"Fear paralyzes us all. When we leap past it, new worlds can unfurl and amazing things can happen.

Ask Amy Youngren, leader of the Toronto-based five-agent team Urban Lifestyle Group. She leapt past her fear of being on camera 18 months ago and has become a video shooting star, nominated by Inman News for most innovative agent of the year and earning several high-profile conference speaking gigs.
​
The engaging, creative videos she produces for all her team’s listings have done more than raise her industry profile; they’ve propelled her business, helping to:

• Double her team’s listing inventory
• Triple the number of incoming referrals
• Generate a ton of buyer leads

Youngren's Tinder-inspired listing video that we shot in late August generated over 3,600 views on Facebook prior to the writing of this article, without any paid advertising.

She looks like a natural, doesn’t she? But that wasn’t always the case. She was afraid. Very afraid...

'I used to let my perfectionism hinder my progress,' Youngren said. People always told her to do video and she finally decided to heed the advice of two industry luminaries who preach video, prominent industry speaker Jeff Lobb and Curaytor Co-founder Chris Smith.

'The fear of not seeing the results became greater than the fear of doing it,' Youngren said.

Youngren’s just three and a half years into her real estate career, yet the swagger exhibited in her videos has propelled her already to great heights. In 2016, her team handled 254 transactions totalling $92M in sales volume. She attributes her quick success to lots of work, not much sleep, and her budding video strategy.

​Eighteen months and dozens of videos ago, Youngren started her video life small. She did [short] intros and read the entire script on the video. That’s evolved into a more relaxed style as she’s become more comfortable, but butterflies remain. 

While she’s becoming more relaxed with video and experience, she still carefully plans.
​
People comment that she looks so natural, that she slips interesting impromptu words into the videos. That’s mostly scripted and planned, Youngren said." –Paul Hagey, Curaytor

Youngren's first listing video we shot for the year 2017 talks about winter market trends.

Our client Amy Youngren truly shines on video and with a little help from us you can too! Click here to learn more and book one of our highly-sought after real estate video packages today.

If you noticed that some of your Facebook shares (via our website or others) aren't showing the thumbnail preview prior to sharing, then don't fret. You're not alone.

We see it too and unfortunately there isn't anything we can do about that.  Here is a summary of why.

According to Facebook's own documentation this is a known problem. The preview image isn't displayed until the Facebook crawler sees it, so the first person to share a page may not see a preview.

Their official advice is to use the OpenGraph Debugger and page by individual page process each URL you want Facebook to pre-cache. There are no other methods of having Facebook pre-cache images.

​So with that sadly stated, the solutions here are limited.

​If you don't want to use the Debugger tool linked above, here is our suggestion:

1. When you see the thumbnail-less post, refresh/reload your Facebook page and try sharing the link again. Facebook will ask if you are sure you want to cancel or discard your current post - say Yes.
2. Try sharing the link again.
3. Facebook should have already crawled the web link once (the first time when it came up empty handed, with no image) and now upon crawling it for a second time the thumbnail should show up.
4. Post successfully with image thumbnail!