Online Real Estate Technology

Social media and search advertising are projected to be the most popular advertising tools this year, each cited by 24% of respondents to a PointRoll survey [pdf] of US marketing professionals, conducted by Kelton Research and released in March 2012. Display advertising followed closely, chosen by 22% of respondents. There was then a significant drop-off to online video (11%), mobile or tablet ads (7%), and mobile or tablet apps (6%). Just 1% chose email, text/SMS, or social gaming. Search advertising is more popular among respondents at director level or above, compared to those in supervisory or managerial positions (30% vs. 19%).

Most Will Increase Spend on Digital Channels

In fact, a majority of respondents are planning to up their spend on a variety of digital channels, a position that traditional channels are not slated to share. Among digital channels, the largest proportion say they will increase their spending on social media marketing or ads (79%), closely followed by those who will increase their budgets for mobile marketing or ads (75%). A comparatively fewer 55% say they will increase spending on search advertising, though this compares favorably to just 7% who will either decrease spending (3%) or not use this tool (4%).

Conversely, out-of-home marketing or ads will get an increase from just 16% of marketing professionals, on par with the proportion who will decrease spending in this area. And while 15% will budget more for traditional marketing or ads, 21% will scale back their budgets. Even so, traditional marketing channels still get a big chunk of budgets: 57% of marketing and advertising executives in organizations with revenues of $10 million or more said that most of their spending in 2011 went to traditional efforts.

Audience Targeting Proves Exciting

Meanwhile, audience targeting (49%) tops the list of industry trends that respondents are excited about, ahead of other movements including cross-screen media (40%), web TV (30%), Facebook marketing (37%), social gaming (22%) and digital out-of-home marketing or ads (19%). Excitement about audience targeting is higher at the directorial level and above than at the supervisory or managerial level (56% vs. 44%).

Some of that excitement may be related to necessity: 17% of respondents said that identifying the right audience has been holding them back from doing their job more successfully. According to March 2012 survey results from Acxiom and Loyalty 360, just 49% of company executives agree that they know who their most loyal customers are, and the best way to reach out to them and get them to engage with their brand. In fact, just 10% of respondents strongly agreed with the statement, while about one-third were neutral and roughly 1 in 5 disagreed.

Marketers Using Numerous Tools and Partners

Data from PointRoll’s “Marketing Tools Study 2012? indicates that 28% of marketing and advertising professionals use at least 7 tools during a single campaign to reach their target market, while 62% use between 3 and 6 tools. To help with their efforts, roughly 3 in 10 respondents call on at least 10 partners to help them during a campaign. Even so, this sometimes has the opposite effect than intended: about one-third say that managing multiple vendors typically prevents them from doing their job better, and 1 in 10 say that working more efficiently with vendors is their biggest goal this year.

Other Findings:

• Marketing professionals would pay a company an average of $107,500 to manage an integrated digital campaign.
• Increasing sales (31%) and ROI (28%) are the goals most commonly cited as marketers’ most important for this year.
• Slightly more than half of respondents say that inefficient ROI tracking and measurement has hindered their success at work.
• Almost all respondents predict they will use online video this year. The most popular formats are in-banner (60%), in-stream (49%) and dynamic or customized video ads (42%).
• Roughly 2 in 5 respondents believe that they are behind the curve when it comes to digital marketing.

About the Data: The PointRoll data is based on a survey of more than 250 marketing professionals from across the US at supervisor level and above, conducted in January 2012.

Story source: www.mikeandrewconsulting.com/blog

Facebook has officially started rolling out its new Timeline feature that will enable users to show off the most important moments of their lives on their profile page.

The new feature, which was unveiled in early September, will first be introduced in New Zealand before it is rolled out to other countries, the company revealed on its Facebook blog today.

Facebook said Timeline would keep important life events on profile pages while less-important posts would drop off .

"Now you can share photos of what you did last weekend, and updates about how you feel today," the company said in a previous blog post.

"But since the focus is on the most recent things you posted, more important stuff slips off the page. The photos of your graduation get replaced by updates about what you had for breakfast."

The new feature will allow users to choose which life events, such as birthdays or weddings, are permanently illustrated on their profile.

Timeline raised privacy concerns in its development stage, after it was revealed it would be visible on the Timeline when you "unfriended" certain people, social media website Mashable reports.

Facebook said this was a glitch that had since been corrected.

Story: www.ninemsn.com.au

Luxury marketers take note, according to a February 2011 Affluence Collaborative survey, wealthy internet users connect with brands on social networks for significantly different reasons than the general population. The social networks they use to do so are different, too.

Among the general population, the main reason cited for connecting with brands on social networks was to receive deals and discounts. This result from the Affluence Collaborative survey backs up earlier research from several sources on why consumers follow brands on social sites.

But according to Affluence Collaborative, this was a much lower priority for the wealthy. Their top reasons for following brands were due to a preexisting affinity for and a desire to be kept informed about the brand. The least-cited reason mentioned by all groups surveyed was to be entertained, suggesting that social media marketers still need to provide fans with value, even if it isn’t directly in the form of a coupon or sale.

These findings coincide with earlier research from ExactTarget, which showed that a huge component of liking a brand on Facebook was due not just to an affinity, but as a means of self-expression for others to see. This promotional desire was more pronounced in Facebook users than Twitter followers or email subscribers. Affluents then, in their “love of the brands” they connect with, are largely acting as brand ambassadors.

On the surface, a November 2010 L2 Think Tank survey might appear to contradict these findings. Affluent members of Gen Y (ages 19 to 33) cited promotions and offers as the main reason for engaging with brands on social media. Women were more likely than men to engage with brands in general and to want to receive offers. However, the survey included those who were “projected to earn $100,000 in the next two years”—meaning the respondents were more aspiring than actually affluent. The second biggest motivator was still an affinity for the brand.

Data from the Affluence Collaborative study also reveals that the affluent aren’t using the same social networks as the general population. Facebook was the No. 1 social network used by all groups surveyed, but LinkedIn and Twitter attracted affluent internet users at nearly double the rate of the general population.

Any marketer targeting affluent consumers needs to know not only where to reach that audience, but what appeals to them. For wealthy internet users, connecting with a brand is largely about the brand itself, not gimmicks and offers. Affluents need to see a consistent message that makes following a brand meaningful for self-expression, just like when buying a brand in real life. Watering down the brand in order to gain a large social following may drive away the very people trying to be reached.

View the original article here

Social networks are ‘lucrative hot beds’ for cyber scams as crooks endeavour to dupe members of online communities, according to a Microsoft security report.

‘Phishing’ attacks that use seemingly legitimate messages to trick people into clicking on booby-trapped links, buying bogus software, or revealing information rocketed 1,200 per cent at social networks last year, it said.

‘We continue to see cyber criminals evolve attack methods such as a significant rise in social network phishing,’ Microsoft malware protection centre manager Vinny Gullotto said in Thursday’s Security Intelligence Report.

Phishing using social networking as a ‘lure’ represented 84.5 per cent of all such trickery in December as compared with 8.3 per cent at the start of 2010, according to the report.

Microsoft analysed data gathered from more than 600 million computer systems worldwide from July through December of last year for the semi-annual study.

‘The popularity of social networking sites has created new opportunities for cyber criminals to not only directly impact users, but also friends, colleagues and family through impersonation,’ the report said.

‘These techniques add to an existing list of social engineering techniques, such as financial and product promotions, to extort money or trick users into downloading malicious content.’

Social engineering is a reference to fooling people to access machines or data instead of trying to hack into networks using software skills.

Microsoft noticed a ‘polarisation’ of cyber criminal behaviour and a surge in the use of ‘marketing-like’ deception tactics to steal money from people.

‘On one side, highly sophisticated criminals skilled at creating exploits and informed with intelligence about a target’s environment pursue high-value targets with large payoffs,’ the report said.

‘On the other side, there are cyber criminals using more accessible attack methods, including social engineering tactics and leveraging exploits created by the more skilled criminals, to take a small amount of money from a large number of people.’

Criminals used malicious software to trick people with false advertisements, fake security software, and pay-per-click schemes that generate cash when internet links are activated, according to Microsoft.

Detections of software crafted to infect machines with pop-up advertisements meanwhile rose 70 per cent from the middle of last year to the end of December, the report indicated.

Rogue security software, referred to as ‘scareware,’ was one of the most common ways for cyber criminals worldwide to bilk people out of money and steal information from computers.

The ploy seeks to dupe internet users by pretending to find viruses and other problems on computers and then offering to sell a program to fix the situation. The software being hawked is a virus.

Computer users were advised to guard against threats by keeping programs updated, using reputable security software, and not clicking links or opening files without making certain they are safe.

View the original article here

How age, income and ethnicity affect time spent social networking

The Nielsen Company reported in June that, on average, the global consumer spends about 1 in every 4.5 minutes online on blogs or social networking sites. According to a report by market researcher Morpace, among US Facebook users time on Facebook rises to 1 in 3 minutes spent online.

Unsurprisingly, despite Facebook’s growing appeal to older users, 18- to 34-year-olds spend the most time on the site per week, at 8.5 hours out of 22.4 spent online. Weekly Facebook time drops to 4.6 hours among users ages 55 and older, representing a lower proportion of that group’s average of 21.5 hours per week on the internet.

Broken down by race and ethnicity, Morpace found Facebook usage heaviest by Asians. Not only did that group spend the most hours per week on the site, but they also devoted the greatest percentage of their weekly internet time to Facebook (39.6%, compared with 35.1% among blacks, the second-highest group). Hispanics spent the fewest hours on Facebook, and even compared with their low average time online came in last.

While the Morpace report showed a decline in both total time online and time on Facebook as incomes rose from less than $50,000 up to $100,000, affluent Facebook users making at least $100,000 annually spent the most time on the site and on the web as a whole.

In Q1 2010, comScore found that the visitors who spent the most time on Facebook also spent the most money online. Targeting users who not only spend large amounts of time on the site but also devote a large proportion of their total online activity to the social network could translate to going after the most lucrative portion of the audience.

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.

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.

Social network usage explodes

Usage of social networking sites rose sharply in 2009, thanks to the ever-increasing popularity of Facebook. eMarketer estimates that 57.5% of Internet users, or 127 million people, will use a social network at least once a month in 2010.

“There is no doubt anymore that social networks, reaching more than 50% of the total US Internet audience, are an essential part of the Internet experience,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “Social Network Demographics and Usage.”

By 2014, nearly two-thirds of all Internet users, or 164.9 million people, will be regular users of social networks.

Last year, the social network audience widened sharply beyond the base of teens and young adults who popularized the activity. This year, 59.2% of adult Internet users will visit social networks monthly, up from 52.4% in 2009.

“Teens and young adults are old news,” said Ms. Williamson. “This year, 60% of Internet users ages 35 to 44 and one-half of those in the 45-to-54 age group will use social networks at least once a month. Women, especially moms, are still driving much of the growth.”

By 2014, these changes will become more pronounced. More than one-half (56.8%) of 55-to-64-year-old Internet users will visit social networks regularly that year, up from 34.3% in 2009. Even seniors 65 and up, only 14.1% of whom used social networks in 2009, will get in on the act, reaching 37.9% penetration in 2014.

“The connections and interactions that social networking makes possible didn’t even exist a few short years ago,” said Ms. Williamson. “Status updating, commenting and sharing openly are all activities that will not go away.”

According to the BlogHer and iVillage “2010 Social Media Matters Study,” co-sponsored by The Nielsen Company and Ketchum, social sites are now a frequent destination for nearly three-quarters of Internet users. The study found similar rates of usage among men and women, and pegged the percentage of weekly social media users at 73% of the online population.

Respondents’ top daily media activities were social as well. Watching television is still on top, but Facebook was the next most common media destination visited every day. Among survey respondents, social media games were as popular as reading print newspapers.

Among BlogHer Network users only, usage was significantly higher. For example, 77% read blogs every day and 35% used Twitter.

Social destinations become more important when these especially social-savvy users are looking for information about a potential purchase. Search engines are the No. 1 starting point for information about products and services, but blogs, user-generated content and social networks were more likely to be used frequently for purchase advice than traditional sources such as magazines, television and newspapers.

Among all US Internet users, about one-fifth said blogs and social networks were a good place to find out about new products. One-quarter liked to visit social networks for advice and recommendations and more than one-third considered social networks a good media destination for general information.

“The days of relying on one source for information are over,” said Jodi Kahn, executive vice president of iVillage, in a statement. “Online peer-to-peer advice on message boards has increasingly become one of the most valuable sources for product recommendations. Marketers cannot afford to overlook this captive audience.”

If you were ever in any doubt about the growing power of social media, then it’s time to think again, new stats released by Nielsen Online show just how powerful a tool social media is becoming within the online space. Some stand out points from the report include the fact that 66.8% of internet users around the globe had accessed “member communities” at some point during 2008. When you then compare email usage at 65.1% in 2008, the growth is even more staggering. Now if you think that research just applies to the US, then lets have a look at how social media is impacting the internet user here in Australia. In December 2007, the share of time spent on social media was 6.9%, in December 2008, that had grown to 10.9%, a change of 58% in 12 months. The biggest change in usage of sites was in Switzerland, with a change of 207% in just 12 months.

Time spent on community and blogging sites is growing at over 3 times the rate of overall internet growth. In 2007, social media sites accounted for 1 in every 15 online minutes globally,in 2008 it now accounts for 1 in every 11 minutes. In real terms, in 2008 users spent 63% more time on social media sites than they did in 2007.

Facebook grew by 566% in time spent on it by users worldwide and the fastest growing demographic is the older users, with an additional 12.4 million people aged 35 to 49 using the site in 2008 according to the Nielsen report.

Whilst I’ve concentrated on the stats with this post, I don’t believe there is any doubt of the impact that community based sites are having on internet usage, and real estate businesses in Australia need to really embrace social media and integrate it into their corporate communication strategy.

Social media sites provide significant opportunities for businesses to interact with community sites by tapping into the consumers increasing desire for good quality content. Real estate is a networking business and the better you network, the more opportunities that are created for you.

However, one consideration is how you use social media sites and what content is provided to the users, if you do it wrong, then you as a company, will not realise the potential it has as a network tool, so it’s vital to your companies success that you design a comprehensive strategy that is consistent across all networks, yet employs each ones strengths to their up most potential for your business.     

If you’d like to read the full report, I’ve included a copy for you on the link below.

nielsen_globalfaces_mar09