You know that 83% of video marketers claim they get MORE leads with videos. At this point, you’re probably sold on the importance of real estate videos for marketing. However, you may be struggling with one major thing—when do you have time to record?
I don’t blame you. It’s incredibly difficult to find time to record major videos when you have SO much going on in your business. My team and I really did struggle with this for a long time! But now, after our crew has been publishing thousands of videos consistently every month, we’ve figured out a few things.
Tips To Record Real Estate Videos Faster!
Here are a few tips from what we’ve learned that can help you record real estate videos 10x faster than ever before!
1. Record In Batches
Instead of recording each video separately day after day, record multiple videos at once.
This means that instead of going from the idea phase to scripting, recording, and editing just ONE video, you should move multiple videos through that workflow.
Right now, using my workflow, I can record over 20 videos within a couple of hours instead of taking weeks to do it. All you have to do is take each step one at a time: sit down and brainstorm/script a bunch of ideas. Then, record them all right away. Next, get editing out of the way and schedule your videos to go out one at a time over a week or month.
2. Use the BOSRED Workflow
Brainstorm → Optimize → Script → Record → Edit → Distribute.
This is the workflow I personally use and teach my agents to use. This helps us to stay organized and make videos so much faster.
A system is essential to ensure you get your videos out on time. The BOSRED workflow is incredibly simple.
- Brainstorm a few ideas, focusing on what your audience will want to see. Do you speak to buyers, sellers, investors, or other agents? What are common questions you get from clients? What topics are hot in the news right now? How does the local market look? Use these questions to create topic ideas.
- Optimize your ideas to fit more neatly with your target audience. Make sure that the topic you choose can fit neatly within a video and doesn’t feel rambling or go on for hours.
- Script your idea into a neat video outline (or even line-by-line script). How long you film will depend on you—in some cases, shorter is better, but people are happy to watch 10-15 minute videos (or longer) if the topic is good and they’re getting something valuable out of it.
- Record your video. You can use as many takes as you like. If you want to, say each line multiple times until you get the right cadence in your voice. You can edit all you want!
- Edit your video. This is a technical task, so you’ll have to either Google how to do it or hire a professional video editor to help you out. In addition to fixing mistakes, you’ll want to add in music, various images to help the flow of the video, captions, headlines, and more.
- Distribute your video. As soon as you can, go ahead and publish that video on YouTube! You can also add it to your website. It’s also great to break it up into points so that you can cut shorts out of it to post as Reels on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
3. Plan and Script Your Video
Before hitting the record button, at the bare minimum, you should outline the main points you want to cover. Now, if you have the time and would like to be comprehensive because that helps you work better, go ahead and script everything out line by line.
This will allow you to get videos recorded much faster as you’ll know what want to say. It will also allow you to be thorough and concise with your points as you will have already thought about the exact message you’re trying to communicate.
4. Keep Your Equipment Ready
Always be ready to record! This means having your camera, batteries, memory cards, lights, and any other equipment fully charged and ready to go. You never know when the inspiration and opportunity to record may hit you.
Also, consider having a dedicated space for your recording equipment. I realize that not all of us have the space to have a full setup in our home but try to establish at least a corner of your room to have your camera, lights, microphone, etc. This will limit the amount of setup and breakdown time required.
5. Use Voice-Over Narration
This is actually a super hack for those who have a hard time memorizing lines or do not like being in front of the camera. This also works incredibly well with house or property tours. Instead of recording audio on-site while you’re walking through a home you want to feature, use voice-over narration in post-production.
This allows you to focus on recording great images on-site and great sound quality in the privacy of your own home. In doing so, you can create much more professional videos!
6. Use a Teleprompter or Cue Cards
There’s a reason presidents use teleprompters for big speeches—if you’ve got a whole script written out, you likely won’t have time to memorize it all before you jump into recording!
Get a teleprompter or write out simple cue cards that you can set up behind the camera and look at as you go. This strategy will help you maintain a smooth flow of speech and eliminate the need for constant retakes.
7. Shoot In a Logical Order
Plan your shooting ahead of time (primarily, this is if you’re out giving a property tour or something) and, if possible, in sequence. This will allow you to move smoothly from one area to another and reduce the need for backtracking. It also minimizes setup time between shots.
In addition, this will help you in editing as you know when and where your shots were made. By eliminating the guessing game of where a certain shot is on your SD card, you can save so much time!
8. Use Presets and Templates
If you frequently film videos with similar styles, create templates that you can quickly fill in and repeat.
For example, we do a TON of “Everything about {city name}” videos. So, we have one template/script we use for ALL the cities we feature. Templates and presets allow you to quickly create videos. In addition, your editing software may allow you to save presets and settings for a much faster post-production process.
9. Practice
Alright, let’s address the elephant in the room: you will have to limit retakes and mistakes by practicing. There’s only so much you can learn on the sidelines—in reality, most of the growth happens in the experience you gain along the way.
Minimize retakes and avoidable mistakes by rehearsing beforehand, ensuring a faster recording process. Keep trying until you get it right…THEN go get your camera. Just as you wouldn’t show up to a golf game without practicing ahead of time, so you can’t show up to your business without putting in that little extra effort.
Create Real Estate Videos Now
There are your nine tips for creating real estate videos faster. While this job isn’t particularly hard, it’s not something that’s going to happen without you taking the steps to get started. Take the time to practice, prepare, and put in your best effort! You’ve got this, agent.