Foursquare: Have you checked in?

Foursquare hit the social media scene in 2009 and has gained popularity ever since. With over 25 million users world wide and over 2.5 billion check ins, Foursquare allows users to check in at businesses and public places. Foursquare is a fun social media app but it isn't all fun and games when you consider its business applications

Become the Mayor of your favorite spots
When you check in to a place more times than anyone else you are deemed the mayor of that place. Being the Mayor can give you special things and general notoriety.

Register your office
Setting up your office as a place on Foursquare not only allows you and others to check in at your office giving it online exposure, but allows you to write about your activities like preparing a new listing. It also gives you the opportunity to write tips like preparing your home to sell.

Open House Buzz
Foursquare is a good way to post information about open houses. Sellers and other office agents can comment about open houses and the neighborhood.With Foursquare's ability to forward to Facebook and Twitter, more of your social community can view open house activities.

Connect with your Sphere
Checking in at local stores gives you the ability to see which of your friends are there. Imagine "bumping into" an old friend while shopping! Knowing that they're there gives the savvy real estate agent time to prepare for the casual conversation.

Take a few minutes to sign up for Foursquare if you aren't already using it. The online social community is blending into our face to face contacts making prospecting much easier.

Getting Ready for a Social Media Event

Brushing up on statistics about social media while getting reading for a presentation. This video summarizes everything so well. Thanks Erik Qualman for making it.@Equalman



Here are the statistics from the video:

1. Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old
2. In 10 years over 40% of the Fortune 500 will no longer be here
3. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
4. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
5. 1 in 5 couples meet online; 3 in 5 gay couples meet online
6. 1 in 5 divorces are blamed on Facebook
7. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
8. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
9. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest and 2x the size of the U.S. population
10. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
11. A new member joins LinkedIn every second
12. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.”
13. Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Britney Spears have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of North Korea, Australia, Chile…Israel, Sweden, Greece,
14. Over 32 million have watched the Volkswagen Darth Vader Kid advertisement on YouTube
15. Child actor has never seen Star Wars
16. Ford Explorer launch on Facebook more effective than a Super Bowl Ad
17. 50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
18. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
19. 69% of parents are “friends” with their children on social media
20. eReaders have surpassed traditional book sales
21. Groupon will reach $1 billion in sales faster than any company in history
22. There were over 75 million more people playing Farmville than there were real Farmers
23. Social Gamers to buy 6 billion in virtual goods by 2013; movie goers only buy 2.5 million in concessions
24. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
25. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube
26. If Wikipedia were made into a book it would be 2.25 million pages long
27. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
28. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
29. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
30. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
31. 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations
32. Only 14% trust advertisements
33. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
34. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
35. 93% of marketers use social media for business
36. We will non longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media
37. Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
38. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years
39. Babies have been named Facebook in Egypt

Blogs: Quick and Easy Tips to Increase Readership

Writing and publishing a blog is a lot of fun. It allows the author,using articles photos, and videos, to creatively  develop their online personality. Many bloggers develop an intricate and detailed online personality only to be disappointed at the lack of interaction with their online community.

Here are a few words of encouragement. Whatever you do, don't give up! Try these easy steps to develop a long term group of faithful followers who interact with you through your blog.

• Post - Quit waiting for the perfect article. Take the idea you have and express it. You can always go back later and expand your idea by posting more detailed information. Just Post it!
• Distribute - Make sure your blog posts are shared throughout your online media sources. Remember to use your blog as the hub and sources like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and others as the spokes. These  other social media communities will help you draw in more readers to your blog.
• Engage - Ask questions in your posts. When your readers comment, it is important that you respond. Listen so you can interact. Do this by setting up notifications to your phone or email (or both) so that you are immediately notified when someone comments on your post. By  responding to their comment quickly, you can create a real time conversation.
• Adjust - Analyze and tweak as you go. Watch your statistics and and analytics so you understand what interests your readers most. Post on subjects that have high interest and comments. Stop posting on subjects that have little to now interest.

Enjoy developing your blog and your online community. Keep your blog fresh by updating it frequently. You'll be glad you did!

Quick Social Media Plug-ins for HAR.com

Social media networking and linking is an important part of being found in Google searches. The Houston Association of Realtors makes it easy for us to quickly link to social media sites. The short narrated video slideshow will help you set up your network.

Real Estate Reading List for 2012

With a new year comes a challenge and an endeavor to improve both in knowledge and in skill. My reading list never seems to shrink. As i finish one book I seem to add another two to the pile. What is on your list for 2012?

• Linchpin Seth Godin
• Raving Fans Ken Blanchard
• Trust Agents Chris Brogan
• Tribes Seth Godin
• The Real Book of Real Estate Robert Kiyosaki
• The Millionaire Real Estate Agent Gary Keller
• Unselling: Sell Less to Win More Peter Bourke
• The Law of Success Napoleon Hill
• Google + for Business Chris Brogan
• The Thank You Economy Gary Vaynerchuk

Share

Mashable Reviews Comscore's Study on Social Network

In a whitepaper title It's a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It's Headed, dated December 21, 2011, comScore released amazing statistics. Adam Falk of Mashable highlights a few in this video.

Share

How do we interact in 2011?

To reach consumers it is necessary to understand how people interact today. More than likely, people meet online with 1 in 5 marriages originating from an online introduction. With the likelihood of personal interaction initiating online, a strong, widespread, dynamic, and planned online presence is a must for a real estate professional to grow a successful and productive business.
An online prospecting campaign must include a substantial amount of Facebook. Successful campaigns that create a measureable return on time and dollar investment usually include use of both the personal profile and a business page along with facebook ads.

Recently Facebook incorporated Facebook generated lists to help organize friends into manageable groups. Lists allow individuals to post status updates to specific groups of people allowing a great opportunity to target market. It would be beneficial to post an open house for friends in a specific geographic area. But it may be considered spam to others who live far away from the open house. Lists also allow facebookers to review or watch posts from specific groups of people. Many people today have more Facebook friends than they can interact with. Lists allow people to streamline friends into smaller lists. The smaller groups let posts move slower down the wall so it is easier to pay attention and interact with friends.

Share

Social Media giants dominate the internet

Many agents believe a website will suffice in capturing online consumers. This is far from the truth. In a Comscore Report dated Tuesday, December 21, 2011, consumers spent 35% more time on social media sites than that of a year ago. Websites are too static for today’s online consumer who searches sometimes daily for updated information. Websites should change as the market changes and should provide current
detailed information customized for a targeted group of consumers. In many instances, blogs have taken the place of websites. Agent blogs have the ability to be changed easily, are usually controlled by the agent, and are preferred by search engines like Google.

An agent’s blog can be the hub for consumers to be drawn towards with other even more dynamic sites used as outposts to guide the consumer in. Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are constantly changing and highly trafficked. Youtube, for example, is the second most searched site
behind Google. Facebook has enough members to make it the third most populated country in the world. These, and other social sites, are excellent areas to find consumers who are searching for information about real estate. These sites are needed to help draw buyers and sellers to the agent’s blog. Social sites also allow the agent to create an online personality necessary to creating a personal brand.

Linkedin is a business related social networking site. Somewhat like an online rolodex, Linkedin allows members to connect to each other. Members can post their profile and job history along with updates. Linkedin, according to Wikipedia, has 21.4 million monthly visitors just in the United States and is growing at 2 members per second. Linkedin has over 135 million members worldwide.

Twitter is another fast growing social media site with more than 300 million posts called tweets and 1.6 billion searches a day. Limited to only 140 character posts, Twitter delivers short text like messages and links to its members. Twitter is great for posting links to blog articles and for public conversations within groups.

Youtube is a social media giant with postings of not just short videos but full length movies and music. Youtube, started in 2005, is now a subsidiary of Google. According to Wikipedia, Google reported in May 2010 that it served nearly 2 billion videos a day and nearly double the primetime audience of the three major television stations combined. Registered Youtube users can post videos and video blogs that are viewable by the public or to a specific audience.

Flickr, like Youtube, hosts videos but is mostly used to host photos for use by bloggers. Owned by Yahoo, in June 2011 Flickr had more than 51 million registered users and more than 80 million unique visitiors. This is a perfect place for real estate agents to posts house photos. It also is a great place to post photo libraries of communities.
Though not even scratching the surface of the social media sites, the final outpost of the online marketing hub is the social media giant Facebook.

Facebook Continually updating, Facebook allows users to create both a personal and business persona, posting information about the user’s life and business. Due to its popularity and strength, Facebook dominates the social media scene with over 800 million users. According to Wikipedia, by April 2010 nearly 42% of the United States’ population had a facebook account. In May 2011 Facebook announced it served nearly 140 million monthly users. Comscore's December 20th 2011 report stated that one in every seven online minutes is spent on Facebook while three out of every four minutes spent on social sites are spent on Facebook.

Share

Seven things you need to do to engage your Facebook followers

This is a no-brainer, but were you aware that people buy more when they are engaged? Though I can't source this, some statistics show that consumers spend 20-40% more when they are actively engaged with the salesperson or company.

Do you know why? ...Because buying and selling is emotional

We must move away from one-sided tightly scripted messages to a free form of dialogue with consumers. Creating dialogue and engaging your consumers means you have to know who you’re attracting.

• Ask Questions - Brainstorm a list of questions your followers will find engaging
• Keep it simple and fun - Use videos and photos to attract followers
• Keep an editorial calendar - Plan your posts around themes.
• Create a content grid – Organize your posts into categories: Real Estate, Local Interests,
• Personal Interest, Your website
• Reply to every Like or Comment - Simply, “Thanks for the likes” will suffice.
• Reply to every Share - People want to know that you’ve seen them.
• Measure your success with analytics - Use the basic Facebook analytics or more detailed Hootsuite or Google Analytics to measure your traffic.
  

Share|

Prospecting through social media

Social Media is Relational NOT Transactional

In creating a set of business objectives, we tend to look at number of contacts needed to create one appointment or one revenue share. Though textbook planning, this doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the essence of social media: creating a network of people who share about themselves.

Looking then at the goal of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, I am enthused by the potential of online relationship building. Wow, social media creates the perfect platform for personal branding!

Often people question which social media platform yields the greatest results? The answer varies greatly depending on the preference of the media user. Though many people believe Twitter, for example, is more B2B focused, it provides ready opportunity to build hyper-local market interest. Facebook, on the other hand, is commonly considered a business to consumer media source. Neither social media platforms, however, will produce prospecting results unless they are worked consistently to deliver relevant market contact.

Easy steps in making money with social media:

Choose your favorite platform. If you like Twitter, use it. If Facebook is your favorite social media platform then become a Facebook professional. Learn your social media platform’s tools and posting methods.

Identify your content strategy by understand your target market. This could be a geographic group like in the old neighborhood farm days or it could be an interest group like model railroaders.

Research and “friend” or “follow” your target market.

Identify daily tasks. These are 4 to 5 daily posts of information that are of interest to your market group.

Manage the delivery of the information through a realtime drip marketing program. Just like neighborhood farming, you can’t send out a year’s worth of postcards in one day. Sites like www.hootsuite.com, www.tweetdeck.com, and http://www.socialoomph.com deliver scheduled posting opportunities. Most blogging platforms like Wordpress and Blogspot do as well.

Keep posting! Growing a group of faithful followers who know, like, trust you takes time. Success is dependent on consistent longevity.

Share

Use Video to Innovate Your Marketing

Using video to prospect has several benefits for marketing and prospecting for new business. Consider these:

• First page Google: Video helps move you up the search engines. Video helps create a dynamic website that encourages comments vrom viewers.
• It's Fun!: Creative outgoing people can quickly crank out a video to involve viewers in their website.
• Viewer Friendly: More and more people are willing to spend a few minutes watching a short video than reading a market summary. Do yourself a favor and capture a larger audience by posting a few short videos.

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Share

Facebook Hits 500 Million Users

Facebook is the third largest country in the world.
Fastest growing demographic group on Facebook - 55 to 65 year old females.
Facebook has more weekly traffic than Google!

As expected, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook surpassed 500 million users today. (Wouldn't it be cool to know that you were the 500 millionth?) Zuckerberg in in his blog, says it isn't about the numbers but about the mission, "to help make the world more open and connected."

To better understand Facebook's mission and to commemorate this milestone, Facebook also announced it's new Facebook Stories, asite to share how Facebook has impaced you and your friends' lives.

In an effort to keep updated on the impact social media has had and presently is having on our lives Erik Qualman has updated his video Social Media Revolution.

Does Twitter Really Work in a Social Media Marketing Plan?

I hear a lot of skepticism about the return on investment in using social media sites to prospect for new customers and market real estate for sale. Let's face it, unless you see actual dollars coming from the use of any marketing tool then it's useless, right?

Well, what if you used Twitter as a messaging device? I mean, use it to tell and show people what you are really doing so they could see what your likes are. Maybe they could begin to get to know you and even like you by following you on Twitter. Couldn't this happen on Facebook too?

Interestingly enough, my son and I were out this morning putting flags out for his boy scout troop. The troop raises money by charging people to put an American flag in their yard on national holidays. Unfortunately, this morning one of the flags was missed. Thankfully, it wasn't me and my son although it completely sounds like something I could very possibly do. I know the flag was missed because the woman whose flag was not placed in her yard called me. After a pleasant conversation I asked how she came across my name associated with the flags. She replied that she hadn't, but couldn't remember the name and contact information for the person in charge of the event so she googled searched the troop number. A twitter post I made about a recent campout showed up which is why she called me.

I love Twitter.

What’s your Social Marketing Plan?

I’ve got a Facebook account with two different business pages, a Twitter account that I use every day, a LinkedIn account that with a network that is growing in size literally every day, my own Youtube channel, two blogs, and a Flick’r account. How am I using this amass of social media sites to make money? Does any of this sound familiar?

I talk to a lot of people who were told they could generate income for their business if they had a Facebook account. Now, granted they have had a bunch of fun playing games and getting caught up with people they have talked to since college but the only thing they really have to show for it is a lot of nostalgia. Friends are great, don’t get me wrong, but most of the people I’ve talked to about this say the same thing, “I haven’t gained any business from all this. In fact, I’ve used a lot of time with nothing to show for it.”

Emily Soares Proctor in Social Media Examiner gives 5 easy steps to a winning social media plan including Find your Audience. Let's look at how to create a social media marketing plan strating with finding our audience.

Find Your Target Audience
Before venturing any further into social media marketing, you’ll have to identify your brand. Jeremiah Owyang details two types of brand: personal brand and career brand. Emily Soares Proctor asks, in personal branding, “what unique aspect of your product or service attracts your target population?” She follows up with a great career branding question too. “What do your readers want from you?” Emily recommends writing out a basic profile of your most common customer.
Specifically, look at the geographic or spherical group from which you want to draw business. What are the characteristics of that group? Include income level, education, hobbies, and even their ability to navigate the internet.

Become a Trusted Advisor
Use your social media sites to help people learn about their shared concerns. For example, one of my blogs is titled Quail Valley Real Estate. I have recently written several articles about the Quail Valley Golf Course. In the past year I have included reports on the Turtle Creek Drive construction project. Currently I am reporting on the road construction project on FM 1092. These are items that concern all the residents I Quail Valley. Brainstorm a list of topics that are of interest to all your readers. Research the topics and start writing. By writing on shared concerns and providing current information, your readers will begin to rely on your site for the information they need. You’ll become their “go to” person.

Mix it Up
Write on a variety of topics and in a variety of forms. Do lists, post videos, interview local experts, write personal interest stories, and include controversial topics. Don’t forget to have fun and let your personality to shine through. To get someone to reach out to you first you have to get them to know, like, and trust you.
Post Consistently
To me, this point is the toughest part, consistently providing information so the reader will know when to expect information from you. I know, for example, if I turn the television on at 7:00 in the morning on weekdays I can watch Good Morning America on ABC. It’s always there. I can count on it. Get the point?
In order to have that consistency I have to schedule a lot of my posts to go out at times different than when I write them. I can’t seem to write everyday and produce quality information. Instead, I write a lot on the weekends or at night. I can then break my articles into smaller pieces to be posted at regularly scheduled times. Some blogs allow for posts to be published at scheduled times. There are also sites that can automatically publish posts at scheduled times. Check out SocialOomph, HootSuite, and even to some extent TweetDeck. There are others as well.

All this writing, researching, planning, and posting takes time. It's just like any active marketing activity. You've got to schedule the time and do the work. The greatest reason I can see for including a good dose of social media in my marketing plan is that most real estate customers are beginning their buying and selling experience online. If they have already made a connection with a real estate, their trusted advisor, they will turn to that agent for help.

Setting up a Google Analytics Account

Setting up a Google Analytics account should only take a few minutes. Like most things when you are working on your own on the internet, nothing is as easy as everyone else says. I have used the Google Analytics help site more than once not only to set up my account but also in making it find my blogs and websites. One of the most benficial help pieces I have found, however, has not been on Google at all. It was on Youtube. This video shows step by step how to set up a Google Analytics account. Googgle Analytics for Dummies? I think so. I watched it more than once. Though the audio is not so hot, the content is great. Wrttnrd, the maker of the video, has several Google Analytics "How to" videos. I think all of them are "should watch" level videos.

Have You Ever Used Google Analytics?

Google Analytics has given me the ability to accumulate statistics about my blogs and websites in one place. I can view statistics of hits on particular posts on any given day. I can also see average time on sites and bounce rates. Google Analytics helps me set up goals and track benchmarks completed toward the goals I've set.

For real estate agents using internet marketing as a part of their overall marketing plan, Google Analytics helps determine the effectiveness of reaching my target group of consumers. Google helps Analytic users by holding seminars throughout the country. The seminars range in levels of knowledge to help best meet the participants' needs. The schedule of seminars is on the Google Analytcs site. They're called Seminars for Success. The Analytics site also has a help menu to guide first time users through setting up accounts and a trouble shooting section for those of us who never seem to get things right the first or second or third times.

Google Analytics has helped me formalize my internet marketing campaigns from a haphazard shotgun approach of marketing to a specific set of actions designed to reach specific consumer groups. I can watch and analyze the effectiveness of the implementation of my marketing plan, making changes to continually improve online marketing and time use.

Trying to add cool Facebok buttons

Learning new things isn't always easy. If you are watching others and then trying to figure out how they did what they did and then searching and trying to replicate it, it can be difficult. It would be much easier if I actually knew someone who would say something like, "Whoa dude, check this out. It's sooo cool."
Google serching a problem is getting easier and easier.
Today I tried to add a Facebook Like button. My first attempt landed me a I like Milk facebook link. Nice move, Byron! It looked good on my blog though. I learned by searching how to on google and then on facebook that I had to actually create my own application and then copy and paste my coe to my widget on my blog. Sounds hard but it really wasn't. The big deal is actually having the time to figure these things out. Back to "Whoa dude, check this out." I could use a friend like that!

HAR.com encourages social media marketing through Twitter.com

Using the Tools section of your HAR.com site can feel a bit overwhelming. There are so many tools and so little time to learn what they do! Before logging into TEMPO, look down the sidebar for the Social Networking Plug-in link. Clicking it will allow you to link your listing activity to your Twitter account. Check out how the link looks: 3119 Mullingar Walk

You don't have a Twitter account? Join me on April 14th at Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce for a 4 hour MCE class on Social Media Marketing. Sign up by calling Champions School of Real Estate at 713-629-4543 or online at http://www.championsschool.com/

8 Steps to Writing a Bio Like a Pro by Chris Brogan (in fact)

Chris Brogan writes (in fact) in the Undercover Recruiter how to write a top notch profile that may be used in all your online media sites. He recommends having a full profile, a short profile, and a long profile to use depending on the online media source. Undercover Recruiter also has a post on how to maximize your Linkedin profile. Statistics show the importance of having a top Linkedin profile. The 8 Steps to Writing a Bio like a pro is a must read and do for all agents, new and veteran alike.

Can you really make money with a blog?

Daren Rouse of Problogger.net has the best explanation of how to use social media sites to increase readership of a blog. He uses Chris Brogan's idea of creating social media outposts to support a blog. His ideas seem easy to follow:
1. Social media sites may gain and lose popularity.
2. Own the blog url instead of using a hosting site.
3. Find other related blogs and interact with them.

Use the charts in the video to help determine how to support your blog with your social media sites.