In our post, 5 Tips for Refreshing Your SEO Efforts for 2012, we discuss a number of ways to think strategically about keywords, and offer a list of free and paid keyword research tools.  Take a moment to review the post if you’re looking for tools to guide you.

Turning Our Attention to Content and SEO

With all the content being generated on the web (via blog posts, videos, slideshares, whitepapers, etc.) and then shared via social networking sites, it’s clear that there are many other considerations to be thinking about when it comes to the topic of SEO.

For this post, we’ve curated perspectives about content that most resonates with us: optimizing and sharing content and how to go about leveraging it for SEO.  What you’ll find here is a way to see content through an SEO lens.

#1: Todd Bailey:
Users care about more than just keywords; they care about content.  Search engines care about content, too.  Any website expecting results based on keywords alone is likely to see little success.  Content is crucial and should never be underutilized.

The difference between “good” and “bad” content is largely subject to opinion, but certain things are definite.  Page content should be relevant to keywords, in order to provide the most accurate search results.  Blogs and news articles should be frequently updated.  Options to share that content via social networks should be available to users as well.

#2: Zara:
Create relevant blog post titles.  Include your top-ranking keywords in the title of your article.

#3: Jeff MacGurn:

• Hook lines tend to be more infectious than optimized titles.
• Humor and contention play well in viral content.
• Know when your audience are using the social platform and publish content at the optimal time.
• Know your influencers, develop relationships and leverage them to promote your content.

#4: Nick Stamoulis:
Social media content needs to be optimized and SEO content needs to be sharable. Understanding social influence and its impact on search will allow for a more productive overall online marketing strategy.

#5: Jordan Kasteler:
Let’s start with the obvious: social media builds links. In fact, viral content serves the same purpose as a link building campaign: gathering endorsements that establish authority and legitimacy in your field.

If one site is getting thousands of social shares, it sends three clear messages about your site to search engines:

• Your site is active
• Your site is current
• Your site is invested in the needs of your audience

By gaining a massive amount of social shares, you’re not just boosting your SEO signals—you’re also creating content with value for your customer base. Viral content is a win-win for both your brand and your search rankings. Like anything else in life, however, value takes time and talent to create.

Viral content is quality content. It’s passionate, it’s well-written, it’s eloquent, or it’s hilarious. If you want the thousands of shares, you’re going to have to put into the hours to make something with real value for your audience.

#6: Jim Belosic
:
The popular Facebook pages have all those likes because those pages embrace the ideology of Facebook: they’re interactive, engaging, and usable pages. Facebook, at its core, is about connecting with people, so don’t sacrifice the interactivity of your page for the sake of SEO.

#7: Nick Stamoulis:
One way to leverage social media to boost your SEO is by building multiple social media accounts that you can (realistically) manage. Optimize the key sections of each account while you concurrently build your communities around them. This two-pronged approach is the catalyst that can take your online business to the next level.

#8: Brafton Infographic:

#8: Nick Stamoulis:

• Social promotion of content generates natural links.
• Social networks drive traffic.
• Social networking increases online brand presence.

#9: James Debono:

• Write great content that encourages debate.
• Produce content that warrants being shared.
• Make it easy for people to share your content
• Be active on Social media
• Engage your audience
• Share content that you find valuable.
• Give other people the thumbs up!

#10: CT Moore:

Users tend to share content for these reasons:

• Useful/Informative,
• Interesting,
• Unique/Original,
• Inspirational,
• Funny/Entertaining,
• and/or Sensational

#11: Heidi Cohen:

• Create content your target audience wants to read and share.
• Create attention-getting headlines.
• Integrate a call-to-action to get readers to engage with and share your content.
• Incent readers to add attention-getting comments when they share content.
• Facilitate social sharing.
• Publicize email sharing.
• Promote your content across your owned media to built awareness and readership.
• Personalize your content on social platforms and email newsletters.

What perspectives can you share on content and SEO? Let us know if the comments below or on our Facebook page.

photo credit: paulina spencer via photopin cc

Facebook Turns 8

First, birthday wishes are in order to Facebook who turned eight years old on February 4th! Happy birthday, Facebook.

Several months ago Mashable created a slideshow of the Evolution of the Facebook Profile showing how your profile has looked throughout the years. Fun to see all the changes over the years.

Timeline for Facebook Profiles
One of the biggest changes for Facebook in the latter part of 2011 and into early 2012 is Timeline for Facebook Profiles.

Facebook reported on their blog on January 24, 2012 that Timeline is now available worldwide.

Timeline, is defined as “The new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story. Furthermore they report that Timeline will be rolled out to all Facebook users over the next few weeks. Note: At the time when you get timeline you’ll have 7 days to preview what’s there, and you’ll have a chance to add or hide whatever you want before anyone else sees it.

Niall Harbison discusses some very useful features and tricks to get the most out of Facebook timeline:

• activate subscribers (discussed in more detail below)
• add photos to your timeline map
• add life events (you can also add events retrospectively e.g. work & education, family & relationships, home & living, health & wellness, travel & experiences)
• create a unique look for your page with your timeline cover photo
• add/delete stuff from your timeline
• hide the sidebar
• block people from seeing your timeline
• change your cover photo on the go
• play beautiful full size videos
• control what appears on timeline of others

Timeline Cover Images
A cover is the larger photo at the top of your timeline, right above your profile picture. Note: Like your profile picture, cover images are public, which means anyone visiting your timeline will be able to see them.

The image you select for your cover has to be at least 720 pixels wide (note too that it’s best to load a high-res image). Exact dimensions have been listed as 850px wide by 350px high. To learn more about how to add and edit the cover image Facebook provides directions on their help page.

Mashable offers these suggestions for making the most of your timeline cover photo.

New Open Graph Applications for Timelines
These new applications, referred to as “frictionless,” operate this way–after a user provides permission once, they automatically share users’ engagement with the app on Facebook.

Facebook reports, “New timeline apps are now available from Foodspotting, Foodily, Ticketmaster, Pinterest, Rotten Tomatoes, Pose, Kobo, Gogobot, TripAdvisor, and others.  You can now enhance your timeline with apps that help you tell your story, whether you love to cook, eat, travel, run, or review movies.”

Timeline on Mobile
Timeline is now available on Facebook for iOS version 4.1, for iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

Timeline for Facebook Pages Coming Soon (?)
Mari Smith recently reported in her webinar, “Facebook 2012: What You Need To Know” that on February 29, Facebook is hosting their first ever invite-only Facebook marketing conference. She says that it’s been rumored that “Facebook is going to be introducing and announcing timeline for pages.”

Stay tuned for more info!

Facebook Users, Newsfeed and User Interaction
Facebook reports having 845 million active users and of those 845 million users, 50% or half of them log on every single day for almost an hour a day.

Mari Smith says, “What happens with that newsfeed is the more you interact with a friend, the more youʼll see their content in your newsfeed. The same thing goes with fan pages. The more a fan interacts with your content and your page, comes right to your wall etc, the more they will see your content in their newsfeed.”

The big change with regard to Facebook fan pages and fansʼ interaction with it is that Facebook removed the need to first “like” a page. Visitors can interact with that fan page whether they click the like button or not.

Mari offers these 5 Keys For Creating Guaranteed Consistent Visibility, Engagement, And Growth

• Share relevant content
• You want to test your own frequency of posts
• You want to focus on engagement
• Focus on consistent proactive growth
• Keep it fresh

Facebook Subscribe Button
Facebook launched the Subscribe button in September 2011 which allows users to follow updates with a more customizable News Feed and increased privacy. You can control what types of updates you see from a person and how often.  “When you’re subscribed to someone, you can choose what to see from them in your News Feed. Use the Subscribed button at the top of someone’s profile (timeline) to choose the type of updates you’d like to see from them in your News Feed.” You can learn more about the Subscribe button Facebook’s help page.

Be Conscious of Hidden Posts on Facebook Pages
“Hidden posts” is a “spam like filter” section of comments that Facebook identified as being spam. However, there may be times when comments are sent there that are not spam so it’s important to change that area to make sure you’re not missing comments.

Unhide the comment–You have to be an administrator of the page in order to see hidden posts. If there is a comment that you want to appear on your wall, not hidden in the spam, then hover your mouse over the upper right hand corner of the comment and a little link will appear. Click on it and select “Unhide Comment.” It will then be sent to your wall. It will appear where it would have been chronologically if it hadn’t gone to the “hidden posts” section, so you might have to scroll down to find it.

What other Facebook updates/changes would you add?

photo credit: Patrick Hoesly via photopin cc

Email marketing

Furthermore, Forrester suggests “Nearly every enterprise marketer uses email marketing as the workhorse of her interactive mix.” While businesses may be under the impression that social media or mobile marketing will replace the use of email, Forrester doesn’t see it that way. They believe that social and mobile campaigns will actually help you send more emails since “email tethers together customer experiences across channels.”

In the report, US Interactive Forecast 2011 to 2016, Forrester provides these company examples of how channels work together: “Glamour puts blog content in its weekly e-newsletter. 
In-store associates at Pacific Sunwear of California use tablets to sign consumers up for its daily deal emails. British Airways created an email campaign to drive downloads of its new Executive Club app. And Mint.com generated 8,500 new leads for 50 cents each by emailing existing subscribers with a referral offer that they could forward via email, Facebook, or Twitter. So the more channels marketers embrace, the more email programs they’ll need to support them.”

Email marketing helps you to stay in front of your customers and prospects, reminding them of your products and services and why they should put their trust into working with your company. But email marketing will only be as good as your email list which is why businesses will need to keep their eye on building and maintaining a healthy list.

In this post, we talk about the sources and touchpoints for collecting email addresses, ways to ask for permission to email, suggestions for give-aways and sign-up forms, ways to ensure privacy, and the types of information you want to collect.

Sources and Touchpoints

Eric Groves, author of The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing, advocates for thinking about the quality of email addresses versus quantity, and recommends mapping out the sources and touch points where you can attempt to obtain them. 

He identifies six places and respective strategies:

Web sites, blogs and social media
Here, Groves suggest that instead of using a generic message such as “join my email list” that companies  include a “brief but compelling message about the value of subscribing, along with a link to a privacy statement.” You can also take the opportunity to invite people on your website to follow you on your social networking sites and receive updates regarding posts on your company blog.

Outbound Emails


Groves suggest that in all the emails you send that you place a sign-up for your email list in your email signature, e.g. free internet marketing tips and videos
, click here to join our email list today.

Inbound emails, mobile phones and landlines
The strategy here is to make good use of each and every communication you may have: ask the people you respond via email if they would like to join an email list related to the topic they are emailing you about;  ask callers for their information when they ask you a question and let them know that you answer all kinds of similar questions in your monthly email newsletter; and if your customers are on the go ask them to join by texting their email address to your mobile number or by sending an email with “join the email list” in the subject or body of the email.

Networking events

Go a step further at networking events after you’ve swapped business cards and write down on the back of the card what you talked about with a person and whether they’re interested in receiving your marketing emails. Immediately following the event, send a follow-up email to all who were interested to thank them and remind them that they will be receiving your emails moving forward.

Store counter or in the office
Place a sign-up list on your checkout point or desk
.

Tradeshows and events
Be somewhat strategic in these situations and separate all collected business cards into two piles, first pile are people who asked for more information about your business, the second pile is for people with whom you had social contact but didn’t fully engage. Those are the ones you need to ask permission to send them your email newsletters or promotions.

Email Permissions


Michael Miller, author of The Ultimate Web Marketing Guide stresses the importance of asking a customer for permission to send him email messages. Miller says that it takes a bit of skill and that in most instances, “You have to do it in a line or two of text.”

He suggests that the way to do this is by providing some benefits for them to give you their email address. What benefits can you offer in exchange? 
Miller says more information such as updated information, new product announcements, product updates and technical support. And,  if you charge for support you might offer a few months of free support, or a few free tech support calls deals and specials (may take the form of weekly sale prices or something similar
free access to otherwise), paid information such as archival content, a discount on their next order.

Give-away suggestions



Free gifts can be good motivations for people to be willing to give a company their email address, and Denise Wakeman offers these suggestions for give-aways: a report, an interview, a series of videos, a white paper, a free teleseminar, a workbook, an mp3 of a program, and a webinar.

Simple & Straight-Forward Sign-Up Forms

Allison H. of Website magazine makes the case that in order to be successful that your signup form should be simple. “This includes not asking too many questions, providing content choice options, promoting incentives and linking to your privacy policy so that customers can be assured they won’t be spammed. Allison provides a few examples of effective signup forms from a variety of industries in the post.

Open and Honest is a Good Policy

Lisa Barone suggests that companies be open about how their email address will be used and that you’ll always have a process for unsubscribing should they want to stop receiving messages, and importantly that you will never sell their email address to another party.

John Arnold, author of E-Mail Marketing for Dummies, says that essential information for email address collection comes in two categories: professional and personal. For professional he advocates collecting: preferred email address, product lines or services of interest, zip code (if you conduct events or have multiple locations) For personal, ask for first name, and information that will help identify the users opinions and preferences.

Arnold says that you don’t have to obtain all essential information in the first contact with a prospect or customer and that as long as you have a good permission-based email address you can ask for more information in future emails by sending “short, relevant surveys and by using other contact methods as more trust develops in the relationship.”

Adding a privacy and permission policy to your data collection forms as well as clearly stating your intended usage up front helps put people more at ease when sharing information.

Arnold cautions that collecting information without asking for permission can cause prospective subscribers to hesitate, or worse they can perceive you as a spammer who abuses their privacy. He says, “Obtaining permission also ensures that your list starts out in compliance with current CAN-SPAM laws.”

Here’s some helpful information to  learn more about CAN-SPAM laws and how to be in compliance.

How do you obtain email addresses? What tactics have been successful for you? Let us know in the comments below.

photo credit: Robert S. Donovan via photopin cc

Restaurants are using social media to drive business

A recent Pew Research Center study found that 51% of adults look to the Internet for restaurant information; 38% rely on search engines, 17% on specialty web sites, and 3% on social media sites or Twitter.  Demographic-wise, the adults are more likely to be women, young adults and technology adopters. As Liza Porteus Viana writes, “Restaurants have to be very strategic with how they utilize social platforms – just trying to amass fans, “likes” or followers won’t cut it.”

We reached out to restaurants to hear about contests they’ve held. Our criteria for selection was that they be successful, unique and clever contests via social media. While the businesses we chose may share the commonality of all being restaurants, the nature of their campaigns differed in size and scope but all had a pleasantly unique angle on their contests.

We selected four for this article: Ling and Louie’s Asian Bar and Grill, Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria, The Bistro Group, and Mia’s Pizza and Eats.

Contest with a Twist

Ling and Louie’s Asian Bar and Grill offered their Woktoberfest contest and teamed up with Widmer Brothers brewery to give away a paid trip for two to tour their brewery along with home brewing kits a wok-a-day, and food prizes. The promotion ran the month of October and featured a special Widmer beer infused menu with German influence.

Potential entrants were directed to the page where they would select their branded, local franchisee’s Facebook page and via in-restaurant table tents through QR code. Upon landing on the page, entrants were instructed to like the page as well as fill out a form for entry.

The Sweet & Sentimental Contest

Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria, “considered the oldest family name in Chicago deep dish pizza” offered two contests in 2011, one in conjunction with Home Run Inn (thin crust pizza) where they collaborated on a Facebook-based contest called Through Thick and Thin.

Together the restaurants recruited nearly 11,000 Facebook followers to select their favorite essay among 92 entries submitted on Facebook by married and engaged couples on their relationships. The prize: a wedding or vow renewal ceremony on one of the rooftops overlooking the Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Field during the game on June 13, 2011.

The winning couple was wed during the game and received TV news coverage.

Their second contest,  Devoted to Deep Dish ran in February 2011,  where users submitted 2-5 minute video clips to show their devotion to deep dish pizza by sharing a story, memory or their thoughts relating to Lou Malmati’s and what deep dish meant to them.

The restaurant specified that the clips would be judged “on creativity and your overall enthusiasm for Lou’s,” and that they could be “witty, sappy, dramatic, action packed – the possibilities are endless! ”

The Grand Prize winner received their choice of either a Lou Malnati’s 12-Month Taste of the Month mail-order package from Tastes of Chicago or a Lou Malnati’s gift card worth $1,000 which can be used at any Lou Malnati’s restaurant/carry-out location and online.

Take a look at the 1st Place Winner: Lou’s Girl.

A Contest for a Cause

The Bistro Group (the third largest franchisee of T.G.I. Friday’s) held their second annual Can For A Fan virtual food drive from Wednesday, November 9 – Saturday, December 31, to benefit regional food banks. For each new Facebook fan Friday’s promised to donate one can of food to a local charity. They announced the drive saying that they would continue through 12/31 or until 5,000 cans had been donated.

The Bistro Group utilized table toppers and posters, No.1 Can Fan (employees) in each of their locations to make sure guests were aware and that employees participated. The Can Fans wore a T-shirt that said,  “No.1 Can Fan” and on the back there was a QR code and which said Scan Me. The QR code took the directly to the “Can for a Fan” Facebook landing page so they could immediately fan the restaurant and/or forward to their friend.

Contest with an Artistic Flair

Mia’s Pizza and Eats is a family-owned and operated pizzeria in Cumming, Georgia. For National Pizza Month which occurs in October they held a Pizza Box Art contest where contestants were asked to decorate a used pizza box turning the top into a canvas for the artwork.

There were two age categories: Elementary, 6-11; Middle/High, 12-17.  The elementary winner  received a pizza party for their friends. The middle/high winner received a free large pizza of choice each month for a year.

They promoted the event on their website, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare pages. They also promoted the event to mommy bloggers to come into the store, try the food, and learn about their business. The bloggers received $20 gift certificates for use of give-aways on their sites.

Are you using contests for your restaurant? What unique and fun spin have you taken? Let us know in the comments below.

photo credit: Claudio.Ar via photopin cc

In the Fast Company article, E.B. Boyd summed it up nicely, “Not being online today is the equivalent in earlier eras of not having a storefront or a Yellow Pages listing. It’s effectively impossible for potential customers to find you.”

In this post we offer a definition, additional reasons why it’s important to optimize and ten tips to ensure that businesses can be found through local searches.

First Things First: Local Search Defined

Local search is the use of specialized Internet search engines that allow users to submit geographically constrained searches against a structured database of local business listings. Typical local search queries include not only information about “what” the site visitor is searching for (such as keywords, a business category, or the name of a consumer product) but also “where” information, such as a street address, city name, postal code, or geographic coordinates like latitude and longitude. Examples of local searches include “Hong Kong hotels”, “Manhattan restaurants”, and “Dublin Hertz”.
(from Wikipedia)

Why Optimize for Local Search?

As Corey Eridon points out in a recent post:

• Approximately 3 billion search queries contain local terms every month;
• 70% of online searchers will use local search to find offline businesses;
• 20% of Google searches are for local information.

How Businesses Can Get Found in Local Search

1. Website Tags
Make your website work for you locally
– add your location to the title tag and meta-tag descriptions  of your website, add contact information with name, full address, and list a phone number with a local area code (vs. an 800 or toll free).

2. Organic Search
Use local keywords you want to target; business type and city, city and state, street, zipcode, address and phone number. e.g. office supply, Boston, MA; office supply, Boylston Street, Boston, MA; office supply, Boston, MA 02116; office supply, Boylston Street, Boston, MA (617) 315-1234.

3. Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising
If you’re willing to go the route of paid search engine advertising, also known as pay per click (PPC), advertising you can capture additional leads from online searches e.g. Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. Keep it mind though that some are finding programs on Google AdWords to be difficult to navigate and as a result, Google launched a “lite” version of AdWords called “AdWords Express,” that’s touted as being “both easier to understand and faster to use. And last spring, it introduced free phone support to help AdWords customers learn to use the product. That service is now available in about 70 countries around the world.”

PPC results are shown first in search listing

4. Google Places
Google Places is key for local businesses. They are free pages that are listed within google search results right after AdWords listings, but before organic search results. As we discussed in an earlier post, Google Places may very well be one of the best kept secrets and something that local businesses who aren’t already using will greatly benefit from. The pages are linked to maps and directions, details about the business (transit, prices, hours, reviews) and space for photos and videos, and opportunities to create coupons for customers.

Create an effective Google Places pages by adding photos and videos, writing interesting copy, completing all categories, encouraging customers to review you, adding coupons, and keeping your listing up-to-date.

5. Mobile Friendly Sites
Create a mobile-friendly site by creating a site that eliminates flash, pop-ups, simplifies complex navigation structures, limits the amount of information listed on each page and is optimized for quick loading. 
Research from Omniture found that “mobile-optimized experiences produced an average 75% higher rate of engagements per visit for mobile users.” More importantly, well-designed mobile-ready sites focus on providing the mobile user what they need on the go like phone number and address.

6. Get Listed
Submit company profile data to local directories (e.g. YellowPages.com, SuperPages.com, etc.) One easy way to get started is through, Get Listed where you can quickly see which sites you may have already claimed your page on and by clicking on the link, you can add your business info to better optimize your social search.

If you’re looking for even more directories, Eric Vreeland at Hubspot has compiled a list of 50 business directories for  local marketing.

Results from a Get Listed search

7. Photos
Use a range of different kinds of photos e.g. on Google Places, your website, blog, to show your business and surroundings (e.g. winter, summer, indoor, outdoor, employees, special events, serious and more fun types of shots, too).

8. Pinterest for Local SEO
Chris Silver Smith offers some unique tips for using Pinterest for Local SEO
–”Set up boards using your city name, collect pics about your area (such as Dallas), and name a Board after your business type, products or services.”

9. Participate on social media platforms

As Sean Daily suggests you can use your Facebook fan page, Twitter profile, Foursquare brand page etc. to motivate customers to rate and review your business. Leverage the potency of YouTube by embedding video clips on your Google Place page and public profile pages, and give social media active customers advertising and marketing incentives for discounts on products or services.

10. Blog
You can use your business blog to write about people and events in your local community, making sure to use local keywords in the necessary places e.g. headings, title, tags, keywords, body of the text, etc.

What are you doing to get your business found on local searches? Tell us about your experiences.

MORE: Check out our post, Local Business Marketing: 3 Strategies to Leverage Engagement for more ideas!

photo credit: Ed Yourdon via photopin cc

In this post we’ll introduce the concepts of gamification and funware, the relationship to marketing, examples of gamification, and an exclusive Q & A with Gabe Zichermann, author and gamification thought leader, to help gain more insights into this important new trend and how to assess whether it’s right for your business.

First Things First: Gamification & Funware Defined

Gamification typically involves “applying game design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging. Gamification has been called one of the most important trends in technology by several industry experts. Gamification can potentially be applied to any industry and almost anything to create fun and engaging experiences, converting users into players.”

Gabe Zichermann has been credited with coining the complimentary term, funware, defined as “employing game mechanics such as points, leaderboards, badges, challenges and levels.”

The Relationship between Gamification, Funware and Marketing

Zichermann and Linder say that Funware helps marketing  by combining play with some less playful—or more purpose-driven activities.

“…businesses that incorporate Funware into their marketing will find they get something that is greater than expected…Many have discovered that their traditional marketing campaigns suddenly have additional leverage…game-based marketing doesn’t merely increase a marketing campaign’s value by a few percentage points; it can have a lasting, exponential effect on customer attraction, retention and satisfaction…Through the diligent application of points, badges, levels, reward and challenges, any brand can deliver extraordinary engagement.”

Examples of Gamification

Looking for examples of how brands have used games and funware? Here are a number:

Tom Edwards provides 15 brand examples of gamification and how brands are capitalizing on the trend.

Joe Pulizzi provides 4 examples.

Playgen provides case studies and 7 examples of gamification.

Building Your Brand with Games

Bunchball offers this advice for businesses looking to build their brand with games: “Using gamification, marketers can help increase brand awareness, affinity, and purchase intent by driving their audience to spend more time on a website or related social media property and come back more often. The more users interact with a site, the more valuable and loyal they become and the less incentive they have to click away to another source.”

Q & A with Gabe Zichermann

We checked in with Gabe Zichermann to answer questions about the workings of game-based marketing and what the future holds.

Are there specific industries and types of businesses that you think lend themselves better to game-based marketing than others?

GZ: The techniques of gamification work excellently for almost all contexts—and we’re seeing huge adoption among retail, health, education, travel and large enterprise companies. In general, we think of gamification as facing either employees or customers, but the concepts and techniques used are mostly the same.

Social media marketing has always had to overcome the ROI factor, what do you say to businesses who may be cautious about utilizing game-based marketing? Are there facts and figures that can help make the case?

GZ: Gamification is a metrics and outcomes-oriented discipline. The design process always begins with assessing customer needs, building appropriate metrics, and driving behaviors that can deliver that in the funnel. While there are no global ROI metrics available today, one of the major pieces of anecdotal feedback we hear is a consistent 20% or greater increase in engagement by using some of the core techniques.

In your recent post, “Competition or Cooperation?” you write “collaboration and competition are not mutually exclusive.” Are you suggesting that businesses should allow both to occur?

GZ: Absolutely! Some employees and customers are incredibly competitive, others are collaborative. Being able to design a gamified experience that talks to a broad swath of the target population requires that you think about the different motivations and motivators of your audience. One of the most famous systems for analyzing motivation is Bartle’s Player types – where the research identified four kinds of player motivations (Achiever, Explorer, Socializer, Killer). Knowing what drives your audience—and how to tailor your experience—will help create the ideal gamified system.

I’m curious to know what you think about an aspect of game mechanics and design;
 should the details around leaderboards and how users are able to move-up ranks be spelled out for participants?

Great question. Some of the most interesting debates in gamified design center around the balance between obvious paths and surprise/delight. Some sites/apps, like Foursquare, really keep you in the dark about potential achievements. Others, like Nike+, are much more self-evident. Ultimately, a balance of both is likely to produce the optimal result for an audience. Regardless, when you like the system and are really engaged, it can be fun just to conjecture about how to progress, can’t it? That’s gamification at work.

What are your predictions for game-based marketing in 2012?

GZ: The biggest trends I think we’ll see are:

1. A move away from game metaphors to behavioral metaphors (meaning: gamified systems will look less like games).
2. A dramatic increase in the use of gamification inside companies and facing employees.
3. Big advances in gamification of health and education built around the surprising and awesome early results we’ve seen.

Thank you, Gabe for taking the time to speak with us.

Assessing Whether Gamification Will Be Effective For Your Business Today

Tracy DiMarino suggests 10 questions to ask yourself to determine if gamification fits in with your larger marketing strategy:

1. What are your organizations’ goals? For instance, are you looking to increase customer loyalty, drive purchases or build brand awareness?
2. What audiences are you trying to reach? What are their interests, and where do they interact? Are they likely to play a game?
3. What actions do you want these people to take?
4. Can gamification help you reach those goals and audiences?
5. How does the game tie in with your company’s brand, product and/or service? For example, if you sell lawn care products, maybe your game teaches individuals how to garden.
6. How will gamification fit within your larger strategy and ongoing marketing tactics?
7. How will the game be built? Will the game experience take place within an existing platform, such as Facebook, Foursquare or Twitter, or will it be a truly custom-built solution?
8. What will make people want to play or participate? What incentive is there for them?
9. How will the game be promoted to target audiences?
10. How will success be measured? What activities can you track to determine ROI?

How to Gamify

Adam Kleinberg writes, “Don’t reinvent the wheel. Not every gamified experience requires a ton of back-end engineering. A number of companies like BunchBall, Badgeville, and Gamify have made implementing game mechanics as easy as customizing a WordPress site.”

Closing Thoughts

Game-based marketing can offer a fresh take on marketing and engagement. It may be the exciting alternative you’ve been looking for to spice-up your content marketing efforts this year. We believe that game-based marketing will become even bigger in 2012 and that marketers who take the time to assess and consider it for their businesses sooner than later may gain a real competitive advantage, and ultimately, be ahead of the game!

Additional Resources

Fun is the Future: Mastering Gamification (Video)
Gabe Zichermann’s Google Tech Talk on YouTube

Gamification 101: An Introduction to the Use of Game Dynamics to Influence Behavior
Whitepaper by Bunchball

How To: Gamify Your Marketing
post by Adam Kleinberg

Gamification goes mainstream (infographic)
by Big Door

photo by Sandy Chase

Socia

In this post we’ll take a look at how social media can be used by real estate professionals, tips for content marketing, compelling facts and figures of 2011 and predictions for 2012.

Rationale for Real Estate Social Marketing

Why use social media marketing for real estate? As Erica Swallow writes, real estate pros can use social media for real results:

• attract buyers and sellers
• share listings, tours and showings
• lend expert advice
• connect with other real estate professionals.

A Simple Formula for Real Estate Social Marketing

Wondering how to go about using social media marketing? Imforza’s post offers a simple 4-step formula for real estate professionals:

“You just picked up a new listing and need to move it within a few months. If you are effectively using social networks then your process might look a little something like this:

• Announce your new listing on Twitter
• Add your new listing to your Facebook profile and/or page
• Update your status on LinkedIn talking about your new listing
• Post a short, interesting video of your new listing on YouTube.”

* Note: In recent months, real estate professionals have been coming on board too on Google+ where you can include your blog links, home videos and photos, and have a nice way to target your circles of contacts.
Kristi Hines demonstrates 10 Google+ pages for the real estate industry.

While some professionals may find it beneficial to have presences on all of these social networking platforms, others may decide to pick and choose according to where they feel their client bases are more apt to spend time online. Regardless of your decision, probably the most important factor is ensuring that you can maintain and update all of these pages regularly.

Content Marketing for Real Estate

Where does content fit into the picture? Here are several helpful suggestions:

• Luis Galarza suggests sharing industry news, headlines, statistics, poll results on Twitter and Facebook.
• Angela Connor suggests creating an image gallery of every property and commenting on blogs in the real estate industry.
• Elisabeth Holby suggests that online social outlets allow real estate firms to not only post images and videos of their listings, but also “virtually show would-be home buyers around the neighborhoods and incorporate the personality of the company as well.”
• Ruth Ann Macklin suggests a number of content ideas such as: writing about home maintenance tips, local businesses, offering listing alerts, free market analysis, creating an eBook, hosting a contest with local businesses.

A Quick Glance at the Facts & Figures of 2011

The National Association of Realtors offers an in-depth annual technology report that includes a section on social networking. The survey conducted in September 2011 with associate brokers, sales agents, brokers, broker-owners, and managers reports some interesting findings.

Percentage of Use:
For starters compared to 2008, when only 33% of survey respondents were engaged in social media, the percentage reported by respondents in 2011 was up to 90% utilizing social media marketing.

Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube were the most used social media tools among respondents.

31% indicated that they learn about new technology for real estate through real estate blogs, and 14% said “other”which included company webinars, technology blogs and social media.

Valuable Technology Tools
The most valuable technology tools were tablets (e.g. iPad, Galaxy Tab), Mobile  desktop tools which included Trulia and Zillow’s apps, and CRM solutions like Top Producer. Respondents indicated that these tools make their job easier and keep them mobile and “in touch.” A few others emphasized that the tools were time-savers and increase productivity.

Over one-third of respondents indicated that they’ll purchase or replace a tablet and smartphone in the next twelve months.

Breakdown of Smartphones
The three operating systems for smartphones were Android OS 35%, iPhone OS 28% and Blackberry OS 18%.

Technology Dollars
50% of agents and 47% of brokers spent between $500-$2,000 on technology for their business in the last 12 months.

Comfort Level
Comfort level with social media s always an important consideration. Respondents indicated whether they were extremely comfortable, comfortable or somewhat comfortable:

Extremely comfortable: 25% of brokers and 33% of agents

Comfortable 30% of brokers, 30% of agents

Somewhat comfortable
 31% of brokers, 21% of agents

Lead Generation
61% said Internet was very important for lead generation, 31% said social networking and blogs only 11%

See the National Association of Realtor’s full Realtor Technology Survey Report 2011.

Real Estate Social Marketing in 2012

Todd Carpenter,  Director of Digital Engagement at the National Association of Realtors, recently spoke with “social-media-savvy real estate professionals” to learn what new tools or trends will have the biggest impact on the real estate industry in 2012.

Social becomes normal
Dan Green, loan officer with Waterstone Mortgage, says, “Brands/brokers will begin actively amplifying their individual agents’ marketing messages. Expect top-down ‘messaging’ within a brokerage for agent Web sites, blogs, and social network presence.”

Ines Hegedus-Garcia, a Miami realtor with Majestic Properties, says, “2012 will not be about the best and newest shiny objects, but instead about how we, in the industry, are able to stay atop technology and able to integrate it into our daily business in a way that is useful. The consumer has learned to ask the right questions, and agents will have to show proof of successful business practices which incorporate technology.”

Search becomes more socialized
Ginger Wilcox, head of industry training at Trulia, says, “In 2012, more consumers will want social proof that their agent is an expert and trusted in their field. Having strong online profiles with customer recommendations will be essential to gain the trust of connected consumers.”

Rise of mobile
Ginger Wilcox predicts, “We saw unprecedented growth in mobile in 2011 and will continue to see mobile explode in 2012, especially with smartphones being the norm and inexpensive tablet options expanding and becoming mainstream…Mobile solutions for real estate pros will be essential to help agents connect with mobile consumers.”

Bill Lublin, managing member for the Social Media Marketing Institute says, The increased use of mobile by consumers will drive agents and companies to create mobile Web sites (as opposed to mobile compliant), participate in local review sites (to demonstrate their connection to the local community), and provide consumer tips on location-based services like Foursquare, Foodspotting, Yelp, etc.”

The ‘Great Data Debate’ Heats Up
Pointing out how in 2011, Edina Realty made a decision to withhold their  syndication feeds to third-party sites like realtor.com, Trulia, and Zillow, Bill Lublin states, “Large and small companies alike will be watching Edina to see what happens as they leave aggregators’ sites in an attempt to drive consumers directly to their company site.

A New Focus on Conversion
Jeff Corbett, chief thinking officer for XVentures says, It’s more about who is in your sphere of influence than how many. The focus must be on networking and prospecting practices that can convert into real business.”

Dan Green, loan officer with Waterstone Mortgage, predicts, “In 2012, the agents with the best lead-generation tools plus lead-management tools win. It’s not just *how* you earn a lead, but what you do with it once the lead’s in your CRM.”

You can see Todd Carpenter’s full post on the Speaking of Real Estate Blog.

Final Thoughts
The real estate social marketing landscape looks even more promising for 2012.  Between the existing technology (desktop and mobile apps), increasing comfort level amongst people in the profession on various social networking platforms, and the creative uses of content, we think this is an industry that is positioned to grow and mature with their social marketing efforts.

Are you using social media for your real estate business? Tell us about your experiences and predictions for 2012.

photo by Dan Nickolls

In reviewing our posts of the past year, we took a look at the ones which created the most buzz, and were read and commented on most.  In case you missed any of them first time around, they’re listed here with a brief description. We hope you enjoy reading and look forward to seeing you here on these pages in 2012. Best wishes for a Happy and Healthy New Year!

LATISM 2011 RECAP: My Get Started on Facebook Presentation
A recap of GigCoin’s CEO, Julie Diaz-Asper’s, LATISM11 presentation on how to get started on Facebook and tips for accelerating your fan base growth on Facebook.

Social Media Marketing Trends for 2012: 6 Marketing Pros Share Their Thoughts About What We Can Expect to See in the New Year
Insights from marketing pros Sergio Balegno, Shama Hyder Kabani, Cindy King, Joe Pulizzi, Mike Volpe, and our very own, Julie Diaz-Asper.

Tips for Designing a Successful Facebook Content Strategy
Discussion of recent findings regarding Facebook and 3rd Party APIs, followed by tips for how to get noticed on Facebook by developing a Facebook content strategy.

Social Media & Professional Services: Positioning Your Business to Build Long-Term Relationships
How to use social media to position your business to build long-term relationships, with a special look at the social media efforts of Capgemini.

Social Media Marketing and Book Publishing: Lessons to Help Generate Book Buzz
Creating book buzz, shared experiences & lessons learned from book authors who’ve used social media marketing to launch the publication of their books.

How to user Twitter for Business: Expert tips from Cathy Larkin
Twitter expert Cathy Larkin @CathyWebSavvyPR shares her top tips for using Twitter for Business.

Jimmy’Z Kitchen: How to get super fans, not just likes
How a popular restaurant used social media to increase awareness and business. A look at tips for using Yelp, Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook as a restuarant.

Personality Works on Facebook: How CarWoo reached 100,000+ Likes
CarWoo (an online car-buying marketplace) has made their Facebook page a fun place to hang out and not just for car lovers.

How To: Use Social Media Marketing to Generate Leads and Create New Business Opportunities
Examples of successful social media marketing campaigns with take away messages you can begin to apply right away!

Optimizing Social Media Content for Search Engines: What Works Best?
Discussion of social networking profiles and which are better for SEO.

Facebook Fan Pages and Call-to-Actions: A Roundup of B2B Pages
A look at Facebook landing tabs and how businesses are utilizing call-to-actions. Is there enough of a reason for a user to click “like”?

Thanks for taking a look at our most popular posts of 2011. If you’re not already receiving posts in your email inbox or a fan on Facebook, why not take a moment now and visit the right-hand side of the page to subscribe…and with a matter of a couple of clicks you’ll be good to go, connect and grow with us in 2012!

Networks are changing settings frequently, and it takes a concerted effort to stay up-to-date on the privacy settings of the various social networks where we engage.  As a result, more and more users are looking into the data use policies of networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

The challenge for maintaining privacy isn’t only being felt by individuals. Companies are finding that they need to address and safeguard the privacy of their users, and establish ways to communicate their social media privacy policy.

In this post, I’ll introduce you to individuals and organizations who are particularly tuned into the privacy interests of businesses and their social network users with a number of excellent tips that you can put to immediate use.

Social Media Privacy Policies

Joanne Furtsch, Policy & Product Architect at TRUSTe provides privacy advice for companies using social networking tools.
 She writes,
“Your privacy considerations should start with an understanding of how the social networking feature works, including what information your website passes to the social network and vice versa.” She suggests:

• Make sure that the disclosures in your website privacy policy fully explain the functionality of the social networking feature on your website. This is especially important in cases where the social networking feature you use on your site collects consumer information.
• The privacy policy disclosure around social networking features should describe the type of feature used, the purpose of the feature, and what happens if the user chooses to use the feature versus simply visits a page that offers the feature.
• Depending on your privacy promises and the information being transferred (personal, sensitive, etc.) you may need to provide a specific opt-out or opt-in option for consumers to feel comfortable.

Policy Recommendations

The Direct Marketer’s Association provides three recommendations to businesses:

• Post your privacy policy in a prominent location on the site so that it is clear and conspicuous.
• Advise individual users about your privacy policies, data deletion policy and the steps users should follow to change their privacy settings, to deactivate or to delete their accounts.
• Prevent games, quizzes and other applications developed by third parties from accessing personally identifiable information from an individual user without their knowledge and advance permission.

Add Social Media Specifics to Existing Internet Privacy Policies

Chris Apgar, CISSP, president of Apgar and Associates, suggests that organizations already have an Internet and e-mail usage policy in place, and social media specifics can simply be added to this policy.


 For ideas about policies and guidelines, check-out Cindy King’s post.

Privacy Do’s and Don’ts

Marilyn Prosch, Associate Professor and co- founder of an online data privacy lab at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, provides ten tips for companies:

• Don’t collect data just because you can. It could very well become a liability if you lose it.
• Don’t keep data longer than you need it for a business purpose just because data storage is cheap. Again, it can become a potential liability.
• Be honest with your customers about what data you collect and how you do (or don’t) protect it. The Federal Trade Commission will hit you with unfair and deceptive trade practices if you say one thing and do another.
• Know what laws (international, federal, state) and regulations apply to your business and make sure you are in compliance.
• Appropriately destroy all forms of personal information, including hard copies. Many a company has been fined for inappropriately placing forms, prescription bottles and other items into dumpsters, where dumpster divers have retrieved them.
• Appoint a person or team in your organization, regardless of the size, to be responsible and accountable for protecting personal information.
• Before you decide to collect a piece of information, determine its shelf life, so you don’t keep it forever. If you don’t define this, then it very well may become data pollution (unnecessary data that’s potentially toxic).
• Periodically review your data practices and update them when needed.
• Make sure the security practices are also up-to-date, appropriate and being followed.
• Train your employees on what is and is not appropriate access, use and disclosure of personal information residing in your database. If you don’t train them, they can’t possibly know and will likely inappropriately disclose data.

Adherence to Internet Laws

Joy Butler, attorney and author of The Cyber Citizen’s Guide Through the Legal Jungle: Internet Law for Your Online Professional Presence cautions about four activities:

• The use of collecting personal data from children under 13 with their parents’ consent.
• Neglecting to tell customers when their sensitive data has been breached.
• Ignoring promises in your own company privacy policy.
• Failing to honor US-EU Safe Harbor Commitment.

Privacy Tips for Marketers

Jay Cline, CIPP, president of Minnesota Privacy Consultants provides advice for marketers who may be feeling caught between a rock and a hard place–waiting for their IT or legal departments to brief them on the privacy aspects of their planned campaigns.  He provides five tips for marketers:

Change the mindset

Be curious about the privacy interests of your target audience. Start adding privacy-related questions to your research of target audiences. Tap into the data and use it to your advantage to generate higher engagement and retention. Lead with privacy instead of ducking from it.

Build a Privacy Impact Assessment into your Brand


Convert your target audiences’ privacy interests into a “privacy impact assessment” (PIA). A good PIA is a decision-tree-based checklist of questions that asks you how your product or campaign is going to collect, store, use, disclose and destroy personal data.

Add a micro-notice to that micro-site
One-page micro-sites have become the crossroads of social media marketing campaigns. They’re the landing pages for consumers who’ve clicked on a link, and they bring them one step closer to completing the call to action. Add a short privacy notice or “micro-notice” to that landing page. Tell the consumer why you need the data you’re asking for and that you won’t share it with others for marketing purposes, and include a link to your full privacy notice.

Create privacy self-service
Offer your audience members privacy as a service. This could include options such as just-in-time privacy notices; a personal profile and permission-management center, and live chat for privacy questions.

Test and refine
Run “A/B” tests, where you take one privacy approach with audience segment A and another with audience segment B. Document your findings and lessons learned, and keep them available in a shared area so that your future campaigns can start a leg ahead.

What social media privacy policies does your company have in place? How have they helped your business? Let us know your comments in the box below.

Image by Alan Cleaver

Last week, LATISM got together in Chicago for LATISM11 to celebrate and share with each other what we have learned. It was an incredible event, with great speakers, parties and lots of bonding among the 450+ attendees. Ramon de Leon wowed the crowd as usually and we had the great privilege of hearing Dolores Huerta speak. We even got a live demo of the very new Google+ Pages and great tips via  Eliana Murillo of Google.

It was also great to see very large and reputable organizations support LATISM like PBS, Toyota, Johnson & Johnson, Univision and the other sponsors pictured below:

I was asked to share my top tips for getting started using Facebook to reach and engage your audience. Here is a quick summary of my presentation: