What factors keep an online community happy, involved, and engaged? The authors of this study (.pdf) found four primary things influence these three factors:
Purpose: Clearly define the purpose and values of the community space with a well-articulated and succinct statement so people who join the community know what to expect, while internally defining your (i.e., [...]
Social media monitoring
Here’s a great list of conversation monitoring tools. The article points out some very interesting and straight-forward tips; I especially like the tip on this social media monitoring wiki.
Search use up, email use down
The Online Publishers Association released a study showing that consumers are spending more and more time on search and content [...]
Facebook’s recent purchase of FriendFeed is a multichannel marketing boon. Mashable detailed some threats Twitter may face with respect to the FriendFeed purchase while pointing out some threats to Google too. Regardless as to how the game (err war) plays out, as a marketer you’ve just been handed another delicious marketing tool to leverage. [...]
Aligning website landing pages with targeted social media marketing channels will yield higher on-page conversions (as defined by increased showing appointments, chat requests, 1-800 number call-ins, etc). The challenge many real estate marketers face today is effectively managing the flow of social media traffic with an eye towards ROI. It’s a multichannel marketing issue, which [...]
O’Reilly on underlying Web 2.0 concepts and its future application
Excellent O’Reilly web 2.0 summary and whitepaper on Web 2.0; really good discussion on the nexus between collective intelligence and the real time web and managing the content/data flows therefrom.
[T]he Web is the world – everything and everyone in the world casts an “information shadow,” an [...]
What is innovation? How does one recognize it? Will I know it when I see it?
Wikipedia says:
The term innovation means a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental, radical, and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. A distinction is typically made between invention, an idea made manifest, and innovation, ideas [...]
Are your prospective clients having to act like abalone divers to interact with you? Abalone divers furbish themselves with an abalone iron to pry off abalones from submerged rocks. These divers are committed to their task, as abalone is considered a divine delicacy to some. But if prospective clients have to work like an abalone [...]
Although many real estate brand managers have embraced social media and are pushing their executives and agents to start a blog, join Facebook and LinkedIn, etc, many are still reticent to step into the space. Questions like these are fairly common: “What if someone says something bad, or posts a rude comment, or is just [...]
Here’s another recent article on the changing consumer landscape regarding brand affinity and marketing. It parallels themes from my Crowds, Hives, Mobs, Swarms post.
The contemporary savvy consumer is seen as someone who combines areas of competency (particularly technological sophistication, network competency and marketing/advertising literacy) with empowerment (especially self-confidence and self-efficacy).
The paper points out that consumers [...]
This post on real estate brokerage future and this one on hyper-local targeting are two excellent discussions about the strategic decisions real estate brokers will face over the next few years, especially with the technology side of the equation. I will focus on two salient points from these posts: (1) the ascendancy of broker power [...]
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 [...]
Trulia partnered with 1020 Placecast to provide targeted ad services.
Once users input a location they want to learn more about on Trulia, Placecast will access that data and apply it as a key component along with common demographic data points like psychographic information to provide more targeted ads.
This process makes sense especially at the zip [...]
This Universal McCann study states that
Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and as a collective rival any traditional media
The blogsphere is becoming increasingly participatory, now 184m bloggers world-wide
And as recently referred to in my previous post on the long tail, the New York Times discusses the power of blogs for real estate firms.
So why are [...]
Despite the sentiments expressed by Google’s CEO about long tail search (see previous post), Bill Tancer of Hitwise presents an intriguing alternative view. Tancer shows that despite brand-centric search saturation in the head, the long tail presents a panoply of opportunities to online marketers willing to invest the strategic and tactical resources necessary to leverage [...]
McKinsey & Company Consulting interview of Google CEO discussing long-tail search viability.
As always I am grateful to Owyang to lend his insight and foresight. Here’s another excellent missive on the “Intelligent Web”. In summary, he posits that machines will begin extrapolating relationships and driving recommendations for connections from the juxtapositions and nexus between “our behaviors, context, and preferences”. Sounds a bit like the semantic web. Spinning [...]
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 [...]
Here is an excellent thesis on how public relations professionals can use viral marketing tactics powered by social media to mitigate bad press. The author states that viral public relations campaigns “are less overt and therefore better received” because consumers perceive they are in control. (p56) Viral marketing tactics allow professionals [...]
This paper argues that allowing consumers to “co-create” or “co-author” products–i.e., directly engaging and encouraging consumers to participate in new product development processes–taps vast wells of creativity while exploiting certain cost efficiencies in terms of labor. Similarly, this paper explores how Web 2.0 will fundamentally (has fundamentally) changed the manner by which companies must brand [...]
Google’s AdPlanner (need to register for the beta) has the potential to unleash the power of traditional demographic marketing analysis to long-tail search strategies. This is a great tool because it allows media planners to target niche sites in a highly effective manner while focusing on distinct consumer segments. For example, let’s say that I’m [...]
Assume you’re a brokerage firm with a wide distribution of properties over several zip codes. Aside from basic syndication to online aggregators, what’s another strategy to market your listings? One fee-based option that many aggregators offer is enhanced listings. Before you pay, however, ask them to prove their merit.
Assume you cover these two zip codes [...]
After a couple of months, I decided to give Wikia another test. The theme this time is “golf course homes”:
“golf course homes for sale columbus ohio” Google Wikia Winner is Google because it lists relevant, real estate oriented blogs with posts focusing on the specific search query.
“golf course homes sanibel florida” Google Wikia Winner is [...]
What does The Filter have to do with real estate search? (NOTE: I went through the The Filter Q&A and have to say it was eerily prescient).
What if there was a site where a consumer would 1) define the location where they want to live (via natural language, drop down, or map search), 2) answer [...]
This post on Transparent Real Estate offers a concise, easy-to-follow, tutorial on how to use Twitter and Friendfeed for real estate business development purposes. And this Owyang post further explores these concepts.
Taking Kitano’s and Owyang’s lead, your micro-memes would update your existing, new client, and prospective clients with your market knowledge, your insight, your new [...]
Thanks to this SEO blog I found this post, which details a new type of Yahoo! search that’s in beta mode on Yahoo!SearchIndia. I performed the search “mumbai real estate” and got this:
eMarketer reports that a recent study on traditional media’s use of blogs shows that 57.7% of respondents–US journalists –use blogs to measure sentiment.
Identifying Expressions of Emotion in Text (core study found here, registration required) is an intriguing “blog sentiment” study that identified targeted, emotion-laden words–”seed words”–and retrieved 173 blog posts from the Web that contained [...]
This video, sourced from Bring the love back, beautifully illustrates the new dynamic–and power shift–between consumer and brand.
This post on the SEOMOZ.org site, is an excellent resource on tactics and considerations as it relates to managing your online reputation.
eMarketer issued a report that blogs are big business (or have the potential to be). According to the article, advertising opportunities abound for traditional advertisers in the blogosphere as the number of blogs grow and readership increases.
And this research paper from MicroSoft adCenterLabs discusses intriguing concepts in tracking blog information flows with an eye towards [...]
Epitaph of printed classified advertisements:
And this commentary corroborates the physical evidence.
For newspapers, these are the end times, or something very much like them. Every week provides a new marker on the road to apocalypse: hundreds of layoffs in Los Angeles, circulation scandals in Dallas…
… and …
The rise of the Craigslist model has devastated classified advertising [...]
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.
TouchGraph is an excellent tool that gives you “visual insight” into a site’s external linking structure and relationships, which is a good starting point for website competitive analysis. Let’s compare Redfin, Zillow, and REALTOR.com.
Redfin’s linking relationships
Zillow’s linking relationships
REALTOR.com’s linking relationships
The visual representation of these relationships allows you to quickly explore the link structure of [...]
This new application is similar to Intero’s Terabitz application.
Storytelling is one of the most important marketing concepts in our Web 2.0 world, argues this TrendWatching briefing paper. The key is helping consumers tell other consumers a version of the story that stays true to tenets of the brand.
As more brands (have to) go niche and therefore tell stories that aren’t known to the [...]
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, [...]
T.S.O.L. (True Sounds of Liberty), a 1979 Cali punk band, reached out to their fan base, paid off a legal debt, and is touring again (all according to their website). Punk Social Network = (Passion * Fan base * Clear call-to-action).
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 [...]
Summary of Self Replicating Awesomeness: The Marketing of No Marketing:
Panelists:
Tara Hunt www.horsepigcow.com
Chris Heuer www.theconversationgroup.com
Jeremiah Owyang www.web-strategist.com
Deborah Schultz www.deborahschultz.com
Hugh MacLeod www.gapingvoid.com
David Parmet www.marketingbeginsathome.com
Key take-aways:
Passion for people. Put passion into product.
Let go to gain more.
Social objects are the future marketing.
Technology changes, human behavior does not; nothing replaces listening, nothing.
A story without love is not worth telling
Hunt (horsepigcow.com): [...]
SXSW update: Since this is my first SXSW since 1990, I’ve had to re-orient myself to the pace and orgiastic creativity of the scene. Thus, no long posts on the relevancy of this year’s SXSW to the real estate industry until I’ve had a chance to digest properly. Nevertheless, here are the salient take-aways, as [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
This post argues that an online real estate search leader has not emerged since 2005, given that the recent Inman Connect attendees “still talked about them last week as if they were launched yesterday.” Interesting argument. But consider the Inman audience: real estate centric folks like sales associates, consultants, media, pundits, etc. Where were the consumers [...]
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 [...]
In a real estate market that’s shifted poles (like if Earth’s south and north poles switched) what’s a well-known tactic for survival? Surf.
Youth, sometimes, needs to embrace history. Anyone remember DoubleClick’s privacy fiasco in 2000, the resulting state and federal government investigation, and the apex of it’s resolution? Seems like Facebook could have learned a few things from tech-bubble-run-up-history–at least with respect to how to manage a blow-up from a PR perspective (DoubleClick is still around, after [...]
At its core Trulia applies intense competitive pressure to traditional media firms that historically–in the collective sense–bilked real estate firms out of millions–if not billions–of dollars for essentially non-measureable advertising. Sure there’s the one-off case of a person who walks in the front door of a branch office clutching a Sunday advert who actually purchases [...]
UPDATE: Since I posted this in Dec ‘07, I’ve interviewed numerous brokers and agents who’ve said that Trulia’s delivered lots of real business to them (i.e., high quality traffic that resulted in leads that closed), and that their clients are extremely pleased with the exposure their listings get via the Trulia vertical. Further, several interviewees [...]
