By now you’ve probably heard that Facebook has done away with the idea of ‘Becoming a Fan’ of a Facebook Fan Page, and has instead replaced that function with a ‘Like’ button.  So now, you can ‘Like’ a friend’s photo or status update, and you can also ‘Like’ the Fan Page of your favorite businesses or products, such as Boston Logic or Dunkin Donuts.  When you ‘Like’ a Fan Page, it’s the same as ‘Becoming a Fan’ used to be in that you will now receive messages from these Fan Pages in your News Feeds (unless you ‘Hide’ them).  Most people have no trouble understanding this change; it’s more of a name change than anything else, right?  Right.

But what about the OTHER ‘Like’ buttons?  The new ‘Like’ buttons you’ve been noticing on several websites all over the internet, on sites like BostonLogic.com, Yelp.com, NHL.com, Levis.com, etc.  These new website ‘Like’ buttons were announced at the F8 conference this past April and are part of an expansion of Facebook to help you personalize your entire online experience. These new ‘Like’ buttons can be added to any website, even specific and multiple pages of your website.

So now, not only can you choose to ‘Like’ the Boston Logic Facebook Fan Page while on Facebook, but you can also choose to ‘Like’ our website, or our blog, or a specific blog post (like just this particular blog about ‘Like’ buttons), or even our listing on Yelp.com when you’re browsing the internet.  Basically, anytime you find one of these new ‘Like’ buttons somewhere on the web, you can click it to show that you ‘Like’ whatever content is on that web page, much like when you share something on Digg or Yahoo Buzz, etc.  But that’s not all!

If you’re already logged into Facebook (I know that I, for one, keep a browser page with Facebook up for most of my work day) clicking the ‘Like’ button will post a notice on your Personal Profile Wall (aka Mini-Feed) stating that you’ve ‘Liked’ whatever it is you’ve clicked on and provide a link to that website.  If you’re not logged in, a popup window will appear and prompt you to log into your account, and then a notice with a text link to what you’ve ‘Liked’ posts to your Profile Wall.  If you change your mind, you can click the ‘Like’ button again, and it disappears from your Profile Wall automatically.  You could also go manually delete it from your Wall, but that would not undo your click on the website, so your click would still count on the tally for that button; this difference is actually significant, here’s why:

That ‘Like’ button on the web doesn’t necessarily have to be associated with a Fan Page on Facebook, which is a good thing, because otherwise there’s be a Fan Page for every style of jeans Levis offers!  Instead, the webmaster (or owner) that installed the ‘Like’ button on the website you’re visiting is given an invisible back-end Admin Page (using their personal Facebook Profile ID Number), which actually functions much like any other Facebook Admin Page.

From this ’secret’ Admin Page, the webmaster can see who has clicked on their various ‘Like’ buttons and send out notifications to each group of ‘Fans’ (anyone who clicked any ‘Like’ button) that will appear in each Fan’s Facebook Newsfeeds.  So, even if you never ‘Liked’ or ‘Became a Fan’ of the Levi Jeans Facebook Fan Page, you DID click the ‘Like’ button on the Levis.com website next to that wicked cute pair of shorts- essentially granting Levis permission to send you notifications regarding the shorts you liked or related items, promotions, etc. via your Facebook News Feeds.

Currently, the ‘Like’ buttons you click while browsing the web don’t show up in your friends’ Newsfeeds, only ‘Liking’ a Facebook Fan Page does.  This is good news for people with lots of interests/ ‘Likes’; you’re friends won’t hate you for spamming them with all your internet window shopping, but you are giving the companies, websites, and brands you’re interested in a quick way of reaching you with cool offers and such on your own terms.

If you DO want to share whatever it is you’ve found to ‘Like’ on the internet in your Friends’ News Feeds, many ‘Like’ buttons display the option to ‘Write a Comment’ once you’ve clicked it.  If you do this, it will broadcast your comment and a link to the page you were on to all your Friends.

So, like, feel free to ‘Like’ what you ‘Like’, like wherever and whenever you want, and share it however you like!

To learn more about Facebook’s other new features that you can also utilize for your social media marketing campaign, visit the Facebook blog.  If all this new ‘Like’ button stuff sounds like something you want to implement, but you don’t have the time or know-how, let Boston Logic help you by signing up for an Online Marketing Campaign!

]]> http://www.realestateseo1.com/like-what%e2%80%99s-the-deal-with-all-these-like-buttons/feed http://www.realestateseo1.com/seo-for-video-and-youtube http://www.realestateseo1.com/seo-for-video-and-youtube#comments Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:26:51 +0000 Ashley http://www.realestateseo1.com/?p=773 In light of a recent query on how to optimize video, and a recent launch of some demo videos on YouTube, we wanted to shed some light on the topic. Especially considering that if YouTube was a Search Engine, it would easily be the second largest in the world after Google. If you are lacking some technical experience, resources, or budget to host your own video, creating it and uploading to YouTube is an excellent way to get great SEO results for your videos. We’ve written this post to make sure you do everything you can to maximize influence, ratings, and views.

When you upload a video onto YouTube, the algorithm that the site uses to sort results in a search is based on three criteria:

• Having Text in Descriptions and Titles
• Recent Trending and Total Number of Views
• Ratings for your video

So what can you do to optimize a video you have just uploaded? Here are some tips!

1. Optimize your Title Text. Did you know that you have 99 characters to optimize your title text? Use your keywords selected from your SEO campaign and any additional keywords or phrases you’d like to rank for when users conduct a search. Also remember to include your branding and additional descriptive text for your video. Lastly, check out the #1 spot for your keywords: aim initially for #2, as related videos can substantially boost your views.

2. Optimize your Description. After your title, you have another additional 5,000 characters. Use all this space to be as descriptive about your video as possible. As stated before, user ratings also influence ranking, invite others to rank your video and share the embed code.

3. Tag Optimzations. Again, using relevant keywords in your tags Useful for search terms you use in your title text and description, including names and branding.

When you upload a video, you are often prompted to select or deselect sharing options. Here’s how to make the most out of each!

Privacy - When you work on a video, it is understandable to put the video under a “private” setting. Don’t forget to switch this to “public” when you are ready to show the world!

Comments - It’s up to you whether you want to enable comments. Just remember: if you disable commenting, users will go elsewhere to talk about your video, your brand, or your message.

Video responses can also help boost your video’s  views because they are linked to your video

Ratings directly impact your ratings, so make sure to select “yes”.

Embedding via social media and blogs can seriously boost views, in addition to get your message to users outside of YouTube, so we recommend that you keep this enabled.

Syndication also through social media to boost your views will help your video rank higher in Google and YouTube,  so make sure to keep this enabled.

To Get Views:

Have a great “hook” After a user views the first 8 seconds of your video, YouTube considers this video “viewed”. Be sure to hook potential viewers to have them watch past this time, and ideally your whole video!

Embedding video on product pages or in your blog can encourage discovery of your website and boost video views.

Distribute the links to your videos in your company’s online press releases and embed them into your  social media releases.

Promote more views of your video by purchasing Google AdWords.

Use Playlists to chunk your videos into smaller segments and then link them all together.

Getting ratings:

Rank your own video. We promise we won’t tell.

Encourage others to rank your video by including the request within your video or its description.

Video may be a valuable tool to consider when evaluating your real estate search engine marketing mix. If you have succeeded with uploading a video, let us know! Be sure to check out our YouTube video channel, where we have more helpful tips and tricks for real estate SEO and other assistance with real estate websites.

If your campaign is producing 1000 visitors per month in month 1, then 1100 in month 2, then 1200, that’s great. Let’s say that the trend in month 4, 5, 6 then goes 1200, 1150, 1100. Well, that’s not so good, it was going up ~10% per month, now it’s falling about 5% each month. Well, if the site is optimized around a set of target search terms, and then other traffic comes from halo terms, then to assume that the SEO is providing more or less traffic is also to assume that search volume for this family of terms is constant.

If we used Google Trends to normalize, we might find that the number of times a term was searched on fell 15% during those down months. So, the 10%/month upward trend was actually sustained.

Another way to look at this is to simply ask, what percentage of potential clicks did you get? If this percentage is trending up, then you’re in good shape. This means you’re taking more market share.

Another way to think of this is the following: Let’s say that you’re doing search engine optimization for a site that sells air conditioners. Let’s further assume that you start the SEO campaign on January 1st. Well, no one is really looking for AC units in January. Then, in April, you start to see an upward traffic trend, it goes higher and higher and peaks in August. Then, by mid September, you’re not seeing any traffic from the search engines. You start Googling around and see your site, but no visitors.

Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that people just aren’t buying air conditioners in October. So, you’d pretty much expect to see less traffic. In this case, the best way to judge if the SEO campaign is succeeding is to either look a target terms and catalog placement in search engine results pages, or to normalize your numbers. Take a benchmark at the beginning of the campaign, say a ratio of traffic to searches, then, each month you’d want that ratio to climb. This way, you’ll know if your SEO is working, regardless of market trends.

We’ve all been there. We get a new website, new blog, and get inspired with new business growth and possibilities that we cannot contain our blogging excitement.

Then a month goes by. Then six. And we can get disenchanted with the idea of consistent blogging.

It’s okay.

To get back on track, here are some blogging ideas to get re-inspired and to keep blogging on a regular basis again - which will lead to fresh content, optimized pages, search-engine friendly pages and ultimately more leads to your website. Which is exciting.

1. Talk about the future of real estate by commenting on current developments within the industry.
2. Explain why it’s important for everyone to care about real estate.
3. List online resources for fellow real estate agents.
4. Make a list of the top myths about buying or renting a home through an agency and debunk them.
5. Attend real estate conventions or networking events and report on them.
6. Do real estate market comparisons for your area, the national market, and abroad.
7. Occasionally go off topic and link an issue from your life back to your business, i.e.“10 Reasons Real Estate is like A Box of Chocolates”.
8. Pose this question to your followers: “What would you like to change in [insert your product or service here]?”
9. Speak with other leaders in real estate and guest blog for each other.
10. Write a book review dealing with your topic that depicts thinking about real estate in an outside-of-the-box way.
11. Create short video to change things up - this can be fun, or you speaking about your business.
12. Take a common issue many people care about and explain how it relates to your business.
13. See which blog post received a lot of hits or attention and write a follow-up.
14. Look into social media sites (if you haven’t already) like Digg, StumbleUpon or Technorati and find out what’s trending right now and put a property-spin to it.
15. Tweet a question and blog about your favorite answers.

Blog away!

Source article and more ideas here.

Answer
Our general rule of thumb is to NEVER take someone off your list. ex. I just closed a deal with a client that was put on our email list about 3 years ago. I hadn’t heard boo from them in 2.5 years and then, 6 months ago, I get a call saying that they’ve been getting our newsletter and they want to talk. The deal closed on Monday.

Think about this. Someone might have thought about buying 3 years ago and registered on your site to search for property. Instead they rented and stayed in the same rental for 4 years. Now, it’s time to buy again and they get an email from you. Your monthly newsletter just got you an active buyer client.

Here’s another thought - someone comes along and registers to search MLS but buys with a C21 agent because they walked into an open house and loved the place so put in an offer with the rookie who was staffing it on a Sunday morning. The C21 kid quit the industry last year because he couldn’t make a real living at the real estate game. Now, it’s time to sell because the family needs to upgrade since their second kid is on the way. Your email marketing piece arrives. They call you.

Fact is that everyone moves - I still get emails from Realtors and I bought my home 7 years go…

Facebook is now more than ever an integral aspect of any real estate search engine marketing campaign. The popular social media site hasn’t stopped growing - and neither can you. Facebook’s recent upgrades to privacy settings make it easier for you to control what your viewers can see, and who sees what. We have had Facebook training sessions in the past, at which you have probably learned the basics: but in this Logic Classroom, we are going to take this knowledge to the next level.

Little time and discipline is required to fully utilize Facebook for your real estate social media business strategy. We’ll talk tomorrow night about how to formulate appropriate campaigns and methods, and how to more effectively streamline the content production effort required for your real estate internet marketing campaign.

For this classroom, you are more than welcome to attend at the Boston Logic office (view map), or to participate through an online webinar at your convenience. This is an excellent opportunity to learn real estate SEO best practices and other means of search engine marketing to further grow your business.

Contact Katrina at ksierant@bostonlogic.com or 617-266-9166 to attend. Please also specify if you will be attending in the office or online via webinar. See you there!

The Sequoia platform continues to evolve to meet our customers’ needs. In the last month, we’ve added numerous features which make managing leads and tracking information across multiple offices in a large real estate firm simple and intuitive. All of this is of course in addition to the outstanding features which brought Jack Conway to the Sequoia platform in the first place - features which make it easier than ever to obtain leads and close deals. Integrating lead and content management, IDX property search, interactive user tools, deal tracking, blogging, live chat, and much, much more, the Sequoia platform serves as the foundation for the most advanced real estate websites in the industry.

In 2010 Jack Conway & Co. was once again named the No. 1 independent, privately owned real estate brokerage company in all of Massachusetts by RisMedia. With the Sequoia platform behind their new site, they will undoubtedly benefit from their substantial new ability to generate sales online.

Jack Conway is the largest independently owned real estate firm in Massachusetts, serving communities from the North Shore to Cape Cod.

Some of you, I’m sure, haven’t heard of Yelp. You should check it out. Here’s a link to our profile on Yelp. Yelp is a site where you can write a review for any business with a physical location. People put up reviews, good and bad, of the businesses that they interact with. I recently reviewed a coffee shop that I like a lot. I mentioned that people like it too much and there’s  a long line almost every time I go, but it’s worth it. This is the kind of real world reviews you’ll see on Yelp.

BTW, we’d love it if you wrote a nice review about Boston Logic on Yelp. Click here to review Boston Logic. Thanks.

Here are some interesting and important facts about Yelp:

Reviews
First, the reviews that show up highest, by default, are the ones written by users who have written a lot of reviews. It’s not just the most recent review. You’ll notice above the reviews and below the profile of a company, there are sort options. The default is “Yelp Sort.” If you want to see the most recent just click on “Rating.” Notice also that there are lots of other ways to sort reviews. I don’t know how much this gets used, but while you’re on there, you may as well play around. If you like a review, then you can click “useful” the nice thing about this is that you can sort reviews by how useful other folks have found them.

Bad Reviews
Business owners, if you get a bad review, it’s not the end of the world. First of all, I’ve noticed that truly mean and bad reviews are usually short and often put up by people with fake accounts or accounts with little personal information and fake names. My account is linked to my Facebook account. So, I’m standing behind anything I say. Also, you can flag a review. This won’t make it go away completely, but it can put the review off your page and mostly out of reach of people. The casual user would need to dig in order to find it.

Paid Ads
Next, Yelp does sell paid ads. Or, really, they offer a ways to make your profile on Yelp more prominent and more engaging. For example:

1. You can pay to have your listing appear at the top of search results. This is like using Adwords to have your link come up on the first page of Google’s search results.
2. You can also pay to enhance your profile. So, if someone does find your biz on Yelp, then they’ll be more likely to stick on that page and maybe pick up the phone and call you.
3. Also, it should be noted that Yelp has tile ads on their home page and tower ads on other pages.

Social Network
Also, Yelp is more than just a site to post reviews. They’re a social network too. You can upload photos of yourself, give more details about your life, “friend” other members, become a fan, send a compliment, follow someone, and send a message all within Yelp. I’m not too sure how much this stuff gets used by the average user, but I’m sure the power users are making good use of it.

Like all Social Media sites, Yelp’s value increases as more people use it. If all anyone did was write a review, it would just be opinions stacking up. But Yelp has taken the time to make the more relevant content come up first. In some ways, this makes them a go-to search engine when looking for something great. I’ve often complained that Google is great for finding information, but horrible for rating that information’s quality, trustworthiness, and value.  Sure you can find pizza using Google, but there could be a great pizza place around the corner from you that has no website! This means it’ll never come up on Google at all!

Yelp is showing you the reviews by people who do the most reviewing and by the nature of the site and its use base, they’re probably showing you a more comprehensive results set. If you’re looking for a service provider, I highly recommend Yelp.

Competitors
To be fair, I wanted to point out a few Yelp-like sites. Maybe I’ll write a comparison post soon?!?

• www.citysquares.com
• www.yellowpages.com
• www.citysearch.com
• local.google.com
• Send me more and I’ll grow this list.

YELP PR PEOPLE - I’m sure you’ll find this article. Would love some feedback, thoughts, etc? Tell us how Realtors are using Yelp?

We learned about the importance of the consistency of the user experience from when they begin their online search to when then land on your website, and various ways to KEEP them on your site.  We also talked about  lead capture and management as well as how to leverage social media, email, and other marketing techniques to help convert your leads into clients.

Don’t worry if you missed this LogicClassroom session, you can view the slides below at your convenience. Enjoy!