Internet marketing for real estate: a practical tactical blog

Online Marketing Data: Which social networking sites are your customers using?

November 19th, 2008 by G Dewald

Filed Under Data, Social Media | 1 Comment

There’s a lot of talk about using social networking sites in online marketing. We often hear how having a profile at one or several social networking sites is a requirement for any sort of serious internet marketing initiative. Especially in real estate, where personal relationships and sphere of influence are recognized aspects of the marketing process.

Hopefully, you know a few things about the demographic that you work with in your business. If so, then you might be able to make use of the information in this Rubicon Consulting report: “Online Communities and Their Impact on Business. Part Three: Web Community and Social Life.” The report is the result of survey information given to 3,036 web users in September 2008. Some of the data points that jumped at me along with a few cobbled together thoughts and reactions after the break. Read more

Google’s Guide to SEO

November 12th, 2008 by G Dewald

Filed Under SEO | Leave a Comment

Google just made a Beginner’s Guide to SEO. Check it out on the Google Webmaster Blog.

Chamber presents Entreprenurial Spirit Award to Union Street Media

November 12th, 2008 by Union Street Media News

Filed Under USM News | 4 Comments

Last night at the 98th annual Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce dinner, five awards were presented for emerging talent, community service and leadership. The Chamber selected Union Street Media as the recipient of The A. Wayne Roberts Entrepreneurial Spirit Award.  The award is presented annually to a local business that exemplifies entrepreneurship, leadership, creativity and business expertise.  During the presentation, former Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle lauded Union Street Media for its record of consistent growth, community service, and dedication to producing quality work for Vermont businesses and firms around the country. Mayor Clavelle went on to describe the founding of the firm in 1999 while Ted Adler was still a student at Middlebury College and praised Union Street Media for its position as a nationally recognized pioneer in the development of Web sites for REALTORS.

The packed room — full of 700 business leaders —  responded warmly to Ted Adler’s recognition of the support Union Street Media has received from the Chamber, Vermont Software Developers Alliance, the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund and the Peer to Peer Collaborative, a business mentoring program. In addition to recognizing his business partners Andy Vota and Jon Adler, his acknowledgment of Champlain College as a source of hard-working, talented, ambitious staff received cheers and a round of applause. (A number of Union Street Media’s team hails from Champlain). Ted also acknowledged the efforts of the LCRCC in its support of the Adler family’s many creative ventures, citing his brothers’ success with The Skinny Pancake (a Burlington creperie) as an example. Most people aren’t familiar with the family connection between Union Street Media and The Skinny Pancake, so the reference elicited oohs and ahhs.  For more on this, read the feature story on the Adler entrepreneurs from July of this year.

When pressed for comment today, Ted said “We have an entrepreneurial spirit at Union Street Media that permeates our culture.  From the first days of the company out of my Middlebury College dorm room, we followed the simple business premise of “find a niche and fill it.”  Starting with our partnership with the Vermont Association of REALTORS in 2002, we have helped REALTORS leverage the power of the Internet.  With 87% of home searches beginning online according to the NAR, our work is helping our clients in this challenging market more then ever.”

For more information on last night’s event, check out the Burlington Free Press article from today.

“Maps and Data” from the Archives of Real Estate Internet Marketing by Union Street Media

November 11th, 2008 by G Dewald

Filed Under Data | Leave a Comment

Real estate is local. This is a phrase that’s heard all the time. Understanding “local” is a big part of getting marketing right whether your message/conversation is online or offline.

Maps are excellent tools to understand what “local” is. Adding a layer of relevant data on top of geographic data can be the starting point for developing powerful insights into what changes may lie ahead, what audiences you might want to serve more aggressively with your real estate internet marketing, where you might find those audiences and so on.

I’ve dug through the archives of this blog to find past posts about maps and data, for all of you new readers (and old readers who might have missed something previously).

• WSJ and USAToday map the economy (this is an historical post, combine this information with your current understanding)
• New York Fed Mortgage Maps is kept current for some more recent real estate information.
• Hotpads has a real estate foreclosure map of the US. This post shows you how to access it.
• A mashup of all sorts of data from sources like the Census, FBI, etc. displayed on a map.
• Topographic maps with Wikipedia and Panoramio overlays in your hand with Google Earth for the iPhone. This is a how-to article for some basic ways to market real estate on the iPhone or iPod Touch.
• Real Estate Connect in 2009 will be focusing on “global” so why not start by understanding how social networking and media sites are used differently by a global audience? Understand the services used by your audience via mapping.

[This post is an example of a "forgotten in the archives" post as discussed in "Help Your New Readers Find Your Best Old Posts."]

Help your new readers find your best old posts

November 10th, 2008 by G Dewald

Filed Under Blogging, Web Strategy | Leave a Comment

Blogs are great for sharing information that is relevant to your business. Fresh content, added at a regular basis, keeps readers coming back and keeps the search engine spiders coming back to index your new content.

However, sometimes good posts get forgotten over time. The content of the blog post may still be relevant, but the post itself is somewhere at the end of a several pages of archives. Those forgotten pages can still serve as landing pages since search engines will display them. However, all your new readers may not get around to digging into your archives to find that good information.

If you want to increase engagement with your new blog readers and also make use of that great content you’ve already posted, here are two tips:

Put your best content in the sidebar

Determine your “required” reading for the sidebar based on posts that are most read, most emailed or when people spend a lot of time on them. That gives you your readers’ input. Then think about pages you think are important and maybe put some of those in there as well. So you’re balancing what you think is important with what your audience thinks is important.

If you’re using your blog for online marketing, it’s important to keep your best and most important content visible at all times. This would information that helps you qualify a lead, or increases engagement to the point of getting a customer to contact you or buy your product/service.

Make a “forgotten in the archives” post

Look through your blog and find good articles on page 2 or 3 of a category archive. Those are good candidates to revive with a “forgotten in the archives” post. Remember that the marketing goal of this kind of post is to help new readers find the good stuff they missed when you were first starting to blog.

It’s even better if you can tie the “forgotten” posts together under a theme or topic and run it with a headline like “4 great blog posts about marketing real estate online” or whatever is relevant to your business. This helps create the foundation for a content cluster (I’ll blog more about that later, but if you look at our Twitter for Business post you’ll get the idea of content clusters).

Another advantage of this type of post is that it doesn’t take a lot of time but provides a lot of value to your newer blog readers. I’ll make an example “forgotten” post tomorrow or later this week to give you a sense of what one might look like.

Here’s a nerdy statement to sum it all up: Fully exploit your intellectual property assets by re-packaging existing content to engage new site visitors and increase marketing value of prior efforts.

G. Dewald to be a speaker at Blogger Connect

November 4th, 2008 by Union Street Media News

Filed Under USM News | 1 Comment

Union Street Media’s director of web strategy, G. Dewald, will be a speaker at Inman News’ Blogger Connect event in New York City on January 7, 2009. The title of his talk is: “Getting it! Understand your Readers,” is sure to be lively. Dewald hopes to bring the same open, straightforward insights and practical tips on developing data-driven internet marketing strategies he shares on this blog to the panel.

If there are specific online marketing topics you are hoping to discuss at Connect this year, be sure to let him know.

Meanwhile, some reading to get you started:

• Get an overview of using analytics to listen to your customers.
• Listen to Google to learn how people are using mobile devices.
• Use existing research to learn how your customers are using social media online.
• Use your analytics keyword report to listen to your customers in their own words.

Using Google’s Observations to Improve Your Internet Marketing

November 3rd, 2008 by G Dewald

Filed Under Data, Local, Mobile Tech, Web Strategy | Leave a Comment

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:

Read more

Social Network Marketing with LinkedIn

October 30th, 2008 by G Dewald

Filed Under Social Media | 3 Comments

There are all kinds of social networks on the web. Facebook and MySpace get a fair amount of attention. But there’s also the one that’s primarily for business: LinkedIn. How can you use LinkedIn for your marketing efforts? After the break is Guy Kawasaki’s slide deck telling you how.

Perhaps not every one of these points is directly and obviously related to real estate internet marketing, but enough of them are that I think you’ll enjoy this. Many of his thoughts can be translated into other social network sites as well.

Read more

8 Halloween Blog Post Ideas for Real Estate Bloggers

October 29th, 2008 by G Dewald

Filed Under Blogging, Local | 1 Comment

Every now and them when I’m giving a real estate blog training to a client I’m asked how it’s possible to keep coming up with posts. I think we all face a certain amount of fatigue now and then. Luckily for real estate bloggers, local events are completely fair game and in the realm of usefulness.

So, in the spirit of my “why blog about the fourth of July” post… here are some real  estate themed Halloween blog post ideas. Try one or two of them out before, during and after Halloween. Get your real estate bloggin’ ideas after the break. Read more

4 Ways to Use Google Earth for the iPhone for Real Estate Internet Marketing

October 28th, 2008 by G Dewald

Filed Under Local, Mobile Tech, SEO, Technology | 3 Comments

By now you’ve already heard about Google Earth coming to the iPhone. And yes, it’s awesome and fun and cool. But you’re a marketer at the end of the day so you’re looking to find a way promote your real estate or other business online using this newly enhanced tool. Before coming up with some internet marketing tactics that might be appropriate for the Google Earth-enabled iPhone, let’s look at a few concepts related to this combination of mapping and mobile technologies. Video after the jump.

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