Online Real Estate Technology

Hi everyone, just wanted to advise you of the next round of social media training events, if you are interested in attending any of the events and days listed below, please contact the event organiser on the email address listed.

Social Media for Senior Management will feature on day 3 presented by Mike Andrew.

3 Day MBA for Marketing Professionals

2-4 August 2010
Venue: Park Royal Hotel,Kuala Lumpur

3 Day MBA for Marketing Professionals

4-6 August 2010
Venue: Swissotel Merchant Court, Singapore

3 Day MBA for Marketing Professionals

19-21 September 2010
Venue: Crowne Plaza Hotel,Dubai

For bookings and/or enquiries about costs and to request a brochure, please visit 3 Day MBA for Marketing Professionals bookings and enquiries

Users fear ads more than identity theft

Facebook, which stirred consumer privacy worries in spring 2010 with its rollout of new opt-out initiatives, has not experienced an exodus of users, leaving many industry watchdogs wondering whether web users really do care about online security.

According to a May 2010 study by privacy researcher the Ponemon Institute sponsored by identity theft prevention service ProtectMyID.com, more than three-quarters of US social media users have at least some concern about their privacy and security while using social media, including 28% who say their concerns are serious.

About a quarter of social media users are worried about identity theft on the sites, according to the study, compared with 54% who thought their information might be stolen while banking online and 42% while shopping online. When asked about the consequences they attribute to their own use of nonsecure social sites, the greatest number of respondents cited an increase in the frequency of online ads they see.

That topped the number of people who had had secrets revealed or downloaded viruses, and outpaced by far the number who had had their identity stolen.

While three-quarters of social media users said their security was either important or very important to them, almost half admitted they used social sites that they didn’t trust. Further, only 35% said they chose high security settings for their social media profiles.

And many were still willing to share large amounts of information that, in combination, could potentially be identifying.

Even users who had experienced identity theft in the past did not differ significantly in their practices from the typical social media user.

With just 39% of social media users confident that social networks will protect their privacy, marketers must be careful to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Research suggests users will continue to flock to sites like Facebook and offer them access to large amounts of personal data but will attribute unwanted ads to possible security issues.

Email is a permanent fixture in the lives of global consumers, according to [pdf] a new report from digital marketing firm e-Dialog.

Email Ownership Approaches 100%
Of the nearly 13,000 consumers e-Dialog surveyed around the world for its “Global Perspectives” report, 96% of them have a personal email account. Of the 13 countries surveyed, consumers in South Korea reported the highest percentage of having a personal email account at 99%.US adoption is at 97%. The lowest reported percentage is Italy at 87%.

High email adoption is also driving consumers to use messages that are connected to their primary email account, including social email and mobile email. Although usage of these types of email is much lower (37% and 34% overall, respectively), they are still potentially valuable marketing tools.

Usage of these two email types has strong regional variation. For example, 56% of US consumers own a social networking email account, but only 24% of Asia-Pacific consumers own one.

8 in 10 Consumers Want New Product Info via Email
The vast majority of consumers across global regions clearly indicate that they prefer to get new product marketing information via email. Overall, 80% of consumers surveyed indicate this preference, with 84% of Asia-Pacific consumers indicating such a preference followed by American (78%) and European (75%) consumers.

Broken down by nation, interest in product marketing offers via email is highest in Japan and Singapore (88%) and Italy and China (84%), and lowest in Sweden (54%). e-Dialog analysts advise that interest doesn’t always equal action, underscoring the need for marketers to employ relevance empowering techniques including segmentation and testing to drive profitable subscriber behavior.

Subscriber Acquisition Preference Varies by Nation

While websites are generally the preferred place for consumers to opt-in, marketers must adjust acquisition strategies by these regional differences, according to e-Dialog findings:

• Company website registration: This behavior is highest in Spain (60%), Italy (58%) the US (57%), the UK (53%) and Singapore (50%). Consumers in France and the Netherlands are less likely to opt-in via the website and prefer to do so through a catalog order.
• SMS acquisition: The ability for a consumer to quickly text their email address to an SMS code in order to opt-in online is most prevalent in the Asia-Pacific region. While other acquisition behavior in Asia-Pacific is similar to the overall global results, it differs dramatically for SMS opt-in. Twenty-one percent of Asia-Pacific consumers have reportedly opted in to email in this manner, as compared to 13% of the overall global survey respondents. This behavior is highest in China (27%).
• Social acquisition: This emerging acquisition tactic is more popular with US consumers (12%) than it is with their European peers (8%). But again it is the Asia-Pacific region where it is most prevalent. Consumers in China (27%) and Singapore (17%) are especially likely to be acquired through a social network.

More US Consumers Use Email than SocNets for Brand Interaction
More US online consumers use email than social networks for brand interaction, according to a new study from digital marketing firms ExactTarget and CoTweet. Data from the “Daily Morning” report indicates that 93% of online consumers aged 15 and older receive at least one permission-based email per day, putting them into the category of “subscribers.”

Broken down by age demographic, 15-to-17-year-olds are subscribers at a significantly lower rate (68%). All other age brackets of online consumers aged 18 and older are subscribers at rates between 93% and 96%. In contrast, 38% of online consumers are fans of at least one company or brand on Facebook, placing them in the “fans” category, while only 5% follow a brand on Twitter.

Five key factors make email a more popular means of brand interaction than social networks, according to [pdf] a new study from digital marketing firms ExactTarget and CoTweet.

Familiarity
Because email isn’t new, consumers are familiar with the technology, are comfortable using it, and know exactly what to expect, according to “Email X-Factors.” Consumers have also grown accustomed to using email as a way of engaging with brands, making it top-of-mind when it comes to interacting with a company. Consumers most frequently use email for two types of brand interaction: obtaining promotions and deals and customer communications.

1. Obtaining Promotions and Deals. The internet has simplified price and promotion shopping, and 82% of consumers will search a variety of online channels to obtain deals and promotions. For the majority of consumers, they begin their search by checking a particular brand’s corporate website. Seventy-six percent of consumers will initially seek deals and promotions on a brand’s website, and from there, 62% will sign up to receive email, while 54% will use a search engine.

Meanwhile, 17% of consumers will also include Facebook as part of their search for ongoing deals, and 3% will search for deals on Twitter.
Women are more likely than men to sign up for emails (67% compared to 57%), and older consumers are also more likely to sign up for emails to get ongoing deals.

However, the difference based on age is far less than may be expected. In fact, Millennials (aged 15-24) are twice as likely to subscribe to email in their search for ongoing deals (56%) as they are to search for deals on Facebook (28%).

2. Customer Communications. The internet has also changed how organizations approach customer service. In the age of immediate gratification, the importance of customer service has been magnified. And although social media has given customers a way to publicly air their grievances against a brand, the majority of customers still prefer to deal with customer service issues in private—over the phone, through a company’s website, or through email. When faced with a customer service issue, 41% of customers will communicate via phone, 33% via company websites, and 20% via email. 37% of customers will send an email after an unsuccessful first attempt, making it the most common second step in the process of dealing with a customer service issue.

Consumers often turn to email for customer service requests because an immediate response is not always necessary. Email is seen as an efficient way of dealing with issues without having to wait on the phone for help, or turn to social media where privacy is lost.

Manageability
More than nine in 10 (93%) of U.S. online consumers are subscribers, meaning they receive at least one permission-based commercial email message on a typical day. The average consumer receives 44 daily emails (including commercial and personal), and half of consumers receive fewer than 25 per day. While these numbers aren’t small, most consumers consider the size of their inboxes manageable. So while marketers may be overwhelmed by overflowing inboxes, most of their customers aren’t.

Of those 44 daily emails, about 25% are permission-based commercial messages, with the remaining 75% comprised of personal messages, transactional messages, and spam that’s quickly deleted.

The average teen (aged 15-17) receives less than half the email of the average consumer, and receives only four commercial emails per day. And while marketers often interpret these statistics to mean a large generational shift away from email is occuring, ExactTarget analysis indicates this is a misinterpretation. The amount of email teens receive increases significantly when they graduate from high school, suggesting life stage—not age—is a more important factor when considering how much consumers rely on email.

However, ExactTarget advises email marketers to focus on only sending relevant emails to consumers, as a recent CMO Council study indicates 41% of US internet users threatened to stop buying from brands that sent irrelevant emails. (For more details see “Relevancy” below.)

Trust and Privacy
Consumers have two major concerns regarding trust and privacy of promotional emails: whether personal data will be shared and the ease of unsubscribing. ExactTarget advises that established brands have a distinct advantage when it comes to earning the trust of their consumers. Consumers tend to give the benefit of the doubt to big brands, and assume their email addresses will be safe, secure, and unshared.

In contrast, consumers will do additional research on unknown brands before offering their email addresses. They will Google company names, and review complaint history and comments on Facebook and Twitter.

Relevancy
Consumers know it’s possible for companies to send targeted and personalized messages, meaning relevancy is no longer an option for marketers. And when it comes to email, consumers quickly decide which companies they like to receive messages from, opposed those they don’t, based on whether the email message is relevent or not. ExactTarget research found that half (49%) of consumers “always” open emails from their “favorite” companies, compared to only 16% who say they never open email.

Exclusivity
While only one-third of consumers said they were motivated by the promise of exclusive content when choosing to become a subscriber, email’s exclusivity factor extends beyond content. ExactTarget advises that becoming a subscriber is like becoming a member of an exclusive club. As mentioned earlier, subscribers demonstrate their trust in a brand when they provide a company with their email address. And in return, they expect to be a part of an exclusive club.

More Consumers Use Email than SocNets for Brand Interaction
More online consumers use email than social networks for brand interaction, according to another recent study from ExactTarget and CoTweet. Data from the “Daily Morning” report indicates that 93% of online consumers aged 15 and older receive at least one permission-based email per day, putting them into the category of“subscribers. Broken down by age demographic, 15-to-17-year-olds are subscribers at a significantly lower rate (68%). All other age brackets of online consumers aged 18 and older are subscribers at rates between 93% and 96%.

Meanwhile, 38% of consumers are fans of at least one brand on Facebook, while only 5% are followers of at least one company or brand on Twitter.

Including social media links in promotional emails improves their click-through rate (CTR), according to a recent study from email marketing technology firm GetResponse.

Social Media Links Improve CTR 30%
GetResponse research indicates that on average, promotional emails sent by small-to-mid-sized business (SMB) marketers that include links to at least one social network have a 9.4% CTR. Meanwhile, promotional emails without any social network links have a 7.2% CTR. This means promotional emails including social network links generate an average CTR 30% higher than promotional emails without the links.

The More, The Merrier
Results of the study show that email messages with no social network links return an average 7.2% CTR, while email messages with one social network link returned an average 8.7% CTR. This CTR jumps to 9.3% for messages with two social network links, a roughly 7% increase from messages with one link and 29% increase from messages with no links.

In addition, messages with three or more social sharing links generated an 11.2% CTR, which is 20% higher than messages with two links, 28% higher than messages with one link and 55% higher than messages with no links.

Twitter Offers Best CTR
Broken down by specific social network, Twitter offers the highest CTR (10.2%), followed by Facebook (9.1%). Digg offers the lowest CTR of major social networks (5.3%), meaning messages with Twitter links are almost twice as effective at generating CTR as messages with Digg links, but only 12% more effective than messages with Facebook links.

Most SMB Marketers Don’t Use Social Media in Email
Despite demonstrated improvements in CTR, only a distinct minority of small-to-mid-sized-business (SMB) marketers use social media links or icons in their promotional emails, according to other study results from GetResponse. Data indicates that 18.7% of SMB marketers linked promotional emails to messages on their Twitter accounts. Another 13.5% included clickable sharing links to social media networks.

Almost all users on Twitter are within five steps of each other, according to recent data from social media consulting firm Sysomos.

Eight in 10 Twitter Users Within 5 Steps or Less
On average, Twitter users have five degrees of separation between each other – meaning nearly everyone within Twitter is only five steps away. Of all friendship distances, five steps is the most common (41%), while a friendship distance of four steps is the second-most common (37%). Much smaller percentages are three and two steps away, leading to a total of 85% of all users being within five steps of separation.

Of users beyond five steps away from each other, the most common distance is six steps (13%), with 2% being seven steps away.

Reachability Nears 100% Within 6 Steps
One way to measure the connectedness of Twitter is by looking at the percentage of Twitter users that can be touched by reaching out a certain distance. Using the Twitter network graph, Sysomos analysts determined that, on average, a Twitter user will encounter 83% of all other Twitter users by visiting everyone’s friends up to a distance of five steps.

If the user visits all friends of friends up to six steps, 96% of all Twitter users will be covered. This means, the Twitter network has good social connectivity, and that, in theory, a re-tweet does not have to propagate that much to reach a potentially large number of people.

Twitter is Highly Local
On average, it only takes 3.32 steps for a user to find someone who is following them (with a standard deviation of 1.25 friendship distances). This means, if a user traces their friends, and their friends and so on, in 3.32 steps on average they will discover a follower of their own. This means there are many small, circular connections on Twitter.

Celeb Twitter Followers Have Low Authority
Celebrities seem to have large amounts of followers with low Twitter authority levels (based on factors such as a user’s number of followers, following, updates and retweets), according to other recent Twitter-related data from Sysomos. Of five celebrities examined, the average follower of President Barack Obama had the highest authority rating on a scale of 0 to 10, 2.4. The most common authority score among Obama’s roughly 4.2 million followers is 1, held by 20%.

Celebrities seem to have large amounts of followers with low Twitter authority levels. This could be because they attract everyone from all walks of life. Some people may only be on Twitter to see what their favorite stars have to tweet about. In addition, most celebrity followers tracked by Sysomos had few followers themselves, pushing down their authority scores.

While celebrities have high numbers of Twitter followers, those followers usually have minimal reach and influence, according to social media consulting firm Sysomos.

Celebrity Followers Offer More Quantity than Quality
Celebrities seem to have large amounts of followers with low Twitter authority levels (see “About the Data” for more information on how authority levels are determined). Of five celebrities examined, the average follower of President Barack Obama had the highest authority rating on a scale of 0 to 10, 2.4. The most common authority score among Obama’s roughly 4.2 million followers is 1, held by 20%.

Interestingly, the celebrity whose fans had the second-highest authority score of 2.1, pop singer Lady Gaga, had the second-lowest following of about 4.5 million. The most common authority score of followers of all celebrities except Obama was 0.

Actor Ashton Kutcher had the highest number of followers (about 5.1 million), and the third-highest average authority score (1.8). Pop singer Britney Spears had the lowest average follower authority score (1.3) and second-highest number of followers (about 4.8 million).

Celebrities seem to have large amounts of followers with low Twitter authority levels. This could be because they attract everyone from all walks of life. Some people may only be on Twitter to see what their favorite stars have to tweet about. In addition, most celebrity followers tracked by Sysomos had few followers themselves, pushing down their authority scores.

Social Media Heavyweight Followers Have Most Authority
Social media heavyweights, private citizens who have made a name for themselves on Twitter, had the fewest followers but the highest average authority scores for their followers. Following the pattern seen with celebrity tweeters, the social media heavyweight with the fewest followers, Jason Falls (27,195), had the highest average follower authority score (4.8).

Conversely, the two social media heavyweights with the most followers, Chris Brogan (139,693) and Jeremiah Owyang (64,775), tied for the lowest average follower authority score of 4. The most common authority score for all social media heavyweight followers was either 4 or 5.

Online Media Beats Traditional Media
On the whole, the five news/media sources tracked by Sysomos show more variety among their scores than the celebrities or social media heavyweights. However, online media sources attracted fewer followers with higher average authority scores than traditional media sources.

Online media source Read Write Web, with about 1 million followers, had an average follower authority score of 3, which was also its most common follower authority score (19%). This tied online media source Mashable in average authority score, most common authority score and percentage of followers with the most common authority score. Mashable has more followers with about 2 million.

Online media source Tech Crunch ties traditional media source Time.com with an average follower authority of 2.4 and most common follower authority score of 2, at virtually the same percentage. However, Time.com has significantly more total followers (2.1 million) than Tech Crunch (1.4 million).

Traditional media source New York Times has the highest total number of followers (about 2.5 million) and lowest average authority score (2.2). It also has by far the lowest most common authority score of 0 (22%). Not surprisingly, sources that specialize in social media attract users that are more active on Twitter.

Facebook Fans More Valuable Customers
While there is variation in the value of different types of Twitter followers, on the whole Facebook fans of a brand provide more value as customers than non-fans, according to a new study from digital consulting firm Syncapse Corp.

The average value a Facebook fan provides a brand is $136.38, but it can swing to $270.77 in the best case or go down to $0 in the worst. This value is based on Syncapse analysis of five factors per fan: product spending, brand loyalty, propensity to recommend, brand affinity and earned media value.

On average, a Facebook fan participates with a brand 10 times a year and will make one recommendation. Value can differ significantly by individual brand. For example, in the case of Coca- Cola, the best case for fan value reaches $316.78 but is $137.84 for an average fan. In the worse case scenario, a fan is worth $0.

Consumers do want relationships

The social networking audience in the US has reached critical mass. eMarketer estimates that 57.5% of all US Internet users, or 127 million people, will use a social network at least once a month in 2010. By 2014, nearly two-thirds of Internet users will be on board.

Marketers have been chasing this audience for several years, but the question remains: Do consumers notice, or care?

“Those who still think that social network users are too busy engaging with friends to notice marketers must change their viewpoint,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “Brand Interactions on Social Networks.” “Brand interactions are real, valuable and growing. “

According to a February 2010 survey by Chadwick Martin Bailey, a market research firm, 33% of Facebook users have become fans of brands on the network.

Another survey, by Edison Research, found that 16% of social network users had friended brands there. And half (51%) had done so on Twitter.

Coupons remain a leading driver of brand interactions in social networks. Learning about sales and new products is also a strong motivator for people to interact with companies in social media. Beyond the tangibles, such as coupons, consumers do gain positive feelings about a brand as a result of their interactions.

Still, social networks are not seen as primary research sources when consumers are looking to buy. Although people are very inclined to take advice from friends and family about products they are interested in, they are not nearly as likely to seek out their social network friends when they are researching online.

According to a study by PowerReviews and the e-tailing group, only 3% of online buyers said they sought recommendations from social network friends first, compared with 57% who started with search engines.

“More than half of all Internet users now use social networks, and the percentage of social network users who talk about companies, either in organic conversations or on branded company pages, is growing,” said Ms. Williamson. “Consumers do pay attention and they do value positive interactions with companies.

“But while people trust their friends for advice and use social networks as part of their research process, social networks are long way from replacing search, if they ever will, as a source of information leading to a purchase.”

I’ve been working in social media for a long time now and I write for about 10 different blogs every day and some times I republish articles that I believe will be of benefit or interest to those that read my blogs, just like lots of blog writers do every day, after all, isn’t social media built on the principle of sharing? I thought so until today.

I always adhere to the principles of acknowledging the writer or publisher and I always leave the links intact so as to give the original blog owner the backlink as well as the kudos of having their material syndicated. I am always flattered when a blog owner takes one of my articles and adds it to their blog, as long as they give me credit as the author and include a link back to my site.

Well that is what I did today, published an article with credit and links intact and low and behold I get an email telling me to remove the article as it is copyright material and I don’t have permission to post the article or any other on my site. By the way the “remove” was in the largest font possible, any bigger and would not have needed my glasses to see it.

My mistake here it seems was leaving the box marked pingback ticked.

The site in question, or maybe I shouldn’t tell you who it is for fear they may be a bit precious, is a site all about social media.

The point of this post is basically to advise you that if you are taking other bloggers material to check first to see if the story is copyright, I wonder if they participate in article marketing, mm, anyway make sure you have permission before you publish content.

I mean silly as it sounds, I should just take the post, rewrite it and republish it and we’d be fine, after all, it is a post that offers information that has been around for years.

Maybe that’s what I’ll do, rewrite the post, and call it “6 ways to constantly produce quality blog content” or maybe that is copyright to, I know, I’ll go one better, I’ll change it to “7 ways to constantly produce quality blog content”.

There you go Mike, I’ve just found ways to produce better blog content, and your site will be a constant fountain of ideas.

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a report on the fastest-growing mobile application and browser content categories based on data from its MobiLens service. The report found that social networking led as the top-gaining category for both application and browser access, confirming the surging popularity of this service on mobile devices. The study also found that accessing Bank Accounts was one of the fastest-gaining categories via both app and browser, as the convenience of mobile banking continues to appeal to a growing number of consumers.

“With mobile media consumption on the rise, the discussion of how consumers are accessing content — whether it is via application, browser or both — continues to be an important factor for companies looking to invest further in their mobile brands,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. “Although application access is clearly on the rise, with several categories more than doubling their audience via this method, content consumption via browser continues to be the most popular method for Americans to access mobile media.”

Smartphone Users Post Triple-Digit Growth in App and Browser Access

In terms of penetration, 78 percent of smartphone users accessed their browser in April 2010, while 80 percent of smartphone users accessed applications. In comparison, just 19 percent of feature phone users accessed their browser, with 17 percent accessing applications. Although smartphone users are driving growth in browser (up 111 percent in the past year) and application (up 112 percent) access, feature phone users still make up nearly half of all users accessing mobile browsers and apps.

“Although growth in application usage on smartphones continues to grab the spotlight in the mobile market, the audience using their mobile browser remains larger and is growing just as quickly,” added Donovan. “Brands need to remember to take into consideration the user experience across both channels when building their mobile strategies.”

Social Networking App Audience More Than Triples in Past Year

In April 2010, 69.6 million mobile users accessed an application on their phone, an increase of 28 percent from the previous year. Several application categories experienced triple-digit growth in the past year, emphasizing the increasing popularity of this method as a form of mobile content access. Social Networking experienced the strongest growth in app access, increasing 240 percent to 14.5 million users. Accessing News apps followed, growing 124 percent to 9.3 million users, while Sports Information apps experienced a 113-percent surge to nearly 7.7 million users. Bank Accounts apps also more than doubled their audience, growing to nearly 5 million users in April.

More Americans Still Use their Browser versus Applications

Nearly 73 million mobile users accessed their browser in April, an increase of 31 percent from the previous year. Mirroring application category growth, Social Networking ranked as the fastest-growing category accessed via browser, growing 90 percent from the previous year to reach almost 30 million users, followed by Bank Accounts (69 percent to 13.2 million users). Online Retail sites also experienced a significant increase in audience usage via browser, increasing 47 percent to 7.3 million users, as Americans continued to show adoption of the mobile retail channel.

Donovan continued, “Social networking is by far the fastest-growing mobile activity right now. With 20 percent of mobile users now accessing social networking sites via their phone, we expect to see both application and browser usage continuing to drive future consumption of social media.”