I'm going to keep this simple and short. I read about the new ActiveRain blogs being promoted here and was amazed to see something: 10+ national brand logos being used in templates that are driving revenue for ActiveRain.

On my 123 Social Media blog, I write a lot about branding on the web and losing control of what is happening online.

• Has ActiveRain made corporate deals with all of these national brands to provide official blog platforms?

• Are mainstream companies like ReMax, Century 21, Prudential, Coldwell Banker, Keller Williams, Windermere, ERA, EXIT, First Team, John L Scott, Real Living, & Sotheby's going to sit down and remain quiet while AR is selling merchandise with such respected brands?
• Wouldn't they be respectively annoyed, angered, displaced, and concerned about ActiveRain offering a web platform that is taking valuable SEO traffic from them and misrepresenting ownership of a brand.
• How long before they start sending official policy statements to all agents and franchises to immediately stop using the platform?
  

Knowing how sue happy the legal teams from the real estate industry are:

• Does anyone have an egg timer?

Unfortunately this looks like it won't be a Biznik event and I have teamed up with the Social Media Club nationals group to go a different route.

They have a very new Facebook group @ SMC Facebook
Anyone interested in learning about social media with a bunch of the national experts can still meet up on the 11th.They are taking RSVPs here: RSVP online

Time / location:

6:00 SMC Seattle Espresso Vivace 532 Broadway Ave East Seattle, Washington 98122

As a online marketing, public relations and SEO guy: I take everything with a bit of salt. I need to understand the industry, marketplace, and business requirements to communicate a positive *yet factual* message. I hate seeing "fluffy" PR and marketing that claims numbers or certain metrics, then fails to provide any hard data to look at (especially if such data appears to be unreasonable)

That brings me to today, when I read an article on RISMedia about one of Advanced Access's "success stories" titled Taking Online Initiatives to the Next Level. Over the past few years I have continously run across many sites created by Advanced Access. I usually find that they are somwhere in the "middle of the road" classification of real estate sites: nothing too fancy, but with the essential data tools needed.

”While some agents think that 300 to 500 visits per month is a good number, my website is getting up to 20,000,” says Sam Elam, a broker with Phoenix’s RE/MAX Achievers. “People need to realize that you have to put something into your website in order to get something out of it. This is a result of using all the tools Advanced Access provides,” he says. “They make a lot of recommendations to ensure your website is SEO friendly." (FYI- Sam has an ActiveRain profile here)

Up to 20,000 visitors a month? Okay, I'll bite. For a moment I'm going to believe it.

Okay, that moment is gone. Now I'm going to visit Compete.com and double-check. Here is the Unique Monthly Visitor chart for SamElam.com

So I think, maybe the system is off... in all honesty Compete.com does use an aggregate method of data collection and this site may just have "flown under the radar" and be an anomaly. In my due-diligence, I will visit the Advaced Access Member Spotlight that says the sites are all "performing well" (Actually it says "Members of our Senior Management Team have chosen these Real Estate professionals as examples of clients who have utilized our products, programs and services to successfully increase their Internet presence. These informative, functional, and versatile Websites are shining examples of how a well-developed Website can enhance and often compliment the services that professional REALTORS® can offer to the many clients they serve as they begin one of the most important decision-making processes of their lifetime when purchasing or selling a home.") I tried everything on the page, but out of 10+ sites this year in the Spotlight area only three sites had enough results to chart. The other sites simply didn't have "enough data"

The sites that did not have enough data to display were: michaelanddeenorris.com - valeriagrunbaum.com -judykasper.com - teamconnecthome.com - home-search-now.com - jenniferlblalock.com - rebees.com - rodneywilkinson.com

Here is the Unique Monthly Visitor chart for Century21CoveredBridges.com , DebJones.com, and LindaZimmerman.com:

What is the lesson?

When presenting a marketing based number that can be double-checked for accuracy, make sure to be technically accurate. If numbers are estimated, SAY SO. (A.K.A. Compete uses aggregate data)

I would love to be proven wrong here. I know Advanced Access has serviced 1000's of agents over the years, but the numbers just don't add up. I think it is wrong of Advanced Access to use this type of information and not present hard, factual metrics. If such metrics exist and you have been mentioned in this article - I will be happy to review them in private or public and make an amended statement to this article.

As so many businesses say "Dear God, hold on", I am finding my business to be more along the lines of "Wow, this is going to be a fun ride!"

The financial conditions across the world have been wildly interesting both professionally and personally. I've made dozens of new contacts in places I never would have expected and picked up some wonderful new clients along the way.

This all comes down to trends and cycles. One of the reasons I love my business is that it deals with trends: little pieces of data that infer how and why something will occur. If I draw a narrow correlation to just one part of my business and take a look at search terms online, we will see that is not some "doomsday crash" in real estate, but there is a downward trend on old-school idea:

The above chart is pretty clear: from 2004 there has been a very gradual TREND downward for real estate phrases online. This isn't the end of the world, just a gradual change.

What should real estate professionals being doing right now to maximize business: examine upward trends. I hate to say it, but social media is an upward trend. Real world word of mouth is an upward trend. Being CREATIVE is an upward trend.

Simply put: as finances become tight for folk these days, they tend to put on blinders to certain marketing efforts. Someone who doesn't have money is not subconsciously processing things like they would if they had $10,000 in cold cash stuffed in a pocket. Unfortunately mainstream America is resistant and hesitant to review money matters: we have educated a lot of our population to consider finances to be BAD.

Do not let this same conundrum kill your business. When change occurs at a faster pace: there are opportunities to be had by forward-thinking businesses.

On my other blog I recently wrote two articles about social media measurement to help professionals wrap thier mind around the trends I am experiencing:

Social Media Measurement - Metrics, Analysis, Growth, and Adoption: Highlights several slide presentations that are the best 20-30 minutes you can have on getting up to speed on social media trends. The four presentations are by different professionals (but each one of them is very bright)

Social Media Measurement- Finding Top Industry Blogs: This is an important one for real estate professionals who are expected to be neighborhood and community consultants. If you know how to find relevant and useful information online for a client, you can bring a very valuable and (FREE) benefit to your toolkit with minimal time investment.

Hopefully your business is picking up and doing well. If not, make changes today. If it is, keep looking at the puzzle and finding more of the missing pieces!

Well the answer is YES. It is BAD. Bad, BaD, BAD. At least according to the eyes of Google. If you are concerned about search engine rankings and you do not know how certain "shady" tactics will do more harm than good- read this article and the attached one at the bottom. I would love to know how many ActiveRain members have any idea that this stuff has a great impact on $$$$ they are spending.

I just downloaded a "whats included" datasheet from a fairly sizable SEO firm in the real estate industry that had the statement: "Production of text-based link ads and installation of inbound relevant links.  We write text-based link ads that are filed with your site’s information with real estate directories initially and throughout the term of your subscription. Directories accepting this data will then provide an inbound link to your site raising your sites authority to the search engines. As this process continues during your subscription, your position on the search engines becomes stronger and your site is indexed for the complete suite of keyword phrases contained in all of your relevant HTML tags."

To help clarify some of why "paid links = bad" I am going to qoute some items from Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz.org (which is a large community of SEO people, sorta the ActiveRain of the SEO world)

"Google's been pretty clear - buy or sell links, particularly those that come from broker-type services, and we'll take steps to penalize your site. At one time, this meant simply devaluing the links that come from paid sources, essentially erasing them from the link graph so as to "take the money out of the rankings." Now, however, a considerable amount of new evidence has emerged to suggest Google's doing more than just leveling the field - they're exacting revenge."

This is an article I just wrote today on corporate social media. The crowd here on ActiveRain seems like they would get the big picture statement in it regarding social media marketing, and for those interested in reading more I would greatly check out the list of corporate campaigns that I mention from Mashable.com.

***************************************************

Monitoring the huge trend in corporate social media, executives around the world are testing new ways of sharing information and trying to discard some old school stumbling blocks. Many corporate decision makers are left looking at advanced spreadsheets and blindly take shot after shot in the dark (hoping they hit the mythical beast "the prospect" in the process.) As our team at 123 is often moving around and speaking to these decision makers, we occasionally like to flex our brains a little and examine a company online. Are they doing it right? Are they doing it wrong? Are they even trying? Most importantly, what type of information is available by spending a few minutes browsing around the net?

One of the companies that caught my attention for reviewing was Intermec. When I first visited the Intermec site I thought "uh oh, another corporate site" and then I noticed they had a few unusual links at the bottom: del.icio.us, Digg, and Technorati.

I found this odd, mostly since a good portion of users coming to this site (business decision makers) have little knowledge of what del.icio.us, Digg, or Technorati is. On a flip side, I would have to assume that no one on del.icio.us, Digg, or Technorati has any clue what Intermec does. (BTW, they are in Seattle and I am one of the rare people who actually knows what Intermec does.)

For those of you who don't know, "Intermec Inc. (NYSE:IN) is in the business of helping you achieve the most return from your automated information and data capture (AIDC) and mobile computing systems. That means we do more than design and build the industry’s most complete lineup of rugged, reliable and versatile equipment. We also work with you to get inside your challenges, to know your unique situation and then leverage our strong relationships with resellers and industry-leading alliance partners to help you create a total solution that harmonizes with your networks, platforms and processes. Our collaborative, connected approach can ensure a more complete and seamless implementation whether your needs call for our Gen2 RFID, bar code systems, rugged computers or a Cisco WLAN infrastructure." (Quoted from Intermec site.)

What does that mean? Well... that is the type of stuff you see on many corporate sites these days. It is the officially confusing way to make sure that social media doesn't work and that the general visitor suffers a quick case of avoidance. If you land on nearly any page of the Intermec site, you discover brochure pages that would be confusing for the general population of a larger social networking site. If you are lucky, they may actually take a second to read the "about us" page and be baffled by the terminology of an industry, or be lost when a company uses acronym descriptors like AIDC, WLAN, or Gen2 RFID. If you were a user of Intermec's products or looking for like-minded information, the site design may be presenting the information at the right experience level. However general social media sites are not experienced in the vocabulary of your industry, so examining the actual social networks they are trying to maneuver in reveals some problematic issues:

Technorati has 100 results for the term "Intermec" on various blog posts and articles. I am unfortunately not spotting any official Intermec blog or centralized source of information to harness that exposure. It appears as if all the product reviews and random commentary are either not pointing back at the main Intermec site, or randomly linking to a nestled product page. With the amazing amount of information Intermec releases in newsletters and articles, it is somewhat baffling to find that they are not syndicating the content through a branded blog or properly setup information site.

Digg reveals another unfavorable scenario: Ouch. Zero results. Perhaps someone working at Intermec should Digg a few results.... or they may have tried doing that a little too often and found themselves removed from the Digg platform for spamming (I didn't check to see if it was removed for spamming.)

Del.icio.us reveals that while popular is popular, it is also a strange way of losing money.  Del.icio.us has 259 mentions of Intermec. At first glance this would probably mean "success" to most corporate marketers. They have tagged content for words that could produce some relevant traffic for the business. Unfortunately a variety of suppliers (and Google) seem to be buying the traffic via the adwords campaign highlighted in red on the screenshot to the left. Intermec itself is buying the keyword "Intermec" for brand protection, paying $1.75 to $2.90 per visitor. Rather than receive "free traffic" from a social media site, Intermec is actually losing advertising budget to both del.icio.us and Google. This is a typical Google issue found on many sites that utilize the Adwords system for monetizing traffic, social media transforms from organic traffic to paid traffic.

Moving away from social media sites and looking at Compete.com, we can see that Intermec has been doing a decent job this year for increasing traffic. According to open data sources, traffic is up roughly 160% since last year. The top relevant keywords sending traffic to the site are:

1. intermec
2. intermec technologies
3. rfid tags consumer products
4. rfid chips

These keywords are ultimately one of the "sweet spot" targets for other competitive companies. Collecting the information on five to ten competitive businesses usually reveals the best keyword choices and open targets for driving organic search traffic. Allowing your competitors to do the heavy lifting work of experimenting with keyword phrases is an effective way of reducing the project cost of your own keyword campaigns (either paid or organic.)

Back to my questions from the beginning of the article:

Are they doing it right? Are they doing it wrong? Are they even trying? They are trying, but missing to target the right demographic in social media. This is a general promotion issue in many marketing campaigns: the target is missing the demographic. While sites like Del.isio.us, Technorati, and Digg have massive communities, they may or may not have a niche audience that fits with your overall mission objective. Even if an article or project page was "Dugg to the Top" what results would 500k generic visitors produce? (Probably none) When corporate social media campaigns are launched, it requires strategic mindset to analyze the available audience and choose an appropriate goal for the business. The steps to examine in launching a promotional effort with social media has a very simple core:

• Needs of the Business
• Budget and resources (labor, talent, available bandwidth, and dollars)
• Competitive Analysis (like minded information, finding sweet spots with maximum ROI)
• Understanding of the available audience
• Conversion goals of the campaign
• Measurement

In Intermec's case, there could be useful reasons for using Digg, Del.icio.us, or Technorati, but the benefit for a corporation in such an audience would need to focus on relevant campaigns that work within the confines of the audience. There are also additional benefits that may be a step removed, such as promoting an article or whitepaper within a community like Digg to produce a specific search engine result. If you would like to read another article on other types of information that are readily available online, read my article on Intelius, which includes financial, marketing, and brand impact information results you can find online.

Social Media in Plain English

Keeping in track with some of my other social media tools and articles, I decided to write a quick FYI on Alltop News Aggregation service. Hopefully some activerainers find it useful and discover some nuggets of wisdom from it. Keeping track of millions of news sources is increasingly difficult, especially if you are not a tech savvy user of the web and don't know how to effectively browse for information.

In many cases, sites like 123SocialMedia and others are becoming information aggregation points where experienced professionals like our staff choose to inform our readers about top information on other sites.

Taking that idea a step further is AllTop, a site that says "We've got all the top stories covered all the time." A simple description of AllTop is that the editors there have pre-assembled hundreds of news feeds from all sorts of sites and presented them on one page.

You can go to the general AllTop.com site to see categories, or you can simply browse a category like social media at http://socialmedia.alltop.com

The site is operated by a small team including Guy Kawasaki, who describes the service as "A good metaphor is that Alltop is an "online magazine rack" that displays the news from the top publications and blogs. Our goal is to satisfy the information needs of the 99% of Internet users who will never use an RSS feed reader or create a custom page. Think of it as "aggregation without the aggravation.” The screenshot below shows a clean interface that is easy to browse and keep up-to-date with. In my case, my laptop is set to socialmedia.alltop.com as my home page simply to remind me to browse through some of the hot topics every day and keep relevant information fresh on my mind.

The article was originally titled "Social media Training with Joe", but for the audience of Biznik it was changed to "Biznik Relationships- shaking hands to co-hosting" I wanted to share it with everyone here on Biznik because part of the story expands outside of my main readership and touches upon a key fact of building relationships with people within the community.

*********************************************

My friend Joe Hage and I did a marketing workshop last night for a small group of professionals. Normally hosting a marketing workshop wouldn’t be a noteworthy event, but in this case it is a wonderful case example of starting a connection using social media and developing into a trusting business relationship.

As a professional, Joe is one of the few marketers I have met that has an extreme grasp of both tactical and strategic marketing. He has a sparkling resume of working with companies like Cardiac Science, 1-800-Flowers, Kraft Foods, Jell-O, and Safeco. When he originally met me, Joe didn’t know a huge volumes about my specialty in social media, and he immediately rolled up his sleeves and began devouring information. In any line of marketing work, the ability to absorb new concepts and create new strategies is essential to exceeding expectations. From a business perspective- Joe is the “full meal deal” when it comes to marketing strategy.

I originally met Joe by being a casual member of a local online community here in Seattle called Biznik. You can view both of our friendly profiles here - Joe Hage and Barry Hurd. In terms of the relationship between us, Joe and I would simply not have met in real life if not for Biznik. Realizing that two extremely busy professionals such as Joe and I can form a strong and healthy relationship using online networking is an eye-opener for other professionals like us.

Joe and I use Biznik as a place to shed some of our daily job duties and dive into a creative problem solving mindset working with independent business owners. While I cannot speak entirely for Joe, planning the occasional workshop with a different group of professional personalities allows me to really flex my brain and bring my marketing mind to bear. While some topics in such a class may seem very “101″ to either of us, the unexpected difficulties and obstacles our attendees have require us to think outside of our own box.

The official positioning statement: “To Biznik members in the real estate and related industries, Joe and Barry’s Real Estate Marketing Workshop is your opportunity to learn and apply strategies you need to better stand out in a market crowded with half-hearted real estate professionals.”

• Apply recommendations from the real estate marketing article to your own business.
• Share and learn best practices used by fellow Bizniks in the space.
• Get Barry’s counsel on which search engine optimization key words are virtually impossible to get.
• Walk away with some of Barry’s best tricks to get your name on the Google searches you are targeting.

A lot more than those four bullet points above. The attendees had a chance to hear relevant and like-minded marketing problems analyzed and trouble-shot by two marketing veterans. However the real value only becomes apparent when the audience and the mentors agree to see things from different angles.

In the normal world most of us accept our problems and obstacles from our own point of view. When we see a wall in front of us, most of us see an option to steer around it or stop.

Joe and I do not see things from the same angle. Yes we are both marketing professionals. Yes we both have a lot of experience.
Yet we each have a fundamental viewpoint and core to the way our mind works.

In an interactive workshop, attendees have the ability to utilize the wisdom and talent of the entire group. Joe and I may lead the discussion, but we cannot see how anyone else perceives the same problem. We can only observe how we see it, along with how we view the interaction of the group members.

By utilizing skill, talent, experience, and different perspectives - a team of professionals working in unison can creatively offer solutions to maneuver around almost any obstacle. With only a few extra viewpoints, the team may also benefit from knowing what is behind the obstacle before they even decide to expend the effort to get around it.

Simply put= When used correctly, social media allows any professional to use the wisdom and talent of the entire conversation. They may be smart and talented in respect to a certain field of focus, but the intelligence, talent, and return on effort is magnified significantly by the ability to accept that they may have a perspective that is hindering progress. (I.E. truly wise people can admit that they are wrong, not “the best”, or simply need help.)

As a professional who utilizes the online world, every day of my life is exposed to the benefit of having hundreds of experts in my network that serves as a sounding board to my own ideas. That exposure is not just simply readership and promotion for my business, but results in the benefit of my ideas interacting with the talented viewpoint of professionals like Joe and all of you.