At the South By Southwest Interactive conference in March, Twitter CEO Evan Williams announced a new service called @anywhere. When it’s released (date still unannounced), @anywhere will allow website visitors to tweet about websites or follow people who are associated with a site without navigating away from the page that they are on.
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CommentsIn a recent article, the Burlington Free Press implored Vermont Realtors to embrace social media. When a mainstream Gannett newspaper tells you to do something, you know it must be widely accepted. But just how popular is social media?
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CommentsReal estate websites should be so much more than MLS information and a contact form. An effective real estate website should not only sell the services of the office or agent, it should sell their personality and their expertise in their market area.
To illustrate this, let’s imagine a person is looking to buy a property in your market area but does not have a particular affinity to any office. This person visits two different websites in their search process. Each of these websites is built on the same web platform, using the same basic functionality and layout. If the structure and functionality are all identical, the element that will distinguish one site from another is the portrayal of the agent’s personality, experience and knowledge of the real estate market. By giving people more information, you give them more opportunities to connect with you on a personal level.
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CommentsIf you have employed the services of a an Internet Marketing firm, chances are they have advised you to start a Facebook business page, Twitter account and a LinkedIn profile. You might have a blog, too, videos, and a life to lead! That’s a lot to keep up with while juggling your day-to-day business operations if you don’t have the benefit of someone helping you manage all these accounts.
Here’s a few tips on how you can consolidate some of these platforms and seamlessly integrate them into your day-to-day operations.
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The appeal of social media is strong. According to Econsultancy, social media and blogs are the 4th most popular online activities, even beating out email. The mystery of social media is almost as great as it’s appeal, however.
There are a lot of social media terms thrown around these days, and sorting through all of the jargon can be tough. First, let’s differentiate between the “big three” social networks.
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Facebook is a social network site that connects friends, family, and businesses. People can share updated statuses, pictures, personal information, links, and more. With more than 250 million users in the world, 120 million of which log on daily, there is a large market to reach here.
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Twitter is another social network/micro-blog that allows users to to send and read messages (or “tweets”). Tweets can be up to 140 characters, and they are shared on your personal page and distributed to people who choose to “follow” you. In the last year, Twitter’s growth rate surpassed 1,000%. The potential here to reach customers is huge.
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WordPress is a personal publishing platform that works as a blogging service and as a web hosting service that is run on PHP code and a SQL data backend. Confused? WordPress.com offers a free blog hosting service that requires no PHP code knowledge and a user friendly interface that allows easy updating, customization, and built in widgets to add to your blog. 77% of internet users actively follow and read blogs, so this platform also provides great opportunity to reach and engage potential customers. WordPress isn’t the only blog hosting application out there; there is also Blogger, Vox, and more.
Now that we’ve covered some basics, let’s go into more depth…
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Sounds like an odd thing to say but the reality is in the consumer-to-consumer marketplace, the truth surfaces about products, services, ideas, and companies. For instance, when looking at reviews for bed and breakfast options recently, some friends of mine showed up with a very bad review from a disgruntled customer. I wondered, how could this be? This place is gorgeous and the hosts warm and courteous. I wanted to find out from them what happened so I asked them. They had no idea about this review but had noticed a dip in their bookings and when they looked at the review, they quickly knew what was going on and told me the other side of the story.
The reviewer in question had failed to book through the proper reservation system and assumed they would hold a room for him for the same time each year that he had been visiting during leaf-peeping season in Vermont. As the hosts were not aware of a booking they of course gave the room out to another party who had booked properly. He was furious and called them to complain. A few days later, some deeply unpleasant reviews began to surface on Trip Adviser and their bookings dropped during their most important season. Once they had sourced these reviews back, they went on the offensive and reached out to other long term guests asking them to provide some fair and balanced feedback on Trip Advisor. They came flooding and started to push the bad reviews down becoming clear to others that there was a malicious hijacker at work rather than a bona fide review(s).
The lesson from this is that you will get bad reviews from time to time – it’s the nature of people’s sensibilities. It’s healthy in fact as it allows you as a business to learn from your customers to make your business better, much like test marketing. However you must keep a close eye on any muckraking and manage your reputation as best possible. Unless people break codes of conduct, then it is hard to have conversations removed from your digital footprint, but you can contribute to the conversations and provide more of the type of content that you want associated with your brand. Encouraging customers to do the same is key, as people love user generated content in a trust based community as the web is.
How can you monitor your brand?
Two suggestions:
The blogosphere is an open and often candid forum, so being able to smell a rat and respond can help restore that trust that might have been lost either fairly or unfairly, as in the case of my friends at the B & B. Strengthening your community in life and online will inevitably help you create a strong business.
Tell me your stories on this. How you have had to manage your online reputation?
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This is the third installment of the Facebook for Business series.
As the number of businesses using multiple social media platforms continues to grow, the question frequently comes up: Which content should go where?
Is it Facebook content or blog content?
The two platforms that provide the biggest source of confusion are blogs and Facebook. There is a purpose for both, and each is ideal for particular types of content. It is important to understand the intention of each of these channels.
So, should you put your next update in your blog or on your Facebook page?
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This post is post #2 of the Facebook for Business Series.
Facebook this, Facebook that… You can talk all day about what you can do with this tool, but before getting into the details of how to use the site, we should first establish why to use it.
There are a number of areas where this social networking platform can help your business on and offline. Here are 8 reasons why you should take advantage of them.
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CommentsThe Social Media boom may be bigger than you think; Facebook is at its forefront. Our “Facebook for Business” series will help you make sense of this powerful tool. You’ll learn how to tame the beast and harness it for your business. Follow our series during the next several weeks and:
With over 300,000,000 Facebook users, 120,000,000 of whom log on daily, the business opportunity Facebook presents cannot be ignored. According to Socialnomics, social media has claimed the number one web activity spot over the previous “less acceptable” contender. Facebook is a free way to improve your online presence. To increase your success online, your business must be part of this popular activity.
Leading companies have joined the crowd and are successfully using their Facebook pages to keep their customers happy and connected with with their brand.
Look at who is making the best of Facebook: 10 Successful Facebook Business Pages (from the Penn Olsen Social Media blog). With due diligence, and focused hard work, your business could be among the leaders.
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A business Facebook page is different than your personal Facebook page.
The business page is built off of your personal account and gives you plenty of tools to reach the growing network of individuals using Facebook. You can run ads on the Facebook sidebar, track the demographics of your page traffic with Facebook Insights, create a badge or fanbox to promote your page, start discussion boards with the fans, add company information and events, and much more.
There are many ways to use these features and many ways to optimize your page; but to start, how do you create a business page?
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149 South Champlain St, Burlington, VT
I recently came across another powerful use that Twitter provides people with last week. It not only provided an awesome place to network, but it supported a new local business. Last month, I began to see a trend start to rise with something along the lines of this: #btvfall2009tweetup. Curiosity got the best of me, and I started researching what this was all about. Turns out, a new local bakery, August First was hosting a “tweetup”. A tweetup is a gathering of people who use the social-networking tool, Twitter. 
The event was organized through Twitter by using a third party app, twtvite. This application allows you to organize an event by giving details such as directions to the event and a yes/no/maybe RSVP option. This had been the second invite I had seen in about a month and I was ready to join in on the fun.
The event was organized by John Connors (@JohnCVermont) who specializes in Information Technology at Saint Michael’s College. Upon arrival, I was handed a badge with my real name and twitter user name on it so people would know if we had crossed paths on Twitter previously. Surprisingly, most of the faces in the cozy bakery were familiar. Everyone seemed very content with their coffee in-hand and talking technology. August First was a great location to have this event with their welcoming environment and their variety of tasty treats.
I will now be making an effort to attend every tweetup I can, not only for the geek-talk, but for great time all around.
If you’re on Twitter and want to see what’s going on with the team, you can find us on our Twitter List here. Also, you can follow August First here.
Cheers,
Matt Sisson
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