Avery Cohen from Metrist Partners will be presenting "Ten Tips for Improving Your Search Engine Optimization" at Windy City Social's Social Media and Online Marketing Summit. The event also includes one-on-one consultations with the speakers, so bring a list of questions!

Guests will connect with other marketers and learn about the latest trends in Social Media and Online Marketing from leaders in the industry. People will leave the event with new, innovative ideas about how to leverage Twitter, Facebook, SEO, E-mail Marketing and Experience Marketing.

Several of the speakers and sponsors will be on hand for 15 minute consultations where they’ll give attendees immediate steps they can take to improve their actual site or campaign! And our speakers are going to pick a few emails and websites submitted by attendees in advance to critique during presentations.

Speaker Highlights

• Creating an Experience They Will Remember (in a good way!): Cereality Founders Rick Bacher and David Roth
  
• E-mail Makeovers: Reagan Taylor, NCR
  
• Top 10 Tips for Improving Your Natural Search Rankings: Avery Cohen, Metrist Partners
  
• Tips on How to Get the Most out of the New Fan Pages: Brad Keown from Facebook
  
• Panel on Using Twitter to Promote Big Business

Consulting Highlights

• Email Makeovers
  
• SEO Review of Your Site
  
• Strategic Blog or Website Review: Strategic Marketing & Blogging Expert Liz Strauss (limited spaces)
  
• Twitter Tune-up: Register for Twitter and get tips from top tweeters
  
• Social Media Monitoring Set-up: Learn about free monitoring services and get help signing up for one of them.

Check Out the Full Line-up at Windy City Social

Or REGISTER NOW!

Labels: chicago, chicago networking events, online social networks, social media, windy city, windy city social

Kit Mueller runs REConnect, featuring an on-line networking and events for Chicago real estate professionals. Mueller and also holds twice-yearly SPARKt conferences on Real Estate and technology. The second Chicago SPARKt conference was held April 29 in the Volcano Room at the Bottom Lounge in Chicago's West Loop, with a half-dozen relatively quick high-quality presentations. Muller kept the proceedings on-target (with occasional coaching from the peanut gallery) and the atmosphere upbeat, casual and informative.

There was a good sized crowd, made up primarily of Real Estate professionals, including agents and brokers as well as various online real-estate related web sites and a handful of other service providers. Highlights included
- Matt Dollinger from @properties on Real Estate use of online social media
- Michael Berger, 37 Signals' iPhone geek talking about mobile applications for Real Estate
- Christian Sterner of Welcomemat.com demonstrated how to make online video effective
- A discussion on "Privacy and Social Media" from lawyers Glenn Manishin of Duane Morris and Brock Meeks from the Center for Democracy & Technology
- Eric Bryn talked about how he uses Web Analytics to help realtors come up with blog topics.
- Adrian Holovaty from Everyblock talked about the future of Everyblock and its local data technology.

Matt Dollinger's blog, The You Factor, helps Realtors understand how to use Social Media. The crux of Dollinger's message is to put yourself, personally, out there. Dollinger puts a Real Estate frame around some of the concepts discussed online by Social Media thought leaders like David Armano and Peter Kim (both of whom he referenced in his talk). When you are online, you are not "selling", but building a "personal brand" that shows you to be someone who can help people when they need to make a complex and emotional decision.

Christian Sterner expanded on Dollinger's "personal branding" message, showing how Realtors can use online video not just to show homes, but to become an online presence for all things local. Post videos on YouTube & Yahoo for search engine optimization (SEO) effects. Sterner also suggests using Social Media sites to announce and embed your videos, as an opportunity to connect with people where they are online.

Michael Berger, a former "Apple Genius" who focuses on mobile applications at 37 Signals, demonstrated mobile applications on the iPhone that Realtors can share with clients. Apps from Zillow, Trulia, and Everyblock take advantage of the iPhone's GPS capabilities to show local real estate information on maps. You can see your current location and nearby homes for sale, and other local community information.

Brock Meeks from the Center for Democracy and Technology was perhaps the highlight of the afternoon. A former big-league journalist, he and Glenn Manishin discussed some of the legal issues around on-line social networks. Meeks talked about the process of hiring a Social Media Manager for the Center for Democracy and Technology. He looked at their Facebook and Twitter posts; many candidates demonstrated an "personal brand" that was not consonant with the mission and values of the Center. They also warned that what you say on Facebook or Twitter could become a binding addendum to any existing contract. So be careful out there!

Eric Bryn showed how to use Google Analytics and a few other tools to capture new audiences on the web. He manages several group blogs for realtors. He looks at the blog contents and uses Google Analytics to discover the "organic" search keywords that are used to reach blog entries. If he sees a spike in activity, he knows that there is a good opportunity to use those terms again. Google Analytics also reports if site visitors read more than one page or register for email newsletters.

Bryn also looks at the terms used in entries, and finds synonyms through the Google AdWords Traffic Estimator. This shows synonyms and approximate value for those terms if one was to advertise on the topic. Microsoft offers adlabs.microsoft.com, a tool that shows keywords and relative intent-to-buy associated with usage of those keywords.

Once a valuable keyword that drives traffic is found, Bryn encourages his clients to write "variations on a theme" using the keywords as topics. He used a visual of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans. "7 tips for...", "What not to do when buying...", video and photographs.

Adrian Holovaty talked about the Everyblock iPhone app. With iPhone GPS capabilities, you can see crime/health/news reports for your current location. Holovaty also talked about how Everyblock.com was created under a grant, and under the terms of the grant, the Everyblock code, built on the Django platform, will become open source this June.

There were a lot of very practical gems in the SPARKt conference. With the exception of Meeks & Manishin's talk, the focus remained solidly on Real Estate, though the advice was easily transferrable to other high-touch services. Photos from the event are at SPARKt website. Mueller continues to run frequent RE-Connect events.

Labels: chicago technology, real estate marketing, social media

Real estate web sites Trulia and Zillow are both reporting growth, according to Search Engine Watch. Truila announced record growth in March, while Zillow announced an agreement to build co-branded real estate web sites for a consortium of 180 community newspapers. This makes Trulia and Zillow increaslingly important resources for realtors.

Compete.com shows significant growth for both Zwillow and Trulia over the past several months, as shown below. We note that Compete's panel does not conform to Trulia's reported Q1 growth, at lest reporting through February. By comparison, Google Trends reports relatively flat search traffic on the terms "real estate" and "homes for sale". It would appear that Zillow and Trulia are taking market share from other sites, perhaps the sites of realtors themselves.

What does this mean for realtors? We expect it's going to be increasingly difficult to draw people to the realtor's web site. Given that, realtors have an oportunity to engage with potential buyers and sellers on Zillow and Trulia. There is also an opportunity to focus locally and build online reputation through a variety of social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter.

It's going to be up to the realtors to find their customers online and to connect with them where they are. Customers are searching for "real estate" or "homes for sale", but they are increasingly searching out "zillow" and "trulia". Trulia's blog talks about Trulia's presence on Twitter.

Trulia is chasing Zwillow for real estate shoppers. The opportunity is for realtors to become even more nimble. One strategy is to connect ubiquitously to their own local communities as real estate clients, homeowners and potential homeowners, become more connected online.

Labels: nalytics, real estate, social media, trulia, web analytics, zillow

Social Media Club Chicago, March 26, 2009

Social Media Club Chicago had a crowd of approximately 225 last week at The Chicago Mercantile Exchange for an evening of The Uses of Social Media in B2B Communications.


The high point of the panel was when Ellis Booker worried that "people are doing the right things for the wrong reasons." Marketers are using Social Media "not because it is effective, but because it's cheap!"

To extrapolate on Booker's comments: At this stage, most marketers using Social Media are not measuring results, but activity. Social Media becomes 1) an inexpensive focus group, gathering anecdotal evidence from an unorganized stream of information, and 2) an extremely cheap publishing platform with occasional flashes of brilliant or break-out success. Of course, it doesn't have to be that way.

The CME group has made a video of the event.

The SMCC is organized by Barb Barbara Rozgonyi. The event panel was assembled by Jeff Willinger. Great food from Rivers, in the CME building.

Len Kendall, Media Manager, Critical Mass, moderated a panel of:
Allan Schoenberg, Director of Corporate Communications, CME Group
Ellis Booker, Editor, BtoB Magazine, Crain Communications
John Fairley, Director of Web Services and Social Media, Walker Sands Communications

My lightly edited "summary" of the panel:

What are the differences between B2B and B2C on Social Media?
Booker says that "B2C is easy." B2B is a longer process. In the time he has been at BtoB magazine, he has seen a change, "the playfulness of campaigns has ramped up... having more fun."

CME Group's Schoenberg pointed that the B2B audience is smaller and that the value proposition needs to be stated more strongly than in B2C. While Fairly said that "more people are involved in the sale and decision." Social media allows you to reach those people at different points in the decision process.

Booker says that corporate Social Media presence is becoming an expected part of doing business. Fairly says that people will move toward companies who are active in Social Media because they will be perceived as being more available and transparent.

What tools are you using to manage Social Media presence?
Fairly likes free tools that track history, suggesting "SM2.com", "Social Mention" and "Blog Tracker". Schoenberg likes tools that track what people say about the commodities market, and uses "Vocus". Fairly suggested using Twitter Search to monitor mentions of your brand and related terms.

Tools like TweetDeck and PeopleFollow let us filter the conversations and focus on relevant content.

What are ways we can drive traffic using Social Media?
Fairly talked about the relationship between Search and Social Media. You need to understand the tools of Social Media. Study the networks and see if your customers are there. Are they on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or other niche communities? Listen to your customers on the site. What are their pain points and interests. You have to follow social norms, understand the audience. Then establish key relationships. Later you can tweet to the masses. "Our strategy is to tweet about a pain point to a 'maven' in the community, who re-tweeted our comments."

Booker says you have to focus on why you are doing Social Media. He gave an example of a "sandbox" community site created by a company. They wanted to do a six-month trial, but 18 months later, they had 400 of their best customers actively engaged and had no choice but to keep up that test community, even though it wasn't part of their media strategy.

Later, Booker also said that they are "listening more with Social Media. We use the Social Media infrastructure to listen and decide what to report.

Schoenberg's guideline is "C-squared": Content x Community. Keep driving new content into the community, then engage in conversations. He used LinkedIn, then Facebook and talked about cross-pollinating the venues.

Where is the revenue?
Schoenberg had some anecdotal examples. "We have brought in leads for our brokers, and now they are trading." But he acknowledged that Social Media has been less money and more time. However, he says they have 52K followers on Twitter.

Fairly pointed out that Paid Search has set a standard. It's very measurable, but Social Media doesn't correlate directly to revenue. There is a story to be told: how many influential bloggers linked, some new leads, increases in traffic. Viral media brings traffic from everywhere, so you have to look at cumulative effects.

Booker worried that "people are doing the right things for the wrong reasons." Marketers are using Social Media not because it is effective, but because it's cheap!

To extrapolate on Booker's comments: At this stage, marketers are not measuring results, but activity. Social Media becomes an inexpensive focus group, gathering anecdotal evidence from a disorganized stream of information, and an extremely cheap publishing platform.

What metrics are you using? How do we gauge expectations?
Schoenberg said CME Group's Social Media efforts are part of an overall marketing strategy, "it has to fit into everything else we do. If it's just an island, you are going to fail."

Booker pointed out that E-Marketer magazine forecast on-line advertising would grow by 53% this year. Now, they are saying growth will only be 10%. At least, he concluded, it's going up. Unlike print advertising.

Are there ethical guidelines companies should be following?
Schoenberg brought up Digg as an example that Social Media can be gamed. Their biggest concerns were legal. Let people know you work for the company.

Who is in charge of your Social Media Presence?
Last year, the buzz was "you are no longer in control of your brand." You don't know what people are doing until you listen and hear or see for yourself.

Both Fairly and Schoenberg said you need to manage the message, educate your internal people to get a consistent message. Schoenberg expressed a need to manage the message and to be clear about who is the official voice for the organization.

How do you manage the volume of messages and the 24x7 nature of Social Media?
Booker stated that it is important to get right back to people. Fairley said that they "co-Tweet", having a collaborative Twitter account. Schoenberg uses "TweetLater" to schedule messages to drip out into Twitter. Fairly said that "Social Media is like adding another phone to your office, and you have to answer it."

But Fairly also brought up the most important thing you can do with Social Media: Identify people who are most passionate about your product or topics, engage with them, and activate them to be your advocate.

Labels: chicago, social media, web analytics

Allstate has released their new viral media play, Friender Benders. This imaginative use of flash animation is reminiscent of Office Depot's highly successful "Elf Yourself" campaign, which ComScore credited as being a primary driver of 150% increases in Office Depot online sales. I found it easy to use and pretty funny. There are four animations, and you can see the different ones by clicking on the people in the pile-up at the end of the video, which gives it a strong social media kick.

Labels: allstate insurance, friender benders, social media, viral marketing