Metro Detroit Real Estate Homes For Sale

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Snooze You Loose - Be Prepared with Media Tool Box

As Realtors, we should always have our camera (and now video camera) with us at all times.  In the past, I usually did -- who knows if someone is going to call up to list a home - plus I do a fair amount of Broker Price Opinions (BPO) that require pics.  But there were times when I hesitated - hated to keep in the car or had the fear I might miss place it.  Then I embraced Video as I began to create myself as a Metro Detroit Realtor and local expert.  Now I have more equipment to handle. 

I chose a camera that takes decent video and bought a large memory card.  Not quite satisfied, a friend game me his camcorder & tripod and then I bought a Flip video which is easier to carry around.  I saw the value of having it with me during the holidays when someone told me at our Holiday party of a home down the street that had great lights synchronized to music.  So, on the way home we stopped and I shot a short video--totally impromptu.  Then I went by the next day and spoke with the owners and made a nice connection with e-mails and a few stories about the increased traffic.  I am definitely convinced that I always want to be prepared!

I live in Michigan and it gets pretty cold so I decided I need to find a way to keep organized with my growing cache of tools -- make sure I always have everything, don't lose anything and don't leave any of my tools in the car in the cold or heat.  So, off to Meijer's for my tool box.  I wanted something to keep my Flip, iPod, Garmin Nuvi, camera with extra battery & charger and a laser dimension master.  I finally found something with 4 pockets for everything and a mesh zipper pocket just under the cover for iPod accessories and then I threw in a small flashlight.  One more tool I plan to add is a voice recorder as I create some podcasts and it will go in the mesh pocket on top.  Small like a lunch box, nice handle and I carry it right along with my purse wherever I go - I never leave the house without it--and only $15.

Accessories for a Realtor's Toolbox     Realtor's Toolbox

A couple of notes about my tools:  The reason and use of most are obvious.  However, I particularly like having the "classic" iPod because I download my videos that I use for my blogs so that I can show people an example of what I do (have in mind) when approaching them about shooting a video for my blog.  I have my camcorder and tripod for special videos that are scheduled as they are too cumbersome to carry around.  However - these are for special breaking news and spontaneous events so I am not caught snoozing and losing.

Royal Oak Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service.  Don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

21 commentsCathy Tishhouse Royal Oak Real Estate • February 05 2009 05:00PM

Twestival & Twitter Support - Two Sites You Want To Check Out!

As I do almost daily, I watch the Twitter Stream and check in on a few of my favorites--and always adding to my list of all things Twitter.  And, as a good Tweeter should, I find many that I want to RT (retweet) to acknowledge the contribution that certain tweets have provided for me and the community of followers.

Twitterific LogoPeople are always asking me "what is Twitter" or the "how to" of it.  On this site, you will find under Help Resources Getting Started-- which includes:  Frequently Asked Questions, Posting a Twitter update, or "tweet" , and so much more.  There are "How To" information and "Troubleshooting".  You can also report SPAM and visit a few Twitter related Blogs.  I also found a few more people that I wanted to follow.  It was here that I found the Twestival.

I visited the Twitter Blog and the first post was "Tweet, Meet, Give".  I found the Twestival which will be held on February 12, 2009 in over 100 cities worldwide (and growing).  The Twestival is organized 100% by volunteers in cities around the world and 100% of the money raised from these events will go directly to support charity: water projects.  Scroll down and on the right bottom is a list of "Twestival North America" cities that are participating.  I was happy to find that Detoit is represented--Detroit @llaurentsmith.  What a great way to meet the faces behind the local Tweeters and for a very good cause.

Check out some of my other posts about Twitter:  On the fence about Twitter, Following the Elite, Twitter for Business & Using Twitter Alerts.  And don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

Metro Detroit Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service. 

4 commentsCathy Tishhouse Royal Oak Real Estate • February 01 2009 11:30AM

The Most Amazing Video - Using Re-Twit'd Application

I have been posting a lot about Twitter and why you should join and all the great applications I find as I explore the Twittersteam.  This evening, after shoveling snow, getting my showing appointments made and my listing presentation complete (Not much Twittering tomorrow), I indulged in an hour or so of Twitter.  I found a new application called re-Twit'd.  This application lets you see what's hot on Twitter based on how frequently something is retweeted.  You can find the most popular tweets by most retweeted in hours, day, week and fortnight.  When I checked it out, there was a retweet saying "OMG What an inspirational video You MUST watch this! I'm bawling!!!"  Well that was something I could not pass up!  Here is a link to the video she was referring to (retweeted 7 times).  It's called "Are You Going To Finish Strong".

http://www.maniacworld.com/are-you-going-to-finish-strong.html

One of the people I follow is Pete Cashmore @mashable.  He had tweeted about a Twitter section on his Mashable Blog--this is where I get a majority of my news on Twitter and other things relating to Social Media.  One of the stories was about introducing re-Twit'd.  If you love Twitter like I do, I suggest your check out this site and follow him - AFTER YOU WATCH THE VIDEO!

And, if you haven't checked out my most recent post about Twirl - Tweetdeck - Twitterific: Which is Best?  , I suggest you choose an application to manage your tweets - @mashable is in one of my groups called Twitter and SEO - this way I am fairly certain not to miss a lot of his great posts.  If you still aren't embracing Twitter then Twitter for Beginners - On the Fence - Read This.

Folow Cathy Tishhouse on Twitter

Royal Oak Michigan Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service.  Follow me on Twitter.

5 commentsCathy Tishhouse Royal Oak Real Estate • January 10 2009 06:45PM

Twirl - Tweetdeck - Twitterific: Which is Best?

I have been deeply immersed in Twitter since I joined over a month ago.  In my first post about Twitter for Beginners - On the Fence, I talked about how I avoided it for well over a year and am completely sold on how much value it provides.  Since then, I have been finding new applications, ways to find people to follow and so much more.

As of this post, I am following 506 people with 446 following me.  There are different goals and philosophies on how many to follow and why you choose to follow who you do.  Clearly with over 500 (and I follow people with over 10,000 followers) how do you keep up with them all--you don't!  But, there are ways to manage it and I want to introduce a few of the more popular downloads to interact to utilize with Twitter.  Whatever one you choose there are many.  If you haven't noticed, under each update in whatever program you are viewing them in, there is a source of where the tweet came from.  You will see "web" and this is from the Twitter home page - the basic entry point when you sign up.  You will see "twitterfeed", "twitterberry", the three I mentioned in the title and more.  I am going to talk a bit about Twirl, Tweetdeck & Twitterific which are some of the most popular.

Blue Twitter Bird The main thing that Twirl, Tweetdeck & Twitterific (and others) have over the "web" or home page of Twitter is that they have all the tools you need at your fingertips - mainly the "shorten url".  Twitterific is for iPhone or the Mac so I have not used this one.  With the iPhone (and Mac) so popular, this one, of course, is popular.  My nephew uses it and showed me the basics - a one column list of recent friend/follows as they post on Twitter.  It gives you the most recent tweets of those you follow and the ability to reply, direct message (DM) and update your status.  Twirl is pretty much the same only I have used Twirl and am a bit more familiar with it.  It is also one column which you can stretch longer than the initial download to include more posts.  You can customize it, shorten urls, comment, reply and direct message.  When it is running in the background, it gives you small alerts when there is a reply or DM.  I actually like the alerts on Twirl better as it gives you the actual message of the post.

Actually Tweetdeck does most of the same like shorten url, replies, direct messages, alerts and the ability to search (Twirl does too).  Tweetdeck is my favorite because you have the ability to create Groups.  This is important to me as I follow most of the people who follow me.  However, I search for some of the best on Twitter and want to particularly keep up with them.  With over 500 and growing, this is impossible unless I separate them somehow.  So, I have created about 5 groups:  Local, ActiveRain, Elite, Twitter & Social Media(it seems you can have as many as you want but have to slide screen over to view them).  You can have a column/Group of Replies and one of Direct Messages as well.  These you can close when not using them and open again with an icon at the top.  If you close the other groups, you lose them permanently.  I have done this a couple of times accidentally and the newest download now warns you that your group will be lost.  It warns you about DM & replies but I find that you can open them back up later.  You also have gone Group/column of Friends which is the whole tweetsteam of who you follow.

Other features include a column that opens up when you see someone referred to in another post and want to check out their profile.  You just click on their name (like @tishhouse) in the post and it opens with their profile, stats and recent posts with the ability to click "follow" at the bottom of the column.  The last feature I like is the ability to open Twitscoop from an icon at the top and another column opens and you can check out the top conversations/words that are being twitted right now.  You do have the option to view Tweetdeck in a one column format as well--which is all "friends" like Twirl.   Lastly, if you don't like the black color (I didn't), you can click settings and change it.

More of my posts about Twitter:

How To Follow the Elite on Twitter & Are you One?

Twitter for Business & Using Twitter Alerts

Shorty Awards - Find & Follow Best Producers of Short Content on Twitter

Royal Oak Michigan Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service.  Follow me on Twitter.

8 commentsCathy Tishhouse Royal Oak Real Estate • January 09 2009 05:44PM

Active Rain Recognized by RE/MAX for Video Efforts of Birmingham Michigan Realtor

I am usually shy at tooting my own horn about what I am up to but I am genuinely excited to have my efforts in creating videos recognized by RE/MAX--and they found out about it through ActiveRain!

video cameraDeborah Ball, RE/MAX Times Associate Editor called me when looking to write a story about the importance of video as a tool for Realtors.  Of course I was very excited and asked how she heard about me. She was reading posts in ActiveRain to find a RE/MAX agent who was utilizing video in their business.   It was a great interview where I very enthusiastically talked about the vision of being a "local expert" and networking with the community and businesses--having something to offer while also promoting my real estate business.  I have Brad Andersohn to thank for his generosity in creating the vision of Localism and helping me through my confusion and growing pains with video.  Here is the RE/MAX post:  New at Shooting Video? Here's One Beginner's Tale.

I can't imagine life as a Realtor without ActiveRain.  Everything I do and learn is from the posts and friendships I find here.  While Real Estate is my primary objective for being on ActiveRain, I learn about technology, social media, video, marketing and more that applies to all things on the internet.  Thank you ActiveRain, Brad Andersohn, Deborah Ball and Susan Tedesco (owner of RE/MAX Showcase Homes) for the opportunities to grow and create a business I love.  I also want to thank Jeanette Schneider, VP/Regional Director of RE/MAX of Southeastern Michigan who always recognizes my enthusiasm for RE/MAX and the real estate business--and my efforts in the area of social media as a marketing strategy.

Sorry if it sounds a bit like I am accepting an award LOL but I always feel I am a bit behind in the game of social media because I follow the best on AR and Twitter and they are up to so much--it's hard to keep up in a field that is ever expanding with no end in sight.  I often feel overwhelmed and this encourages me to remember it's the journey and not the destination.

 Birmingham Michigan Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service.  Follow me on Twitter.

10 commentsCathy Tishhouse Royal Oak Real Estate • January 05 2009 11:44AM

Shorty Awards - Find & Follow Best Producers of Short Content on Twitter

For those of you still on the fence about Twitter, you really are missing the opportunity to immediately access and follow some of the top voices in the field of technology, social media and really any field you have an interest in.  The true value I find on Twitter is to follow those who are influencing the fields I am interested in.  That is the beauty of Twitter - a conversation NOW in Real time - where we get to listen and interact with the creative process of people.

web image for shorty awards websiteI posted about following the Elite through Twitter Grader but the Shorty Awards are an even better way to find the top microbloggers in 26 main categories from advertising, social media, SEO to videogames, humor and nonprofits.  There are many other categories as well.  The nominations are now closed but there were more than 32,000 nominations, for 6760 Twitterers in 1599 categories.  I have been following @shortyawards and found the top nominees in social media and started following them.  The top overall nominee is @marismith in social media followed by a list of top bloggers in a variety of fields.  You can click on the different categories and follow individuals in your field of interest.  I started following  @Breakingnews and  @guykawasaki and was already following several.

The thing that makes this different from the elite on @grader is that they are nominated by followers who find great value from their posts.  There will be final voting and an awards ceremony in February and you can follow @shortynews.  You can also check out my post about twittering for business and twitter alerts.

Don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

Royal Oak Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service.

4 commentsCathy Tishhouse Royal Oak Real Estate • January 02 2009 03:58PM

Twitter for Business & Using Twitter Alerts

We have all heard about keeping track of what is being said about us on the web by utilizing Google Alerts.  Well, you can do the same with Tweetbeep.  You can keep track of conversations that mention you, your local community (which is what I do with Google) and a keyword on any topic that you want to hear about that is being twittered.  It also says you can even keep track of who's tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL (like tinyurl.com).  I haven't tried the latter but have set alerts up about the communities where I sell Real Estate and have found local twitters to follow.

Follow Cathy Tishhouse on TwitterSpeaking of local people to follow.  On my last post on How to Follow the Elite, there was a comment "haven't done anything with it yet.  I still don't see how it can help me increase my income".  I find/follow a lot of local people to network in my community.  While most of the comments are not about Real Estate, local twitterers can view my profile to see who I am and what I am up to.  Of course, you would have to be engaging and contribute to their conversation for them to be interested enough to check you our and, hopefully, to follow back.  I post a lot about local businesses and events and broadcast these to Twitter from ActiveRain.  Followers can get interesting and quality information and, at the bottom, there is always a link to my website etc.  You can link to Twitter from your "settings" and Facebook accepts twitter posts when you sign up for that application.  So Twitter alerts increases the usefulness of why you want to Twitter and what to Twitter about.  I find much more up-to-date information and ideas for posts.  If you are still "on the fence about joining" read Twitter for Beginners.

We know that the majority of people utilize the internet for buying/selling homes.  Who wouldn't want an agent who is up to date on the latest technology.  While my "twittering" may be 25% real estate and marketing, I do broadcast new listings, price changes and market reports etc.  Who do I want to know these things but people in the local areas where these apply.

Graphic used was Posted on Twitter free graphics.  It is in a zipped file but some follow graphics to use.  A great site to follow is @twittes where I find a lot of interesting stuff.  Don't forget to click on the graphic and follow me on Twitter.

Royal Oak Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service.

6 commentsCathy Tishhouse Royal Oak Real Estate • December 19 2008 12:24PM

Twitter for Beginners - On the Fence - Read This

I avoided Twitter!  I have heard about it for a long time on ActiveRain-people twittering each other at conferences, commenting on how fast a conversation reaches everyone and how many responses they get to a question.  If I joined Twitter, that would be the final straw that broke by blogging back!  But, it is here to stay! 

Finally I started commenting "I have heard about it and can't ignore it any longer" - and yes, "I will join this weekend" (when I had more time).  Or, "I have bookmarked this post and will come back". . . (you know the rest).  I just knew I would get swallowed up, eaten whole, spit back out and none the wiser.  It would be one more thing I HAVE to do to be the good social media realtor that I need to be and can't quite be-like the grown ups.  I know there are many of you out there saying exactly the same things.  Is there no end . . .  will I ever reach anywhere and feel I have finally arrived somewhere?  The answer is NO and Twitter really freed me up to escape all the chatter.  And here is my story. 

As you can see by my points, I am hardly an active blogger as compared to so many on ActiveRain.  Why I don't blog so much is that I get very serious and significant about what I blog about:  Will it contribute to the community-there's such great stuff, will mine be OK, will it add value?  Has it been posted before (I spend time searching to make sure)?  Will I write it well (I majored in journalism)?  Will people think it valuable (I don't want to game the system)?  It looks boring, let me add a picture (I spend another half hour or so looking for the right one).  And where do they (top bloggers from who I learn so much) get their ideas anyway? 

It is a moment of celebration when I find something that hasn't been posted before, I find a fun picture and it reads like it deserves a Nobel prize-maybe I will be noticed, acknowledged, appreciated for my efforts and get a lot of comments.  I think you get the picture on how long it takes me to write a post-did I say I am a very serious and significant person about my life . . . and a perfectionist.  

When I started to Twitter, I lost all the significance.  When you can only use 140 characters to say something, it doesn't leave much room for all the crap significance.  And, now I know where everyone gets all the new ideas - they are in a live real time conversation on what is going on in the world.  You are literally listening to the pulse of what's new-top people who have created and gotten on board the latest technology and actively communicating about news breaking events.  And there is the personal side-we are people who want to be connected and make a difference in a very big small world.

In the chaos of it all, in the overwhelming onslaught of so much media, technology and my concerns of not being good enough, I found my voice.  One tiny voice in the hugest space gave me the ability to just be myself-it is just too hard to be anything else.  Did I say-I LOVE Twitter.  When you follow so many people (some have thousands), how can you possibly keep up or worry about it all.  I have had a conversation about the weather in Minnesota, commented on someone's picture about snow, read a post by someone I follow on ActiveRain and commented from Twitter.  Since this is Twitter for Beginners, here are the very basic things that you need to know to just jump in and the rest will come. 

Just join Twitter-even the bio is tiny - you can change it any time-just remember-don't be significant about it.  @kimwood wrote a 5 part series on Twitter that gives step by step instructions.  The link is for part 1 and each part has a link to the next.  I read it after I joined Twitter (to make sure I did it right LOL).  I am one of those "types" that rarely read directions first.

Next you want to "follow" and be "followed".  Once you do this, you see the true value of Twitter.  I knew @BradAndersohn was on Twitter and so he was my first follow and he followed back.  Then I went to Twitter Search and typed in @MissyCaulk and a few others.  My nephew read a Facebook update that I had joined and he followed me.  Once you have a couple, you can see who they follow and some of the responses from people in their profile and see if you want to follow them as well.  Once you click "follow" under their profile picture, most will follow you back.  You will get e-mail alerts that people are following you-if you like their short bio and a few of their tweets, you can follow them back.  To get you started, here is a recent post about some top people to follow from Nestor & Katrina Gasset on Top people to follow.     There is also an advanced search to find topics of interest - you don't want to make it all about Real Estate.  I have found many other ways to search but this is the beginning. 

Finally - how do you manage the chaos - not that you really can--like I said, that is the beauty of it--you get what you get and you don't get what you don't get and that's just how you get it-a bit like life--I like to call it "Being vs. Doing".  I really dug in and explored Twitter for two weeks before writing this.  You will never read all the Tweets that flow by (unless you have a very narrow world) but I do want to make sure I read certain ones so I found Tweetdeck. I didn't like the black color so you can edit the settings.

There are a lot of applications to manage your tweets and more on all this in a "Part 2 For the graduates of Twitter for beginners".  Just download tweetdeck soon after you have a few follows to create groups.  I currently have five groups.  The first group is the Twitter stream of all you follow.  I look here when I first log on and might comment to a few people.  Mostly I look at my groups.  I have an ActiveRain Group (whoever I choose to follow); a local group (a local search to network in your community)-in this group, I include my family; I have a Twitter group (I follow many people who write about Twitter and technology); lastly I have my favorites-you can bookmark the tweets you want to come back to later and take a closer look.  

There you have it - if you have been on the fence, think it is just too much, it's never going to stop--it isn't--just dive in and enjoy the Twittersteam.  Don't forget to follow me @tishhouse.

Royal Oak Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service

22 commentsCathy Tishhouse Royal Oak Real Estate • December 11 2008 06:59PM

Don't Like Your Domain Name - New Ones May be Introduced

The Wall street Journal published an article in their Managing Technology section on October 13, 2008 introducing the plans of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to sell new domains.  This is to address the fact that all the good ".com" names have been taken and small businesses are left to buy domains that are long and cumbersome. 

cartoon of .com website domainI know that by the time I was aware of the need to have web presence and searched domains, I could not believe how many were gone.  I spent hours (probably days when you add them together) searching - after realizing that having my personal name as a domain was not a good idea.  The ones I finally came up with - "the wordy leftovers" -- homesinoaklandcountymi.com and southeasternmichiganrealestate.com are definitely not convenient on a business card or to use as my e-mail address.  I would definitely love to have a name like royaloak.realestate or royaloak.homes or other similar addresses of the many areas where I promote myself--Birmingham, Rochester Hills etc.

Apparently the intent is to provide small businesses with an alternative to these exhaustive domain names.  The problem is that this ultimately is about making money.  So they plan to auction them off to companies that have the "deep pockets" and they, in turn, will sell them to local companies.  For example, someone who can afford it will buy .realestate for $100,000+ (they predict) and turn around and sell sub-addresses to local companies within their new domains--for probably $50/year (or more I would predict).  Someone could buy Royaloak and then sell addressea to all the local restaurants and businesses.

They did quote Google officials who said that it does have "potential to cause widespread user confusion" but that the company does plan to include the domain names -- "subject to the same criteria as other sites:  most relevant sites will be listed first".  I for one am still focusing on "content is key" including bringing video to my websites and to Localism.

Royal Oak Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service

4 commentsCathy Tishhouse Royal Oak Real Estate • October 17 2008 03:52PM

Making a Video Part II - Audio and Posting

I decided it was time to get on the video band wagon to take my listing presentation (what I will offer my sellers) and the marketing of my listings to the next level.  After all, it is a challenging market in Michigan and I want to stand out in Oakland County Real Estate - one of the areas that I service.  Not to mention that buyers want to see everything than can about a home--the competition is fierce.  I documented the first half my my journey in "Making a Video Step by Step"and now I have completed it and here are the final steps and My First Video Debut of the Rochester- Rochester Hill's"Art and Apples Festival".

I was stopped when it came to getting rid of the audio that was recorded when I took the video and adding music for a finished video.  I posted Part I to assist those that were as novice as I was and to get some tips on getting through the wall of 'Not Knowing'.  Brad Andersohnsaid I could give him a call (he has been very helpful in the journey) and I received several great comments.  I was busy with an upcoming Michigan Association of Realtors (MAR) convention and put all on hold.  At the event, I signed up for Podcasting Part I and Podcasting Part II and finally got into the world of audio.  I had never created a podcast either (maybe another post).  Between sessions, I asked James Spellos (our speaker who was great) how to mute the current audio to make room for the music and he gave me a few ideas.

1.  I finally figured out to right click on the audio right under the video and there was a mute button - YEAH!  I had to do this for each piece of video that I had added to the story board in Windows Movie Maker.

2.  I went on-line and searched for free music.  I need to experiment with this some more as I only went to the first link in google and listened to a few until I found one that "would do" - probably not my best choice but hey - I'm learning.  I imported it and then dragged it down to the audio portion of the editor.

3.  Well, it was only two minutes or less and my video was a bit longer so I just used the same music twice and stretched out the credits a bit to make it all fit - however the audio goes on a touch longer than the video and there is an obvious hic-cough in the middle.  By now I have decided that I want to post my Rochester Community Event with the still pictures I took as a back-up.

4.  Once I finished editing, I didn't really like the quality compared to what it looked like on my camera.  I had posted earlier about which is the best camera to buy and whether I needed a camcorder, flip video or still camera that does decent video.  One of my goals is to interview the local community at the events I promote and local business owners etc.  With interviewing, I feel I really need a microphone so I have a friend who will loan me a camcorder to see if I like it/use it/can edit it before I invest more money.

5.  Wow - I finally felt like I had accomplished something - even with the few defects.  Now I was ready to post it.  In Movie Maker, there is "Finish Video" - then save to computer, send in e-mail, save to the web.  I first clicked "publish to web" thinking this it it.  I ended up joining one of two choices for a 30 day trial and could share it with people but couldn't download it to YouTube.  So, I figured I probably need to download it directly and I have an account through my use of Real Estate Shows.  When I started downloading it from a copy on my computer, it wasn't the right extension.  So, I figured that I had to convert it once again.  However, a friend of mine said that every time you do that, you loose some of the quality - well - I thought the quality wasn't that good - I hated to loose more.  So, I played around some more and finally tried the "save to computer" option and it created the right extension for downloading to YouTube.  In my first attempt to download, I think I picked up the edited version directly out of movie maker and hadn't really saved it at all.

So, here is the Movie Premier of my very first attempt at shooting, editing and posting a Video:

Royal Oak Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service.

9 commentsCathy Tishhouse Royal Oak Real Estate • September 27 2008 05:43PM