Online Real Estate Technology

Brands that include photos and calls to action see higher engagement rates with those posts

Companies on Facebook and other social sites are always trying to determine what to post to get fans engaged. While each brand is different, and its fans will respond to different things, there are some common threads that companies can keep in mind when planning social media posts and status updates.

Digital marketing agency Web Liquid analyzed 16 brands and more than 1,500 brand posts from March to May 2011 to see which Facebook posts saw the most engagement, such as comments and “likes.” Web Liquid found that Facebook posts with photos saw a 0.37% engagement rate, higher than posts with videos (0.31%), text only (0.27%) or links (0.15%).

Momentus Media, which provides marketing software for use within Facebook, came up with similar findings, even when analyzing the top 20,000 Facebook pages and between 10,000 and 250,000 posts overall. Facebook posts with photos saw a 0.21% engagement rate, while videos saw 0.11% engagement rate and links saw 0.07% engagement.

Within the text of a post, companies can encourage action by asking fans to “like” or comment on the post. Momentus Media found that Facebook status updates that contained the word “like” saw a 0.38% engagement rate and those that said “comment” saw a 0.14% engagement rate. Text updates without “like” or “comment” saw 0.11% engagement.

While these statistics are interesting, brands should determine which tactics work best for their Facebook page and their fans. Additionally, the upcoming changes to Facebook’s Timeline feature and brand pages will change the way consumers interact on the social network.

Facebook’s new Timeline relies heavily on photos, so it seems that posts with photos and videos will continue to perform well for brands. And as Facebook introduces more verbs beyond “like,” companies could develop interesting ways to increase engagement on their pages. By testing different types of posts and continuing to learn what spurs a reaction, marketers can keep up with what content fans prefer on their brand Facebook pages and keep engagement up.

A majority of social shoppers trust user reviews and recommendations on social network sites more than other sites, according to a study released in October 2011 by Performics and conducted by ROI Research. Data from the “2011 Social Shopping Study” indicates that among participants who use social networks at least occasionally during the shopping process, 58% trust the recommendations they find on social networks more than other sites. Shopping sites (57%) and deal sites (53%) follow closely as trusted sources of product recommendations. According to the study, about one in 2 social shoppers are positively influenced by favorable reviews and recommendations. This compares to roughly 45% of social shoppers adversely influenced by negative reviews.

Shopping Sites Most Important During Process

Almost three in 4 (72%) social shoppers consider shopping sites to be an important part of the purchase process, about 25% more than those who report deal sites (58%) to be an important factor. Just four in 10 (41%) find social networks to be a significant part of the shopping process.

1 in 5 Use Sites Daily to Find Deals

Among active social networkers, nearly one in 5 (19%) turn to deal sites to find specials, coupons, or deals on a daily basis. Social networks (18%) and shopping sites (17%) follow closely as deal sources. While 15% of social shoppers use social networks daily to learn about new products, only one in 10 use social shopping sites on a daily basis for other key stages of the shopping process, including to research product information, read product reviews, compare products, and find product availability.

Shopping Sites Most Popular Before Purchase

Although social networks are most frequently used to learn about new products, the vast majority of social shoppers (87%) turn to shopping sites while searching for a product, while 83% use these sites right before committing to a purchase. This compares to roughly two-thirds of social shoppers who frequently use social networks or deal sites prior to purchasing a product. After the purchase, however, the focus shifts to social networks: almost six in 10 (59%) frequently share their experiences on social networks after the purchase, compared to 57% for shopping sites and 51% for deal sites.

Other Findings

• Almost seven in 10 (69%) social shoppers visit Amazon at least once a month, making it the most popular shopping site, ahead of eBay (53%) and retailer websites (52%). Search sites fare less well: just 27% visit Google shopping on a monthly basis, followed by Yahoo shopping (23%) and Bing shopping (13%).
• Close to half of social shoppers (47%) have a Groupon account, far more than those with a Living Social (27%) or Eversave (15%) account.

Nielsen: SocNet Users Most Trust Info from Consumers

Social network users are most likely to trust product and service information provided by other consumers, according to data released in October 2011 by NMIncite and The Nielsen Company. Sixty-three percent say consumer ratings are a preferred source for product information, while 62% say consumer reviews are a preferred source. Company websites come in a distant third, preferred by 50% of social network users for product and service information. Call center (47%) and email (45%) closely follow. Interestingly, company Facebook page (15%) and company Twitter (7%) are among the least preferred product information sources.

About the Data: The Performics survey was conducted among 1000 participants who were required to have an active social network account and use social networks at least occasionally in the shopping process. The online survey was in field from 9/27/11 to 10/4/11.

There is a lesson to be learned for all companies in the following story, as Internet marketing consultants, we are constantly advising our clients to ensure they have secured all variations of their domain names, and given the very cheap cost of these valuable pieces of on line real estate, you would think it would be one of the first marketing tools they would secure.

However a lot of companies do not understand the value of a domain name and do not secure them.

They only have themselves to blame for this, so now you have been told, get online and make sure you own every variation of your trademark or domain name, it’s a very small price to pay to ensure that this type of problem does not impact your company or brand.

You can check wether your domain names have been secured by checking our Really Cheap Domains registration web site! 

“A NSW man has been ordered to shut down several pornographic websites featuring Speedo swimwear and using the company’s trademark.

Speedo Holdings took Central Coast blogger Dave Evans to court claiming he had used the trademark under aliases and without the company’s consent.

The company claimed the websites and the use of the company’s trademark as part of his domain names could damage the "valuable reputation and goodwill associated with the name and trade mark Speedo".

In the Federal Court of Australia on Thursday, Justice Geoffrey Flick ordered Evans to stop operating and registering any domain name containing the name Speedo.

He was also restrained from operating websites featuring any sign of the Speedo trademark.

Evans, who didn’t appear in court, was ordered to transfer the domain names to Speedo within 21 days.

If Evans doesn’t comply, a registrar of the court will be appointed to transfer the domain names and Evans will liable for substantial damages to the company.

He was also ordered to pay the swimwear company’s legal costs.”

Story source: www.ninemsn.com.au

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.

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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