Twitter + Meetup = Tweetup

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

Union Street Media Is Hiring!

Our Internet Marketer’s primary responsibility is to help our clients achieve a greater return on their web site by implementing our continuous improvement process, which we call Report Recommend Revise. Each month, our IM staff completes the “RRR” process for dozens of clients, which includes:

• Doing keyword research in search of the best long tail phrases where our clients have a good opportunity to compete
• Studying site traffic using GA and other metrics tools and using that analysis to help increase site visitor conversions
• Coaching our clients on content creation and blogging strategies
• Identifying ways to integrate video and social media into clients’ internet marketing campaigns. And a whole lot more…

To view the full Job Description please click here.

Utilizing Google Local For Your Business

Search Engine Optimization is a time-intensive exercise. We regularly tell clients that search Engine Optimization is an endurance race not a sprint. You must work on your site consistently to make sure that you are accurately represented in Google Searches. This is because as we frequently tell people “No one can pull the strings a Google.”

This statement has one notable exception, the Google local listings. You have undoubtedly run across the local listings as you have preformed searched in Google when you search for a term with a location attached. For example lets say you search for “web design 05401″ you get a search page that looks like this:

The local listings are the ones that appear next to the map. You can have direct control over these listings. By utilizing Google Local listings you will give your business great visibility for people searching locally for your services. If you click on Union Street Media’s entry you are taken to a page that we have set up for our business that looks like this:

As you can see, you can literally write your own ticket in Google. You can add pictures, enter hours of operation in addition to many other pieces of information that will give your business visibility and attract attention. A great way to get a better idea of what this feature has to offer is to look at the Google Local Business Center Introductory Video.

Setting up your Google local account takes some work. There is a phone or mail based address verification check that you will need to complete but it is totally worth the investment of time. To get started click here to go to the Google Local Business Center.

Video Testimonials: Simple, Inexpensive, Convincing

In Vermont, we have a great tradition called Town Meeting Day, where members of the community come together and vote on local issues.  Depicted in a famous Norman Rockwell image, Town Meeting Day is one of the unique things about Vermont that makes this a wonderful place to call home.  Here in Burlington, our 39,800 residents makes us the largest city in the state (calling it both a city and within Vermont are considered debatable points).  Since we’ve outgrown the high school gym for our Town Meeting day, Burlingtonians go to the polls.  Accordingly, this past March we held an election for Mayor.

Amongst the candidates that ran for office, I publicly supported a moderate independent candidate named Dan Smith.  Unfortunately, he didn’t win.  However, Dan did do some pretty cool stuff on the web much of which involved the use of video.  Using the new $229 HD Flip Mino Video camera, Dan’s staff videoed a number of local supporters, myself included, and uploaded the videos onto youtube.  They then embedded the videos in his site (which is still online, but may not be much longer).  This was pretty simple to do, easy to publish and unique with in the campaign.

So what does this have to do with selling real estate, promoting your company, product or service?  A lot.

I’m a believer that device consolidation will eventually lead to your computer (or iPhone) being the one tool you use to access all media, including television.   At this time, however, video still has a little bit of the “wow” factor still left in it online.  Imagine a new visitor coming to your site and hearing from your clients, on video, talking about how they benefited from working with you?  It would be unique, compelling and not that hard to do.  I’ve mentioned the idea to a number of our real estate clients of videoing a young couple just after they have purchased their first time home.  Hearing them describe how you helped them find, negotiate and close on their home would be compelling.  Unlike a video tour of a home, which I also recommend, a video testimonial has a long shelf life on your site.

We have a couple of clients who have been progressive with their use of video, such as Dan Cypress and Jessica Bridge at RE/MAX North Professionals.  Jessica, who also endorsed Dan Smith, is photogenic and Dan knows how to do a thing or two with iMovie.  However, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to put together a great video about the Vermont Required Consumer Information Disclosure and post it on your site.  All it takes is a little initiative and a investment in a Flip Video Camera.

Please share links with us in the comment section below if you have posted cool videos on your site.

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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8 Halloween Blog Post Ideas for Real Estate Bloggers

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

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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Conference Dashboard: Vermont 3.0 Creative/Tech Jam

[Update: link to the dashboard itself is fixed. Click here to just go look at the dashboard.]

As mentioned earlier, I’ll be on a panel at the Vermont 3.0 Creative/Tech Jam on Oct 25th at Champlain College here in Burlington, VT. I’m really psyched to be up there with David Gibson from Propeller Media Works and Frank Canovatchel (who, it turns out, was an advisor to USM developer Scott Nellé). Our topic is about building websites and I’m sure between the three of us we’ll be able to handle most any question that comes up. Read a little more about the conference and my fancy conference dashboard after the jump. Read more

Bringing the Olympics home: 5 blog post ideas for Local.

With the Olympics going on right now there seems to be a lot of Olympic-themed blogging going on. This is probably great for being current, but maybe there’s ways to think more long-term on this. After all, the Olympics happen on a regular basis (every two years: Summer then Winter etc) so there could be a fireworks-like advantage to blogging about the games.

Let’s combine two ideas: Current Events and Local

Blogging about current events is always a good idea. It lets people know you’re listening and can add some context or value to the conversations that are occurring every day. When those events repeat on a regular basis this gives us some added incentive to write about them because there’s a predictable pattern to the number of people giving attention to the topic. Today I’m going to use the Olympics as an example.

Being “local” could mean the obvious: write about your nearby geographic zone. But it could mean your special niche or directly relevant topic. Today I’m writing mostly for my real estate readers so I’m going to be using the geographic kind of local.

And let’s also make it relevant

There are lots of ways we could try to stuff the word “Olympics” into an article. Then we’d get a lot of traffic looking for generic Olympics information and those visitors wouldn’t be happy and then they’d go away. Not much point in that. Let’s make articles that are Olympic-themed but also provide value for the people you most want to serve. In today’s example I’m using real estate buyers/sellers/watchers. But I bet you can synthesize this into your own industry.

Olympic-themed blog post ideas for Real Estate “Local”

• Any Olympic athletes grow up, live or train in your neighborhood?
• Any Olympic training facilities in or near your neighborhood?
• If someone wanted to train for the Olympics in your neighborhood, how would they get started?
• Any team leaders, coaches or trainers for the Olympics active in your neighborhood?
• How about Olympic gear and equipment manufacture or purchasing options? I can tell you from experience that getting a properly set-up biathlon rifle is not something you can do anywhere.

Notice how all of these ideas involve connecting a current event back to your area and gives some insight, context and value to someone who is truly interested in the Olympics. Also notice how it will help you position your neighborhood in relation to the Olympics and athletic competition. You might get a long tail conversion, but at the very least you will be adding good content about your neighborhood to the web. Search engines like this very much.

The strategy here, as you might guess, is to get the attention of readers both now (current event) and in the future (people who will make decisions based on how your neighborhood relates to the current event). This is an example of a content-planning strategy that makes use of the long tail marketing concept.

Examples of good Olympic blog posts:

Zillow, making use of it’s position as an aggregator of information, tells us about the state with the most Olympians in the 2008 Olympics. Talking about the state and cities brings us some local aspects, talking about the Olympians inserts their brand into the current events conversation. They even provide some additional value by linking out to the source that identifies the home of all the Olympians.

Feeding a small tidbit of news/gossip, The Real Estate Bloggers, lets us know about Olympic hero Michael Phelps’ recent condo purchase. Olympic content? Check. Local information? Check.

Perhaps taking a tip from Zillow, Lynne Pope further segments that California list down to the athletes that are in her market area.

Might be time to get ready for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

This blog post is dedicated to my colleague Scott Nellé who wanted to skip work today so he could watch the basketball game.

Long Tail, Fireworks and Real Estate Photography

Coming up with stuff to write on a blog is one of the constant challenges facing new (and even not-so-new) bloggers. Here’s one quick idea my US real estate blogging readers might be able to put to use within the next week: Fourth of July. Apologies to my non-US readers; please follow along and find the right synthesis for your country and let us know what that is in the comments.

Why should Real Estate bloggers write about the Fourth of July?

What does Independence Day have to do with real estate? How can you move property or get listings by writing about it and photographing it?

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