Virtual Home Staging

Virtual Home Staging is here from RTV! With more and more homes now being vacant due to foreclosures virtual staging is now more in demand than ever before.

Are you an RTV virtual tour provider? Are you looking for additional property marketing services to add to your offerings menu? If you answered yes to both of these questions then look no further. A powerful property marketing tool packing a dramatic eye-catching punch is here!

RTV is now able to offer you this new virtual home staging product at an extremely low price. Please review our latest RTV newsletter for ordering details and virtual home staging pricing.

RealTourVision
http://www.realtourvision.com
Virtual Home Staging

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Island Digital Images Rocking TxT Connect Mobile Marketing

As a leader in the greater Corpus Christi area real estate market you have either started to use IDI TxT Connect as an integral part of your marketing plan or you will be signing up for the program in the near future.

As you are no doubt aware IDI TxT Connect is both an inexpensive marketing tool, (as low as $2.95 per month per property), and one that allows you to join in the expediential growth of mobile marketing.  As always if you have any questions on this or any other Island Digital Images virtual tours or property marketing products just let us know.

Some of the new features and benefits of the IDI TxT Connect product include:
"Lots" Added as a New Category
Within real estate, we now have Homes, Rental Properties, Commercial Properties and Lots.

"Text Business Card" Added as a New Category
Why not use one of your keywords for a Text Business Card! ie: Text Alan to 43766 for my contact details sent to your phone!

Agent Photo Upload
Your photo is now displayed in the new mobile website design!

Virtual Tour/Video Upload Link
You can now upload a video or provide buyers with a video URL link such as YouTube. This is another great use for the video version of your virtual tour. This video is included with our Turbo Media Exposure option.

MLS Auto Fill
Simply enter the MLS number and click auto fill. All of the property details, extra description and up to 10 photos are automatically populated into the listing fields. The more detailed property description and photos will appear on the mobile site. This is now a one step process! (keep an eye on this process to make sure it is your listing that is uploaded, if there is more than one listing in Realtor.com within the state of Texas it may select the wrong property. If the wrong property is selected just add your information and photos manually)

New Mobile Website (WAP)
For those with a mobile data plan that can access the internet, we have re-designed our mobile website design. Our new design takes a buyer directly to the photos as the landing page, they can access a map of the listing, click on a video or virtual tour if uploaded, see the agent and their photo, "click to SMS" (or call or email) the agent, etc.

Mapping Feature
Buyers can now click an icon in the mobile site to see the property on a map!

Photo Upload Enhancement
Photo size is now larger (4MB) and you can see the upload progress and photo itself after each photo upload.

Opt-In For Price Updates Through Mobile Site/Listing
Buyers are all looking for an edge! Now they can simply click a button if viewing the listing on their mobile phone and enter their number to "opt-in" to receive SMS broadcasts for property listing info and updates. Remember, we also make it easy for any buyer to also opt-in simply by replying YES to the second text message they receive.

Stats
You can now view a number of various stats on your property listing and filter by date.








Good luck out there with TxT Connect Everyone!

Alan Fon

Island Digital Images, LLC
Corpus Christi Virtual Tours
www.islanddigitalimages.com

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Like a hand in glove - Joining the Chamber

When RTV suggested that my Nova Scotia virtual tour business become a member of the local Chamber of Commerce, I put it on (what seemed at the time) a very long "to do" list. Priority was given to developing my brand, mastering the RTV virtual tour software, learning my new camera, establishing a website, marketing and staying abreast of what RTV's Inner Circle Marketing constantly had to offer.

After the launch of my Nova Scotia virtual tour company (http://www.supernovastudios.ca) and with more time on my hands, it was time to consider RTV's recommendation. Could the Chamber offer me opportunities to shoot tours for my local area and local businesses? It was time to find out. Once registered, I had the opportunity to join Toastmasters. Toastmasters is an educational organization that operates for the purpose of helping members improve their communication, public speaking and leadership skills. IT WAS JUST WHAT I NEEDED! I signed up immediately, and I'm so glad I did.

Following my registration, the next monthly newsletter prepared by the Chamber, I was asked to write 250 words about my company. ( http://www.bridgewaterchamber.com/NewsletterDecember82009.htm) What a wonderful opportunity to showcase my new business (for free) to every Chamber member! Your local Chamber has many functions throughout the year. I was invited to a Christmas meet & greet in December. Business cards in hand I was one of the first to arrive. I spoke to everyone there about my new business, the interactive virtual tours (http://www.supernovastudios.ca/packages/residential-real-estate), the Text 2 Look program (http://www.supernova.txt2look.com) AND the FREE Social Ignition course offered at my site (http://www.supernovastudios.ca/home). And you will never guess what happened.

I was asked to SPEAK by the Regional Development Association in the new year on social media! Can you believe it? This small town Nova Scotia girl has a speaking engagement! Has a nice ring to it doesn't it? The Chamber of Commerce and my business just "fit" together - like a hand in glove. (Thanks RTV!)

Thanks Jason!

Taylor Design & Prepress

Book your Nova Scotia virtual tour today!

Supernova Studios
www.supernovastudios.ca
159 Alexandra Ave.
Bridgewater, NS B4V 1H6
Phone: 902-543-2185

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The FORMULA 22 | Must Love Blogs

Attention FORMULA fans! Are you ready to start pumping…and I mean PUMPING Google Juice your way? As you already know from taking the RTV Social Ignition course ‘Google Juice’ comes from freshly squeezed blogs and that’s exactly what we're going to be chatting about next week.

Please join FORMULA host Jason LaVanture for The FORMULA 22 ‘Must Love Blogs’ episode. If you’re already blogging this will be a must attend event and if you’re not yet blogging this is a do or die event for your business.

As you might have already noticed we are making some changes in the way we push blogs here at RTV and have also launched an outside blog on Active Rain http://www.panoramajack.com which allows any RTV RAINMAKERS full…yes we said FULL access to submit their content any time they please.

You will then be able to post to the blog independently of RTV any time that you desire and know that your links are being followed by the search engines.

Don't worry non RAINMAKERS!!  We will still post the content for you and link back to your site!


Please join us on Tuesday February 16th at 7:00 PM EST as we talk all about Blogging, Anchor Text, SEO, and the RTV Blog Submission process. Who knows we might event award you with a free tour at the end of the show. See you online soon!!

Register Now in Your TMS!

~RTV
Virtual Home Staging

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For Sale By Owner Virtual Tours

The advent of the internet has forever changed the Real Estate market, allowing home buyers and home sellers to be more empowered then ever. Unfortunately, the recent Mortgage crisis and state of the economy has put us in the middle of one of the most challenging Real Estate Markets in recent history. With foreclosures on the rise, mortgage money hard to come by and an abundance of homes on the market home buyers are being very cautious with their time and choices.

As a “For Sale by Owner” (FSBO) home seller the challenges are even greater. The question is; how does a FSBO seller compete on the same level with an MLS Realtor in this tricky market? Today, top Real Estate professionals use Virtual Tours to showcase properties in their best light and provide Maximum Exposure of their real estate listings.

Today, 84% of all home buyers look to the internet first for their new home. Without crisp, clear professional images coupled with a 360 virtual tour and/or interactive floor plans, many potential home buyers move on to the next property. Time is very valuable to home buyers as well as the seller. A Virtual Tour offers a way to view many properties from home and venturing out to view in-person, only the homes that fit their needs. At the same time, the seller is spared from endless viewings by unqualified buyers and curiosity seekers. Simply stated, a professional quality Virtual tour will give you 100 times more exposure than simple snap shots or no photos at all.

Now, professional marketing is available to the individual home seller by the very same Virtual Tour Provider that services the Real Estate Professional.

DragonFly 360 Imaging, full service provider of Albuquerque Virtual Tours is pleased to offer their services to individual home owners marketing their homes themselves. With many families relocating from various parts of the Country, it is essential that your home can be viewed nationally if not globally. Our Search Engine Optimized, Google linked 360 Virtual Tours along with available syndication services provide maximum world wide exposure for your home insuring your homes greatest exposure in the global marketplace. We invite you to call and arrange a no obligation consultation to discuss the available marketing options for your home.

Call today and get your 24/7 Open house on-line today.

PS. If you should decide to list with a real estate agent, be sure to ask us first as we are currently working with many of the areas most tech-savvy real estate agents who use our powerful property marketing tools.  Making the right choice on who lists your home is certainly a determining factor on how quickly your home sells!


Dale Hart
DragonFly 360 imaging
505 962 2207
Albuquerque Virtual Tours
http:// www.DragonFly360imaging.com

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Calling All RTV RAINMAKERS

Are you currently on Active Rain? Are you grandfathered in as RAINMAKER status? Have you paid for your RAINMAKER status with a paying subscription to Active Rain? If you’re already at RAINMAKER status the word RAINMAKER will appear under your photo when you login and click on your profile.

Assuming that you are, you will now be able to participate in the RTV Virtual Tour Provider Blog http://www.PanoramaJack.com.

To get things started with this new initiative please email jason(at)realtourvision.com and let me know that you would like to participate. I will simply need your Active Rain username that you use to login with. Once I have that I will login to the PanoramaJack Active Rain blog and will send you an invite to become an author in the new Blog.

You will then be able to post to the blog independently of RTV any time that you desire and know that your links are being followed by the search engines. You will be able to post to the blog by simply logging into your account, accepting the invite and pushing any existing blogs there or writing a new blog and checking the “Collaborative Outside Blog” box. At any time you will be able to log in and post your content and get the google juice flowing back to your site without waiting for RTV to get to your blog submission.

Better yet, let us know when you post to this new blog and we will copy your blog posting from there to the RTV Blog too for even more awesome Google Juice. Get on board now because the PanoramaJack blog has already started pumping!

Not a RAINMAKER? That’s perfectly fine because as you post send in your blogs to us for the www.VirtualTourProvider.com blog we are automatically posting them to the www.PanoramaJack.com blog too. Please keep in mind however that we are only posting one blog daily so if you notice a time lapse, that’s why. We’re not ignoring you but simply taking them in the order in which they come in.

If you’re a RAINMAKER on AR and a part of the RTV virtual tour photographer network please email me your Active Rain username NOW and I will send you an invite right away.

RealTourVision

RTV

Virtual Tour Software

Order a virtual tour - 866-947-8687

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New Technology & New Year

The New Year is sure to bring new technology to our San Antonio virtual tour company, especially under Jason’s tutelage. While we are embracing new virtual tour software technology, don’t forget to keep tabs on your present virtual tour technology.

I recently had my website compromised and didn’t find out about it until I was looking at my Google Analytics and saw a flat line for a number of days. I did a search on Yahoo and Bing and Google and lo and behold, what did I find but to my dismayment, that while my site name was there, there was ‘nothing here’. By that time, the searchbots had gone through and I lost my rankings among competing virtual tour companies.

It took a couple of weeks to regain what I had lost and there is no telling how many possible virtual tour customers I lost. It’s a good idea to review your virtual tour website probably on a daily basis just to catch any problems before they are magnified and really put a wrench in your works.

Speaking of wrenches in the works, are you backing up your data regularly? We tend to think that it won’t happen to me or that I don’t have too many hours on my drive, memory, flash drive, etc. and then the worst happens, lost data, corrupted files, virus, etc. Take a step back and think or calculate the cost of loss of your primary data base and programs if you lost them, then consider the ‘insurance’ that you need and the cost vs cost of loss. Don’t put it off, as so many of us do. Make this one of your New Year’s resolution, back up , back up, back up before its too late.

Happy New Year and may this be a fruitful and growth year to all of you.

Jim Hoback
San Antonio Virtual Tours
L’oeil L’esprit at www.AlamoAreaVirtualTours.com

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Wilmington Virtual Tours

When it comes to Virtual Tours and what’s new on the market I have seen a few things that make me want to say there is a very bright future coming and I need to get on board before I miss the boat.

First is the talking website Avatar that’s lets you use your own face for the Avatar and voice. It comes up on your front page and will be interactive to your viewing clients. We all know (or should) that the amount of time spent looking at a webpage is very short so your front page has to Wow them and it has to be easy to navigate so what better that an Avatar of you.

Second is video information on your virtual tour company website. Video clips that are geared towards our industry that will pop up on your front page also that will deliver important information on selling your home faster by staging it, Mortgagees and the new laws, and many more “How To “ video’s. Once you have gotten them to your site you need to keep them there so let’s not be boring or overwhelm them with soooo many drop downs and text that they just want to fly away to another site that’s easy to navigate.

Being a Wilmington virtual tour company, I pride myself on using the number 1 virtual tour software and system in the world. I know that I've got one of the largest Virtual Tour companies in Wilmington, NC. I currently provide virtual tours to the following counties:

Belville, Castle Hayne, Kings Grant, Leland, Masonboro ,Murraysville, Myrtle Grove, Navassa, Ogden, Seagate, Silver Lake, Wrightsboro, Wrightsville Beach. High quality service and images is what I deliver my customers. I'm also very pleased to say that I also offer the only Elevated camera shots around. I’m Douglas and this is the Virtual Tour Vision's way of getting out there on the Net and being seen and heard.


Sincerely Douglas Meyers
Virtual Tour Vision
Wilmington Virtual Tours
Order a virtual tour: (910) 805-2467

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Tamed by Twitter and Propertybot

As virtual tour providers we are marketers. We market our own virtual tour and property marketing services, sure, but my business’ goal is to be a marketing partner for my clients. Whether I’m researching for my market or helping my clients research their market, detailed real estate marketing search is a key. Finding a certain type of property in the right price range quickly is an important skill.

This is a follow up to a blog post I wrote for TwiTip.com http://www.twitip.com/twitter-real-estate-listings-now-with-an-easy-button/. In that post I reviewed a great little tool for distributing Real Estate listings on Twitter called Tweetlister. (http://tweetlister.com) I wanted to let you know about another Twitter tool that goes hand in hand with Tweetlister and is from the same developer. It’s called Propertybot. http://tweetlister.com/propertybot.aspx

Propertybot allows you to search for listings by using the Twitter @reply function. Over the last few months, Tweetlister has had a ton of data thrown at it. According to Tweetlister.com, Tweetlister has a database of over 1.6 million listings, mainly from their partner listing feed partner, ListHub, but also from TweetLister members who have entered their listings manually. Because of this, the service has a great property search feature built into the Tweetlister.com site. Now with Propertybot, you can access this data in your Twitter app, whether that’s at your desktop or on your hand-held computer, I mean phone.

You don’t have to be a Tweetlister member to use Propertybot. The only requirement is a free Twitter account. If you’re not using Twitter and encouraging your virtual tour clients to use it, there’s never a better time than now to start. Here’s how:

• Log in to Twitter and follow @propertybot (http://twitter.com/propertybot).
• Start a tweet with @Propertybot and then add the search criteria.
• To get a full menu of the criteria available send this tweet: @Propertybot help

The main thing to remember is to put the location in quotes. For example, I sent this tweet: @Propertybot “Huntsville, AL” residential 3BR $175K-$250K

In a minute or two I received an @reply from the Propertybot account with a link to my search results. It found fifteen properties and each result has a link to the source of the listing. Most of the time it’s the Realtor’s website. Want to quickly find a list of the agents and brokers who list in the top tier in your area? Just change the location and price range and follow the links.

Speaking of Realtors, you can search a specific agent/broker's listings through Propertybot. This is a tool intended for TweetLister member agents/brokers. Your virtual tour clients can tell their clients to DM (direct message) Propertybot and get all their listings, or a specific set of their listings, by tweeting a message with the agent's Twitter name. If you tweet @Propertybot [agenttwittername] house for sale, you'll get all of the agent's home listings. This is just for agents/brokers who are TweetLister members, but you can get credit for recommending it!

The uses for this service are as many as you have reasons to search for properties. The killer part is that it’s free and there’s no new software to install if you’re already using Twitter.

Happy Tweeting!

Brett Weaver
Owner/Photographer
SpotLight Virtual Tours
Maury County TN Virtual Tours
http://spotlightvt.com
Order a virtual tour: 931-201-9328

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Lighting & Framing Photography Challenge

Virtual Tour Photography, taking pictures versus tech savvy training and experience, can be a perplexing challenge for a novice photographer and especially a virtual tour and real estate photographer, in the world today.

Once upon a time, in the not too distance past, I can remember when being a photographer meant heavy, expensive equipment not to mention the technical training involving the operation of this equipment. A special talent, passion and extensive training were basics in starting a career as a professional virtual tour photographer and of course a mentor never hurt.

Very few in my world had these opportunities, so the question of even thinking about setting the goal of being a professional photographer, were out of the question. With the advancement of time, new technologies have been developed and have presented new opportunities where we can quench these daunting obstacles.

The meaning of being a professional photographer once meant more than just taking pictures with a camera. One had to experience patience in waiting for the film to be developed in a dark room before they could view what was captured in their photographs. I use the word photography instead of pictures, because I feel skill is need to produce photographs and pictures/pics are quick, uncalculated impressions.

With the wonders of digital photography, now we experience instant gratification. Immediately we are able to realize what has just happened and can correct or adjust our actions. Time being the equivalent of money, these expensive processes are reduced to affordable applications, leaving us with more time and energies to apply creative techniques to satisfy the virtual tour customer.

In real estate, the product we are selling, be it a building or land, we need to remember that we only have a small amount of time to capture our client’s interest. It is paramount we represent the property in an inviting, cozy and appealing manner. The angle/framing of the photo is essential to entice the client/buyer into action, the actual sale of the property. If you show too much open spaces of nothing, a thought can be placed in the viewer of an empty, useless area.

The same goes with lighting, if it is darkly lit, your viewer will not be see the points of interest, All in all, we can only do so much with post shoot adjustments. If we lay down a fundamental understanding of lighting and framing of our subject, the finally photo will represent what we want it to. Stop by our website today to get the Southern Michigan virtual tour and property marketing services that you deserve!

Have a warm, safe and prosperous New Year RTV!

Sandra Gibson

Power Play Multi Media Productions
Web Design, Internet Marketing, Virtual Tours
Southern Michigan Virtual Tours
http://www.powerplaymmp.com
Order a Virtual Tour Now: 517-869-2707

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We Love The IMAGE Webinars

RTV,

Last night Ben had another excellent IMAGE webinar. Although I was late to the Lighting topic I was able to take away enough in the framing portion to make it well worth it for my virtual tour business. Like always Ben broke it down to a very easy to understand level, while still getting straight to the point when balancing artistic expression. For all the virtual tour dealers that were not able to attend you may want to watch this one, On top of the excellent tips that Ben threw at us he explained exactly what our national virtual tour company accounts are looking for… Another great webinar Ben!

Matt Rayner
Lafayette Virtual Tours
www.acadiana360.com


Hello RTV Family,
I just wanted to say that the latest RTV webinar conducted by Ben Knorr was outstanding. Although I am a seasoned virtual tour photographer, I gleaned plenty of information concerning framing and overall lighting techniques. The additional virtual tour photography training proved to be refreshing! It is clear that Ben is not only well-versed in the technical aspects of RTV’s infrastructure, he is also has a clear grasp of virtual tour photography.

This is especially important when dealing with individuals who are just getting into RTV and virtual tour photography in general. If one has no clue in the basics of photography or virtual tour photography, especially lighting and framing, one’s reputation and creditability as a photographer will soon suffer. I stress “basics” because in order to advance to the next level of photography the fundamentals of photography must be mastered in order to progress. To this point, Ben did a superb job redirecting our attention to the makings of a stellar/ above-average visual presentation related to our virtual tours. I was impressed with Ben’s research to supplement his presentation. Instead of simply providing us an overall summary of lighting and framing, I found it extremely useful incorporating examples from other photographers who specialize in property & virtual tour photography.

In the same light (no pun intended), I found it equally useful and helpful when Ben incorporated the “No-No’s” of lighting and framing in his presentation. By displaying images submitted by current RTV dealers, he was able to point how each image fell short of RTV’s standards. In addition, he was able to show us, instead of simply telling us what to avoid. This technique was brilliant! Overall, I was quite impressed with the webinar. I will be attending more in 2010; more importantly, I will become more active this upcoming year with respect to the RTV business opportunity. Best wishes to the entire RTV family!

Wendell Nicholes



Thank you, Ben and RTV, for another interesting and very informative webinar. I really enjoyed the framing session. It started the creative juices flowing. I had a Knoxville virtual tour scheduled today and I put some of the ideas to work. I've shared some of the stills with the realtor and she loves them.

I'm really excited about the future virtual home staging webinar. That will put us even further ahead of the competition. Thank you RTV and Staff for the ongoing support and new ideas.

Looking forward to a very prosperous and successful 2010.

Happy New Year,
Tammy Mills
www.TimeMattersMarketing.com
Knoxville Virtual Tours

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Virtual Tour Marketing Pieces

Each month our Virtual Tour Company strives to help you become more efficient and better connected to existing and potential virtual tour customers. Our virtual tour marketing pieces are professionally made, easily customizable, and typically just require you to insert your specific company information and logo.

We recommend using Vistaprint for postcard printing and other printing needs. They seem to have fast service and extremely great rates. Did you know that you can also get 100 free postcards from them each month by going to http://www.vistaprint.com/nar?

Take a moment to read the text through and make sure your virtual tour and property marketing company can deliver the services delineated. If you can't or don't know how to provide a service such a bird's eye elevated shots, exposure engine, or night shots, contact us and we can point you in the right direction. As you know many of our monthly webinars cover these hot new topics and allow you to quickly and easily add these services to your virtual tour business.

If you have an idea for a new virtual tour marketing piece, suggestions, or want to see something in the next few months send me an e-mail. Best wishes, Jill K. Jill(at)realtourvision.com

Have you looked for a new dentist recently? We moved four years ago and I found just looking in the phone book daunting. I would have loved being able to really see inside and take virtual tours of local dental offices. We ended up with a great pediatric dentist that has an amazing facility. Each room is painted with a jungle theme and their waiting room has an island hut with a large salt water fish tank. Their office is ideal for a dental office virtual tour. Look into your community; you might be surprised what you find!

This months virtual tour marketing postcard is one that will spark the memory of how good it really does feel to sell properties to agents. The back of the postcard simple delineates how effective virtual tours are for selling properties. You should run one postcard campaign each month. The big dogs do and so should you!

As a final touch we have added an awesome new TxT Connect presentation that will allow you to drop by an office, talk about your new TxT Connect program and leave behind a very powerful CD with all of your TxT Connect marketing pieces neatly arranged. This powerful ready-to-go CD presentation requires that you have AutoRun Max on your computer and is ready for you to import. It comes with all the buttons, graphics and layout. Simply add your marketing pieces, powerpoint video presentation, flyer, company logo and start burning your CD's!

Happy Marketing Team & Good Luck out there

RealTourVision
The Best Virtual Tour Marketing System
The Largest Virtual Tour Network
The Coolest Virtual Tour Staff...ok we are gloating now.

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Special 2010 TxT Connect Offer

RTV is pleased to announce a Special 2010 TxT Connect Offer to kick start 2010. Did you participate in our TxT Connect program last year? Are you a new provider with RTV that would like to get setup selling our new Mobile Text Marketing System? The time is now to get your site going. This is a limited time offer only available to RTV Dealers who sign up for the TxTConnect program during the month of February. The commission plan is not quite as generous at it was the last time around but we're still offering one heck of a deal on the white label site. For $249.00 you will get the following:

• a custom TxTConnect site and license fee for $249
• a commission of 20% for all sales including all recurring sales.
An additional bonus to the next 50 RTV Dealers who sign up in February including 5 free packages of TxTConnect 10 code plans. These 10 code plans can be used for demo purposes or sold to interested agents.

We will pay a further commission bonus on the initial orders for any of these plans that a dealer sells. The 20% commission has been increased to 50% commission on the initial order and then 20% every month the plan stays active.

This is a great opportunity to sell an exciting new technology and service into the accounts you already do business with. If they are using Virtual tours they can benefit from TxTConnect. Act fast to take advantage of this great opportunity. Sign up now in your TMS!

~Go RTV
www.RealTourVision.com
International MLS

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Join us for a Webinar

Well we took a little break to let you digest part one of The FORMULA Setting up Shop and now the gang is back for more action in part two of this series.

Have you been wondering if you’re setting up your virtual tour company the right way?

Ever ask yourself what you could do right out of the gate to set yourself apart?

Are you a bit confused as to what to do next and where to put your precious company dollars?

Has your business slowed down and are you in need of an overhaul of your virtual tour products and virtual tour service offerings?

Do you just need to put a little more steam into your virtual tour & property marketing sales?

If you answered yes, and you're an RTV virtual tour provider you MUST attend part 2 of Setting up Shop next week for The FORMULA 21.

We have arranged to have guest appearances from Graves Carey of Delaware Virtual Tours http://www.360Visions.com, Alan Fon of Corpus Christi Virtual Tours http://www.IslandDigitalImages.com, Mike Thompson of Detroit Virtual Tours http://www.RealVisionStudio.com and of course Jason LaVanture of Traverse City Virtual Tours and http://www.BlueLaVaMedia.com.

This combined panel has produced a total of 6314 virtual tours with “Kid Dynamite” Graves Carey leading the pack with over 2600 tours produced!

Please join us on Tuesday February 2nd at 7:00 PM EST as we engage in a round table discussion on “Setting up Shop”. This is an Inner Circle Only Event. See you at the show!

~RTV

Reserve your Webinar seat now by logging into your TMS!

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Preparing for a Virtual Tour

On a recent trip to Florida, we had dinner on the beach during a beautiful sunset. The sky looked like it was on fire as gorgeous shades of red and orange lit the horizon. Wanting to capture the moment, we asked a friend to take our picture. In the picture, you can see the sunset if you look hard enough but unfortunately, the first and potentially only thing you see is my pretty but very distracting pink and orange paisley shirt.

Preparing for a virtual tour is just like preparing for any photo shoot…it’s vitally important that nothing distracts the viewer from the big picture. Virtual tours allow prospective buyers, renters or customers to step into your venue and literally take a look around. After you live in a space for a while, you often don’t see your own clutter or distractions. Problem is that someone who sees it for the first time often has a tough time seeing anything BUT the clutter and distractions.

We recently shot some Helen virtual tours where the homeowners had a large carousel horse. While it was beautiful and unique in person, in the 360º photographs it became a distraction from what was otherwise an elegant and classy living room.

We understand you usually have to live in your home while it is for sale but keep in mine, once your house is on the market, you must view it as a commodity and not as “your” home. Take a look around your house and see what prospective buyers may see. Go to open houses in your neighborhood and see what stands out to you.

Some of the things that can be visual stumbling blocks include:

Personal photographs
Office clutter
Kitchen counter catch-alls
Large or unique decorative pieces
Bookshelf or built-in displays
Refrigerator magnets and art
Distinct wall colors and accent walls

Remember that the objective is to showcase your home…not your stuff. If necessary, ask a friend to come over and objectively walk through your house. Chances are they will see things that you miss.

For more tips on showcasing your home or business, please check our website www.vquestmedia.com

Greg Mitts
White County Virtual Tours
www.vquestmedia.com
Order a Virtual Tour: 706-973-9056

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Virtual Tour Success Starts Here

I have been involved in land development, on the CAD (Computer Aided Design) side, for over 20 years. When the economic downturn occurred, the land development industry slowed to a crawl, forcing many engineering firms to have layoffs. I was one of several thousand engineers in the industry who was affected by this.

One always has to be open and ready for change. Now was the time to be proactive. With the absolute belief that I am in control of my own success or failure in life, I began to make some changes. I had always wanted to start a business involving video, and photography. With 20 years of computer work and engineering under my belt, I wanted to incorporate that experience somehow and knew I wanted to do this with the help of a successful franchise. Thus began the search for a suitable partner.

Enter RTV (Real Tour Vision).


Jason LaVanture, the founder of RTV, answered all my questions thoroughly. RTV waited patiently with no pressure for many months for me to make an informed decision. After looking over all the information I chose to invest and become a full service virtual tour provider with RTV. They are the largest virtual tour company and property marketing network in the world. They have the best virtual tour software, property marketing training and technical support. They even hold many national and International contracts with hotel chains which feeds business back into the virtual tour dealer network. How cool is that!!??

With Real Tour Vision servicing over sixty thousand real estate agents worldwide and over 1500 virtual tour providers in his network, Jason knows what services and functionality are needed on a local or national level. I am very excited to be moving forward in my new Harrison virtual tour business business venture, Virtual Tour Success, with RTV at my side. I can’t wait to be up in full force and to be providing my own clients with the best the industry has to offer in marketing and solutions to their problems.

The competition in the Real Estate Industry is fierce now. Quality virtual tours will give my clients the edge not only at the local level, but at the national and international levels.
To give your property the edge contact Virtual Tour Success today.

Virtual Tour Company Testimonial by:
Buffy Crosby
Owner
Harrison Virtual Tours
www.virtualtoursuccess.com
Order a virtual tour: 916-690-1786

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Florida Mobile Marketing System

Virtual Florida Tours is presenting the new text messaging service for real estate marketing. This is the best service provided since the advent of virtual tours.
Virtual Florida Tours is always searching for the top notch technologies that will allow our customers top the market and provide their customers the best possible service available at the lowest prices possible.

We made an exhaustive research of all the providers of this service and selected the one that gives the best quality service available on the market. Our provider offers this service on all the United States and Canada. That is a greater coverage that you can obtain with most of the companies. Allowing prospector to text the number to friends and family that are willing to relocate to the area and they will be able to see the property and the realtor will receive immediately information on the telephones that have contacted their advertisement.

If you will like to receive a better idea of the service we are presenting just SMS prop123 to 43766 or click to see a little presentation.


Gabriel Duque
Miami Virtual Tours
www.VirtualFloridaTours.com
Order a virtual tour today: 305 331 8960

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Life in the Mountains - A Virtual Tour Photographers Dream

I want to thank Ben Knorr for our virtual tour IMAGE Webinar this past Tues. evening, having a 2nd flash available on a shoot is really a valuable idea. I’ve been carrying a 2nd flash around for a while and I’ve had a few instances where I needed it.

www.knoxtours.net is shooting a lot of virtual tours in the resort rental cabins in the Great Smokey Mountains area, more exactly in Wears Valley right outside Pigeon Forge, all this just down the road from Knoxville, TN. It’s really great, I get to see some really beautiful mountain and valley views while shooting my virtual tours and also visit some awesome rental Log Cabins, values range from $100,000 to well over $1,000,000.

There’s all designs and different themes for these cabins, mostly these are homes away from homes and are rented to vacationers when the owners aren’t in the area. With our situation with the economy, a very many of these cabins are for sale, creating a pretty good situation for my Knoxville virtual tour company.

I recently shot a virtual tour of a cabin that was named “Me Tarzan You Jane”. Right in the very middle of this cabin was a good size tree! complete with branches and leaves, it did look very real. I always try to shoot cabins with a diffused flash, around f5.6 or so and a slow shutter speed - it helps bring out ambient light in the virtual tour. My biggest problem is white balance, the rooms already have a pretty warm glow, and unless I come in with several flashes and blow out the lights, this warm glow gets pretty intense. I put a #82 blue filter on it in photoshop, that helps a bit but that red is pretty hard to minimize and opening up a bit loses me depth of field.

Balancing the light coming in thru the windows while shooting your virtual tour is pretty easy unless it’s really bright outside, like direct sunlight on the windows, I find I get a happy balance averaging readings from the windows and the inside. I also try and stage a bit - Setting up the pool table to play, sometimes setting out dinner ware in the eating area, and such. I’m an “old Newspaper Photographer”, my clients like that I take lots of photos and on a virtual tour shoot.

Running a virtual tour company through RTV is such a great way to make a living, all I need now is more customers and I’m set for life!

I hope everybody has a very prosperous 2010.

Mike O'Neill
Knoxville Virtual Tours
www.knoxtours.net

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Scottsdale Virtual Tours by PowerVision360

Hello RTV Dealers out there! We are PowerVision360.com - Brad and Suzanne Feinberg - Real Estate Photographers in Scottsdale, Arizona

Just a quick hello to let you know that we are around. Our specialty is to produce Scottsdale virtual tours here for Arizona Real Estate Agents and Brokers. We also love servicing our clients in Mesa, Tempe, Gilbert, Chandler in the East Valley Real Estate Market. We love Phoenix, Arizona as well as the West Valley Real Estate Market and find ourselves in Surprise, Glendale, Peoria. We wouldn't want to forget all of the MLS listing agents in Carefree or Cave Creek either.

If we haven't mentioned your city, invite us to meet you and tell you about ourselves. We pride ourselves in treating every home for sale with the White Glove Treatment. As an architectural photography company, especially one that does real estate photography for homes for sale, PowerVision360.com is very excited to use only professional Canon camera, lens and lighting systems. Our software is the full Adobe CS4 and Nik Software packages. Our Virtual Tour software is provided by RTV and allows us to share the highest rated Virtual Tour software in the industry.

When you combine that power, with the power of the Photobiz engine that runs our website, you can understand how important quality, service and satisfaction are to our company.


Suzanne Feinberg
Scottsdale Virtual Tours
Order a Virtual Tour Today: 602-770-7149

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Great Job Baker B Solutions

BakerB Solutions, LLC. was established in 1997 as a website development firm. Over the years the company has grown and began to taylor it's services for our clients. We offers general business, marketing, technical and web based services to businesses of all sizes. Whether your company is a start-up or a well-established business, BakerB Solutions offers something for every business need.


Alex Saenger
Washington DC Virtual Tours
BakerB Solutions
Interactive Virtual Tours & Marketing Specialists

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Why are you Hiding?

Your relationship with your current and potential virtual tour client is somewhat of a personal one. Most of your business comes from real estate agents. Agents have personal relationships with their clients and vendors. I say this because I look on many virtual tour provider sites and on their about us or contact pages do not display the virtual tour providers name or their photo.

I think some providers are missing out by not displaying this very important information. What are you hiding from?? Real estate agents put their photos on just about every piece of marketing material they utilize from their websites, flyers, business cards, and their virtual tours. This is to develop a face/name recognition and just to show a potential client who they may be meeting or corresponding with.

A virtual tour provider should be no different. I am not saying put your photo on everything, but you should on your site and maybe your flyers and newsletters. Your potential clients want to know who they are dealing with.

At 360 Visions, provider of Delaware Virtual Tours, I am a two man business. I have a part time employee. Both mine and my employee’s name and photo are on the company website. I have a business name, but I am the business, and my clients deal with me personally. They aren’t dealing with a national company, and have to call a toll free number to talk to someone. They call me when they have a question, problem, or need a virtual tour. It’s personal relationship, and photos give clients somewhat a comfort level. When I pass out flyers, I have my photo on it. Agents recognize me after they have seen a flyer or two.

All I am saying is don’t be afraid to put your photo and name on your site and some marketing materials. It is not arrogant or cocky, it’s just a part of effective marketing. You may find people around town, or agents will recognize you and the business you are in. Give it a try. You may be surprised of the results.

Graves Carey
Delaware Virtual Tours
www.360visions.com

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Thailand Virtual Tours

Happy New Year from Koh Samui, Thailand Virtual Tours!

At JFK Enterprises, our main business is operating two pubs in Koh Samui, Thailand. But since I had a computing background (after spending more than 20 years in automatic identification solutions), I thought it would be good to continue providing some form of IT solutions.

We started with providing web hosting packages from Hostgator, one of the leading hosting providers in the industry. A few years ago we were introduced to Joomla, a content management system. After seeing the power of the solution, we decided to embrace it and include that into our offerings and hence, we started providing web site designing using Joomla.

We further branched into customization of another open platform system – vTiger, a CRM (customer relationship management). Of course, I continue to provide consultancy services in automatic identification solutions as that has been my expertise for over 20 years.

Over the past year we have seen and heard a lot about 360 virtual tours. John evaluated many different virtual tour solutions and finally decided that the solution provided by RTV was the best for us. One of the main reasons is because RTV does not just provide a 360 virtual tour that is embedded in the customer’s website. Rather, RTV provides a total package solution that is so different from all the other competitors that we see.

Since I am from the background of providing a solution, we both saw that the RTV solution is a good fit for the expansion of our business. Hence we signed up with RTV in September last year.
The information and guidance provided by Jason and his team has been great. We have enjoyed the webinars (especially those by Ben who is the host of The IMAGE a free photography webinar) as the information provided has been a great help to us.

Although it was difficult for us to wake up at 6am or 7am our time to catch the webinars (the difficulty is because we only get to bed after 3am when our pubs are closed), we always make a point to try and attend. In many cases, unfortunately, we are unable to and would just have to download the recorded version and view it.

Our first approach to launching this new venture was to offer a tourist guide site on Koh Samui. We thought we could offer a different way of viewing this beautiful island. Businesses in Koh Samui have been suffering badly due to the low number of tourists arrivals. Hence, we decided to create a street tour which we can include every business on a street as one scene. This way, we also help to reduce the cost of a tour to the business and yet are able to help promote the business.

We launched our web site, Koh Samui Virtual Tours, and our first 360 street virtual tour, Soi Green Mango on 1st November 2009. Within a month of our launch, we were impressed to see that our site is now in the top 10 of Google Search engine. We know that this is mainly due to the spider link technology provided by RTV.

Koh Samui (Koh in Thai means island) is a tourist island and our main efforts will be to promote the holiday resorts and rental villas on the island. We have made a reasonable start with a few orders, but cannot complete them until the middle of January because the beginning of December is the King of Thailand’s birthday and all the resorts install very large portraits’ of the King at the reception area and keep it there for two weeks and once it is taken down then up goes the Christmas decorations, so, our work will start in earnests from January. We continue to strive and look for new tours to add to our Thailand virtual tour business and we believe with the assistance of RTV we would be able to add a few more tours this month.

About John and myself:

I am a Malaysian Chinese from Penang and John is English, originating from Manchester. I met John while he was working in Malaysia as an electrical engineer and after a number of years we both decided to move to Thailand to the beautiful island of Koh Samui. Type ‘’Koh Samui” in any search engine and see what comes up. Pretty soon we will be #1 for Thailand Virtual Tours too!!

Judy Khoo
JFK Enterprises Co Ltd
Thailand Virtual Tours

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Bay Area Virtual Tours Save the World

Okay, prove it!!!

I learned a long time ago to take life One Day at a Time... Well to use that same philosophy, we plan on saving the world one house, one seller, one buyer, one property at a time...

Well, we may be exaggerating a little bit, but hopefully we got your attention! If we all do our part and focus on small improvements (Kaizen), we can make a difference. So, how do we all market and promote real estate today? Traditional methods include:

• Local Newspaper
• Local Real Estate Guides and Magazines
• Real Estate Flyer's (either mailed or hand delivered)
• Post Cards - Just Listed and Just Sold
• Online MLS Listing with a few agent produced digital pictures
• For Sale Sign in Yard
• Brokers Tour, Open House and of course networking...

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) we are on pace for existing homes sales of over SIX MILLION homes sold during 2009 in the United States, (helped by the First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit). Every one of these homes used some form of property marketing.
If each buyer of these homes looked at 10 homes prior to making a buying decision and the buyers drove 10 miles to look at each house before narrowing their search to the 2 or 3 they were most interested in and then drove around to open houses for another 20 or 30 miles, they probably drove a minimum of 100 miles (conservative) before making a buying decision.

Staying on the conservative side, if we could cut this number in half, that would represent
SAVING over FIFTEEN MILLION GALLONS OF GAS PER YEAR!!!
Over 85% of home buyers last year say they used the Internet to search for homes. Bay Area Property Marketing Studios and virtual tours captures these home buyers and sellers and promotes a marketing program that reduces the need to drive around to every open house, and for real estate agents to reduce the number of newspaper ads, flyers and post cards that are polluting our environment, and SELL their properties FASTER!

And we haven't even gotten into the flyers, post cards, real estate guides, newspapers, etc... Well save that for another article. The point is, we all need to do our part to GO GREEN! And here in the Bay Area, Property Marketing Studios is doing our small part to SAVE THE WORLD!
Property Marketing Studios and virtual tours are the green alternative to home buying and selling. Let's take a look at some options home buyers and sellers in the San Francisco bay area and east bay can do to market, research, sell and buy real estate, both commercial and residential when they use Property Marketing Studios and our Super e-Distribution.

• We take professional, high-resolution still and 360 degree panorama photos of your property
• We produce a state-of-the-art virtual tour and slide show to highlight the properties features
• We include an online map and satellite view of the property
• We include a downloadable flyer, pictures and virtual tour
• We distribute your virtual tour and slide show to over the top real estate web sites, portals and search engines including Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com, Homes, Backpage, Activerain, Google, Yahoo and so many more...
• Many of our tour packages include a YouTube production and a professional Craigslist Ad.
• We distribute your listing/virtual tour to over 500 local real estate agents and professionals.
• We include your property in blogs, Twitters and social networking distribution channels.

Property marketing is going green... are you? Visit our website, Property Marketing Studios and sign up to receive our trademark "Brokers Pajama Tour" email newsletter and see how you can save your buyers gas, your sellers time and money, promote yourself and your properties and at the same time... save the planet!




Tim Denbo
Property Marketing Studios
www.PMStudios360.com
Bay Area Virtual Tours
Visit our blog at: www.EastBayVirtualTours.com
Order a virtual tour: 925-549-0714

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We Love the IMAGE

I was pleased to participate in the Webinar last night, The IMAGE, about lighting and framing. Ben Knorr was extremely helpful with his tips about lighting and looking for artistic framing of our shots. As a new RTV dealer who has not done any Tour Track jobs, knowing settings of the camera that others use for these Hotel/Hospitality tours is very helpful.

I enjoy learning something new from each of the webinars I listen to. I hope that my images quickly reflect that. The Faststone Image viewer seems very helpful as well. What a great piece of software to get for free. I might need an entire webinar on how to use it.

I think that RTV does a great job of keeping the virtual tour dealers educated. New virtual tour technology and techniques are shared freely and that makes RTV a truly unique experience. Thanks for welcoming me into the RTV family.

Mary Jane Salopek
Pittsburgh Virtual Tours
www.picatour.com

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The Agent Video Connector Tip

Hey everyone out there. Don't forget to update the code on your website so your agent video connector works properly for you. Remember all you RTV virtual tour providers, The Agent Video Connector is a FREE service for everyone in our network. Go snag your code now and let's get some Video on our sites! You can see mine right now if you go to my Traverse City Virtual Tours Website.

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