Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Signal VS Noise: A Look At The REBCNASH Twitter Stream

April 30th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

I wasn’t going to write this post. I obviously changed my mind.

This is a post about REBarcamp Nashville, but it’s not really about REBarcamp Nashville. Nothing I’m about to say has anything to do with the quality of the 51 sessions that took place during the day at REBCNASH. From everything that I’ve heard from people who were actually in attendance, Brian Copeland ran an excellent REBarcamp, filled with great information and attended by many who were new to the Web 2.0 space. One of the speakers I spoke with mentioned that he was pleasantly surprised by how attentive the audience was. He said that many were taking notes on actual paper, with actual pens.

Signal vs. Noise

I decided to monitor the Twitter Stream for REBCNASH based on a conversation I had the previous day about the volume of noise that was coming from conferences and how hard it was to find valuable content in what was being shared via Twitter. The claim was that these conferences were becoming polluted with noise. They were echoing the feelings Matt Stigliano had while trying to listen to the content being generated on Twitter at SXSW. And I remembered clearly watching his cry for people at SXSW to do more than just broadcast their Foursquare data. You can read about it here: Two Weeks of Social Media Hell.

This is no scientific study, but I did want to be as accurate as possible. So, I cross referenced my main monitoring, using Tweetgrid.com/irc, with Twazzup and Twitter Search,. Luckily, the Twitter gods were kind and the search stream was consistent between the three tools. In total, there were 184 tweets that used the hashtag #rebcnash that day. Those tweets were generated by 77 different people. I don’t know how many were in attendance. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that 77 people decided that they wanted to use the hashtag on Twitter to share something about the event with the rest of the world.

So what did they share?

To analyze the content, I brought the tweet stream for REBCNASH into a spreadsheet and categorized each broadly. A tweet was either “signal” or “noise.” Since REBarcamps are learning conferences, I defined signal as any tweet that gave a piece of information that contributed to learning, or a provided a link to something that might. Everything else was considered noise.

Out of the 184 tweets, I only considered 8 to be signal. And when you see the 8, I think you’ll agree that I’m being generous. Here are the 8 “signal” tweets:

8:10:49 am MauraNeill: Google loves Wordpress (via @kdrewien) #rebcnash
8:16:30 am MauraNeill: Wordpress is industry standard – @kdrewien #rebcnash
“8:27:04 am DawnGrizzell: “”love is a killer app”" with @RealEstateZebra. Learn to be a better agent. I’ll be reading the book! #rebcnash http://twitpic.com/1j4e64“
“8:42:26 am shabsxu: @serkes you can add “”/rss”" to any WP url and it will give u a feed! #rebcnash”
12:50:01 pm JeremyHelton: #rebcnash social fusion autofeeds, interesting stuff.
12:55:23 pm MauraNeill: Facebook ads – for the first time we can create laser-focused ads that pinpoint a very specific group of people. #rebcnash
1:03:28 pm MauraNeill: Good read 4 REALTORS-check it out! RT @kleighcreative: BLOG POST: If You Bum Rush Me, We’ll NEVER Do Business http://bit.ly/aBPbRQ #rebcnash

Again, I think I am being VERY generous here. Example, I included Jeremy Helton’s tweet because it might cause me to go take a look at Social Fusion. So, I counted it as signal. I could debate the “signal worthiness” of several of the others, but this should give you a sense of how low I set the signal bar. Retweets of these signal tweets (only a few) were not counted as signal.

A Closer Look At The Noise

So, the math is pretty simple. If only 8 tweets were signal, 176 were noise. Example: “no sweet tea here at #rebcnash yet but always hope. Had some awesome sweet tea the other day though. Must have more ” Which is a perfectly fine tweet, (I’ve said similar things on twitter while at a barcamp) just not signal by my definition. There were, in fact, almost as many tweets about tea, 6, as there were tweets that contained any real content.

My next step was to categorize the noise. I wanted to get a feel for the kinds of things people felt were important to throw out into the twitter stream. So I put the noise into one of five categories; praise, questions, statements, location, and photos.

Praise: these were tweets that simply praised some aspect of the conference without really providing any insight. An example of a praise tweet: “Can’t wait to line up the rest of the afternoon at #rebcnash.” These tweets contained the most used word at REBCNASH, which was “great.”

Questions: these were tweets that were predominantly coming in from outside of the barcamp itself. There were 17 questions asked. Only two of them were answered using the hashtag, one of them by me. An example of a question tweet: “Which is the best Twitter app for a Palm Pre? #rebcnash.” This was never answered.

Statements: these were tweets that simply made a statement, often seemingly random. An example of a statement tweet: “Learning more about twitter at #rebcnash” and “Is hanging and sponsoring #rebcnash today. Loving ‘Love is the Killer Ap dude’s jacket!” The last one could easily have been put into praise or even location as well.

Location: these were tweets that simply let people know where someone was while they were at REBCNASH. An example of a location tweet: “Second half of #rebcnash has started! (@ REBarCamp Nashville w/ 10 others) http://4sq.com/ai3HWT” The majority of these were not Foursquare posts, however, just people letting us know what session they were in.

Photos: these were tweets that contained photos. An example of a photo tweet: “#REBCNASH Schedule is Revealed! http://post.ly/dmq4″ Many of these also contained praise or a location or both, but were only counted in the photo category.

How Do We Increase The Signal To Noise Ratio?

I’m not here to debate why so little content was placed into the Twitter stream during this REBarcamp. There was no WiFi at the event, so a livestream was not possible and computer access was limited. I get it. And once again, just to be clear, those who actually attended are saying emphatically that the information shared in the sessions was excellent. Clearly, however, desire plays a role. First and foremost, you have to want to create valuable content or want to consume valuable content to make any of this work. And you certainly have to be able to identify what valuable content looks like in either case.

Personally, I’d like to do a better job of sharing valuable information. So, for those who have the desire and the ability to recognize or create good content, how do we make it easier to get more signal into the stream and get more signal out of it as well. @jazzychad has done a good job with Tweetgrid.com/irc and an even better job with Madch.at, but even those miss the mark on many levels. In this specific case, if you were interested in gleaning some knowledge from the REBCNASH stream, having the very best listening tool in the world would still have only netted you, at best, 8 potential nuggets.

And having the best tool for sharing great content only works if people actually share. From my own experience, I know I am more diligent to present quality information if I know it has some legs. It’s one of the reasons why we’re creating the Live Blog app. When I know the information I’m tweeting at an event is going to live as content on my blog, I’m more careful to make sure it’s good content.

Some Questions

When you listen in on a conference via the “official” hashtag, what are you hoping to find?
Do we have any obligation at all to share the quality content at free conferences with the community at large?
Should conference organizers play a larger role in the distribution of the targeted content coming out of their events?
Is Twitter even the best place to share that content? If not, what is?
What tools are needed to make relevant content easier to create and consume?

I’m not sure I have the right answers for most of those questions, but one thing I do know for sure is this - I’m personally going to give more thought to the content I’m sharing at the next event I attend. I’m going to shoot for more signal and less noise. I think everyone will benefit. Including me.

Tags: noise, rebcnash, signal, Social Media, tools, Twitter
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Social Media | 46 Comments »

The Lo-So Hurdle – Getting The Average Jane To Check In

March 16th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

I would put my current opinion of the popular and public use of “lo-so” (location-based social networks) somewhere between silly and dangerous.

When I take myself out of my tech lover mindset, I’m just not sure what the point of all of this public “checking in” really is. My general feeling is this – If you want someone specific to know where you are, just tell them? And if you’re not a social media fan boy, or someone enjoying their 15 minutes of technorati fame, or a Realtor trying to turn every mundane daily activity into a sphere-of-influence-building mission, then you probably couldn’t care less if your entire network knows you’re at your local Chevron. I have to believe that if you’re just an average Joe or Jane, telling the whole world where you are at every turn just seems kind of silly.

I’m not alone in my house. In fact, my wife, Rocky, has heavily influenced my opinion. She is not anti-social media by any stretch. She has witnessed the value of Twitter and Facebook in encouraging public conversation. It has helped her charity, MFFO.ORG, raise thousands and thousands of dollars for an extremely worthy cause. But she falls squarely into the “average Jane” description above. It would be accurate to say she thinks all of the public Foursquare announcements are stupid in most cases and dangerous in others. She’s was not a happy camper when I was using Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla in real time to broadcast where I was to my Twitter stream. She was less considerably less happy if I checked in when we were all together as a family. She wouldn’t even consider doing it herself.

If I’m a business, I’m hoping guys like me and gals like my wife change their mind fast. Why? Because these services represent a major opportunity to influence our buying decisions. And the new Foursquare analytic tools for business being tested offer a good look at the wealth of data that could be available if the consumer begins to see a benefit in using the services ubiquitously. But what is it going to take to get people like my wife to use them? It’s going to take more than cool tech to sway them. She has no idea I’m writing this post right now, so I’m going to go ask her and then come back.

I’m back. And I’m a bit surprised.

I won’t beat around the bush. She agreed with my descriptions above. She feels all of the public check in activity is dangerous, especially for women. And said, “Unless I was at a social media conference, trying to keep up with where my friends were, I just can’t see myself using it.”

Then I said, “OK, but let’s pretend you’re Julie in Illinois or Kim in West Virginia. You’re never going to go to a social media conference and you rarely, if ever, travel without your family. You’re you as you are in your day-to-day life here in Santa Clarita.” She put herself in that place and I asked, “What would it take for you to use it if you could keep your check in activity completely private?”

That spurred some thought. And I was surprised by her answer.

“You mean if I could limit who saw my check in to just my small local sphere of friends, the people I interact with face-t0-face, people who live nearby?” Yes. “Then I could see a real value in getting an alert if Alana or Susan were at Whole Foods, for example. I could ask them to pick something up for me. It would be a benefit for them to know if I was at a store as well. That would have REAL value to me.”

I would never have gone there. I can see real value in that as well.

Encouraged, I pushed on and asked, “What if when you checked into Whole Foods, the Pei Wei across the parking lot could push a message to you that offered a discount if you showed them them your iPhone screen, or if a new organic cereal company offered you a free sample as you were in the store shopping, would that encourage you to check in more often and at more places?” She paused a second and said, “Yes, that would make me check in more often. No question. But I still wouldn’t care if I were the Mayor of Whole Foods.” (That’s my girl!)

What’s interesting is that she could use Foursquare as she envisions it right this very second. She was totally unaware that her check in activity could be kept private and limited to just a few people. Her understanding of Foursqure and other “lo-so” services was solely based on the public behavior being displayed by the technorati on a daily basis and at conferences like SXSW.

I’m going to help my wife use it as she described above. I want to see if it provides value for her. But I’m left wondering how many other average Janes and average Joes are being negatively influenced by the popular uses of these services? It may be time to take a step back and ask the question, “is the popular public use of location-based social networking attracting people or driving them away?”

Photo credit: Bits

Tags: brightkite, foursquare, geolocation, gowalla, lo so, location, Social Media
Posted in Blog, Social Media | 7 Comments »

Stop Calling Me A Social Media Marketing Expert

March 8th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

I’ve tried hard to not call myself a social media marketing expert or guru or master or rock star. What I haven’t done is correct others when they have. And I haven’t done a very good job of letting people know what I really am or what I’m really good at.

That’s all about to change.

I’ve spent at least a year in a complete blogging funk. And it’s not because I don’t have things I’d like to say. I most certainly do. The reason for the funk is that I’ve been having an internal battle between “what I should be doing” and “what I really love to do.” Luckily for me, what I really love to do is also what I’m really good at. And it’s not creating and defining marketing strategies.

First, some commentary. A troubling trend has emerged from the chaos of the social media boom. People who have no real marketing skills or training or any experience with business strategy are becoming “social media marketing” consultants, strategists and coaches based on a few factors that have nothing to do with successful marketing strategy. These new marketing “experts” fall into one of three categories.

The Cheerleader
The Successful Fool
The Opportunist

The Cheerleader

You all know this social media marketing expert. He or she is the person who has no proven track record for building ANYTHING other than followers on a few popular social media sites. They equate this popularity with business success and can even teach others how to recreate their “success” in these online venues. They use anecdote and analogy to answer questions of ROI and they universally fail to be able to point to any quantifiable measures of business progress that contribute substantially to a company’s bottom line.

The Successful Fool

This social media marketing expert has a proven track record of past business success, but it has nothing to do with any marketing experience, least of which social media marketing. There is no proof that their journey is repeatable. They use an unintentional slight of hand to direct our attention to their past exploits as proof positive of future benefit. And they make the foolish mistake of thinking their personal ability to grow a business can be transferred to others on a large scale.

The Opportunist

This is my least favorite form of new age social media marketing expert. They promise big results with almost no effort. They are the social media marketing snake oil salesmen. They’re the ones telling you that if you don’t do x and y you will be extinct in 2 years. Their success is measured in the number of people they dupe into buying their placebos. They’re not marketing strategists, they’re carnival barkers.

So what am I?

I have been very successful in my business life. Let me be clear, by “very successful” I mean that my companies have made solid profits for many years. But they have not been successful because I am a marketing strategy expert. Quite to the contrary.

What has helped make them successful is hiring great strategy consultants and partnering with great strategic thinkers, like Bill Leider. I’ve have also tried to align myself with others who are great marketing and brand strategists in specific market segments, like Marc Davison in real estate. But I am NOT a marketing strategist. What I do is work WITH and BESIDE marketing strategists to develop tools, tactics and technology paths that make executing those strategies simpler and easier. I look at a company’s objectives and devise ways to use technology to make executing those strategies more efficient and effective. I am a tactical strategist and a technology strategist. I am not a marketing strategist – social media or otherwise.

The mistake I’ve made over the past year is thinking that I needed to be something else. I don’t.

When Hal Lublin related the story of how, while playing poker, Chris Brogan helped him understand that he shouldn’t hold back, I wondered why I was holding back. I wondered what was keeping me from writing. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no one good reason. There is just one bad reason – I’ve been resisting being seen as a social media MARKETING expert.

My Master’s degree is in School Psychology with a focus on behavior modification. I spent several years creating behavior modification plans for severely mentally handicapped and criminally insane patients. So, if sometimes I want to write about behavior, I should. I have a passion for science, so sometimes I want to write about technology, the Internet and social media as it relates to quantum mechanics and complex adaptive systems. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. I’ve also spent a great deal of time dissecting, with the help of some great thinkers, the role of vision and values in building and managing a business and solidifying a brand. I should write about that too. I will.

But what I will not do is continue to allow my resistance to being lumped into the category of “social media marketing expert” keep me from writing about areas in which I excel. I’m going to write about emerging digital tools and how to make them work to the benefit of strategy – personal, brand, marketing or otherwise. I’m going to write about what I love – technology.

Taking the experts’ advice.

The social media marketing experts I admire tell me that if I want to increase engagement, I should ask a question at the end of each blog post. Let’s see if they’re right. What barriers are holding you back from being more effective in using social media?

Tags: behavior, execution, expert, guru, Social Media, strategy, success, technology
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Social Media | 37 Comments »

My Y2K Story Would Be Better With A Few Photos

December 30th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

“Share your Y2K story” jumped out at me as I panned through one of my Twitter lists this morning. Jeremiah Owyang wrote a great post asking his readers to share their personal memories of the Y2K scare. Ten years later, I remember it like it was yesterday.

At that time I was CEO of a company called AdOut. AdOut was responsible for 100% of the ads created by the Los Angeles Times, LA Daily News, and the Torrance Daily Breeze. Thousands of ads per night were created by our dedicated team of graphic designers. And those three newspapers depended on us, exclusively, to meet their deadlines each and every day. It was a truly a nightly miracle.

So, although we were running a 100% Macintosh office and had no worries at all about our systems being impacted by Y2K, the newspapers were very concerned about the power company and required that we rent a LARGE generator to kick in when the lights went out at 12:01 am on January 1, 2000. Of course, that never happened. And, truth be told, none of us at AdOut ever thought it would.

Insert Nostalgic Y2K Photos Here

So, we laughed about it at our offices. We all took photos by the generator, which was the size of a semi truck. I’m sure I have those photos stored somewhere, but I’m not about to try to find them this morning. And that’s what strikes me most about what has transpired in the last 10 years.

If Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube had existed in 1999, I’d have those photos available for this post right now. I’d know exactly where to find them. This post would be filled with images, and embedded videos. The story would contain links to tweets that illustrated perfectly how silly we all were. We could laugh as we read the archived posts from the onslaught of Y2K consultants that surfaced in the months leading up the the new millenium. This post would be so much better if the social media tools available to us now were available to us then.

Boy has the world has changed in ten years.

Tags: daily breeze, daily news, facebook, flickr, los angeles times, newspapers, Social Media, Twitter, y2k, youtube
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Social Media | 1 Comment »

I Just Want My iPhone To Know Where I Am

December 24th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

Most of the time, I don’t want the world to know where I am, but I do want my phone to know.

Last night my wife and I finished up our Christmas shopping. It was fun. We were alone… no kids. It felt just like a real date. From the time we left the house, around 6pm until we decided to get some hot chocolate at Starbucks around 10pm, I was never once tempted to let the world know where we were. The lure of Foursquare points was not enough of an incentive to make me want to check-in at Toys”R”Us or Sports Chalet. I simply didn’t care if the rest of the world knew where we were.

But I did need to find a different a specific gift. So, I fired up the Maps application on my iPhone and typed in “sporting goods.” My iPhone knew my location and quickly populated the screen with cute little stick pins. I clicked the one closest to me, a Big 5, then clicked on the phone number so I could ask if they had what we were looking for. They did. At that moment, I was very happy my iPhone knew exactly where we were. And equally happy nobody else did.

Truth be told, I’ve been forcing myself to use things like Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla. Perhaps if I lived a more exciting life I’d feel differently. But I don’t. When I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I felt certain that when I checked in somewhere that there was the potential for a friend to be close enough to quickly jump in a cab and join me. It feels the same way when I’m at a conference. The popularity of a specific tool among the people I want to hang out with makes it really easy to locate the parties.

But I live my every day life in Santa Clarita, CA, and my business is not location specific. On a typical day, I rarely venture outside a 300 yard radius of my front door. And If I do end up going somewhere, it’s not usually very exciting. I’m the mayor of a Chevron for goodness sakes. Yay me.

When we arrived at Starbucks, I pulled my iPhone out and noticed several Twext.me updates. So, I read them, without actually going to Twitter. When I closed Messages down, there, staring at me on my home screen were the pretty little Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla icons. I thought, “why not.” So I fired up the one I like best, Gowalla, and let the world know I was having some hot chocolate with my wife. At that point in the evening, I wouldn’t have minded if someone we knew saw it and came by to say hi. But I didn’t really believe that would happen. Not in Santa Clarita. And I didn’t really believe anyone would or should care.

So, that makes me wonder. I wonder how many others are like me? I wonder if the technorati’s use of Foursquare will really translate to the general population? I understand that the tech community is madly in love with the potential of these apps, but when it comes to everyday use, my wife thinks they’re all stupid and dangerous, especially for a woman. She doesn’t even want me to know where she’s at most of the time, let alone the rest of world. I wonder how many people are just like her?

Are you?

Tags: behavior, brightkite, foursquare, geolocation, gowalla, life, maps, search
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Social Media | 3 Comments »

FourSquare And Social Media ROI

December 1st, 2009 - Jeff Turner

I think my comment on Matt Stigliano’s FourSquare post deserves a bit more explanation.

First, I want to say that I am not a FourSquare fan. It’s partially because I think geolocation will be better served inside a larger social network, like Facebook. It’s partially because my wife hates geolocation and sees it as potentially dangerous. But it’s also because Foursquare allows anyone to input anything they wish. And since it’s a game, it allows people to cheat, easily. And a few people I know cheat, openly. They know who they are. So, I’m not even going to begin to argue the merit or lack of merit in investing time playing Foursquare.

The Quesiton of ROI

It’s not surprising that the conversation in the comments on Matt’s post quickly turned to ROI. Bob Wilson rightly questioned the value of spending any time at all on Foursquare under the assumption that it would “bring you business” and said, “I guess I’m growing weary of all those who keep pushing sm as a biz model for selling real estate who are unable or unwilling to provide real numbers that demonstrate the value or ROI.” He then quickly added, “Oh, wait. I forgot that you are not supposed to ask about ROI when it comes to SM”

I always find it humorous when someone says that. I’m not sure who made this “don’t talk about ROI with social media” rule, but I’m thinking it was somebody who doesn’t understand the nuances of analyzing return on investment in marketing or what can or should be measured in the first place.

The Problem With Most Social Media ROI Discussions

The problem I see with most of the discussions around social media ROI in the real estate industry is that the product real estate agents sell, a house, is not an impulse buy and the decision to use one agent over another, a completely different kind of conversion, is not a simple decision. If they were, we could focus on conversion alone and be done. But they’re not. So, the focus on conversion to the exclusion of all other sales or marketing objectives is simply wrong. It fails to address the big picture. In real estate, the “conversion” is proceeded by multiple touch points of exposure. Those touch points can include print advertising, direct mail, email, a phone call and yes, social media. Each exposure, each touch, each conversation, plays a significant role in helping the customer move from awareness of the “product”, whether that’s a house or an agent, to the intention to “buy.”

The key to evaluating the merit of any tool, social media or otherwise, is understanding where that tool (and the behaviors it facilitates) fits in the acquisition, persuasion and conversion cycle. Focusing on conversion alone will simply result in a lack of investment in acquisition- or persuasion-oriented initiatives. Just as an unbalanced focus on acquisition initiatives will result in a lack of investment in conversion tools and behaviors.

Marry that with the absence of a clear marketing goal (even the simplest of goals) and poor to no analytics and you have a recipe for disaster. In the business environment, engaging in any activity without an understanding of what you hope to achieve as a result of that activity makes it impossible to measure the success of that activity. The goal can be as simple as “lead people to my blog post.” That’s measurable. Did my efforts lead people to my blog post or not? Did my advertising bring more visitors, did organic search bring more visitors or did my tweets bring more visitors? How do I make sure I can measure the impact of each effort? And that can’t be the end. There has to be some understanding of a path to conversion. After they came, who stayed longer? Which channel moved more visitors to the next step in my conversion process? Do I know what that next step is? Subscribe to my blog? Search my IDX? What is it?

Tools Are Just Tools

Tools aren’t strategy. Tools aren’t behavior. Tools don’t do anything without someone using them. Some use them well. Some don’t. Some tools probably shouldn’t be used for business at all. And in a business context all tools are worthless without a plan. Where do the different tools and behaviors fit for you? Where does Twitter fit into the cycle? What about Facebook? Where does advertising fit? Where does your phone fit into the cycle?

And, by the way, do you know the ROI of your phone?

Tags: foursquare, game, measurment, roi, social medai, tools
Posted in Blog, Consulting, Social Media | 14 Comments »

The Lure Of The Shiny Object

November 25th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

Some very well meaning, very smart people are being distracted by the lure of shiny objects. And they are distracting others in the process.

The sexiness of the social media space and the desire to see an immediate return on the time investment required to access it, has created an atmosphere ripe for solutions to problems that don’t really exist. Example: Tweetlister.

Tweetlister launched in May of 2009. It allows the “tweeting” of real estate listings into a user’s Twitter stream. It gives real estate agents the ability to “post and re-use as many listings as you want.”

Funny, I thought Twitter already gave them that ability.

My first response, six months ago, came in the form of a tweet. I said, “Here’s an example of a solution in search of a problem if I’ve ever seen one.” And this was all I intended to write about it. Besides, Nicole Nicolay had already done a good job of exposing the shiny object.

But it didn’t go away. This private twitter conversation, a few weeks later, should have given me a clue that this would be a very distracting shiny object. It was sent to me by an extremely bright executive from one of the largest real estate companies in America.

Them: “Good concept – I definitely see this tool being abused.”

Me: Why is it a good concept? Why would you want to push people to yet another 3rd party listing site? Why not your own?”

Them: “That was a duh moment when I read your response. I’m a twitter newbie. Still learning & having fun. Thanks for the schooling.”

That wasn’t schooling. I didn’t teach them anything they didn’t know already. I just wasn’t distracted by the shiny object and simply asked a few questions to make sure there was something worth biting on the hook. But several very smart people, people I resprect and also call friends, did bite. And then they told their friends to bite. They’re still biting.

I posed the following question on the post linked above; “Your listings are probably already on your site or your blog. If you really want to automate, you could use Tweetlater (or Hootsuite or Objective Marketer or CoTweet) and set up a similar kind of schedule. Then the links would come straight to you. This just gets in the way, IMHO.” Agents could be leading buyers to their site and to their IDX search, but instead they are tweeting away and leading them to a search site they have no control over, one that is not a destination search site and one that could easily lead the buyer to another agent. And they are paying $9.95 a month for that right. I still don’t get it.

I’ve been thinking about this for six months. Why do smart people spend so much time leading people away from the sites they own? Why aren’t people employing a more focused hub and spoke approach to how they use social media? Why aren’t brokers providing more intelligent tools to help their agents?

That thinking has lead me in several directions, one of them being how the real estate virtual tour business works and how we do things at Real Estate Shows. The result of my thinking? Real Estate Shows needs to get out of the middle of the real estate transaction to the greatest extent possible. When consumers search on sites like Trulia and Zillow and Realtor.com, if they click on a link to a virtual tour, it should lead to a site owned by the real estate agent, not to yet another third party site.

How do we do that? I have a few ideas, but this post is already too long. The answer lies in being more intelligent with how our links work and becoming invisible to the consumer. More to come.

Tags: cotweet, hootsuite, objective marketer, questions, Social Media, strategy, Twitter
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Consulting, Social Media | 5 Comments »

Using Social Media To Strengthen Your Brand

August 17th, 2009 - Bill Leider

Ever since the word brand (a noun) was expanded to branding (a verb) interpretive misunderstandings about what “brand” and “branding” really are have multiplied. Various self-proclaimed gurus (consultants above criticism) have written about the sins of misguided “branding.” Unfortunately, too often, they themselves didn’t know what a brand or branding were either. So they just added to the confusion and the body of misconceptions masquerading as wisdom.

Simply stated, your “Brand” (the noun) can be defined as what you deliver and how you deliver it. The quality of your Brand is determined by how closely aligned the experiences of your customers are between what they expect vs. what they get.

Every single thing you, as an organization, do or don’t do factors into the equation of brand definition and brand strength. That goes way beyond advertising, marketing and sales.

Branding (the verb) is about two things:

Spreading the word about who and what you are; getting and keeping your name out there. It creates name recognition, top of mind and back of mind awareness; and
Making promises and creating expectations in the minds of your current and potential customers. It is supposed to increase sales (duh).

Advertising and ad campaigns do not strengthen brands.

They build awareness, they communicate promises and create expectations. They can be clever, cute, creative, entertaining, informational, confrontational, sexy and more. But they do not strengthen Brands. Brands are strengthened when the promises are kept, when peoples’ expectations are met or exceeded. Brand strengthening is experiential. Advertising is informational.

Enter Social Media. It presents a powerful opportunity. If you develop and execute a sound Social Media strategy you can cost effectively strengthen and support your Brand and improve the effectiveness of your Branding.

Here are some things to consider.

Develop a comprehensive Social Media strategy. If you don’t have a well-thought out strategy, what you have is a hobby. The odds of achieving financial success with a hobby are similar to those for winning the lottery.
• Your strategy should be broad and deep. In other words it must encompass more than building name recognition and trying to increase sales. Think about how you can use Social Media to engage your customers and prospects in meaningful discussions about what they want from you: your products; your product support; new products/services and new features. Enable your customers to tell you about their experiences with your “Brand:” what they like and what they don’t like. Listen. Respond. Do it publicly. Transparency is the path to trust. Use the information you get to improve, to fix what is broken and to build on what works well.
• Determine whom you want to engage? What do you want to discuss and learn? What outcomes/results do you want to achieve?
Coordinate and integrate Social Media with all other forms of marketing going on in your organization. Take into account the behavioral/cultural changes that you must effect in this process.
Transition your culture to embrace transparency. This is much easier said than done. But consider that much of the information that for centuries was deemed confidential is now considered public. People want to be part of an ongoing dialog. They want to know what is happening. They want to participate in and help shape discussions, and more. If they don’t like where the conversation is going, they want the power to shift it. Let them – or they will leave. Social Media is not about pushing your message down the throats of your audience. It is about conversations. It is about you learning by listening.
Choose your Social Media platforms and your communication programs and processes with all of the above in mind. Technology just provides the tools. Knowing which tools to use should come as a result of first determining all of the elements above. Don’t be seduced by the buzz of tech toys. Letting the hype about any particular piece of technology make your decisions for you is orchestrating frustration at best and disaster at worst.

Social Media should not replace or compete with anything you currently do that works effectively and profitably. Done well, it should enrich everything.

Tags: brand, branding, Social Media, strategy
Posted in Blog, Consulting, Social Media | No Comments »

Being An Effective Writer In The Social Media Realm

August 1st, 2009 - Bill Leider

Multi-tasking makes contemplation impossible. In today’s world, people who don’t multi-task are deemed retarded. Taking the time to search for deeper meanings is becoming obsolete.

Peoples’ concentration levels leave no room for expansive exploration. Bullet point bluntness has replaced the expansive paragraph.

Social media readers like to absorb bits of data. The value of that data is determined by its relevance to the immediate needs and whims of its readers. A presentation longer than a page is the Social Media equivalent of War And Peace. This is the environment in which the Social Media participant must become effective, relevant and read.

Talent is not required.

The good news in all of this is that writing talent is not required for success. Authenticity, brevity and relevance rule. People do not use Social Media to have a literary experience. They use it to connect to others. Successful Social Media people are not judged by their writing skills. They are judged by their ability to connect with people.

If you are reluctant to engage in Social Media because you say you are not a good writer, you need to find a new excuse. That one is simply inaccurate.

Clear thinking is required.

So here’s a better reason. You might be a fuzzy thinker. You may find it difficult to write your thoughts clearly and concisely. That is not because you’re a bad writer. It’s because your thoughts are not well organized, they don’t flow logically and often they are not convincing.

Being a fuzzy thinker does NOT mean that you are not intelligent. You can be intelligent, capable, do a good job and still be a fuzzy thinker.

Being a fuzzy thinker simply means that you are not always able to clearly write what you really want to say. It means that you have some trouble putting on paper what you are thinking. You have a thought in your head and somehow you can’t get it from your head to the paper in a way that makes sense and that succinctly reflects what you want to say. That happens to many people.

For people who fit this description, there is another aspect to acknowledge. The fact that one cannot put certain thoughts into written words indicates that the thoughts themselves are not clear. In other words, you don’t really have a handle on your idea, or opinion, or thought. Don’t blame your writing skills.

If you are one of those people, chances are you have been that way for some time. And you probably find yourself in situations where you are required talk to others and you find yourself taking longer than needed to make your point or to be clearly understood. You might eventually say what you need to say, get everyone to understand and you accomplish your goal for the conversation. But it is not as crisp and dynamic as you might like.

If any of this describes you or even sometimes describes you, it is impeding your success. It is preventing you from achieving more. The good news is that there is a cure for this condition.

Write.

Do the very thing that you claim you cannot do. Write to yourself. You don’t have to publish everything you write. Just do it. If you don’t like it, throw it away. Write something every day. Even if you have nothing to say, write about the frustration of having nothing to say.

Over time, you will experience a stunning change. Your thoughts will become clearer. Your arguments will become more compelling. You will become a more successful oral presenter, not to mention a more easily understood writer.

Being understood, being authentic, writing something that brings value to your audience – these are the attributes that will make you successful in the Social Media realm. The only thing delaying you is finding your will to do it. I’ll be writing more on the process in future posts. Stay tuned.

In the meantime – write something.

Tags: authenticity, Social Media, thinking, writing
Posted in Blog, Consulting, Social Media | No Comments »

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