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CommentsBe an International Video Star
Southwest Missouri businesses are making the wild world of YouTube work for them. Why aren’t you?
By Evan Fisk
(page 1 of 2)
 Illustration Cassie Darst Paul Dizmang uses YouTube to post marketing and educational videos for his 417-land real estate business. One features him in a hot tub. |
Search for Springfield, Missouri, for example, and you’ll get dozens of amateur videos from January’s ice storm mixed in with a professional music video of local musician Jeremy Larson. You might also stumble upon a two-minute video of an alien peering down on Springfield from space. (Fast food restaurants are pretty much all it sees.) And although there’s a lot of junk to sift through, there are all sorts of gems. Now some local businesses are learning that jumping on the YouTube bandwagon can be as good for business as it is for your short attention span.
Paul Dizmang is one such business owner. The 43-year-old broker and owner of Springfield-based Dizmang Associates Real Estate has been using YouTube to post his video podcasts online since February 2006. Dizmang first got the idea to focus his company’s marketing online when his office manager received a video iPod for Christmas in 2005. Looking at some of the video clips on the mp3 player, Dizmang thought he could do something similar to offer advice to locals with real estate questions. He already had a camcorder, and soon the first edition of (417) Dwellings, Dizmang’s video podcasts, was born.
“When we put it out there, we didn’t realize the number of people that would see it,” Dizmang says. “It has gone all over the world. We’ve received numerous hits from people in Singapore and the United Kingdom, not to mention tons of e-mails from people in the U.S.” And while people aren’t exactly making offers on property they’ve only seen in grainy online video footage, the podcasts have given Dizmang the chance to network and answer questions for literally hundreds of curious viewers. They’re available for download on iTunes, too. His podcast about managing property after the January ice storm chalked up more than 450 views at press time. Even a simple explanation of the difference between a realtor and a real estate agent has been watched more than 500 times. Still, none of his videos comes close to the three-minute video he shot in his hot tub. The short video shows Dizmang giving advice about moving a hot tub from one home to another while he’s in a hot tub himself.
Dizmang is not the only one looking at YouTube and thinking business opportunity. The Branson Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce posted an advertisement video called “Even Santa vacations in Branson,” showing St. Nick enjoying all the area attractions in Bermuda shorts. But it’s not just businesses hoping to put their names in the minds of prospective clients who use YouTube for business. Twenty-two-year-old Brandon Goodwin of Springfield uses the online video-sharing site for work, too, but not for advertisements. Goodwin owns Citizen Media Group, a videography company that deals mostly with weddings and freelance video jobs. Despite the fact he’s a professional videographer, Goodwin’s YouTube profile is strangely empty compared to Dizmang’s. Goodwin doesn’t keep all of his examples online for the whole world to see. Instead, the work he posts online usually consists of rough edits of jobs for his clients. “With video, people always want a new draft,” Goodwin says. “YouTube can be a good way to not waste a lot of time. It’s a lot faster than burning a draft to a DVD and mailing it. You can just upload it, they can watch it and give you feedback the same day.”
Still, at the end of the day, YouTube is mostly populated by random, funny videos. “It’s a really good way to waste time,” Goodwin says. “If you hear about something scandalous, odds are someone taped it and put it on YouTube.”
Dizmang agrees. Although most of the videos he has posted pertain to his business in some way or another, there are a few that have nothing to do with his company. One such video is entitled “Fat Man on a Scooter,” in which Dizmang tapes a large man driving down the road on a small, two-wheeled scooter from the front seat of his car. Another called “Bunny Gone Wild” depicts the Easter Bunny pole-dancing on a tree in Dizmang’s neighborhood. “Yeah, that one is kind of out there,” Dizmang says with a laugh.
Strange Easter prank video aside, Dizmang is trying to take this explosive video phenomenon seriously. He now teaches a seminar for fellow realtors called “Podcasting to Profit,” to teach other locals in his field how to harness the power of YouTube. He’ll lead a similar seminar for the public this summer, he says. (No date was set at press time. Visit getpaul.com for details.) He knew he was qualified to teach on the subject when he attended a seminar by a traveling speaker about integrating technology into the job. “The first thing he did was show my video when I was in the hot tub,” Dizmang says.
