Crack the Social Media Code

Photo blogging tips to grow your business August 4, 2010

Los Verdes Golf Course

This article is your reminder. It’s August and hopefully you’re out and about in your market and neighborhood showing property or meeting with people. As long as you’re out there, bring a camera.

Sometime before next selling season — maybe during the time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, or maybe in that panicky search engine optimization/social media/viral marketing epiphany you’ll have in March or April of next year — you’re going to wish you had a nice photograph of something in your town. Maybe record a little video, too, if you’re ambitious. But definitely start taking some snapshots of the areas where you work. Obviously, I’m not talking about specific houses — hopefully they’ll be off the market and sold. I’m talking about the things that make your neighborhoods and cities unique and cool. Things you might like to write about on your blog. Maybe not today, of course, but sometime in the next year.

Media the you create now will have a better chance of helping you put the best face on your neighborhoods and cities. Having these resources on-hand now can make your winter season content-creation work go much easier. It also will allow you to get a couple months’ jump for any seasonally focused posts you might do. For example, you can release your classic fireworks blog post a few months early, along with photos of the neighborhoods that have good views.

Here are a few tips to help get you started grabbing images that you can use throughout the next few months to help prepare you for next year’s selling season: Carry a camera with you all the time. If it’s your iPhone, that’s fine — you just need stuff for your blog. It’s more important that you have a camera than that you have the best camera. Start taking advantage of “golden hour,” the first hour and last hour of sunlight. If you’re an early riser, take advantage of that and shoot pictures just after dawn. This early light will give you some great stuff to work with. The last hour of sunlight may conflict with your dinner plans, so go out to eat someplace where you can take photos of the neighborhood.

Make a list of blog posts you might like to write over the winter for next season, and then go out and take supporting photographs. When you download the pictures to your computer, change the file names from something like DSC101009.jpg to something descriptive like Best-Coffee-Shop-in-Newport Beach.jpg. Make sure to include the city in the name of the file, a property tagged photos and video are very search engine friendly. Shoot a wide variety of subjects. The only thing keeping them all together would be that they are in the markets you work in. If you really can’t think of anything to shoot, go to your favorite place in your neighborhood. Then take a picture of the most interesting thing you see, walk 10 steps, take another picture and so on.

Don’t have time to take pictures now? Find a high school kid you trust, hand the kid your camera. Offer him or her some money to go take pictures of cool stuff in the neighborhood. You’ll end up with some useless stuff, but you’ll likely get something good out of it, too.