You Get The Point

Lately I have been thinking about social media. It’s the big hot thing nowadays, but that’s not the reason why I’m thinking about it. I’m thinking about it because my clients have been asking about it, and as a result, I find myself struggling to explain a vague concept like social media to people who are driven by ROI in a down economy.

The idea of social media is not really new. However, the term “social media” is. To start this discussion, I propose a simple definition of social media – “the use of web-based tools to facilitate online communication and encourage social interaction”. I use this definition to highlight certain aspects of social media:

• “web-based” – social media is unique to the medium, the internet.
• “tools” – here’s what most people can’t seems to grasp. They are just tools. And tools require strategies to utilize them effectively.
• “online communication” – it is used to facilitate conversations with people, which means that sometimes people may disagree with you, or say bad things about  your products/services.
• “social interaction” –  the main goal is to encourage social interaction, i.e. to get people to connect, preferably IRL (in real life).

What are some of the tools used as part of social media? Forums, Blogs, Chats, Social networking websites etc. Are these things really new? These things have been around since the days of dial-up BBSes. The tools have become more sophisticated in its delivery, but it is still the same.

Most interested companies I know struggle with social media. I keep hearing questions like “Should I get a product page on Facebook?”.  When I hear that, I know immediately that they missed the big picture. Social media is not Facebook. Social media is not Twitter. They are just tools. The question they should be asking is “How do I utilize social media to help the company?” Answer that question, the execution becomes much easier.

The point I’m making is simply this: Disregard the technology, and think about the purpose and strategy. Once you are clear on that, everything will fall in place.

I usually start the day off plugging into all of my stat programs to check the traffic activity for all of our clients and today seemed to be standard until I checked the summary graph for our client FamilyDen.com, it was something that every SEO director (or maybe a seismologist as well) dreams of…that sudden spike on the graph that delineates a surge in traffic. I recently re-tooled FamilyDen’s SEO and have watched a strong and steady increase in traffic and conversions in less than two weeks but after a close look at the report this sudden increase was due to FamilyDen being found by an editor (searching for one of the keywords we optimized for) and featured as “killer-startup” on killerstartup.com. FamilyDen is now gaining ground as a “safe, free and convenient family networking site”, and pulling up through the ranks. You can read the mention here, and props to Matt for the sites recognition.

At his office in Jupiter Florida’s posh Admirals Cove community, broker Rob Thomson sits at a desk decked out with six computer monitors - seven if you count the laptop. Thomson calls it his battle station. On one screen is a Google Analytics page that tells Thomson who’s visiting his 20 Web sites, what countries and cities they’re from, how long they’re staying on his sites and what properties they’re looking at. On another screen, Thomson, owner of Waterfront Properties, keeps tabs on how his various sites - such as waterfront-properties.com and daveabernathy.com - rank in Google’s search results.

His goal is to be in the top 10 for search phrases such as “jupiter waterfront club communities” and “admirals cove homes for sale.”  Front and center is what Thomson considers the most important screen of all - the one he uses to forward the names, numbers and e-mail addresses of potential buyers to his 17 agents. If Thomson is away from the office, he uses his iPhone to accomplish this last task.

While waiting at stoplights, he checks his BlackBerry. Thomson’s tech department includes a “search engine optimization”  specialist whose job is to update blogs and make sure Waterfront Properties’ sites show up in the all-important first page of Google results. Thomson says he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing his online lead machine. “It’s dramatically changed our business,” he says. And Thomson says it’s the main reason his company handled $200 million in sales in the past year, despite a difficult market. In recent months, two big sales reminded Thomson of just how powerful Internet marketing has become in what used to be a face-to-face business. Waterfront Properties sold an $8 million home and a $7 million house to buyers who arrived through the Internet.

“With less and less people wanting to drive around and look at properties in an effort to save gas, the uber rich are no different”, says luxury home real estate agent Jane Michael, “fuel all the way around has gone up, so my very wealthy clients are not flying their private jets like they used to, they are searching the internet for real estate just like everyone else so it pays to have a good search marketing firm.”  Michael’s also adds, “when the newspaper hiked their rates I pulled all the stops, canceled my ads and moved everything to the internet, and so far its paid off, unless a client demands an ad in the paper for their listing, I am sticking with my website and search marketing firm.”

by Laura Lake

Oh my, the sky is falling and we are in an economic downturn. It’s on the news and it is in the papers. Everywhere I turn we hear of the downward spiral of our economic state. I know what you are thinking; it’s time to cut that marketing budget. Signs of recession are all around us. Let’s start slashing costs and marketing is the first to go. Makes sense, right? No! Let me explain.

Don’t you dare cut your marketing budget. That is one of the first mistakes businesses make during times of economic crisis.

It’s time to get smarter about your marketing dollar and spend it to bring results. Sounds good doesn’t it? However, I can hear you - how do you do it? If ever customer intelligence was important it’s now.

The key is to look at your marketing dollars as an investment not an expense. Use the customer knowledge that you have and implement SMART marketing during these times of financial distress.

SMART marketing consists of the following

S - Strategize
M - Maintain market spend
A - Assess and allocate the budget
R - Research your customer thoroughly
T - Target and reach out to them

Read On…

The new fresh, 2.0 front page for the family networking site, FamilyDen.com has been released. We have worked for quite some time on the re-design with site owner Matt Horne and it was a great feeling when all of the pieces came together. I would also like to add that in a matter of days our initial  SEO efforts have pulled the Familyden.com site from a non-existent status to the first couple of pages across all three major engines for popular keyword terms that are relevant to the site, and its still climbing!!