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

Twitter: Using Social Media to Increase Business Success

According to Mashable, The Social Media Guide, Twitter saw a 752% growth in 2008. It’s no wonder everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon.

There are many benefits that come with proper Twitter usage:

• Reinforce your brand and increase awareness by linking your Twitter account with all of your other web outlets.

• Check your Google Analytics; Twitter is a direct source of traffic.

• Network with like minded professionals, potential customers, and other local businesses.

• Tweets are now indexed in Google; we smell potential for organic Google traffic!

What a lot of people don’t realize are the practical uses of this valuable tool. Many businesses recognize the potential with this platform and yet after creating an account, have no clue what to do. It’s important to know about Twitter etiquette, hashtags, practical applications, and more.

Before getting started, there are a few things to remember.

Read more

Changing Media Landscape

I had an interesting phone call from a longtime client yesterday who decided to stop advertising in his local print real estate monthly for the next four months and will instead be engaging our report, recommend, revise process.  “RRR” helps our clients improve the search engine placement of their web site and generate more leads from the web.  This client understands the shifting media landscape and I was pleased to see him make his marketing investments accordingly.

The upcoming Media Convergence Conference in New York City, put on by The Economist, launched a video called Shift Happens, that helps put these changes in context.  They posted a fascinating video about the event here:

My favorite statistic: The average American teen sends 2272 text messages a month.

With numbers like that, and the often quoted 2008 NAR study that shows 87% of home buyers use the internet when making a purchase, I wonder how much longer people will continue to disproportionately spend money offline?

Social media links for Real Estate sites

At Union Street Media we have rolled out another new feature with our new detail view social bookmarking and links toolbar, courtesy of one of our talented progammers. It comes standard with new Real Estate web sites and will greatly enhance their social media presence and the ability to acquire a wider audience in the relevant areas.

This feature enables rapid sharing of information about listings, bookmarking blog posts about your local service area or a quick email to friends and family. It’s easy to use and provides a choice of platforms depending on what you want to achieve. Bookmark your favorite listings with Google bookmarks for example or Twitter a listing to an engaged group of followers and receive instant feedback. Use the Facebook function to participate in real estate groups or people looking for particular properties in certain areas.

As people become more accustomed to these links and use them more and more it adds further usability and interactivity for the viewer. For the realtor adds superb SEO opportunities especially in garnering relevant, inbound links from trusted sources.

Examples of our sites with this feature are:

Bryan Bomba

BCK Real Estate

Greybeard

Filtering Noise from Twitter

Can you have too many followers?

10, 50, 100, 500? There is surely a finite amount of conversations any one person can follow and how well relationships can develop by “drive-by” remarks. It is also true of people following you. How do you provide good value to say a thousand people that follow you?

From a business point of view it is sensible to maintain a smaller volume of followers that are truly interested in your business to keep people engaged and vice versa. The best way to achieve this is to grow organically, which is often a good maxim in business. With the use of APIs (application programming interface) that artificially generate lists of friends you risk becoming a spammer. Much like all interaction with the web it is perhaps wiser to focus on good contributions in your local or national community with content that people want to hear about rather than empty tweets that will often get lost among all the other noise.

Relationship building has become the currency of social media and like any relationship needs to be cultivated, therefore putting a marketing hat on and talking “at” people is not going to cut it in this medium and there won’t be much value gained.

What do you think? Leave your comments.

Targeting homebuyers through social networking

This article from the New York Times highlights how savvy real estate agents are using social networking to target their buyers.

Some important points raised in the article include how the new trends on the web are reaching younger audiences for free. This more tactile marketing by many web-savvy professionals are now sending messages on Twitter, getting referrals on LinkedIn, posting blogs, uploading virtual tours onto the Internet and sending text messages and alerts to customers’ phones when homes come on the market.

Bettie Meinel, vice president for career development at Century 21 Laffey Associates, based in Greenvale, said that because consumers are already online seeing the photos and virtual tours, “that is their first showing.” Actually touring the house shows more serious intent, she explained. “If they like it enough, they make an appointment to come and see that property; that is the second showing,” she said.

Also check out other blog posts on these topics in the social media and video sections.

The Evolution of Facebook and Twitter

The graying of Facebook

Two articles that comment on the increasing median age of Facebook users, in particular the 35+ crowds. A recent one, ‘Facebook Users Growing Up Fast’ from mediapost.com, talks about how now over half their users are over 25 in part due to the aging of existing users and the influx of older users. It also discusses ways in which marketers are looking to serve this new group of users.

The second one ‘My Midlife Facebook Crisis‘, which came out a year ago,  is a hilarious day-in-the-life style article from the Wall Street Journal. It anecdotally makes the point that we’re all inescapably social net-workers now.

Twitter flying high

Twitter has been getting a lot more mainstream media attention lately, so we thought we’d post this article ‘Putting Twitter’s World to Use’ from the New York Times. Amongst other things it talks about the increasing interaction between businesses and their customers driving business decisions and as a research tool diving into the world’s collective mind.

It’s only upwards for the folks at Twitter.

Twitter for Customer Service

Increasingly, companies are using Twitter to enhance their customer service. Handling customer service in a public environment like Twitter is probably just the next round of transparency. Want to know how good a company’s customer service is? See if they’re on Twitter and what they’re doing there.

Here are some articles related to using Twitter for customer service. Read more

Real Estate Connect Social Media Dashboard

I’m back from vacation and I’ve built a social media dashboard for all of you going to Real Estate Connect in New York City this week. You can find it here:

Real Estate Connect Social Media Dashboard

It’s set up to gather images, video, twitter posts, blog posts and all sorts of stuff that are tagged with ICNY09 or #ICNY09. So if you’re at the event, tag some of your thoughts, or where the good parties are.

Also if you’re at the event, come ask me questions at the Blogger Connect event (I’ll be presenting the listening to your audience section) or at the Down and Dirty Analytics panel on Thursday. Or even just grab me in the hall and see if I can help you out with your web marketing strategy, site analytics or whatever.

You don’t need a social media strategy

Instead, you should read this post by Chris Brogan. He outlines a tactic that will be very effective. Somewhere along the way, while using this tactic, you will figure out what your strategy should be.

Required skills (which are within your grasp to learn, no holding back please):

• Ability to use online spreadsheet or other data tool (think Google Sheets)
• Ability to use online communication tools such as email and Twitter
• Willingness to continually explore online social networks to find allies

keep looking »