The Basics: A Beginner’s Guide To Starting A YouTube Channel For Real Estate Agents

Table of contents

Michael Brannon
8 min readFeb 12, 2022

The Best Decision of your Real Estate Career

Starting a YouTube channel could be the best decision you make to build your career as a real estate agent. Successful real estate YouTube channels don’t have to compete with the most prominent national websites. They’re all about getting leads for your area, listings, and buyers. Whether you’re featuring a home as the listing agent or showing a buyer the home of their dreams, a YouTube channel can bring in dozens of leads a week — maybe even more!

Read this step-by-step guide, as it will help you get your YouTube real estate agent channel up and going. You will find no-nonsense tips for starting a YouTube channel inside this article. Read on for our advice and how-to secrets, including using TubeBuddy, a plug-in that makes managing your YouTube channel a lot easier.

Getting Started With Your Real Estate YouTube Channel

Before you start, take some time to look around and search for successful YouTube real estate channels. Look for ones in areas that have a bit in common with yours or ones where you like the agent’s style or the videos they created. Take some notes about the essential features from their channels to see:

  • What kind of videos do they make?
  • How often do they publish?
  • How long are their videos?
  • What does their branding look like?

Create a Publishing Plan

Now that you have a good idea of the type of channel and schedule you want in your head — write it down. Create a plan for videos and publishing; Airtable is a fantastic tool for tracking and publishing content of all types. Pick one or two days a week you’ll film, and one or two days a week you’ll publish your videos. Having a consistent time and day to post will help you optimize your real estate YouTube channel.

Setting up Your YouTube Real Estate Channel

This next step is where your note-taking from the other real estate YouTube channels will come in handy. You’ll need to include the following elements when you start your channel:

Channel Customization

Layout -

  • A Channel Trailer — a one — to a two-minute trailer that introduces people to your channel and encourages them to subscribe.
  • A Featured Video — a trailer that greets returning subscribers.

Branding -

  • Picture — use a good headshot, not a logo.
  • Banner Image — create a powerful and informative image and ensure it displays what a subscriber can expect from your channel.
  • Video Watermark — appears on your videos in the right-hand corner.

Basic Info -

  • A Channel Name — name your channel something that clarifies to your visitors what type of content they should expect to see. Be sure to include your name.
  • Channel Description — include facts and information, don’t forget to include keywords like your area’s name and type of real estate you service, and any special links you want to be included.

How to Choose Which Videos to Create

You should have at least three types of videos on your YouTube channel.

1. The first type should be educational — showing the benefit that homeowners and future homeowners can receive from homeownership.

2. The second type should be general — videos that introduce people to your area.

3. The third type should be videos featuring properties that you’re listing.

The Basics: A Beginner’s Guide to Content Creation for Real Estate Agents…thanks for stopping by. If you have time, check out this great article, too.

4. You can also have other videos presenting a “lifestyle,” covering the advantages of moving to your area, or perhaps videos about travel, food, history, or recreation.

Follow these steps when deciding how to put content on your YouTube channel:

Conduct Keyword Research: Use a keyword tool to identify keywords that bring people to your channel. TubeBuddy is an exceptional tool for YouTube videos. It offers a browser extension keyed into YouTube, bringing you dynamic data on topics that people are searching for on YouTube. Don’t forget to download the TubeBuddy mobile app.

TubeBuddy - sign up for free.

After you have your keywords chosen, ensure you place them into the title, as well as the body of your blog posts.

Don’t forget, most of your searches will be from mobile devices and often use voice, not text. You can start by putting your city or town’s name and then adding words to see which ones have a high volume. Here are some examples:

  • Potomac Shores homes for sale
  • Homes for sale in Port Potomac
  • Woodbridge, Virginia homes with pools
  • Homes with pools in Woodbridge, Virginia

When It’s Time To Film

YouTube videos are just like any other content you create: you have a short time to hook your viewer and let them know what to expect in the rest of the video. Make sure that your intro informs the viewer about what they can expect during the rest of the video.

Make sure you have the following elements in your videos, whether they’re about a specific property or features of your local area or any other topic you choose:

  • Hook with a preview of the content to come: 15 seconds
  • Introduction: 15 to 30 seconds explaining the purpose of video and viewer takeaways
  • Content: create anywhere between 6 to 12 minutes of content
  • Offer: conclude the video with a call to action like subscribing to your channel or calling you about a property

Editing and Uploading Your Real Estate YouTube Video

Video and audio editing can quickly become complicated. Not to fear, you can choose a free or paid service such as Fiverr or UpWork to edit your video. However, Spoke and Descript are two excellent tools that turn out accurate transcripts from your videos. There is a whole range of services, including ones that work on your phone or tablet.

Descript Logo

After you’re satisfied with the video, you should upload it to YouTube. Every time, you’ll need to:

  • Write a good title and description with keywords and searchable terms
  • Add tags that fit the video’s topic and your goals for leads
  • Create a thumbnail and add a visual hook
  • Create captions (YouTube has its caption function. However, Fiverr offers white glove services.)
  • Schedule the video for publishing

Your description should include your main keywords as well as a call to action. You can also have your contact information and even links to other videos on your channel.

Best Practices to Promote Your Video

YouTube shows videos to a broader audience based on engagement. If you’re making YouTube videos, you also want to send them to your contact in your email list and post them on social media channels. Be sure to promote your videos when they’re published and encourage your current audience to like and watch the video to the end. Missinglettr is an excellent resource for getting your blog post seen and shared by additional people. If you have comments on your video, be sure to respond and be courteous and professional.

Missinglettr Promo

Using Analytics For Your Real Estate YouTube Channel

You might be discouraged by seeing only a few views for each of your first videos — don’t be. You should create a solid number of videos together, at least 12 or more, before you start focusing too intensely on a “trend” in your analytics. To learn more, read an article about the Basics of Analytics. Gaining insight into the success of your videos can be tricky.

YouTube divides channel analytics into 4-sections:

  • Overview — gives you a quick overview of your channel and videos’ performance.
  • Reach — is a summary of how your audience is accessing your content.
  • Engagement — represents how long your audience was engaged (watched your video).
  • Audience — is a summary of the type of viewers watching your videos.

Although many people appreciate shorter no-frills content, your audience will ultimately determine whether or not they would rather have a video with content that provides more in-depth information or rather have a briefer version. Ultimately what your audience wants is up to them, so make sure you take the time to get their feedback on where they stand in their preferences!

Summing Things Up

Starting a YouTube Channel for Real Estate Agents: a Smart Move That Will Pay Off

With more people deciding to buy or sell a home than ever before and using their mobile devices to search for properties, you want to use all the tools available to generate leads and close as many sales as possible. Given the number of videos on YouTube, one could assume it is being “saturated” with content, but the truth is, local areas and communities aren’t. You can start a YouTube channel and have an excellent lead generator for your real estate career.

YouTube or Video Marketing, in general, can be a potent lead generation tool for real estate agents. If you want success from YouTube, keep these tips in mind to help you get started with this powerful tool — it’ll help you generate new leads and give your real estate business consistent traffic and interest.

I hope this article has helped shed some light on the benefits of using YouTube in your marketing. At Titus Media Solutions, LLC, we are always excited when one of our posts can provide helpful information on topics like this. Our mission is to provide you with valuable resources while at the same time, we also hope to make every blog post interesting for you, our readers.

Please feel free to comment below; feedback keeps us on our toes. Thank you for your time!

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Michael Brannon

Entrepreneur | REALTOR® | REALTIST® sharing marketing knowledge with residential real estate agents, anyone hoping for more. #TitusMediaSolutions, #retiredSCPO⚓