Why you want a social media presence

Our roughly 1,000 Digital Sherpa clients buy one of our Sherpa programs for a variety of reasons.  Of course everyone likes to attract online traffic, find new customers and generate leads.  And while those are outcomes of a good social media and content marketing program, that’s not always what brings our customers to our virtual door step.

Some buy it for the content creation; it takes a lot of time and discipline to write 2 quality blog posts per week.  But there are a great many who buy our program because they want to build a social media presence.

The adoption of businesses in the social media space has been exploding in the past year.  And Sherpa clients are a part of that surge of businesses on that leading edge of social media adoption.  But often when we ask new clients why they want to build a social media presence, the answers range from “because I don’t want to be left behind” to “my son/daughter/grandson/friend said I should” to “I really don’t know, but I feel like I probably should”.

The answer to why you want to be in social media can be found in a recently published report from Comscore.  Comscore is an internet marketing research firm that tracks and reports on online behavior.  Their recent report “Women on the Web:  How Women are Shaping the Internet” gives some great insight into the very question of why you want to be in social media.   The report speaks for itself, but I’ll highlight a few things I found particularly relevant:

• Women are more enagaged than men on the internet
• Social networking is central to women’s internet experience
• Women drive a disproportionate amount of online spending
• 9 out of 10 women in North America visited a social networking site in April 2010

Social networking sites are prime areas for attracting new customers whether you want to lure them to online sales or to visit your showroom.  The audience is there, what are you doing to make sure they find you?

Design Sherpa brings 100 design enthusiasts closer to a dream trip to Paris

Design Sherpa, our Digital Sherpa product for the home design and remodeling industry, is hosting the What Inspires You? contest.  In this contest Design enthusiasts are competing to win $10,000 and a 10-day trip to Maison & Objet in Paris.

Phase 1 has ended, the judges have spoken and narrowed down the field to 100 winners which are announced daily on the Design Sherpa blog.

Each winner submitted a photo and up to 100 words telling us what inspires them.  Below are a few of the images submitted.  You can view these, the 100 word design inspiration messages and the rest of the 98 winners on the Design Sherpa blog.

Phase 1 winners will now move to the second phase of the contest.  In this phase each contestant will enter a 350 word blog post about an interior or architectural design topic that communicates both his or her unique passion for design and writing style.

Social Media Marketing: In-House or Outsource?

Challenges to consider with social media marketing:  In-house, or outsource?

There is little question that a well-executed social media program will generate new business by engaging your customers, increasing your “Google rank” and turbo charging word of mouth.  As an example, in a recent study of over 1500 businesses by Hubspot, a social media research company, they discovered that
business to consumer companies have a high degree of success finding new customers.

A critical question for many businesses is simply should we do this ourselves?  Or should we outsource it?  There are pluses and minuses to each approach but no matter how you proceed — here are the critical success factors that you need to consider.  It is not as simple as throwing up a facebook fan page and hoping for interaction.

1.    Setting up a well-designed blog and linking it to your other social identities (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) is an important first step.  This is not exceedingly difficult, but does require a focussed effort and for someone to learn basics and best practices around blogging and your specific blog.  There is absolutely a learning curve

2.    Staying current with technical changes in social media platforms.  New features are constantly added to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the various blog platforms.  Someone needs to stay current, and have it be part of their job.

3.    Creating ongoing content is the single most important key to success in social media marketing. Someone needs to be focussed on the creation of fresh and relevant content (blog posts, Facebook posts, Tweets).  Without it, there will be no engagement, no “Google juice” and no benefit.  There are countless examples of companies starting with the best intentions, getting setup, and then failing over time to continue to create posts and content.

4.    Tagging tagging and search engine optimization (SEO) tasks need to be managed, as this is one of the key benefits of social media marketing.  Whomever is creating content needs to be saavy to making that content as findable as possible by Google and the various search engines.

5.    Measuring results. Traffic, visits, comments, engagement can and should be measured.  Part of any social media program should be measurement and analysis to gauge program effectiveness and make adjustments.

More and more businesses are finding social media highly valuable for generating new customers, and retaining existing ones.  Your next marketing plan should absolutely contain some basic social media marketing efforts — bearing in mind the key success factors outlined above.

If you have a person on staff that has the time and expertise to handle your companies social marketing needs, that’s great.  If that is not working for you or if you seek a more professional perspective, outsourcing might be the answer.

For additional information, contact Bill Pryor at Digital Sherpa, bpryor@nci.com  781-254-3677

White Papers and eBooks

Yes, Facebook users interact with companies!

Given the explosive growth of facebook —- over 500 million worldwide users, it is very interesting to note that over a third of those users interact with brands. What drives this? The offer of coupons, specials and discounts. That is an amazing number considering Facebook was considered almost exclusively a personal networking tool not that long ago. Companies are becoming more and more innovative when it comes how to communicate through social media, but the real “aha” is that consumers are also evolving in the way they think about communicating, sharing and interacting online. The online behaviors learned initially for personal use, have broadened to other (practical and commercial) areas of people’s lives. For more reading on this topic check out a post called “brands and social media”.

Outsourcing blogging and social media programs / 5 reasons

There is little question that a well-executed social media program will generate new business by engaging your customers, increasing your “Google rank” and turbo charging word of mouth. The real question is the classic make or buy decision. Should we do this ourselves? Or should we outsource it? I believe there are 5 reasons to outsource the “heavy lifting” of your social media marketing.

1. TIME….Time hog number one is setting up your blog and linking it to your other social identities (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). This is not exceedingly difficult, but does require a focussed effort and for someone to learn basics and best practices around blogging and other platforms. There is absolutely a learning curve. If you outsource you are letting someone execute these basics who has done it many many times.
2. TIME….Time hog number two is staying current with technical changes in social media platforms. New features are constantly added to Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress. YouTube and the other key social media platforms…..someone needs to stay current, and that takes time.
   

   "Time Hog"

3. TIME….Time hog number three is creating content. The single most important key to success in social media marketing is the ongoing creation of fresh and relevant content. Without it, there will be no engagement, no “Google juice” and no benefit. There are countless examples of companies starting with the best intentions, getting setup, and then failing over time to continue to create posts and content. It takes time.
4. TIME….Time hog number four is making sure that tagging and search engine optimization (SEO) tasks are being managed effectively. Whomever is creating content should be consciously working to make that content as findable as possible by Google and the various search engines.
5. TIME….Time hog number five is metrics. Traffic, visits, comments, engagement can and should be measured. Part of an outsourcing program should be measurement and analysis to gauge program effectiveness and make adjustments.

Social media is a powerful new form of marketing for small and mid-sized businesses, but most run very lean from a staffing standpoint and the basics of a good social media program can absolutely be outsourced. This does not mean that you should wash your hands of active content development and participation—-it simply means that many of the tasks can be efficiently outsourced. In fact, your input on content should be a critical component of any outsourcing program. For an example of custom (outsourced) blogs that have been created for small businesses…take a look at the sample sherpa blogs .

Health and Fitness just went digital with HealthFitSherpa

The time to get pumped up has officially arrived. Digital Sherpa is growing, and building a new brand around, well, body building. The NCI company dives into the health and fitness market with the release of HealthFitSherpa, a fixed-cost monthly subscription service aimed at industries focused on health, fitness, beauty, wellness, cosmetic, spa, nutrition and diet.

Following the lead of other successful Digital Sherpa ventures – such as DesignSherpa for the design industry and CommunitySherpa in the apartment community market – HealthFitSherpa offers health industry businesses a chance to expand their digital footprint with an original blog, Facebook page, Twitter presence and more.

The custom-branded approach means to improve search results, increase referrals and leverage social media tools to deliver fresh content and will ultimately impact a company’s bottom line. It’s a proven approach that offers measurable results.

“Social media marketing requires expertise, management and focus,” said Bill Pryor, business development director for HealthfitSherpa. “NCI has successfully created over 1,000 social media programs for local businesses in a variety of industries. HealthfitSherpa will now serve the health and fitness industry, which has natural communities ideal for this type of client and community engagement.”

Learn more about HealthFitSherpa here.

Digital Marketing Starts with SEO

I attended my first Social Media Seminar a few years ago in Columbus OH. The conference was put on by Jennifer Laycock, editor of Search Engine Guide. After having attended all sorts of apartment related seminars and events, that basically said the same thing year in and year out surrounding Apartment Marketing, it was real treat to further dig into Social Media Marketing with folks who were doing it.

I was pretty flattered when Jennifer reached out a few weeks later and asked me to write for her at Search Engine Guide, from a small business perspective, and relating to the various things we were doing in our own boutique apartment management business at Urbane Apartments. Although my writing there has been off and on over the last couple of years , mostly because of time constraints of operating a small business, I have learned a lot from both Jennifer and several other contributors. You can peruse those articles here if you like. Search Engine Guide is in the top ten highest ranking blogs in it’s class, with a significant following. I have also joined Jennifer on a series of small business panels at places such as SES Chicago.

One of the top contributors and one worth following his work is Stony deGeyter, President of Pole Position Marketing, a leading search engine optimization and marketing firm helping businesses grow since 1998. Stoney is a frequent speaker at website marketing conferences and has published hundreds of helpful SEO, SEM and small business articles.

Stoney pioneered the concept of Destination Search Engine Marketing which is the driving philosophy of how Pole Position Marketing helps clients expand their online presence and grow their businesses. Stoney is Associate Editor at Search Engine Guide and has written several SEO and SEM e-books including E-Marketing Performance; The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!; Keyword Research and Selection, Destination Search Engine Marketing, and more.

Putting it all together

SEO isn’t especially difficult to do, but it does take time and enough knowledge to help you get started down the path to learn as you go. Many small businesses will try to save money by doing SEO on their own and they can be successful to a point, so long as they have the time needed to not only gain the knowledge but to implement it as well.

Here is Stoney’s series on the  basics of SEO. Read up on these and you will be well on your way!

Missed a part of this series?
Part 1: Everything You Need To Know About SEO
Part 2: Everything You Need To Know About Title Tags
Part 3: Everything You Need To Know About Meta Description and Keyword Tags
Part 4: Everything You Need To Know About Heading Tags and Alt Attributes
Part 5: Everything You Need To Know About Domain Names
Part 6: Everything You Need To Know About Search Engine Friendly URLs & Broken Links
Part 7: Everything You Need To Know About Site Architecture and Internal Linking
Part 8: Everything You Need To Know About Keywords
Part 9: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Core Terms
Part 10: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Qualifiers
Part 11: Everything You Need To Know About SEO Copywriting
Part 12: Everything You Need To Know About Page Content
Part 13: Everything You Need To Know About Links
Part 14: Everything You Need To Know About Link Anatomy
Part 15: Everything You Need To Know About Linking

Apartment Marketing; It Starts with a Google Search

A Guest Post by Brian Owen; Executive Director of Marketing for Laramar Group in Denver CO. Brains post illustrate exactly what we teach folks in our Move the Google Needle sessions, most recently at Optimization Summit in Dallas. Here are the slides should you have interest.

Enjoy Brian’s post, and let us know your thoughts and comments,

Google Killed the Adjective

Quite frankly, Google doesn’t care what serene, beautifully landscaped, sparkling surroundings your apartment community is nestled in nor do the prospects using Google, per se.  Not initially at least.  This makes marketing apartments a little less creative from a writing standpoint, but a little more fun and challenging from an analytics and strategy standpoint.

If you currently have Google Analytics on your website, run a report to see if anyone found you by typing in adjectives other than those related to proximity or cost (close, near, cheap, affordable).  Trust me, they didn’t.  So why do many of us continue to use those “romance” paragraphs on our website and in our ILS advertising?  The only answer I have is that some of us are still stuck in a print mindset, and between you, me and Dupree, using romance paragraphs in your print ads is a waste of creative energy as well (that’s a whole other discussion).

I’m not going to tell you what keywords you should be using on your landing pages of your websites, but I will say that if you are close to the campus of University of Michigan, you sure as hell better mention that because Google will find that a lot more relevant than a sparkling pool.  Highlighting your city name, neighborhood name, landmarks, points of interest, major roads and freeways, public transportation, shopping and entertainment in the area is the way to define your community and for many of our communities are the true amenities prospects seek.  It’s not sexy, but those of us who are creative and savvy will find a way to make it work and boost our search engine results.

Web Site Performance and Conversion: Get Out the Measuring Stick

Our Guest Post today comes from Jennifer Kennedy, Technology and Operations Specialist at Property Counselors Management Group in Fort Myers, Fl. Jennifer, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and getting the conversation going. This is Jennifer’s second Guest Blog with us, her first post, Does Increased Web Traffic Draw Increased Sales had lots of comments!

Get Out the Measuring Stick

A few years back industry leaders were conveying the importance for properties to have a website and online presence.  This is when our team at PCMG decided to move forward with each property having its own website for current and future residents.   After the initial launch, we saw a significant increase in traffic.

However, it is far too easy to create the websites and then just set them on the shelf.   Are the photos currently on your site from the fun and exciting resident function you had last week or last year?   We have come to realize that it is critical to keep updating content and evaluating website performance.   We just completed revamping our entire company website, which is quite an undertaking that requires resources constantly allocated to website content and improvement.

Now that the websites are launched and the content updated, it is time to get out the measuring stick.  The primary purpose for a property website is to generate traffic and secure leases.  In order to properly evaluate these goals, standard metrics need to be in place.  We currently measure our website conversions for unique visitors that lead to an online guest card or a phone call to the property.    As a portfolio, websites are converting 5% of new visitors to an online guest cards and 4% converting to a phone call resulting in a 9% total conversion.

The most important part of measuring is that our efforts are producing new leases.   Portfolio results consistently show that any property that converts 10% of its new visitors has seen a boost in occupancy with most averaging a 3% increase.

There is nothing I would like to see more from our industry than coming to a consensus on how to measure website performance with benchmarks that we can gauge our results against. What measuring stick are you using to evaluate your property website performance?

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