Back in January, Monique was asked to impart her social media wisdom on Monica Hamburg’s blog, Me Like the Interweb. Monique’s lesson was this:
Talking to clients about social media is always an exercise in metaphors for me: Social networking is a digital cocktail party. LinkedIn is a business conference. Twitter is your individual headline news ticker. YouTube is your private tv station. In many ways the metaphors are silly and don’t fully explain the platform, but the point is that social media is nothing new. Social media is simply a set of tools that let us do things that are harder to do in real life, such as keeping up to date on what all of our colleagues, friends and family members are doing, exchanging business contacts and making friend-of-a-friend introductions.
The skeptical comments I often hear from clients are, “why do people spend time on this?” and “how can I benefit?” Any active social media user knows that these are the wrong questions. The answer is that people spend time on this stuff because it improves their ability to network offline, to gather information quickly and to establish relationships and to stay in touch.
The basis of a good social strategy is answering the questions, “what are my clients doing online,” “what makes their chosen social networks attractive to them,” “what social failure or real life challenge does this network solve,” and “how can I participate here in a way that adds value, that establishes a closer relationship to my customers, that let’s me stay in touch with their needs, and that, ultimately, is a reciprocal relationship?”
What’s a lesson without homework? Here are some excellent articles that will help you put Monique’s advice into action and get you started on your social media strategy.
Socialnomics: How social media transforms our lives and the way we do business by Erik Qualman, published by Wiley Publishing, is in bookstores and on eReaders.
Posted by Monique Sherrett | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
We spend a lot of our time helping clients get social media marketing efforts and budgets approved by the decision makers—be it board members, CEOs or upper management. Social media is still new territory and many are hesitant to jump on the social media bandwagon.
What we tell our clients is this: Social media is not a fad. It’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. If you’re not participating in social media your brand is missing out on valuable opportunities to engage with your customers or clients.
Below are some videos (via Path Marketing) to help get your boss excited about social media. It’s here, it’s here to stay and companies are having real success with it.
NOTE: Be prepared. Don’t build excitement without having a plan to move your efforts forward. Read Mashable’s 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration and have a social media marketing plan ready before you sit down with your boss.
Urban Development Institute Pacific Region hosted a breakfast earlier this month for the real estate community. The panel of speakers discussed the impact of online media on the real estate industry. Below are my notes from that morning.
David Allison, partner Braun-Allison, began the day with a quote that I often use, “start small, start now.” David can be found on Twitter with similar musings, but his presentation looked at many points that he makes in his book Sell the Truth, which is his roadmap to selling real estate.
Some of David Allison’s highlights included the 5 trends:
People want more info about everything. (MT: True. We want to know where our apple came from, if it is organic. We want to know if the coffee is fair trade. There’s lots of info we want to know about purchases that are in the $1-4 range. The real estate industry needs to provide prospective buyers more than a snapshot and a couple of bullet points and marketing speak if they want our $1 million.)
Dialogue is expected. (MT: Yes. Speak with your human voice, not your PR spin voice.)
People are searching for authenticity, transparency, and openness.
Traditional ads are working less effectively.
Social media is growing.
What David Allison particularly nailed was that real estate marketing is about branding and word of mouth, and, if you want the sales, you have to win the cocktail conversation, meaning that you have to give your buyers the facts so that they are confident in their purchase and are able to defend (or sing its praises) when questioned by their peers. As I like to say, “advertising doesn’t tell me what to buy. Advertising tells me what is available to buy. My friends tell me what I want to buy.”
And that is the missing formula. How can real estate developers generate word of mouth through social media?
Allison definitely gets it, and each of the speakers talked about the ingredients, but no one really explained how to bring it all together. What do you add when? How much time do you allocate for each? How do you use social media in this business context? The audience was already sold on why they needed to add social media to the mix. And if they weren’t, the next speaker was Hanson Lok of Ipsos.
Lok had all sorts of interesting stats on who does what online and for how long, but most interesting to the real estate audience was the following.
When asked about where they hear about real estate:
39% of those polled said print sources
15% said online
BUT those numbers are how they first heard about real estate opportunities.
When we are at the research and decision stage:
46% report online as their source for finding information about a development
36% say a real estate agent
And when asked about what sources they trust:
34% said the real estate agent
28% reported online sources
Amielle Lake of Tagga Media also proffered some numbers. People report spending 2 hours a week on real estate research if they are in the market. Mobile gives you access 24/7 (assuming you have a smartphone).
My favourite stat: 65% report that they will not share their phone with their spouse. In addition, lost wallets are reported within 26 hours, whereas lost mobiles are reported within 68 minutes.
Lake also talked about the conversation funnel, which provided some of the “formula” to generating word of mouth and using social media for real estate.
Imagine a funnel, or upsidedown pyramid. You have a lot of people you can reach at the wide mouth of the funnel. Here you are creating awareness, typically through online and print. But with Tagga Media, you can also add text codes to your signage and mobile websites for on-the-road property listing checks.
Moving down the conversation funnel is where you try to generate demand. Testimonials, word of mouth, share functions, price and time-based sales are your marketing tools here.
I’d suggest for creating awareness and generating demand that companies also consider share functions on their websites. I’d ask real estate developers to consider their property website:
Is it easy for a spouse to share a found listing via email?
Is the URL unique or is the site all flash based?
What and how are you using Twitter, Facebook and email to regularly connect to those potential buyers who are researching for 2 hours a week?
Do you have printable versions of the listings? PDFs or 1-page summaries?
Can people favourite listings on your site or annotate page they want to come back to?
Can you send them personalized notes through permission-based marketing?
Next step is, of course, measuring demand, and that is dependent on forward thinking in advance of a campaign. Do you know how many Facebook followers you had before your outreach? Do you have analytics installed on your site? Are you filtering out your own traffic?
Further down the funnel is the qualify stage. In real estate, this is online registration forms and in-person events. These points of engagement help determine interest level, and ideally lead us to the narrow end of the funnel, which is the sale, 1-to-1 conversation.
And that’s the one to many, and many to many funnel that leads to a one to one. But what happens after that sale? It seems, as an outsider, that once a sale has been made, the online conversation with that buyer becomes mute. And that’s a loss, especially if you follow Allison’s nod to winning the dinner party argument.
Look beyond what everyone else sees.
That small group of buyers can become your biggest fan. They’ve already bought in. Their word of mouth is golden.
If the property is in development, report on the construction through a blog and encourage buyers to log in and comment. Take photos of delivery and move in day. Celebrate that online. Ask for testimonials and post them publicly (with permission, of course). Use social media to create excitement and to entice the next sale. People want neighbours like them.
Chris Breikss of 6S Marketing weighed in with some tactical tools and how-to tips. Most interesting to me was some of the numbers related to engagement. It’s always hard to compare your campaigns to a competitor’s without insider knowledge of their budget, time, and strategy. But the numbers are interesting markers nonetheless.
In talking about Hootsuite, Chris showed us the weekly stats, 224 total clicks in 7 days, on his account.
He also presented a quick case study on Opus Hotel, which had good reviews but needed more reservations. Their Facebook campaign managed to generate some interest and they have 2500+ fans. They do ads to promote events, all of which target their desired demographic.
In the summer, they ran a campaign, “Sleep Where the Stars Sleep.” They invited followers to post to the Facebook page and between June 22 and July 24, they had 41 photos posted, 275 likes and 337 comments.
More case studies like this would have certainly helped the audience understand what to expect from social media. Regardless, it was a well-rounded panel with a lot of expertise to share. Thanks to those panelists and UDI for the breakfast event, and to Katherine at Sotheby’s for inviting me along.
Posted by Monique Sherrett | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo is coming out this month and their book publisher, No Starch Press, understands geek entertainment and they sent Boxcar Marketing an advance PDF. Yipee!
No Starch has also given us permission to excerpt a couple of sections of the book. The first one is our favourite lesson for people using social media marketing for business.
Friends with Benefits: Chapter 4
Lesson #7: Don’t Be a Social Media Spammer
Spammer is pretty much the worst aspersion you can cast on a web denizen. In the online world, being called a spammer is like being called creepy, desperate, and corrupt all at once. Marketers rightfully worry about demonstrating “spammy” behavior and often ask us how to avoid looking like a shady online citizen….
This behavior is the kind that will brand your forehead with a big red S:
You send generic emails to bloggers and podcasters with saluta-
tions like "Dear Webmaster."
You contact bloggers with grand promises of "link exchanges." Bloggers value links but offers of link exchanges have all the
appeal and personality of pyramid schemes.
You post promotions for your own Facebook group (or worse,
your product) on the "walls" of other Facebook profiles, pages,
and groups.
You haphazardly respond to blog posts, podcasts, and videos
that discuss your competitors and leave promotional messages
about your services.
You don’t consider the topics a social media creator covers, and as
a result, you pitch a chick lit novel to the guy with a hockey blog.
You send press releases out to large lists you bought or culled
from the Web without obtaining the recipients& permission.
You sneakily insert links to your products and services into
Wikipedia.
You offer to buy editorial coverage on a blog. On that note, you
should be skeptical of anyone who accepts payment to promote
your organization without publicly disclosing that payment.
Using Facebook as a business can be an interesting exercise in anger management. Facebook is a powerful tool, especially for individuals, but it can drive an intern batty as she tries to set up new pages or migrate Groups to Pages. (Yes, Crissy, the Boxcar Marketing intern, has spent a lot of time with our friend Facebook.) Let me share our experience.
Earlier this year Facebook changed the way that businesses can network in this social space. They upgraded the Pages functionality to better house business profiles. Pages are not identical to Personal Profiles, but they do give a business more leverage than a Group.
With a Page, people interested in following your organization can become fans of your Page. On your Page, you can host photos, videos, RSS feeds, and custom applications.
Creating a Page
A Page needs to be administered by a person so start by creating a Personal Profile (for a real person because fake accounts are removed by Facebook). The Personal Profile should be of someone in your company who is going to stick around for awhile. Then follow the links to create a Page. You can change and add administrators to your Page after it is set up.
You will be asked to select what type of Page. Choose wisely because you can not change it afterward. By choosing the type of Page, you are choosing a default set of fields to complete. For example, choosing Band gives you opportunities to bring in a playlist. Choosing Public Figure - Government Official asks for your date in office.
Adding Stuff to Your Page
A Page can have all sorts of tabs, including Wall, Info, Photos, Discussions, Events, YouTube, Notes, Boxes.
Wall is where your status feed aggregates. Info is what you want to tell the world about your organization. Photos are, well, photos. Discussions are discussion forums where you can start a topic and have fans discuss it. Events is an aggregated listing of events you are hosting. YouTube is your YouTube channel. You enter your YouTube details and your videos are automatically pulled into Facebook, which is nice because it eliminates the redundancies of uploading videos to two places. Notes is for mini-blog posts or links to things you like. And Boxes is a crazy place where all sorts of things can be pulled into one spot, like videos, RSS feeds, photos, etc.
Editing Stuff on Your Page
Here is another opportunity to lose your mind. To edit most applications (Discussions, YouTube, Notes), you go to the Wall of your Personal Profile and click the “Edit Page” link on the top left. From here, click on the pencil icon in the top right corner of the application box to edit and change its settings.
You can move application boxes to your Wall or to your Boxes tab by clicking on the pencil icon next to the Application name. Applications can be either on your Wall or in your Boxes tab, but cannot be in both places at once.
To move applications around in the Boxes tab, just drag them. That is the easiest part of this whole admin experience.
Claim Your Facebook Username
Visit http://www.facebook.com/username to claim a shortcut name to your Page. Your Facebook Page must meet two requirements: it must have been live on Facebook prior to the May 31, 2009 cut-off date and have had a minimum 1,000 fans at that time.
This limitation was temporary. All Pages created after May 31, 2009 that have more than 100 fans can now claim a username. http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=900
Boxcar Marketing has been out and about on the speaking circuit lately and the following myths keep presenting themselves. Let’s dispel them, shall we?
Myth #1: Social media is a marketing strategy.
Social media is not a marketing function; it’s an overall high-level business strategy that supports your organization’s goals.
Myth #2: It’s all about the online tools.
Social media is not about sending out electronic press releases or setting up a Facebook page. It’s about how we can use the tools to engage with our community. For example, how can we use electronic press releases to capture the attention of a new audience or how we can use Facebook to encourage social interactions that build loyalty and connections to the company and between community members.
Myth #3: Building online communities requires tight control and management.
Nope. You always have people out there talking about you; it’s called word of mouth. In traditional approaches, we make sure that people have a positive experience with us at all levels, from the person who answers the phone to the customer service to the follow-up afterwards.
The same is true with social media strategies. Relinquishing control does not mean abdicating responsibility; it means that you control the things within your control. You set the stage and the conditions that allow for your organization and community members to thrive. That way, people have good things
to say.
Myth #4: Social media is time consuming.
The key here is practice. The first time you do something it takes time. The first press release you ever wrote, the first job description for a new hire, the first report, whatever it was, you were doing something new and you needed to be slow and methodical in your approach. But as you gained experience, things got faster and easier. The same is true with the web. It’s just practice.
Myth #5: Your audience isn’t online.
The average Canadian spends close to 43 hours per month online. And it isn’t just young people who are spending time online. The latest Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada report (PDF) showed that in May 2007: 29% of age 50+ web users visited a social media site in the last month versus just 8% in September 2006; 72% of 20-29 year olds had visited a social networking website, up from 44% in September 2006.
For more information
Read the Harvard Business Review article Getting Brand Communities Right by Susan Fournier and Lara Lee. The site also includes a great quiz to help you determine if your business is social media ready.
Posted by Monique Sherrett | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Monthly Newsletter
Conferences & Events
What we’re talking about 
Project Highlights
Did you know?
Vancouver internet marketing strategists 
Looking for the bee? 
Subscribe to our blog.