Real Estate Agent and Brokerage Blogs

Real Estate Podcasting is easier than you would imagine. You can start your own high-quality real estate Podcast today by investing as little as $60 and 30 minutes of your time. I like making things easy, so I will how you how to use the same equipment for both live and over the phone interview recordings.   There are plenty of other ways to do this, but I do think that this way is one of the easiest and most flexible.

Want to know what Podcasting is and how real estate professionals can use it as a marketing tool, read Ultimate Guide to Podcasting, Part 1.

1. Getting started with Equipment:

Digital Recorder: you will need a hand held digital recorder with either a USB interface or a memory card. My recommendations are:

Sony IDC-P320  $59.95

Olympus WS-100      $79.99

Olympus DS-2  $129.99

I, personally, use the Olympus WS-100 and love it. To hear the recording quality, listen to my live podcast with ActiveRain.

Telephone Recording Device: If you want to record podcasts over your phone you will need a device that will intercept the audio through the handset so it can be recorded on your handheld device or computer. I recommend:

Mini recorder control  $17.99

*NOTE: if you use this kind of device, make sure the first thing you do is tell the person you are talking to that they are being recorded otherwise it can be construed as wire tapping.

Sound Editing Software: you will need a good sound editing software package to edit your audio easily if there is background noise or the voice volumes do not match. There are plenty of them, but I really like:

Blog: Having a blog with a podcast plugin the easiest way to publish podcasts to the web. Most blogs like Wordpress, TypePad and RSS Pieces have built-in free podcast publishing components. 

2. Plan your real estate podcast:

Just like everything else in life is you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So, If you are going to record an audio tour to accompany a virtual tour or a tutorial about buying or selling a home, be sure to fully write out your ideas so you can record it once and not get stuck splicing a whole bunch of random thought together. If you intend to interview a client, local celebrity or industry big wig, be sure to provide them with the questions ahead of time and limit your interview to 5 questions. Keep the podcast entertaining by incorporating humor and personal conversation so you engage listeners.

3. Record the real estate podcast:

In person recording:

This one is simple: take your digital recorder, find a quiet spot free from outside noise and phones ringing and press “record.” 

Over the phone recording:

This one is pretty easy as well: plug the telephone recording device into your phone and your handheld digital recorder. When you get your interviewee on the line, simply press record on your digital recorder and there you have it.

4. Pull the audio off your recorder and onto your computer:

Connect your digital recorder to your computer via the provided USB cable and transfer your file to your computer’s hard drive. 

5. Edit the audio: 

Open the saved file in Audacity. Listen to the file. If it sounds good, save it as an .mp3. If it could use a little work, you can use the tools in audacity to drowned out the background noises and boost voice volumes. I will post another article on editing audio with audacity later for now, here is a brief audacity tutorial I recommend. Here is a good article that shows some of the features of audacity and how you directly record on your computer with it.

6. Publish your real estate podcast:

Move your file to the server and link to it with your Podcasting software. RSS Pieces makes publishing your podcast very easy. Once you have the .mp3, you simply upload it through the file manager in your post editing window very similarly to how you would do it in other major blog platforms like Wordpress. RSS Pieces podcast publishing system pulls text from the post associated with the podcast and reads tags out of the .mp3 files (ID3) to assist in SEO.

Want to see how easy publishing a podcast is with RSS Pieces? Check out the screen shot below. Just click it for a full screen version! Or, if you want to experience it live, email me and get a login for our demo site.

Our podcast/vidcast publishing and hosting support are included in our service at no additional cost. You create them, we provide the technologies to get them out there! Our Podcasting system is so advanced that it generates a streamlined feed with enough information to support popular services like itunes and juice.

Related Posts