Read the related story: “12 Ways to Incorporate Video into Your Business”

Just when you felt comfortable with the concept of a blog, the momentum shifts and everyone is talking about video instead. Video blogs—or vlogs—are a way to reap the benefits of blogging (improve search engine results; increase traffic on website; establish yourself as expert in your area) while taking advantage of the increasingly popular medium of online video.

Agents can use vlogs to deliver local market updates, highlight community features or answer common questions in a compelling, visual way. “Video is the closest thing you’ve got to meeting somebody in real life,” explains Stephen P. Jagger, founding partner of Ubertor, which helps agents develop video-focused websites. “They can watch you, hear your passion for a topic, see your smile. You earn their business before they’ve even met you.”

Below we profile four vloggers who are shaping the medium—on a national scale, in the real estate industry in North America and right here in Arizona.

Want a glimpse of what video can do for a small business brand? Gary Vaynerchuk grew up around his parents’ liquor store in Springfield, NJ. He rebranded the store as the Wine Library and began a series of videos, Wine Library TV, to share his passion about wine (and talk up his favorite football team, the Jets). Catch him in action as he pairs wine with breakfast cereal in the video segment below.

Vaynerchuk has grown the family store from a $4 million business to a $45 million business. His book, Crush It!, was named one of the top business books of 2009 by Inc. Magazine. “Anybody in the world who has enough passion, and skill set around that passion, can go out and buy a $200 Flip cam[era] and put that voice to the world and then build a business around that. It’s staggering,” says Vaynerchuk.

The real estate equivalent of Vaynerchuk hails from north of the border. Ian Watt focuses on luxury condominiums in downtown Vancouver and has built his personal brand through savvy use of video. Here he is trumpeting his standing as “lucky number 13” in rankings by unit sales from the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board—pretty impressive considering he spends just $500 per month (exclusively online) on personal marketing.

Watt’s videos are nearly always shot in his car as he drives around Vancouver musing on the ups and downs of real estate in his particular niche. He isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers (as in this video where he blasts the use of lockboxes).

Kristin LaVanway, an agent with Thompson’s Realty in Gilbert, was looking for a way to increase her visibility in the marketplace. After hearing buzz at the RE BarCamp in Phoenix last spring and seeing what Ian Watt was doing in Vancouver, she started incorporating video on her blog at www.hereinphoenix.com. When she found that she enjoyed the medium and could produce new content quickly, she significantly turned up production over the last four months. “That’s the whole thing with blogging,” she says. “You have to find what you’re comfortable with and can do consistently… Now I’m really hooked.”

LaVanway has a personable, unfussy style in her video segments that was inspired by the work of Watt and Vaynerchuk. “They don’t over-think their postings,” she explains. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. That gives it some personality.” Rather than spend a lot of time rehearsing or editing, she generally prepares a few points she wants to make, gets it done in one or two takes on her Sony Handycam and then uses iMovie to edit out the beginning and end (where she’s turning on and off the camera). “If they take too much time, I won’t do it,” she says.

LaVanway has heard the critics who question ROI for blogs, vlogs and other new media. She knows that it will take time to see how vlogging shapes her business going forward but sees the attention it has already brought her. “I’ve made a lot of contacts that I would never have made without doing this,” she responds. “Some are business contacts, some potential clients. People are calling me. I got invited to an investor meet-up because of my trustee sales vlogs.” (See video below). In the end, she explains, she’d much rather be vlogging than cold calling. One downside? “You always have to put makeup on and make sure your hair looks halfway decent.”

Dean Ouellette, an agent with RE/MAX Diamond in Mesa, is another Arizonan who has incorporated vlogging into his website, www.deansellsaz.com. A blogger on different topics since 2001, he was burnt out on writing but wanted to keep blogging for his business because he knew the benefits. “Video took so much less time to do than it takes to write a blog post,” he says. “I knew I could do it on a much more consistent basis…four or five times a week.”

Like LaVanway, he does minimal editing and doesn’t work from a script. Still, their videos are as different as their personalities. Ouellette shoots mostly in the car to make the most of the time he spends driving around town. His topics come from his day-to-day real estate business—the questions he gets from clients and via email, the articles he reads, market statistics that jump out at him. His biggest surprise? Potential clients feel very comfortable talking to him because they’ve already seen his videos online. “They want somebody they can relate to and trust,” explains Ouellette. “I’m just the guy next door chatting with them.”

Ouellette gravitated toward video because of his own preferences online. “If I have two options—watch video or read something—I watch video,” he says. “So I thought, if I’m feeling this way, so are others.” As he ramped up his video output, he saw traffic to his website increase about 30%. One video on short sales, similar to the one above, netted 15-20 consumer questions off the Internet. He has also expanded to doing videos featuring small businesses in his area.

Being one of the first in the vlogging space is certainly an advantage. After thinking about his responses for a moment, he added with a smile, “Tell them it’s way too much work, and nobody else should even consider it.”