Editor’s note: Guest blogger Chris Smith is the co-founder of the Tech Savvy Agent blog.
By CHRIS SMITH
Believe it or not, the “Print Screen” button on your keyboard actually used to fire up the printer! With the evolution of technology and cloud computing comes a myriad of useful tools and one that I highly recommend all real estate agents download: Jing.
If you are not currently leveraging a screen-capture tool for your real estate business, you are really missing out. Tech Smith is the company that first introduced us to Snagit, which many agents have come to know and love. The downside of Snagit is that it comes with a bit of a learning curve that most Realtors are not looking to push through.
Enter Jing: Also by Tech Smith, Jing simplifies the art of screen capture/sharing and has really big and easy-to-use buttons, which makes using it daily to help improve your marketing doable for all tech skill levels.
Jing has the ability to capture both simple images as well as video screen capture and has been one of the most well-received tips that I have given out over the last year.
The beauty of Jing is in the simplicity. Once you have downloaded Jing, a small sun icon will appear at the top of your screen. When you hover over the sun, it extends and allows you to then easily crop out the part of the screen you want to focus on.
Jing takes it to the next level, without becoming overly complicated: You can easily overlay text boxes and arrows. These calls to action will really spruce up the look and feel of your marketing and can also help to increase your lead conversion.
In the example below I show a standard map view of an Internet Data Exchange website and also one where I have used Jing as a way to “speak” with the visitor on my site or blog. Can you see a difference?
Both were taken using Jing, but by leveraging their easy-to-use editing tools I was able to really make option No. 2 stand out and thus convert more visitors into contacts.
Option No.1: Simple screen capture
Option No. 2: Screen capture with quick editing
As you can see, the second option really pops off the screen and also tells the consumer exactly what the next step is — in this case to contact you! Another useful tip would be to include any social media sites so that consumers can connect with you there if they prefer.
The basic Jing is a free download that can be used to create images, screenshots and video for your website, blog, direct mail and anything else you plan on putting in front of potential prospects.
Once you have cropped and edited the image you simply save it to your computer and can add it any — and everywhere. Jing works for both Mac and PC users.
As is becoming commonplace with software applications, there is also an upgraded version available called Jing Pro. If you find yourself using the free version regularly, it could be worth a minimal investment of $14.95 annually.
The additional features include one button push to post your newly created content to both Facebook and YouTube. Jing Pro also reduces the size of the files that you capture, which helps a ton with load speeds of the videos and images once they are placed on your website.
Check out the video below to see Jing in action. I feel Jing is a great addition to any Realtor’s computer. What are some of your ideas for how to use this tech-savvy tool?
Guest blogger Chris Smith is the co-founder of the Tech Savvy Agent blog, which won an Inman News Innovator Award. Future of Real Estate Marketing is a part of Inman News. Tech Savvy Agent provides bite-sized tech and social media tips daily for real estate agents, and interviews with industry leaders.