This was recently brought to my attention and I liked it so much I wanted to share it with you as well. Tavia Ritter of RE/MAX of Reading created this video tutorial on using a Real Estate Shows Flyer as an online greeting card for her clients. Tavia has creative ideas and shares her tips in an easy to understand step-by-step format.

Thank you, Tavia!

If you’re thinking of trying this yourself, why not test it on the new Instant Show about the spring time change? Your clients might appreciate the reminder!

Here is a sample Halloween Greeting Flyer from Real Estate Shows.

Rocky VanBrimmer shared a very personal Real Estate Show with me this morning.

Rocky sent me an email with a link to a Show he produced for his wife’s birthday. Part of the response I sent to Rocky was this, “Are you aware that you can use hard returns in the titles to have them break to read easier?” Rocky’s response back was, “Showing my techno ignorance here, I do not know what “hard returns” means… Would you care to elaborate?”

Two things occurred to me as I read his response. First, I didn’t phrase my response very well. I could have been a lot more specific in my description. And second, I realized this “mistake” is one I see a quite a bit. So, I thought I would do a quick tutorial video on the topic.

Rocky graciously allowed us to use his Show as an example in this tutorial video.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Rocky, thank you again for allowing me to use your very personal Real Estate Show!

Our Easter/Passover flyer templates have been live for a few days now. And since I wanted to do something different with this announcement. that meant this post had to wait until I returned from the Colorado Realtor Rally.

Be warned, this video is 20 minutes long. It is a “live” recording of my thought process and every action I took to create this Easter Show and Flyer example. It takes you from concept through completion. I started with only the notion that I wanted my greeting to be about Easter eggs. It takes you through how to search and download the photos on Flickr, how to edit them using Picnik and the full Real Estate Show creation, editing and flyer selection process. You’re seeing it in full (except for two pauses)… warts and all. (That includes some of my typing errors.)

Click here to watch the concept to completion video. It may take some time to download and play.

I hope this will help you understand not only how to create a Show, but also give you inspiration for creating variations of your own.

Photos in show by richardbh, queenie13, striatic, sofubared, the G-tastic 7

Cathy Tishhouse is a new Real Estate Shows client. And she asked the following question in the comment section of a blog post on ActiveRain:

I subscribed to Real Estate Shows a few weeks ago after seeing some posted by Missy Caulk and my seller’s love them – really adds to my listing presentation. Just when I was doing the trial run, I found out that RE/MAX has a similar tool in their design center but liked this one better… I have noticed that the pictures on the Real Estate Shows end up zooming into a particular spot that I might not have chosen – is there a tutorial to say what angle is best to take the pictures in the future – don’t want to go back and retake them all. Thanks for your help.

Well, we did have a tutorial on camera movement that I could have sent her to view, but I wanted to test a brand new piece of software, ScreenFlow, so I made the following video to answer her question.

ScreenFlow: Editing Camera Movement in Real Estate Shows from respres on Vimeo.

I sent the video to her via email and this was her response:

It worked great – thanks so much – I have changed my shows and very quickly. I am having trouble with the sound on my lap top – very faint and volume is turned up the highest. So, I could hardly hear but the visuals were enough to do this quickly. I love that I don’t have to watch the way I take the picture but can adjust the focus here. Great idea – this is why I chose yours over the free version that RE/MAX offers J and Thanks for the quick response!!

It was, of course, my pleasure. I was asked twice last week why someone would choose to pay for Real Estate Shows instead of opting for some other “free” option. I’ve been asked that question many times. But I’ve never had anyone ask me that question who had actually given Real Estate Shows a try.

There’s an old adage, “free is usually worth what you pay for it.”

Success and mastery are always about the subtleties. Many presentations look the same until you examine them more closely. Then the details emerge, details that mark the difference between successful presentations and those that just go through the motions but don’t deliver great results.

You are in business to get results and earn a living. We’re in business to help you do that.

A very common email came into our customer service department last week. It was a request we get fairly often and it went like this, “I deleted a Show from my account and was wondering if you could bring it back.”

Sometimes this was a mistake, a show was deleted by accident. Since we don’t really delete shows, we would happily “bring it back to life.” But sometimes, a show was deleted because it was the only way to remove it from public view. This removed the show from the account and required a phone call or email to customer support to bring it back.

We thought you should have more control over this. So we’ve added a new Show category called “offline.” When you move a Show into this category, it is no longer visible to the public. The Show, however, remains in the account and you can edit it and view it from inside your account. And you can bring the Show “back to life” by moving it into any of the other Show categories.

This video will Show you how it works.

I wrote a post a few days ago entitled, A Closer Look At Google Presentations. In that post, I included some very general instructions on hosting your own presentations, Google or otherwise, that included the comment, “download the Google Presentation to a zip file, unzip it and load those files to your own server using FTP.” I then said, “If you don’t know how to do this, let me know and I’ll prepare a separate post about uploading files via ftp.” I received several emails as a result.

Several readers wanted to know more about how to FTP.

So, I thought a video on how to use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) applications was in order. In addition, I’ve also tried to explain how URL’s work, so you can properly name and structure your files on your web server. In the simplest of terms, the “slashes” in web addresses are basically saying “then go here.” The graphic below illustrates how this works. The files for this demonstration were uploaded to our server at www.realestateshows.com and placed in the “presentations” folder, then in another folder named “googleftp” and then, ultimately, pointing to a file in that folder named “index.html.”

As you can see, the URL is made up of parts. Each part is referencing a different “folder” on the web server. When you upload your files using FTP, what you are doing is creating a file structure not unlike what you do on your own hard drive. You name files and place them into folders to make them easy to find. Web URL’s are really just short hand for how to find them.

Before you will be able to get started, you’ll need to know your FTP address, username and password. Your web host can provide this information for you. You will enter this information into the appropriate fields provided by the FTP software of your choice. Save the information in your favorites and you’ll never need to do it again. It will look something like this:

Here is a video which takes our Google Presentation from being hosted on Google’s servers to being hosted on our own servers. I apologize if this goes further than those who requested it might have like, but it wasn’t possible to explain FTP without explaining a few other things as well. I did not attempt to cover what FTP software is available, since they all work basically the same. I use Transmit on the Mac, but it’s simply a personal preference.

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Less than an hour after we “soft launched” our new features, I got an email from one of our long time clients, Doug Scott. Doug is an avid supporter of RealEstateShows.com, but his email was less than flattering. He was unhappy. Specifically, he was unhappy with the social bookmarking links that now came up at the end of his Shows and was concerned about people leaving his site.

Doug was only one of two people that first day that had this reaction. Of those who took the time to comment, most were excited to see these options for social sharing presented in this way. Doug didn’t say the following, but what we heard in Doug’s comments was this…. “Don’t force things on me. You shouldn’t decide for me what new technologies I should buy into. That’s for me to decide.”

Of course, I made an effort to “educate” Doug on the potential value of these links. But ultimately, Doug knows his clients and his market better than I’m ever going to know them. And he should be the one to decide how he wants to work with them. Not us.

It doesn’t take a thousand voices to deliver the truth. One will do.

So, we went back to the drawing board and rethought how this should work. What we came up with has already been implemented. Here’s how it works now: The “Get Link” and “Get HTML” icons, as well as the Social Bookmarking Icons will be OFF by default. They are now turned on at the Show level. This is done in the “Edit Buttons” area.

Here is a short video to show you how.

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Doug, thank you for helping us make our product better for everyone.

The publishing/distributiom options available as a result of the new Flyers feature required that we find a better way to group the various distribution methods. This has caused a little bit of confusion, so I thought I’d put together a quick tour of the new “Publish” page so you know where to find the links you’ve come to rely on.

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We’ve done all we can in the lab, now it’s your turn!

We can only learn so much in a beta test. We need real world exposure to understand how things really work under pressure. So, all of the new features are now officially live! But we want your feedback to help us understand what is and is not working in your specific environment.

Your feedback will help us make any changes that might be necessary to insure everything works just the way it should. We’ve already begun getting good feedback, both positive and negative, so thank you!

Internet Flyers

You can now begin building and distributing flyers. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to do that.

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You can view the demo flyer from this video here.

Category RSS Feeds

You’ll notice an RSS Feed icon [ ] in the “Manage and Edit Existing Shows” area. Click on that icon and you’ll be taken to a page where you can select a full or partial feed of all the Shows marked as “Viewable in Other Shows.” You can do this for any category you wish.

We have successfully tested these RSS feeds in the RSS feed widgets that come standard with Blogger, Wodpress.com, Wordpress.org and Typepad blogs. For blogs that don’t come with built in RSS Feed widgets, like ActiveRain, we recommend the RSS Feed Widget by Grazr.

A Brand New Player

There are still some changes we’re going to make once we get your feedback, but it’s up and running. You will notice a change in the look and also a new ending to each Show that will better focus the Internet viewer on the additional features of the Show. This is also found under Menu.

The zoom icon left of the speaker will play the Show in full screen mode. This button will not be active on Shows embedded using the html method before today’s launch. If you would like full screen to function in those old embedded shows, you will need to replace the old code with new code. If you embedded your Shows with the Java version, there is no need to do anything.

In addition, there are new ways for the Internet viewer to share the Show with friends and family. We’ve made the embed code public, so anyone who wants to blog about a house they like can embed the Show right in their post. (Today that code points outside of the player, but once we’ve received all of your feedback, we’ll be moving that inside the player.)

Social Bookmarking and Social Networks

We’ve also made it easier for Internet viewers to share Shows they like via social bookmarking sites, like Digg, Del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon, and the social networking site, Facebook. Each of these will make it easier for people to spread the word about a home they are considering for purchase, or to promote the home you are selling for them, or to simply share a random Show they’ve enjoyed. We’ll be writing more about the value of this later.

We Want Your Feedback.

Please give us your feedback on these changes and let us know anything that is not functioning properly by emailing customer service. This will place your comments and technical issues directly into our ticketing system.

We’re looking forward to your input.

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