Submit your articles and stories to the RTV Blog and move up in Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines quicker than ever before! Whether we like it or not, it’s all about back links, and getting a back link from the world’s most powerful and relevant virtual tour blog is good for you.
If you’ve been with us for awhile you’ve most likely already sent in a story or two for our virtual tour provider blog located at http://www.VirtualTourProvider.com. You know that we send your story off to our marketing team and publish it using your geographical keywords to link back to you. If you’re new to RTV please take a moment to become familiar with our Virtual Tour Company Blog by clicking the link above. Feel free to click around and make new connections with the people that you see posting.
How can you get tour credits for blogging?
New Comers: For those of you that are brand new to RTV, we give you one virtual tour credit for your very first blog submission. This helps break the ice and gets you started. Simply write your story down and email it to info@realtourvision.com. Your blog should be at least 250 words long, spell-checked, and you should use your geographical keywords (Traverse City virtual tours, Miami Virtual Tours) throughout your article. Keep your blog article relevant to the virtual tour industry by writing about how you got started, something that happened on a recent photo shoot, a new service that you’re announcing. Anything that’s relevant to our business is perfect. We’ll take your story and post it in the order in which you submit, link back to your website, and credit your account one virtual tour credit. If you have any images that you would like included in your blog please attach them to the email along with your submission.
Experienced RTV Providers: Been around here for awhile? With the Fusion virtual tour software system alive and running, there will be so much to talk about moving forward. We’ll be giving you one free virtual tour credit for every two blogs that you submit to us. Send us your press releases, any blogs that you do on your own, your launch stories, and of course we love to hear how our new virtual tour system is knocking the socks off of your customers and winning you more business. Submit your blog to info(at)realtourvision.com and be sure to include your geographical keywords in your submission. Attach any photos that you would like to have included with your blog.
Remember everyone, the RTV Blog is a great place for the public to see your capabilities, special skills, technology, and hear about your success stories. With so many exciting stories and industry related news coming from all corners of the globe the RTV Blog remains a great place for our Dealers to shout out to the world and build very powerful links back to their websites.
Happy Blogging everyone!
RTV, Inc
Virtual Tour Software & Digital Marketing Training
Order a virtual tour today: 866-947-8687
We’ll we did it team! Fusion is here and now it’s time to see what’s under the hood that will put more time into your day and dollars into those coffers. Fusion does everything. In fact, here at the show this year, our virtual tour providers were comparing Fusion to Siri, that nifty robot in iphones. Fusion sets reminders for you, Fusion allows you to task your photographers, Fusion plays full motion video, Fusion manages your YouTube account for you, Fusion makes your flyers, Fusion saves you boatloads of time, Fusion does your craigs ads, your QR Codes, Fusion does lead capture, Fusion does....well...everything! Here's the full list: http://www.realtourvision.com/virtual-tour-marketing-tools.php
Since Fusion does so much more than any other virtual tour system out there, we thought it was only appropriate that we have a show for you that talks about how you might sell these features. During the show we'll try to do a full rundown on the many features of Fusion and how you might go about selling each one or integrating it into your business, but it's my best guess that we'll run out of time and will need to make a two part series out of this. Fusion is simply AMAZING!
Please join me on July 17th at 7:00 PM for our first FORMULA episode of 2012, Selling Fusion.
RTV Dealers sign up now in Either Tour Builder 4.0 TMS or in your new Fusion TMS.
http://tms.realtourvision.com
See you there!
Jason LaVanture
RTV, Inc
Virtual Tour Software & Digital Marketing Training
Order a KILLER Virtual Tour: 866-947-8687
Wednesday we launched our new RealTour Fusion system to about 100 of our virtual tour providers. Our virtual tour portal www.RealTourFusion.com is quickly filling up with new virtual tours as they come off the assembly lines. We can’t begin to tell you how happy we are to get the new virtual tour software system out to you, and we thank you all so much for your patience.
We're quickly making changes and enhancements to the system and working very hard to tie in the last few pieces that will make Fusion complete. Moving forward and throughout the remainder of the year, you can expect that we'll continue to enhance at a rapid pace.
Now that we've got a brand new virtual tour platform written from the ground up, updates will be fast and keeping you at the forefront of virtual tour technology will be very easily accomplished. Look out! Expect a LOT of great new marketing pieces to hit your RPM site and make sure you attend the next IMAGE webinar on June 26th with Ben and myself called Fusion 101.
If you have not yet received your Fusion postcard in the mail, you will shortly. We’re live and bringing FSD’s over to the new system daily. To setup your Fusion account simply call 231-947-0684 and you will most likely have to leave a message as our staff is busy helping to bring over FSD accounts. Leave a message and we’ll be getting back to you as quickly as possible. Enjoy the new system and we’ll see you on our show tomorrow night!
Yours Sincerely,
Team RTV
http://www.RealTourVision.com
Order a virtual tour: 866-947-8687
Spring has sprung and summer is here. With all the great weather it has been a busy time in the real estate market. Home sales are up and so are prices, even with the promising news, 360 Image Media a premier Wisconsin Virtual Tour Company, continues to develop and implement virtual tour products to help its customers sell homes faster and for top dollar.
First I want to introduce our all-new venture with our virtual tour software partner, RTV. 360 FUSION, our all-new virtual tour experience. 360 FUSION, offers so many virtual tour features and tools, it will make your head spin. Full 360 x180 panorama capability, full motion video, lead generation, enhanced tracking reports, online syndication, and interactive gyro enabled mobile 360 tours. These are just a few of the features that will make the 360 FUSION tours the best in the Wisconsin Virtual Tour marketplace. Stay tuned to our blogs and website http://www.360imagemedia.com for a 360 FUSION sample coming soon.
Next we are ecstatic to announce our latest venture with Wisconsin Home Collection. Wisconsin Home Collection is an all-new all-Digital real estate publication for Wisconsin Homes for Sale. This amazing publication allows a niche-marketed avenue for realtors and home sellers to reach even more buyers, at a fraction of the cost for a print advertisement.
You can head over to Wisconsin Real Estate and view the current June sample issue. So with sales and prices picking up, 360 Image Media, Wisconsin Home Collection, and Real Tour Vision are dedicated to helping our customers look amazing online.
Contact us today for your Professional Photography, Virtual Tours, and Online Advertising needs.
Robin Duran
Owner
360 Image Media
http://www.360imagemedia.com
Order a virtual tour: 262-613-1099
sales@360imagemedia.com
Wisconsin Home Collection
http://www.wihomecollection.com
advertising@wihomecollection.com
360 Virtual Tours HDR or No HDR? Mirage Virtual Tours, a Palm Springs virtual tour company is an RTV virtual tour provider specializing in 360 virtual tours for Southern California, Palm Springs and beyond. We are pleased to be officially taking pre bookings for July 2012. Call Toll Free: 1-877-678-4795 Contact us to discuss your 360 virtual tour needs.
In todays competitive business and real estate markets one thing is certain that does shooting in HDR make a difference, or is it too artsy and cartoony? Normally one would think HDR would be instant on request but most come far short when asked about HDR or why they need it and if they need it at all. Recently this was a very topic, that HDR was not necessary to create great shots, in fact the suggestions where that normal photos could sell the item whether it be business related or real estate better with normal shots and balanced and correct camera settings. Well, we disagree and here are the professional reasons why.
First HDR images that are shot with a professional camera and processed by a professionally trained virtual tour photographer will have instant characteristics that are instantly noticeable over shots taken with regular digital or film cameras. Here are just a few, first the overall look is far better. Usually there will be a lot more detail to colors and focus, next you should see more saturation and tonal gradients. Lastly light, light, light. Whys is light so important or not? With HDR it does not have to rely on light per say like that used in flash etc instead it relies on interior lights at any given location. Once all the elements are combined, the shots are taken and processed, you lastly should always see a perfect balance of light from the outside and the interior of the location, again something you will not get with a conventional camera, if so it's "a loooooot" of work!
Here at Mirage Virtual Tours we use the latest and best virtual tour technology when it comes to shooting anything virtual tour related. Our HDR Cameras and lenses are the best. Our virtual tour software for processing your professional HDR images and creating either an HDR Gallery, HDR V-Slide tour or HDR 360 virtual tour stand out amongst the best in the 360 virtual tour industry.
A curious thing was the newness even to our organization regarding the HDR technology. In fact I can recall friends of mine that are very success driven realtors that have been shooting their own shots now for years..until now. Once they saw the HDR images we create, they started rethinking who their customers were, what they where doing and why they where doing it!
Now they are sold on HDR and we know you will too once you see the difference. We invite you to explore the samples of HDR images on our site here: http://www.miragevirtualtours.com/hdr-gallery and see for yourself the true and amazing quality and detail that HDR delivers to the final projects. You can see our HDR photo packages here: http://www.miragevirtualtours.com/hdr-photography or simply check out our latest HDR 360 Virtual Tours here. http://www.miragevirtualtours.com/rtvDS/listing/search
Also please take a look at our newest and most advanced tour recently shot with the latest HDR cameras and edited and posted with pro HDR. In considering HDR or Not to HDR a project we believe that HDR is truly the only way to go but ultimately it has to be your decision, we hope to hear from you very soon and to be part of your next great HDR project whether it's a gallery shoot, v-slide or full 360 virtual tour you know that we will look after you in full HDR style.
360 Virtual Tours, V-Slides, HDR Photography for Southern California, Palm Springs and beyond.
Greg Osborne
Owner
Website: www.miragevirtualtours.com
facebook.com/miragevirtualtours.com
Order a virtual tour: 1-877-678-4795
I heard on the news this morning that housing sales were on the rise and it got me thinking of something that I had noticed here at the office recently. Over the last several days I’ve had the pleasure of dispatching out quite a few virtual tour leads that our dispatch center has not been able to handle being busy with photography deals, editing orders and of course coordinating shoots. I’m not ordinarily that close to the dispatching of virtual tour leads as they come through the site so I took a look. Yes indeed dispatches were quite a bit up over where they were this month last year! I just love sending out virtual tour leads to our tour providers. A virtual tour provider in our network, Stan Davis of Silicon Valley Virtual Tours wrote the following:
Thank you Jason,
You are like Santa Claus but delivering presents year around! With these three leads today Real Tour Vision is responsible for about $2000 of my revenue this month! Between April and May Real Tour Vision was responsible for about $1500 from the Event Rental guy you sent me.
Last year you sent me the apartment guy that I work with. Not only did he do 20 tours with me but he has been a Text Connect customer for almost a year with $120 /month revenue every month.
Life is Good with RTV!
Best Regards,
Stan Davis
Thank you so much Stan!! Of course we just love hearing these things from our virtual tour providers and as the market and economy wakes up I’m sure that leads going out to our virtual tour providers will continue to rise and we’ll be getting a lot more emails like this.
Remember that RTV does not set a national price for our virtual tour providers. We let those who purchase our virtual tour system create their own personal brand, set their own pricing structure and compete on a local level. We feel strongly that this will ultimately be the better business model over time when compared to companies that “Own” their photographers.
When you do receive a lead from RTV remember that you should contact the lead as quickly as possible. We’ve found that if you’re able to contact the customer within ten minute to a half hour you’re 90% certain to bring them to close. Remember that these are people looking for the service online and what they’re really looking for here is a price for your professional photography and virtual tours. They’re not going to stop looking until they get a price. We do our very best on our end to explain how things work and why they should use our technology but after the hand off the closing of the lead is up to you.
RTV’s all time record is 160 leads dispatched out to our virtual tour providers in a given month. We’re very excited to see things getting back on track and it turn into success stories for so many of you out there. Our new long awaited for RealTour Fusion system will be launching any day now. Are you ready?? See what Fusion can do: http://fusion.beta.realtourvision.com/tour/76703
RTV, Inc
Virtual Tour Software & Digital Marketing Training
http://www.RealTourVision.com
Order a virtual tour today: 866-947-8687
Capture the spirit of your museum by using your museum photography in our interactive virtual tours! When today's consumers are looking for a place to visit, they head online. Is your museum's website designed to attract and engage new members? Research has shown that professional photos and virtual tours are the most vital factor in drawing people to your museum.
Rent more properties—faster—with professional photography and RTV's powerful interactive virtual tours.
Are people clicking on your property listings, but not taking the next step to contact you for a rental agreement? At RTV, we give you the capability to turn professional rental photography into stunning HD virtual tours that turn visitors into paying clients.
Partner with the leaders in professional photography and virtual tours
As proven experts in national photography services and online virtual tours, we have more than a decade of experience designing rich, vibrant interactive virtual tours that captivate online audiences and compel them to take action. Research has proven that having professional rental photography and imagery is the single most important factor for consumers who are searching for properties online—the higher the quality of your photographic media, the more business you'll generate.
We’ve got the tools you need to bring your properties to life.
Our state-of-the-art video / virtual tour packages make it easy to create amazing tours for all types of rental properties, from storage units to apartments, condominiums, and real estate rentals. Leveraging high-resolution photography of your rental facility’s best features, you can easily build interactive, high-definition virtual tours that engage potential renters and get them excited about your properties.
We make professional rental photography and virtual tours affordable and accessible.
With hundreds of virtual tour providers throughout the United States and in 27 countries around the world, we offer comprehensive rental photography and virtual tour packages for every business need and budget.
Rich, vibrant imagery will showcase your rental properties in a captivating new light, helping to turn visitors into renters.
Contact us today to learn more about how fast and easy it is to order professional rental photography and create exceptional virtual tours of your rental properties. Start signing more rental agreements, faster!
I had a boss once whose least favorite word was “potential”. As a salesperson working for him, I never understood his violent aversion to the word but if you wanted to see him bristle, all you needed to do was tell him about all your potential business.
Our Charleston virtual tour business is currently in negotiations for so much potential virtual tour business that it makes my head spin. We have bids in negotiation for several huge 360 tour contracts that are right in our sweet spot and we’ve been told “Yes” by several businesses that are even now working out the logistics. Webster defines potential as “existing in possibility; capable of development into actuality.” Because I am an optimistic person, I look at opportunities that exist in possibility and calculate all the potential income. The problem with this is that you can’t spend potential!
It’s frustrating and also presents a bit of a conundrum. Our virtual tour business, like any small business, relies on a consistent and steady stream of new opportunities to stay afloat. The conundrum is how to schedule current business in light of future potential. For example, we had a hospital chain reschedule 12 healthcare virtual tours because they found out that they are having HUD inspectors come in for two weeks. The challenge is that one of the other potential national virtual tour jobs that we are waiting on (the biggest of them all) told us that they would be ready to start about that same time frame as the hospital virtual tours wanted to reschedule.
Of course, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush but juggling potential business is much harder than juggling actual virtual tour business. We frequently get ourselves overbooked with our virtual tour business and end up working frantically to fit everything in. But it’s harder making decisions regarding potential business -- that business that is capable of developing into actuality also presents the possibility that none of it will actually develop.
While it is exciting to look at the horizon and see all the potential, it is vitally important to not stop business development efforts when things look promising. We have learned that until the virtual tour is photographed AND the check is actually cashed -- all business is potential business!
Sign up for the next episode of The IMAGE in your TMS today! That's right, we're having two episodes of The IMAGE this month and this will be our first IMAGE webinar of 2012, “Spherical Stitching”.
Please join Ben Knorr on June 12 at 7:00 PM Eastern as he walks you through RTV's new photo stitching software.
With the coming launch of the New RealTour Fusion system we are now able to create full spherical virtual tours. Spherical virtual tours allow you to look straight up, straight down and all around so that you can see everything.
In order to create a spherical panorama you need the right hardware, lens, and of course software to stitch these types of panoramas.
Get a firsthand look at how to use our new advanced and professional photo stitching software, its powerful tools such as the masking feature, batch stitching feature, and so much more.
Our new stitcher is both MAC and PC compatible making it a great solution for everyone.
Make sure that you attend this webinar next week everyone. Sign up now in your TMS
See you there!
Ben Knorr
Order a virtual tour: 866-947-8687
Recently I sat down with a friend of mine who happens to be a very successful business owner. The conversation quickly got right into 360 virtual tours. I was thrilled when he started asking me how I have been but more thrilled when we started talking about my new 360 virtual tour business ventures. He said to me that he wished that we had more 360 virtual tours covering his area as this was something a bit new to him and he was delighted to see them..Really I asked? Well, you see, I actually myself have been looking for a new place (to live) and a new warehouse/office to lease. Wow I said again...As we talked more he told me how frustrating it has been for him as a busy and successful businessman to have to stop, take time out of his days to read through listings and then go see the listings only to be hugely disappointed.
So this really got me to thinking we as authorized virtual tour dealers are really are doing an amazing and great service here for our clients and yes you really do need a 360 virtual tour. If you are a business owner or realtor, this should be proof enough, that the customers are there and are in serious need of the virtual tours, it was for me. He absolutely was so excited for me and my 360 virtual tours which was great but I was just so disappointed that he had no access to a virtual tour for his personal or business needs at this time.
I assured him to hang in there and told him to keep checking my site out at www.miragevirtualtours.com and maybe very soon we would get lucky and be able to help him out some time soon. Let me tell you that the main purpose of this blog tonight is not to talk about my conversation with my friends but rather to let you as a valued business owner and/or realtor know that your potential customers are out there and they want to see the 360 virtual tours! They need to see the virtual tours so they can make smart decisions and act on what it is they need now whether it be a new house, condo, apartment, office or warehouse space.
It just makes smart business sense in today’s market with ever changing super fast internet speeds, coupled with the ability for us to deliver to you the most sophisticated, yet easy to navigate virtual tours and superior seo not to mention the ability to place the virtual tour links into any social network space, website or emails etc It just makes sense.
Question of the week...”Me as a Businesses and 360 virtual tours, do I really need one”? The honest answer is, I think you do.
Mirage Virtual Tours is located and services Southern California including Los Angeles and Palm Springs areas and Coachella Valley. We are an authorized (RTV INC) dealer for Southern California.
* Need a 360 Virtual Tour? Got questions or not sure what you need? Contact us for a free no hassle consultation. We are now taking pre bookings for July 2012
Greg Osborne is owner and operator of
Mirage Virtual Tours
Toll Free: 1-877-678-4795
website: www.miragevirtualtours.com
like us on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/miragevirtualtours
My answer is YES. When it comes to marketing Real Estate pictures DO matter... But I sell Wisconsin Real Estate Photographic Services and Virtual Tours so you might suspect I might be just a little biased.
Is my opinion based on self interest or on facts?
Let's look at some facts and see what your opinion will be based on those facts.
In the upper left corner of this post is a graph known as a histogram... this one has red bars. The resolution isn't very good so you can's see the numbers but what is shown is pretty dramatic. This graph is from REALTOR.com and it shows the number of 'hits' a listing received over a nine week period begining in the middle of April 2008.
This isn't some listing from some far away place in some market different from Southeastern Wisconsin. This is a listing right here in the Milwaukee area entered into the Greater Milwaukee Area MLS.
The property was listed in the middle of April but the sellers really weren't quite ready yet. Even though the listing needed some cleaning and painting and staging, the sellers and the REALTOR... especially the REALTOR... rightly thought the best thing to do was to get the property to the spring market as soon as possible. The sellers thought that the work would be finished in a week. A couple of exterior pictures were taken, the property went into MLS and then uploaded to REALTOR.com.
Well, the interior cleaning, painting and staging streched from a week to three weeks. In the first three weeks with just a couple of pictures in MLS and on REALTOR.com the listing generated around 50 hits per week as the graph above shows. Not bad if you don't know any better.
After the cleaning, painting and staging were completed I photographed the property, then uploaded the maximum number of images to MLS and REALTOR.com along with a large Virtual Tour. The number of 'hits' jumped dramatically.
In the first week with the maximum number of photographs and a Virtual Tour, there were over 200 hits-- four times as many 'hits' as with just a couple of photographs. In the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth week the number of 'hits' on the property by consumers was never less than 300 per week. The more pictures... the more consumer interest. The more consumer views the greater chance you'll connect with the consumer who wants to buy the property.
Do pictures make a difference? From the example... the facts above... the answer is yes.
Here's another set of facts...
Below is another graph; this one summarizes the results of a study Point2 Technologies did in 2008 analyzing the effect of photographs and Virtual Tours on Real Estate Consumer behavior.
It's plain to see that Listing Views, Consumer Interest and Prospects Generated increase with the number of Photographs.
Do pictures make a difference? From this set of facts the answer is yes... again.
Just to be clear on what these facts DO say and what these facts DON'T say... Your listing will get MORE activity; more meaningful activity as the number of pictures increases. That fact is clear. What these facts don't say is that a poorly maintained, over priced listing will sell.
The sale of a listing is a partnership between the Seller and the Real Estate Agent. The Seller provides the pricing... with guidance from the Real Estate Agent...and the Seller provides the condition of the property. The Real Estate Agent provides the Marketing.
Have you ever had a beautiful listing priced to market and had little activity and an expiration in 90, 120 or even 180 days? The facts should tell you that you failed to get as much market exposure as you could have with MORE pictures.
Properties for sale-- well over 100,000 active listings-- entered by Real Estate Professionals into the Point2 Agent website network over the first quarter of 2008 were included in the Study. The Study covered economic regions across every U.S. state, every Canadian province and several other countries around the world.
The sample of listings was analyzed based on the number of photos that each listing included. The number of photos was then plotted against three key variables:
Views - how many times a listing was viewed online;
Interest - how many unique visitors interacted with a listing, such as going beyond the initial set of photos to view the listing’s virtual tour... and,
Leads - the number of unique visitors who went on to contact the listing broker or agent.
So here's the question again. Do pictures make a difference? From this second example... the second set of facts above... the answer is yes again.
But let's be clear on what the facts DO say and what they DON'T say.
Will more photographs cause your poorly maintained overpriced listing to sell? The answer is no. But if you have a beautifully staged listing priced to market you WILL get more attention and your chances of selling that listing increase dramatically because of the increased exposure.
Mark Jay
Order a virtual Tour (414) 771-7713
