Traverse City Real Estate Photography Company Raises the Bar!

September 19, 2019

Team BlueLaVaMedia, a Traverse City Real Estate Photography & Virtual Tour Company has just announced their BOOST Marketing presentation for local real estate agents and brokers. The full presentation is approximately ten minutes long, and while it’s best-presented in office by founders Jason LaVanture and Jim Blue, the video below clearly demonstrates the powerful impact professional photos have on real estate sales and a real estate agents ability to win more listings.

“When local real estate agents choose BlueLaVaMedia for their professional real estate photography they get professional photos with a marketing punch,” said Jim Blue lead photographer for Team BlueLaVaMedia.

BlueLaVaMedia has been photographing real estate listings and local businesses in the Northern Michigan region now since 2007. They attribute their steady growth year after year (140 homes photographed in year one, to nearly 1300 homes photographed in 2019) to the fact that they offer unique BOOST marketing services at no extra cost with every professional real estate photography shoot.

A local real estate agent can order a professional real estate photography package starting at $129 and it automatically includes many savvy marketing tools that help real estate professionals communicate with sellers, drive traffic from print to digital, attract attention from social media groups, and show their listings off to other area real estate agents.

“We’ve put together several unique boost marketing services that we include with our photography and aerial drone packages. Other photography and drone services in the Northern Michigan region simply don’t offer these unique marketing tools so when it comes time to decide whom to use, nine times out of ten, savvy real estate professionals choose BlueLaVaMedia”, commented Jason LaVanture founder of BlueLaVaMedia.

 

Aside from having some of the regions best real estate photos, some of BlueLaVaMedia’s most sought after BOOST Marketing services include:

A branded and non-branded virtual tour – https://tours.bluelavamedia.com/391092
An attractive Weekly Seller’s Report – https://fusion.realtourvision.com/report/trafficreport-email.php?tourid=391092
Listing lead capture tools – BlueLaVaMedia will send you leads
Social media videos with agent branding – https://youtu.be/W1YEUuXYZ0E
22 printable flyer layouts to choose from
BlueLaVaMedia Hot Sheet – An email blast of new listings to other area realtors
Social Media Blast – Pushing listings to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and more
Short tour URL & QR code for print
BlueLaVaMedia HomeSite URL – single property website layout

Those interested in taking advantage of BlueLaVaMedia’s BOOST marketing services that accompany their professional real estate photography and aerial drone services are encouraged to reach out to Jim Blue or Jason LaVanture today to schedule a photo shoot or an in-office presentation. If you do have them come to your office for a presentations we recommend that you ask them to bring something good to eat for lunch!

Visit BlueLaVaMedia’s website for up-to-date traverse city real estate photography pricing.

BlueLaVaMedia, LLC
Phone – 231-946-1360
https://www.BlueLaVaMedia.com

Virtual Tour Software Updates – July 2019 Update

July 20, 2019

Hello and good afternoon RTV fans! It looks like 2019 is shaping up to be one of the busiest years on record. I know that many of you are also saying the same thing out there with your photography and virtual tour businesses. That’s fantastic! Keep up the great work and we appreciate your support and dedication. BlueLaVaMedia is going to the moon and back on new business and we attribute much of that to our new BOOST Marketing office pitch that you might have heard about by now. In the days to come, I will be sending out a message to you all with a step by step guide that will help you stand out in your market and grow your business faster by harnessing WOM marketing. More on that later though. Stay tuned!

The programming team here has a lot of great things cooking for you, and we even have some great surprises that are yet to come this summer. Let’s take a look at the latest changes that you will find the next time you log into your RTV Virtual Tour Software system.

Those of you that would like to watch our latest technology update feel free to watch the video below.

Branded Tours on Portal Sites: There’s nothing more important than having your brand on your virtual tours. From your name in the URL to your logo on the end productions. It’s all a vital part of you spreading the word about your unique services and amazing photography business. That’s why we decided it was time that the national portal sites (Realtor.com, Homes.com, Movoto.com, Redfin, Zillow.com, and others) pulled up the branded virtual tours and not the non-branded. Even though the national real estate portals pull directly from the MLS, your branded virtual tours will appear on those sites. Be sure to let your customers know about this noteworthy change in virtual tour behavior. Branding is EVERYTHING!

AstroZoom Property Lines: So Property lines have been a HUGE seller over at BlueLaVaMedia. About a third of our aerial drone orders coming in are ordering Enhanced Property Lines. It might be our best add-on for 2019 next to our Exposure Engine. Because of the interest level, we decided to bring you the same type of service for your AstroZooms at RTV! You can now add property lines to your AstroZoom videos for only $5.00!

TinyTurls Now Secure: We have trained most of our customers to encourage the directing of traffic from print to digital so it was essential for us to secure the TinyTurl short printable link via HTTPS. If you notice that your customers are utilizing your photography for print marketing, you should take that opportunity and educate them on our TinyTurls link that is nice and short for print marketing and redirects to your online virtual tour. From print to digital is where it’s at!

Social Media Video Files: More local real estate professionals and business owners than ever are asking for short videos that they can use on Instagram and Facebook. The RTV Video Ripper is great for making videos out of your production but it’s not able to support short clips from your video files or custom transitions just yet. In light of this, we thought it would be a good idea to offer a new product to you in the form of a custom Social Media Video file. Our social media video file is 1 minute because that’s the limitation of Instagram and studies also show that 45% of people stop watching a video after the one minute point. Whether you want to use Fusion to make your short Social Media videos or have us do it, this is something that you need to start offering! The custom social media video files can now be ordered directly from RTV for $12 each from your video promotion section. See how we make your social media video file here – https://youtu.be/2LAt24sQ_0k

Ask Alex Webinar: We have launched a new weekly training show called “Ask Alex”. This is a show for anyone and everyone that would like to learn a little more about our Fusion virtual tour hosting platform. If you would like to register for this webinar-based show, log into your virtual tour manager and click on the little blue ? (question mark) in the lower right corner. From there you can register. The show runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings at 11:00 AM Eastern. We hope to see you there so you can ask Alex!

Keep your eyes peeled for many more system updates to come team. We’re currently in the middle of a full re-write to our system. After we finish, we’ll be announcing a brand new Single Property Website Layout as well as a new RTV Client Center 2.0.

The upgraded Client Center will take our existing private-labeled login and kick it to the next level. For starters, you will enjoy full integration with Stripe. This means you’ll be able to have your customers pay before they download your photos. The Client Center will also support a much-needed photographer scheduling system which will allow your customers to book online without having to speak with you. We’ll take mileage fees and travel time into consideration as well. We will even allow for photo only scheduling since so many of you do hundreds of photo only jobs each month.

In addition to these two bigger ticket items above, please note that we will continue to make the overall virtual tour building process much more streamlined for you by implementing smart settings and system-wide/profile defaults which equates to fewer clicks for you and faster tour creation time. Thanks for checking in for our technology update and get ready for more coming soon!

Check out these updates now in your RTV Virtual Tour Software Manager – https://manage.RealTourVision.com

Thanks for your support!

Team RTV

Virtual Tour Software & National Photography Services

Order a Virtual Tour – 866-947-8687

www.RealTourVision.com

 

 

Real Estate Photography Marketing – New From RPM

May 30, 2019

As we go into this summer its all about getting the local realtors talking about you and your unique offerings and services. What do you do in your market to stand out from the other real estate photographers and virtual tour providers? What additional services are you offering that come standard with your photography packages? Are you standing out or blending in? Getting the local real estate professionals to work you into their listing presentations and recognize you as a source for unique marketing services not offered by anyone else is what you should be focused on.

When you’re on their mind and you can get them pitching your unique services to their prospects you’re likely going to be photographing every home they list. Below are a list of real estate photography and virtual tour provider marketing pieces that will get them talking about you, help you “Stand Out” in your market, and will separate you from everyone else that’s out there trying to take a piece of your business.

BOOST Marketing Services Office PowerPoint & Signature Pack – That’s right, we have finally updated our office power point and have retired the original RTV virtual tour photographer office pitch. This office presentation is centered around professional real estate photography first and foremost then goes into the BOOST Marketing Services that set you apart from every other real estate photographer out there. If you’ve been looking for a ten-minute hard-hitting pitch this is it!

Download, customize, and deliver. Each time we have delivered this pitch up here in the Traverse City market we have picked up between two and four new customers. It works!

Also included with our BOOST Marketing PowerPoint is a signature for you to use with your Fusion virtual tour and photography deliveries. The signature shows new and existing customers what they need to do with the virtual tour links and helps them get the MOST out of your unique services, virtual tours, and professional photos. Enjoy!

 

Professional Photos+ Flyer – BlueLaVaMedia decided to Stand Out this year by offering full green grass and sky replacements with every photo shoot. A bold move but it’s got all the local realtors in town talking about them and nearly a dozen new agents have come through the doors already this year as a result. Use this marketing piece at your next luncheon, office pitch or presentation to let them know that your images are the BEST in town. – Login to RPM today https://www.RockPointeMarketing.com to download.

profession photos flyer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home Preparation Flyer – Hand off a stack of these double-sided flyers to your best customers this year and encourage them to work your professional photography into their listing presentation. This home preparation flyer ensures that when you get there the home will be photo ready! Also use this nice flyer to let prospects and current customers know that you’re not there to clean, tidy up or stage the homes. This is a must-have in your marketing arsenal!

Real Estate Photography Preparation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2019 Drone Marketing Flyer – We have updated our drone flyer to include the 107 certifications VS the 333 waiver that was indicated on the previous version. If you purchased this you can log in and download the updated version free of charge. This aerial drone flyer also mentions additional services that are available for purchase. If you’re shooting drone make sure you get the word out with this slick double-sided flyer.

2019 Google Street View Business Tour Flyer – Here’s a nice double-sided leave behind for those of you doing Google Business Tours. This marketing piece gives you a great starting point for creating your own Google Street View packages and pricing.

 

Enjoy the new pieces and feel free to contact us with any questions that you may have!

Login to RPM today https://www.RockPointeMarketing.com to download.

Sincerely,

Team RTV

Virtual Tour Software & National Photography Services

866-947-8687

Virtual Tour Software Updates – 1080 Adaptive Streaming, 360 Video Support, & More!

April 24, 2019

Spring is officially here and with it comes blue skies, green grass and for our customers & followers, it also comes with a LOT of virtual tour software updates.  We’ve been trying to find the time to get a change log, blog and software update video out but with so much going on it kept getting put on the back burner.  Here we are now with a larger than usual software update email for you all.  Let’s get started!

Those of you that would prefer to watch a video overview of this update feel free to watch the video below.

All others read on!

Adaptive 1080 Video Streaming: We’re beyond excited to officially announce the release of our 1080 Adaptive Video Streaming to our virtual tour software that just went live here in April. Customers that utilize our virtual tour hosting system for aerial drone photography and home walkthrough videos will LOVE this update the most! RTV’s adaptive streaming technology is like no other being used in our industry at this time. Not only is the video crisp and clear across all devices and tablets but it’s also very fast loading and streamed to you in 1080 quality.  This is a huge improvement over our older 720 technology that did not load as fast, play as smoothly, and autoplay on devices.

Users will notice right away that the videos will autoplay on devices without the need to press a “Play” button.  We have also introduced an innovative “Play Head” that allows users to interact, skip ahead, or go back to key locations in the video.  Locations within the video are identified by using preview thumbnails very similar to that of “Netflix” and other advanced streaming services. Those of you with a keen eye will also notice that we have added in a nice transition as you go to and from video scenes. I the previous version, our virtual tour player added in a black empty space that did not flow with the rest of the production.  The newly introduced transition will also be customizable soon with the release of our new Theming Update that is coming out next!

Finally, our customers can rest assured that anyone on a fast 3G and higher connection will be able to watch the video in 1080.  Those on slower connections will be served up a smaller 720 or 480 video size.  Our new Adaptive streaming technology allows us to serve up a video experience for everyone in every corner of the web! We look forward to hearing your feedback and seeing your beautiful productions come through here this summer in 1080!  Please note that video files uploaded to Fusion prior to this update will need to be removed and re-uploaded / re-encoded to take advantage of this streaming update.  If you see the small white “Gear” on your virtual tour to select a quality you can rest assured that your video is new enough to take advantage of our streaming technology.

See our adaptive streaming technology in action by viewing these virtual tours – https://tours.bluelavamedia.com/164406  and https://tours.robertharveyphoto.com/809285

New 360 Video Support: With the release of adaptive video streaming we thought we would surprise you all by adding in support for 360 videos.  360 video is an up and coming technology that is currently not being used as much as traditional video but has the potential to gain popularity as time goes on. We are anxiously waiting to see what our customers will do with this unique technology.  If you add 360 Video into your productions please be sure to send your creative work to us so we can take a look at how you’re utilizing 360 video in our virtual tour software.

New Email Traffic Reports: While we were not planning on overhauling the E-mail version of the Seller’s Report this last month we were forced to because of changes that Google made to their API.  We completely revamped how our weekly virtual tour traffic reports look as well as how they are sent out.  The new reports will send 25 times faster on an upgraded database and will show up in agents inboxes on time and with an entirely new look and feel.  We’re very happy with the new colors, stats, and layout.  Tell us what you think – https://fusion.realtourvision.com/report/trafficreport-email.php?tourid=881108

Faster Video & Image Processing: Those of you that upload videos or panoramas to our server have already been commenting on how fast the videos and panoramas are processing these days.  That’s because we’ve greatly improved the back end threading that handles these processes as well as migrated all of the “heavy lifting” to another server.  With this intense processing removed from the management server, you don’t feel the weight of hundreds of others creating virtual tours at the same time, and you’ll feel an overall boost in the virtual tour manager speed.

Lightning-Fast Media Deletion: Image processing is not the only thing that we’ve made super fast on the tour manager.  Now when you’re in your media manager and you want to remove a panorama, a still photo or a video you’ll notice that you can delete those unwanted scenes instantly.  We’re very happy to announce to you that there is no more waiting ten to twenty seconds to remove a batch of images or a video file.

Improved Spherical Panorama Playback: In preparation for taking the RTV system to a full-on “Walkthrough Virtual Tour” type system we were aware of some playback issues when loading a spherical panorama.  Those issues have been resolved and now the playback in both the Fusion Experience and Fusion Slim virtual tour players are seamless and without a black space or uncomfortable delay which was present in the previous build. Those of you that would like to see a Walkthrough Virtual Tour on RTV’s platform check out this winery virtual tour that we recently photographed – https://fusion.realtourvision.com/847718

New QR Code Generator: Our new QR code generator works much like our previous one did except now we have greatly extended the upper limit of the QR code generated to be several thousand pixels tall. We have made this change to allow for the printing of a QR code on larger signs and billboards.

Buttons Now Tour Options: By popular demand, we have made renamed and relocated the “Buttons” section of the tour manager.  This section is now called Tour Options and is located under the “Manage” section. We left the word “Buttons” next to it for the time being while you get used to its new name and new locations but please be advised that we will soon be calling this section “Tour Options”.

We live to program new virtual tour software features for you every few weeks. Stay tuned for more AMAZING updates to come in 2019!!  Thank you all for your dedication to our brand and loyalty.  You Stand Out with RTV!

Sincerely,

Team RTV

Order a virtual tour – 866-947-8687

https://www.RealTourVision.com

The FORMULA 84 – Virtual Staging with Tom

February 27, 2019

We are pleased to offer to the friends and followers of RTV, on March 12, 2019, at 7:00 PM, a one-hour training session dedicated to virtual staging. Over the last year, there have been significant advancements in virtual staging technology as well as the addition of hundreds of pieces of new furniture for you to choose. If you’re already offering virtual staging in your business or thinking about offering it, we recommend that you come to this live RTV webinar event. 

During the show, we will be interviewing Tom Feis from SharpEye Visuals on the virtual staging process. Late last year Tom became RTV’s new “Go To” and recommended service provider for Full-Service virtual staging. Tom has staged just over two hundred photos for dozens of real estate agents and photographers around the globe. He is now allowing us to hold a webinar with him and he will share his expertise, provide tips, shortcuts and overall know-how on virtual staging.  Come to this live event and learn how to get the most out of the virtual staging software.

Click on the following link to see examples of Toms virtual staging work – https://fusion.realtourvision.com/148372

During the show we will be covering some of the following topics and more:

Setting up a virtual staging account
How to purchase credits – how they are used
How to photograph and plan for virtual staging
What image size should you upload
The virtual staging process
How to place items on hard to reach areas such as shelves
The furniture removal process
What is a flare and how to use flares

With virtual staging requests on the rise, the time to get started with Virtual Staging is now. Please be sure to register for The FORMULA 84 and enjoy one hour of virtual staging training. We hope you can all make it to the show on March 12, at 7:00 PM!

Those of you that do not already have a virtual staging account set up please use the following link to set that up – https://stager.virtualhousestaging.com/signup

Sincerely,

Team RTV

Virtual Staging Software & National Photography Services

866-947-8687