Youtube hasn’t just been home to the “crazy cat video” for quite some time.

The same YouTube that hosts those crazy (and strangely addictive) cat videos can also be quite effective in promoting your real estate business. YouTube is a perfect platform for scaling your business brand along with adding a user-friendly team resource. Furthermore, many of the most effective YouTube strategies in use today are not just easy to implement, they are low-cost or free.

In our company, we leverage the reach and automation advantages that come with a custom YouTube channel both for our own business operations and those of our clients. Here are five ways we use video marketing and YouTube to attract attention to our business, help smooth entry and exit for residents and landlords, and build a dynamic, engaged audience of potential clients.

Strategic Video #1: “Reality Real Estate” Real-Life Videos

Introduce (and reintroduce) your properties every time they get an upgrade or just undergo a “turn” for a new tenant. Real estate investors, homeowners, renters, and landlords alike love a good property makeover. Take advantage of this by documenting your own reality real estate experiences, charting the before, during, and after for both new acquisitions and older properties. These popular videos help generate interest in projects, build waiting lists of buyers and residents, and promote your brand and services.

How to do it: Create videos of your fix and flip projects, record yourself scoping out wholesale properties, and document your daily experiences. You never know when you’ll encounter a great “before” story. Then, track progress online, promoting on social media throughout the process.

Strategic Video #2: Onboarding & Introductory Videos

Onboard your new residents with a video “tour” of policies and procedures, from signing the lease to how to submit maintenance request and make a payment. Discuss emergency procedures as well.

How to do it: Just record your onboarding process as if you were speaking directly to a new resident. Keep your segments three minutes or less to attract and maintain interest. Allow your viewers to interact with the content via YouTube polling actions and quizzes as they move through your content to improve engagement and learn more about what is working and what might be improved.

Bonus benefit: Policies and procedures videos enable you to “stretch” your staff by enabling residents to watch a clear, concise message that provides simple answers when your staff is busy during peak leasing months. It has the added benefit of meeting fair housing compliance with a consistent message delivered to each new resident.

Strategic Video #3: Tenant How-To Videos

Help tenants solve minor maintenance issues on their own with a series of how-to videos dealing with common maintenance calls like resetting the breakers, unclogging the toilet, and changing a lightbulb. In many cases, tenants will choose to resolve the issue on their own rather than wait on maintenance, but they might need a bit of guidance.

How to do it: Ask your handyman or local contractors for a list of their top five service requests. Then, record simple solution videos on resolving these issues. Provide links to your YouTube fix-it channel in all correspondence with residents to raise awareness of this resource.

Strategic Video #4: Employee Orientation Videos

These videos are a great time-saver for you and your staff. As you bring on more employees, help them become familiar with policies and procedures using a series of videos highlighting the most important issues in your orientation handbook. This video series should include an overview of vacation policies, social media practices, and professional behaviors from answering the phone to documenting interactions with clients. These videos will not replace your employee handbook, but they will help ensure your employees get the highlights without getting lost in paragraphs of legalese.

How to do it: Run through your employee training handbook as if you were speaking to a new employee. Make sure to use your voice and expression to communicate your excitement about regularly occurring activities like team-building events and training opportunities. Share case studies and white papers on new clients in a similar manner to help your employees literally see how much these topics and your employees themselves matter to you. You may also record click-by-click instructional videos or project meetings for future reference.

Strategic Video #5: List-Building Videos

Create a series of videos specifically to build trust and rapport with your audience of potential clients and residents. Videos made with a personal touch increase conversions. People buy from the people they trust, and that trust is built when you relate on an emotional level. When looking for a new unit, the potential tenant needs to see something that stands apart from all the noise. Real estate photos are everywhere; set yourself apart with videos of your units their advantages.

How to do it: Record regular videos explaining how you handled a problem or created a positive, win-win solution for clients in your real estate business. For example, in our business, I document the “success stories” where we handle difficult situations between tenants and landlords in ways that leave everyone feeling good about the resolution. We also document funny moments in our business, good times with clients and employees, and the “behind-the-scenes” moments when we attend industry events or make public “appearances” on industry stages, podcasts, or radio.

Don’t Delay

These five strategic video categories only scratch the surface of what your YouTube channel can do for you. Even if you can only record a video a week it will add up quickly. At this time next year, you will already be at 52 videos. Get started today!

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