Online Real Estate Technology

6 in 10 Twitter Followers are Existing Customers

More than six in 10 (64%) people who follow a brand on Twitter are existing customers of the company, according to [pdf] a study released in October 2011 by Chadwick Martin Bailey. Results from “10 Quick Facts You Should Know About Consumer Behavior on Twitter” indicate about six in 10 (61%) also want to be the first to know information about the brand.

No other reason for following a brand on Twitter is shared by more than half of followers. However, almost half (48%) follow to receive discounts and promotions. Another 36% want to gain access to exclusive content and 28% want to receive content and information to share and retweet with others.

6 in 10 Followers More Likely to Recommend

Six in 10 Twitter brand followers are either more likely to recommend many (18%) or a few (42%) brands as a result of following them. Another three in 10 (31%) are not more likely to recommend a brand they follow on Twitter and about one in 10 (9%) don’t know.

Twitter brand followers 35-49 are much more likely to recommend many brands they follow than those younger than 35. In the 35-49 segment, 33% are likely to recommend many brands and 14% are likely to recommend a few. Although a much higher percentage of followers younger than 35 are likely to recommend a brand overall (61% compared to 47%), only 14% are likely to recommend many brands and 47% are likely to recommend a few brands.

Interestingly, 33% of brand followers in both age groups are not more likely to make brand recommendations. The differentiator comes in the percentage who don’t know: 20% for those 35-49 compared to only 7% of younger followers.

Half of Twitter Users Go Online More than Once an Hour

Fifty percent of Twitter users go online more than once an hour, compared to 34% of Facebook users and 29% of overall online users. Facebook users are slightly more likely to go online once every couple of hours (46%) than Twitter users (40%) or overall online users (45%).

Meanwhile, 20% of overall online users go online once per day, compared to 17% of Facebook users and 7% of Twitter users. Only 5% of overall online users, and 3% of both social network users, go online two to six times per week.

Nearly Half of Twitter Users Been Tweeting Less than 1 Yr

Thirty-eight percent of Twitter users have been tweeting for six months or fewer and another 9% have been tweeting for seven to 11 months, meaning 47% have been tweeting for less than one year. Thirty-eight percent have also been tweeting for one to two years, and 15% have been tweeting for more than two years.

In addition, one-quarter of Twitter users older than 50 have been tweeting less than one month.

1/3 of Followers Interact w/More Brands This Year

Thirty-three percent of brand followers on Twitter are interacting with more brands this year, while 57% are interacting with the same number and only 11% are interacting with less. Men increased their rate of brand interaction more from the previous year (38% compared to 27% of women).

Other Findings

• 79% of Twitter users follow fewer than 10 brands, with 36% following one or two.
• 75% of Twitter followers have never unfollowed a brand.
• 26% of Twitter users 18-35 follow a brand, compared to 17% of followers 35-49 and 13% of those 50 and older.
• Half of followers say they are more likely to buy a brand after following, including 55% of men and 45% of women.

Performics: Entertainment Top Twitter Category

Entertainment is the brand category most followed/liked on both Twitter and Facebook, according to an August 2011 study from Performics and ROI Research. Data from “S-Net, The Impact of Social Media” indicates 46% of brand fans on both social networks are fans of at least one brand in the entertainment category.

While the top five brand categories are the same on both social networks, there is some variation in how the next four categories are ranked. After entertainment, Twitter users are most likely to follow brands in the restaurants, food, electronics, and apparel categories. In contrast, Facebook users are most likely to like brands in the food, restaurants, apparel, and electronics categories.

About the Data: Data was collected through a 15-minute online questionnaire of 1,491 US consumers age 18 and up fielded in January 2011.

There are a number of factors that search engines use to rank a web site, and as search engines often change the algorithms used to determine rank it can sometimes be very difficult to keep up to date.

One of the factors that Google for example uses to rank web sites is back links, or the number of incoming votes from external web sites or domains to a web site. The more votes for a web site, the higher Google and other search engines will place your web site in the SERP’s .

Other factors also come into play, the age of your domain name, the older your domain name is the better as search engines will trust your site more than a newer site, how much authority or page rank your site has, how may web pages are trying to rank in the top 10 for your keyword and even how long your domain name is registered for are all factors.

The reason back links are important, is the more votes a site has usually indicates the popularity of that site and its content with other web users. Search engines love popular sites.

It is harder to generate votes for a static web site than it is for a blog based site such as WordPress, due to the fact that most blogs are updated on a daily basis whereas most static based sites often get few or no updates.

One of the techniques that you can use to generate back links for your site is by placing comments on blogs that you either read or follow on the web. This is even better, if you can find a blog that allows for a “follow” link back to your web site.

What is a follow link? Some time ago Google invented a piece of code that can be inserted into a hyperlink that tells search engines “not to follow” that link from its place on a web page.

This essentially stops most search engines from following the link, so it effectively stops the link juice, it does not however stop the traffic from following a link on your site.

Web pages that have 100 or more links on them can be penalised by search engines and in this, read Google, so if you have a web page that features a lot of advertising links, say for example on your home page, then you could be penalised for having a lot of links, this is usually one of the tell-tale signs of a spam site.

Likewise, having no code placed in the link means that a search engine will follow the link and discover in some cases new web sites. You can also use this method if you’d like to get your web site indexed quickly in the search engines, as placing a link on a web site already in Google’s index will result in your site being indexed quickly as Google will “follow” the link.

Creating votes or back links for your web site, whether you use a blog based site or a static web site is not easy, there are some web masters who believe that the process of link building is easy, that’s because they like to use paid link building services and a quick search on the web will uncover a number of these services on the web. But you need to be very careful with buying links, Google frowns on this and will penalise your web site if it catches you doing it.

One of the ways you can build back links to your web site is by commenting on other writers or companies blogs, most of these blogs still allow follow links back to your blog, and if they happen to have a very high page rank with Google, this adds considerable SEO value to your blog.

If you have a blog and want to start building links this way, one thing you do not want to do ever, is to use automated blog commenting software, I find with my blogs, I constantly get comments that are generated by these stupid software programs.

These comments often have no relationship to my article, are blatant advertising or add nothing to the discussion and it’s very obvious that they have been generated by a software program because in most cases we humans do not speak this way.

I will delete them without a second thought as they add nothing to my blog.

So when creating your comment, always make sure that you make it relevant either to the content on the blog or the story you have been reading, if you do this, the blogger will appreciate that they have a real person taking the time to comment and you’ll always get published which includes your link.

Email remains the top choice for marketing communications among all age groups

The latest death knell for email was sounded by data in comScore’s “2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review” report, which noted a decline in time spent with web-based email among all US internet users under 55. Users ages 12 to 17, who have been most likely to drop email in favor of other online communications like social networking, had the steepest decline in usage, down 59%.

But web-based email checked at a desktop computer is only one slice of all email communications, and email represents an overwhelmingly important communications channel.

According to research from customer relationship marketing agency Merkle, 87% of internet users checked personal email daily in 2010, a number that has changed little since 2007. Among those with a separate email account for commercial email, 60% checked daily, down just 1 percentage point since 2008.

Further, social media usage is hardly taking away from email. Rather, social media users are significantly more likely than other internet users to check their email four or more times per day, and less likely to check infrequently.

Mobile access is also encouraging email users to check more often. More than half (55%) of those surveyed who had an internet-enabled mobile phone checked their personal email using their phone, and nearly two-thirds of mobile email users checked their account at least once a day.

There is some evidence that personal communications are shifting away from email, though. Messages from friends and family are taking up a smaller share of all time spent with email, while the share spent with commercial emails is rising. And the proportion of respondents spending at least 20 minutes per week with email from friends and family fell from 71% in 2009 to 66% in 2010.

But email is still a major method of communicating for the vast majority of internet users. Across all age groups, it was the top choice for receiving commercial communications. Most respondents preferred the phone for personal communication, but email was the most important online channel for communicating with friends and family among every age group except 18- to 29-year-olds, a demographic for whom email was tied with social networks.

One of the easiest ways to stay up to date with the latest on social media, technology and internet marketing, is to get the news delivered straight to your email inbox as it happens.

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comScore, today released The State of the Internet in Australia, which looks at the latest trends in digital consumer behavior in the market.

The findings of the report were also recently presented at a comScore-hosted industry event in Sydney. Among the report’s key findings was that Social Networking now accounts for the largest amount of total time spent online at 22 percent, an increase of 5.3 percentage points from the previous year, as social media plays an increasingly prominent role in Australians’ digital lives.

A complimentary copy of The State of the Internet in Australia can be downloaded at the following link: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2011/State_of_the_Internet_in_Australia

“2010 was dynamic year for the digital media industry in Australia,” said Will Hodgman, comScore executive vice president for the Asia Pacific region. “Consumers are turning to the Internet with increasing frequency for a vast array of activities including entertainment, commerce, news & information and communication, as digital media becomes embedded in the daily lives of Australians. Look for 2011 to be another year of continued innovation and increased competition as brands vie for consumers’ attention in this rapidly fragmenting digital environment.”

Social Networking Accounts for Nearly 22 Percent of Time Spent

Social Networking accounted for 21.9 percent of Australians’ time online in December 2010, up 5.3 percentage points versus the previous year, and leading as the top online activity. Portals accounted for 19.7 percent, down nearly 10 percentage points from the previous year, while Instant Messengers accounted for 11.6 percent of time, down 7.7 percentage points, as both categories lost share to Social Networking throughout the year. Entertainment which accounted for 9.1 percent of time in 2009, increased 2 percentage points to 11.1 percent.

Additional key insights from the report include:

• In December 2010, Microsoft Sites led as the most-visited Internet property in Australia, followed by Google Sites and Facebook.com. When looking at the top sites by total minutes spent, Facebook.com assumed the #1 spot followed by Microsoft Sites and Google Sites.
• More Australians visited Retail sites compared to last year, outpacing increases in the global average. Amazon and Apple led as the most-visited retail destinations.
• Group-buying sites continued to gain traction over the past year. Cudo, an MSN property, currently leads the space with 418,000 unique visitors in December 2010.
• 3 out of 4 online users in Australia watched online video in December 2010, with an average viewer watching more than 7 hours of video during the month.
• Nearly 12 million Australians conducted an online search query in December, with an average searcher performing 115 queries. Google Sites accounted for 80 percent of searches in December.

At Google one of our key philosophies is to take risks and to experiment. To that end, in July 2009 we announced the ability to find property for sale or rent directly on Google Maps. This is one of the “search options” next to the search box on Google Maps, and is currently available in the US, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Japan.

In part due to low usage, the proliferation of excellent property-search tools on real estate websites, and the infrastructure challenge posed by the impending retirement of the Google Base API (used by listing providers to submit listings), we’ve decided to discontinue the real estate feature within Google Maps on February 10, 2011.

We’ve learned a lot and been excited to see real estate companies use Google Maps in innovative ways to help people find places to live, such as Coldwell Banker’s use of Google Maps and YouTube, or Realtor.com’s Android app that lets you draw a shape on a map to find all properties you’re interested in.

Yet we recognize that there might be better, more effective ways to help people find local real estate information than the current feature makes possible. We’ll continue to explore this area, but in the meantime, Google offers other options to home-seekers: you can still access other information in Maps such as local businesses, directions and transit times, as well as aerial and Street View imagery to explore where you might want to move, and also use Google search results to find helpful real estate information and websites.

Real estate companies can also continue to use tools from Google to help connect with buyers and renters who use the Internet to research properties. For example, companies can use the Google Maps API to embed customized maps that are useful to potential clients right on their own web pages. Our Google for real estate professionals site contains various methods for generating leads and improving real estate business operations.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP, Google Earth and Maps

The man credited with inventing the internet has lashed out at Facebook and other social networking sites saying they are moving the web away from its founding principles.

In an essay in Scientific American magazine, Tim Berners-Lee says social networking sites are tightly controlling the information put on there by users meaning the internet’s being split into fragmented islands.

Berners-Lee said there is a chance Facebook could become so big that it could limit innovation.

Source: www.ninemsn.com.au

Facebook has moved one step closer in its efforts to trademark the word "face", after receiving the green light from the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The Office has issued a notice of allowance to the social networking juggernaut, allowing the company to own the word after paying a fee, the NY Post reported.

The trademark will allow Facebook to challenge any of the 89,000 websites using the word "face" in their domain name.

The trademark would cover "telecommunication services, namely providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment subject matter, none primarily featuring or relating to motoring or to cars".

A Facebook spokesperson would not reveal why an exemption was given to cars.

Several companies are considered to be in the sights of Facebook’s legal department, including Apple over its video conferencing service Facetime and a pornography website called Faceporn.

Facebook has also sued websites Teachbook, Placebook and Lamebook in order to protect the social network’s identity.

Facebook has already been successful in trademarking the words "Like" and "Wall".

Source: ninemsn.com.au

Searching the web recently keeping up with the goings on with social media, I came across an article by a self proclaimed social media guru on the subject of auto thank you messages on Twitter.

These are messages that you can send out automatically to thank someone who decides to follow you. I’ve had them programmed on my Twitter accounts for ages now and what surprised me was this guru stating in his article that if he receives one of these auto thank you messages he automatically un-follows the company or person. He says it annoys him, oh really you poor dear, I think you’re forgetting that the whole concept of social media is being social.

In my mind, it is just a polite way of acknowledging the follow and as long as the message does not contain a blatant add or sales pitch, I have no problem with these messages at all.

This guru’s belief is that common courtesy rules, apparently don’t apply to social media marketing, well he’s wrong, because I think they do and I will continue to send out my messages to those that do decide to follow me, and by chance if this social media expert is offended by this, then goodbye.

Being social and communicating and connecting with your followers is the essence of social media and I won’t decide to follow or un-follow someone because they sent me an auto thank you message.

That’s just too ridiculous for words, and I wonder if this guy is consulting to companies on social media strategy, what he is advising his clients to do, I just hope he’s not working for you.

There are a lot of instant social media experts around today, and most of them don’t really have a clue.

Decide who you are going to follow by the quality of information they are providing, how interesting and unique it is and if it is informative and relevant.

Oh and if they happen to send you a thank you message for the follow, then that’s good manners.

Remember, Focus on being social not doing social.

Swatting down recent rumors that it’s launching an e-mail killer, Facebook today unveiled a new messaging system that will envelope e-mail, instant messages, Facebook messages and SMS.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched what he calls a "modern messaging system" to handle the convergence of different kinds of messages and bring them together under one social umbrella. The system, which has been in the works for about 15 months, is designed to save all messages for five years, meaning users will have a history of their communications.

Although people will now be able to have a facebook.com e-mail address, Andrew Bosworth, a software engineer at Facebook, noted that the new system will work with other e-mail systems, such as Gmail and Yahoo mail.

"People should share however they want to share," said Bosworth. "If you want to send me an e-mail and I want to get it in a text message, that should work."

At this point, the messaging system — code-named Titan — will not include voice chat. Zuckerberg said that should be coming down the road, but offered no timeline.

More than four billion messages are sent every day on Facebook, with the vast majority of the messages between two people, according to Zuckerberg. And about 350 million people use Facebook to message their friends and family members.

He said he started thinking about those numbers after talking with a group of high school students who told him that they rarely use e-mail. It’s too slow, they told him. "I was kind of boggled by this," Zuckerberg said. "I remember having a similar conversation with my parents about why e-mail was good and regular mail was slow…. At Facebook, we’re all so used to using e-mail. It’s interesting to see that all kinds of folks don’t see it that way."

So Facebook decided to create a new messaging system that would include e-mail, expand on the concept and tie in other means of communication as well. "It’s not e-mail," said Zuckerberg. "It handles email, in addition to Facebook messages, and IM and SMS. People are going to be able to have facebook.com email addresses but this won’t be the primary way people use this system."

For the last three or four days, the Internet has been abuzz with speculation that Facebook was getting ready to launch an e-mail killer. Zuckerberg kicked off today’s news event by saying that’s not the case.

"There was a lot of press leading up to this saying this is an e-mail killer," he added. "This is not an e-mail killer. It’s a messaging system that has e-mail as one part of it. I don’t expect people to wake up tomorrow and say, ‘I’m going to shut down my Yahoo account or my Gmail account.’ We expect that more people will IM and more people will message just because it’s simpler and easier and it’s more fun and valuable to use."