Vidlisting Blog: Web Real Estate Video

Editors Note:  We are in the process of remaking all of our help videos since the interfaces and features have changed since this blog post.  Stay tuned.

What Is A Vidlisting Shared Media Catalog?

 A Vidlisting shared media catalog is virtual workspace for REALTORs to work with real estate video in almost any format and be able to easily share that content with customers or other REALTORS using social networking. Unlike other forms of video channels which require you to cut and paste HTML code or input endless emails every time that you want to share a video, you’ll be able to easily share content with 3-4 clicks. 

Content can be pushed or pulled using Vidlisting shared media catalog. Customers or others in your organization can “pull” Youtube videos, virtual tours from Real Estate Shows, or uploaded Vidlisting real estate video content that you’ve selected to be shareable and move that content directly to their own media catalogs. This catalog can be real estate video property tours, agent introductions, video interviews, promotional video spots for your organization, or even real estate video podcasts. Once in their their catalog, they can make individual widgets, group content together into media bars (even with different content types such as real estate shows, Youtube, and Vidlisting content),  and otherwise use it as their own.  If the consumers of your shared catalog are using the Vidlisting Wordpress Plugin, they’ll be able to directly insert content that you share directly into Wordpress blogs.

How Do I Know What Content In My Media Catalog Is Shared?

We’ve built a comprehensive yet extremely simple catalog system so that you’ll immediately know if your media catalog is in a public, permissive, or private state and specifically what content, if any, is shared.  If the below information is too complex or not understandable, we’ve put together a short video that demonstrates the functionality as well.

Users at any paid level of membership with the Vidlisting can share their media catalogs with others. We have a view of an actual shared catalog that is available to you to test with that we’ve simply named, “Miami Homes”. It consists of a public catalog of a number of videos that vidlisting filmed in the Miami, FL area. The catalog header clearly states the current status of the catalog when the member is at a paid level. The sharing state can quickly be changed with a click of the Configuration button.

As shown above, although the Miami Homes catalog itself is in a public sharing state, none of the content in the working area of catalog is currently marked as shared. Below, you’ll see that not all of the content in a shared media catalog has to be shared - we’re choosing to only share one video in the example here. The content in the working area comes from videos that you may have previously uploaded, YouTube videos or Real Estate Shows that you have referenced, or may even be content from another shared catalog that you are consuming. Sharing media from any these media sources only requires four mouse clicks.

The first click is to select the media that you want to share from the working area of the media catalog. The second click is on the button labelled, “Modify Selected Icon(s)”.

This brings you to the interface where you can modify attributes of the media icon (titles, etc.) The third click is in the checkbox labelled “Share This Media” (sorry, the image is from a pre-release version of the interface) and the last click is on the Modify button.

The result is a shared media image that is clearly labelled and difficult to miss.

What Does The User See When They Want To Consume My Catalog?

We’ll work through an example of what the consumer actually sees.

The initial state of the consumer’s catalog only contain the default content that each user for that organization will have. In this case, we are looking at a Vidlisting catalog which has mandatory property and interview content - different organizations can have different default content.

The first step is to browse the available shared in order to find Miami Homes. Althouh a direct link will be available shortly, for the moment, we click on the configuration button and then click on the “Browse Available Shared Catalogs” button

Now you click the first letter of the desired catalog which in this case is “M” and you’ll see Miami Homes listed with the identifier (Public) which means that no approval is required to consume the content. Catalogs marked (Shared) require approval from the catalog owner before you can consume content from that catalog. Now you click the desired catalog’s checkbox and the Add button.

Once you have completed the above steps, only the shareable content from the selected catalog will automagically appear in your partner video tab. UPDATE: I’ve just added a Real Estate Show from the Miami area and a YouTubeVideo as well to play with.

How Can I Get My Own Shared Media Catalog?

Anyone can consume an available public catalog without permission and shared catalogs with the owner’s approval. Sharing your own media catalog is normally a paid level of functionality. You must first open your own media catalog. Free level members and above can consume available shared media catalogs.  However, only paid members can actually share out their catalogs - you’ll need to upgrade your membership to do so.

We are however inviting selected media content providers the opportunity to offer their own content during the shared catalog beta period (approx. the next 30 days). Participation in the beta means that you’ll have a year’s free use of the functionality if approved. Please contact me at tony@vidlisting.com to request participation.

Vidlisting will be the first site to use the ForSaleByLocals Multimedia Wordpress plugin starting today. This marks a huge step forward for us in terms of finding new ways for users to discover and easily apply new real estate video content.  The plugin integrates the content from Vidlisting Personal Media Catalogs and makes vidlisting branded video widgets instantly insertable into any self hosted wordpress blog.  An additional benefit is that the multimedia plugin also can process and insert youtube video and Real Estate Shows widgets using the same system whether the video content has to do with real estate or not.

We chose this approach because many users prefer to insert via a user interface in Wordpress rather than have to be bogged down in the details of cutting and pasting HTML.  The standard we used was the ease of use in inserting images into wordpress blogs.

We’ve created a special page to download our real estate video version of the wordpress plugin. ForSaleByLocals have provided a set of installation instructions for the plugin. Configuration of the video and multimedia plugin is super easy.  We are available at support@vidlisting.com if you have questions, comments, or issues with the plugin.

Here is what is next. Within a few weeks, you´ll also be able to directly insert video into blog posts from other people´s shared or public catalogs for which you have access. So, imagine the speed of viral videos, when you not only share media content with friends but also have it available to be directly insertable in all blogs that you share content with.  Nice.

Adding Real Estate Shows (RES) to your Vidlisting personal media catalog is exceptionally quick and easy.  You’ll also benefit from the new catalog interface that we want to show off and use alternative media sources such as YouTube and RES if you have real estate video content stored there. For those that are interested in reading about how to add YouTube video, we’ve covered that over on our ForSaleByLocals video platform blog since YouTube has applicability beyond just real estate.

Beyond Real Estate Videos: How To Include RES In Your Personal Media Catalog

Once you’ve opened an existing personal media catalog (or create a new personal media catalog), you simply click on the button labelled “Add YouTube and RES”.

This button will bring you to a short form. You simply cut and paste or type the RES URL of the show that you want to add to the catalog. This is the only required step. Note that for RES we “automagically” retrieve Photo #1 from the show so it isnt necessary to upload a photo.

You can also optionally add up to 2 lines of titles and some text that will be shown in your video icon.  You can also geolocate your show which will allow us to potentially include your property oriented show when others search for real estate in the same area.

Now just hit the send button and you’ll see a representation of your real estate show in your catalog:

It’s that easy.  Once included in your catalog, you can just as quickly do interesting things with your icons that include creating group horizontal and vertical media widgets using real estate videos and Real Estate Shows for use in your blog or website. Up to 5 icons can be selected and included.

We’ve included an example of a functioning widget below and will have instructions in a future blog post on how to create them (hint: click on the media that you want to include and use the “Create Horizontal Video Bar” Button - it takes about 10 seconds)

Since the widget above is live, try clicking on any of the properties in the widget and the click will bring you directly to that real estate show.  Note: you can mix video and RES in these video bars without any issues. As always, contact us with any questions…