This study (.pdf) delves into programmatic methodology that can be used to predict strong and weak ties between users of a social network. From a community manager’s perspective, this is important because predictive activities can alleviate some oversight tasks while intelligently satisfying the needs of community members. As an example of practical implications of their [...]
Blogging:
Here’s a good history of SEO since 1999, which is valuable to understand how things have changed over the last 10 years. Change is a constant with the Internet and SEO…what “worked” yesterday may not “work” today. Thus, focus on passionate, relevant, and niche content as a way to ground your SEO efforts on a [...]
If one stops and ponders the amount of data and content users add to Facebook on a daily basis, it’s truly staggering. I’ve often wondered what the Facebook data team does with this data and content. Recently, I stumbled across two insightful articles and a video series that sheds some light on this.
The first article [...]
Here’s an excellent article on the PR 2.0 blog about the new homepage design features Facebook will soon release. The article gives a reasoned analysis of the new Facebook feature-set as well as possible implications for brands, individuals, and services like Twitter and Friendfeed.
What could be considered the Wall 2.0 or quite simply, a personal [...]
Here are two salient take-aways from this great article detailing how Obama eviscerated previous fund-raising records
1) Strategically embrace Web 2.0 and facilitate consumer control over certain elements of an overall marketing plan
Supporters’ blogs and You Tube postings were also brought inside the campaign through the website, where the online team could help consolidate the energy [...]
The New York Times has a great read on how Obama embraced social media to help win the election.
Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. used radio to change the way he governed, J.F.K. was the first president to understand television…Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the Web to lower the [...]
Owyang delivers an excellent summary of Facebook’s new “Engagement Advertising” tool. This tool seems well-suited to real estate brands that want to showcase a particular niche or market they serve, particular the “Fan Style” ad targeting luxury verticals (it could also be interesting to allow the Facebook community to “gift” someone a $50,000,000 property to [...]
This paper includes an interesting analysis of online reputation management. It discusses “reputation spillover”, which is defined as a “reputational crisis that impacts a focal organization [and] spread[s] to others.”
Reputation crises are triggered by financial crises or accidents and spread virally because consumer “link” like firms together, even if one of the “linked” firms has [...]
Go2Web20 is a great place to view what’s available in Web 2.0 tools and services. To make sense of the madness, read their blog. TransparentRE also lists some great Web2.0 tools.
Another excellent post by Jeremiah Owyang: Social media brand-jacking. The post highlights some interesting brand mishaps in the social media space. Make sure to read to the comments too.
An e-Marketer recent report shows that moms are a major power on the Internet.
Notice how FrontDoor.com leverages this fact. And this research article points out that women adopt e-Service loyalty programs at a higher rate if their enjoyment and perceived social presence of the site is high. Notably, the researchers point out that
In particular, [...]
The semantic nature of social networking has hit, head-first, the issue of phishing. A research paper by Peter Mika, discusses the semantic and colloquial nature of social networks, the findings of which offer savvy marketers unprecedented opportunities to understand how to incorporate social network folksonomies into their brand strategies. Yet this fundamental tenet–i.e., semantic relationships–that [...]
How do you launch a Web 2.0 media campaign? You don’t. If you’re thinking of “launching” “campaigns” in the Web 2.0 media space, you’ve broken your legs out of the starting gate.
How does a corporate brand manager “launch” a Web 2.0 “campaign” to counter (or embrace) a consumer-generated product review like Dirt Devil vs Electrolux [...]
With social networking sites surpassing search engines in terms of popularity, will the marketing value of search engine optimization diminish over time? This article makes a great case that the usefulness of organic search for consumers may eventually wane.
Interesting question: when a social network community provides answers–as opposed to an algorithm–can anyone really “optimize” their [...]
Contemplating a social media campaign? Don’t go about it in the “traditional” media planning sense. BuzzMarketing has a titillating thought on this concept. And this social media slide show gives an entertaining and educating primer on why traditional media planning will not work well in a social media context.
Social networks will change the way real estate professionals interact with their clients. Terms like engagement, conversation, and community underpin social networks. And in “off-line” environments real estate professionals have likely “engaged” in meaningful and relevant “conversations” while building a “community” of long-term clients.
Yet many real estate professionals are reluctant to embrace social networks as [...]
Research papers:
Identifying inherent privacy conflicts in social network sites
Assessing the privacy risk of sharing anonymized network data
Proposed algorithm for automatically extracting social hierarchy data from electronic communication behavior
Discusses how rumors, viruses, and ideas propagate over social social networks
You either have high home prices or lower home prices and lower home prices are what we want, and people shouldn’t be afraid of that,” said Robert Shiller, Yale finance professor, in a Reuters interview. Most of us care about our children and grandchildren, and these people have to buy houses so why would we [...]
Here’s a great example of multi-channel marketing: the Maximum Ride literary series. The first book in the series refers readers to this blog, which refers readers to this YouTube video.
Real estate professionals can use similar tactics. For example, on listing presentation collateral, refer prospective clients to your blog, from your blog refer clients to your [...]
Many posts have been written on this paper, Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence from Google. What’s interesting is the influence of proximity on predictive markets. According to the paper, sharing an office had the highest influence (as opposed, for instance, communicating exclusively via email) and part of cultivating an innovative culture [...]
By using Facebook, an agent could create their own Web 2.0 brand while controlling their sphere of influence and network. Real Living has already established this platform for it’s agents (or was it an agent, or group of agents, establishing this platform Real Living?). What a great way to kick start the engagement process while [...]
Create value for the swarm. That is the overarching goal of a swarm business mindset. Swarm creativity embodies the passion that drives this goal, along with coolhunting as an adjunct exercise. Real estate, as an industry, seems well-poised to take advantage of swarm creativity.
Nicholas G. Carr, of the Economist.com explains the basics of swarm business:
To [...]
As an increasing number of real estate firms seek to embrace and integrate Web 2.0 principles in to their websites, many of these firms may encounter a sense of frustration in having to “upgrade” once again to meet, or exceed, customer expectations regarding Internet-based services. Is real estate an Internet based service? Absolutely. With over [...]
Continuing the discussion from the McKinsey interview of Cammie Dunaway, she states
[Yahoo!] is using behavioral data–really mining the wealth of transactional data we have about how people are spending their time online and trying to marry that data with attitudinal data…that’s where the most powerful insights can really come from.
Insights into what? It could be [...]
According to McKinsey, global companies are increasingly using Web 2.0 technologies to engage their customers. Tapping web services, collective intelligence systems, and peer-to-peer network capabilities were the top three technologies companies were currently deploying or planning to deploy. Respondents indicated that customer acquisition was the number one reason they were deploying social media (the respondents also stated that they use [...]
Social media has created a challenge for website brand / product managers. Where social media is a rich fount of ideas, product information (negative and positive), etc, website brand / product managers have a challenge in using web analytics from these sources to drive site optimization (in terms of user experience, performance, etc).
Two recent research [...]
Jeremiah Owyang explains the concepts and value of social networks from a marketing perspective in an easily digestible manner. Yang et al (registration required), Battiston et al, and Hill et al discuss the scientific underpinnings of these topics. Juxtaposing these discussions against one another leads to some interesting insights with respect to social media marketing.
Yang [...]
HitWise has demonstrated a correlation between LinkedIn and Gmail, YahooMail, and Hotmail and a corrleation between LinkedIn and Facebook. Hypothetically now…assume that LinkedIn and Facebook and Gmail, or YahooMail, or Hotmail share their databases, where a user’s email account address is the unique identifier. At this point it’s a matter of relational database mechanics to [...]
eMarketer predicts that in 2007 advertisers will spend $900 billion on social network advertising. As a real estate professional witnessing an explosion in social network sites (e.g., Active Rain, TruliaVoices) aimed at agents (and consumers), what are some first steps to engage this form of real estate marketing?
Step 1: Just understanding it. In this regard experience is the best instructor. [...]
