The problem is that some people came from facebook.com, and others come from a mobile version of Facebook.  We want to combine all the traffic from all the versions of Facebook and view it clearly on a single graph. To do this we will use Advance Segments.

Create a new advance segment,  then add two conditions:

source containing facebook.com

or

source containing m.facebook.com

And save it under a name like “Traffic from Facebook”

Now you can see all the Facebook referred traffic in one place.  You can do this again for Twitter, combining the various Twitter urls:  twitter.com, t.co, hootsuite, tweetdeck, ow.ly, and bit.ly

Now you can compare Facebook vs Twitter referred traffic on a single graph, to help you figure out where you are getting your best marketing return.

Do you need help with Google Analytics or Social Media Marketing? Contact Us!

As some of our team was brainstorming on a project, I suggested using a QR code to redirect users to more complete information on the web, but was told, “We already have an app for that.”

Maybe I’m not as smart with my smart phone as I should be, but I only want to download so many apps and stick to the ones I use the most. I see apps kind of like all of the store cards than overstuff my wallet and clutter up (and break off of) my keychain. They get out of control in a hurry.

My question is, if you’re out for lunch, dinner or shopping and you think you a deal exists but you’re not sure, how do you look for that information?

First you need an original animation in the size of the banner.  The space consists of five 125 x 125 squares. So the width of the banner is 5 times 125, or 625 pixels.  Technically there are four 15 pixel spacers between the squares, so your final banner dimensions will be 685 px x 125 px.

Below are two of the final squares in our banner, with the 15px spacer.

For our Urbane Media banner, I used Adobe Flash to create the original movie file.

NOTE: For better quality, don’t save your flash animation as an animated gif, wait to do this in Photoshop because it does a better job.  Instead save as a jpeg sequence or a quicktime movie from Flash.

Next import your movie into Photoshop for chopping.  Now it’s a matter of cropping and saving the 5 squares.  For an easier time, set your crop tool to 125 x 125.  If your images are but a pixel to large, they won’t animate on your G+ page.

To get the spacing right, I copied and pasted a screenshot of another Google Plus page to use as a template.

after each crop, export as a gif by going to “export for web and devices” under the file menu.

Now upload them into your Google Plus page in order from left to right, and you’ve got yourself a brand in motion!

As a journalist and writing news stories several steps beyond the inverted pyramid style of writing, I’ve gotten in the habit of being too objective and distant in my writing. It doesn’t always make for the most entertaining online magazine content, so I began taking my own advice.

Writing the way you talk makes the writing process easier, more enjoyable and faster. Also, it makes your message more enjoyable to read and lends the type of credibility that tells readers that you’re a real person. You should never intentionally sell yourself, your product, your company, or your ideas when writing a blog, but you should definitely share information.

Remember, if your speech is anything like mine, grammatical errors slip in, and I can sometimes wander off onto another topic. Give whatever you write a rest, come back to it, and clean it up. Having a second set of eyes look over your writing helps to polish it off, too.

Happy writing!

One thing that marketers are doing today that they never really did before is Curating Content. In search of the Holy Grail, digital marketers are constantly posting links to twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn all in hopes of getting a share, a retweet and a click through.

When Did We Become So Share Conscious

Somewhere along the line someone convinced marketers that the more content you attempt to share you may pick up some business. There is so much content being shared today it is dizzying. And with that, most of it is boring, boring, boring. Many marketers are sharing the same stuff we are all already reading every day, and to continue sharing that stuff to your audience makes you a commodity.

Why Are You So Boring

As with most businesses and brands, they are boring, and so is most of the content sharing and content marketing going on. We are flooded with content being pushed at us by our social connections. At what point is this just more Spam, but instead of coming from businesses it is coming form our Social Connections.

While Everyone Can be a Publisher Doesn’t Mean They are Good at It

Digital Marketing, Content Curation, Social Media Marketing or whatever the name of the day is has an inherent positive, which is that anyone can do it. It has a very Low Barrier to Entry. But that is a double edged sword, and the ramification of that is increased noise in the social space.

Content Curation

We penned an article over on Jason Fall’s Social Media Explorer blog a while back on Content Curation titled Is Content Curation the New Community Builder;

Media Curation is a complex subject among media professionals, with notable professionals both for and against the practice. Mark Cuban, a well known owner of media properties and sports teams has said that media Aggregators are “vampires” and content creators that don’t ban these so-called vampires are “showing their neck” and likely to have their lifeblood sucked try. Cuban is not alone in this position, many media companies including Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp have taken a stance against content aggregation and curation.

As with many things, Content Curation is a skilled trade, and is much more than reposting links to stories, and adding your own new tag line. If we are all reading the same stuff, what does make for a good “Share”? What should the “Sharable Rules” be? And, are we actually doing more harm to our brand by “Over Sharing”?

We would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

We’re pretty fortunate at Urbane Media to have a crack team of professional writers who provide interesting and timely stories that are relevant and interesting to our readers. Many people come to the online magazines we produce in much the same way they read commercial local newspapers and magazines.

Of course, we have plenty of inbound links that drive traffic back to the websites that funnel the dollars and cents for our clients, but our stories also create an image for our clients that readers can relate to and gets them talking about and sharing these stories with their friends, family and colleagues who, we hope, come back to our online magazines to read the story and go through the sharing cycle again.

One story in particular that has gained some nice attention is my story in The Urbane Life on Bakon Vodka making its Michigan debut at Baconfest Michigan. Of course, vodka and bacon have nothing to do with luring residents to the Urbane Apartment communities, but stories and events like this are of interest to our target market. Plus, being open-ended with our content gives reasons for people to come back day after day. Besides, no one wants to be sold.

We wouldn’t be doing this if it didn’t work.

We have logged nearly (2,000) blog posts at The Urbane Life on line magazine. The blog continues to be the hub of our social marketing at Urbane Apartments. From day one I have been adamant that writers can write about anything they are passionate about. We love to highlight local businesses and events, and generally focusing on things that our target demographic may find interest in. The only thing that the writers cannot write about is Urbane Apartments. In fact, other than an inbound link at the end of the article, there was nothing about our apartment business anywhere on the site. I think that is a missed opportunity, and we are changing our direction.

We have added a series of opt in information tabs about our core business, including photos, videos, and reviews. Blog readers can take a look, or not, but the information is out there in one more spot to help with brand awareness.

Pictures and Graphics are all the Craze 

We have been late to the Pinterest party. Many of our multifamily peers have touted the SEO benefits of this picture craze for some time now. We have started setting up  accounts,”pinning” and creating friends and followers. We are taking the approach to NOT push the traffic to the parent web site, but instead push the traffic to the blog site.

At the Urbane Lab, we test market things on our own portfolio first to see what works best. What we have done with our Urbane Life experiment, with significant, measurable results is create Pinterest Boards that match the same categories as are on the blog. As the girls “pin” pictures, the url of the picture is changed to match that of the corresponding url of that blog category, therefore driving the participant that clicks through back to our blog, onto the landing page of that specific category.

 We are seeing two exciting trends with this;

1) Our direct web traffic to our UrbaneApts.com is increasing every month, meaning folks know us and are looking for us specifically. Brand Awareness is growing each month.

2) More and more prospects are telling us they are a Facebook Fan and follow us there. This is a big deal, as they already know us (or they think they do) before seeing our product. We have created a virtual connection way, way before the sale.

3) The leasing funnel has expanded, meaning prospects know us months or years before either A) Leasing from us, or B) Recommending us to a friend.

The Sales Funnel is Expanding 

My point being, companies need to respond to that lead nurturing in a cost effective way. That said, done right, you evidentially create a leads funnel large enough to self support your business leads needs. We believe Pinterest is an excellent lead nurturing tool.

Today, that’s more true than ever with many businesspeople having to share the responsibilities of content marketing.

I’ve been asked to proofread for and coach many such people who have fallen into this role. In most cases, they do pretty well. Some want to hide under a desk and say, “I feel so stupid,” if I move around some paragraphs or correct some grammatical or style errors. They shouldn’t feel that way. I write hundreds of stories a year, and I wouldn’t expect to change a tire with the same swiftness as a tow truck driver or mechanic, or put the perfect crust on a crème brulée as a pastry chef. Besides, I’ve had many a copy editor red pen my work. I don’t like seeing red ink on my copy.

If there’s one thing I suggest to new writers it’s to get a copy of the AP Stylebook, otherwise known as the journalists’ bible. It’s a guide to those nit-picky things that seem to get many people doubting themselves on proper use of things like words, abbreviations, and titles such as:

Months: An easy way to remember if a month is abbreviated is if ends in “ber.” September-February (Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec., Jan. and Feb.) and August (Aug.) is always abbreviated. March-July are always spelled out.

More than/over: More than is preferred with numbers. Over generally refers to spatial elements.

Titles: Capitalize formal titles only when they come before an individual’s name. If it falls after the name, make it lowercase.

Composition titles: Magazine and newspaper titles aren’t italicized, just capitalized. For composition titles such as books, video games, films, TV shows, works of art, speeches, etc., use quotation marks.

Numbers: Write out numbers one through nine; use figures for 10 and higher.

That/which: AP says to use that and which in referring to inanimate objects or animals without names. Use that for essential clauses that are important to the meaning of the sentence. I remember the day that we met. Use which for nonessential clauses, where the pronoun is less necessary, and use commas.

Farther/further: Farther refers to physical distance. Further refers to an extension of time or degree.

Toward: Toward never ends in an s. The same rule goes for forward, backward, upward, downward, etc.

Street addresses: Street, avenue, and boulevard are abbreviated only when part of a numbered address. Road and other related causeways such as court, drive, lane, way, etc. aren’t abbreviated.

State abbreviations: AP doesn’t follow standard zip code abbreviations (MI for Michigan). Each state has its own abbreviation (Michigan = Mich.). However, eight states — Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, Texas, and Utah — aren’t abbreviated. I still keep a list of abbreviations taped on my desk.

For about $20, you can get the book version or a mobile app. It’s well worth avoiding the embarrassment of making a “stupid” mistake.

It allows us the opportunity to peer into the window of other businesses world. Kind of like window shopping electronically, except what you see is how the business behaves.

We can learn things about companies we didn’t know, particularly those practicing transparency via blogs. This of course is also true of individuals. On occasion we are fortunate enough to meet our virtual friends in real life. It is always a fun experience, and one I haven’t done enough of in the past.

This week I was able to spend the day in St Louis with Mike Brewer from Mills Properties and the Mills Social Marketing Team they have created dead center in the middle of their apartment management company. To put this relationship into perspective, Mike may well be one of the first guys I started to follow on line, even pre Twitter. Mike has been blogging his thoughts and passion surrounding multifamily marketing and apartment operations way, way before most anyone else I know. Remember Squido, that may have been the first place I saw his tag line, “Out to make a dent in the multifamily universe” You can find Mikes blog, MBrewer Group  here. It is a definite follow. After following Mikes blog and writing for some time he invited me to provide content on his blog. That was my first crack at blogging, and I really appreciate that opportunity many years ago.

Mike will tell you that his Mills Team were purposefully a little late to the social party. That may be true based on Mike’s timeline, however from what I saw this week, these guys have it together. If you have read or followed Mike you know he is a huge Tom Peters fan, and he has applied what Peters used to refer to long ago as a Skunks Works Project.

 Tom Peters bestseller, In Search of Excellence, published in 1982, primary idea espoused was that of solving business problems with as little business process overhead as possible, and empowering decision-makers at multiple levels of a company. That is in fact exactly what Mike has orchestrated at Mills with his social marketing team.

It was great meeting and interviewing the team for an assignment for an upcoming article in Multi-Housing News, which will run in the July issue titled Marketing “Social/Local/Mobile.” So, we aren’t going to give much away here for the article, except that what really hit me when I arrived at Mills office in St Louis was the size of the internal department that these guys have created. A dozen or more folks head up the writing for Mills Blog; St Louis Neighborhoods.

Mike has somehow convinced the financial folks and the fair housing folks of this well run apartment management company that digital apartment marketing does matter, and creating their own Branded Media is a great idea to drive leasing leads. More to follow on all of that, but I want to leave you with this thought.

While at lunch our converstaion drifted off to our most favorite topic, the ILS (Internet Marketing Service) and all of the algid value add things they are doing in the social space, when Mike made the comment that no longer are other apartment communities our biggest competitors, as that is now the ILS, as we all complete for digita domination in a geographical area. Kind of ironic how what was once a marketing partner is now a competitor.

Great Job Mills, one company Doing It Right!  

Recently, we got some great hits when we reached out to reporters and editors about the QR code/pizza dinner perk for new move-ins and the new overnight stay unit at Urbane on Washington in WWJ Newsradio’s Great Lakes Innovation and Technology Report (GLITR), Royal Oak Patch, The Oakland Press and The Detroit News.

In years past, I’ve always thought press coverage was wiser investment and much more efficient way to elicit a call to action to customers and lends a stronger sense of credibility to potential clients than advertising. Now, it also provides some strong content to share in your social media messages.

Also, there’s something that’s powerful about someone else telling your story an sharing it with the world. A media campaign is something every business should do at least once a month.