5 Steps to Reduce the Pain of Starting a Business Blog

Blogging can be intimidating for someone who hasn’t done it in the past or grown up in the age where everyone has a personal blog.  It is, however, critical that business owners and marketers ‘blog for business.’  Putting pen to paper or more appropriately, putting fingers to your keyboard is the biggest challenge for most people.  So let’s talk about how to get started.

1. If you’re hesitant to put your voice out there for fear of being critiqued, start small.  Go to blogs in your industry and start reading.  Reading is the easiest way to get started.  See what others are talking about, review the comments.  Place a few relevant comments on other blogs to get a feel for what it’s like to be out in the blogosphere.

2. Blogging doesn’t have to be technical.  Setting up a blog for your business is as easy as setting up a sub-domain or a sub-directory of your main website.  If you have an IT team, this will take them a matter of minutes.  If not, it’s still a relatively easy exercise.  Depending upon where you host the site (i.e. Network Solutions, GoDaddy), their support department should have detailed instructions on how to set-up a sub-domain.  There are also inbound marketing software packages that have blog software included.

3. Determine who your audience is going to be and why you are blogging.  Think about what you are trying to accomplish with a blog.  Is your objective to entertain, educate or just drive visibility to your company/industry?  Write these personas down.  You may think you’ve thought of everything, but you haven’t.  If you had to give a 30 second pitch on all of the people you were writing for, could you?  Craft your articles based on the personas you have outlined.  This will help you target your audience and solid blog content.

4. Figuring out what to write about when getting started is a snap.  Review old email to find common questions that leads or customers have asked about.  Chances are you already have quite a bit of content in your email.  Drop it into your blog and do a little editing based on how you’ve defined your audience and BOOM… you have your first article.  Do this until you feel comfortable drafting new content.  If you don’t have information like this available, go to other blogs and take your own spin on controversial or interesting posts.

5. Post!  Seth Godin is one of those rare big thinkers and he has produced several best selling books.  One of the most interesting points he makes is that you cannot wait for every piece of something to be perfect.  You must produce work.  Produce it.  Get feedback.  Tinker with it and then produce more work.  If you wait for the perfect topic, the perfect title, the perfect content, you will never get anything out the door.  If you never get anything out the door, you’ll never get any better at blogging.  Don’t put something on your blog with spelling and grammar mistakes, but just start writing and posting.  It’s the fastest way to get better, become a thought-leader in your space, drive traffic and ultimately inbound links.

For more articles like this one checkout Buying A Rent Roll

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Ten Ways to Sell with a Tablet

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to your paperback, tablet computing is heating up. Here are 10 ideas to tap your tablet and turn it into an indispensable sales tool.

Just in time to save Christmas – and maybe the real estate industry – are an array of Android-based tablets are hitting the streets. These devices aren’t designed to compete with the iPad: they are designed to compete with your laptop. That’s why you’re going to love using them to work on the go, communicate with clients and make more sales. Lighter, faster, smarter, the new tablets hitting the market are going to unleash a whole new level of productivity for people who have avoided upgrading to a smartphone (“it’s too small!”) and refuse to carry their laptop around (“it’s too heavy!”).

Here are ten cool things you can do with your tablet that are just perfect for next generation real estate sales professionals:

1. Better brochures. It’s one thing to attract client with your website; it’s another to leverage that site while working with them. Whether you’re showing homes or chatting at an open house, your tablet lets you reference your website during the sales process. With the ease of a pad of paper, you can access articles, videos, calculators, on your website, while keeping the conversation naturally flowing. You’ll have all the reference data you need without ever forgetting the “right brochure” at the office.
2. Better product staging. The best home staging falls apart once we hand customers a pathetically printed listing sheet. With a tablet, listing information will become interactive. Reference information about the property, video descriptions of the neighborhood and other deep-data that no printout can supply. Then, tap to email it or share it socially with the buyers. That’s product staging and selling!
3. Engage imagination. Most buyers preview homes furnished the way the owners prefer. It’s hard for them to imagine what their furniture would look like or grasp layout opportunities in their minds. New tablets with digital cameras (duh, iPad!), will let you snap an image of a room and use software to mark up the image. Switch to video and  you could record ideas for painting, point out special features or just imagine-out-loud – then email your creative ideas to customers to dream about later.
4. On Screen! Since the days of Dick Tracey we’ve been waiting for wristwatch video conferencing. With the new batch of tablets, it will become an instant reality. In fact, some tablets will have two cameras – one on each side. Imagine video chatting with a client while streaming a virtual walk-through of a home or neighborhood from the second camera. Video conferencing holds opportunities for prospecting, negotiating and closing – all times when a smile is worth a thousand words!
5. Gather better data. Tablets will combine the sophistication of a competent laptop with the simplicity of a pen/touchpad and the visual clarity of a camera. That’s one powerful data gathering device, and it will transform data management. Imagine a “broker tour” where you snap photos, record your impressions and save it instantly into your database. You’ll be better equipped to catalog and analyze the market, then represent that content to prospective clients.
6. Take better notes. In addition to gathering market data, tablets will improve capturing client data as you take notes as easily as writing on a notepad. Typing on a laptop might be rude in a conversation today, so tablets using quiet, finger-swype data entry will be less intrusive. Even digital audio recording could help you take capture and store data faster – improving your ability to recall and manage a client’s preferences, feedback and instructions. Goodbye to sticky notes forever!
7. Leads management. At last check, fully 40% of REALTORS still did own a smartphone with access to email. The common reason given is simply that smartphones are “too” small for many agents to use comfortably. Thus, new leads and client opportunities go un-checked while agents are away from the home or office. Tablets models will be “just right” for this problem – larger than a smartphone, yet smaller than a laptop or iPad. Samsung’s Tab, for instance, features seven inches of viewing and typing space, at only 380 grams. Finally, agents will be able to check email as easily as carrying a financial calculator.
8. Socialize sooner. Along with email, updating Facebook or Twitter on tiny smartphone screens may also be responsible for nearly 49% of agents who did not yet have a social media presence. Wireless tablets make socializing with your sphere of influence frequently throughout the day as easy as mailing a form-letter. Scrolling news feeds, sharing content and photos and even posting a video blog can be done while waiting for the buyer to show up at the listing.
9. Localize opportunities. If real estate is about “location,” what better way to leverage location data than the GPS  in a tablet. Tablet-based satellite data can display layers of valuable information on an interactive map. From traffic and weather to restaurants and entertainment, maps will come alive as sales tools to engage prospects. Show consumer heat maps  - income, foot traffic, spending profiles – to commercial clients. Layer on social content – friends, jobs, environmental data – to the home a buyer is considering. Combining satellite and internet data into one screen gives a whole new meaning to “directions” for your sales prospects.
10. Learn. Tablets are a big step towards improving online learning. They combine the familiarity of a book with the power of a computer. Read news feeds, monitor real-time market data or watch training videos as easily as you would use your iPod – even better, since it will be real-time wireless content, without the need to synchronize with a computer. Learn on the go, brushing up sales skills or exploring new opportunities as easy as swiping a finger to turn the page.

It’s a sure bet that the next generation tablets are going to make next generation sales professionals a competitive force in the marketplace. With new features like cameras, video conferencing, expandable storage and just-right screen sizes, the age of the pen and paper will finally come to an end. Perhaps just in time, too, for real estate agents ready to work with the Gen X and Gen Y buyers and sellers of the future.

For more articles like this one checkout Buying A Rent Roll

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6 Ways to Make Your Website Faster, More Flexible

Many of us have experience with sites that can be slow to make changes on things as simple as title tags. This slowness causes more problems than you may even realize, and will be one major factor in the future of SEO and all of your e-commerce success.

Why it's Important to be Fast

When I first started as a content manager many years ago, I greatly underestimated how much our web site was going to change. I asked for budget for a project, and my colleague and I were pretty sure that we would be set for a long time. Of course, now I realize a million changes were set to come.

The e-commerce and SEO landscape is always changing. Reacting to those changes is a significant competitive advantage.

How quickly did you get your Like button or Google Analytics' new asynchronous tracking? How soon were you ready for the iPad? How quickly are you able to get A/B tests live, and how long after do you implement the winning pages?

Think about affiliates, for example. You may have affiliates that have driven significant revenue to your site because some of them can be so quick to adapt to new SEO, PPC, and other strategies. Or, consider the online-only competitors that came out of nowhere because they had better sites than the established leaders.

Long term, spending money on projects that will allow you to change your site quicker is a great investment. Your cart is going to be better? Great -- but for how long? By the time you get it live, it's out of date. Best practices are always changing, and quicker now than ever.

Where to Improve

• CMS flexibility: Want to be faster without IT help? Have a powerful CMS, custom to what you do, giving more writers, editors, merchandisers, and designers access to what they need.

• Platform and module flexibility: Ask yourself what happens in six months when you don't like everything about a platform anymore. Can you add and customize modules? Should you buy or build solutions?

• Team: No matter the architecture choices you've made, someone is going to have to actually make the updates. Is your team dedicated to the website? Or do they have other duties slowing them down?

• Budget: Team and budget seem to be part of a seesaw in some ways. If you don't have much of a team, you should at least have some budget to outsource, or vice versa.

• Red tape: Does it take 20 signatures to change the alt text on an image? Teams need to be allowed to be able to make decisions on their own.

• Testing: As you make more changes, you can expect errors and copy mistakes. You should be able to fix them faster conversely. Budget for keeping up with regular testing across many browsers and devices to help catch them faster.

You still need great content, good copywriting, good marketing ideas, and more to have a successful site. But everything you want to do with your online presence can be made better when you are fast and nimble. A fast, flexible site is more forgiving of bad decisions when good ones can be rolled out soon.

For more articles like this one checkout Buying A Rent Roll

via searchenginewatch.com

5 Common Mistakes Bloggers Make

I've been blogging for quite a while now, both for my own blogs, (personal and business), as well as here at Search Engine Watch.

In the past few years, I've made a lot of mistakes blogging, and I've seen others make a lot of mistakes. As we all know, we can learn from mistakes!

Here are some lessons we can learn from some common mistakes many bloggers have made, and are still making today.

A Post Isn't Just for the Home Page

A common mistake many bloggers make is that they think only in terms of the home page. On group blogs, some contributing bloggers will complain that their blog post was "only on top for a few hours." Yes, the top position will get you the most traffic, but only within the first few hours.

But a blog post doesn't vanish once it leaves the home page! The blog post lives on!

A blog post can very well be part of the long tail. Once its gone from the home page you can get a lot of attention for a specific post.

Of course, there is the way we all specialize in: making it visible in search engines. But there's more.

It isn't a crime, for example, to promote older blog posts, especially when the topic all of a sudden is "hot" again. Tweet out older posts, connect them to current news events, and if you do it right you can even get them to show up in Google News (again) when a related topic is in the news by using 301 redirects.

The crux is to keep the post "alive." Use the different methods (social media, search, and links within the website) to bring older posts back into the attention.

Blogging Should be Fun

Once a blog starts getting visitors a strange thing happens. The blog owners start believing they have to write content to keep the visitors coming. That usually turns out in a lot of posts about nothing. The fun of blogging disappears, and so will the visitors.

Once you start writing because you have to write and the fun is gone, the quality of your posts will drop. Readers will notice.

We all know that people want posts they can relate to and that quality matters. It's better to write a little bit less than write crappy content.

Don't Think Your Readers are Stupid

You're probably the most knowledgeable person in your industry, right? Nobody knows better than you how to get things done and how to be successful?

No? You're not? So why are you acting as if you are?

Many bloggers make the mistake of claiming too much fame without having earned that fame. That is very dangerous. There is always someone who knows more than you.

Thinking you know it all means that one person who knows more is going to find you and will most probably take you down. Which means you will lose your credibility. And once you've lost that, no matter what you write, people will no longer trust your writings.

Make sure you're always open for comments, tips, changes, and for those who know a (even if its only a little bit) more than you.

Your Readers Don't Know it All!

What? Wait, didn't I just say you don't know it all and that you shouldn't shout out to loud that your way is the only way because your readers might know more on a topic than you do? Yes I did. But that doesn't mean you should think your readers know it all.

Yes, there are some very knowledgeable readers among your visitors, I'm sure. Just like you're a very knowledgeable reader of Search Engine Watch.

But many of them might also need some extra help in some matters. If you start throwing around only advanced terms, your audience will become very small. If that's your goal, getting only the attention of the very advanced, that's OK, but you probably want a bit more than that. Make sure you explain some elements and don't use too much advanced language.

What the Others do Isn't Always Right

Finally, you've probably noticed the amount of copycats on the web. Do a search for a simple phrase in your niche and you'll probably find a lot of similar sites. Even the "big ones" in the tech industry (e.g., TechCrunch, Mashable) and the different leading sites in different countries look the same.

One the one hand, that's good. Take the best from the best and put it on your blog makes sure people will feel right at home and some things actually work because the big ones have tested them out.

But be careful: not everything the others do is right. Sometimes you see other sites do things you might like, but which might not be that nice for the readers of your blog.

Don't copy the bad things. It's like when you were in high school: if you didn't study, you had to be careful copying from your neighbors, because they might be writing down the wrong answers!

Another danger of copying what others do is that you don't stand out. If there are 10 sites people can pick from in the SERPs, they'll either pick out the ones they know or the ones that stand out.

Conclusion: Think From a User Perspective

These are just a few mistake some bloggers make. Be careful you don't make the same mistakes.

But also, you can look at this post in a different way. Even I'm not always right, so some things might work out for you anyway.

Regardless, always ask yourself one question every time you change something on your blog: does this benefit my readers?

For more articles like this one checkout Buying A Rent Roll

via searchenginewatch.com

5 Tips to Kick Start Your Link Building via Social Media Monitoring

Lately there's been renewed interest in building links via social media monitoring. To build links this way, a link builder creates a monitoring search in their favorite social media tool and waits for it to find news stories, blog posts, tweets, comments, and other social content. Each new post is an opportunity to find a relevant influencer and build a relationship.

Unfortunately, in some niches or with some very narrowly-targeted searches, the amount of new content being posted may be one or two items per week, which wouldn't exactly fill the link builder's schedule. It's important to start your social media link building with a thorough review of the amassed social content that already exists. So here are a few tips to find bloggers faster with highly-targeted, relevant searches.

1. Get Your Search Phrases Right

Think about your ultimate audience and the language that bloggers writing for that audience will tend to use. Let's say you're building links to an apartment hunting site for a linkable asset of interest to landlords. You would create a set of phrases that are likely to appear in posts speaking to landlords.

For example, bloggers writing for a landlord audience would tend to use phrases such as "my tenants," "your tenants," or "resident satisfaction." Because these phrases are so specific and identify with their audience, the chance of these searches returning junk posts is greatly reduced. Of course, with searches this narrow, you'll find precious little new content published on a daily basis, which leads to the next tip.

2. Start with a Google Blog Search

Now with that super-targeted list of can't-miss search terms, head over to Google Blog Search and start reviewing the archives. Use Google's time-based searches to restrict your results to posts within the past month or year. Use this step to build a list of good prospective blogs.

3. Search Google News Archive

OK, this is a little bit of cheating, but a search of newspaper archives is an excellent supplement to a blog search. As the line between blogger and traditional journalist fades, any journalist who has recently written for your audience is likely to also blog on similar topics.

The main challenge is tracking down their blog. One way to do this is to search Google for their name in quotes and remove their newspaper from the search results -- e.g., ["david pogue" -site:nytimes.com].

4. Blog Directory + Google Custom Search = A Wee Bit o' Awesome

Whereas the last two tips focus on finding blogs by searching blog and news archives, this tip involves using blog directories to find a broad list of blogs, then dumping them into a Google Custom Search, and searching it with your narrow keyword searches.

To do this, first browse AllTop, PostRank, and Scribnia to find blogs that are generally-related to your topic. For example, to target bloggers writing for landlords, you should include all blogs categorized as real estate.

It's OK to include more general blogs at this step because you'll be narrowing it down later with your searches. Once you have the list, create a Google Custom Search engine by entering each blog in this format:

*.site.com/*

Once your custom search engine is populated, you can start running searches for your target keywords. You'll discover some high quality, highly relevant content this way, which can help you find relevant influencers.

5. Save Time by Combining Monitoring with Influence Metrics

There are many quality paid social media monitoring tools that will automatically look up a blog's influence for you, allowing you to sort your results by mozRank, PageRank, etc. But there is also a free method to do this. Create Google Alerts or Social Mention searches, grab the RSS feeds (if there are multiple feeds, you can merge and filter them with FeedRinse), and add them to Google Reader.

But the key tool that will really save you time though is the PostRank Extension for Google Reader, which is available for both Chrome and Firefox. This extension automatically scores the importance of your monitoring results as you view them in Google Reader. You'll save time each day by filtering out the lower authority blogs and spam, enabling you to spend more time on the higher quality publications.

So there are five tips to help you quickly ramp up link building via social media monitoring. Before you go, here's one bonus tip: track your blog prospects in a link management tool, a spreadsheet, or a social bookmarking tool.

Ideally, you should record relevant metrics and your own scoring criteria (such as those discussed in "6 Metrics You Need to Manage Link Building"). However, if you don't have tool or filling out a spreadsheet is too time-consuming, then you can manage your findings with a private social bookmarking tool like Diigo, which enables everyone on your team to track and tag bookmarks (don't overlook the power of tags -- you can capture a lot of metrics with them).

With your new list of relevant bloggers, it's time to start building relationships, which is a great way to use your time while you wait for your daily social media monitoring searches to start sending new stuff your way.

For more articles like this one checkout Buying A Rent Roll

via searchenginewatch.com

How to Create Site Information Architecture

So you want to build a website. You went out and got your domain, your designer, and are already writing content.

Wow, you think, this isn't so hard. I don't get what all the fuss is about. Making websites is easy. Then you think, Hmmm...maybe I'm forgetting something. What could it be?

Well you did forget something very important. You forgot the most obvious, most overlooked, and most difficult part of creating any site: your site information architecture -- or in layman's terms, your site blueprint.

Now this happens with more sites than not, but why?

• Seems obvious because you need some type of structure when you build anything, but isn't that what HTML is for?

• Assumed, so overlooked because structure is often just designed in by the designer or writer, no one stops to think about the structure these team members are actually creating and assumes the task complete.

• Can be difficult because when done properly a site architecture will cause you to question not only your website direction, but everything your business does online, and off.

Why You Need a Site Information Architecture

Your site information architecture is essentially your building plan. If you were building a house, it would be your blueprint. You wouldn't build a house without a blueprint, so why would you build a website without a proper site architecture?

The architecture tells your designer what parts of the site should be graphically emphasized, either for user retention or revenue generation. It also tells your content team what content they are creating and your business team how they will best evaluate how well the site meets their business goals.

Without a plan there is no clear goal. With no clear goals, it becomes difficult to have a successful site.

Without a proper architecture, sites tend to wander aimlessly with no clear direction or pathing, so users don't get the information they need; you don't get the conversions you desire; and over time the site languishes.

In addition, without proper architecture your on-site search engine optimization (SEO) efforts are hindered. So, as with a house, proper planning is often the difference between success and failure.

So What Makes a Good Site Architecture?

A good architecture thrives on topic specificity and proper sub-categorizations. The architecture is generally comprised of the following:

• Top (or primary) level navigation

  • You select these by what topics are most important to your users and what paths you need to bring in revenues or path users to site goals. These aren't always mutually exclusive.

  • Redundancy is good, though repetition is not. When using redundancy, don't use the same terminology.

  • Don't combine categories unless this is how they are always used outside of your website. A category shouldn't be generalized to where you're covering two separate topics under one top-level item.

Secondary level navigation

• Each top-level navigation item should be specific enough that they can't be duplicated, but broad enough that subtopics, or secondary navigational items can easily fit within the topic in a logical manner.

Tertiary level navigation

• Only large sites have a need for tertiary (or third level) navigation. If you have a small site and are using a tertiary level navigation, then you probably want to re-examine your top level navigation and make sure you made each category specific enough.

Fourth level navigation

• There is almost no reason a site, except a very large one that has been properly outlined, should have a fourth level navigation. If you have a fourth level navigation in more than one or two sections of your site, re-examine your architecture and see where you can make adjustments.

Keep it Quick

Keep each category set as similar as possible (i.e., if you do it for one, you do it for the next) and do your best to make sure you have all content within four clicks of the home page.

Does this mean users have to be to the end of the content by the fourth click? No. The user just had to have found the content path by the fourth click. If not, then you're likely to lose the user, but as long as you have them in the path by this point you will be OK.

Of course, the rule of quick applies. The quicker you get them to their information, the better your chances for retention and/or conversion. So whenever you can shorten the path without sacrificing content, do!

SEO & Site Architecture

Your navigation contains the site path for the user, but also the search engine spider. So make sure before you do your site architecture you have done your keyword research. Hone in on those words and use those in your architecture, your URLs and your linking structures. No architecture should be rendered complete before the keyword research has been finalized and incorporated into the site plan.

Being an Architect is Tough, Isn't it?!

Site architecture is tricky business and people who do it well are worth the time and money. But when you have to do it yourself, remember nothing beats an excellent site architecture for your customers and for the search engines.

It's sort of like when you get a map. If the map is easy to read, easy to use, and provides you a proper path to where you need to go, you'll find your journey much more enjoyable. Users and search engines are no different when trying to find your content.

Simplify. Make the path an easy one and you'll be rewarded with happy customers and satiated spiders.

However, developing a true site architecture means looking at your business goals and departmental contributions and how those should be represented on your website. So this may invoke discussions such as which department deserves home page real estate and which vertical appears on the top-level navigation. This alone can cause internal and departmental conflicts.

This can become an intensely personal, or even territorial, debate, so try not to be too surprised the first time you work on your company's site architecture. If you treat these discussions as potentially riddled with these inherent issues, and follow these suggestions, you should avoid many obvious pitfalls.

For more articles like this one checkout Buying A Rent Roll

via searchenginewatch.com

As the Economy Gets Moving, Will Your People Do the Same?

According to Deloitte's recent annual "Ethics & Workplace Survey", one-third of employed Americans plan to look for a new job once the economy recovers. That's an astounding figure that, in many cases, could be mitigated if organizations invested in a long-term strategic approach to motivate and reward staff. Many companies assume they need to roll out extravagant rewards to make a big impact. This is not so, and I've found that a healthy retention rate can be achieved by following the tips listed below.

1. Management training builds morale and employee dedication: The status of an employee's relationship with his or her manager is the most sensitive indicator of whether he will stay or quit. It's not enough that a manager is nice; they need to communicate clear expectations to the employee, offer ongoing feedback about performance and provide a framework within which the employee can perceive success. Ensuring that employees are provided with clear feedback on their performance and that they clearly understand their earning potential will let them know they're valued and an important part of the long-term bigger picture.

2. Embrace employee opinions or risk losing their respect: As I wrote in June, corporate culture is the way employees describe where they work, understand the business and see themselves as part of the organization. If an employee feels empowered and comfortable to speak freely within the company, they are more likely to feel a part of the business. Ask yourself: Does my organization solicit ideas and provide an environment in which people are comfortable providing valuable feedback? If so, this will create a happy and more productive work force. If the company does not promote an open door policy for feedback, employees often disengage and ultimately go looking for a better fit.

3. Recognize your staff: Employees like to know that they're valued members of a larger team, and recognition for a job well done goes a long way in establishing company loyalty. If offering a raise, cash bonus or additional paid-time off aren't options, nonfinancial rewards, title promotions and new assignments are all great alternatives--and often mean more than financial recognition. Offer top performers a greater role in decision making or set them up with a mentor. If a business prefers to financially reward employees but cannot afford pay raises, bonuses are also an effective tactic.

4. Create a sense of community: One of the biggest benefits to working in a small or midsize business is the closeness of an environment where people know each other beyond just a name and a face; it can become a true community. Leverage this strength by holding potlucks, picnics and even the occasional social hour. Being part of a community can be a powerful counterpoint when a larger, more impersonal entity tries to recruit your star employees.

5. Transparency goes a long way in building trust: Share financial details and other company information with employees, and solicit their input. If employees feel they're part of the overall process of moving your business forward, they will not only stay productive, but they will also support new ideas that come from management.

I truly believe that to succeed and retain top performers, business leaders must provide an honest snapshot of the company's future goals. I hold an all-hands meeting quarterly to review the previous quarter, reveal company financials and asses the company's achievements in relation to the goals we set. This provides an opportunity for staff to ask questions and allows the entire company to hear the same message.

As validation of this idea, Deloitte's survey identified that 48 percent of respondents cited loss of trust in their employer, and 46 percent claimed lack of transparent communication from their company's leadership were the primary reasons for pursuing new employment at the end of the recession.

The bottom line is that employees are the one asset a company categorically cannot do without; the retention of key employees is crucial to a company's long-term health and success. As the economy stabilizes, many CEOs and managers are rightfully concerned that their best talent will look for greener pastures at other companies--an occurrence that will only escalate as the economy continues to improve.

For more articles like this one checkout Buying A Rent Roll

via entrepreneur.com

4 Ways to Attend Meetings On Your iPad

When Apple's iPad launched in April, it was marketed primarily as a consumer device for reading, playing games and viewing media. But as the tablet computer's popularity has grown, so too has its usefulness in other arenas, including business.

One of the many business needs met by the 900-app strong "Business" category in the App Store is the ability to attend online meetings. The device is particularly well-suited to attending meetings on the go, with its large screen for viewing the presentation and microphone and speakers for VoIP-based discussions.

GoToMeeting

The popular Web conferencing app GoToMeeting jumped onto the iPad bandwagon early, producing an app that is easy and even sort of fun to use. Simply enter the meeting ID number and your name to join the meeting. From there, you can view the presenter's screen, hear others speaking and respond via the device's microphone or via a headset.

When you first do it, something about holding the meeting presentation in your hands and responding by speaking out loud feels very natural and kind of cool. The only drawback of the app is the inability to take over as meeting presenter or organize meetings from the app. That has to be done from the GoToMeeting desktop interface.

WebEx

The iPad app for WebEx is very similar to GoToMeeting, in that it's a very cool way to participate in a Web-based conference call and view the presenter's screen. Again, the meetings cannot be scheduled or hosted from the iPad, but rather must be set up from a Web browser on the desktop. If you haven't been invited to a meeting, but still want to try the app, WebEx lets you join a demo meeting with real, live strangers.

Skype for iPhone

It's not the most elegant solution overall, but if your team happens to already use Skype on the desktop for chat-based meetings, the iPad-compatible iPhone app is a great complement to that. It doesn't support video chat (not that it would work on the camera-less iPad anyway), but perhaps that will be in the pipeline if rumors of a front-facing camera on the next iPad come to fruition.

Fuze Meeting

The newest entrant to this space, Fuze Meeting is also the most feature-rich iPad meeting app to date. Unlike GoToMeeting and WebEx, Fuze Meeting lets you initiate and host meetings from the iPad, without requiring any action in a desktop browser. It works with Keynote presentations, supports instant messaging and integrates with Dropbox for access to files hosted in the cloud. Other players in this space will undoubtedly be taking a cue from the new Fuze Meeting app and hopefully beef up their own offerings to compete.

For more articles like this one checkout Buying A Rent Roll

via readwriteweb.com

Strong Growth for Local Online Advertising

Slow rebound overall but a 30% increase online

Local advertising spending is holding up better in 2010 than previously expected, according to estimates from BIA/Kelsey. The firm, which initially predicted a nearly 1% drop in overall local ad spending this year, forecast growth of 2.1% to $133.3 billion by year-end.

Drilling down into where that spending will occur, online is the source of all growth in the space. Traditional local spending, after a dramatic plunge in 2009, will continue a downward trajectory through 2011 and will not recover to earlier spending levels. But rising spending on the web will fuel overall increases in the local space from 2010 through 2014.

The growth of online local ad spending, along with the stagnation of traditional efforts, will mean online takes an ever greater slice of the local advertising pie in coming years. Online has already increased its share by 50%, from 10% in 2008 to 15% this year. By 2014, BIA/Kelsey expects nearly one in four local ad dollars to be spent on digital.

“The strength and popularity of certain media over the next five years in the local media marketplace will dramatically affect the distribution of advertising spending for many of the advertising categories,” said Tom Buono, CEO at BIA/Kelsey, in a statement. “Players in the local market need to be aware of their media competition for each of these advertising categories.”

In August, Borrell Associates released somewhat more conservative estimates of local online spending. The firm predicted advertisers will spend $13.7 billion on local online ads this year, a number set to increase 17.5% to $16.1 billion in 2011.

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via emarketer.com

The New Business Intelligence of Social Media

As one who runs a social media agency, I'm often addressing questions around the topic of social media research, monitoring, and analytics. The questions vary, but are typically consistent in nature:

1. How is research valuable to social media?

2. What do all these tracking tools provide to guide strategy and tactics?

3. What should we really be doing with social media?

Answers to these questions may be unique to any given effort, but a common best practice for entering and maintaining a wide range of social media initiatives begins with business intelligence (BI), a term first coined over 50 years ago to describe computer-based approaches for analyzing data to support decision making.

The Tools and Top 5 Measurable Attributes

Having worked with lead offerings developed by companies that include Crimson Hexagon, Buzz Metrics, Collective Intellect, Radian6, Sysomos, Filtrbox, and Umbria, here's a quick summary of function and value:

1. Volume of Conversation and Share of Voice: Find and track a significant amount of content within online "conversations" that matter to you most. For benchmarking purposes, conversations are often segmented by subject matter (competitive/industry brands, products, services) and source (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, etc).

2. Identification of Key Themes, Opinions and Trending Topics: The tag cloud is a basic representation of this. If the volume of data warrants, filtering conversations by theme and topic is a way to obtain deeper meaning and value.

3. Sentiment Analysis: The main function is indexing the tone of conversations (positive, negative or neutral), with more sophisticated insights gained through content matched to varying degrees of sentiment (satisfied vs. very satisfied).

4. Influencer Identification: This is about growing a database of relevant individuals, organizations, and web properties with a history or potential of influencing conversations about your subject matter. Beyond traditional influencer identification, companies like Linkfluence focus on identifying how content spreads through and across communities (lifestyle, gossip, political, etc.).

5. Social Graphing and Viral Tracking: Tools from companies like Rapleaf give insights into where your customers (and potential customers) frequent online by linking e-mail addresses to user accounts within social networking properties (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, etc.).

   Beyond web analytics, tools like Meteor enable you to track what goes viral and, importantly, where it goes viral. It's easy to assume a well-known influencer or community will spread your content like wild fire, but the reality is it may better propagate through several lesser-known communities.

The Big Question: How is this Data Actionable?

The gap between data and actionable strategy is a common frustration. If the data doesn't inspire strategy, then no action will occur. If there's no action, there's no ROI.

Here are a few examples of social BI in action.

• Content Development: If you had to boil down the ingredients of social media marketing, the two elements would be content and context. Social BI gives insight to where you should be engaging in social media, and with what kind of content. Knowledge gained can be applied from a branding (brand vs. products/services), sales, development, and customer service perspective. Note: because of social media, we're all in the customer service business!

• Influencer Monitoring and Outreach: I once worked with a company that said they wanted to know every time Adobe was mentioned online. That's like boiling the ocean. How about filtering sources that influence conversation about Adobe, being aware of what they are discussing, and applying that knowledge to any number of applicable strategies?

• Prioritization: You may want to launch an effort on Facebook, but discover your target audience is busy digesting Slideshare presentations in LinkedIn. Social BI can help prioritize your efforts from both a platform and tactical perspective.

Considering the numerous choices associated with social strategy and execution, it might just be safe to say companies not taking advantage of business intelligence are being... um, unintelligent.

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Activating Sales in the New Media Environment

Hugh Boyle
Head of Digital—Europe, Africa and the Middle East at Ogilvy Action
Ogilvy.com

Hugh Boyle joined Ogilvy Action in early 2005 and built it into an interactive consultancy and production operation within the Ogilvy family of agencies. Boyle spoke with eMarketer about today’s new media environment and how consumers can be moved creatively toward purchase decisions.

eMarketer: Ogilvy Action has 44 offices worldwide and a mission to "activate sales." What is your approach to this task?

Hugh Boyle: Ogilvy Action is the fastest-growing division of the Ogilvy Group worldwide, and without question it has been brands’ emerging need for brilliant retail and sales activation—which today is essential to compete and capture market share—that's driven that growth.

The traditional broadcast options were fragmenting more and more, and through the emergence of 3G mobile, consumers were increasingly able to do more out-of-home. Inevitably, retail, experiential and digital became the new channels in which to engage with consumers and push them over the line to purchase. And they are the cornerstones of our approach.

We believe that any activation program can be blessed with absolute relevance, which is certainly not the case with all CPM-based traditional channels. We can find consumers based on what they want to buy, where they talk about what they buy and, of course, where they shop. We actually go where they are.

eMarketer: Which examples of your recent work do you think stand out for their insight and innovation?

Boyle: I think the digital work we did for the launch of the Motorola “Blur” Android product demonstrates this best.

We were asked to activate the overarching brand campaign in the digital space. Not only did we build a compelling traditional web-based campaign that prompted record-breaking clickthroughs to purchase, we also took the campaign out, about and into retail proximity using new digital spaces. For example, the work was seen on hundreds of digital outdoor spaces on the London Transport system. And then, flirting ever so slightly with the law, we reached people in social spaces and places where they shopped, by projecting enormous, dramatic moving images across well-known London buildings including the Westfield shopping complex, St. Paul’s Cathedral and the tower of the Tate modern museum.

“We proved that successful product activation is less a result of pure investment in mass media and more a result of identifying your target audience and being where they are.”

Taking the product to such places created a huge buzz in the social community. Thousands of videos of our projected outdoor graphics were captured on mobile phones and uploaded to YouTube. Tech bloggers lauded the device and peer-to-peer reviews spread rapidly. Our banner and page takeover campaigns achieved an overall CTR of 0.38% with a cost per click of £0.84 ($1.32). And as sales of far better supported competitor products struggled, Motorola sales soared. We proved that successful product activation is less a result of pure investment in mass media and more a result of identifying your target audience and being where they are.

eMarketer: What are the biggest challenges for Ogilvy Action in today's market?

Boyle: I think our biggest challenges are tied to the emergence of arguably the most influential new demographic group in the past 50 years: those true “digital natives” currently aged 14 to 17 who have only known a digitized world. Their innate ability to instantly grasp and understand any emerging technology thrown at them, and, more importantly, to comprehend its full application, versatility and potential will ring the most dramatic changes in the advertising and marketing industries since the invention of television. I believe that after running their lives in a truly digital way as teenagers, they will demand that brands and retailers use these same tools and technologies to engage them once they emerge into the world of the consumer.

eMarketer: What do you see as the most exciting prospects for the "next stage" in the retail experience?

Boyle: Again, the answers are in the digital space. Some incredible new technologies will soon add massive value for the shopper. QR codes, albeit increasingly commonplace, will be used with much more creative agility. RFID, as a tool, will become more active than passive, and image recognition via 4G mobile will ensure that the world itself—and every retail environment in it—will become part of the internet.

“It is consumers themselves who will become the real stakeholders in the next-stage retail experience.”

But beyond all of these, it is consumers themselves who will become the real stakeholders in the next-stage retail experience. Why? Because the consumer has become very powerful. Very powerful through going shopping or visiting bars and restaurants with a mobile phone in their pocket from which they can communicate with their social universe. Through this device, and for the first time ever, they can instantly express satisfaction or dissatisfaction at any retail or leisure experience—a long wait, an overpriced cauliflower, a rude waiter or lukewarm minestrone. And where we used to complain by writing a letter, ringing the customer complaints line or having words with the manager, today we just instantly tell all of our friends instead!

This is obviously a terrifying prospect for brands and leisure businesses, but we at Ogilvy Action are very excited by this rise of the “social shoppers.” We believe that by listening to them, understanding them and harnessing their power at these points of activation and purchase, we can provide a quality of insight and learning to our clients as never before.

via emarketer.com

The 9 Worst Ways to Use Twitter for Business

Twitter is a fantastic network for businesses. You can monitor your brand to garner valuable feedback, keep tabs on the competition, engage your customers in conversation, or even choose to use Twitter as a customer service channel. But there are several common mistakes that companies make on Twitter.

Here are 9 Twitter for business strategies to avoid, as well as how to remedy them.

1. Be Overly Self-Promotional

Would you want to have lunch with someone who only talked about themselves, and didn’t even ask you how your day was going? Of course not. So why should you act that way on your Twitter profile? Instead of having a Twitter profile full of self-promotional news or links to your own website, share other interesting, educational, or even funny industry news from websites other than your own. You’ll build a following more quickly, and you’ll likely be retweeted more often. And it’s not unprofessional to ask your followers how their day is going.

2. Only Include Links to Your Own Blog

Business blogging is a great marketing tactic, and so is sharing your blog posts on Twitter. However, these shouldn’t be the only blog posts you share. It only takes 10 minutes a day to contribute valuable content on Twitter. Check your RSS reader daily and share interesting articles you see there. Also, find other relevant bloggers in your industry on Twitter and retweet their articles. Give to get; these bloggers may reciprocate and share your content as well.

3. Follow Anyone and Everyone

Ever see a Twitter profile of someone with 10 followers who’s following 10,000 people and think “oh, they must be interesting!” Me neither. If you follow a ton of just anyone, not only will your Twitter stream be filled with irrelevant content you don’t care about, but you’ll look spammy to people who see your skewed follow numbers. Be picky about who you follow, especially in the beginning. You can use Twitter Search or Twitter directories such as Twellow or WeFollow to find people interested in your industry and what you're talking about. 

4. Don’t Establish a Personality

Your company Twitter page shouldn’t just be a corporate Twitter page; this exudes a stuffy tone that nobody wants to follow. Some of the top brands on Twitter actually put a face to the person behind the tweets, such as Comcast and Zappos. You can even just link to the profiles of people behind the tweets in the bio section, which is what Ford does. These personal touches will attract more followers than hiding behind a corporate logo.

5. Don’t Interact With Other Twitter Users

People on Twitter want to follow people who might actually interact with them. So if you’re only putting content out there, even if it’s interesting content, you might turn away people who want to know you’ll reply. Twitter isn’t only about sharing one-sided content. It’s about sharing other Twitter people’s content and engaging in conversations about that content. Make sure to retweet and reply to at least a few people each day so that you’re making Twitter a two-way conversation.

6. Don’t Share Your Twitter Profile on Your Website

Keeping your Twitter profile hidden from your website visitors, the people most likely to actually follow you, is never a good idea. Add a Twitter badge to your website, and even add a feed of your tweets to your blog. Make it easy for your visitors to find out how to connect with you in social media.

7. Don’t Monitor Your Own Brand Chatter

If you think that monitoring your brand on Twitter is too time consuming, you’ll be glad to hear that monitoring all of your business’s social chatter takes only ten minutes a day. Use free tools like Twitter Search or TweetDeck to monitor conversations taking place about your company on Twitter in real-time. After you complete a Twitter search, you can even click “Feed for this query” and add it to your RSS reader for monitoring.

8. Don’t Customize Your Twitter Profile

Not customizing your Twitter profile is like blending into an anonymous crowd. Did you know that Twitter accounts with a profile picture have 10 times more followers than accounts without pictures? And that having a Twitter bio gets you 8 times as many followers? If not, there’s your reason for doing so. Also, brand your business on Twitter by having a unique Twitter background.

9. Only Tweet Once Per Week

If you tweet only once per week, it will be hard to get noticed in the Twitter streams of people who follow thousands of even hundreds of users. But if you follow some of the advice above, by taking a few minutes each day to retweet interesting tweets and share relevant content, you shouldn’t have a problem here.

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via blog.hubspot.com

B2Bs Tap Social to Boost Search

More synergy for social and search

Social media marketing is almost a necessity in its own right for many companies, but efforts in the area can also help boost more traditional online channels like search, according to data from BtoB magazine and Business.com.

Nearly half of US business-to-business (B2B) marketers said their social media efforts had a positive effect on search performance, with the remainder nearly split between “neutral” and “do not know”—just 1% reported a negative effect.

Search rankings are largely driven by the volume of high-quality inbound links a site receives, and at its most basic level, much advice about search engine optimization has amounted to “get more links.” Social media efforts are one way to get those links: Companies must create content compelling enough to get their followers chattering on Twitter or Facebook, which means they are driving inbound links from social sites. Nearly half of respondents indicated this was helpful.

Almost as many reported increasing search rankings for social media profiles. Only about a quarter of B2B marketers were monitoring social channels for help choosing keywords for their paid search campaigns, suggesting many companies may be passing up opportunities to find out how customers naturally talk about their products and services.

According to the survey, B2B marketers’ No. 2 goal for social media marketing—after building brand awareness—was increasing traffic to a website, which social media’s natural synergy with search marketing is helping to achieve. Their next goal, generating leads, can in turn be reached through both social media itself and improved search efforts, both of which, according to HubSpot, bring in more leads.

Keep your business ahead

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On-Site Linking Architecture: Your Hidden SEO Goldmine (or Nemesis) - Part 1

Contrary to popular belief, Google's PageRank algorithm doesn't only apply to external (i.e., outgoing and incoming) links -- it can also be used as a self-contained analysis tool to determine health, strengths, and weaknesses of your website's on-site links.

Of course, this has nothing to do whatever with the Toolbar PageRank (TBPR) Google has been using as a brilliant tool of social engineering for years, eminently safeguarded by plausible deniability all along. According to Google, it is, after all, intended "for entertainment purposes only."

So why is this important? Consider: out of the 150~190 or so individual factors governing a website's ranking (who outside of Google can ever know for sure how many they are exactly?), there's only a handful you yourself have full control over.

First comes content, obviously: it's the one thing the search engines can't and won't create for you. Then there are other on-site elements, such as meta tags, title tags, the canonicals specification, page architecture, etc. Last, but not least, there's your on-site linking structure.

Organic Issues

In a nutshell, here's what you may get if you fail to optimize your on-site links:

• Non-indexed pages

• Pages dropped into what used to be called Google's "Supplemental Results Hell"

• Pages relegated to Google's "Omitted Results" filter

• Orphaned pages

• Broken links impeding rankings and accessibility

Websites that have grown "organically" in the course of the years, with several generations of webmasters and system administrators having tended to them (not to mention management, sales departments and creatives -- think redesign!) are inevitably bound to encounter problems with their on-site linking structures sooner or later. Remember good old techie terms like "link rot"?

CMS Issues

Nor is this "organic" (i.e., human component) the only culprit involved. Content management systems (CMS), which drive a huge chunk, if not the overwhelming majority of large corporate sites, are another prime issue generator.

Many major CMS providers have latched onto the fact that "SEO" is all the craze now, so they take great pains to voice their claim that their systems have "full SEO features" implemented. Generally, this is, however, limited to including customizable (i.e., not entirely templated) meta tags, title tags, and keyword rich page or file names. From a professional SEO's point of view, this still leaves a tremendous lot to be desired. And, in any case, an optimized on-site linking architecture addressing a given site in its entirety doesn't seem to be part of their SEO efforts anyway.

What's worse, many sub-optimally organized sites aren't even their respective CMS's fault. Content management systems are, after all, pretty complex tools, and if the staff charged with implementing and configuring them aren't 100 percent sure of what they're doing, especially as regards state-of-the-art SEO requirements, it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out what you'll get in the end, and as a rule it's anything but pretty.

Promotion Issues

Finally, there's another important factor that may prevent your on-site linking architecture from being optimized the way it should be from a pure SEO perspective: your real life promotion environment. Regardless of whether you're trying to push sales online, solicit leads, offer customer support or establish and fortify your brand -- you'll have your own, perfectly legitimate views of how to present yourself to your clients.

This will typically encompass specific, indispensable elements of design and corporate identity factors ranging from logos to icons and color schemes. And, yes, you may actually prefer a specific, non-standard type of site architecture for the very same reason as well.

(For example, you might want to focus on pushing your products overview or your customer survey pages rather than your mission statement or your news section. Some sites want their visitors to engage in some Flash based interactive features, such as an online game or a quiz, while others may prefer to point potential buyers to their global resellers network, etc.)

More often than not, this will mandate some kind of trade off between what would be the optimal linking structure from a purely SEO driven point of view, and whatever real world requirements need addressed.

Leverage Google's Published PageRank Algorithm

In any case, you should always be aware of what you're doing -- and every single on-site link ought to have its own objectified rationale backing it up. In our experience of some five years investigating this matter, analyzing large corporate (usually CMS powered) websites, and optimizing their on-site link architecture, we've found that leveraging Google's published PageRank algorithm (in contrast to whatever modified version of it they may be deploying as part of their top secret internal ranking algorithm) offers us excellent, unbiased metrics to determine a given site's linking fortes and soft spots.

Nor can this be ignored with impunity: arguably the trickiest aspect of the matter is the fact that you may actually be losing search engine rankings, traffic, and sales due to a non-optimal on-site linking structure -- without even being aware of the fact! Examples next time.

In part two, we'll address the various forms of on-site linking architecture and how they are anything but created equal.

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Marketers Gravitate to Facebook As Most Trusted Referral Source

Marketing your product in a trusted environment translates into utter success for businesses. No wonder companies rush to populate different social networks in an attempt to dominate the most credible one.

But which channel do marketers themselves trust the most for referrals and product reviews? That would be Facebook, a recent HubSpot poll showed.

During HubSpot’s webinar, Digital Word Of Mouth: Let Your Customers Transform Your Marketing, we asked attendees to list their most trusted source for receiving product recommendations. The majority of respondents, 40 out of the 124 participants, selected Facebook above Yelp, Twitter and advertising. Company website ranked second in this survey, with 37 respondents recognizing the importance of this channel.

What is most interesting about this quick survey is that only six people voted for advertising as a trusted referral source. These results emphasize the ineffectiveness of outbound marketing as a recommendation system. Instead of consuming TV ads in a passive environment, online audiences prefer to interact in a dialectical environment. They would reach out to their contacts for product tips and reviews rather than rely on a corporate brand message.

The fact that Facebook has emerged as the leader in social networks doesn’t erase people’s fear of confidentiality breaches. Many times have online audiences expressed concern about their privacy on Facebook, and marketers need to be careful not to exasperate that fear. Businesses should encourage authentic discussions and celebrate the two-way communication thriving in the new media landscape.

As recent research by research company Vision Critical shows, "consumers trust a brand message when it is discussed or recommended by friends, family or contacts within a social network." According to the study, coupons, product photos and videos also rank high as credible avenues for product placements. Not surprisngly, banner ads are the worst performing in terms of earning the trust of audiences.

For more articles like this one checkout Buying A Rent Roll

via blog.hubspot.com

Don’t Forget Blogging!

Social media is a great way to share a few quick thoughts, but what if you want to express a complete idea with your sphere of influence? Bring in the blogs!

Marshall Mcluhan once said that the medium is the message. In other words, how we communicate impacts what we communicate. These days, much is made of  neo-modes of communications. Texting, with its vowel-less syntax; Tweeting, with its truncated grammar; and social media status updates that combine both. While many marketers are enthralled with ‘headline-news’ marketing, there’s a wide open a space for something more powerful to engage consumers:

Idea marketing.

After fighting to get your audience’s attention, then distinguishing your message in a crowded competitive landscape, sales and marketing professionals often struggle to get prospects to understand their ideas. And consumers really want to buy ideas. Ideas reflect things they value. It’s not just the features of a product that count – like how many buttons or bathrooms. It’s the idea your product or service  represents – like convenience or status – that consumers really want to buy.

Few of today’s neo-marketing mediums do justice to some of the wonderful and smart value propositions in the market today. Their mediums struggle to convey much more than their message.

Enter the power of blogging.

While nobody wants to read novel-length marketing pieces, blogging fills the gap between ‘instant messaging’ and story-telling. There was even blogging long before the internet: Think of the television infomercial. It fell somewhere between an investigative report and the short-break ad. The concept tried to balance the attention span of the consumer with the information capacity of the medium. Infomercials worked extremely well.

Once the eyeballs moved from television to the web,  the medium evolved into what we know today as blogging.

Get more ideas and training about blogging inside the Matthew Ferrara Learning Network!

Don’t misunderstand. Blogging doesn’t have to follow the cheesy infomercial-style that worked on television. But understanding how blogs work as “intermediate mediums” on the web is important. Blogs reduce the work consumers have to do to learn about your company’s values, and even its products and services. More importantly, they do so better than the what-did-they-mean? status updates that dominate social media.

Skeptical Gen X consumers like blogs because they’re looking for more than just catchy slogans, flash animation or half-baked feature-claims. They want to know “the rest of the story,” including how your company’s values mesh with theirs. As for Gen Y, whom we’re told doesn’t read anything in their text-message-existence, we do know they engage good ideas through blogs, as long as the blogging is done by video.

The key to leveraging blog marketing is to complete an idea in every post. Unlike “gotcha” marketing methods, readers or viewers of blogs expect their time to be well spent. They appreciate brevity, and sometimes levity, but they always demand integrity. When they’re done engaging your blog, they want to have received some value. That’s how they will judge your company’s value, and then decide to buy.

Blogging works technically, too. Many readers subscribe to a blog, which means they receive direct email alerts when you add new content. This eliminates managing a separate email marketing list. Some readers may monitor your blog’s RSS feed, which instantly updates a web page or smartphone with your new content as you add it. Best of all, blogs foster dialog: Readers and viewers can engage with your company’s ideas by posting comments, asking questions, and sharing your content with their sphere of influence via social networks. Modern consumers like to feel like they can “participate” with the companies they spend money with, and blogging can create a deeper dialog with current and potential customers.

Blogging is often underrated in the “latest-feature” hyped news cycle of social media technologies. Certainly social media can be used to distribute your blog; it’s a great instant-delivery mechanism direct to prospects. But from a marketing perspective, the under-use of blogs in comparison to status-updates is unfortunate. Some of the best brands are built around stories that customers relate to. And the best stories revolve around ideas customers like.

If you want to get customers to hear more than just a message, or get caught up in the techno-geek of the medium, try spreading your ideas using a blog.

For more articles like this one checkout Buying A Rent Roll

via matthewferrara.com

Gimmicks, gadgetry replace old-fashioned techniques to lure real estate buyers

Real estate agents are turning to iPhone apps instead of old fashioned gimmicks like sausage sizzles at open houses / File Source: AAP

REAL estate agents are turning to gimmicks and gadgetry like iPhone apps in an effort to lure buyers.

The tricks have gone from baking bread and brewing coffee just before the start of an open house or setting up a sausage sizzle at an on-site auction to music video clips, iPhone applications and Facebook pages.

George Hadgelias, of Ray White Paddington in Brisbane, said agents needed to be more creative and make full use of a home's features during open house inspections.

"If we are marketing a property with a home theatre or media room we will have live concert videos playing during our opens," he said.

Mr Hadgelias said video was crucial in property marketing.

"Many homes on our listings can be viewed via an online video tour," he said.

Chris Hinds, 26, is Australia's youngest RE/MAX principal, setting up RE/MAX Everything Property in Brisbane's CBD. A Gen Y-er, he produces video clips on the properties he has for sale, providing more than a virtual tours.

He said the videos put the property into a "lifestyle setting", profiling not just it but local bars, shops and infrastructure.

"Inner city property is prestigious and should be marketed like fashion or cars," Mr Hinds said.

Technology also is continuing to develop to meet the demands of information-hungry house hunters.

LJ Hooker has introduced an iPhone application that lets potential buyers view property listings and photo galleries, see listings on Google maps and find their nearest LJ Hooker agent direct from their iPhone.

And in an Australian real estate industry first, it comes bundled with SunLocator, which can give potential buyers an insight into how sunny or shady their new home may be.

It lets buyers track the path that sunlight travels over the block on any given day - overlaid on the camera screen of their phone. Predicting a property's sun exposure can help to plan the position of outdoor rooms, clothes lines and even solar panels.

Ray White New Farm has also set up a Facebook page for residents at the luxury Cutters Landing development at Teneriffe in inner-city Brisbane.

"New owners and tenants have become friends of the page and they can post photos about Cutters Landing," Ray White New Farm principal Heatley Cush said.

But sometimes the key to making a sale is ensuring agents are at the top of their game.

Mr Cush said he also kept staff and agents on their toes by using "mystery shoppers" to evaluate performance and "ensure we are always offering the highest standards of service".

For more articles like this one checkout Buying A Rent Roll

via news.com.au

The Race to the Bottom

I was going to call this post ‘Do Quality Marketing Materials Really make a difference?’ It is a question worth discussing. In the US marketplace, there is no such thing as VPA (Vendor Paid Advertising). The sales commissions for Agents are higher (around 4 – 4.6%) and from that, they have to finance all their own marketing.

So, in the United States, Agents ‘doing it themselves’ is common place – assisted by new technology which sees kids in prams texting. Now Americans aren’t exactly what you’d call a camera-shy race. From taking their own photographs to shooting their own video – on an iphone, or a Flip – which you can upload to a site to take care of all the editing and the streaming – all for $29, the US market is flooded with ‘do it yourself’ and ‘host it yourself’ collateral.

Just one example:

http://hdhat.com" title="Top Hat Video" target="_blank">Click here to view video. There’s even film-making and script-writing courses at HD Hat. In reviewing these ‘home’ movies, you have to say, they do the job. If you were interested in buying a particular home, I think they certainly show you enough of the property to make a judgement call on whether or not you phone the agent.
Add to this Google Maps and Street View, and buyers do have a vast arrange of free tools at their disposal.

From a Vendor’s perspective, why invest any money in quality marketing materials or even mass media for that matter. Just do it yourself and launch it to YouTube. Which raises another question; if marketing professions are being made redundant by technology, will ‘Agenting’ and negotiating skills follow? But if quality doesn’t really count, why has Google added a High Quality criteria to its searches for video? And why do big Companies spend millions on new creatives if any video describing a product will do?

Guess Jeans goes to awesome lengths, with multi-million dollar campaigns, just to sell a pair of pants yet most home-owners agonize over spending a few thousand to sell a million dollar asset.

The US housing market is a total mess. Making it ‘Cheap and easy’ to not only own a home – but sell one – hasn’t worked. Will Australian Agents ‘Flip’ over doing it themselves?

For more articles like this one checkout Buying A Rent Roll

via business2.com.au

An 11 year real estate online business case study

Having just sold a real estate online business, almost eleven years to the day after it was founded, I thought I’d share some thoughts before they were lost to the sands of time…

Start Up
Starting a business is relatively easy, as it involves buying things. Buying a company name, a domain name, some IT and marketing skills, office space…  it’s the running of it that is tough. And if you were starting up in a whole new industry (online real estate ads) in 1999, then it was tougher still. But sometimes people like to give the new guys a go, and for that I salute Western Australia, not somewhere I grew up in, but the place I’ve called home for 13 years now, and a State where new ventures (be they junior miners, baby bios or anything really) are welcomed and often where (due to its remoteness) new products can be quietly launched. The first dotcom boom helped: if you had an MBA, a dotcom idea and a pulse people threw money at you. Perhaps your nerve is the only thing holding you back. The support of a wonderfully supportive spouse or partner helps a great deal, as does the sage advice of a few business people & MBA professors you look up to.

Getting Out There
As many of us know by now, major new IT projects can take three times as long (and cost three times as much) as you think they will. IT has a certain logic to it, that you will learn along the way, but with no experience in IT, real estate or business, we are testament that you can certainly give it a go, and if we can do it, let me tell you, you certainly can. But choosing your business model (advertising, e-tailing or subscriptions were the three in existence when we began) is going to be critical, as is gaining a foothold and moving towards that all important tipping point where enough visitors are coming to your site to view enough content. Without that, you will not enjoy the ride much.

We picked off the top end suburbs, mainly because we hailed from there and thought the internet use would be highest in those areas and many would have fastish web access from their work computers in the city. (Remember, this was in the days of dial up. No one had heard of broadband.) We figured that the real estate agents that plied these areas probably had the success and advertising money to pay for such a new service and might get it sooner than those out in the boon docks. So it proved.

We were also lucky that realestate.com.au and domain.com.au were not around at the time – in fact they weren’t to place salespeople on the ground in WA until we were well established. There were local competitors trying to beat us, and property.com.au were probably the major force at the time, so it was our cool technology (“interactive mapping”) and our parochial nature (“we’re just around the corner!”) that we pushed as our unique selling points. The local Institute site reiwa.com (for some strange historical reason) had not made much impact in the western suburbs, so really the area was there for the taking. It was a land grab.

Most of business really is about remaining close to your customers, and so we spent a lot of time talking and listening to them. We did not have bucket loads of cash to spend on marketing (we’d have just wasted it if we had) and so we had to be a little street wise about how to build traffic, get good SEO results, get our name out and evolve our business model through the years. We moved into web design, print, seminars and such (none of this bore any mention in our original business plan) and so the words of Amir Bhide came true: “just get out there, because opportunities only present themselves by you being out there”. [Bhide’s 1993 ‘Bootstrap Finance’ Harvard Business Review article had become our Bible.]

What Worked?
Like many businesses, we have tried lots of things, thrown away what didn’t work and kept what did. So what worked?

1. The perpetual shift of eyeballs and advertising dollars from print to online was the major ‘wind beneath our wings’, but this on its own would not have been enough (although it was a necessary factor)
2. True attention to total customer service was critical – easy to say, but only evidenced in a million little things done day in day out over a decade. Real estate clients can annoy you, can be unfair, can be wrong… yes, so what? Without them, you are nothing. Most of the time, they happily use your services, pay their bills on time and keep coming back for more. Trust follows. Invaluable.
3. Hiring and Retaining the best people – we’ve always had good people, sometimes certain people did not fit (so they had to go). People are not only your best asset, in a real sense, they are your only differentiating asset.
4. Being Realistic. There will be tough times, sometimes you just have to admit defeat, sometimes you have to push through the barrier and win. This involves judgement and gut feel, but also a healthy dose of reality and reflection (Jim Collins’ ‘Stockdale Paradox’, from ‘Good to Great’ 2001)
5. You can R+D yourself into Bankruptcy. True, the web site is important, and its fun having lots of cool stuff on the portal, but there has to be a balance between making money (sales) and developing a nice site (R+D). I had lots of battles on this one over the years. Sales is hard work, but it is the most important too. Pick up the phone, make that call. Everyday. The reward for making some sales is some time in R+D.

No doubt readers of this will have other comments on ‘what works’.

Exit
Maybe the most difficult decision is to know when to exit, and how to manage that whole process. We had all sorts come across the threshold in 11 years promising this and that. Most just wanted to take a peek under the bonnet. It’s all very emotionally draining. In the end, it was a cup of coffee, an idea that had merit and then a few more meetings to thrash out the numbers. It was all done inside 6 weeks. If you’d told me 4 months ago I’d be where I am today, I’d have not believed you. Yet now it’s happened, it seems the most natural conclusion in the world. In a few months, I hope to blog about ‘merging portals’, but for now, I have work to do doing just that…

For more articles like this one checkout Buying A Rent Roll

via business2.com.au