to sell, lease, or rent. A departure from the old fashion 360 Virtual Tour, Amazing Video Tours takes online property marketing to the next level.

 

Summary:  Awesome, with a couple tiny exceptions.  You can stop reading now.  Or not!

 

I’ve been to my fair share of Real Estate Seminars over the years.  Star Power, Brian Buffini, BarCamps, Local MLS events, and State Conventions, so I know a good conference when I see it.  THIS was a good conference.

 

It was the 3^rd RETechSouth (although only my first) and it was first class.  First, the Venue.  The Gwinnett Center in Atlanta (well, Duluth) GA.  Wow – what a facility!  The Hotel was walking distance, and one did not have to stray more then 5 miles for any of the scheduled evening events.  If you’ve ever sat in traffic in the heart of Atlanta, you know why I was happy this was not in the heart of Atlanta!

 

They had networking events set up every night.  Night one featured a Tweetup, and I think over 100 people showed up.  The venue (@ArenaTavern) was great as were the people I met.

 

Night 2 was the MVP party at Wild Bills’ Crown Lounge.  Once again, a great event with Casino Tables, a Karaoke Stage, and pulled pork bar-b-que.  Night 3 was at Dave and Busters.  I can’t comment as I was on the way home as this event got under way.

 

But how about the Conference? 

 

I love conferences with options.  By that I mean you are not stuck in one large auditorium, forced to hear one person drone on for hours.  To me, this felt more like a BarCamp.  Somewhat casual, with several sessions going on at once.  You had choices.  Choices are good. 

 

I can’t comment on every session, and I won’t bore you with details on every session I sat in, but I do want to highlight some of my “light bulb” aka – Wholly Crap, THAT’s Awesome (WCTA) moments throughout the two days.

 

My first WCTA moment was in Gahlord Dewald’s “Social media improvement via web analytics” session.  I had not seen Gahlord speak before and I will go out of my way to see him again.  I love analytics and stats – and he delivered.  He talked about Google Website Optimizer, URL Builder, and my homework assignment for this week, which is figuring out what Gist.com is all about.  If these are foreign to you, look em up!  I know I will.

 

Second WCTA moment was in Jeff Turner’s “Wake up and Smell Your Brand” session.  Jeff comes from a different planet from the rest of us.  They’re smarter then us earthlings, and they see our future. Jeff is a visionary and is usually the first one to lecture about social media topics the rest of us have not thought of yet.  Paraphrased – (Your brand is not what’s on your website, its not your company logo, its not your mission statement.  Your brand is the way people FEEL when they think about your business – it’s the way your business is perceived.  How do people feel when they think about your business?) I’m sure I didn’t nail that exactly, but suffice it to say that Jeff got me thinking.  There was more – much more – you should really try to see Jeff speak for yourself.

 

Next, Brian Copeland and his “Leveraging Yelp to Grow Local Influence and Track ROI” Session.  Brian is a great speaker.  He has a wit and an edge about him that I think he could teach Multi-variable Calculus and make it fun (no offense to any mathematicians out there).  I had not previously dabbled with Yelp, but after seeing what Brian was able to do in his local area with it, I’m getting on board.  Wanna know more, www.Yelp.com

 

I had another WCTA moment in Garron Selliken’s “Empowering Your Agents to Optimize Web 2.0 Tools” session.  He clued me in to something I have been interested in pursuing for a long time, which is an IDX Solution for WordPress Blogs.  I will be definitely taking a closer look at homequestgroup.com

 

DAY 2

 

Home Run Derby – You just had to have been there!  Come next year and see for yourself

 

I had to hear what Jeff Turner had to say about “Transparency is for Amateurs” and he delivered.  Everyone (myself included) preaches transparency in social media.  Jeff (again) took the discussion to the next level and made it crystal clear that too much transparency in social media is NOT a good thing.  He showed example after example of actions taken by “business professionals” that were shooting for “transparency” but delivering inappropriateness.  There were no new revelations here, but Jeff has a way of delivering a point in such a dramatic fashion, he made a room full of professionals really think about their own actions. 

 

I had heard Pat Kitano speak at VREBC, and loved his session, so I wanted to check him out at RETechSouth.  He did not disappoint.  He’s another one of those guys who seems to have a window into the future as to what to implement now.  His session on “Community Engagement using Twitter” showed us how to use Twitter as the curator of breaking news in a hyper local marketplace.  I’ll be checking out http://breakingsfnews.com/ to investigate this further!

 

I went to another session with Brian Copeland to see what he had to say about Real Estate Video.  Even though I do video for a living, it’s always important to see what other people have to say on the topic.  Brian and I have very different approaches to video for real estate, but I still learned a lot.  Brian has a way of connecting with people that can only be described as a gift.  He (literally) had the whole room in tears as he described one of his accidental viral video stories.  He is truly a pro, and I’m guessin’ one hell of a great Realtor.

 

Next, I hung with Ginger Wilcox and Hal Lublin to see “Selling Without the Shamwow”.  Hal is hilarious and delivers the goods in a way that is unrivaled.  Ginger keeps it all on track – together, they are great presenters.  What I got from this session:  Check your sleazy sales pitch at the door, and don’t come walkin into this social media scene wearin your used car sellin leisure suit and snake oil hat. 

 

I capped the whole thing off with Nicole Nicolay’s session on “10 Tips for creating more meaningful Social Interactions”.  I’ve conversed with @nik_nik on twitter before, and she’s one of those (all to rare) social media super stars that has large following, and will still slow down and make time for a newbie.  She delivered in her 10 tips session.

 

So what were the tiny exceptions that I mentioned way up in the beginning of this post book?  The only bad part (and it was very small) was that there are still some speakers that just don’t get this format.  A couple sessions seemed like infomercials where the speaker was only interested in showing off their wares, and the teaching was secondary. 

 

The good thing is that with so many sessions going on, you can bail out of a session that degenerates into a sales pitch.  With this casual format, as long as you are polite, and quiet about it, I don’t see any reason to not get up and go find another session that is more about the education than the pitch.

 

So that’s it.  My experience in a (not so) nutshell.  Hope you liked it!  Special thanks to Brad Nix and his RETSO crew for putting on such a great conference!

 

 

  ————- ©2010 – AmazingVideoTours.com – All Rights Reserved. Amazing Video Tours is Charlotte’s Premier Real Estate Home Video Provider for Realtors, and other individuals with property to sell, lease, or rent. A departure from the old fashion 360 Virtual Tour, Amazing Video Tours takes online property marketing to the next level.

  

 

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”  – Ferris Bueller

 

In this rapidly changing online marketing world, things are happening faster now then ever before.  Not since the advent of the website has online marketing been so revolutionary.  With fast pace comes all the bad stuff that goes with it including a crop of self proclaimed experts trying to charge you for services.  Right now, the Google search phrase, “social media expert” yields over 1.4 million results.  

 

How in the world do you select a good social media consultant with results like that?  Can someone please explain to me how you can be an “expert” in an emerging field?  I’m not aware of any sanctioning body, educational curriculum, or designation as of yet.  Is there one?  I’d like to know as I certainly don’t know it all.  

 

The catalyst for this article is the web designer of one of my video clients.  It took them 2 weeks to figure out how to embed a YouTube video on my client’s website.  When I went to go check them out, I was surprised to see that they were, “Social Media Experts”.   Their marketing tool was a PDF that you could print out to call them.  They had no Blog, no Twitter account, no Facebook Fan Page, no LinkedIn account.  They had absolutely zero commitment in social media for their own business, but they felt qualified to charge YOU to help your company with social media. 

 

Later that same day my phone rang.  The guy told me that my measly number of Twitter followers was never going to get me any business, and he could get me 20,000 followers in 2 months for $500.00.  I checked him out.  He had 24,500 Twitter followers.  He had tweeted 50 times over 5 months.  Every tweet was spam – “I’ll get you more followers, check out www……….com”.  I told him to take me off his list. 

 

So here’s the lesson.  If someone calls you and tells you, for example,  that they know how to get you 20,000 followers on Twitter, RUN, don’t walk, run away fast.  Additionally, the number of followers *they* have on any social network is not a designation of ability.  There are 3^rd party Twitter programs that will automatically build you up to 20K followers in a short period of time. 

 

But SO WHAT!  Having a bunch of hollow followers will not increase your sales.  Know one thing, Social Media is a marathon, not a sprint.  It takes time (read that, a lot of time) to build a lot of followers that actually care about what you are saying, and will help your message go viral by re-tweeting, re-posting, or sending more traffic to your site. 

 

So how do you select a Social Media Consultant?  Check THEM out.  Look past their advertised number of followers and see what they actually have to say.  Are they engaging, or just spamming the networks with their sales pitch.  A good Social Networking strategy for business has a 90:10 ratio.  You give 90% to get 10%.  Some would go as far as saying it’s 95:5.  Are they giving, or just taking?

 

Social Networking is about transparency.  Consumers want to know who they are dealing with.  The number one rule for marketing this decade is trust.  How do you build trust?  By generating content on an ongoing basis that is interesting, engaging, and original.  When you make it clear to your audience that you know your stuff, they will keep coming back to see what you have to say.  Over time, this builds trust, and trust generates real followers, and real followers will become clients. 

 

So, is the social media expert that just offered to charge you $XXXX doing this for their own firm?  What are they blogging about?  What are they saying on Twitter?  On Facebook?  Would you want to follow them?  Are they even there?  It’s a litmus test, if they can’t prove they understand social media for their own business, how are they going to help you?

 

Am I a Social Media Expert?  No!  But I do practice what I preach, I don’t think I know it all, and I attend many conferences every year with some of the country’s best speakers to continuously learn more.  I don’t call myself an expert, and I’m not a trailblazer who spends every waking moment online trying to figure out what the next big app is going to be.  I’m in business to make money, so I stay where the people are, and I don’t stress out about what I might be missing – it’s not sexy, but it works. 

 

There are many good resources out there that can help your business succeed at Social Media.  The purpose of this post is to warn you that, like many other things, for every good 1, there’s 10 out there selling snake oil.  Caveat Emptor – Let the buyer beware.  In the case of selecting a social media consultant, it’s NOT all in the numbers.

Unlike most of my other “How To” Videos, this one is not targeted for the beginner.  We’ll categorize this one as Intermediate/Beginner.  If you know what an FTP client is, and if you know how to gain FTP access to the web server that your blog sits on, then you won’t have any problem.

 

If all this makes you nervous, you might try a WordPress Automatic Upgrade Solution.   

 

If you have a WordPress.com Blog – don’t sweat a thing, upgrades are taken care of for you. 

 

The reality is, many folks have someone else set up and install their WordPress.org Blog.  But what happens when an update is necessary?  Watch this video on How To Update Your WordPress.org Blog.  If you have any questions, let me know and I’ll help you out.

 

 

————- ©2010 – AmazingVideoTours.com – All Rights Reserved. Amazing Video Tours is Charlotte’s Premier Real Estate Home Video Provider for Realtors, and other individuals with property to sell, lease, or rent. A departure from the old fashion 360 Virtual Tour, Amazing Video Tours takes online property marketing to the next level.

I finally did it. I made it to page 1 on Google

If you have ANY doubt about the power of Videos and SEO, I’m here to tell you that it works. Along with social media and a dedicated blogging campaign, video has helped me to achieve the holy grail of SEO …. Page 1 on Google for my keywords.

So what does all this mean? Well, I checked my website statistics since getting to page 1 and they are up. Way up! More people are finding my site. It has not translated into real dollars yet, (it’s only been a week) but my phone and email activity has picked up and I know it’s just a matter of time. I know Google reshuffles the deck every now and then so it might be short lived. But for now, I think I will enjoy it.

So – if I can do it, so can you. Keep blogging, keep writing good quality original content for your website, and do videos of your listings and upload them to video hosting websites with keyword rich content as icing on the cake to a good SEO program.