Virtual Tours are an important part of any Real Estate Marketing Platform.  Virtual tours can also be the first exposure that a potential buyer has to a listing.  This is why it is important for your virtual tour to look great.  Below are three tips to help you enhance your virtual tours.

• Upload large photos – many agents will simply download photos from their listing system and import them into a virtual tour system.  The problem with this is that many listing systems resize the original photos and they end up extremely small.  At a minimum your photos should be 640px wide and 480px high.  For the Digital Home Info system the optimal size of a photo is 1280px wide by 1024px high (unless you are using panoramic images).  Images of this size will display very well in both the Animated and Full Screen virtual tours.
• Over saturate photos – Over saturating a photo is a process that makes colors seem brighter.  In the Digital Home Info gallery there is a photo editor that will allow you to adjust the saturation of a photo.  We have found that over saturating a photo by about 10% will cause the colors in most photos to appear much brighter without distorting the overall image.
• Number of photos – A prospective buyer is viewing a virtual tour for one reason.  They are trying to determine if the listing is worth the effort of viewing in person.  We have seen instances where agents upload 40, 50 or more photos to a virtual tour.  While it is a great a way to show every aspect of the home it also allows a buyer to see things that might be on the “Deal Breaker” list.  Things like a rough patch in a basement floor or really close neighboring homes.  These are things that in person may not be as much of an issue but cause the buyer to pass before they ever see the listing in person.  We recommend somewhere between 12 and 24 photos as the optimal number.  This allows you to showcase the listing and leave a little mystery for the buyer to see when they get there.

This quick tutorial explains how to use One Click Sharing to share your Virtual Tour links to your Facebook Fanpage instead of your personal profile.  You can watch the video above or follow the instructions below.

1. Make sure that you are logged in to both Facebook and Digital Home Info.
2. Starting with Facebook, click on the “Account” link in the upper right corner of the browser.
3. Click on the “Use Facebook as Page” link.
4. A window will pop up.  Select the Fanpage that you want to post the Virtual Tour or article to and click on the “Switch” button.
5. This will make the Fanpage the active Facebook user.
6. Go back to your Digital Home Info account.
7. Click on “Listings” tab.
8. Scroll down to the listing that you want to share.
9. Click on Facebook share icon.
10. This opens a new Facebook Sharing window with the Virtual Tour information and a space for you to add any additional information.
11. Across the top left you should see your Fanpage name and in the top right you should see “Posting as this page.”
12. Once you have added any additional information click on the “Share Link” in the lower right corner of the page.
13. At this point the Virtual Tour has been posted to your Fanpage instead of your personal page.  If you refresh your Fanpage you should see the Virtual Tour as your latest post.

Text Messaging is an emerging technology in the Real Estate industry.  REALTORS are using it in many different ways.  We thought we would list 3 ways that REALTORS could use texting to generate leads.

1. Mobile Flyers – Many mobile services (like Digital Home Info) offer a mobile real estate flyer that returns the property and agent information in a text message.  Many of them also offer an instant notification that provides the lead information to the agent.
2. Mobile Virtual Tours - If your virtual tours are mobile optimized include a link to the mobile version at the bottom of mobile flyers and messages that you send to prospects.
3. Text Card – A text message business card.  Puts your information on a prospects phone and provides you with their lead information at the same time.

These are just a few of the many ways that text messaging can be used by REALTORS.  Let us know how you are using text messaging by leaving a comment.

Digital Home Info is excited to announce that we are now capable of posting Virtual Tour Links to REALTOR.COM.  This has been an often requested feature and we are pleased to make it available to our customers.

To use this feature simply click on the “Realtor.com” link in the Active Listings section of the management portal and follow the directions presented.

If you have any questions please feel free to call or email us.