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Hello, and welcome to Media Connexus Impression Tours. In less than ten minutes, I'm going
to show you how you can create your own professionally designed virtual tours complete with professionally
designed flyers and brochures. Let's get started.
Impression Tours launches on the "Recent Tours" screen. From here, select "New Tour". The
"Installed Themes" screen shows you all the different options you have for your tour.
All are professionally designed and come with matching flyers and brochures. Choose the
theme you wish to use by selecting the "Apply Theme" button.
Whenever you start a new tour, Impression opens the theme and the Tour Information dialog
box. The Tour Information dialog box has two tabs - one for Property Information, and one
for Common Information. The Common Information tab is for information which is typically
the same for every tour - contact info, company info, and information about you. I discuss
creating a template for this information in the "Virtual Tours - Common Information" video.
I've already created a template for this theme, so all my common information is already filled
out.
At this point, all I really need to do is fill out the Property Information, import
the media I wish to use in my tour and flyers, title the media (if I want), then order the
media as I want it to appear to the viewers.
If you have an IDX subscription, and have already uploaded information about this property
to your MLS, you can download that information as well as any photos you've uploaded to your
MLS. Simply fill out the information about your IDX account and the listing ID, or MLS
number, in the IDX Server Logon section down here. Except for the IDX Listing ID, this
information will only need to be input once.
When it's all filled out, click the "Retrieve IDX Property Information" button to get the
property information, then the "Retrieve IDX Photos" button to download the photos. If
anything is incomplete, you can edit any of this data before clicking "OK".
If you don't have an IDX membership, or have not uploaded the information to your MLS,
you'll need to fill out the form by hand. If you take this route, make sure to still
include the "IDX Listing ID" since this field appears in the virtual tour and on all flyers.
Once all the information is complete, select "OK".
Before we continue, notice how all the information we entered into the form is now in its proper
place on the tour as well as the flyers. If you wish, you can edit any of these fields
by holding the control key and clicking on them. Whatever you type into the fields on
the virtual tour will flow to the flyers. However, whatever you type into any flyer
will stay with that flyer. This is convenient if you want to have flyers with different
information on them.
Okay, next we need to get some media in there. This is our Gallery toolbar where all our
media lives. We need to begin by importing the media we wish to use. So, click on this
Import Media Asset. Navigate to the media you want, then select "Open." Alternatively,
you can drag and drop from any Windows Explorer window. And remember, since this is Impression
you can use many different types of media - pictures, videos, flash movies. Check the
help files for a complete list of the supported media types.
If you've downloaded any media from your MLS, it will be in the "Media - IDX" folder.
Okay, now that all the media we want to use is in the Gallery, we need to put it in the
correct order. This is the Tour Media toolbar and where we'll organize all the media. And
it's as simple as dragging and dropping. You can drag and drop from a Windows Explorer
window directly into the Tour Media toolbar, but you'll still have to order your media.
If you want to re-order your media, simply select it and drag it to the new position.
Notice how you get a little bar between thumbnails to show us where we're moving to. You can
remove media from your tour by dragging outside the Tour Media toolbar. You can grab several
assets by holding either shift, if they're next to each other, or holding control for
assets that aren't contiguous.
Finally, most themes provide a way for you to at least title each picture if you want
to provide more information. To edit the picture's title, hold the control key and click on the
field. If you don't want to title the picture, hold the control key, click on the field,
then delete the contents of the field. Though the filed will still say "", the text
will not appear in the published virtual tour nor on any flyers.
One last thing and we'll be done with the tour. Some music would be nice. Every Media
Connexus theme comes with a couple options for background music that you're free to use.
They're located in the Gallery toolbar under "Theme Media". Simply pick the one you like.
Drag it to the stage, and you'll see a red speaker where you can drop the media. Of course,
you could also import your own audio file and use that.
Okay, so we've got the virtual tour in the order we want. We've titled the pictures we
want to title. Let's look at the flyers. Notice how the media assets we used in the virtual
tour have passed directly through to the flyers. Impression takes your media in the order of
your virtual tour. If you don't like the media being used for the flyers, you could always
change them. All you need to do is drag from the Gallery toolbar to the stage. When you
do, little red targets will appear to show you where you can drop the media. Simply drop
right on the target.
Before we publish and print, it's a good idea to go through the tour and flyers and make
sure everything is as you want it. Every theme is different, so you'll want to be familiar
with them and know what information you can put in.
Great - time to publish and print. Select "Publish". The QR code on the flyers, and
the large format QR code are set to link to the virtual tour online. So, the QR code on
the flyers won't be correct until you actually upload the tour. So, let's upload the tour.
Make sure "Virtual Tour" is selected and click on "Manage Online Tours". This is the Impression
Manager screen. It shows all the tours you've uploaded to our servers and is where you'd
manage them. We need to get one up there, so click on "Upload/Update this Tour". A little
progress bar shows up in the lower left. You can cancel your upload by clicking this "Cancel"
button. If you make changes to your virtual tour, this is the same process you'd go through
to update that tour.
Okay, so our tour is uploaded and it shows up right here. This web address is the address
of your personal portfolio created by Media Connexus. It's the location of all your tours
that are in any of your portfolios, which I’ll discuss in just a moment. If you'd
like, you can send people to this web address and they'd be able to view all your virtual
tours. The important information here is your customer id which is this last string of numbers.
You'll need that number for integrating with your own website.
Each tour you upload will have its own unique web address as well. That's here. You might
want to use this address in your other marketing material. The portfolio drop-down box here
is for integration with your own website. How we integrate with your website is beyond
the scope of this video, but there are detailed instructions in the help files. However, let
me demonstrate how easy it is to manage the virtual tours on your website from within
Impression. Right now, this tour is not in any portfolio on my website. If I select "Include
in Portfolio 1", this tour will immediately appear in the portfolio I've designated as
portfolio one on my website. Which you see here. If I change it to "Include in Portfolio
2", again, the tour is immediately changed to the portfolio I've designated as portfolio
number two. With some really simple code, put once into your website, you'll be able
to manage which virtual tours appear on your website and where they appear. If you no longer
wish a tour to be on your website, set it to be "Not in Portfolio".
The trial version of Impression Tours allows you to upload only three tours to our website.
In addition, those tours will have watermarks on the tour and flyers. If you purchase any
of the tour packs, these watermarks will be removed from all tours - even the ones you've
already uploaded. Since the number of tours you can display at any one time will always
be limited, you'll want to manage how many tours you have on our servers. Once a property
has sold, or is otherwise taken off the market, you can delete the tour from our servers to
free up a slot.
Okay, that's all there is here. Let's click "Done" and go back to the previous screen.
Now that the tour has been uploaded, the default QR code on the flyers and the large format
QR code is now replaced with the correct QR code. Your flyers and large format QR code
are ready for printing. Simply select the flyer you wish to print then click on "Print".
If you want to have your flyers professionally printed, you can save the flyer as a PDF and
give that to your printer. We've also included a direct link to FedEx Office so you can upload
this PDF to them and have them print
your flyers.