December, 2009

6 Degrees Group — No Comments
31
Dec 09

Reflecting on 2009

Today is the last day of 2009 and just  few hours from now a fresh new year will begin. This year has been filled with challenges and opportunities, with failures and successes. I will always remember 2009 as the year that I was tested, struggled & succeeded.  Jeff and I spent our last day as newlyweds in 2009.  We decided to formalize the new media consulting program we had been  implementing  for new home builders since 2007 and 6 Degrees Group was born. Loyalty, hard-work  and commitment  re-affirmed our faith.  New relationships were quickly formed and old ones strengthened.  Throughout the year we reflected on milestones met and felt grateful to our partners for their faith in us.  In 2010, Jeff will celebrate 21 years in new home sales and marketing.  I will be celebrating 13 years  in real estate consulting and marketing, working side-by-side with my husband, which is an achievement on its own!  2010 will be a big year for us with new technology, new products and new services.  We have a lot to celebrate and send our very best wishes to all of our friends, family and clients that supported us along the way.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6 (Yay – 6) – Happy New Year!!!! ok 5, 4, 3, 2, 1  W00T!  W00T!

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6 Degrees Group New Media for New Home Real Estate Developments, Leasing Communities, Resort Properties & Hospitality

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Twitter — No Comments
28
Dec 09

10 Features of Twitter Often Overlooked

Twitter was created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey and in November, 2009 had 22,481,568 unique visits (according to compete.com). Twitters credibility has increased dramatically as it recently struck deals with Bing (Microsoft’s search engine) as well as Google to provide real time search feeds benefiting all brands that create accounts.

10 unique Twitter features that we find compelling, yet often overlooked are listed below:

1. Favorites - Twitter allows users the ability to star favorite tweets. They can be your own tweets or others that you have enjoyed and re-tweeted. 6 Degrees Group uses this feature to “bookmark” our favorite highlights of a community so that readers can easily get a sense of the community’s features and market position without skimming through the news feed.

2. Lists – 9/30/09 Twitter announced that they would be adding a new feature – the list. This feature allows you to organize your followers or who you follow by grouping them into categories. Not only does this help industry partners easily locate other professionals, but it gives special recognition to those placed on the list.

6 Degrees Group uses lists in 2 ways: 1. We group local business and area attractions specific to each of our client communities (restaurants, wine bars, music and art venues, events, etc…) 2. We list local real estate professionals that take an interest in our communities by following along. This enables potential buyers to easily locate agents that are condo/loft/multifamily/leasing or area specialists. We look at this list feature as a way to show our appreciation and have termed it our long-term “Follow Friday”.

3. Website link icon - The icon link is often an overlooked marketing feature. Every community that has a Twitter feed should not only have a link to its website, blog or Facebook page on its Twitter page, but in turn these pages should contain a link back to Twitter. 6 Degrees Group always recommends that your community webpage and all eblasts contain a readily available icon for interested parties to click to read the latest real-time announcements from your community. This also helps your linkability and SEO campaign.

4. Location - Would you create a webpage without listing your location? It is important to list your location on your Twitter account as well. Real Estate is location sensitive. Someone with an interest in a San Francisco high-rise, leasing community or hotel may not be interested in one in Seattle.

5. Relevancy - Relevancy matters. Everyone wants to be the popular kid in school and have the most friends, however isn’t it best to have a handful of really great friends, rather than a roomful that don’t really “get you”? Simply put “who” matters more than “how many”.  If someone who is relevant to your location or profession follows you, you have the opportunity to follow back. This can be a strong networking tool and just as in “real-life” you never know when you will be meeting this person face-to-face, if they are a source for referrals, if you have mutual friends or will be in need of their assistance in the future.  A follow can strengthen not only your knowledge, but your network as well.

6. Video links - Links to videos can be attached as URL links in your Tweets. Services that allow you to shorten your URLs and track them are powerful for measuring click throughs. Video is continuing to grow and develop as higher broadband speeds become more widespread. Younger audiences are leaning toward a preference for multimedia and its popularity is growing. 6 Degrees Group likes using VR video, interview and testimonial links specific to a particular community in our Tweets.

7. Twitpics – Twitpic allows you to share photos on Twitter.  An online photo album is created for your brand that allows you to upload and distribute photos in near real-time. 6 Degrees Group uses Twipics in community tweets to announce a new phase, model home or show off an event. Often we also include Twitter links to a community Flickr account embedded with keywords to reinforce the visual campaign.

8. Re-tweets Marker – Recently, Twitter introduced a new Re-tweets link that contains a 3 tabbed history with categories listed as (1) Re-tweets by others, (2) Re-tweets by you and (3) Your tweets, re-tweeted. This new feature easily allows tracking of brand mentions and forwards – allowing you more quantifiable measures of success. It also allows you to get to know the interests of those you follow and those that follow you more intimately by offering greater market insight -increasing your ability for quality content, customer service and co-promotion/endorsement opportunities. Additionally, it is a tool to find relevant people/brands to follow and followers – increasing your capability to create quality connections with Industry Leaders/Broker/Agents. The only negative we find is that many on Twitter use outside applications like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, etc… and are not apt to use this hard copy re-tweet feature, thereby decreasing the reliability of its trackable component.

9. RSS Subscription - Twitter truly is a microblog.  Twitter brand pages are often updated more frequently than a blog.  There is less room for journalistic editorial and creativity - it must be written in 140 characters or less.  The subject matter is almost always relevant to the product because tweets must remain concise (aside from links).  This is great for both organic SEO and busy professionals that are not able or do not prefer to spend a lot of time reading your community blog. An RSS feed is featured on Twitter pages where readers can subscribe to all updates. Subscribers receive updated information from the feed that is automatically downloaded to their computer and can be viewed in at their leisure.

10. Hashtags - Hashtags allow us to label our tweets. Multiple tweets with the same label can be searched and grouped. 6 Degrees Group adds hashtags to particular twitter posts or themes (promotions), as we would keywords.  This enables us to create a listing of each time that post is re-tweeted or referenced.

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Social Media Campaigns — No Comments
18
Dec 09

Relevancy Matters

Relevancy does matter.

Social media is not a numbers game.  It is about building relationships with the right audience. It isn’t difficult to get high numbers of followers and friends if you are open to spammers, adult sites and those using social networks purely for self promotion.  There are auto-follow controls and even viral services that help your cause if you care more about quantity than quality.

Why is relevancy so important?

Think in terms of a weekend open house. Would you rather have 15 interested pre-qualified buyers walk your development in a weekend or 30 warm bodies that included: 8 agents trying to price their own listing against your product, 12 out-of towners waiting for a nearby retailer to open, 4 girlfriends looking for decorating ideas, 5 people hoping to win a free lunch and 1 window cleaner looking to promote their services?

Those new to social media spend too much time worrying about how many people are following or friending them instead of who is following or friending them and what those people are saying.

It is easy to make the mistake of measuring success by measuring the number of followers and fans. They are (after-all) at front and center, an easy gauge. They do look like a metrics of some sort and are quantifiable.  The challenge is to see beyond all of this and go back to your roots, your target audience (prospects, homeowners, broker-agents, local businesses and media).

Some thoughts to consider:

  • When a follower/friend Retweets or “shares” your content, where does it go?
  • Are your followers/friends geographically significant to your building?
  • Are they truly interested in learning about your community?
  • What motivates them to follow along?
  • Do they have influence on your brand?
  • Do they provide helpful feedback and add value to your content?
  • Are you providing specific, relevant content about a community and positioning it in the marketplace or is your community lost in the corporate brand?
  • Are prospects, broker-agents and local merchants connecting to your individual development and endorsing it?
  • What do the businesses/people that your community follows and those that follow you say about your brand?

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6 Degrees Group New Media for New Home Real Estate Developments, Leasing Communities, Resort Properties & Hospitality

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Facebook / SMO Getting Started / Social Media Campaigns / Twitter — No Comments
1
Dec 09

Finding your Voice

In the world of advertising emphasis is placed on the voice that best represents your brand and appeals to your target audience.  An advertiser will stress tone and rhetoric that can be carried throughout your campaign in order for your audience to identify with your message and your end product.  Colors, font style and photographs are also hand selected to reflect the image the advertiser wants to portray.

Social campaigns add a clear voice to brands. They narrate the story behind a building and a community, allowing the audience to learn more than what may be found on a website or in a brochure.  The bullet points come to life as they are expanded upon through video, photographs and article links.  Neighborhood maps with points of interest are no longer static dots, as specific local amenities: entertainment venues, parks, retail and restaurants are featured to showcase lifestyle.  A sense of community is truly built within a community.  Opportunities for co-promotion and third party endorsements increase as relationships are built. Social campaigns have the ability to expand, adapt and deliver key messages to different market groups. It is where your prospects, clients, broker-agent partners and influencers will all convene to gather information about your product.

This brings us to the one crucial difference between how traditional and social marketing define a “voice”.  In traditional methods, importance is placed heavily on the style of writing or “tone“, while social campaigns should be more concerned with value-added content or “message“.  If you forget everything else, remember these 2 phrases when launching a social campaign: Be Authentic and Content is King.

Do not try to use social marketing as a traditional advertising platform with colorful sales language to pitch your angle.  Instead, listen to your audience and deliver value-added content that they would find helpful.  Feature specific amenities of your building by expanding your brand narrative to include content about a sculpture designed for your lobby entrance, low VOC paints, living roofs, concierge services and modern architecture.  Feature special incentives, events and timely new release updates for your prospect and broker-agent audiences. Showcase your location within a community by spotlighting specific local businesses, events and service providers such as Movies in the Park, Jazz festivals, free tasting night at your local wine bar, neighborhood dog walkers and local moving companies.

While language use is still important, emphasis on “tone” should be reserved for web pages, brochures, press releases and advertorials. Social sites are places where “content” matters most.

Remember, the delivery of this content must be made in 140 characters or less using Twitter (including links) and 320 characters (with spaces) using Facebook, before expansion is necessary. This leaves little room for writers to showcase their skills.  It does, however, open up an opportunity to add video that defines LEED or Green Point Rated, the Men’s Journal featured story about your neighborhood, an article in NY Times about your local gastronomical treasures or a homebuyer testimonial.

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6 Degrees Group New Media for New Home Real Estate Developments, Leasing Communities, Resort Properties & Hospitality

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