Photo Sharing Done Right

High-quality online photos and video tours have become a critical part of real estate sales. A recent REALTOR.com study found that residential listings with multiple photos were viewed nearly three times more often than those with just a single photo. In addition, 72 percent of those homes received requests for more information. As Web 2.0 evolves into the increasingly mobile-friendly Web 3.0, there is no shortage of ways to share your ­photos online: your Web site, Facebook, Flickr, Snapfish, YouTube, and more.

The demand for imagery, whether in photo or video form, is tremendous. In fact, YouTube says it receives a staggering 92 billion page views each month. And real estate practitioners are increasingly finding that video tours of their listings are a big hit on YouTube as well as their own Web sites. More than 13,200 real estate–related videos were uploaded to the site over the past year alone, and the rate has been rising rapidly, according to a YouTube spokeswoman.

“This is human nature. We are visual people. And we are nosy,” says Mariana Wagner, an associate with Keller Williams Hope Realty in Colorado Springs, Colo. “We want to see as much of the home for sale as possible.” Wagner uses multiple social media outlets to post listing photos. But before you put photos on the Web, here are tips and caveats about the smartest ways to use four of the most popular tools.

1. Facebook

Practitioners should be careful about how they promote their business on personal Facebook pages. Your friends and fans don’t want to be sold to on a regular basis. But if you’re using a business page, then posting photos of a listing or open house is a great way to get your property seen. Seychelle Van Poole Englehard, an associate with Keller Williams Realty in Dallas, has had success posting 15 to 20 listing photos on Facebook prior to an open house. She sets up virtual open houses about a week before the actual ones. The online images and their captivating descriptions help boost foot traffic to the home. “It’s not enough to just put the photos up. Give details about the appliances, the materials used, and unique touches of the house,” she says.

2. Hipstamatic 

More than 2 million users have downloaded this iPhone app, and it will most likely become popular with real estate practitioners as one of the first services that geotags photos. The iPhone’s GPS automatically locates where you are when you take a picture. When you shoot and upload a photo from your iPhone to your social networking outlets, the app automatically attaches the location. If you take a picture of a house, it will attach the address within the photo’s tags. As Internet users search for locations, these pictures will appear in the results. It’s important to add descriptive captions such as “Four-bedroom saltbox Colonial on quiet street with modern kitchen and sprawling deck,” so that when users find photos, they recognize what they’re seeing.

3. Flickr 

In many ways, Flickr would seem an ideal application to share listing photos through because you can easily upload images and stream them through several social media channels. And many practitioners try to avail themselves of this service in which each image becomes a distinct Web page. However, there’s a problem: Flickr’s terms of service prohibit using the application for commercial use, which would include photos of listed properties. Flickr actively monitors such activity and immediately suspends accounts that violate its terms of service.

4. YouTube 

With 490 million unique visitors worldwide each month, YouTube has a power that’s undeniable. Users often treat the video sharing site as an Internet search engine—for example, typing terms such as “San Francisco lofts.” You don’t even need to shoot video for YouTube, as applications such as Animoto (the basic app is free; the premium version, which offers more music choices and video effects, starts at $5 a month) can take your still images and weave them into impressive videos to upload. Eric Kodner, CRS, of Madeline Island Realty in LaPointe, Wis., has been putting videos on YouTube for the past three years and has closed 11 properties working with buyers who initially found his videos online. But he cautions agents with limited video experience from posting online. It’s best to take the time to develop your skills though an online tutorial or a class before you dive in on behalf of your clients. “There is nothing that looks quite so amateurish as a jittery, badly photographed real estate video on YouTube,” says Kodner.