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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.

Who is using which social networking sites?

• MySpace and Facebook are about tied by resondents in terms of profile use.
• Those aged 31 and up are as likely to use MySpace as Facebook.
• Those aged 40 and up are more likely to have no social network site profile.
• LinkedIn usage peaks in the 31-40 age demographic, though still well below Facebook/MySpace.
• Twitter, though very small compared to other services in the report, has about twice the profile use of Second Life.

How and why are they using social networking sites?

• About half of the users ignore invitations to join new sites.
• 30% feel strongly that they have not made new friends through sites.
• Respondents felt satisfied with their social networking site experiences.
• But they don’t feel that social networking sites played an important role in their social life.
• And they don’t feel that social networkings sites were important to their business life, either.

How good is the data you’re gathering?

Here’s where it starts to get really intriguing, especially if you are using the web for online marketing in a lead generation business like real estate:

• About 12% of respondents across all age demographics reported putting incorrect information in their social networking profiles.
• About 25% of respondents give “false personal information when registering to use a site or download something.”

That second number, the ones who give false information to use a site, gets higher the younger the audience gets.

What sort of things are they falsifying? Here’s what the report says:

The personal information that’s most likely to get falsified is (in order): Phone number, mailing address, name, and e-mail address. Users are much less likely to falsify non-contact information such as sex and race.

Some conclusions about online marketing and social network sites

None of this is going to be too earth shattering but I figure I should say it anyway.

Unless the younger users have a change of heart about falsified data and/or the services become more worthwhile, lead generation businesses using content as a hook (I’m looking at you registration-only MLS boards) will have to make some significant changes.

I hear a lot about Facebook in many marketing circles. I don’t hear as much about MySpace. Both sites are about the same in terms of users and engagement. Seems like some opportunities may exist here.

They aren’t joining new sites, they don’t think the sites are important to their business or their social life. Yet they are satisfied with the sites. What are they really doing with the sites that makes them satisfied? Or is their satisfaction barrier fairly low, such that being a peripheral feature of their social or business life is satisfactory enough?

If you liked this post you may also find value in my review of Forrester’s Technographic Profile Tool.

Image by Aaron Escobar via Flickr

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

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.

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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."]

Image via Wikipedia

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.

Image by suchitra prints via Flickr

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.

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:

• There is latent demand of mobile users for carrying out search enquiries - a demand that i smolstly being inhibited by fear of high data charges
• Every weekend, the demand from mobile devices for map tiles reaches the same level as the demand from fixed devices.
• People seem to want to search for the same sorts of things - in the same proportion of times - regardless of whether they are using fixed devices or mobile ones.

This is the sort of thing to think about when looking to the future of human and computer interaction. Thinking about these data points leads to more questions and thoughts, of course.

People want to use data services on their mobile devices more

The primary barrier to people using data services appears to be price. This price will certainly go down in the future. Here are some questions to think about:

• How will this affect my marketing efforts?
• Will my current marketing efforts be sufficient in a world where mobile devices are used as often as large screen stationary devices?
• What will have to change and why?

On weekends, map-based services are used equally by mobile and desktop devices

When William Gibson said that the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed I always thought he meant geographically (better cell phones in Asia, for example). But the future could be distributed by any of the dimensions, and here is an example of distributing the future based on time.

If mapping and locality are significant to your business, then you get a free glimpse at the future for two days a week. Make the most of it!

People aren’t different just because they’re sitting in a desk at work.

If people are searching for the same kinds of things from their mobile device as they are from their desktop, then perhaps some beliefs about “browsing habits” are either incorrect or changing. That and perhaps we’re carrying our work around with us all the time with our shiny iPhones and Android handsets.

For those who are afraid of change this last point is at least some solace: What you know about your site visitors now is applicable to a future mobile web world. People aren’t changing what they’re interested in, they’re just moving around while they’re interested.

Image by .Andy Chang. via Flickr

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.

Image via Wikipedia

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.

• Coolest decorated house in the neighborhood. Don’t forget photos.
• Best street to get awesome candy. Don’t forget photos.
• Where to park when you go to attend any Halloween events (like Halloween parades and so on).
• Any actual haunted houses in your locality? Do an interview with someone about it. Maybe with video or audio.
• Any fun Halloween craft events for kids in the neighborhood? Again, video and photos are awesome here.
• Neighborhoods with the most police calls/vandalism on Halloween.
• Neighborhoods with the least police calls/vandalism on Halloween.
• Any local traditions around Halloween (Cabbage Night anyone?).

So there you go. Remember that the idea is that people will find these posts via search next year too. This is why having pictures or video is great. So if you’re writing about something that is going to happen, take pictures when you’re there and update your blog post after the event. So people searching next year can see what fun it is (or isn’t).

Image by plemeljr via Flickr

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.

Local without the hyperbole

For some time, internet pundits have been talking about “local” and when no one seemed to respond then they started talking about “hyperlocal” (when driving gets dull try hyperdriving!). The concept of Local is about delivering results when knowing about location increases the relevance of the results.

The real estate industry is an obvious example where information is more valuable when it’s location-aware   than location-numb. If you know about the schools/neighborhood/employment/scene etc then you know something valuable to anyone looking to buy or sell real estate.

But real estate isn’t the only industry where local information or knowledge is valuable. Any physical-only business should be firmly woven into the internet representation of a locality. Think about restaurants, car dealerships, news outlets, museums and colleges etc etc. I could go on and on. But all of these things contribute to the quality of “local” and can benefit by being present in the digital representation of a locality.

Google is the de-facto digital representation of locality for most areas. When people want to know about a location they ask Google about it first. And Google has a variety of platforms for delivering that local information.

Good marketing is relevant

While “local” is an expression of information quality, “relevance” is perhaps more dependent on delivery. Are you getting the quality information you want when you can act on that information? If so, you’re getting relevant information.

The problem with relying on Google’s database for local information has been that local information is most relevant when we aren’t tethered to our computer.

If I want to gather more context from my immediate surroundings while I stroll down Church Street in downtown Burlington, I’m out of luck. With Google Earth for my iPod (Vermont still doesn’t have an iPhone… I know, it’s a real bother) I can pull in the WiFi, auto-set the location, and the resulting image will include Wikipedia entries and images by default. If I’m hungry I can search for a restaurant nearby and the search results will be overlayed on the map. If I’m looking for a condo… hmmm…

What about plain old Google Search or Maps? They’re already pretty much the same thing right? If I don’t care about physical space at all I’ll probably just use Google Search. Google Maps has the directions and streets for that specific sort of task. If I want a restaurant it will also show me the address. Google Earth doesn’t have the maps or direction-making capability. But it has photos and wikipedia for increasing local context. If I want to get somewhere I’m going to use Google Maps. If I want to know more about an area, I’m going to use Google Earth.

Using Google Earth, I can have local information delivered to me when I can act on it. It’s also a really fun delivery method so that helps too.

4 ways to use Google Earth in your Internet Marketing

Up to now I’ve focused on how individuals might be using Google Earth with their iPhone, concentrating on the concepts of Local and Relevance. How can you use this tool to market your business online?

Caveat: What follows are some nice untested tactics. Using these tactics shouldn’t hurt (in fact, you should be doing some of them already). But I wouldn’t replace a functional internet marketing strategy with the handful of tactics which follow.

1. Ensure that your Wikipedia entry exists and is up-to-date. Google Earth for the iPhone will show Wikipedia entries that are relevant to the section of Earth that is being displayed. A tip here: if you go in and create your Wikipedia entry with what sounds like a press release you won’t get very far. The editors are quick and thorough. Be certain to cite any and all claims you make and respect the Five Pillars.
2. Get your images of your business into Panoramio. By default, Google Earth will show little squares for images that are relevant to the section of Earth that it is displaying. Make sure your place of business is one of them.
3. Get images of your products into Panoramio. This might be easier for something like real estate, where the product might be a house or condo. But you can use this internet marketing tactic for other products as well. But keep to the spirit of Local when you do so: photographs of your product in relation to the landscape/locality. Show how your product is a part of what local means. Also, one picture isn’t enough. Lots of pictures. WIth tags and descriptions. And a Panoramio username/profile that also markets for you. This one will be hard for me as I’m a big Flickr fan.
4. Get to work on your plain old Google SEO. Google Earth for the iPhone or iPod allows users to perform a search that is limited by geography. Make sure that you are well ranked for the search terms that are relevant to your business.

These four tactics should tie into your existing profile-marketing, image-marketing, SEO and reputation management strategies. Any other ideas?