Social Media Advisors

We are Social Media Advisors, a Social Media Speaker, & Custom WordPress Site design.

Creating Better Video Content

Social Media Speaker, Video

Wow! What a crazy month it has been here for me.  Over the past few weeks I traveled several thousand miles to share as a social media speaker at many events around the country.   One of the more popular presentations I have done recently has been on video in real estate.  In that video I share several video demonstrations on various tools & tips.  Things like the importance of using an external microphone, using tripods, etc.

Shooting video insideI think these video tips are fairly important and could be useful to others, so I will be sharing these short video examples and tips over the next few weeks here on the blog.  Today I am sharing tip 1 for creating better real estate video.

Getting The Right Indoor Video Shot

The biggest issue I have seen in most indoor real estate videos has to do with the camera position.  Too many times I see the shot focusing on the windows of a room and shooting directly at them.  While it is important to point out the lightness & brightness inside a room caused by a window when trying to sell a home, if you try to convey this the same way in your video that you do when physically in the home with a buyer you end up with all kinds of problems.

Because there is so much brightness, many ignore turning on the lights in the room to try to keep the shot from being over exposed which causes problem one.  Then you have the unbalanced amount of light as you pan the room.  Most cameras can not adjust fast enough as you pan so you end up with part of your shot looking fine, part completely washed out and then another segment that is so dark you may think you are in a real estate cave.  Not to mention the fact that it looks like the room changes color from tans to yellows to grays to whites.

You can spend hours in the editing booth trying to adjust color and exposure in your shot causing you to want to pull your hair completely out.  While this option is available, there are others that are much easier.  The angle you choose to shoot your video at can fix all these issues almost instantly.

Instead of shooting your video directly into the windows with no interior lights on, move the camera to the other side of the room near your windows.  Turn on the interior lights and begin your video shot there.  By doing so you will see a more consistent amount of light across your shot without the white balance & exposure changing as many times as a chameleon.

Here’s a quick demo video from my recent presentation on Real Estate Video Basics:

 

So when you shoot your next indoor real estate video, take time to think through the shot to get even steady lighting throughout.

Adding External Links To Your Custom WordPress Site Navigation

Custom WordPress Sites, WordPress Tutorials

Continuing my series on WordPress tutorials to help those with a Custom WordPress Site, today I am sharing a really simple tutorial on how to add external links into your navigation.  For example, on my navigation at the top of my site you see there is a media button.  But if you click on that link, it actually takes you off my main domain and transfers you over to a subdomain of my site which is http://media.210consulting.com.

I wanted to inculde this as a part of my main site as it includes a lot of great content that can be beneficial to those visiting my main domain.  Sometimes when I am building custom WordPress sites for my clients this same type of thing can come into play.  There are times where they may use multiple sites and don’t want to have to recreate it on the new domain.  Instead they want to simply add a link.  This tutorial below teaches you how to do this.

If you have any questions, or need help with your custom WordPress site, feel free to contact me.

Google+ Hangouts Come to Mobile Devices [VIDEO]

Social Media Advisors

Today Google+ released many new features for it’s users in addition to opening up to a Beta state that is now available for all users with no invitation required.  Of these new features, the one that I think is the biggest and also my favorite is the ability to now do a hangout from your mobile device.

So far the update is only for Android phones, and so I immediately downloaded and installed on my device.  I then gave it a quick demo test with a few of my friends.  Unfortunately, it seems as if there is a glitch in either the app or within my device as whenever I use the front facing camera I am sideways in the Google+ mobile hangout.  If I switch to my rear facing camera the video seems to be fine.

I see this another major step by Google at taking market share from the iPhone devices.  Facetime has been a huge success for their devices but is only available on Apple devices.  Google+ on the other hand will be available across all platforms it appears in the near future.  The one issue they may face is that there are so many different devices running so many different versions of their operating system.  Unlike Apple that allows everyone to update to the newest version, The Android system only is updated when the phone manufacturer allows an update to be done.

Here’s quick demo video.

I see this new feature coming in very handy over the next few month as I have several events at which I am presenting as a social media speaker.  This way I will be able to have plenty of face to face interaction with not only my family, but also with my clients.  The one issue I have had so far with Google+ hangouts is that it required a connection via a computer on wi-fi.  With the addition of Google+ mobile hangouts, this issue has been resolved!

What do you think of Google+ hangouts new mobile version?