Help Us Win The Social Madness Challenge

The first-time social media competition hosted by the Business Journals and sponsored by Capital One Spark Business is now in its Phase 1. A call for entries was issued in 43 metro markets a couple months ago, and more than 4,000 entries were received, including 127 in Phoenix and the Valley. This is sort of like the social media version of the National Football League’s draft, mini-camp and exhibition season, all rolled into one.

But starting June 1, practice was over. Thousands of companies from coast to coast began slugging it out for the chance to become one of three Social Madness national champions. Three national winners each will be able to designate a charity to which American City Business Journals, will donate $10,000 on the winner’s behalf.  

How can you help us become a National winner?  Before June 18^th, vote for us at  http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/exclusives/socialmadness (then click Medium Companies, find Fidelity National Title Agency  in the list, and click “Vote”, as well as click the buttons to Like us on Facebook and Twitter).  The votes we generate, as well as the growth seen on our social media platforms is what will help us make the first cut and move on in the challenge!  

And please find and engage with us directly on our Facebook  and Twitter; we love to hear from you and you’ll find all kinds of content about the real estate market, both locally and nationally, marketing and homeowner tips and tools, community information, and other items of interest.

The competition begins with companies of like size squaring off against us in the same local category of Medium sized companies. On June 18th first cuts will be made and survivors will go into a head-to-head, bracket-style competition, so please be sure to vote for and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn no later than June 18^th!  Social Madness culminates in September, when national champions are crowned and the designated charities are awarded.

Source: Partially adapted from an article by Ilana Lowery, Editor- Phoenix Business Journal

Leverage Social Media

For most, participating in social media is like going to a rock concert.  You find yourself surrounded by people that all have a common interest (be it AC/DC or real estate).  You like the familiar, loud music, you like the energy of the crowd, you feel connected.  But, at the end of the show, there are only a select few that the whole crowd remembers.  It was those on stage, leading the audience to be connected, who made the biggest impression.

So with your efforts in social media, you need to make the choice: Are you going to be on stage, making the lasting impression?  OR are you going home in an overpriced souvenir T-shirt, telling all your friends how great it was?

Social Media has made it all too easy to organize a formidable community.  Now, to be successful in leveraging that community to “work” for you, it is your responsibility to get up on stage, in front of them, night after night, and start leaving an impression.  If you go to the show just to hold a lighter, you’ll always be just a face in the crowd.

1. Get there early to develop the largest amount of followers as possible.
2. Regularly provide relevant, compelling, eye-catching, and impressionable content for the community to consume – and share.
3. Update your status regularly with relevant, compelling, eye-catching, and impressionable bite-size content.
4. Participate (comment, message, tag, nudge and friend) in the Greater Community to grow your reach, relevance and influence.
5. Lather – Rinse – Repeat.

We can’t stress enough how important it is to learn to use these social tools of today. Be certain, they aren’t going away. The generation coming up under us will make sure of that.  So get up on that stage and make a lasting impression!

Source: Adapted from an article by Jim Cronin

Leverage Facebook For Your Real Estate Practice

*One in every five page views in the U.S. occurred on Facebook, bringing in more than 400 billion page views this year.

*The average visit time on Facebook is 20 minutes.

*Facebook members know a thing or two about loyalty.  About 96% of Facebook visitors have returned within the past 30 days, as of April 2012. 

Based on current numbers, it’s estimated that by the end of 2012, Facebook will approach one billion members.  As social media has become a big part of life in a technology-saturated world, it developed functions other than to connect with friends and family.  Social media helps businesses and professionals network, promote their products and services, and find potential clients.  However, it’s a fine line, building one’s “funnel “ of prospective buyers and sellers, while not annoying them with your unsolicited marketing efforts.  How you engage them is key.  

A lot of you in real estate have embraced social media, and some have really learned how to fully leverage it in your business.  The Corcoran Group out of NYC, in particular comes to mind, as does the Get Home Denver team.  Both have iPhone and Android apps, blogs, and integrate other effective social media tools into their Facebook.   And equally important, they seem to have a grasp on that fine line of the right content to engage and convert, without putting people off with overly done marketing. 

Join us for an informative workshop to learn the ins and outs of leveraging Facebook in YOUR real estate business!  This intensive workshop will teach you all the necessary basics to use Facebook for your business including the following: 

Everything you need to know about the new Facebook Timeline 

How to grow your brand with a compelling business page 

How to best engage customers and prospects, build loyalty and create brand advocates 

How to generate leads and business on Facebook 

This is not a generic Facebook workshop but is specific for the real estate industry. You will leave with an actionable plan on how to grow your real estate practice using Facebook.

Speaker: Nadine Kagan Wilson, Moxie Consulting 

Date: Wednesday, June 13, 2012 

Time: 10:00 AM—11:30AM 

RSVP: Erika.Kalpakoff@fnf.com 

Where: Fidelity National Title– Training Room 

60 E. Rio Salado Pkwy, 11th Floor 

Tempe, AZ 85281

Source:  Mashable, Samantha Murphy

Supercharge Your Online Marketing

Today’s web is a very noisy place, so competing for eyeballs is no small feat. Smart marketers know that it’s no longer enough to talk about you, your product, how fantastic your service is, throw a couple of testimonials on your site and call it a day.

In order to create action & engagement, you must first earn the interest and trust of your target. So how do you do this?

Create content that informs, educates or excites, or all of the above. When you create content that people read and interact with, that is a great start. Create content that people share, well now you’ve discovered the secret.

Bring on social media and blogs. The rise and popularity of social media consumption gives you as a marketer a great opportunity to create the type of content mentioned above and convert social media and blog readers into customers. But, don’t think of your online presence as a hard sale sales tool. Not only will this type of content not attract new readers, it will turn off the readers you have. So as tempting as it is, listings don’t make for effective blog posts.

Where to start? What to write about? This is the challenge that content marketers face every day. Think about your interests, your passions, think outside real estate. Connect with people with common interests.

If you’ve a passion for black and white photography, write about it from time to time. Or gardening, collecting fabulous wine, etc.; you get the idea. Not all posts must or should be real estate related. Connect online to people as people, with a shared interest, just as you do in the real world. Interact with them on your blog, Facebook page, etc. and forge relationships with those readers; you’re adding these relationships into your pipeline of eventual customers (when the time was right).

Now think back to real estate. What do you know about the market, selling a home, home staging that consumers would be interested in? Write about it! Position yourself as a leader, an expert, another great way to build trust.

Social media is not a short term strategy, it takes time, patience is a virtue, write like a human (no corporate speak), let your personality shine through, look for new and interesting angles, use the web for inspiration (what are your peers blogging/posting about, what content is working for them) and have fun!

Source: Marie Still, Director of Marketing for MRIS.

Tips for Using Pinterest

What is all the buzz about Pinterest??

We’ve heard it countless times, folks that have created a Pinterest account, dabbled a bit by pinning a few items and then forgot about it… until the recent tsunami of interest flared up. Now it’s become almost impossible to escape tweets and status updates that mention Pinterest. There’s quite a frenzy around this new player on the social media scene. And the number of people who openly claim to be addicted to pinning is rising at alarming numbers.

Pinterest is growing rapidly from unexpected demographics and changing the rules of social media engagement. It’s a new way of interacting, the interest-graph, and is not prominent on Facebook and LinkedIn. It provides a new opportunity for public companies with strong brands and highly visual products to reach a captive audience that is more than willing to advocate on the company's behalf.

It is a virtual pinboard (or you can also look at it as a social bookmarking site) that focuses on images. It allows you to share images and videos you find anywhere on the web and link it back to the original content -so it’s great for generating links and SEO.

You can look around other people’s pinboards to discover things from people who might share common interests. You can organize your images by subject or however works for you by putting them in different boards. People can choose to follow all of your boards or any individual boards. As well, you’re able to like, repin and comment on other people’s content. Just like Twitter, Pinterest is an open network so anyone can follow you and you can follow anyone.

Why should you consider using Pinterest? With nearly five million users, and rapidly growing, nearly 1.5 million unique users visit Pinterest daily, spending an average of 15 minutes a day on the site. Think those inspiring vision boards don’t result in referral traffic to websites and blogs? Think again. In January 2012, Pinterest drove greater traffic to websites than LinkedIn, Google Plus, Reddit, and Youtube — combined.

While lots of folks are flapping their jaws about the impressive statistics of Pinterest, some companies are quietly using this fabulous new tool to pin their way to better customer engagement and a visually interesting, personally appealing brand. Some tips for beginners:

• Make sure you feature your business name on your profile for maximum exposure. Use your business name as your username, or change your profile name to your business name after your profile is set up.

• Add a paragraph about who you are and what you’re interested in to the “About” section on your Pinterest profile. It will show up right under your photo, and will be one way that users can find out more about you.

• Connect your account with your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Not only will it help you gain followers, but making this connection adds social media icons under your profile picture that link to your Facebook and Twitter profiles.

• Don’t forget to add your website URL in your profile, too!

• Pin lots of stuff. Pin content steadily, instead of in huge bursts, to maximize your exposure and engagement.

• Come up with creative and interesting board names. They get shared whenever you pin something, so make them enticing. But be creative — you need to keep your board names short. There isn’t a lot of room for long descriptive titles.

• Tag other Pinterest users in your pins by using “@username” in your descriptions. Network with other professionals and vendors in your field by using this feature. Not many people are doing this yet, so it’s a great way to build your following and stand out.

• Comment on other people’s pins. Just like with tagging, this feature hasn’t really caught on yet, so use it regularly to really engage with other users. Obviously, use the same good manners and common sense you would when commenting on a blog or other social media site.

• “Like” other people’s pins to give a thumbs-up when you want to recognize great content.

• Pin from lots of different sources, instead of just from one or two sites. Variety is important on Pinterest.

• Mix pinning your own unique finds with doing lots of “repinning,” which is repeating someone else’s pin to your followers (just like a Retweet on Twitter). The person whose image you repin gets notified via email, and they also get a credit on your pin, which increases their following.

• Feel free to pin your own blog posts, but don’t over-promote. Follow the usual etiquette rules of any other social media site, and don’t be the boorish one at the party who only talks about himself.

• Pin videos! Pinterest has a special section just for pinned videos, and there are far fewer videos than images on Pinterest at this point, so use them to distinguish yourself. Any YouTube video is easy to pin.

• When you pin an image, add a description under it. Be smart about these descriptions — a good description will stay with an image as it gets repinned all over the Pinterest world. If the image is something from your own site, definitely use your business name in the description.

• After you pin a new image using the very handy Pinterest browser bookmarklet (a great tool in its own right,) use its built-in social media prompts to re-share your pin on Twitter and Facebook, too.

• Use Pinterest’s embed option to publish pins as content in your blog posts and website pages. Note: As Pinterest is catching on, you may need to tell your users that they need to click on a Pinterest image to get to the original source. When I tried this last week, a reader wrote to me and asked, “Is there more to that Pin thing? Or is it just a pretty image?”

• Get the Pinterest iPhone app, so you can repin on the go, pin from your camera and add a location to your pins so others can find your images.

• Optimize your website content for Pinterest sharing (Part One): Use images in every single post you write, so your post can be shared on Pinterest. When you find yourself getting lazy about this, remember –- not using an image in your post means no one will pin it. And remember — the prettier the picture is, the more it will get pinned. The images that appeal to Pinterest members are powerful and emotive, so keep that in mind when choosing your pictures. That combination tends to work well for your blog readers, too.

• Optimize your website content for Pinterest sharing (Part Two): Consider watermarking your images, or adding text to them. If you’re using your own images on Pinterest, one of the best ways to help your image stand out is by adding a clear description to the image itself, or adding a watermark with your business name. Make sure it’s clear, but that it doesn’t block out the main subject of the photo.

• Create seasonal or holiday boards that relate to your brand. Example: New Year’s Resolutions, Fourth of July, etc. Users love these.

• Add a prominent Follow Me on Pinterest button to your website to advertise that you’re a pinner!



Source: Beth Hayden

Social Media's Impact on Brands

Social media has infiltrated the purchasing funnel, helping consumers make informed decisions, from what to have for lunch to where to go on vacation. Depending on the decision, sometimes you turn to your social media, and sometimes you turn to Google. So, as a brand marketer, you want to know what online channels you should be targeting in order to reach the perfect audience for your product.

To better understand the new social consumer, Beyond and M Booth conducted a study of 1,500U.S. consumers, asking about the two products and services they had most recently researched online and how they went about it. They were then categorized as either a high sharer or a low sharer, each utilizing various digital channels differently, depending on whether they are researching and interacting with high or low involvement products.

Of the 1,500 consumers polled, 53% use Facebook to interact with a brand, with 42% going so far as to write a post or comment about a brand, and 40% ‘liked’ a product. 33% wrote a product review, and 20% use Facebook to research a product at least once a week.

Products research or purchased were categorized as either high involvement or low involvement. High involvement products such as photography equipment, other electronics including computers, and vacations, were less frequently purchased. This due to them being more complex and expensive, requiring more time and effort in the research phase. Low involvement products, such as cosmetics, baby supplies, and food were bought more frequently with less thought and research effort, due to the lower cost.

High sharers tend to be the most valuable to brands as they recommend products three times more often and influence other’s buying decisions. They make up 20% of online consumers and tend to be younger, have stronger brand loyalty, own multiple internet devices, and research low involvement products.

Low sharers make up about 80% of online consumers and tend to be older, are more open to changing brands, care more about quality than brand image, are more likely to purchase researched products, and research high involvement products.

The three channels that influence the social consumer are Earned, Owned, and Search. Examples of Earned are rating and reviews sites, news articles, word of mouth, and blog posts. Owned channels are brand websites, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Search channels are paid search and organic search.

Channel influence on products is very similar for all three channels, with baby products the most influenced, with personal finance products the least influenced. Facebook has the most influence on baby brands, YouTube on music brands, and review sites on electronics.

After online interaction, 31% are prompted to purchase, 26% take no action, 20% are prompted to recommend, 9% are encouraged to visit, 8% have an increased awareness, and 3% had their product impression changed and were encouraged to contact.

All digital channels play a role in a brand’s marketing strategy; looking at the channel your consumer is most influence by will lead to an increase in your digital ROI. With Search acting as the gateway of influence on today’s consumer, creative digital content is essential within Earned and Owned media channels to boost a brand’s organic search relevancy. Identifying high sharers in the most effective digital location, and engaging them with sharable content, will help lead to a cycle of recommendation, loyalty, and purchase.



Sources: Lauren Drell, Mashable, and data from M Booth and Beyond

Using Google Analytics In Social Media

In a recent interview Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner did with Avinash Kaushik, the digital marketing evangelist for Google and author of Web Analytics 2.0., Avinash shared how the free enterprise-class tools available through Google Analytics affects businesses today. He explained how your social media activity influences the behavior of your business audience to help you improve your results.

Think about 3 buckets:

Acquisition – It provides details about where people are coming to your site from. Was it from SEO you’ve implemented, from your Twitter, etc.

Behavior on your site - Bounce rate, the percentage of people who somehow landed on your site, but went (clicked) no further. It’s pretty valuable information, as it can help you identify weaknesses at the floor level of your site. From seeing what pages they’re landing on and immediately leaving, it may suggest broken links or landing pages, or campaigns/content that may not be enticing enough to make them WANT to go further.

Conversion or outcome for you – This is where Google Analytics goes deeper. Did they land, click on an e-report to be sent to them, and thus become a lead? Did they leave a comment on your blog thus adding value to your site as well as to SEO and the conversation? You can measure the number of people who follow you on Twitter, who sign up for your RSS feed, who come back repeatedly, etc.

Google Analytics can also help you understand your social media results, particularly when used in your business branding and marketing. Not only do you want to know when your Tweets or Facebook posts, etc. cause activity and engagement, but most important, what was the value of that activity? Did that activity drive more website visitors, more website engagement, more prospects? Knowing these things, by Google Analytics measurement, quantifies your social media efforts. This enables you to compare the value of your social media efforts against that of other avenues, i.e. display ads, SEO, etc.

One of the things you can easily do in Google Analytics is to create and track what they refer to as advanced segments. This could be your Twitter segment, another for Facebook, another for YouTube, etc. It takes you literally about 3 seconds to create a segment, then once created, all the same stats and details you can find out with Google Analytics, are than drilled down to specific segments. You can than compare the value you’re getting from one segment to another, and make adjustments of time invested based on that. If you’re getting say 23% more comments on your Tweets than your are on your Facebook posts, might knowing that direct where you apply the larger percentage of your social media effort and time? Super valuable information!

In terms of which metrics of social media provide the greatest value to you, while it’s great to know how many Facebook followers you have, how many Tweets you’ve been mentioned in, etc, it’s of more value to you to move beyond those basic numbers. For example, with your Twitter segment, look at the number of re-Tweets. Think about it like this, each of your Tweets is like a drop in a lake. What matters more than the number of Tweets you’ve made, is the wave caused by that drop; is it a big wave or a small wave? If your Tweets provide value to your followers, they validate that by re-Tweeting, and now that value goes out to others who aren’t perhaps already following you or even know who you are. You’ve just been introduced to perhaps countless other prospects!

The follower re-Tweet percentage is also important to measure and look at. Is it just your Mom and Dad re-Tweeting your brilliance, or is it a growing number of followers that you have? If you analyze these metrics, it enables you better know who the people are who follow your Twitter account, what are their needs, what do they respond to?

Another important metric to look at is conversation rate; on Twitter this would specifically be the number of replies you sent each day, and the number of replies received each day. Basically, it’s measuring more one-on-one or one-on-few conversations. Social media is not a medium where simply shouting creates value. The real value comes when that “connection” is made by people with your brand. THAT is the real gift of social media.

To learn more about Google Analytics in social media, you can follow Avinash on Twitter, @avinash, or go to http://www.google.com/analytics.

Facebook Best Practices

We previously shared 5 of our 20 Facebook best practices and today we share the next 15 best practices.

#6: Put a fan page widget on your blog or website: You’d be amazed at how many people simply don’t know about your fan page. Putting it on your website (i.e., your home base) will get it in front of all of your website visitors. My favorite example of this is from Klout. It got me to Like them!

#7: Customize your fan page URL: Vanity URLs are a fantastic way to make your fan page memorable. Check this awesome fan page http://facebook.com/awesomefanpage. Vanity, baby!

#8: Put your fan page URL on your business cards: Combine offline and online by letting the people you meet IRL know about your fan page.

#9: Put a link on your personal Facebook profile: Put this under the “links” section. This is a “soft sell” of sorts, letting your friends passively know about your page. You might have forgotten that people actually check that part of your profile!

#10: Harness the power of your team: Have everyone in your organization put your fan page link on their personal profile.

#11: Ask fans to post a link: Ask all of your current fans to post a link to the fan page on their personal profile. As long as you don’t ask this often, I’ve found that people love to help out. Leverage the power of your existing audience and get results! For instance, at Monk Development, we simply asked everyone to post a link to our company fan page on the same day. We doubled our average daily Likes because of one simple step.

#12: Put a tag in your YouTube videos: If you make compelling videos as a part of your content marketing strategy, throw in a well-timed fan page link at the end of your YouTube videos. The Gregory Brothers, the geniuses behind “Auto-tune the News,” are some of the best social marketers around. They always include a link to their fan page (and other social networks) at the end of every video and make it a welcome addition to their content.

#13: Put your fan page URL on your Twitter profile background: Lots of tweeters still use the web-based version and your profile background is a prime piece of web real estate. Cross-advertise and use one social network to promote another! CenturyLink does a great job of this. If you go to their Twitter page, you can clearly see where their fan page is located. They don’t make you guess, which leads to conversions!

#14: QR codes for your page: I bought the furniture for our house mostly because the store used QR codes to get me to their fan page. Once I got to the fan page, I was welcomed with a custom landing page that welcomed me to the store. It wasn’t elaborate, but it was creative and it worked! They engaged me as a customer both online (QR code leading to fan page) and offline (sales agents in the store), making sure I knew I was welcome. Smart!

#15: Use your fan page: Use the “Tell Your Fans” feature. With the tools built in to the fan page, Facebook allows you to import a contact file or import your contacts from Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. Good for when you’re just starting out and want to tell people you already know.

#16: Add a Like box: Place this in your blog/website sidebar. This is a given. A must. But when you do this, make sure you set the options to include face pile. That way, your Like box will show your readers how many of their friends like the page as well. Genius.

#17: Use targeted keywords in a Google AdWords: Use a keyword-based ad and direct people to your fan page. This is like Facebook ads on steroids. If you’ve never used AdWords before, it’s fairly straightforward.

#18: Redirect your webinar guests to your fan page: If you use GoToWebinar, you can choose to send registrants to a URL of your choosing after they sign up. This is where you let them know of the awesomeness that is your fan page.

#19: Put your fan page URL in your Keynote/PowerPoint slides: When I present, the last slide I show is my contact info, complete with our organization’s fan page. Most people are already on Facebook, so it’s a no-brainer to give them an easy way to connect with you.

#20: Last, and certainly least, invite all of your friends (if you must): This is at the end for a reason. Pester your friends only as the nuclear option. I’ve given you 19 other ways to let people know about your fan page. Give your friends a break!

Don’t let the list stop there. There are hundreds of different ways to let people know about what you and your online community are up to on Facebook. Why not get creative and start a list of your own? What are some of the most interesting ways you’ve seen people or businesses promote their fan page? Let us know; share what you’ve found!


Source: Social Media Examiner, Justin Wise

Facebook Best Practices

Welcome to our series on Facebook Best Practices. Today we share a little information about Facebook with you along with the first 5 of the 20 best practices we will share with you throughout this series - so be sure to check back!

If you build it, they will come? Perhaps in baseball, but not necessarily when it comes to people (i.e. potential customers) finding your Facebook page. Those potential consumers ARE using social media…. but it’s up to YOU to make sure they can find you. Your fan page can be one of your organization’s richest sources of interaction, R&D and lead generation…. as long as you’ve done a good job of making people aware of it!

First, go to facebook.com/username and secure a custom URL for your Facebook page. Then, put that URL everywhere it’s appropriate: your website; TV, radio and print ads; signs, banners, table tents and window clings, door flyers – all marketing pieces; and your email signature.

Don’t just tell people “Find us on Facebook!” If they conduct a search for your business on Facebook, they may find many similar pages that are not yours. Make it easy for people – direct them to your URL.

The numbers associated with expertise in integrating social media into your business marketing can be mind-blowing! And with social media continuing to grow, the numbers can only get better, as businesses better understand how to effectively engage people.

A report from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate reveal people feel more inclined to purchase from the brands they are fans of on Facebook. 51% of Facebook fans said they are more likely to purchase from at least a few brands they are fans of on Facebook. 60% said that being a Facebook fan of a brand would cause them to be more likely to recommend that brand to a friend.

Unless you have a built-in audience like the huge brands (think Nike, Coca-Cola), you’ll need to help drive traffic to your fan base. There are myriad creative ways to promote your Facebook page, one of the most complete lists below, put together by Justin Wise on Social Media Examiner:

#1: Put your fan page URL in your email signature: How many emails do you send per day? Now imagine each email you send is a chance for someone new to find out about your awesome fan page! This URL goes out on every email I send! Talk about free publicity!

#2: Write a blog post about your new fan page: Give your readers five compelling reasons why they should join your fan page. Don’t beg; just give reasons they’ll benefit.

#3: Tag other, well-trafficked fan pages in your updates: Their fans might see your page and you may get some cross-traffic.

#4: Ask your Twitter followers to join your fan page: Give some compelling reasons why your Twitter base should join your Facebook community. If Twitter is the new water cooler, think of your fan page as an invite to come in and chat. For example, tweet something like, “Wanting more conversation than 140 characters will allow? Join us on Facebook at http://fb.me/awesomefanpage.” A nice and simple ask that will get results.

#5: Invest in Facebook ads: They’re easier than you think and you can spend as little (or as much) as you’d like.

Source: Social Media Examiner, Justin Wise

Leveraging Foursquare For Your Real Estate Practice

In mid-June of this year, the location-based social network, Foursquare announced they had reached a major milestone: 10 million users! This is particularly amazing in that they’re pretty new in the social media realm, having started in March 2009.

Of those current 10 million users, about 3 million check-in somewhere each day, and about 400,000 businesses use Foursquare as a marketing tool.

Checking in is becoming more and more popular. The latest ComScore report released in May 2011 revealed that nearly 1 in 5 smartphone owners access check-in services via their mobile device. Foursquare had 381,576,305 check-ins in 2010 alone.

So how exactly does this affect real estate? We are starting to see brokerages adopting creative social media strategies, like the ‘Race for the Home’ event that Prudential Georgia Realty did. Based in metro Atlanta, they teamed up with property search site HomeFinder.com and mobile gaming platform SCVNGR to offer some 500 prospective homebuyers the chance to compete for a $15,000 down payment on a home purchase. We’ve also seen The Corcoran Group, a New York brokerage, embrace Foursquare and is now a major brand on Foursquare. Foursquare fits beautifully into Corcoran’s core brand ideas in that the process of searching for a home is just as much about what’s outside of the 4 walls than it is inside.

What are some of the ways you can start leveraging Foursquare in your own business?

Add your own business location to Foursquare - Provide clients who check-in to your location regularly with loyalty rewards. Offer incentives for people to write tips that mention you by name e.g. “Go to Jones Realty and ask for Sally Jones. She knows Jonesville like the back of her hand.” It’s a great way to generate word-of-mouth referrals.

Check-in when you’re doing an open house - If you are a Realtor sitting at an open house, do you have a Foursquare special set up? Think of it as just one more way to market to the people who are in the immediate area and just may be looking at open houses on your block. Remember, EVERYONE who checks in somewhere nearby (the local coffee shop, hardware store, etc.) sees not just the place they’re checking into but other places nearby; including your open house IF it’s there to be found! Your Foursquare check-in provides a map to your location. Conversely, it also works the opposite way. If someone comes to your open house by way of seeing it in an ad, but are unfamiliar with the area, they can use the ‘Explore’ tab on Foursquare to check out nearby places friends have visited or are popular with locals. It’s a fantastic way to go somewhere new and try something different. You can even filter it by the type of venue you’d like to visit – the type of food you like for example. Their vast inventory of user-generated tips is the content that ultimately describes what those experiences are going to be like prior to actually going there. If you’ve never tried it, it’s a powerful form of suggestion-based marketing that often leads to some amazing recommendations. Most importantly, it keeps people engaged with you and your content in a meaningful way. The unexpected search result or experience in a sea of noise, that creates real value related to what the user was originally looking for, can be a very powerful place to position your services.

Advertise that the property is open for review on Foursquare - Mention in your web advertising that you’ve added the property location to Foursquare. Invite home open visitors to write a review. Their review will be available to other Foursquare users.

Ask your colleagues to check-in when they show the property - Get them to add a brief review while they’re at the property on an agent caravan or when showing buyers. And reciprocate by doing the same for them.



Sources: Mashable, Tech Savvy Agent

Social Media's Impact On Business

If you’ve still any doubt social media is an indispensable tool for business, check out these staggering statistics of what social media campaigns accomplished for these businesses:

An Old Spice campaign resulted in a 60% increase in Facebook fans, with between 500,000 to 800,000 new fans in one month’s time. Twitter followers jumped an astounding 2,700%, and YouTube subscribers more than doubled to over 150,000.

Under Armor’s campaign to find their “Ultimate Intern” resulted in a 130% in Facebook page Like’s, a 25% increase in Facebook active users, and a 45% increase in Newsfeed impressions.

Coca-Cola got 86.5 million impressions for a Promoted Trend on Twitter. Yes, MILLION!

Evian’s video “Roller Skating Babies” received 65.5 million plays in two years.
20 million impressions came from Network Solutions “Go Granny” Super Bowl tweets.

McDonald’s showed a 33% increase in check-ins (Foursquare, Places, etc.) from a one day campaign randomly rewarding $5 and $10 gift cards for check-ins.

There were 184,000 players checking in during a scavenger game campaign at Buffalo Wild Wings.

In general, Foursquare had 381,576,305 check-ins in 2010 alone.

Are you beginning to get the picture? The numbers associated with expertise in integrating social media campaigns into your business marketing can be mind-blowing! And with social media continuing to grow, the numbers can only get better, as businesses better understand how to effectively engage people (I.e. = potential consumers). Those potential consumers ARE using social media…. Are YOU?

Source: Mashable's Todd Wasserman and Lauren Drell