Posts Tagged ‘social networking’
How to Get a Social Media Audience
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Social Media on May 10th, 2012
Setting up Social Media profiles for your business may seem like the hardest part; you have to know the technology to accurately create them, have appealing graphics, and know how to sprinkle the right keywords into your about page.
Most people assume if they master this part they can kick back and watch their social networks “get to work”. Post some great articles, offer valuable and helpful information… wait. Where are the likers and followers?
Yes, content is king – but without an audience listening to your great tips what good is it?
Here are a few ways to attract people to your Social Media pages:
- Put Facebook and Twitter links on your website that direct users to your social media pages
- Put Facebook and Twitter links in your email signature
- Put Facebook and Twitter names on print materials
- Advertise your social media sites in your newsletter – make sure to highlight the benefits
- Put a sign in your lobby or front desk; a sign will remind both prospects and residents to fan you
- Get vendors to follow you and retweet and share special offers
- Run a contest and use social media to help promote it
Your turn: what methods do you use to increase your fan base on Social Media? Comment below or share it on our Facebook page.
Newcomer Takes the Cake with Women
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Social Media on April 10th, 2012
As the new kid on the block, Pinterest seems to be already beating Twitter and Facebook when it comes to trust among women.
According to BlogHer’s annual study on women and social media, 81 percent of women said they trusted blogs and Pinterest, while 67 percent said they trusted Facebook and 73 percent said they trusted Twitter.
Interestingly enough, 61 percent said they’d made a purchase on a blog recommendation and 47 percent said they’d acted on one from Pinterest. Facebook and Twitter can only tout around 30 percent.
Women seem to trust other women in their circle when it comes to taking action online. Facebook is primarily used for fun and connecting with family and friends; blogs help them learn about new products and read reviews, which is a major part in the purchase decision-making.
The Pinterest community has more than 11 million unique visitors a month (according to recent numbers from comScore) – an impressively fast-growing social networking site. Its design plays a big role in that popularity.
What about you? Are you using Pinterest? Who do you trust online when it comes to making purchasing decisions? Share by commenting below or posting on our Facebook page!
Using QR Codes to Engage
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Marketing, Social Media on March 8th, 2012
QR codes seem quick and easy – they’re all about convenience. But when you think about it, in order to take advantage of them, they require people to own a smart phone, have a QR reader downloaded and installed, and have their phone handy with the app open and ready to scan at any given time.
Whew! It’s a lot more complicated than it appears.
Worse yet, many companies are using them to convey data that could be just as easily delivered in another (more convenient) format. They are popularly replacing URLs in common advertising.
Are people really ready to replace URLs? When done correctly, all they require is your memory, not a smart phone, data plan, or special app.
What should they be used for?
QR codes are most effective when they unlock information, not lead users to a final destination. Especially one they can call up on their mobile browser! Is there an immediate payoff for your users’ efforts to take out their phone, open the app, point, scan, wait for the code to register, and find out what’s next?
Do you have a special list of products or services that continually get updated? Do you run promotions that change frequently? How about location-based campaigns? These are perfect candidates for your QR adventures!
Make sure your information is formatted for mobile, and again, that it’s relevant for your user immediately. If you’re trying to get people to your website, or to opt in to your list with no timely reward, a QR code is not the best solution. Just like when Twitter first hit the scene, don’t do it to be with the “in” social networking crowd – you have to have a solid plan to engage your audience.
How Well Do You Know LinkedIn?
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Social Media on March 7th, 2012
LinkedIn has been proven more effective at generating leads than Facebook or Twitter, especially for B2B companies. It boasts over 100 million users and affords brands and individuals the opportunity to build valuable industry connections that can lead to new business, co-marketing and affiliate agreements. You can even find your next new hire.
There may be some hidden LinkedIn gems that you’re overlooking when navigating your social message. Some examples are:
LinkedIn Answers
LinkedIn Answers is a forum for people to ask and answer questions about virtually any topic. By answering questions in your industry, you build credibility and show your expertise and value. But that’s not all – it’s also a great opportunity to identify industry influencers with whom to network. In fact you can even search through experts in the Top Experts section.
If you’re looking for guest writers for your Blog, the top experts on LinkedIn Answers are the people to reach out to. Ask them to take some of the most common questions they answer, and write a post for your blog on that topic. Then whenever the question comes up again, they can refer people to the blog post they wrote for you on the subject. They get to build their reputation, and you get the SEO benefits.
Subgroups
You may belong to several LinkedIn groups, but did you know there were also subgroups of those groups? Click ‘More’ on the tab of your LinkedIn group, and you’ll find them.
Subgroups help maintain relevancy; as groups grow there are naturally some topics, industries, or side projects that develop that don’t pertain to everyone. Subgroups offer a chance to filter out any content that isn’t relevant for the entire group and keep your members engaged.
LinkedIn Apps
Enhance your profile and better collaborate with your network with the many available apps, like SlideShare Presentations, WordPress and Company Buzz.
News Module
Everyone with a LinkedIn Company Page should be using this feature. The News Module feeds mentions of your business to your LinkedIn company page, and also shows news to those who have your name listed in their profile. This helps your information be seen in multiple places. Go to your page’s ‘Overview’ tab while in edit mode, and check ‘Share news about my company’ to enable it.
LinkedIn Polls
Within your group you can now offer polls. Polling not only lets you perform your own market research and collect interesting data for content creation, but doing it on LinkedIn also means it can be extremely targeted based on group demographics.
Export Contacts
You can export all your LinkedIn connections to a .CSV or .VCF file. You even have the ability to filter out certain people — like friends and family — that aren’t relevant to your business. The only rule of thumb here is to make sure you do NOT include them in your email campaign list – being a LinkedIn connection is not synonymous with opting in to receive emails from you.
Are you using these to your advantage? What works better for your business? What tools did we leave out?
Still Think Size Matters?
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Marketing, Social Media on February 21st, 2012
You’re a social media marketer – are you still worried about quantity over quality for your success measurement? Does size matter? Really?
In a recent study, 75% of the respondents really are still worried about size.
Sure, it would look great to be able to tout that your client has 25,000 followers on Twitter or 75,000 Facebook Likes, but how many leads and sales have your efforts led to? With the current options of buying followers and likes so prevalent how can anyone put any stock in numbers, anyway?
A more viable goal would be to drive as many people to a website as possible, having those become actual leads and, eventually, sales.
If your content, products, and services are top notch, it really doesn’t matter what your grand total is. It’s more important to look at the steady rate it is climbing, if people are hiding your messages or unsubscribing, and the quality of the comments and engagement.
What do you focus on when it comes to metrics and measurement? Let us know by commenting below or posting on our Facebook page!
Social Media Glossary
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Social Media on November 30th, 2011
When Social Media comes up around the water cooler or in client meetings, do you cringe and try to fluff your way through the terminology? Here are some of today’s common terms when it comes to the Social Web so you don’t have to feel so lost:
Avatars – Graphic images representing people. An animated version of your online persona, it may or may not be an authentic representation of yourself.
Blogs – Websites designed in journal format, with most recent items at the top of a page, and written in a conversational, personal style, giving the author an authentic voice online.
Blogroll – A list of sites displayed in the sidebar of blog, showing what other blog sites the author reads regularly.
Bookmarking – Saving the address of a website article, either in your brower, or on a social bookmarking site like del.icio.us.
Community Building – Attracting and helping an audience to find shared interests and goals, use the technology, and develop useful conversations.
Content – Text, pictures, video and any other meaningful material that is on the Internet.
Crowdsourcing – Harnessing the skills and enthusiasm of those outside an organization who are willing to volunteer their time contributing content and solving problems.
Email Lists – Names and emails collected through sign up forms that are kept in one place so you can send mass emails to them in the form of a newsletter. It is best to use an email service provider for this rather than manage it on your own so you comply with spam laws.
Feeds – A way to read, view or listen to items from blogs and other RSS-enabled sites without visiting the site, by subscribing.
Links – Highlighted text that, when clicked, take you from one web page to another. Bloggers use links a lot when writing, to reference their own or other content. Linking is another aspect of sharing, by which you offer content that may be linked, and acknowledge the value of other’s people’s contributions by linking to them.
Podcast – audio or video content that can be downloaded automatically to a website so you can view or listen offline.
Post – a blog article or entry in a forum.
Profile – The information you provide about yourself when signing up for a social networking site. Usually contains a picture and basic information, your personal and business interests, a “blurb” about yourself, and tags to help people search for like-minded people.
RSS – Short for Really Simple Syndication. It allows you to subscribe to content on blogs and other social media and have it delivered to you through a feed.
Social Media – A term for the tools and platforms people use to publish, converse and share content online.
Social Networking Sites – Online places where users can create a profile for themselves and engage with others using a range of social media tools including blogs, video, images, tagging, lists of friends, forums and messaging.
Subscribing – Signing up to receive information regularly from a particular website by feed or newsletter.
Tags – Keywords attached to a blog post, bookmark, photo or other item of content so you and others can find them easily through searches. Remember tags are common terms that people would normally use in their searches.
Web 2.0 – A term coined in 2004 to describe blogs, wikis, social networking sites and other Internet-based services that emphasize collaboration and sharing, rather than less interactive publishing (Web 1.0).
Wiki – A web page – or set of pages – that can be edited collaboratively. The best known example is Wikipedia, an encyclopedia created by thousands of contributors across the world.
Are there any terms we forgot, or that you’re still confused about? Let us know by commenting below and we’ll help!
Top 7 Social Networking Sites for Real Estate
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Marketing, Real Estate Trends, Social Media on October 6th, 2011
Here are the top seven social networking sites that benefit anyone in the Real Estate industry.
1. Facebook
Now reaching 800 million active users, Facebook is one of the easiest ways of finding prospective customers within any given area. For real estate you can target very specific groups according to your business needs and reach your prospective customers where they already are.
572 members in the Atlanta area are using Merchant Circle’s free marketing tools to find new local customers. You can link up with other local businesses, create special deals, and fill your profile with influential reviews.
3. Trulia
Trulia is an all-in-one real estate site that’s jam-packed with the most useful and timely information on homes for sale, apartments for rent, neighborhoods, markets and trends to help you figure out exactly what, where and when to buy. You can also follow popular real estate blogs and get advice and opinions from local experts on Trulia Voices.
4. ActiveRain
ActiveRain is one of the few networking sites that are exclusively meant for real estate professionals. Join 214,063 professionals on the world’s largest real estate network — it is still free.
RealTown is a resource for a wide variety of real estate related articles from industry experts, syndicated columnists, Real Estate magazines, vendors and members. It is an internet portal that features everything real estate. Developed back in 1995, RealTown is one of the oldest and most respected communities in the real estate industry.
Realtors are beginning to leverage the power of Linkedin.com for their business. The growth of the site’s traffic and user base coupled with opportunities to join Groups, engage in Q&A’s, and broadcast information makes Linkedin an absolute necessity to any Realtor.
Zillow is a free online real estate site where you can search for homes for sale, find home prices, see home values, view recently sold homes, and check mortgage rates.
Bonus: Google +
Not quite in the top tools list yet, Google+ offers a steady concentration of traffic from affluent demographics that could create the perfect conditions for luxury marketers.
How about you? What are your favorite real estate social networks?
A Hypothetical Situation:
A prospective buyer visits your real estate property looking for a home to purchase. A leasing agent or even property manager greets him or her with a less than chipper or helpful attitude. As the prospect is shown the property and informed of its hopefully many benefits, your leasing agent continues their lackluster sales performance. At the end of the showing, your once potential prospect might be turned off from your property simply because of a horrible interaction with your leaser.
What does this mean? Did you lose a potential renter or buyer? Probably, but it also means so much more.
This is where real-time reviews can either be your best friend or your worst enemy.
Using their cell phone, the unsatisfied prospect could be posting a negative review of your property on multiple platforms in only the time it takes for them to walk to their car. (Twitter, Facebook, Blog, etc….)
Scary right? Now all of their friends know of the terrible sales experience. It gets worse. With the recent addition of social search to Google, people searching for your property on the Internet could possibly stumble upon their Twitter or Facebook update. Now the bad review goes beyond just their friend group.
So what can we do about this?
The answer seems simple. You outperform any consumer expectations. Is this possible? Maybe not, but it is an admirable goal.
What else?
A Trendwatching.com article suggests that companies should be extremely involved with the review process. This would mean monitoring reviews and responding to them, or actually providing a platform for reviews in order to gain insight and participation ease.
The reality is that people are going to say things about your property/brand. Why not take advantage of the good and bad? If you responded to someone’s positive Twitter comment about your property with a thank you, do you think that would help the chances of them buying or renting from you? You better believe it would. What if you apologized for the bad experience and invited them back for a special visit? It would definitely help.
This is something we need to be thinking about for next year. Real-time reviews will become more common as time passes. Are you ready to handle the good and bad? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
