Online Real Estate Technology

Females care more about relating positive vs. negative word-of-mouth

Marketers looking to spur brand advocacy among women—or those worried about the possibility of negative brand buzz facilitated by social media—have another piece of evidence that good experiences are a key motivator of brand discussions.

A survey of online women in North America by female-focused marketing and communications firm Harbinger found that 92% of them turn to friends and family for product information, making word-of-mouth their top source. They consider it important to seek and share information on a variety of product categories, with appliances, restaurants, automobiles and entertainment leading the list.

In the food and beverage category, which more than two-thirds of female internet users said they were likely to share information about, 58% said they would do so because of a good experience. A bad experience would motivate 46% of respondents to speak up.

Experiences with appliances—which 80% of women surveyed said they would spread the word about—were even stronger motivators. Four in five respondents reported they would share good experiences with others, while just under three-quarters said the same of bad experiences.

In every product category studied, sharing good experiences, and often a desire to help other consumers make smart purchases, came ahead of sharing bad experiences as a word-of-mouth generator. A truly negative brand experience may still garner negative buzz online or offline, but the women surveyed were more inspired by the positive.

And despite the popularity of social media among women—and marketers’ propensity to target them there and turn them into online brand advocates—those studied preferred to share information with friends and family face-to-face (92%). They were also more likely to share info in person with strangers or acquaintances (36%) than via a website (32%) or social networking site (27%).

Becoming fully incorporated into media and marketing

Blogging has been around for well over a decade—an eternity in internet time. Whereas blogs used to be a thorn in the side of traditional journalism, today they’re an essential ingredient in the media mix. Hardly a news organization exists that does not have a blog where its journalists post updates to breaking stories, offer personal commentary and engage in a dialogue with readers and viewers.

Similarly, blogging has grown into a vital marketing tool for all types of companies, including Fortune 500 marketers and mom-and-pop retailers. eMarketer estimates that 34% of US companies will use a blog for marketing purposes this year, a proportion that will continue to grow to 43% by 2012.

“Businesses are increasingly using the blogosphere to further a variety of corporate functions, such as communications, lead generation, customer service and brand marketing,” said Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “Corporate Blogging: Media and Marketing Firms Drive Growth.”

While blogging still tends not to rate such high usage as newer forms of social media like Facebook and Twitter, it still has many strengths, including full control over branding and advertising, integration with all corporate web properties, no limits on post length and the existence of a full, easily searchable repository of information. And studies have noted blogging’s usefulness for lead generation.

In addition to marketing, blogs have also become more fully integrated into the world of communications. In the early days of blogging, the established media showed a definite distrust of such nontraditional publishing. By October 2009, according to a Cision-led study, nearly two-thirds of US journalists reported they used blogs to publish, promote and distribute what they wrote. And according to PRWeek and PR Newswire, about a third of journalists used corporate blogs as research sources in 2010, up from a quarter last year.

“This confluence between established and emerging media is making blogging an integral part of the news cycle,” said Verna. “As consumers assimilate blogs into their media consumption, they are less likely to distinguish between a blog and a traditional news outlet.”

Investors in the real estate investment trust (REIT) sector are preparing for a bumpy last quarter of calendar 2010 caused by rising interest rates and the next round of office and retail property valuations.

Property trust analysts have predicted another round of consolidation among the trusts is not far away as predators look to take advantage of the continued low share prices for many of the listed trusts.

Deutsche Bank’s Matthew Bertram has earmarked Mirvac’s residential business as a prime target for any consolidation within the REIT sector.

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”In our view, Mirvac’s residential brand would be saleable, if REITs were to enter a consolidation phase,” he said.

”If Mirvac’s return on capital remains below its weighted average cost of capital in the medium term, on our estimates a sale of the residential division would be accretive to funds from operations, reduce debt and potentially facilitate a return of capital to shareholders.”

Other deals being worked on are the sale or internalisation of the management rights of the ING Group’s listed trusts, while Stockland is closer to securing the retirement group Aevum.

Investors are debating whether Stockland will launch a bid for FKP’s retirement assets.

Reflecting the fluctuating sentiment among REIT investors was the S&P/ASX 300 A-REIT Accumulation Index, which underperformed the broader equity market by 5.5 per cent, returning a negative 0.9 per cent for September. That compared with August, when the same index outperformed the broader market by 3.5 per cent, returning 3.5 per cent over the month.

The managing director of Maxim Asset Management, Winston Sammut, said over the past year to 18 months, Australian REITs had been concentrating on improving their balance sheets as well as refinancing their debt facilities.

Where possible, a number have been actively disposing of ”non-core assets”. As a result, most of the A-REITs have moved back to basics, becoming the traditional defensive asset class it should always have been.

Mr Sammut said that as a consequence of these changes, the longer-term outlook for A-REITs was positive.

”Over the short term, we expect the sector to trade around current levels before moving ahead as investors become more comfortable with the reformation of the A-REITs that has taken place over the last year or so,” Mr Sammut said.

He added the recently launched Maxim Income Fund benefited from the volatile financial markets, generating a return of 3.29 per cent from July 15 (the date of the last distribution) to September 30th.

Story by Carolyn Cummins COMMERCIAL PROPERTY EDITOR www.smh.com.au

Google gained ground in its dominance of the US explicit and total core search markets in September 2010, according to monthly comScore qSearch analysis.

Google Takes Larger Share of Explicit Core Search
Google Sites held 66.1% of the US explicit core search market (which measures user engagement with a search service with the intent to retrieve search results) in September 2010, up 1% from 65.4% in August 2010.

Second-ranked Yahoo Sites lost 4% of its explicit core search market share, dropping from 17.4% to 16.7%. No other explicit core search provider experienced significant month-over-month fluctuation.

More Explicit Core Search Queries Performed via Google, Microsoft
More than 16 billion explicit core searches were conducted in September 2010, up 2% from 15.7 billion the previous month. Google Sites ranked first with 10.6 billion searches, up 3% from 10.2 billion searches; followed by Yahoo Sites in second with 2.7 billion, down 2% from slightly more than that total the previous month.

Microsoft Sites came in third with 1.8 billion explicit core searches, up 3% from 1.7 billion.

Google Also Grows Total Core Search Share
Google Sites accounted for 63% of total US core search queries conducted in August 2010, up 4% from a 60.5% share the previous month. Yahoo Sites followed with 19%, down 9.5% from 21% the previous month, and Microsoft Sites came in third with 12.5%, down about 2% from 12.8% in August 2010.

Google Sites Jumps in Total Core Search Queries
The total number of core search queries performed via Google Sites jumped 8%, from 10.2 billion to 11.1 billion. Meanwhile, second place Yahoo Sites lost 5%, dropping from 3.6 billion to 3.4 billion. Third place Microsoft Sites increased its total number of core search queries 2%, from 2.16 billion to 2.2 billion.

Total US core search queries grew 4% in September 2010, rising from 16.9 billion in August 2010 to 17.7 billion.

US teens age 13-17 sent and received average of 8% more text messages in Q2 2010 than in Q2 2009, according to new data from The Nielsen Company.

Teen Females are Queens of Texting
Teens age 13-17 sent and received average of 3,339 monthly text messages in Q2 2010, 8% more than Q2 2009 and more than six per waking hour.

No one texts more than teens (age 13-17), especially teen females, who send and receive an average of 4,050 texts per month. Teen males also outpace other male age groups, sending and receiving an average of 2,539 texts. Young adults (age 18-24) come in a distant second, exchanging 1,630 texts per month (a comparatively meager three texts per hour).

Texting Trumps Safety
Texting is the main reason teens get a cell phone, with 43% claiming it is their primary reason for getting one. Safety, which was the main teen reason for getting a phone in 2008, is now less important. It is secondary among girls and less so among boys. Keeping in touch with friends is still one of the top three factors, too.

Overall, percentages of teens citing specific reasons for obtaining a cell phone did not greatly vary between Q2 2009 and Q2 2010.

Voice Usage Drops in Younger than 55
Tracking use of voice telephony by age group, voice usage declined in every age bracket younger than 55 between Q2 2009 and Q2 2010. It slightly increased among the 55-to-64-year-old and 65 and older demographics.

Voice activity has decreased 14% among teens, who average 646 minutes talking on the phone per month. Teen females, who are more social with their phones, average about 753 minutes per month, while males use around 525 minutes.

Teens Use More Mobile Data, Apps
While teen usage of mobile data and applications does not reach levels of activity seen by young adults, it has increased substantially since Q2 2009, growing from 14 MB to 62 MB. This fourfold increase is the largest jump among all age groups. Much of this boost is led by males, who are more gadget-savvy and consume 75 MB of data, compared to 17 MB in Q2 2009. Teen females use about 53 MB of data, compared to 11 MB a year ago.

Teens are not only using more data, but they are also downloading a wider range of applications. Software downloads among teen subscribers who use apps enjoyed a solid 46% increase in activity, from 26% to 38%. This includes popular apps such as Facebook, Pandora or YouTube.

Usage of the mobile web has also surpassed activity on pre-installed games, ringtone downloads and instant messaging. Other mobile activities like mail and text alerts have also seen significant growth.

Teens Text 5x More than Adults
Teens ages 12-17 send and receive a median of five times more texts per day than adult texters, according to recent data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Slightly more than half (51%) of adults who text send one to 10 texts per day, compared to 22% of teens.

The percentages of texting adults and teens who send 11-20 and 21-50 average daily texts are fairly similar. Where teens begin to outpace adults is in the percentage who send 51-100 average texts daily (18% to 7%), and more notably in the percentage who send 101-plus average texts daily (29% to 8%).

Ultimately, adults who text typically send and receive a median of 10 texts a day; teens who text send and receive a median of 50 texts per day.

A higher percentage of US adults owns a mobile phone than owns a computer, according to new data from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

Cell Phones, Computers Top Gadgets
Pew data indicates that 85% of Americans now own a cell phone. Cell phone ownership rates among young adults have reached 96% of 18-to-29 year olds. Meanwhile, three-quarters (76%) of Americans own either a desktop or laptop computer. Since 2006, laptop ownership has grown dramatically (from 30% to 52%) while desktop ownership has declined slightly.

Less than Half Own MP3 Players, Video Games
Ownership rates of other popular gadgets among US adults do not reach 50%. Slightly less than half of American adults (47%) own an MP3 player such as an iPod. This represents a nearly five-fold increase from the 11% who owned this type of device in early 2005.

Console gaming devices like the Xbox and PlayStation are nearly as common as mp3 players, as 42% of Americans own a home gaming device. Parents (64%) are nearly twice as likely as non-parents (33%) to own a game console.

Tablets, E-readers Grow with Early Adopters
Compared with the other devices on this list, e-book readers (such as the Kindle) and tablet computers (such as the iPad) are relatively new arrivals to the consumer technology scene and are owned by a relatively modest number of Americans.

However, these devices are proving popular with traditional early adopter groups such as the affluent and highly educated. Ownership rates for tablets and e-book readers among college graduates and those earning $75,000 or more per year are roughly double the national averages of 5% and 4%, respectively.

Multiple Ownership Common
Eight in 10 American adults (78%) own two or more of these devices, and the median adult owns three of the seven gadgets we asked about in our survey. Among other factors, device ownership is highly correlated with age.

For example, the typical adult younger than age 45 owns four devices, while the typical adult between the ages of 55 and 64 owns two and the typical senior (age 65 or older) owns just one. Those with high levels of income and education are also more likely to own a relatively large number of devices compared with those with lower income and education levels.

iPad Owners Valuable to Advertisers
iPad owners may currently represent a small segment of the adult US population, but they demonstrate a number of demographic trends that make them valuable to advertisers, according to research from The Nielsen Company. iPad owners skew younger and more male than owners of many other portable computing devices. Sixty-five percent of them are male and 63% of them are younger than the age of 35.

India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, has moved into his new home — a 27-storey mansion worth $1 billion.

The enormous Mumbai palace has three helipads, a dance studio, a ball room, a 50-seat theatre and an underground car park for 160 cars, according to media reports.

The 37,000 square metre home is believed to be the world’s most expensive and took seven years to build.

Mr Ambani, 53, is a major shareholder at Reliance Industries — an oil, retail and biotechnology conglomerate.

Forbes magazine has ranked Mr Ambani the fourth-richest man in the world and values his net worth at $29 billion.

The tycoon’s mother, wife and three children will live with him inside the 173m tall monolith, alongside 600 staff members.

The building has been named Antila, after a mythical island, and has views over Mumbai and the Arabian Sea.

Shiny Varghese, an Indian design magazine editor, said Antilia was "obscenely lavish".

"But we are heading into the sort of culture where money is not a question when setting up a home," Mr Varghese told The Guardian.

But an associate of Mr Ambani told the newspaper there was nothing obscene about Antilia, and that the businessman had simply "built a house to his requirements".

"He can’t just walk into a cinema and watch a film like you or me," the unnamed associate said.

"So he has built a house to his requirements like anyone else would. It’s a question of convenience and requirements. It’s only a family home, just a big one.

"It’s just another home that someone is living in. It’s no big event."

Story from ninemsn staff reporters

US internet titan Google is readying its own ‘Google Price Index’ based on a vast database of online purchases, providing a daily measure of inflation, said a top company official quoted in the Financial Times.

Google has not yet decided whether it will publish the index (GPI), which is still in development, the group’s chief economist Hal Varian said at the National Association of Business Economists conference in Denver, Colorado.

Varian said the GPI indicates a ‘very clear deflationary trend’ for goods purchased online in just under a year of data gathering, a potentially worrying prospect for US officials.

The GPI, calculated differently from official statistics of consumption — a key indicator of US economic growth — as it only accounts for products sold on the internet, but can be a much faster tool as results could be modelled at real-time speed.

The most recent official data from the Commerce Department was released at the beginning of October and showed consumer spending in August. Those figures showed spending rose 0.4 per cent in August as consumers spent slightly more than expected for the second straight month.

Story from www.ninemsn.com.au

Only 18- to 24-year-olds use the social networking site more than email for passing items on

Content-sharing has become a staple of internet usage for most online adults. Research from Chadwick Martin Bailey found that three-quarters of web users are likely to share content with friends and family, and nearly half do so at least once a week. But while much social networking content is built around such shared items, most people still prefer to use email to pass along items of interest.

Overall, 86% of survey respondents said they used email to share content, while just 49% said they used Facebook. Broken down by age, the preference for email is more pronounced as users get older. And only the youngest group polled, those ages 18 to 24, reverses the trend, with 76% sharing via Facebook, compared with 70% via email.

Earlier research from StrongMail and ShareThis also found email was still on top for content-sharing. Other studies have shown that, when limited to sharing on social sites, Facebook is No. 1.

Asked what gets them to share content online, web users polled by Chadwick Martin Bailey revealed selfish motivations. Rather than focusing on sharing content they thought the recipients would find helpful or relevant (58%), most respondents cared more about what they thought was interesting or amusing (72%). Asked to select the single biggest reason they shared content, the greatest percentage of respondents (45%) again said it was because they enjoyed it. Men and women reported similar reasons for sharing, but motivations varied by age. The oldest respondents cared more about the value of content to recipients: 67% of those ages 55 and older said they shared items because they would be useful to recipients, compared with just 45% of 18- to 24-year-olds.

This difference in sharing motivation could have a relationship to the method of sharing. Email is a more targeted form of sending content; while content-sharers may shoot off mass emails to large distribution lists, most email shares are likely sent to a person or small group selected based on the specific content being shared.

Sharing via social networks like Facebook, by contrast, typically involves feeding items to an entire friends list. The youngest users, who care the least about whether the recipients of their content actually want to see it, are also most likely to disseminate the information to the widest group. And the seniors and older boomers who find the recipients’ needs more important dramatically favor email for sharing, suggesting they are sending relevant items to only those who will want them.

About a quarter of small businesses now marketing via social media

After climbing steeply, according to research from Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, small-business adoption of social media marketing has plateaued at 24%.

The study of US small business found that those that do market via social media primarily use Facebook (82%), and that the most common activities are maintaining a company page on a social network and posting status updates or links to interesting content. About half of businesses that used social media also monitored brand chatter on social networks.

As small businesses have gained experience with social media, some have realized their expectations for the channel did not line up with the reality of the social web. As the wider marketing world begins to look at social as more of a loyalty channel than one for acquisition, small businesses are also finding that their hopes for spreading brand awareness and attracting new customers have not been fully met. By contrast, somewhat fewer small businesses had expected to use social media as an engagement channel, but nearly two-thirds have had success in that area.

The most common business objectives small businesses have achieved through social media marketing tell a similar story: Customers are connecting with companies through sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, but relatively few sales leads have been received through the sites.

Small businesses have found other frustrations as well. Many say their efforts take up more time than they had expected, although that percentage dropped from 50% to 43% between December 2009 and June 2010, suggesting companies are being more realistic about what’s involved in social campaigns. At the same time, however, the percentage saying their business had been criticized online nearly doubled, reaching 29%. Still, just a tiny 1% of small businesses said their image was hurt more than it was helped by social media—a number that’s also down, from 6% in December.