Today, propertyadguru.com welcomes a guest post from Richard Fellner, editorial consultant for the recently launched social media management tool, Sobox. Sobox was created by propertyadguru.com owner Classified Ad Ventures.

Richard has 25 years experience in the online marketing world, so he understands the ins and outs of online content, SEO and New Media. Here, he shares one strategy for social media success:

One of the most common mistakes that many businesses make when diving into Social Media is to treat their pages and platforms as a monologue tool; i.e. posting one-sided articles with no reader interaction. By using this “megaphone” mentality, there is no indication whether the content is being read, whether the people who DO read it find any value, or if it incites any action. It thus undermines the real value of Social Media, and represents many lost opportunities.

Dialogues are the next step in the Social Media chain, and are currently the norm for most businesses and individuals. In a dialogue, you interact with your fans/followers on a one-to-one or even a one-to-many basis.  You may post an interesting article or Tweet, read your followers’ responses, and then continue the conversation with your own timely response or follow-up questions. The key here is to use each interaction as an opportunity to develop a stronger, long-term relationship. Dialogues are a powerful tool, and they form a solid foundation for any Social Media strategy.

Truly savvy businesses, on the other hand, are now beginning to treat Social Media as a Multilogue, which is a relatively new term defined as a “Many-to-Many” conversation. Similar to a moderated forum, a Multilogue unleashes the real potential of Social Media, and creates multiple opportunities.

To understand a Multilogue, first imagine a room full of people at, say, a town hall meeting. A question may be put to the group, and someone may stand up and share their viewpoint. Someone else may then build on that idea, add their own viewpoint, ask additional questions, etc. Soon, there are multiple conversations popping up, with related topics being discussed, and the room begins to buzz.

While multiple concurrent conversations can sometimes lead to chaos in a physical setting, the beauty of a Social Media setting is that every statement or question is displayed on the screen – for everyone to read. More importantly, however, the entire conversations can be shared with other people or even entire groups in real time. This generates more questions, ideas and general excitement.

Sound familiar? In essence, the theory is the basis of Viral Marketing – the most powerful form of marketing there is. And it can all start with a single Tweet or Facebook post.

So how can you unleash the power of the Multilogue into your own Social Media project? First, make sure that everyone knows about your Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, etc. Add links to your pages in your email signature, on your website, your brochures and flyers, your display signage, on your shopfront window, etc.

Next, ask plenty of questions within your pages and tweets. People love to share their views. Ask for opinions on things like interest rates, the best neighbourhoods for school-age children, sea-change vs tree-change, or what the biggest obstacle for first home buyers. Don’t be afraid to cover controversial topics (e.g. Sydney vs Melbourne) as those can generate great interest and interactions. Maybe you could try a “Name the Neighbourhood” competition: post a photo of a house or famous landmark, give a clue or two, offer a small prize and see who can guess the neighbourhood or region. It may even be a photo of a house you’re selling, which may not only send traffic to your website or listings page (as people try to match the picture), but could also give the house some extra exposure for an open house or auction.

As people respond to your posts, follow up immediately with your own posts. The key is to keep the conversations interesting, fresh and constantly moving. As they say: Nothing draws a crowd like a crowd.

By regularly interacting with your followers — and keeping your brand at top of mind — you’ll boost your Social Media exposure, and maybe even have some fun along the way.

Welcome to another instalment in our new agent strategies series, where agents from around the globe share their tips for success in online marketing.

Today’s strategy comes from Andrea Swiedler, a realtor with Prudential Adams & Associates in New Milford, Connecticut. Read on to find out how she increased her traffic with a combination of blogging and SEO:

I believe success online is a combination of things, not just one thing. Blogging will keep my content fresh, while SEO has a very big place in both my blogging and my websites. Without using SEO even the blog would fail to make it on page one.

Before I came to ActiveRain and started blogging and learning about the right way to direct traffic to my blog and website, my stats were down – the only way you could find me was if you could spell my name! I went from stats like 192 unique visitors in March of 2008 (pre-blogging) to 692 for March in 2010.

I am sure this is a direct result of blogging and SEO combined. Although that may not seem like a large number, I am located in a town with a population of about 26,000 and a lagging market. The other towns I cover are much smaller – 3,500, 3,000, you get the picture. These towns have a fair amount of luxury second homes. A very tough market indeed. So all in all, I am very pleased with the results I am seeing and only expect it to increase as my skills with SEO and blogging increase.

To understand what is going on a bit better I have Google Alerts set up for a few of the keywords for my website. Google has started picking me up almost instantly when I write fresh content on a subject.

Again, blogs work, SEO works. I have had leads that came from the Internet – leads that closed sales. Those are the important ones!

Got a great online marketing strategy you’re keen to share? Get in touch with us at editor@propertyadguru.com. For more SEO tips, check out our guest series here.

As an online marketer, you’re probably well aware of the importance of search engine optimisation or SEO (if not, check out our guest series here). You also may have noticed a similar acronym popping up recently – SMO, which stands for “social media optimisation.”

Social media tends to rely on users rather than search algorithms to promote content, so the idea of “optimising” your content for the social web might sound strange at first. But the fact is, you’re probably already implementing a number of SMO strategies without even realising.

Wikipedia strips the definition of SMO down to two key points: social features added to content, and promotional activities.

Social features might include things like adding an RSS feed to your blog or allowing visitors to share your content via tools like “retweet” buttons. The promotional activities your undertake as part of SMO usually take place outside your website. These include things as simple as commenting on other blogs or highlighting your content via a status update.

By now, you’ve probably realised that SMO is already a big part of your daily online activity. But how do you make the most of it?

Back in 2006, marketing blogger Rohit Bhargava coined the term “social media optimisation” and set out five SMO rules:

1. Increase your linkability. In other words, make sure you have content that is worth people’s attention in the first place.

2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy. The easier it is to share your content, the more people will do so.

3. Reward inbound links by mentioning those people who link to you somewhere on your website.

4. Help your content travel by offering content such as PDFs and videos that can be easily added to other websites.

5. Encourage the mashup. In other words, don’t be afraid of people re-using and re-working your content. As long as you’re attributed somewhere, it will usually result in more attention for you. 

Since 2006, more SMO rules have been added to the list, bringing the current total to 16. Luckily, anyone who blogs interesting content regularly and participates in at least one online community is probably following many of these rules already.

If we had to choose the most important rule for agents, it would be number nine: “know how to target your audience.” That’s because the better you understand the people in your local real estate market, the easier it will be to find them online, provide them with interesting content, and ultimately create leads and sales.

A few weeks ago, we looked into Facebook Ads and found out exactly how to create one from the ground up. Now, Facebook has released its own guide to help people get the most out of its targeted ads.

Guide to Facebook Ads goes over every aspect of the process, from how to make your ads stand out, to budgeting, ad delivery, and best practices. Those who want to get really familiar with the process can even sign up for a webinar here.

For those still considering whether Facebook Ads are a worthwhile investment, the best practices section of the guide is a good place to start. This covers gaining more fans, acquiring leads, and driving awareness, providing a good overview of what Facebook can achieve in these three key areas.

For the record, the above ad for All Nippon Airways was featured as one of Facebook Ads’ success stories after it earned the company a 25 percent click-through rate – a marked improvement from its usual eight to 12 percent.

The latest US-based figures from Hitwise show Twitter is the fourth most popular online social network with a tiny market share of just over one percent.

According to the Hitwise statistics, Facebook is firmly established as the leading social website with a market share of 53 percent, followed by YouTube with 15 percent. Third place is currently occupied by MySpace, which has a 13 percent share of the market.

Yet despite its relatively small audience, a recent report from socialmediaexaminer.com shows online marketers still have a good deal of faith in Twitter. Amongst the almost 1,900 social media marketers surveyed, 88 percent use Twitter, while 87 percent are reaching out to their audience via Facebook.

LinkedIn is the third most popular online marketing channel, used by 78 percent of respondents. This is despite the fact that Hitwise’s figures place it 13th on the list of popular US social networks. 70 percent of the respondents said they use blogs for online marketing, while 46 percent use YouTube, and only 11 percent use MySpace.

So what conclusions can we draw from these contrasting findings? Clearly, Facebook still needs to be a priority for those marketing via social media. As for Twitter and LinkedIn, their smaller audiences sizes mean focus and planning are all the more important to create some level of return on your time investment. In other words, don’t waste your updates - tailor them to ensure you connect with your audience every time.

US real estate agents are leaning heavily on email and many are taking up the social media challenge, according to the National Association of Realtors’ latest survey.

The NAR says more than six in 10 of its members have a personal website, while 89 percent say their firm has an online presence. 94 percent use email daily or nearly every day, 91 percent use computers, and 56 percent use smart phones with wireless email and Internet capabilities.

Perhaps the most significant change in US agents’ online marketing habits found by the NAR is the increasing use of social media. The survey found that more than half of NAR members now use online social networks, up from 35 percent in 2009.

Do you fit the profile of the typical NAR agent? If so, check out these articles to help you with your online marketing strategies:

Essential Inclusions for Your Website

Email Newsletters: Awareness, Loyalty, Leads

Golden Rules for Social Media ROI

Top 10 Tips for Online Branding

With Facebook now closing in on a total of 500 million users worldwide, the topic of Facebook ads is worth looking into. Here, we’ll outline how to create one of these pay-per-click/pay-per-impression ads, along with the arguments for and against using them for real estate.

To begin with, you’ll need to decide what to include in your ad. Facebook ads are based primarily on text, so strong copy is essential. Because your ads are going to be displayed down the right-hand side of the screen, a snappy, attention-grabbing headline is also important. In the body of the ad, you’re limited to 135 characters, so spend some time refining your copy to get as much information in as possible.

An enticing picture of the area you represent is also worth considering before you upload a picture of yourself. Remember: home hunters are primarily focused on where they’re going to live rather than who’s going to help them find their new home.

Now that you have a catchy headline, engaging body text, and a great picture, it’s time to choose who’s going to see your ad. Facebook lets you refine viewers by country, state, city, age, gender, keywords, education level, and even whether it’s the user’s birthday or not when they see the ad.

If those options weren’t enough, you can go on to limit viewers by the name of their workplace, relationship status, whether they’re interested in men or women, their languages, connections (pages, events, groups or applications), and friends of connections.

After all that, Facebook gives you an estimate of how many users are going to see your ad. The final step is to set your daily budget, and choose whether you want to pay for impressions or clicks. Once you’ve entered the amount you’re willing to pay per-click or per-impression, Facebook will give you an estimate of the number of clicks or impressions you can expect to receive.

The question is, do these ads actually work for real estate agents? Making the case for Facebook ads is business2.com.au contributor Charlie Gunningham, who paid just over US$3,500 over 11 months to get his ad seen 22 million times.

For the negative, we have 4realz.net, which argues that Facebook is too quick to take down non-performing ads and says the ads would only be useful if Facebook could allow agents to target people who are likely to move to a particular area.

But just because the jury is still out on whether Facebook ads are a worthwhile investment doesn’t mean you can’t give them a try. If you do decide to use them, remember to track your results, and adjust your ads according. And if you’ve had success – or lack thereof – with Facebook ads, do let us know in our comments.

Twitter is arguably the most hyped – and therefore the most divisive – of all the online social networking tools. Plenty of agents have tried it out, and the results seem to be anything but uniform. Visit any real estate blog and you’ll find just as many people with tales of Twitter boosting their business as you will people who’ve seen no returns from Twitter whatsoever. So what’s the defining factor here?

Clearly, the agents using Twitter to boost their business are doing something different. As far as we can see, those Twitter users are employing at least one, if not more, of these tactics:

Offer something. Just like any other communication tool – email campaigns, letterbox flyers – you have to give people a reason to pay attention. So before you hit that “tweet” button, ask yourself how valuable this information is.

Don’t just talk, listen. There’s a reason the word “engagement” is thrown around so much when it comes to social media – it works best when there are similar amounts of give and take.

Understand the “tricks”. Get into the habit of using hash tags to link your tweets into ongoing conversations, and use the search function to find people you can engage with. Is someone looking for information on your area, or an insight into your market? Answer their questions and you might just be the agent they choose when the time is right.

Use separate accounts. Not everyone agrees on the idea of separating out personal and professional accounts, but how many times have you followed someone you thought could help you wit hour business, only to unfollow them as soon as they start tweeting about their breakfast?

Don’t buy into the “silver bullet” mentality. Because Twitter is the subject of so much hype, it’s easy to start thinking of it as a “magic” marketing tool. Of course, in the end it’s simply another way to communicate online, and as such demands time and perseverance for an eventual pay-off.

It goes without saying that before you can measure your success with Twitter, you’ll need to define what “success” will look like. For more on how to do that, and a closer look at social media ROI, check out our article here.

Tune in to any technology blog this week and you’ll see one word popping up again and again: Facebook. At f8, Facebook’s conference for developers and entrepreneurs held yesterday, founder Mark Zuckerberg had plenty to reveal about the future of his social network, which is about to hit 500 million visitors per month.

Facebook’s developer blog outlines the biggest changes, the first of which is the ability to add “Like” buttons and other social plugins to any website. timesonline.co.uk describes this as Facebook’s “plan to control how you see the web”. Zuckerberg puts a different spin on it, writing “we are making it so all websites can work together to build a more comprehensive map of connections and create better, more social experiences for everyone.”

Along with social plugins, Facebook is introducing something called the “Open Graph Protocol”, which turns websites into objects people can add to their Facebook profiles. “When a user establishes this connection by clicking Like on one of your Open Graph-enabled pages, you gain the lasting capabilities of Facebook Pages: a link from the user’s profile, ability to publish to the user’s News Feed, inclusion in search on Facebook, and analytics through our revamped Insights product,” Facebook’s developer blog explains.

According to mashable.com, the launch of the Open Graph will mean the end of the now-familiar Facebook Connect, which is used across multiple real estate websites.

Facebook’s latest changes are mainly aimed at developers, but what does it all mean for users? Will the changes have an effect on privacy? Zuckerberg addresses these questions in the following video:

Of course, no change to one of the world’s biggest online social networks is going to please every single user. But if Zuckerberg is worried about the naysayers, he isn’t letting on, finishing his blog post with these words:

“We look forward to a future where all experiences are this easy and personalised, and we’re happy today to take the next important step to get there.”

We’re all aware that a well-executed Facebook presence can pay dividends, and that a tool like Twitter can be just the thing to drive online engagement with potential customers. But there is another, less-hyped cousin of these two popular social networks: Flickr. Done right, your Flickr presence could become yet another social source of leads.

So where do you begin with this photo-based social network? The good news is that once you sign up, adding photos is a simple three-step process of choosing, uploading, and describing them. This last step is important for real estate agents – be as detailed as you can in your title, description and tags so the maximum number of people can find your photos.

If you’re still wondering what on earth a photo sharing website could have to do with real estate search, consider Flickr’s groups feature. This is where you can add your photos to subject-specific collections made by a number of users. For example, the Grand Rapids Michigan group, the Northern Beaches Sydney group, and the Manchester UK group are all full of photos showing off a particular area. The question is, who’s photographing the part of town you represent?

1000Watt Consulting’s Marc Davison summed up the argument for agents using Flickr in a recent blog post:

“Go to Flickr. Search your city. How many images here are yours? If the answer isn’t more than anyone else… change that. Who better than you to document every street, neighborhood, hiking, jogging and biking trail, sunset and sunrise vantage point, vista, mesa, valley and alley in the area?”

Davison hits the nail on the head here. At first glance, Flickr may look like a collection of arty photos, but plenty of people do use it to get an idea of what a new town or suburb is really like. All you need to do is be online to meet them.