Real Estate Marketing Blog

How to upload panoramic images

January 27, 2012 | Posted by Adam Small in Real Estate Marketing Blog, Real Estate Marketing Tip | No Comments »

Panoramic Virtual Tour

We are commonly asked if our Virtual Tours support panoramic images. Yes, our Virtual Tours do support panoramic images.  The steps below show you how to upload and set parameters on panoramic images.

  1. Login to the Digital Home Info portal.
  2. Click on the “Listings” tab.
  3. Click on the “Edit” link for the listing that you are working with.
  4. On the “Edit Property” page select the “Gallery” tab.
  5. Press the “Add New Images” button.
  6. Press the “Browse” button to find and select the desired image.
  7. Press the “Upload” button.
  8. Once the image has upload (it will be removed from the list) close the upload screen by clicking on the “X” in the upper right corner.
  9. When the screen refreshes the panoramic will be in the list of images. Under the thumbnail of the panoramic, click on the “Edit Info” link. This will show a pop up screen.
  10. In the pop up you can:
    1. Add an Image Title
    2. Add an Image Description
    3. Change the time in seconds that an image is displayed on the Virtual Tour.
    4. Change the direction an image moves in the Virtual Tour.
  11. For a wide panoramic image select “Left to Right / Right to Left” in the “Direction of Image” drop down list.
  12. Press the “Save” button.
Your panoramic image is now uploaded and setup to pan across the screen. If you need any help or have any other questions please feel free to contact us.

 

Easy Image Stitching for your Virtual Tours

January 27, 2012 | Posted by Adam Small in Real Estate Marketing Blog, Real Estate Newsletter | No Comments »

Do you like panoramic photos in your virtual tours?  Did you know that there is software available at no charge that will automatically stitch your photos together?  Microsoft has released ICE (Image Composite Editor).  This is a program that can be used to edit photos, stitch and crop images.  Some of the features include:

  • Accelerated stitching on multiple CPU cores
  • Support for “structured panoramas” — panoramas consisting of hundreds of photos taken in a rectangular grid of rows and columns
  • No image size limitation — stitch gigapixel panoramas
  • Photoshop layer and large document support
  • Automatic exposure blending
  • Choice of planar, cylindrical, or spherical projection
  • Orientation tool for adjusting panorama rotation
  • Automatic cropping to maximum image area
  • Native support for 64-bit operating systems
  • Wide range of output formats, including JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PNG, HD Photo

So if you want an easy way to make panoramic images check out Microsoft’s ICE.

 

Real Estate Infographic – Social Media Infographic

January 9, 2012 | Posted by Adam Small in Real Estate Infographic, Real Estate Marketing Blog | 1 Comment »

According to the infographic (by FIXR) below Social Media is delivering a greater ROI than Blogging.  Have you experienced this?

Social Media Real Estate Infographics

Real Estate Infographic – Real Estate On The Go

January 4, 2012 | Posted by Adam Small in Real Estate Infographic, Real Estate Marketing Blog | No Comments »

The inforgraphic below outlines how the iPad has changed the work habits of REALTORS®. Has it changed yours?
Real Estate Infographic - Real Estate on the go

Real Estate Infographic – Real Estate Industry & Social Media Use

December 28, 2011 | Posted by Adam Small in Real Estate Infographic, Real Estate Marketing Blog | No Comments »

Real Estate Marketing was altered forever with the advent of Social Media.  REALTORS® are using social media more and more every day to promote their listings.  The infographic below (put together by POSTLING) outlines how the Real Estate Industry is using Social Media.

Real Estate Infographic - Real Estate Industry + Social Media Use

Virtual Tour Features – New Small Photo Virtual Tour and Image Trimming

December 21, 2011 | Posted by Adam Small in Real Estate Marketing Blog, Real Estate Marketing Features, Real Estate Virtual Tour | No Comments »

Real Estate Virtual TourAs part of our ongoing efforts to enhance and improve the Digital Home Info Real Estate Marketing Platform we have recently released a few new features.  A new small sized virtual tour that is ideal for displaying small images and auto-trim and correct photo processing.

The new small virtual tour has all of the same features as our larger animated virtual tour (Home Information, Google Maps, Mortgage Calculator, Appointment Scheduler, Auto-generated PDF Flyer, and photo browser) it is just optimized for smaller files sizes.  We have noticed that many of our agents use photos from their local IDX system and that these photos tend to be around 640px by 480px.  Although these looked good in the larger virtual tour, sometimes you could tell that a photo had been stretched to make it fit right.  So we created this version to match the need.  If you upload your own photos or your photos are large you can still use the larger virtual tour. We just wanted to provide another option so that you can get the most out of our service.

Something else we noticed with the IDX photos was that they sometimes contained whitespace (borders) around the edges.  So we set out to find a way to remove the whitespace without altering the photo.  This is where Auto Trim comes into the picture. Now you can simply click on the “Trim” link under each photo in your gallery and Digital Home Info will automatically remove the whitespace. This greatly improves the presentation of the virtual tour since the white is no longer there to detract from the overall presentation.

We will be blogging how to’s on both of these new features in the coming days so look for those soon.  If you have any suggestions or comments please let us know.

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The Content Strategy Burger [Infographic] | Social Media Explorer

December 19, 2011 | Posted by Adam Small in Real Estate Infographic, Real Estate Marketing Blog, Real Estate News | No Comments »
A good content marketing plan contains a number of different elements including theme, audience, tone, publishing channel, etc. But how do all of these components come together to form a cohesive strategy?

http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/the-content-strategy-burger-infographic/

Real Estate Infographic – Home Affordability

December 19, 2011 | Posted by Adam Small in Real Estate Marketing Blog | No Comments »
This Current State of Home Affordability infographic was put together by Creditscore.  It illustrates a number of interesting points.
  • More than 7 Million new privately owned housing units were authorized from Sept. 2009 to Sept. 2010
  • The Median price of a home is up 7x over 1940.
  • It would take the average american household 4 years to save enough money to buy a median priced home, if they spent on nothing else.
Real Estate Infographic - Home Affordability

Are you ready for 2012?

December 16, 2011 | Posted by Adam Small in Real Estate Marketing Blog, Real Estate Newsletter | No Comments »
About this time of year, many people are looking to the next year and thinking about what they can make better.  A slimmer figure and more money in the bank are a couple things that end up on many lists.  Every year people fail to meet their goals set for the New Year.  Here are few reasons why this happens and how you can overcome them:
  1. Too high of an expectation/Setting yourself up for failure.  If you can’t remember the last time you exercised and set a goal of losing 50 lbs by spring or to exercise every single day, you will likely not achieve that goal (unless you are dropping everything to go do it on a reality show).  Same would hold true if you set out to double your income each month.  You will not change your habits overnight.  Jumping into the New Year with such aggressive goals can make you feel like a failure fast.  Start with a smaller goal for January or the first quarter and a set a higher goal for the later months.  Your success early in the year will motivate you to continue to have successes.
  1. No plan.  What adjustments will you make in the New Year in order to be more successful?  Why didn’t you exercise more in 2011?  Why weren’t you making more money in 2011?  Have you identified what has kept you from reaching your goals in the past?  The change of the calendar doesn’t offer you more opportunity.  It’s just another day with a different number on the end of the year.  People feel like it’s a perfect time for a fresh start, but in reality, you can make a fresh start any time of the year as long as you have a plan and the desire and dedication to implement it.  Think about what you can do differently in order to reach your goals.
  1. Vague goals.  We’ve heard a lot of agents say that next year they will be more involved in Social Media, will network more, or will do a better job of keeping in touch with their contacts.  When asked how though, many are unable to define what that means.  More involved in Social Media-Does that mean you’ll set up a Twitter account and Facebook Page and hope it helps or will you commit to learning something new about a specific application and make a post each week?  How will you keep in touch with your contacts?  Email marketing twice a month?  Personal follow ups at 1 month & 6 months after you complete a sale with your buyer/seller?  Direct mail 4 times a year?  Be specific about your goals.  Make them realistic and measurable.
  1. No accountability.  What happens if you fall off track?  Do you quit or do you identify why it happened and determine how you can get back to making progress toward your goal?  Statistics have shown that people are more successful in achieving their goals if they both write them down (and put them where they can be reviewed often) and also share their goals with someone they care about and respect.  Try sharing your specific goals with a spouse or colleague and ask them if they would be willing to ask you every month how you are doing.  Offer to do the same for them.  You won’t want to disappoint them.
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Real Estate Email Marketing Reports

December 14, 2011 | Posted by Adam Small in Knowledge Base, Real Estate Marketing Blog, Real Estate Marketing Features, Real Estate Marketing Tip, Real Estate Tutorials | No Comments »
What do all of those terms in my email marketing reports mean? Opened – The number of unique people that opened an email at least once.  Even though they may have opened the email more than once they are still only counted once. Unopened – The number of emails that were not opened. Bounce – An email that was unable to be delivered because of an issue with the email address. i.e. bad email address, miss- spelled name, domain is expired etc… Delivered – The number of emails that were delivered. Total Opens – The total number of times the email has been viewed.  Each time the subscriber opens the email is counted. Clicks – The total number of times a link in the email has been clicked. Unique Clicks – The number of times links in the email have been clicked.  If a subscriber clicked on a link more than once it is only counted once. Forwards – The total number of times that the email was forwarded using the “Forward” feature link in the email. Opt Outs – The number of people that opted out/unsubscribed from your list using a the link in this campaign. Feel free to contact us if we missed any terms.
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