Category Archives: Web 2.0

Union Street Media News

Why video is good for marketing real estate online.

Sony DCR PC100E Video Camera

Image by zcreem via Flickr

[Ed. note: The Real Estate Internet Marketing blog welcomes a new voice to the blog, our intern Tom Cull. We think you’ll enjoy his perspective and experience working with video in this and other posts.]

Remember when “Video killed the Radio Star“? According to The Pew Internet & American Life Project, almost 15% of all web traffic comes from You Tube and other video-sharing platforms. Couple that with Google’s increasing ability to index video into top search results and using video becomes a key component.

Many small businesses are jumping on this bandwagon as people are becoming more accustomed and willing to watching video online as they are to read text, especially with advertising. Using platforms like YouTube also saves on storage and bandwidth costs with great distribution possibilities from social networking.

But a caveat, large or small it is important to follow some basic rules of online video to communicate your message effectively and not turn off the viewer:

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Union Street Media News

Can Video live without Music?

Google New Logo For YouTube :)
Image by dannysullivan via Flickr

I was reading and article about site ranking on the Inman Report today. Here’s what Bernice Ross had to say about video and Google ranking:

“Google’s algorithm (the mathematical formula that determines Web ranking) seems to assign higher rankings to sites that have video. Consequently, use video to improve your ranking. Please note that virtual tours that scan still photos do not rank as highly as actual video. Furthermore, Google recently started using software that allows it to convert the voice track of a video into search-able text. This means that if you are using music on your videos, it’s smart to dump the music and replace it with a voice track. The music does nothing to improve your search-engine ranking, while the voice track does. Also, don’t forget to add plenty of still pictures, as this helps your ranking as well.”

I am heartened by some of these points. It was only a matter of time before Google’s sophistication at indexing video improved with the help of SEO fields on 3rd party hosting sites such as YouTube and WellcomeMat. Yet would I be sacrificing a key element at the altar of film-making by taking off my carefully syncopated soundtracks?  Sound and music is crucial to the narrative flow, even something as dry as a virtual house tour. It provides editing ‘beats’ and color. I personally am not going to strip music out of story-telling pieces. Straight up interviews might be another story, but I want viewers to enjoy watching my videos and feel like they are skipping along with purpose. Often, good music that is strategically placed provides a motif and further identity to the contributor.

Ultimately, it’s a decision about what you want a video to achieve on a site. If it’s to make it as engaging and watchable as possible to keep visitors on the site and communicate something, then think about using of music and sound effectively. If what is being said is keyword rich and part of a strategy to get seen by as many people as possible, then leaving off a soundtrack would be something to seriously consider.

Feel free to offer your feedback on this issue or on my use of music for some of Union Street Media’s video content!

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G Dewald

Internet Marketing Basics: RSS Feeds

Blue stringsImage by Mirko Macari via Flickr

You’ve probably seen the little orange icons and “subscribe to my feed” buttons on sites you’ve visited (you can see some over to the left of this blog post, in fact). You might even have read articles where people argue about things like RSS and Atom and so on. Maybe you’ve heard of things like Google Reader. This is an article written to help you start using RSS feeds to help your online marketing efforts.

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Union Street Media News

USM in the News: SEO, Real Estate Marketing Online and Print Media

The Barrie Colts applying pressure at the Bram...Image via Wikipedia

Union Street Media pulled a hat trick of news mentions this week. We think the readers of our blog will find something of value in each these articles as well.

Search Engine Optimization for Small Business

Our director of web strategy, Gahlord Dewald, was quoted in the Burlington Free Press for an article that discusses the marketing discipline of search engine optimization (SEO) from the perspective of a small maple syrup producer. Dewald says he was very happy to offer his insights to the story and encourages you to read the sidebar, especially Nicole Ravlin‘s excellent tie in to social media at the end. [Please note that Gannett time-limits the availability of their articles, so the link may cease working sometime in the furture–read it while it’s hot]

Future of a Daily Print Newspaper

Union Street Media founder Ted Adler was quoted in a feature story about Free Press publisher Brad Robertson in Seven Days (the Burlington-owned weekly paper and kind-of competitor to the Free Press). Ted makes note of Brad’s innovative change-agent style. If you’re interested in what’s happening in news media, the article provides a great perspective from outside the big shakeups going on in the larger markets.

Examine the True Costs of Your Online Marketing Efforts

Gahlord answered a Q&A about which types of skills and technologies will be most useful to real estate professionals engaged in online marketing for Inman News. He encourages business owners to evaluate whether their current low-cost methods of marketing are truly low cost.

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G Dewald

Other Readings: Thinking about Search

Legacy 2400 baud modem for leased lines. Proba...Image via Wikipedia

A lot great articles about search lately. Not just search engine optimization, but the whole concept of what search is and how it can be used for engagement etc. Here are some that I’ve been reading:

Mobile Search

People search for things in a context. They are somewhere in the universe and they need to know something. Ten years ago if we wanted to search for something we could use this fancy new thing called the internet and it was awesome. We logged in on our dial up modems and typed our questions. We used computers weighing at least eight pounds to interact with the data. The screens were maybe a foot wide or more.

Increasingly, we’re out in the world and looking for something. We use devices weighing a few ounces. The screens are a few inches wide. We can’t type into them and a noisy real-world environment surrounds us. But we still want to search for something.

“Mobile Search Engine Optimization” describes some of the different ways we use search on the go. We think and act differently when using mobile devices. Your search engine optimization that works so well on a desktop at your office, might not be reaching and engaging a customer who is standing within ten feet of your product or service. This is an emerging area of research so expect more in this vein.

Want to get ready for a mobile search world? The future of the mobile web is available to you every weekend.

Lifestyle Real Estate Search

While Union Street Media customers have been using our One Click Real Estate Search technology to craft custom lifestyle real estate searches on their sites for some time, there are an increasing number of services and aggregators focusing on creating real estate searches that highlight more than just price and location. Joel Burslem gives a roundup of several, including the Onboard Infomatics Lifestyle Listings Engine (which looks pretty sweet).

How do people search for real estate?

Understanding what people type into search engines is very important to getting the reach you need for your site. It helps you put your site in front of people that may find your site relevant. There’s been a fair amount of chatter about “natural language search” vs the “old” checkbox-zip-code-how-many-bathrooms approach. The FBS Blog (quickly becoming one of my favorites, by the way) gives a quick take on natural language search and whether it applies to real estate.

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Union Street Media News

The Future of Online Marketing Has Already Begun

The Future of The Internet, is a very grand title, the new report from Pew Internet and American Life Project  doesn’t stop there however. This latest of three installments by The Pew Project focuses on how the integration of technology and communication systems will eliminate the concept of being “at work” or “at home.” To quote

“few lines divide professional time from personal time,” and those professionals are happy with the way work and play are “seamlessly integrated in most of these workers’ lives.” (Pew Report).

Regardless of your stance on that issue the future of wireless technology and the growing breadth of web applications has come a very long in not much time. This is especially true considering I had my first email account in seventh grade (I know I am dating my self there), which was a scant 14 years ago. When you think of how technology continues to develop at an ever increasing rate it is hard to imagine where we will be in 2020, which is the point which the study hypothesizes about. The iphone still looks like something out of Star Trek as far as I can tell. I am sure Steve Jobs already has one that has the ability to scan humans for sickness.

All this aside the report raises some interesting questions particularly for the online real estate market. To use my self as an example; as I told you before, I got my first email account in seventh grade and I just bought my first house, which I found … you guessed it … online. The generation of E-mail and blogging are buying houses and if you are not ready for them then you will be left by the wayside. Online applications are getting more and more important and the best sales tool that will be at your disposal in 2020 is only a glimmer in some programmer’s eye. Read up and stay ahead of the curve.

Here is a link to the full article – The Pew Report

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G Dewald

Mobile Internet Advertising with Google Adwords on G1 and iPhone

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

If your web marketing strategy incorporates search engine advertising and you want to reach consumers wherever they are: good news. Google is now setting up mobile-specific segmenting options that reach the G1 and iPhone operating systems only.

So, for example, if you have mobile real estate web templates enabled on your site, you can set up an ad campaign targetted at a mobile audience. And only pay for those who click through.

If you’re in ecommerce or retail, Google notes that “last Christmas, the iPhone drove more traffic to Google.com worldwide than any other mobile platform.”

One of the advantages of mobile search marketing is that you’re reaching a customer exactly when they are looking for something. Not when they’re at work or at home or tethered to a laptop. Right when they want to find something. Combine this with geo-targetting and things can get pretty interesting.

More details at allthingsd.com.

See also: Joel Burslem’s Future of Real Estate Marketing blog where he gives this practical tip to real estate marketers: “…create unique campaigns with mobile-ready landing pages as well as mobile-specific calls to action (e.g. “Call 1-800-XXX-XXXX for help with your home search”).”

Related articles:
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G Dewald

Quick and Easy Video Marketing: Flip Mino HD vs Kodak Zi6

Test pattern

Image by dklimke via Flickr

Trying to decide which little video camera is the one to use for your online marketing efforts? The Flip is always talked about. But what’s this Kodak thing? Luckily, someone has done a side-by-side comparison of the Flip Mino HD and the Kodak Zi6 by rubber-banding the two together and wandering around his house.

Check out Blankbaby.com for the comparison shots (with audio comparison as well) and then you’ll know which little easy camera you need to make your internet marketing videos.

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G Dewald

Using Google’s Observations to Improve Your Internet Marketing

Google collects and analyzes a massive amount of information about what interests us, how we use information and where we use information. Teasing insights from that data can have a strong impact on your internet marketing direction, strategies and tactics. Take mobile services, for example.

David Wood writes on his blog about a Google presentation about use of mobile services. The presentation, by Sumit Agarwal who is the product manager for Mobile at Google, includes a lot of insight into Google’s approach to developing applications and is very much worth a read (especially if you’re into developing software).

But from a straight-ahead data standpoint here are some interesting revelations about the way people are using mobile devices and Google’s mobile products:

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