By Mike Scotty

When folks talk about ‘social media’, many people think immediately of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Foursquare and new-fangled smart phones.  But if you’re looking for your single most effective and powerful social media tool, you’re reading one right now – it’s a blog.

The practice of communicating with your associates and potential clients through social networks is an important piece of any social effort, but is typically to a closed network – your Facebook friends, your Twitter followers or Linkedin connections.  While I am by no means minimizing the importance of your network followers, your blog will additionally distribute your knowledge and expertise beyond those you already know to prospects who are looking for the subject of your expertise – expertise demonstrated and optimized through the content (keywords, images, video) of your blog posts.

A well-written blog post will be a magnet for search results that expose new prospects to your knowledge, to your blog and to your services.

Consider a Facebook wall post or tweet that says ‘Check out the new model at MySubdivision’ or ‘Check out my new listing at 123 Main St’.  Although you've reached your audience and probably have a link to the appropriate website, most social network content is not picked up in search.

Now consider a blog post about that new model or subdivision.  You’ll reach your Facebook and Twitter followers because it’s easy to post a blog link.  But because your blog post expands on the subject you’ll also reach new prospects through search who may be search for the community or neighborhood, the park across the street, the nearest shopping center, the style of house, the architect, etc., etc.  Label the images in your post or add a video and you’ll be adding the huge audience who is doing image or video searches on those same subjects.

By Mike Scotty

We write a lot of blog posts and shoot a lot of video at New Home Notebook / YoChicago.  We typically do both unscripted and off the cuff – we talk about a subject as we would talk across the table or across the fence.

Many of our clients are nervous that they aren’t ‘projecting the correct voice’.  But in this environment of conversations, a scripted voice or a marketing video that is carefully choreographed to show only the pristine elements of an area or project, is the one that is not believable.  The view counts prove it.

By Mike Scotty

In the last post, I talked about the folly of trying to build your website’s Page Rank through backlinks from the major social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

That is not to say, however, that social media sites do not provide opportunity to build your Page Rank through backlinks.  Though perhaps less popular, real estate-specific social media sites are, in fact, where you are most likely to get your coveted backlinks from. 

Blogs, forums and discussions are where you’ll typically get talked about and linked to. Virtually none of the major blog-hosting sites (WordPress, Blogger) or social-networking site hosts (Ning, CrowdVine) use nofollow links.

And here we return to a resounding theme on this blog which is current relevant content.  When you put aside all the tricks, good relevant content gets you broader SEO, more followers and more engaged readers.  And yes, more backlinks.

Social media is all about sharing information and when you write timely relevant content, readers and fellow bloggers are likely to pick up on your ideas and link back to them.  Bloggers are always looking for good ideas to blog about and your posts can often be their inspiration.  You can also join forums and discussions and inject links back to your own blog posts to augment a discussion point.

Finally, don’t forget about news submission sites where you can submit press releases that get picked up on the Web.  These sites allow you to upload news stories and event postings with linked images back to your site, though they typically require a nominal fee.

This viral process will obviously take some time, but you’ll secure better links from more topic-specific sites.  The better your content, the more likely you are to get picked up by larger high-traffic sites, whose links back to you are more valuable from a search ranking perspective.

Related posts:

• Leveling the playing field with good relevant content
• What do I talk about in my real estate blog?
• Real estate bloggers fare best with relevant local content

By Mike Scotty

I’ve talked before about Page Rank and its value in relation to Google’s algorithmic decision to put your site above or below your competition on a search results page.

One of the most important determiners of Page Rank is the number of inbound links from other websites. Link-related factors that enhance a page’s search ranking include:

• The number of incoming links
• The number of websites those links are coming from
• The Page Rank of the sites that host your links
• The anchor text of those links (the words that link)

So what’s the easiest way to get inbound links you say?  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube – I’ll just repost my content there.

Not so fast.

While posting links to your content on social sites is a very effective strategy for getting your message heard by varied groups of prospects, most social sites use a ‘nofollow’ link attribute in their outgoing links, which will negate any search ranking benefit to your site.  The nofollow attribute tells the search engine crawlers not to follow a given link. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, Flickr and Wikipedia all use the nofollow attribute. 

So go ahead and post your video and news content on these social sites.  The traffic benefits to you are often substantial.  Just don’t expect your site to climb the search rankings through social media postings.

More on links in next post.

By Mike Scotty

Every month, Comscore comes out with new numbers for the month that support the notion that video is more and more commonplace and even an expectation of American internet viewers.

The latest numbers for April 2010 came out on June 1st.  Here are some highlights:

• U.S. Internet users watched 30.3 billion videos in April
• 83.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• 135.7 million viewers watched 13.0 billion videos on YouTube.com (96.0 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 4.4 minutes.

As if these numbers are not enough, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that video is able to communicate what copy and photos cannot.  And you can reach many more prospects with your video message.

If you want to stand out from your competition, video is easier than you may think.

By Mike Scotty

Building an additional base of organic content for your development or real estate business is one of the most effective things you can do to promote your business online.

Many confuse the term organic SEO with something you hire someone to optimize your website for.  Sure, you can and definitely should optimize your website pages to accurately convey to the search engines what the content of each page is.  The idea, of course, is to attract Web searchers to see your website when they search for terms that relate to your business.

But can you really optimize your website for every peripheral phrase that might describe or, more to the point lead back to an opportunity for your business?  How can you capitalize on current events, individuals that comprise your business, specific characteristics of your business that come and go (think notable listings, sales events, market trends, etc.), communities where your business thrives, neighborhood expertise, past project successes – the list goes on.  These are the things that people are searching for where your website, no matter how well it is optimized for search, would not typically appear in the search results.

This is where the term ‘organic’ makes more sense – the living, breathing, day-to-day operations of your business that people are interested in and look for when making decisions on products and services, but is virtually impossible to accurately convey in your standard website.

Posting day-to-day content outside your website but with links back to the relative informational pages on your site, and then enhancing its distribution to channels where your prospects search is a viable, soon-to-be necessary part of your marketing plan.  Online news creation – via blogs and video creates and builds a base of accessible information that extends your reach on the Web exponentially.

By Mike Scotty

Last month I opined in this blog post on how marketing really hasn’t changed.  The same fundamentals apply. There are no quick fixes. 

What has changed is how consumers behave and what they expect.  They use different media, use it in a different environment, and more often than not are able to react instantly.

A couple of weeks ago, I flagged this Duct Tape Marketing article by John Jantsch because there is an element of truth to it.  Here’s an excerpt for your enjoyment / analysis…

We don’t need social media tools, social media plans, social media agencies, or social media departments, we need marketing strategies and tactics that are informed by a terribly heightened customer expectation. I’m not the first marketer to suggest this for sure, the idea of engagement has always been a part of the social media thread, but we aren’t moving fast enough to stamp out this idea that social media is somehow still a new and meaningful concept – now that we understand what actually happened it’s time to drop the term, concept, and confusion and focus on what really matters.

Social media is not a strategy – it’s a tactic, part of a comprehensive plan to gain exposure online.

By Mike Scotty

Because they want to know about the real estate. 

Whether you are a developer promoting a project, a builder promoting a community, or a broker promoting his expertise, the important thing to remember as you set up and implement an online media and social networking campaign is the need to remain focused on your core subject.

That’s why your readers are following you and that’s how new readers are finding you.

You’re trying to attract readers to your project or expertise.  You won’t do that unless you focus on your project or what you’re an expert at.  If you waver onto other topics, you won’t retain the interest of your most valuable followers and you won’t be building the search terms that will attract new readers.

So skip the small talk about the weather, the Cubs, Mother’s Day or American Idol unless there is a direct relation to your blog topic – your project, a property, or your community.

Trying to be everything to everybody will only ensure that you become marginal to a very few.  Focus on the reason you’re blogging – to gain loyal and future clients.

By Mike Scotty

Video is a great tool for promoting real estate – but only if your prospects see it.  Here are a few tips to help get your video seen.

1. Upload your video to YouTube, preferably on a well-known local real estate channel with good Page Rank.
2. Optimize your video for search on YouTube.  Use the ample description field to fully describe the content of the video. Use some of YouTube’s recently-added features to enhance visibility
3. Blog your video.  Posting your video on your blog is easy – you’ve already written a description.  Just add some timely commentary as to why you chose to film your subject.  Use a different title from your video title to encourage additional search results.
4. Distribute your video on your social media accounts.  If you’ve got a Facebook business page, add it on your wall.  If you’re on Twitter, tweet it.  If you participate in a community blog, post it.
5. Participate.  Search out other conversations that revolve around the subject of your video.  Link to your video in comments when the content will enhance the conversation.  Use Google’s new options search to specifically search blogs, discussions and related videos.

By Mike Scotty

If you’re into creating videos or having them created for your real estate business, we can’t stress enough the benefits of hosting them on YouTube.

I got a little advice direct from the source a couple of weeks ago.

Because our New Home Notebook / YoChicago YouTube channel is a YouTube partner channel, we were invited to a YouTube partner meet-up at YouTube’s Chicago headquarters.  Among other topics – our host Margaret, from the partner team, shared a couple of tips on making sure our videos got optimal exposure.

Margaret talked fondly of ‘Al’, short for algorithm, and how Al looked at all content associated with the video – title, description, tags – equally and in context to determine how and when those videos were presented in search and on what keywords.  Given that information, she emphasized that the description had a 5,000 character limit, and that videos should take advantage of that to include information that could drive both common and long tail search results.

Does this mean you should put entire feature lists in descriptions? Try it out – let us know your video behaves in the search results. 

We at New Home Notebook typically include at least a couple of paragraphs covering the video’s subject, which gets us good results.  And despite Google’s assertion that YouTube considers all metadata (title, description, tags), remember that your video title becomes your page title – which continues to be the most important to all search engines.

By Mike Scotty

I read an article today that aptly pointed out one of the truths of online social marketing for real estate.  The article is called Let's be honest about blogs and other 'time-sucks' by Teresa Boardman, a realtor in St. Paul, MN.  It’s worth a read.

The gist of the article is that while online presence and participation in social media is the latest marketing tactic, it has the same limitations and requires the same persistence and consistency that all successful marketing programs require.  As one commenter points out, online marketing may be a time-suck, but it’s time well-used.

There are no quick fixes. 

The core marketing adages of reach and frequency still apply.  In simple terms, you need to reach the right audience and you need to reach them on a regular basis so that when the time comes for one of your prospects to make a buying decision that may include what you have to offer, you’re there, top of mind.

These adages apply to any type of marketing effort whether its print, direct mail, broadcast or online and social marketing.

The beauty of and the difference in online marketing is the concept of ‘inbound marketing’.  Rather than you finding your potential clients, you can position yourself so that they find you.  You’re never guessing at whether a prospect has an interest in your content – they opt in when they’re interested.  The new challenge that accompanies this new opportunity is making your content and message appealing to your target audience and getting found online.

Many dabble in online and social media, but few persist.  Not unlike traditional marketing.  Continuity in social marketing not only keeps you in front of your followers, but builds a body of content that keeps on giving in search engine results.

By Mike Scotty

I ran across this message on a Chicago development’s construction blog.  As you can see, it says ‘Comments Off’.

What?!? They might as well have said “I don’t want to talk to you” or “I don’t care what you have to say”.

It may be the case that the administrators of this blog have a controversial project that may be prone to some negative comments.  An unwillingness to address any negativity says a lot about the blog host.  Whether or not it’s true, it looks like they may have something to hide.

Online readers have come to expect the ability to comment and notice when the opportunity is not there, even if the post doesn’t blatantly expose its absence as you see here.

The truth is, comments are your best opportunity to connect with prospects – and that’s why you blog in the first place.

By Mike Scotty

If you’re thinking about where to start an online media strategy, think about the numbers.

Before you build your own blog on Wordpress or Blogger, or add a blog page to your website, consider whether your platform will bring you the volume of traffic you need to make your efforts pay off.  Sure, good SEO will help get your content found, but there are a couple of strategies that will make that happen faster.

Look for a blogging site that…

..has an audience in your target demographic

Assuming you’re writing about real estate, find a site that focuses on real estate, a site that has a real estate category for its contributors, or a community site where you can position yourself as an expert in the real estate category of that neighborhood or community.

Your content will benefit from a built-in audience, but you’ll also have the opportunity to re-purpose your content on your own website through an RSS feed and of course, drive traffic through links in your content back to relevant pages on your website.

…has a good Page Rank

An article or blog post will get better search results on a site with a Page Rank of 5, than the same article on a site with a Page Rank of 3.  Page Rank is a Google indicator of the importance or relevance of a website, valued from 0 to 10.  A site with a higher Page Rank typically has more websites linking to it, thus its Page Rank can be likened to the result of a popular vote from internet users.  

Page Rank is akin to the Richter scale, where reaching each level becomes exponentially more difficult. Getting to a 1, 2 or 3 can be achieved with basic search engine optimization techniques and a decent audience. Rankings from 4 to 6 are achieved only by demonstrably successful websites, and the gap between 5 and 6 is far greater than between 4 and 5.

Who’s got a Page Rank of 10? Google, of course, and sites like cnn.com.

If you want to check the Page Rank of a specific site, a number of sites let you do that.  If you use the Google tool bar, you can expose Page Rank on your browser.

By Mike Scotty

By Mike Scotty

With the Web becoming our primary communication tool, bloggers can get an edge with some formatting knowledge that allows them to better convey their message to their audience – and to the search engines.

Most blogging platforms will assist you in formatting by automatically assigning HTML properties to your posts – but not always – and not always completely.  If you’ve written a post, and the result is something you’re not totally satisfied with, knowing how to enhance it a bit (without bugging your IT guy or gal) can make a difference.

Simple visual enhancements like paragraph spacing, image sizing and adding bullets, lists or text links enhances readability.

Knowing how to add image tags to images (alt attribute) not only provides information for the visually-impaired, but enhances readability by the search engine crawlers.  Google's image search ranks in the top ten traffic sources for both New Home Notebook and YoChicago.

There are many free tutorials on simple HTML, but one that I’ve found pretty simple and helpful is called My HTML Tutorials.  If you need a little practice, or want to test your new skills – try out this live HTML conversion tool.

By Mike Scotty

In the final segment of the three strategies of building a successful online presence, your third move is networking in conversations you can enhance with your content.

You’ve got your online content on a well-trafficked Web platform (Step 1) and you’ve spread that content to audiences through popular social media sites (Step 2).  In Step 3 you socialize, you comment, you respond, you spread your ideas and content directly into conversations where it will improve the discussion and/or enlighten the participants.

Review and respond to comments on your content

One of the keys to generating interest in your blogs is to pose questions to your audience and ask their opinions.  With or without questions, you’re bound to get comments on your blogs, photos, and videos.  This is a great opportunity for you to engage a potential prospect in a conversation, while demonstrating your personality and knowledge to your entire readership.

Ideally, your readers may pose questions to you through the comments function.  When responding, don’t withhold information or request a private exchange with the reader – this is a social turnoff – other readers may want to know the answer too.  You are much better off putting your faith in making the connection through honesty and transparency.

Keep tabs on your comments.  Most social platforms will have an option to alert you to comments made on your posts – typically by e-mail.

Find out who’s talking about you or your project

It’s pretty easy these days to track who’s talking about you, your project, your company or your competitors on the Web.  Google Alerts is a one of the more common applications.  Enter your search terms (your name, your project, your neighborhood) and schedule an e-mail to be delivered to you daily, weekly or ‘as-it-happens’.  Whenever Google crawlers find a new item with your terms mentioned, you get alerted.

A more organized approach is to use a News reader, commonly referred to as a News aggregator, feed aggregator or RSS reader.  Google Reader is a commonly used reader that combines RSS feeds and Alerts into an organized digest of news that you customize to your interests.  While you consume your customized news, you can be alerted to new conversations or articles on topics that you may want to be a part of, and offer your content to.

Look for opportunities to build your following and spread your influence

As you find people talking about subjects or areas you have expertise in – go ahead and join the conversation.  Offer links to your content or videos when relevant.  Even link content that you may have written or posted months ago - this is a great way to give new life to older content.  Be careful not to link where your link is not relevant to the conversation – you will quickly lose credibility.  It’s OK to link your name to your content platform for anyone who is interested in finding out more about you.

Most often in comments, you are just offering your opinion.  Engage and become known in groups where your expertise is valued.  You’ll discover prospects that you would never have otherwise reached.

By Mike Scotty

Continuing with coverage of the three strategies of building a successful online presence, the second move is focusing on a social media strategy.  Step 2 is perhaps the easiest of the three.

Now that you have your online content on a well-ranked platform (Step 1), Step 2 is a matter of identifying the right social networks and presenting your news and views to new audiences, leading interested prospects from those networks back to your social micro-site, ideally enticing them to follow you on an ongoing basis.

Identify the social media sites you think are worth participating in.  There are some very obvious choices here.

Start with Facebook.

If you have any doubt that Facebook is the #1 social network player, check out these statistics.  It’s easy to create a Facebook business page. 

You can post your blogs and videos that you’ve already produced to your Facebook business page. Posts on your Facebook business page will link back to your blog or micro-site.

You can post manually on your Facebook business page or use applications that will automatically access new content through an RSS feed and post it to your business page.  While none of the RSS applications are perfect (manual posting works best), we’ve had the best luck with RSS Graffiti for auto-feeds to Facebook. 

Facebook allows you to invite your friends (from your personal page) to become a fan of your business.  Seek out (search on Facebook) your past clients and business associates who you’d like as clients. Beyond that, Facebook ads are very cost-effective and can build you a fan base that is truly interested in your content.  The most effective way to build your fan base, though, is by asking everyone you meet to fan you on Facebook.  Build your audience by adding your Facebook page reference to all your printed collateral, your Web sites, your e-mail signature, and all correspondence.

Twitter reaches a growing audience

At 50 million tweets per day, Twitter is a social force to be reckoned with.  As you post blogs, videos, and photo sets, post a quip on Twitter that will interest your followers in clicking on an adjoining link to your content.

Like Facebook, there are options to automatically generate a tweet whenever you post content to your blog or micro-site. 

Create a Twitter account and start inviting people to follow you.  Many of the people you choose to follow will follow you back, which creates an ‘opt-in’ audience.  Choose your followers wisely – use the search box on your Twitter account to invite users in your industry.  Use a variety of keywords to discover your prospective followers.  Remember, quality trumps quantity.  Having hundreds of followers is useless if they aren’t interested in what you have to offer.

Twitter can drive a significant amount of traffic to your content and ultimately, to your business.

YouTube is a video must

If you use video in your marketing efforts, and you should, posting those videos on you tube is an absolute must.

More than 175 million Americans watch video every month. And most of that is on YouTube. YouTube is the second most used search engine on the internet. Yes, there are people who only want their news if it’s in a video format.  This makes it the largest social network and one you must penetrate.  That in itself is a reason to add video to your content strategy.

Another reason to use YouTube is that when you post your video on YouTube, you are able to embed the video in multiple Web sites.  When the video is viewed on one of those sites, YouTube sees that the video is being watched and adds to the view count on the main site.

If possible, find a YouTube channel that already has good traffic and is specific to your industry.  Many regional real estate-specific sites have their own channel that already has many subscribers and a sizable audience.

Local social sites

There are scores of local real estate social sites that offer varying levels of traffic and interest. You’ll have to be the judge of whether they are worth the time it takes to participate.  We’ll cover local participation in the third segment Step 3: Your social networking strategy.

By Mike Scotty

Last week I promised to elaborate on each of the three strategies of building a successful online presence, the first of which is your online content strategy.

Make your content relevant

Decide who you want to connect with.  It’s pretty safe to assume that if you’re reading this blog, you want to connect with buyers and/or sellers, ideally in a well-defined area or niche.  If you want people to find and follow you online, you need to talk to and about that niche. 

The audience you acquire over time will only stay with you if you keep giving them what they want from you – information about your real estate niche.  Keep giving them the information they want and they’ll stick with you.  Add some personality to make it interesting, but stay on point.

Organic search results, from which you will receive a significant portion of your audience, will depend on you talking about the terms that your potential prospects will be searching for. 

Find a good real estate platform

You will also acquire more prospects when you are part of a larger Web platform that serves the real estate community.  Many prospects look to these sites to start a search, or wind up on a site because it is well-ranked and appears high in search results. 

Those who start a lone blog with their own domain name will spend a lot of time trying to acquire search position without much luck. Start by finding a site with Page Rank and reputation that allows individual participant to have their own micro-site. You will still be found in your niche while reaping the benefits of a well-positioned community.  A high Page Rank and audience size will heighten the effectiveness of any blogging effort.

Optimize for search

Make sure that the site you choose to be a part of will position you well for search results.  A lot of the SEO effectiveness will come from how you write your blog posts, tag your photos and make use of video, but do some searches on a spectrum of real estate terms and see how the results from your chosen platform fare.  Then make sure you use relevant keywords and links in your posts, particularly in your title.  A good variety of posts on the right topics on a well-ranked platform will naturally produce good SEO.

Commit to a schedule

The more content you build up online, the more online visibility you acquire.  As you acquire followers, you’ll want to deliver content on a somewhat regular basis, but that could mean once a month or several times a week. Plan around what you think you can realistically accomplish, in conjunction with your goals.

Remember the old marketing adage of reach and frequency?  It still applies.

Next time, social media distribution strategy.

By Mike Scotty

The best social media strategies start with, and are based on a core online content strategy that includes a steady stream of rich relevant content optimized for organic search.  Only when you have good content should you follow up with distribution of that content through a social media strategy, followed by online discussion and reference to your core content through a social networking strategy.

An unplanned jump into the social realm will most likely result in a haphazard effort with sporadic results, if any.  If you hear a lot of people saying online social media efforts are a waste of time – it’s because they don’t have a plan.

Some suggestions for you, in this order:

1.  Online content strategy

• Find a platform to host your content, preferably one with an audience that has an interest in your type of business.  Make sure the platform accepts multiple content types; blog posts, photos, and video at the minimum.
• Be sure your platform helps you optimize for search results or provides guidance opportunities for you to learn the basics of SEO.
• Commit to creating content on a regular schedule.  It could be once a week, twice a week or twice a month.  You just need to remain committed.

2.  Social media strategy

• Identify the social media sites you think are worth participating in.  The most obvious choices are those with large audiences like Facebook and Twitter .  If you use video, YouTube is a must.
• As you post to your blog, or add photography or video, post the content to your social media sites.  Facebook and Twitter have automatic feeds that you can hook up to your blog.  Clicks to your content bring the user back to full articles your content platform, articles that contain links to your contact information.

3.  Social networking strategy

• Review and respond to comments on your blog or social sites.
• Solicit comments on your blogs and your social media platforms by asking for opinions or posing a question.
• As you read your favorite blogs and news feeds, look for commenting opportunities to inject your opinion or offer additional information to a discussion by adding links to relevant content on your blog or Web site.

Each level feeds the next.  When you have a solid content strategy, you have a rich contribution to social real estate discussions that bring you notoriety and new clients.

Look for subsequent posts that expand on each of these strategies.

By Mike Scotty

You understand the importance of penetrating online search by getting content for your real estate project or business out on the Web.

But you suffer from the belief that you are not a writer.  Don’t worry.  Not only does blogging not require that you be an accomplished journalist but there are other ways to blog with a minimum of writing.  You might try one of these suggestions:

Pick a subject and start writing. 

Pretend you’re writing an e-mail to a client or a colleague explaining a listing, a neighborhood, or a recent relevant event in your market.  Keep it to 2 or 3 paragraphs.  Now do spell and grammar check.  Post it as a blog.

A picture’s worth a thousand words. 

You knew that, right?  Use a set of photographs to capture a neighborhood, a new model, an amenities set.  Write a couple of sentences describing the set and post the photos and/or link to a photo set on Flickr or your social network.  Be sure to tag your photos so that the search engines can recognize the image.

Video trumps all media. 

You can’t beat video for getting a point across or for its organic search value.  Be yourself. Speak on camera in the same manner you would talk to a client or prospect.  On-the-spot videos can cover a variety of topics including but certainly not limited to a model tour, a building’s amenities, a listing, a buyer testimonial, or an interview on a current topic.