- 14.8 billion (with a "b") videos viewed in January 2009.
- 147 million Internet users watched video in the same time period.
- The average was 101 videos per viewer.
If you didn't think you needed video before, do these numbers change your mind? They should. And, I'm not talking just about listing virtual tour videos. Those are fine, but just the tip of the iceberg. You need a lot of variety in area videos, such as:
- Neighborhood & subdivision drive-through videos.
- Parks and outdoor recreation.
- Shopping centers.
- Museums and cultural sites.
- Schools and government centers.
- Churches.
All of these are of interest to our highly mobile society. Assuming that your buyers are familiar with the area is a problem. The Internet is world-wide, and your videos can help someone far away to get a better idea of what it's like to live in your area. My personal real estate blog site has now logged more than 18,000 video views of about 90 videos at this point. And I'm still making them.
Another thing to keep in mind is not to listen to those who tell you not to place videos on YouTube for quality reasons. The vast majority of my views are on YouTube, and they generate traffic to my site. Of the numbers I listed at the top, 6.4 billion of those video views were on YouTube and Google Videos.
Did you know that Google also searches video descriptive text and YouTube/Google videos show up in search results, even those for real estate that don't mention video in the search term. It's not too late to get into gear, but you're getting behind every day.
