Podcasting – Effective Marketing Tools for Realtors

Today’s competitive real estate market requires innovative and easy to use marketing tools for Realtors to market themselves and their listings. Podcasts are great marketing tools for Realtors because they are inexpensive, versatile and unique. A podcast is an audio file created in mp3 format. Think of it as your own personal radio show. Podcasting technology allows potential clients that have personal audio players such as iPods, mp3’s and some cell phones to receive broadcasts of audio media via an Internet RSS (really simple syndication) feed to which users can subscribe. Users are able to listen to your podcasts any time they choose. In fact, the technology is so easy to use that many users download the information to their PC or MAC instead of their audio players.

Advantages of Podcasts

Podcasts are effective marketing tools for Realtors because they save time and money. Podcasts function as multiple marketing tools for Realtors. Podcasts can be used in the following ways:

• You can combine your podcast on your website with a virtual tour of your listings as well. This unique way of marketing listings is not offered by many other agents and sets you apart from competitors.

• You can do a video of local neighborhoods and podcast them as hot neighborhoods. This works well for local attractions and restaurants as well. You can also speak to owners or managers of local attractions and restaurants and see if they would be interested in mentioning you on their podcasts too.

• Podcasts are a great way to give instructional seminars to your buyers on how to apply for a home mortgage, how to buy a home, or to advise your sellers on how to get their home ready for sale instead or how to sell their home with a short sale instead of writing articles and posting them to your website. Or you can have both podcasts and informative articles on your website.

• With podcasts, it’s easy to create a personal radio show and interview past clients you sold homes to, local area developers and builders, mortgage brokers, home inspectors and other vendors you work with. It’s great advertising for them as well. Ask them to podcast and interview you too.

• Create announcements of your broker’s opens, open houses and any local community events such as music festivals and art festivals. People love this kind of information.

Kinds of Podcasts

You can record podcasts on your computer.  All you need is a PC or MAC, microphone and podcast recording software. You can get free recording tools, but I recommend you spend around $50.00 and purchase better quality software such as Propaganda or Webmaster Podcaster. There are also podcasts that will convert your blog to a podcast or a blogcast. Autocasting converts the blog text so that it can be downloaded via a podcast. The text summary is indexed by the search engines so your podcast is searchable.

The best marketing tools for Realtors are the ones that keep people coming back to your website and increase your lead generation. Podcasts are perfect, easy marketing tools for Realtors because they are simple to do, and they are a fun way to market yourself and your listings. You can be as creative as you want, and podcasts require little time to do.