Over the last decade, the Internet has become increasingly more interactive for its users by the year, by the month and even, by the day.  New innovations are happening constantly and it would be impossible to stay updated on them all on a regular basis (another good reason to read the IMI blog everyday!).  Today, I want to mention a relatively new phenomenon that is taking off like wildfire- website applications that allow user personalization.  And I don’t just mean custom forms that allow people to search the value of their old cars like on KelleyBlueBook.com or something; I mean true personalization with digital imagery upload- something that really hits close to home for our population’s more visual users.

So let’s start with something seasonal: Has anyone ever checked out ElfYourself.com?  On this website, users are allowed to upload pictures of themselves and four additional friends.  After the upload is complete, each of the head shots are inserted onto elf bodies, which then sing and dance to holiday themed songs.  Whereas two years you could only select one standard song, this holiday season, users have the option to select from country, disco, hip hop and more.  And now, when you’re done, you can embarrass yourself and your friends by sharing with Facebook!  It’s truly phenomenal.

But, if you’re already over the holidays and you’d prefer a blast from the past, check out YearbookYourself.com.  This website allows you to upload a head shot and after you’re done, it will place you in a persona from yearbooks of the past.  For some reason, whenever I try it, it has an uncanny ability to make me look identical to my mom.  Anyone else getting the same results?

My latest find in the interactive web arena is a site called MorphThing.com.  It would probably behoove you to check it out everyday for a good laugh when you’re in need of a smile because you never know what new morphs will be featured.  Today’s best morph was a cross of Marilyn Manson and Barack Obama.  Other featured morphs include: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie entitled “Brangelina,” Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez entitled “Bennifer,” Jessica Simpson and Dane Cook, Ashley Olsen and Mary Kate Olsen, and the list goes on.  Users can also make custom morphs and even baby morphs, which could be a very useful tool in marriage preparation (and might send some people to counseling).  Use these tools wisely!  Enjoy.

From Britney Spears, to Oprah; from Sarah Palin, to Ashton, celebs and politicians alike are employing social media as a means of online reputation management.  Whether they want to promote their books or shows, refute paparazzi and journalists or simply stay in the spotlight doesn’t matter- it’s all different means to the same end.

Social media has become a great way for people to get out their message with a large reach and a low cost.  Recently, Sarah Palin has been making waves on Facebook to promote the launch of her new book “Going Rogue: An American Life.”  She used to be an avid tweeter but decided to cash in the 140 character microblogs for Facebook notes.  Now, she regularly writes back to readers and journalists making false accusations about her memoir and suggests that AP writers engage themselves in something more newsworthy than ripping apart a book.  See a recent Facebook note of her’s below:

Sarah Palin's Facebook Note

This is only one of many and the others were definitely more aggressive but I think this gets across the same message in a brief manner.  Clearly, Palin isn’t afraid to be frank and candid, which was shown to the world on her recent Oprah appearance as well.  Oprah, who is also heavily engaged in social media, made the interview a trending topic on Twitter and posted a podcast of of some of the clips.  While the video claims, “There’s nothing we didn’t talk about!,” much of the interview has not been released to the public.  But, Oprah does occasionally give her Twitter following some proprietary information:  On November 20th, when she announced the end of her show in September 2011, she first informed her fellow tweeters.  Before the episode, she tweeted, “Big day…. tune in my tweet friends.”

Rach and Tey prior to break up

Oprah isn’t the only public figure using Twitter to relay big news.  Rachel Zoe and lead employee, Taylor Jacobson, publicly broke up on Twitter only weeks ago.  They had been working side by side for the last four years styling celebrities all over the world on the show the Rachel Zoe Project.  On November 6th, Taylor tweeted: “Today is an end of an era and the beginning of a new professional chapter.  Looking forward to what the future brings…!!”  The media picked up on this immediately and their split soon became common public news. But, sources are still not sure who broke up with who….  What do you think?  Let us know what gossip you’ve been hearing around the globe.

Not just for elementary school playgrounds anymore, Foursquare, a new online social network/gaming platform, is catching on like the common cold in a fifth grade classroom.  And this isn’t their first venture: just a few years ago, this same crew gave us the mobile social network Dodgeball, which was acquired by Google in 2005, and then later canned.  But unlike Dodgeball, FourSquare presents an expansion to the simple notion of broadcasting your location to your friends.  Foursquare tracks your “check-ins” at various locations like bars, restaurants, museums, retail outlets, and even street vendors, and awards you for such notable achievements as “Gym Rat” (for frequent visits to the gym), “Mayor of ___” (for frequent visits to a certain location), and “School Night” (for checking in late on a weeknight).  These achievements are then published on your personal profile and available for viewing for the whole Foursquare community.

Friends can use Foursquare as a means of finding each other when they’re out as well as compete with each other to get the most badges or Mayor statuses.  One can see how addictive the game could get; similar to Facebook, Twitter, and the likes, users can easily become preoccupied with the number of “check-ins” and forget the real reason they even go out.

The team has also partnered with Twitter as another broadcasting channel for their check-ins, a partnership which spurred some chatter about the similarities between the two social networks.  Mashable blogger Pete Cashmore commented on Robert Scoble’s observation: “Go back three years ago. Twitter was being used by the same crowd that is playing with Foursquare today.”

The application also allows for highly targeted marketing initiatives for participating locations, such as drink specials for the “Mayor” of a bar or reduced ticket prices for those who frequent a specific art gallery.  The novelty in this could quickly wear out, though, as many perceive to be the fate of Twitter’s marketing abilities.

With key competitors including Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite and Google’s Latitude, Foursquare’s path to success won’t be smooth sailing.  But their unique offerings will surely give them a head start against the rest of the pack, and I’m sure we can expect many more great things added to the Foursquare platform in the near future.

With 1.9 million unique visitors per month, you can bet that celebrities all over are jumping on the Twitter trail too.  On an average day, users can expect to find tweets from Britney Spears, Lance Armstrong, Barack Obama, Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Colbert, Shaquille O’Neal and even, MC Hammer.  But the wide array of celebrities on Twitter really extends beyond this.  Some celebs ahead of the curve have already logged on to Twitter, managed their accounts for a while and subsequently deactivated.

So what would drive a celebrity to run away from the free publicity and fame?  Isn’t there always more time to be in the spotlight?  Well, not according to famous teen star, Miley Cyrus.  She claimed that her Twitter account began invading her privacy and putting her personal affairs in public view too frequently—probably right around the time she boasted a following of 2 million.  So she decided to conclude her Twitter affair and kissed it goodbye with a YouTube rap video about how she “stopped livin’ for moments and started livin’ for people.”  You should really check it out if you haven’t seen it— it’s highly entertaining, not to mention perplexing as she is trying to run from the public eye by creating a new viral video.  How ironic.  She should probably stick to acting, but that’s beside the point…

Regardless of Miley, many other celebrities have managed to run successful campaigns on Twitter.  They’ve used them to promote themselves, their songs and shows, grow a fan base, relate to their audience and humanize themselves.  Twitter can actually be a really successful tool for celebrities in increasing their personal brand awareness, just like how companies and businesses use the microblog for viral marketing.

Ashton Kutcher is a great example of this phenomenon.  I’m sure everyone remembers his victory over CNN?  Earlier this year, they we racing to see who could reach 1 million followers first.  He tweeted incessantly and offered a free Guitar Hero to his millionth follower.  Somehow he single-handedly conquered the news super station.  He currently claims the most followers out of any other celebrity on Twitter with 3.9 million fans reading his microblog on a regular basis.  He tweets about 10 times a day and usually adds in a link, either to a website or other profile.  He often interacts with his followers—recently, he replied to a fan’s tweet about his last chemo session with “live strong, Drew.”  Must be why he has so many followers!

However, Ashton Kutcher is not the only celeb using Twitter to show his sensitive side—Tila Tequila has been consistently blasting out posts on her profile page to aid her favorite charity, The Keep a Breast Foundation.  She recently collaborated with artist Randy Janson to create a shiny, red, sculpted version of her breasts to be auctioned off on Ebay.  Tila is a heavy Tweeter, with an average of 143 posts per day.  She’s been publicizing and promotion the auction from her Twitter account, which has apparently created a lot of hype.  There’s only 8 days and 10 hours left and the bidding has already hit $45,000, so if you’re interested, I’d bid now!

So as you can see, celebrities are not shy when it comes to Twitter.  The most successful celebs are the ones with the highest tweet frequency and most user engagement.  But, keep in mind, just because we’re talking about celebrities here doesn’t mean they are all tweeting with the same intentions.  Several news sources in 2009 have conjectured that many stars employ their Twitter profiles as a way of disseminating personal information before the paparazzi can expose it.  Some people may see this as lessening their personal privacy but celebs like Britney Spears, Lance Armstrong and Shaquille O’Neal believe that this is actually a form of privacy control because they can control the accuracy of the information they release.  Although it may deplete the dollar signs of the paparazzi machine, it seems like a pretty good plan to me.

For more information on celebrity profiles, check out Celebrity Tweet.

We can start to move past all the talk about how crucial social media is for brands (now and into the future).  Studies are showing that companies who have completely committed to social media over the past 12 months have, on average, grown revenue by about 15%.  Those that have not have generally seen a decline (Study by Altimeter Group).  This follows the same fact that, historically, companies that have sustained creative marketing and advertising during a recession have come out ahead of those that do not.  Its time to start talking about implementation and measurement. 

So how do we sell the social media concept to an executive team and most importantly, how do we measure it?

When marketers pitch new ideas up the chain of command, the good ones know to come armed with data and information that proves the validity of the strategy.  They know that the first thing out of the boss’s mouth will be “how much does this cost and how will it impact growth?”

There is plenty of information available about how to use social media and how it can affect a company’s growth.  There are many case studies and great example of companies who have built a brand around social media and made it part of their unique identity and culture (i.e. Zappos).  But when it is presented to a business owner they are going to want to know how it will benefit their business directly.  This is a good question because social media marketing requires a different strategy for each company.  The execution and management of the process will also have a great impact on the result.

Here are some tips to use when presenting this strategy, its effectiveness, and its measurability:

• Set benchmarks – explain how the company currently communicates with current and potential customers on a regular basis
• Communicate that you are not giving up control – companies often feel that social media has no boundaries and the brand message will get lost or that people will communicate bad things…guess what, companies never had control over what is being said on the social web and the best thing they can do is get involved in the conversation
• Prove the investment – provide current stats and data showing the dramatic shift away from traditional media…to be more specific, show the shift from traditional “online” media as well and how advertising needs to be packaged as a conversation rather than a message
• Be prepared for questions – do your homework and know the answers
• In-house VS outsourcing – either way you will need a dedictaed team to get this right…know the differences in costs between hiring someone our outsourcing to a firm
• Show how it can be measured – this is the most important piece.  Before you even go into social media metrics you should undertsand and communicate how the company is (or is NOT) currently measuring marketing ROI.  A platform needs to be set before engaging in any online media so that you can optimize the website and other online platforms, set conversion goals, etc.  In a good social media campaign, everything should be tied into the website so that all your analytics can be funneled through once source.  You can measure your social media effeciency with any of the many free tools.  However, it will come down to needing to prove increases in traffic and conversions.  That will ultimately come through your website and landing pages.

Normally we don’t write self promotional blogs but this story is too interesting!

For those of you that are fans of Ceci Harkins and the “All Things Online” video blog series, we have some great news!  The next episode will have a very interesting topic.  Internet Marketing Inc. attended a taping for The Price is Right yesterday in Los Angeles.  We took most of our San Diego office so we had about 21 people granting us group status.  Group Status means that they guarantee at least one person from your group will be called up to play. 

As luck would have it, Ceci was called up to play!  And play she did…she won the entire Showcase Showdown!  Ceci won about $44K worth of prizes.  The whole group ran up on statge to celebrate!  The episode is set to air on October 22, 2009. 

We are very proud of her.  Be looking for next week’s “All Things Online” video about this great experience.  They will be talking about the episode and more about social media of course! 

The topics will include:

• Video optimization marketing
• How to incorporate your company’s assets, experiences, and recognitions into your social media

More to come!

To remain competitive in today’s environment, real estate professionals and home builders must understand who their buyers are, where they are doing their research, and how to effectively communicate their brand message.   As we continue to see a dramatic shift away from traditional media, home builders and marketers are seeking advertising channels that are most cost effective, more targeted, and more measurable. 

Internet marketing is earning greater recognition as the industry becomes more educated about the valuable marriage between creativity and technology.  Social media is one of these strategies that is gaining fantastic momentum.  Social media as a marketing strategy has made so many advancements in the past 12 months that it is hard to keep track.  The online marketing space has redefined how companies brand themselves, communicate with customers, and allocate marketing dollars. 

Transparency is the only way builders can remain relevant and competitive.  The old days of companies hiding behind their “big brand” are over.  Companies that are engaging in social media are committing to real customer interaction and showing who they really are as a brand and as a team.  This article aims at providing insight into why we should care about social media, how it is redefining the way we market products and services,  and how to use it effectively to sell homes.

Why Should We Care About Social Media Marketing?

Home builders and real estate professionals need to understand that their buyers are in fact online and are using social networking sites on a regular basis:
• According to the National Association of REALTORS “Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers 2008″ 87% of home buyers use the Internet to search for a home.
• According to a 2009 Facebook statistics report, the fastest growing group on Facebook is now the 35 to 54 year old demographic growing at growing at 276.4% in the first six months of 2009.  The 55+ demo is not far behind with a 194.3% growth rate.
• According to Nielsen, unique visitors to Twitter increased 1,382 percent year-over-year, from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009, making it the fastest growing site in the Member Communities category for the month.
• YouTube is now considered the largest vertical search engines in the world with well over 70,000,000 videos (as of March 2008)

Redefining the Marketing Landscape

The hybrid approach:  Social media marketing has created a fusion between real estate marketing, advertising, and customer relations.  The most successful real estate focused social media campaigns combine all online and offline marketing efforts and truly engage the audience.  The companies that use these strategies effectively are fully committed and spend considerable time on these initiatives.  Once a campaign gains momentum, the social platforms (i.e. Facebook Fan Page, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube) become real communication tools.  Builders can now actively interact with potential buyers and industry professionals in a more personal manner.  Consumers want to see user-generated content and learn about your brand from people outside your organization. 

Branding:  We should be careful about how we define “branding” as it applies to marketing and advertising.  Sometimes branding can be thought of as that marketing strategy with an indefinable ROI.  Actually, it is of course much more important.  These days it doesn’t take just good advertising or PR to brand your company.  For home builders that already have a distinct brand image social media is about creating trust and transparency while still protecting the brand.  Once a real estate professional or home builder begins social media they should encourage everyone in the company to contribute.  A builder’s brand shouldn’t just be about the homes and communities.  It should be about the team of people driving the business.  If the Simon Cooper of Ritz Carlton is a regular blogger and uses Twitter, that should tell us something.

Cost Effectiveness:  Just like any other marketing strategy, Internet marketing and social media should be designed to support a builder’s sales goals.  With budgets being tighter, it is crucial to design a marketing plan that contains strategies that are measurable and can produce a desired ROI.   One of the key ways that Internet marketing and social media are more cost effective is because it is targeted.  With social media marketing, an effective campaign starts first with setting goals, doing research, and defining the audience.  There are many great social media tools available to help plan and manage campaigns.  The key element for measuring results should be in the analytics.  All social media pages should link to the company website and gradually build traffic and conversions.

10 Tips for Getting Started

1. The team:  Whether your hire a social media agency or consultant or use an in-house team, you have to be committed to investing in the process.  It’s all or nothing.  If you outsource, it is still recommended to have someone in-house directing the message and strategy.  The more your buyers and potential buyers communicate with you, the more you will have to remain involved.  If you plan to build an in-house team, enlist the help of some Internet savvy interns for some extra man power. 

2. Website:  Do not spend time and energy engaging in any online strategy until you have a website that is user-friendly and designed to foster conversions (i.e. building an email list, capturing registrations, and generating sales).  Your website will always be your most important foundation from which any online marketing strategy will be built.  Make sure to have Google analytics installed in your site so you can actively monitor traffic levels, traffic sources, bounce rates, and time on site. Be sure to have a great database management system for capturing and organizing incoming leads. 

3. Blog:  Keep in mind that social media is first about providing value to your online community and building trust.  The best place to start is with a blog.  Blogs are easy to set up and show your customers that you care about what’s going on in your industry.  Word Press blogs are a great recommendation and very “Google-friendly”.  Be sure to build your blog into your website as opposed to having it as an external site.  Write about current topics that people can relate to and never make your message self serving.  If you don’t think you have time for all this, think again.  Like physical fitness, if you care about it and are committed, you will make the time.

4. Facebook, Active Rain, Twitter, YouTube:  Set up a Fan Page on Facebook.com and profiles on Twitter and ActiveRain.com.  You will build a large network in two ways: (1) networking within the online community itself and inviting people to “join” your fan club or “follow” you on Twitter; (2) driving traffic from outside sources to your profile pages, which you can accomplish this by having links to your profile pages and encouraging people to follow or join. 

You will keep them engaged by having good content (i.e. your blog articles is a great place to start).  You can set up an RSS feed so that your blogs are automatically posted to your Twitter page and Facebook page.  Set up a YouTube channel and start adding content.  Most builders have some kind of video or TV content so start adding it to your YouTube channel and Facebook fan page.  To create new video content, purchase a simple flip camera and shoot three to five minute videos at your properties.  Interview sales representatives, property managers, and even owners. 

5. Communicate & Build a Following:  Your efforts will be fruitless unless you have a loyal following which takes some time to build.  The more effort you put into it, the better your results will be.  Ask your social media partner for effective ways to build a following on Twitter without spamming the community.  Be active on your profile pages on Facebook and ActiveRain.  The more value you have to offer the more people will talk.  Management should lead by example and get involved.  Encourage all employees and sales people to be a part of the network.  Once you have some momentum you can start incorporating your special incentives, promotions, events, grand openings, and other creative messages.  When communicating special offerings, remember to include links to landing pages that give more details and have very clear calls to action like simple registration forms. 

6. Online/Offline Integration:  Include links to all of your social media profile pages and YouTube channel on your website.  Also make reference to these sites in all other marketing and advertising efforts.  If your fully engaged in social media and offer a great resource to potential buyers, why not brag about it?

7. Track Results and Conversions:  The best way to really track results is to be sure your social media platforms are always pointing back to your website and landing pages.  From there you can use your analytics to watch how much traffic is coming from these sources and how its converting. 

8. Get your sales teams involved:  Every member of your sales team should be active in their own social media efforts and the company’s.  Just be sure that there is some level of control to the overall message being communicated through your social networks. 

9. Get your communities involved:  All of a homebuilder’s communities should have their own Facebook and Twitter accounts and be actively involved in the company’s network as well. 

10. Get Creative:  After you gain momentum, the sky is the limit.  Your social network sites then become a platform for creativity and true customer relationship management.  Develop new concepts like special promotions, events, and contests.  Make it fun for people to be inlcuded in your online community.

In a time of economic downturn and an ever changing online universe,  the end consumer has always dictated what the future holds for businesses and technologies alike.  According to some recent Nielsen ratings and Lightspeed research, video is becoming the hottest social medium on the web.  With over 116 million consumers watching and interacting with online video, you can now say that online video viewership is comparable to television viewership.

Consumers are now not only watching videos but sharing them with others.  According to Lightspeed research the most popular methods consumers are using to share videos include : email to friends (50%) , Send to a social network friend (23%) and Instant message a video clip to a friend or colleague (21%)

In conclusion, if your watching videos online your interacting with them more than ever. If your an online business or product online without video optimization and distribution you are definitely missing the picture or should I say online video!

Optimized video content is a key element in a well rounded search engine optimization campaign.  With Google’s newest algorithms and Universal Search features, a company must optimize not only it’s website but also ALL other digital assets such as video content.  YouTube.com videos are some of the best video content to embed on a website because Google gives them the most relevance. 

Video files can be optimized in the same way you optimize a web page with title tags, meta descriptions, etc.  Those videos then can be blasted out through networks such as Tube Mogul.  The idea being that when users run searches, they may not get your website everytime but a video result can be just as powerful.  Video optimization is a great Internet marketing tactic that enhances brand image and supports both SEO and social media strategies.

Here are some great tips for optimizing videos:

Upload the video to YouTube and write an optimized title and description, plus add a link to your site from that YouTube page

Video should ALSO be located within one of the company’s domains, IF POSSIBLE, and have the page itself optimized for the video which includes the Title Tags, META Description, & content.

Embed both the YouTube video and a link to the raw video on the client server

Video should not be in FLASH

Have all videos within one subdirectory or subdomain

Create a video XML feed file for iTunes and other podcast readers, to include BOTH the YouTube video AND the client server download URL for readers – adding the video location to both the site’s current HTML & XML sitemap would be an added benefit

The XML file should contain the description, Title, Client Server URL, YouTube embed, link to blog post/client page and other meta data

Enable a CALL TO ACTION be located in the video, especially a link to where they could purchase something similar to what’s in the video

If there are issues hosting videos on the client server then YouTube videos alone should suffice but its best if you can have both in tandem since there will NOT be duplication penalties applied

NOTE – The YouTube video will rank fairly quickly while the client hosted video would be a slow climb in the rankings

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Social Media Circle

With the way outlook has been like since the financial meltdown, companies are looking for ways to cut costs by any means available to them.  They are looking to survive, meaning the days of wanting to be the best are becoming a faded memory.  If your company is in such a pit as most companies are, you do not have to despair – but only if you take the right steps towards survival, and thriving.

Recently on Yahoo! News, there was a story featured about a London bakery that is thriving.  But, they are not thriving through traditional means of radio, television, or print ads.  Instead, they have decided to embrace social media technologies at their disposal.  They are using Twitter to inform their Twitter followers when they are serving fresh bread.  They are a small business who have embraced social media for their sales purposes.  Large companies are also following suit.  They are building what is called “engagement marketing” by allowing consumers to be actively engaged in the branding, products, and more that companies sell or offer.  Online users are no longer restricted to the high schoolers, college students, or simply tech savvy people.  Instead it has become successful in attracting people from all ages and background – this is why companies are now not only following suit temporarily to save money, but because social media is here to stay.

Advertising online, appearing in organic listings, being talked about online in forums, social networks, discussion boards and more is what is now considered the norm for online marketing.  Additionally it also is how companies such as Dell convert disgruntled customers become happy ones through Twitter.