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?

Does increased web traffic result to increased sales?

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 surrounding web traffic and apartment communities!

Here is Jennifer’s post;

Measuring Web  Traffic

This topic came up on the January 5^th blog talk radio Apartment Marketing Gone Digital. I was inspired by the comment made in relation to traditional property tours.  As an industry we have a standard expectation that if a certain number of prospects walk through the door we expect our teams to close and lease a certain amount of apartments, thereby know how much traffic we need to generate to reach our occupancy goals.  However, how do we measure our website traffic? How much traffic do I need to generate to my property website to secure a lease?

Apartment operators and owners need to answer these questions for their business, and the way to measure website leads will vary from company to company depending on the marketing of their websites and the way the sites themselves are organized.  For PCMG the property websites are both for prospects and residents.   Based on the dual roles for our sites, when it comes to generating leads we look solely to new visits to our site that resulted in an online guest card.  We found that as a company 5% of new visitors completed a guest card.  We had one site as low as 1% and one as high as 10%, but the majority hovered around 5%.   Five percent sounds low until you put it in the perspective that our average number of new visitors to our website is 237.

This information generated a new set of questions.  How can I make 10% the standard?  What did my site that hit 10% do differently?  Was the traffic generated from different sources than my other properties?   Answer these questions and you now know what sources deserve the most resources allocated to them.  There are so many mediums that can be utilized to push traffic to your site it is paramount to determine where your time and money should be spent.

I urge you to start measuring today!  Complete an analysis that is appropriate for the purpose of your site.   As an industry we have to start measuring the effectiveness of our sites in order to progress and continue to take online leasing to the next level.  If we don’t have a measure for our online efforts, we will never know the extent of their success.

Disruptive Marketing: Remove Folks That Are in the Way

I like Disruptive Marketing It tends to move things forward and remove folks that are getting in the way of change

Not just for the sake of shaking things up, although some might think that sometimes when I am on a soapbox, but it tends to forward propel change, sometimes much needed change.

Take the Kindle for example. A recent post in the New York Times by Nick Bilton titled Is Amazon Working Backward The post drew a lot of criticism as a botched attack on the Kindle. The intent of this post is not to debate the merits, or lack there of, of the graphs and ways and means in which Bilton surveyed the Kindle. It is about the Kindle being a Disruptive Product.

Seth Godin penned a post on this as well, and summed it up nicely with this quote;

The Kindle has managed to offend exactly the right people in exactly the right ways. It’s not as boring as it could be, it excites passions and it has created a cadre of insanely loyal evangelists who are buying them by the handful to give as gifts.

Create Disruption

Start to think about ways to get your product offering in front of your Customer Evangelists. The many conduits of Social Media aid your marketing efforts, and give your Customer Evangelists extended reach and speed.

Disruption Marketing goes against the grain, think Cirque du Soleil, a circus, but no animals. Look at the way Steve Jobs disrupted the entire music business with the iPod. In the case of ketchup, it was as easy as turning the bottle upside down.

While these are big brand examples, there are hundreds of ways you to can establish distance between your product offering and the guy across the street, its called being creative.

We would love to feature your story here on this site, and we will help you expand your digital footprint by writing about your remarkable product or small business. Leave us a comment, or drop us a line.

DigitalSherpa:Content, Engagement, Analytics, and Lead Creation

For a manageable monthly fee, DigitalSherpa will develop and execute a complete social media Internet marketing program. This is a fully integrated approach with a custom blog at the core. Content management, social newtork identities, tools, SEO and reporting analytics are all included.

 

 

 

DigitalSherpa provides the following services for an affordable, fixed monthly fee:

Content Management

• Blog hosting and maintenance for your single location business, or a network of blogs for regional and national businesses with multiple locations.
• Ongoing content creation and management; regular blog posts with content written specifically about your products, events, promotions, projects, and business highlights. Also relevant content created by our award winning home design journalists along with additional sources we identify and source for you
• NCI supplied content is selected and developed to establish community engagement around the design sensibility, budgets, and project scope of your target prospect and existing customer;
• Image galleries to present your perspective;
• Interactive content;
• Helpful resources, tools, and answers to FAQs;
• Content that you want to share about personal favorites, tips, and activities that define you, your community, or your business.

Social Network Development Maintenance

• Creation of social identities for your business on Facebook and Twitter
• Development and publishing of content for your social identities
• Recruiting and development of your social network connections among your clients and prospects
• Monitoring of your social network activity for problematic or sensitive issues and dialogue

Internet Tool Development / Search Engine Optimization

• Periodic enhancement and upgrade of social media tools, such as blog platforms, interactive widgets, etc.
• Analysis and refinement of Search Engine Optimization performance for your professional business blog in search engines such as Google, to increase traffic and raise your business and personal brand’s profile.

Reporting Analytics

Monthly reporting and analysis will include:

• Measurement of how many members of your network interacted with your program
• Report on traffic and leads
• Referal activity measurement
• Measure business activity among customers who are participants in your social network vs. non-participants

Sample Custom Blogs and Templates

The blog is a core element behind your DigitalSherpa program.  Customized for your business, most of your content and postings will originate here.  The blog is a key foundation application for engaging your customers, driving web traffic, and serving as a repository for content that is linked to all of the social identities we create and manage for DigitalSherpa clients. It can also serve as your primary website.  There are several templates to work from, an array of functionality and plug-ins,  and ample flexibility to achieve your company’s own unique look and image.  Here are a few sample templates and examples of how they can be customized for different business identities.