Online Real Estate Technology

Smaller companies most successful at social acquisition

While many marketers struggle with how to measure social media marketing return on investment, some businesses are finding at least one hard metric where their efforts have paid off—customer acquisition.

According to a February–March 2010 survey from office services firm Regus, smaller companies see the most success, with nearly half of small businesses around the world having acquired a customer through social networks. Large companies were less successful, but more than a quarter had seen social success through customer acquisition. This was despite large companies being more likely to devote budgets to social marketing.

The survey of senior managers and business owners from around the world found customer acquisition varied by country, with the US coming in the lower half of the pack. Overall, 40% of businesses studied had acquired a customer through a social site, but only 35% of US businesses said the same.

“While the most popular function of these networks remains that of keeping in touch with contacts, businesses are also successfully acquiring new customers, supporting their retention efforts and interacting with customer groups,” said Sande Golgart, vice president at Regus, in a statement. “Organizations who have not yet ventured into the world of social networking may be missing out on sizeable business opportunities.”

In January 2010, Hubspot found that more than 40% of companies using social media marketing had acquired a customer through the channel. The Regus survey, which was not limited to businesses using social marketing, suggests that number may be slowly climbing.

The lovable Evian Roller Babies, which broke the world record for the most viewed online advertisement in history last year, have made the leap from YouTube to your television.

Evian’s wildly successful viral campaign has surpassed 100 million views across all of its many versions. It was one of the first YouTube-exclusive campaigns by a major brand: there were no TV commercials for the viral videos.

Now according to Social Times, the campaign has already made its debut on Los Angeles TV stations, and will run in New York sometime this summer. They are also airing in other countries, including France and the UK.

The Evian Roller Babies showed advertisers that viral videos have tremendous reach. Hopefully we’ll see more advertisers take their ads to the YouTube masses first before pushing them out on the far more expensive TV airwaves.

It had to happen at some stage and here it is, a song and video about Social Media, not quite as serious and informative as my previous post and video about  Social Media, but I thought this great video would bring a smile to your day.

So please enjoy!!

One of the dangers of moving blogs that have been around for awhile from where they’ve been happily resting  is loss of links and RSS feed subscribers. I’ve spent the most part of the weekend reparing broken links and trying to rescue my loyal RSS feed subscribers.

Well, I don’t think on the RSS front I succeeded, so all of my readers who would like to continue to get updates, can you please click on the headline animator on the right hand side of the blog or click on the link here to get the new RSS Feed.

My sincerest apologies for this, and I hope it doesn’t cause you to  much trouble.

Rumors in the US that a new bill is being introduced called the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act. The new law will require any mobile phone containing a digital camera to sound an alert whenever a photo is being taken. It will also make it illegal for the phone being equipped with a device designed to silenced or disable the tone.

Will make for some interesting interpretations of the law, such as will it apply to existing phones or older phones?

I’ve just moved all my RSS feeds over to a new account with Google, so if you are reading my blog and normally recieve updates via RSS feeds, there may be an issue with you recieving updates.

Please click on the RSS link on the side of my blog to reset the feed if you believe there may be a problem or you are not recieving new updates. 

My apologies for any confusion this may have caused.

Mike

Ever wondered when visiting a new city how safe you were, or when you’re looking for your dream home and find one in what looks like a great suburb, but you don’t know how safe that suburb really is? If this is you, then here’s an Iphone application that is just made for you.

Lethal is a new Iphone & Ipod touch application available through Itunes. The application draws on information in various data bases which has been compiled from government and academic sources. The app uses a lethal index system which tells the user how dangerous that area is. There’s a “Wildlife” index, a “Crime” index as well as “Disease” and “Disaster” indexs.

This application is ideal if you want to know what strange animals, or “beasties” might be lurking near you when you go out walking or if you want to check out how safe you are in your current suburb, this little beauty will give you the score. If you are travelling or sightseeing and start wondering how safe you are, this unit uses GPS to find you and then let you know how safe you are in your current location.

Unfortunately, this application will only work in the US at the moment, but if you are planning a trip to the states, this would be an absolute must have before you leave.

Just imagine the impact this would have if launched in Australia on property searches or suburb choice.

The application is available at a small cost from Itunes and I’ve included a screen shot for you below:

New Iphone & Ipod Touch Application

I just wanted to wish everyone who reads this blog, a very merry and safe festive season and I hope the man from the south pole brings you all you desire.

Thank you for your support throughout 2008 and I’ll be back from the 5th January 2009 with hopefully more interesting and helpful technology advice and information.

Till then stay safe and happy!!

Interesting story coming out about the terrible events in Mumbai, it appears that social media sites such a Twitter and flickr were inundated with messages and videos from the scene, more so than even the more traditional sources of news such as CNN could carry. Reports from Twitter were that people who were either trapped or close by the tragedy were blogging reports and updates from the scene. Apparently at the height of the attacks, more than 80 messages or “Tweets” as they are called, were being sent to twitter.com via sms every 5 seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates. Users sent pleas for blood donors and some were even asked to help transcibe the names of the dead and injured, which were then listed online.  

However, there is another side to this and that is the number of ugly unsubstantiated reports and inaccuracies. Numbers of those killed and reported on twitter varied and numbers were reported as high as 1000 at one stage.

What can’t be ignored though is the obvious impact that social media sites have on engaging and reporting on news items such as the events in Mumbai and tragedies and natural disasters, although you have to remember that the information is often unsubstantiated and subject to the wild rantings of users.    

Social media has come of age and it is showing itself to be very influential tool however inaccurate, at times, it may be.

Just received this from the Domain.com.au team,

We’re really excited to announce the arrival of Street View on Domain.com.au.

Taking your property search experience to a whole new level, you can now check out a street level view of properties in selected cities and then, walk down the actual street by panning, rotating and zooming using Street View maps.

See what the neighbours place looks like, explore the whole neighbourhood and even see how close a property you’re interested in is to shops, school, parks and more.

To find out more on how to use Street View on Domain.com.au

Given the success of this on real estate sites in the US, this will start to open up a new experience for Australian on line searchers.  Check it out on domain.com.au