Periscope: Are You Ready to Redefine Your Marketing Strategy?

Posted on Jul 24 2015 - 4:01pm by Nick Caruso
#4

PeriscopeIf you’re a real estate agent wanting to target millennials, you need to be active on social media and you need to be tech savvy. Even if you aren’t specifically targeting millennials, an advanced knowledge of technology will help leaps and bounds as you set forth to dominate your local market. Applications like Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat are surefire tools that agents can use to increase their game and reel in those anxious first-time buyers or the timid prospective ones who are still (ugh) waiting on the sidelines. While these apps can provide a snapshot of an agent’s life or listing, there’s a new app in town that allows followers to see far more than just one static perspective. Welcome to Periscope.

After creating their own version called Meerkat, Twitter acquired Periscope, an up-to-the-second live-broadcasting app that is reshaping mobile news and social media as we know it. When the app is opened, users can broadcast a live feed of whatever they’re doing to the Internet. A link of the broadcast is sent out to Twitter followers, and those who decide to check in and watch can live chat throughout. Using Periscope, agents can now market their listings to their entire social following all in one fell walkthrough (errr…swoop!).

For real estate, this is huge! Just imagine the possibilities. Real-time virtual tours and open houses, anyone?

“It allows you to create your own real estate channel,” said Rob Zwemmer, president and team leader of the Zwemmer Realty Group, Luxury Homes by Keller Williams in Indian Wells, Calif. “If you’ve never seen it, you’ve got to log on and try it out. It’s absolutely the coolest interactive app that’s out there.”

As opposed to Instagram or Snapchat, Periscope moves as you move, allowing your sphere of influence to watch you in real time, live and unedited. Since its inception, the savviest of companies have already begun using the app to reach out to younger audiences and rejuvenate their brands. As a crafty, calculated real estate professional, staying on top of social media means more than just updating your Facebook page once a day. It means embracing all of the latest and greatest, and adopting technologies that your buyers and sellers are using every day.

Although Skype and FaceTime also have video broadcasting and conferencing capabilities to a certain degree, Periscope has some additional features that really edge up its cool factor. Users have the ability to only allow access to their broadcasts to certain followers, which could come in handy if your audience is fragmented. In addition, after each broadcast, the video is stored on users’ profiles where followers can go back and re-watch something, or watch a broadcast they missed live. Replays are available for 24 hours starting immediately after a broadcast ends. Users can also save their broadcasts as videos and republish them to other platforms, i.e. YouTube or Facebook, helping you reach as many of your followers, buyers and sellers as possible.

“Periscope is going to be one of the game changers for real estate,” said Zwemmer in the latest of RISMedia’s Agent Webinar Series – and he’s certainly right. If the industry adopts Periscope to its fullest extent, there’s no stopping what agents can do with the latest innovative and powerful social tool. When paired with Facebook targeted ads, for example, or even when used on its own within Twitter’s framework, Periscope can certainly revitalize an agent or brokerage’s mobile marketing strategy.

It may even redefine it.

So tell us – have you toyed around with Periscope yet for your real estate business? Share your stories with us in the comments below!

4 Comments so far. Feel free to join this conversation.

  1. JAY MCHUGH August 1, 2015 at 7:33 am -

    I LOVE PERISCOPE…and have been using it since its launch date…… http://www.jaymchugh.com to learn more …cheers….

    • Kim Spear August 3, 2015 at 2:37 pm -

      Jay, how are you finding the viewers and what do you think they like best about what you show them and what you share with them on Periscope?

  2. Aimee August 10, 2015 at 8:57 pm -

    Periscope seems to be great but female agents beware, the unexpected disadvantage is trolling. Don’t know what trolling is? It is unwanted, usually sexual, commentary that leaves the user feeling very vunerable. There are some newscasters that have blocked (yes you can block the creeps) over 300K followers who refuse to stop trolling commentary.
    So Periscope may be the wave of the future but looks like it is quite a sexist method to spur interest from potential clients. By the way, the more professional the female appears to be on Periscope, the more trolling they experience according to a BBC world news report: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33853288

  3. Bruce Minter December 4, 2015 at 9:01 am -

    I have been working on getting set up to use it this week. I have a new listing hopefully coming on line in the near future that this will be a great tool to help in marketing. It’s a turn of the century home that has been in the same family for over 100 years and located in a historical district. I signed up for a detailed course on how to set it up, what to do, what not to do and tons of valuable tips from http://www.kimgarst.com @ Boom Social. Check her out for all things social.