Barry's Blog

BuzzProfile, my little pet project

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:27:38 -0500

As I am working away and burning the midnight oil, we have a good group of beta users on the service and are always looking for other test groups that serve a particular niche or level of user. If you belong to a niche professional group, let me know and I will look at having some specific materials produced to support you.

BuzzProfile is currently in private beta, but you can visit http://reputation.buzzprofile.com and sign-up for our waiting list or contact me at barry.hurd@buzzprofile.com to get access to our new service.

To help with some additional learning points, I decided to break out some one page guides to some basic services involved in the BuzzProfile process.

You can find them here:
http://www.slideshare.net/BuzzProfile

Right now they include a Guide to SEO, Guide to Twitter Tools and Intro to Google Alerts. I have also continued to add user tips to the BuzzProfile blog for some answers to basic "what does that do?"

If you are logged into BuzzProfile, you can visit our USER TIPS articles that include a growing breakdown of the tools being provided. The latest addition includes RSS Reader, Alerts, and Notation. You can read it here http://buzzprofile.com/user-tips-google-reader-alerts-and-notes/

We also have some user tips covering:

* User Tips - basic search functions
* User Tips - Conversations, Ambient Info, Identification
* User Tips - Screenshots and Images
* User Tips - Professional Profile Information
* User Tips - Tell a Friend, Sharing with Your Network

Is ActiveRain going to get sued?

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:28:34 -0600

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?

Seattle Social Media - Have Coffee with the Experts

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:07:30 -0600

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

Are you in the greater Seattle Area? Want to know more about all this stuff? Have some secrets to share?

Join me for an early evening of conversation as we discuss the launch of Seattle Social Media, a hub of connecting minds looking to share information and help build each others understanding. All attendees will be invited to fully partake on this new group and will benefit from free promotion as a participating member, in addition to reviewing tips and secrets presented by Barry Hurd regarding how to use social media for business.

The entire session (you don’t have to attend the whole thing!) is open to anyone interested in social media / new media. A great opportunity to network with like-minded professionals, discuss education with talented speakers, plan upcoming evening seminars, casual workshops, continuing education, pub nights, and the ability to communicate with people who want to help each other.

The groups main focus will be to coordinate and promote events that assemble professionals dealing with the evolution of communication- from information privacy concerns, search engine optimization, online branding, professional reputation, to the business side of the industry dealing with sales, marketing, and business development.

Advanced Access or No Access?

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 18:18:28 -0600

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.

Online Real Estate Trends - Its NOT DOOMSDAY

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:34:23 -0600

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!

Is buying paid text links bad?

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:29:54 -0500

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."

Corporate Social Media - Intermec Review

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:43:35 -0500

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.

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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:

intermec
intermec technologies
rfid tags consumer products
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 Training- How to get the message across.

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:27:57 -0500

I know a lot of folk here on ActiveRain are constantly looking at what we are doing and asking "what is it I'm doing?" or getting similar questions from peers.

I found a video from CommonCraft that I haven't seen here on AR before, which I wrote about in my social media training article yesterday on my main site.

Simply put- if someone ask you what social media is, this video does a pretty good job of describing it.

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Social Media Training can be difficult. How do you tell someone about a complex idea? In the case of CommonCraft.com, they use paper and video to make complex ideas easy to understand. Over the past months CommonCraft has created some wonderful viral videos on some pretty interesting topics, and in today's case I'm sharing the "Social Media in Plain English" video to help our users understand some of the basics of what the whole craze is all about.

Social Media in Plain English

Alltop News Aggregation

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:52:30 -0500

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.

Social Media Training with Joe- how introductions turn into partnerships

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:29:07 -0500

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.

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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.

Who is Joe Hage?

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.

How did we meet?

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.

How do we interact?

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.

What was our workshop about?

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.”

In our two-hour session, you will:

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.

What did people learn?

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.

Conclusion - What does this mean in regards to social media?

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.

Social Media Keywords and choosing a niche

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:37:18 -0500

I wrote an article on my main blog today and since I used a real estate example, it made it even more pertinent to sharing here on ActiveRain. In part this piece is getting ready for my class on Thursday night here in Seattle (Marketing with Joe and Barry)

Hope everyone enjoys!

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Social Media Keywords and choosing a niche

It is all about the keywords right? Well… not really. It is actually all about the demographics each keyword represents. When someone searches Google for “seattle real estate” you have to put yourself in the mindset of the searcher. Who searches for that phrase? It could be a prospect for a home, a real estate agent checking local properties, or a real estate broker looking for a new recruit. Assuming a keyword will generate a return on investment… for the time and budget it takes to have an organic result in the search engine may be a monolithic mistake.

Rather than think entirely “in the box” of search terms and keywords, think demographics. Think target market.

Consider social media a chance to explore your target market. One keyword leads to another, leads to another. Within a few steps you may discover that your best prospect for your business may be two or three levels removed from where you have been trying to reach them.

Example: Real estate professionals always want to show up for “city state real estate” as a term. Yet often they need to reach a person much earlier in the process. A real estate transaction is a relationship based sales process taking one to twelve months. There are indicators online regarding what people do before buying a home. They get married. They find a new job. They get divorced. They have kids. They go to school.

Social Media generates an entirely new set of keywords to compare and look at in the “big picture”

demographics
hobbies and interests
family connections
friend networks

Taking the real estate example: You can look at schools, churches, major employers, lawyers, hospitals… and create a niche for themselves in a strong and consistently producing category. For instance Boeing, Idearc, AT&T, Comcast, Amazon, Microsoft, etc are all heavily present in the Seattle area. More importantly, some of those companies have huge employee groups clustered around certain neighborhoods.

How do I find my niche? Think out of the Box

There are a variety of tools out there that will help you with keyword research and drawing some basic conclusions. There are different categories of tools that can be used together or individually, they will help you discover:

the popularity of your keyword
who is talking about your niche (and the people involved in the conversation)
keyword synonyms and related terms (One letter may make all the difference…)
niche industry trends and traffic patterns

Keyword Research Tools

Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions- Use the Keyword Tool to get new keyword ideas. It works with providing keywords based on words or phrases and can also recommend based on site content.
Google Traffic Estimator- a very simple to use traffic tool. You can dump in a list of hundreds of keywords or phrases and see what choices make sense for your next article.
WordTracker - Wordtracker is the best non-google system, however it requires you to purchase a membership to get real usage out of the tool (and I am a fan of free/low cost)

Competitive Keyword Tools

Compete.com Search Analytics - Identifies rival search marketing strategies to take your SEM and SEO efforts to the next level. Also defines traffic patterns on competitor sites.
KeywordSpy - shows terms that competitors are buying or ranking for in the organic search results, including pay per click ad text.
KeyCompete - shows pay per click words that competitors are buying.

Social Media Specific

TweetVolume , TweetScan, Summize all give insight to Twitter. They can show you how much a keyword is being talked about and the associated terms that are drawn to it.
del.icio.us tag page- StumbleUpon tags - - The most popular tags (keywords) can be seen in clusters of information.
BlogCatalog Directory - MyBlogLog Directory - are both massive directories of sites that have been tagged by a member community. You can quickly search for a term, see associated terms on a site, and popular members on each site that may be influencers.
IceRocket Trends - Technorati Tags - Useful for seeing keyword trends (Icerocket) and authority value (Technorati- the number of sites linking to another site)

Free Search Engine and Online Promotion Report
Unethical SEO - Marketing Tactics that get you banned
Social Media Measurement and Brand Control
Online Reputation Control, Branding, Insurance, or Dumb-Luck?
Can the Web Destroy Your Business? Yes It Can.

MIT Event - How Public Information is Used

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:09:58 -0500

In the real estate world, we are obviously seeing more and more public data get used in creative ways- everything from ActiveRain to Zillow. Since I've been contacted by so many decision makers regarding "big thought, strategic conversation" ideas in the real estate realm, if any of you are in the Seattle area and interested in attending the following and doing a little networking, please zip me off an e-mail (barry.hurd@123socialmedia.com) or leave a comment on my company blog.

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If you missed the announcement on several other sites, the MIT Forums of the Northwest is having a great panel on Wednesday night (June 4th) - MIT Event - The Business of Public and Personal Data. Any business professional, especially communications and public relations decision makers should be looking at this information and forming some strategic viewpoints regarding it. This panel will be a good opportunity to hear some different viewpoints on the topic of how personal and public information is being used by companies, and what is in store for the future business models.

The proliferation of social networks here in the Northwest brings this type of topic home pretty quick- where we have community sites like Biznik (10k members), ActiveRain (90k members), Zoodango (membership unknown), along with larger community portals belonging to companies like Amazon and Microsoft. We also have dozens of smaller communities based on services like social services on Ning and Meetup, which is greatly influenced by the technical savvy and aptitude of our region.

Understanding how some bright minds have monetized the “public information” super-model of business has a huge potential impact to almost any industry. There are databases and sites full of public information that is of little value by itself, but when compared to other public data or indexed with additional proprietary information it becomes amazingly worthwhile.

Camel Back Bottle for children?

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:19:31 -0500

Camel Back bottles for children... do they exist? I recently bought my seven year old a new bike for his birthday and as we have been extending our rides further and further, he obviously needs more and more water. I've tried a smaller camel back hydration pack without success (not small enough for a seven year old) and I'm looking for options.

If you don't know what a camel back bottle is - it is simply a high strength, light wieght, durable water bottle. Doesn't sound like much eh? Well if you are trying to pedal, steer straight, and maintain rythm... a good water bottle can mean the difference between a happy day of exploration or the not so fun impact with a car bumper.

So if you are here on ActiveRain and are a bike enthusiast with a child, let me know if you have a good solution. My son acts more like a pro-biker than I do, so I would like to keep him supported and active in what he loves to do the most.

Brand Management and Reputation Control with Images

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:43:52 -0500

I try to update my readers on some of the useful tools in my technology arsenal... and this time it requires a video to show you how Piclens (a browser plugin) simplifies brand and reputation management when it comes to online search.

In addition to brand and reputation, for all the listing agents here you will be amazed what types of presentations you can give a prospect by using a Flickr account coordinated with Piclens to present a user friendly browsing experience of all your properties.

Seattle Area Real Estate Marketing Session with Barry and Joe

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:40:22 -0500

My friend Joe Hage and I are holding a small hands-on, point-counterpoint, cut-to-the-chase marketing session focused on real estate issues. If any of you know Joe or I personally or professionally: as marketers we both believe in applied use of strategic thinking and tactical actions to get our projects done.

If you are interested in attending- visit this link to register for the evening class 6:00 to 8:00 PM Thursday, June 5th. It will be held at the Seattle public library extension on Capital Hill.

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Inspired by the enthusiastic reception to this article, marketing mastermind Joe Hage and I will co-host a workshop exclusively for real estate industry professionals.

Here's the positioning statement for the workshop:

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.

In our two-hour session, you will:

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.

We look forward to a great working session with you.

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You can also join the local Seattle community of Biznik Here if you are interested (Good for networking, and the profiles are very SEO friendly)

Question to the ActiveRain crowd... defining thought leaders?

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:30:13 -0500

I wrote an article on my main blog yestery about how influential business thinkers are rated and created. The "gist" of the article was the fact that the Wall Street Journal had compiled a list of influential business thinkers and relied on Google to do it, but didn't really take into account how search engines work (or why people search on an engine)

In comparison to ActiveRain, I've been here since fairly early on and have watched some gurus "rise and fall" along the way.

On ActiveRain- how does everyone feel the ranking system is working? Do you know of the ways people have abused and manipulated it? Do you care?

Are there better ways for defining thought leaders on ActiveRain beyond points?
Should community members be able to vote other members up or down?
Are there thought leaders here that don't receive honorable mention?

Last weeks blog postings -

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:32:55 -0500

While I try to get a fresh piece of content here every now and then, I also post 3-5 items on my main company blog almost every week. Here is a recap of the last week on my other blog:

123 Guide to Google Gadgets

A lot of people think they have to create new information for social media. While original content is good, it isn’t always necessary - in fact most popular sites barely have a drop of fresh content on them. There are dozens of different sites that provide functional, useful (and fun) gadgets, ranging from Widgetbox to…

Ethical Media Consulting - 10 questions to ask before blowing your budget

As a marketer I am responsible for helping my clients promote themselves, as a public relations contact I am responsible for helping them strategically maneuver, as a professional I am responsible for making sure that I do not sacrifice my clients well-being for my own, and as a thoughtful human I must hold myself responsible...

123 Guide to Linkedin

LinkedIn is currently the largest professional network where individuals connect with prospects, employers research information on new candidates, and a mix of knowledge is relayed. Currently populated by over 20 million users and growing at a million members per month, the average age of users is 41 and there is at least one executive from...

Social Media Videos- European marketing ahead of U.S.

The European television marketplace has always been riskier than the American counterpart- and that risky element for the past decade has mostly revolved around humor and making us laugh. As a quick example, I went ahead and pulled four European viral videos that have taken off online. The longest one is just over a minute...

Hopefully you find something interesting, useful, and informative. If you have any questions feel free to leave them here or there- I wander "to and fro" almost everyday.

Do you have a frequently updated blog?

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:44:27 -0500

I have been looking at various members blogs trying to locate some worthwhile reading and was interested in what AR folk have a frequently updated blog as part of what they do? (non AR hosted)

If you go through the effort of posting 3-5 times a week, please drop a comment here. I am also interested in newer blogs that have launched that are also updated frequently. I am interested in putting together a report on the statistical relevance of how readership and traffic produces growth.

The original thought was inspired by launching a new blog myself, which is doing very well (100+ daily readers first week) and I'm tracking those numbers. I just wrote about the first week on this article - the importance of social media for entrepreneurs. I would like to find some "other industry" blogs that adhere to frequent posted and a committed attempt to use it as a promotional tool for the business.

So to sum up the request:

1- Comment here if you have a frequently updated blog.

2- Let me know if it is a recently launched project.

Join the Linkedin Business Media Group

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:14:55 -0500

123 Social Media has just opened a new group on Linkedin to help you understand how to use Linkedin as a communication and business development tool. You can join the group here.

We have also posted a wide range of other articles in the past week:

1000 Ways to Enhance Wordpress- If you are a Wordpress user- realize that there is a vibrant and thriving community of technical developers, creative users, and astute business minds that are enhancing the Wordpress platform on an hourly basis. The very 123 Social Media site is based on the Wordpress platform and has anywhere between 35 to 60 active plugin modules, a few dozen custom pieces of code, and a modified template for our visual theme.

Free Information with Google-411- Google’s 411 feature is a free “direct to information” service for your phone. Any busy professional will appreciate having immediate and free information, ranging from direct call-through for the business, text information sent directly to your phone, or even having a map sent to a mobile that has internet service.

Online Press Release 101- Whether you use word of mouth marketing at the local coffee shop or submit to the communication guru’s, understanding basic press release 101 is key to success. Know what you are pitching, what you have to offer, and who you are pitching it to. Start by understanding the five starting questions of press releases 101.

Link Vendor SEO Tools- It checks for Wikipedia entires, DMOZ (large open web directory), Alexa, Google PageRank, Keyword Position, etc, etc, etc. It has roughly twenty tools presented on a nice clean page, which product fairly understandable results that you can take action on.

Search Engine FAQs

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 21:19:16 -0600

Do you need a basic introduction about search engine optimization? This article is an introduction to being able to understand conversations about SEO, Spyders, Black Hat, and a variety of buzz words used by online marketers.

Why is everyone so eager to be on search engines?

In 2007, advertisers spent billions of dollars on search engine marketing. Projections for search engine marketing efforts are slated at over $12 billion dollars by 2010, with some statistics going as high as $25 billion. The online market place is constantly shifting and evolving, producing large amount of targeted traffic for various types of businesses that know how to convert those visitors into clients.

In 2006- Forrester Research released these basic statistics about search traffic:

93% of all internet traffic is generated from internet search engines
89% of them are first-time visitors
99% of internet searchers do not search beyond the top 30 results
97% of them never look beyond the top three results
Top 10 positions receive 78% more traffic than those in positions 11-30
65% of online revenue is generated from websites in the top three positions on search engine results pages (SERPs)
93% of global consumers use search engines to find websites
76.7% of Google users use the natural search links
(organic unpaid listings)

What is search engine optimization (SEO) and why is it important?
SEO is the process of analyzing elements on a site so that the code maximizes the combinations of keywords contained on the site when a search engine looks at it. While text elements are visible to a human eye, dozens of pieces of code within a site are also important to showing up for specific keywords: this includes structure, HTML code, directories, images and content on the site. The selection of the keywords a site shows up for is radically important to a business, as the competitiveness and importance of those keywords could potentially send thousands of viewers a day to a site.

What is search engine marketing (SEM) and why is it important?
SEM is the understanding of how a target site relates to other sites on the web. Some SEO techniques allow a site to show up for relatively low competition keywords, but as the number of sites on a given keyword becomes more competitive, SEM allows a business to coordinate dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of sites to increase the relevancy of how a search engine views it. SEM can also include pay per click (PPC) or unpaid organic results.

What is the primary difference between SEO and SEM?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is primarily done with code work on a target site. It includes images, text, and information on the site.
Search engine marketing (SEM) is primarily done with work not on the site. It includes link-building, business partnerships, and other online marketing efforts.

What is the difference between Pay Per Click (PPC) and Organic search results?

Most search engines have some form of PPC advertising that a business may purchase. You choose the word or phrase you wish to show up for, and when someone searches for that phrase your advertising and link shows up in the results. These systems are usually on a bid based system and typically show three to ten advertisors. When someone clicks on your link, you pay a per visitor price typically ranging from ten cents to ten dollars (some keywords near the $100 price point.) In Google, PPC results are typically the top 2 results labeled as “sponsored” and also include the right hand column.
Organic results are generated by the search engine attempting to provide the most relevant information based upon the search criteria of the user. Most SEO and SEM is focused on getting top placement in the organic section, as once the result is achieved no further cost is incurred on a per visitor basis.

What is a spider or a robot, and how is my site found?
When a site is originally created, most designers will do a simple submission to the main search engines. This causes the search engine to send an automated robot (also known as a spider) to examine the web site. Depending on the search engine, that spider is looking for various clues to help categorize and rank the relevance of your site. (history note: the term spider was adopted as a nickname when the internet became commonly known as the “web”) These robots are looking for relevant and fresh information. When they find it, search engine spiders are instructed to analyze how often the information is refreshed and how relevant it is (often identified by how many times it is mentioned on other sites.)

What factors determine where a search engine will rank a website?
Most search engines use a process of automated mathematical analysis to determine what site has the most relevant content. There are a number of accepted best practices for reaching higher value on specific terms, ranging from keyword research, selection and relevance of link partners, meta-tags, element and heading tags, submission techniques, freshness of data, and overall online competitiveness of the keywords and industries. Social search engines vary in this regard- in that community members or staff act as the filter of relevant data, either voting or submitting data manually to the search and browsing areas of different social search networks.

How long does search engine optimization and marketing take?
Basic optimization work can be done immediately for most sites, which is a labor intensive chore of making sure the site is coded and labeled using best practice techniques. SEO work will not rank a site for competitive terms, but will provide a platform for long-term results over time depending on the material of the site.

Organic SEM usually takes 15 to 30 days to implement, and results are typically 30 to 90 days behind those efforts based on the competitiveness of the terms. That timeframe can be reduced by spending more effort, but as the time frame of the project is shortened, the pricing typically sky-rockets.

With a strategic team and specific goals, some terms can gain results within weeks by leveraging industry partnerships or using PPC campaigns for immediate impact. For most businesses, realistic search benefits should be seen at 90, 180, and 365 days.

How do you target traffic using search engine marketing?
Search engine traffic can be extremely targeted using specific keyword combinations. The more detailed the term, the more targeted the traffic. Many companies make the mistake of trying to reach extremely broad and competitive keyword results when they should be focusing on lower traffic but more highly defined keywords. Understanding the marketing 101 behind your product and services may also allow you to target like-minded terms that are not directly competitive with your business, but that attract the same demographic and target audience you are looking at reaching.

What is ethical search engine marketing? (a.k.a. what is black and white hat?)
There are many “best practice” strategies and techniques that search engines both appreciate and endorse, and ones that they actively discourage and ban. In the search engine world, White Hat describes only positive and encouraged efforts, while Black Hat describes manipulative and questionable techniques. Ethical search engine marketing utilizes only practices that are beneficial to the target site (white hat) and do not risk negative reactions (black hat) from the search engines. As a general rule, search engines appreciate using good code and relevant information to index, while they dislike techniques designed to manipulate, SPAM, or corrupt the search results.

Here are some known items that are either black hat, or discouraged by the search engines:

•   Page cloaking
•   Spamming of the submission process
•   Automatically generated doorway pages
•   False redirects to another page
•   Keyword stuffing (too many keywords on a page)
•   Irrelevant keywords
•   Duplicate content on different pages or sites
•   Misspelling of common words, or well-known brands/sites
•   Unrelated link farms
•   Data blogs with no unique content (also known as splogs)
•   Malicious code design to trick the search engine

Can I do SEO for myself or can my web developer do this for me?
Yes and no. There are many basic steps of SEO that a business owner can do for themselves. Many of these involve making sure the site is correctly coded under current standards and that it is submitted to the most popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Lycos, etc.) Beyond the basic steps of making sure the site has good foundation, experienced web designers and developers can commonly take on the task of basic to intermediate search engine optimization. Expert level and competitive search marketing falls into a more general umbrella of online marketing that may involve SEO, SEM, online partnerships, business development, public relations, and online advertising expertise. Depending on the time frame, importance, and budget, choosing to learn certain SEO items or utilize an expert is a case by case basis. As with all projects, using a specialist may or may not make sense.

Google Gold Rush, where the search engine gold is.

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 22:05:44 -0600

Have you ever asked yourself how many valid eyes would visit your site if you had that coveted first spot on a hot keyword? If the first spot is good, how much does the second or third spot get? Where is the gold?

The truth of the matter is that it is very hard to find these answers. It is also changing with the evolution of the Internet. Search engines specifically want to keep you guessing the exact numbers to encourage you to buy pay-per-click advertising campaigns and give them control of your advertising budget. Many search engine marketers value the information of knowing where searchers are looking as “white gold” - but few of them actually update quickly enough to predict current trends in media. In Google, search marketers had referred to the top of the search results as the “Golden Triangle” as the very top left hand corner of the search sites represented the majority of viewers on the site.

Unfortunately there is an issue being caused by the addition and evolution of “blended media.” This is where images, audio, and video are slowly making a way into search results on various terms and different search sites. A year ago every business wanted to be on top of a search phrase in the results, and now that isn’t necessarily true.

The golden triangle where all the gold was, has moved.

A look at the real world past - when you look at a print magazine like Real Estate magazine, there are a number of viewing habits that publishers know exist. A reader’s eye usually follows a specific path starting at one point and moving to another. That creates high value locations in a print magazine where certain portions of the page have a much higher visibility and branding ability. This trend allows publishers to place specific stories and advertising according to the value of that location. Depending on the publication, these high value locations have different prices for advertising (front page, back page, banners, within the fold, corner ads, etc)

In the online world, blended media has created a shift in how, why, and where readers are expecting good information. Our eyes are specifically drawn to highlights on a page, and today that highlight may be on top, the right, the bottom, or the very center. As a society of users who have been educated on interactive advertising and information, a good portion of the population using online portals has shifted away from expecting the best information to be “on top.”

Google is a good case example: items are constantly moving around the search page of Google as they try to maximize where advertising makes them the most money. On what seems like a weekly or monthly basis, Google is moving around information as they maximize pay-per-click campaigns to drive revenue up for the advertising they sell. As items like maps and video elements are added to the search results, the focal point that has “free advertising” in the search results is shifting around it naturally. If Google directs 50% of viewers to look at a map, the next best place to have free organic advertising is right next to it. This is where the gold is.

This same scenario repeats over and over in a thousand different search sites and community portals. Many of you have probably seen the television commercial for Ask.com over the past few months that is trying to highlight and educate mainstream television audiences that good information is “no longer on top,” but rather they know what (and where) you are looking for. Search engines are trying to adapt as quickly to the changes in media and information as they can, and many are falling behind the trend due to the inefficiencies of large business.

Those inefficiencies of large business is where concentrated effort can pay off big. Any search engine is just like any other publisher: they can only sell so much advertising. After that advertising is sold, everything else has to be given away for free. The free information is what attracts people to the advertising they sell.

Understanding how search engine publishers like Google and Yahoo are changing their advertising structures is where smart and savvy business folk will investigate the hardest, by staking a claim on the largest pile of gold they can, they are creating incredibly valuable real estate right next to it that is often secured for pennies on the dollar.

About the author:
Barry Hurd is president of Social Media Systems, an online marketing and advertising consultant group working with search engine marketing and leveraging social media communities. He has over 15 years of entrepreneurial Internet and online marketing experience. As an author and prolific blogger, he has reached online audiences around the world. Since the mid-1990s, Barry has been involved in numerous efforts to bring forth technical innovation through online business models. Past projects have included NIKE, REI, TMP Worldwide, Monster.com, Verizon Superpages, Intuit, and RISMedia.

For more information, visit www.socialmediasystems.com.

Free Local Real Estate Search Marketing

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 18:46:06 -0600

RISMEDIA, Dec. 4, 2007-Some of the best stuff on the Web is free, especially if you know how to leverage hundreds of free options into a unified business strategy.

Almost every search engine has a free listing for various business categories. When you register your business on one site, you have to keep in mind that a strategy in how to coordinate those free listings back and forth across the Web. Whether you are a single agent working out of a home office, or a large regional broker with hundreds of agents in each office…understanding that every single city, neighborhood, and topical center has different free options is essential.

What does free really get you? On a small scale…not much. One can assume a free listing on any one search engine may only get a few visitors a month. If you have a good call to action, one of those visitors may convert into an actual interested lead.

When you combine them and establish dozens or even hundreds of valid local listings you gain many benefits. Each listing is a potential in-bound link on a relevant keyword from a well recognized site. Each link adds to the previous link, and with 25, 50, or 500 links…now your site shows up for competitive search terms in the most popular search engines.

Let us take an example and break down the math. Good marketing is often about repetitive and basic math:

You are a single agent. You establish 100 properly setup free local listings. Each one sends you one visitor a month. Your site converts 5% of your visitors into a lead who fills out a form and you contact. You close 20% of your leads. Free listings on multiple search sites = one closed transaction per month.

Out of 100 free local listings, a quarter of them give you valid in-bound links on search terms. Within a 30 to 180 day period your main site shows up for competitive keywords such as “my city real estate.” You get an additional 100 visitors a month looking for the keywords you selected. Your site converts 5% of your visitors into a lead who fills out a form and you contact. You close 20% of your leads. Free listings on multiple search sites fueling organic results in the search engines = another closed transaction each month.

Move the example up in the real estate industry: You are a broker with 100 agents who all utilize a proper local search campaign.

First off, we will be realistic and drop that number from 100 down to 10. In most offices only 10% of the agents are actually going to do what they are told to do, even when it is in their own best interest to do it. If 10% of the office follows the steps, there will be 1,000 new incoming local listing links that also represent 1,000 new local search visitors that are looking for exactly what you have to offer.

Utilizing the economy of scale and superior knowledge, your site actually converts 10% of those visitors into leads = 100 leads a month. Since they have additional support and help nurturing the prospects, they close 25% of the leads = 25 finished transactions.

As an agent or broker, how much do those closed transactions mean to you?

For a larger group of agents working together, those 1,000 incoming links can be tailored to target meaningful search phrases in the main engines that none of them as individuals could hope to attain without a much larger budget. The economy of scale is simple: leveraging a team allows the office to benefit from more exposure on Web, which in turn allows the company brand to grow stronger to help close those transactions.

A key benefit of both the single agent and broker scenarios is that a local search listing campaign and having a wide marketing strategy protects you from sudden changes in the online marketplace. By relying on dozens of smaller streams of visitors, no single site can impact your bottom line. Google or Yahoo can change something overnight, and you are protected from having your lead source dropping off the radar.

To help you on the beginning of your local search marketing strategy, here is a short list of a few standard local search sites that offer free local listings:

Google Local: (http://www.google.com/local/add)

Yahoo Local: at (http://edit2.ls.scd.yahoo.com/csubmit/)

Superpages.com: clicking the “add or edit a business” link at the bottom of the page. Be forewarned that you will receive a sales call for a follow-up to offer you many other services. Just let them know you’ll take all the free options they have.
Local.com: (http://advertise.local.com)

The following two are a popular and growing form of social media local listing sites based on community models with voting. User can review and comment on your business. These have the added benefit that they also serve to protect your online reputation:

Yelp.com: perform a search for your business name to find out if you’re already in Yelp’s system. On the bottom of the search result page, click add business which leads to a simple form where you can add your business.

JudysBook.com: (http://www.judysbook.com/Pages/Help/AddBusiness.aspx)

For more information, visit 3net Search Engine Marketing Blog. (http://socialmediasystems.com/blog)

Your Social Media Reputation

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:49:43 -0600

The buzz in the past 12 months has been about blogging, podcasting, online video…hundreds of ways for people to share commentary and talk about things. Regardless of how active you want to be with social media, the general population simply doesn’t care if you are in the conversation or not. They are going to blog about you, discuss the colors in your logo, comment on how customer service issues were resolved, and possibly even try to tell you how to run your business. The community at large may be your best friend or your worst enemy…

The question on most business owners’ minds is simple: Is there a conversation going on about you?

Every day there are a thousand blogs and community portals striking up conversations about every topic imaginable. This online conversation is being leveraged for both “Good and Evil” by business and personal users, ranging from things like search engine marketing to promoting a new product on a local community site.

Here are some important tools you can utilize to understand how your business is perceived online:

1. Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts)
Google Alerts is a free service that e-mails you an update of relevant Google results based on the keywords you select. It is simple yet highly effective way to setup a weekly e-mail that notifies you of keywords with your personal name, company name, and even the name of your competitors. By staying up to date in the conversation, you can react to things as they happen and maximize your response.

2. Technorati.com
Unlike Google, which views everything as an entry of data that is sorted and indexed, Technorati tracks blogs as if they are conversations between people. It tracks how many people commented on other blogs, how many readers are subscribed to each blog, and the overall ripple a conversation has online.

3. Google RSS Reader (http://www.google.com/reader)

Google provides a free Web enabled RSS reader. This may not include your name or search strings, but when you find a blog or site that has information about your brand or your industry, subscribe to it’s RSS feed by using Google’s RSS Reader. If they talked about you once, they may be inspired to talk about you again.

To help cover the basics of what you need to monitor, here are four items you should keep an eye on:

1. Company name and slogan. If you have a name with more than one word, you can use quotation marks around it to reduce the number of false reports on your name.

2. Company Web site. Keep an eye out for both your company URL with and without the www extension. Many bloggers and commentators will only include a link to your site and may not use the proper name of your company.

3. Names of executives and team members. Make sure to add the name of everyone on your executive team or who drives significant value for your business. You can use quotation marks around full names to reduce false reports. You will also want to consider variations on basic names such as “Bob / Robert”

4. Names or properties, developments, products, or services. Any significant asset in your company that has a proper name should be on the monitoring list for your marketing and public relations efforts. There is nothing worse than trying to list a property that has a negative headline article in the local newspaper that you do not know about.

There are three main reasons to monitor your online presence as part of your weekly duties.

1. Protecting your online reputation and brand
You spent a lot of time and effort creating your brand, and your online presence may be the first interaction a potential client or business partner is exposed to it. By knowing what is being said about you online, you can protect yourself against opinionated statements and leverage good information for marketing and public relations campaigns.

2. Competitive intelligence
If you really want to know what “Web 2.0″ is, it means that the competition is moving faster than ever. Monitoring your own online presence along with competitive sites is a key way of keeping up-to-date with the marketplace.

3. Reacting to the industry
When you accept that over eighty percent of the current prospect base is turning online for information, being able to react to trends on a daily basis allow you to set yourself apart from the competition that is oblivious to changes in the industry. Having a strategy for maneuvering those obstacles as they happen is an easy way to establish your business as a leader in the industry.

It is not a requirement to participate in the conversation, but being ignorant of a conversation regarding your business is a quick way to being blind-sided by situation that could have been dealt with in the early stages. Many topics in the online marketplace tend to have a short lifespan. Knowing how to identify and monitor the ones that have an impact or growing trend allows you to make the decision to interact and allocate your effort accordingly.

For more information, visit the 3net Search Engine Marketing Blog. http://socialmediasystems.com/blog

RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Send your e-mail to: realestatemagazinefeedback@rismedia.com.

E-PRO Classes and Social Media Training

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:45:14 -0600

I decided to clip this article and repost it here since it deals with something the ActiveRain community is constantly debating, reviewing, and conversing about. My original post is at SocialMediaSystems.com E-PRO Classes and Social Media Training

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As a professional, my original interactive marketing experience started out in the recruiting industry working for the largest interactive ad agency in the world at the time- TMP Worldwide. As I progressed through corporate life and learned my lessons, one of the critical items always found lacking in numerous large businesses was up-to-date training.

Training however, is critical at all points of development. We cannot fail to realize that. In an industry I am very familiar with (the real estate industry), the National Associate of Realtors has a program it endorses called E-Pro.

From their description "The e-PRO Certification Course is an educational program unlike any other professional certification or designation course available, comprehensive and Interactive. It is sponsored by the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION of REALTORS® and is specifically designed to help real estate professionals thrive in the competitive world of online real estate. In addition, the e-PRO Certification Course is geared to ensure continued success in online real estate after the course has been completed and certification earned, by online participation in the e-PRO Community and the e-PRO Referral Network."

I found a mixed review of the program, ranging from harsh critiques to glowing testimonials. Like all certification programs in a big organization there are all sides to consider.

One quote I found online by the Jim Cronin at the Real Estate Tomato "The e-Pro class is so far removed from what it takes to be competitive in the internet marketplace, that 'graduates' deserve nothing but a tinfoil badge for their efforts."

While programs like E-Pro may not be the cutting edge of the internet marketing art, professionals of all backgrounds and experience levels need to be brought up-to-speed about online technology. As a marketing savvy friend to many start-ups in the Northwest, it is my belief that everyone has a place in the realm of social media and it is our responsibility to assist and nurture everyone into an understanding of the benefits they may be missing.

Unlike Cronin, who goes on to say things like "If you are having to drag you agents into the 21st century with a class like E-Pro you are not only wasting their time, but it's too late to help someone who needs a 'beginner's guide' to grasping the internet. Let the dinosaurs sleep."

~I ask myself, perhaps we can take the dinosaurs out of the past and leverage the incredible strength they have?

In the real estate realm, I am on the younger side of the audience. I understand the technology on a fundamental level, I "get it" and I even wake up in the middle of the night thinking about fantastic new ways of changing the industry. Yet I do not have the thousands of relationships that a 25 year veteran of an industry has... I do not have the experience of seeing true depressions in a market... I do not have the knowledge of a great number of things.

That is were the partnership of strengths becomes greatest.
I do not need to take the assets of those who have gone before me, I merely need to help them understand the new community they interact with. I need to focus on what I do best, to strive for a way to help everyone become something better than we are as individuals. I need to accept that I am best at what I do, and for everything else there is someone I must turn to.

This is the very nature of social media: of collaboration and community. Perhaps the military figured it out before everyone else did: it is the idea that no one should be left behind. There are no dinosaurs in my world, merely some of us who may be weak in one area, and stronger than Goliath in another.

Perhaps, when no one is looking and my youthful insight fails me... I will fail.

I should be grateful enough that one of those dinosaurs that were left behind by other people repays me and picks me up.

Google ad agency, not a library

Barry Hurd (123 Social Media) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:57:06 -0600

I often write about the way media changes with the adoption of technology and trends in society. Newspapers move online, television becomes mobile, and even our old fashion mail goes digital.

As this trend happens, we forget that the industry leaders who have established foundations for our new business models and way of communicating have changed too. So many companies view Google as an impartial entity that serves up the best information on the net... but when you sit back and ask yourself the hard questions, a peaceful mecca of online prosperity is the last thing you find.

Google is about domination, acquisition, subterfuge, and even sabotage. I am not saying Google is evil, in fact it is far from evil, but the big boys of the search industry are corporate businesses that have a singular goal: profit (call me a little jaded!)

So when you ask anyone in the realm of search engine marketing, if you have a really good trick in your bag of goodies... it is only a matter of time before they either stop working or actually become assimilated by the Googleborg.

This past month Google "recalculated" part of it's algorithm to affect a large number of blogs, in an attempt to reduce the number of SPAM blogs (splogs) that have been popping up... and to tighten it's reign on profits.

In a post today over at WebProNews, I read a piece about Pay Per Post and how Ted Murphy (the guy in charge of that service) has been a "lightening rod for criticism" since it was created. Murphy has a blog covering how Google had tweaked the PageRank of some PPP bloggers to a big whopping ZERO.

Murphy ~"It is no coincidence that Google has gone after some blogs that utilize PayPerPost and many of our competitors services. We offer a very attractive alternative to AdSense and are leading a charge to provide real monetization for everyday bloggers."

I agree whole-heartedly.

While I would like to think that the big players in the search industry are making these sweeping changes to preserve the wonderful information they collect and to help our ability to find worthwhile information, I can only be left with this gut feeling that they identify worthwhile information based on quarterly profit statements.