Shameless Plug Archives - Page 8 of 17

Pro Tip: Product Videos

April 17th, 2015

I’ve been doing these kinds of videos for awhile now. I was typically using an iPhone to shoot them. They came out pretty good. I like having a person, instead of just a screencast. I think it gives us a more personal vibe.

I recently bought a new camera (I’m a Nikon guy, but for video everyone told me I needed a Canon 5D Mark III, so I bought it) and microphone setup. And the improvement to quality has been astounding. The video below is our latest (Frances Brittle, our director of marketing at W&R Studios, is the women in the video).

I use iMovie to edit. PremiumBeats.com to buy the background music. Keynote for the slides and animation. And if I need to capture video off my computer I use ScreenFlow for Mac.

A company called Wistia has a great blog with lots of free tutorials and tips on how to create them. They have been a great resource, check them out.

Vendor Alley Ad Spaces now available!

March 25th, 2015

It’s that time a year again.

Promote your existing product or service to Vendor Alley’s highly targeted audience of MLS providers, real estate associations, brokers, agents, vendors, and connoisseurs of fine satire.

Vendor Alley Ad Boxes- We have 4 spaces available (below the brass balls).
Pricing: $500 per Ad Box, per month. Size is 250 X 125.

To reserve your space or find out more please email me at: vendor.alley@gmail.com

These will go fast. And most advertisers buy 12 months.

Zillow Agent Finder is awesome.

March 25th, 2015

I’ve been playing around with Zillow’s new Agent Finder. It’s crazy good! Matt Carter of Inman News summed it up in a post article entitled; “Zillow just gave consumers something more than a cow pie.”

“Realtor.com couldn’t do it. Redfin couldn’t do it. Even the Houston Association of Realtors tried and failed.

Now Zillow’s done what the industry establishment couldn’t: It’s helping consumers find agents in their area who have the greatest number of sales, the most listings or the best reviews.”

I’ll say. And of course I sure many REALTORS will lose their shit about this. You can already see this in the article’s comments.

Few things that strike me about this announcement.

1. Timing. Matt mentions this in his article too. With Zillow trying to get as many direct feeds why launch something so controversial?

2. Will the industry play catch up? Now that the cat is out of the bag. Will Realtor.com, Redfin, HAR finally get their agents and members to get off their ass and compete?

3. Consumers are going to love Agent Finder. One thing I noticed when I was searching through the list of agents is when I came across agents with no reviews, I was wondering…”what are they hiding?” Agents with no photo, or listings (currently or previously) seemed not worth my time.

Of course their are other services out there. Just yesterday Cloud CMA announced integration with RealSatisfied. In a nutshell you can add any ratings and reviews you get on RealSatisfied right as part of your Cloud CMA report pages.

Cloud CMA clients can also easily add Zillow Agent ratings too.

Agent ratings and reviews are here to stay. The industry needs to get out of their own way and embrace this new world, not fight it.

Cloud CMA Teams/Brokers Edition

March 18th, 2015

The super duper talented group at W&R Studios just introduced a special edition of Cloud CMA for teams and brokerages with less than 50 agents. Lots of goodies for teams and smaller brokers to enjoy.

Introducing the Teams/Broker Edition of Cloud CMA!

“Well, after tons of feedback, W&R Studios is proud to announce that we have released an edition of Cloud CMA specifically designed for Teams of up to 5 agents, brokerages up to 25 agents, and brokerages of up to 50 agents. To read the full press release go HERE.

Each team or brokerage will have a designated administrator that will upload a branded cover page, logo, header, and footer for each agent that is part of the account. In addition, each agent will have full access to all of the features that Cloud CMA offers.”

Paul Hagey of Inman News also did a nice write up on it too:

Brad Inman visits Huntington Beach

March 17th, 2015

Brad Inman stopped by W&R Studios Headquarters in Huntington Beach today. He saw we had some video equipment and asked if it would be cool to shoot an impromptu video. “Of course!” I said. We talked about “Z2K”, marketing automation, and what it all means. Coming soon.

What’s a ZMA?

March 4th, 2015

Glad you asked….

http://ztc.cloudcma.com

Flipboard for the web

February 11th, 2015

Great article about how they created Flipboard for the web. It is a bit technical. I love to use Flipboard on my iPad. This quote caught my attention.

60fps on the mobile web

“Early on, after testing numerous prototypes, we decided our web experience should scroll. Our mobile apps are known for their book-like pagination metaphor, something that feels intuitive on a touch screen, but for a variety of reasons, scrolling feels most natural on the web.”

That’s exactly the same conclusion we came up with Cloud Streams. On the web people love scrolling through streams of data (think Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest). And when you think about it most MLS portals display some excel looking spreadsheet you need to click to move on to the next 25 properties.

Also this is why none of those viewer plugins popular with publishers to turn their paper Magazines in to a “digital” version never really took off. The interface was lousy and seemed like a hack job.

People want to scroll.

I want my Cloud __________!

February 5th, 2015

In December 2014 W&R Studios did a “Hack Week”. The premise was to pick two product ideas, have the ideas be worked on 2 teams of developers, and then see what they come up with.

The two products chosen were:

Cloud MLX – An alternative front end to MLS systems.

Cloud Open House – A beautiful way to track your Open House from start to finish.

In this 4 part series you got to meet the developers, their backgrounds and how they approached the challenge. W&R Studios also recorded a live raw video of their final presentations to “pitch” their product to the company.

In Part 4, W&R Studios is asking people to vote on the product they would like to see built. There’s a great recap video and you can also check up on previous “Hack Week” posts. It was a lot of fun, hope you enjoy.

W&R Studios’ “Hack Week” – Part 4. Vote!

Can you build a better MLS system in just a week?

January 9th, 2015

They tried!

W&R Studios “Hack Week” Part 2

Making the sausage.

January 8th, 2015

Last month we did a “Hack Week” at W&R Studios. We picked two products and had our devs pair up for a week and make something. Then the following Monday they presented their “finished” products. It was super fun! I documented a lot of the process and even recorded their final presentations.

So starting today there is a 4 part series about our “hack week”. The two products we choose were code named, Cloud MLX and Cloud Open House.

The first product, Cloud MLX, is an alternative front-end to an MLS system. Which I thought might be of interest to VA readers. I was really impressed with some of the ideas our team came up with, and I think it will cause a good amount of discussion. I video recorded their final presentation and it will give you a fly on the wall view of how the teams thought about the products.

So head over to Cloud CMA’s blog, “The Lightning Bolt” and check it out. Part 1 is posted today. Part 2 will post tomorrow.