FACT: Basic marketing principles are just as important online as they are offline. For me the beauty in online lies in the fact that you can target your market even better and get a better indication of return on investment through analytics’s than offline.

The harsh reality is that all the marketing in the world will not save what you are selling if there is not a market for it, so how sure are you that you have a market?

It is absolutely vital that you have a marketing plan for both your on and offline marketing efforts, without a plan you are without direction and doomed to fail because you will end up chasing your own tail.

So the 5 MUST knows of any marketing plan are:

1. Who is your target market? It is impossible to market to everyone, you must specialise and FOCUS on a group of people or as we call it a niche. Unless you are selling a product everyone uses like deodorant (even here you have a division between men or women). You need to know the age span of your clients, their income group, how they relax, why your product would be of interest to them, in fact get as much info about your ideal client as possible.
2. What motivates your target market? Why do they want to buy a house in your neighbourhood? What finally drove the to finally making the decision to purchase your product and to purchase from you. Ask your past clients why they bought and why they bought from you. If they give you a fact ask them to rather describe the emotion that fact evoked in them.
3. Where does you target market get their information from? Lets face it you cannot preach to the choir at the local pub, you are much more likely to find them at the local church. And don’t make a mistake the choir is exactly whom you need to preach to because they are the one’s interested in what you are selling. Find out where your target client hangs out, on and offline, target these areas to focus your marketing message to.
4. Why should your target market buy from you? That’s right what do you have that the next guy does not have. What is your unique selling proposition? People buy from people, give your prospect good reason to trust and like you and they will buy from you. How do you position yourself in the market? You must become the GOTO guy for your market, the true area specialist. THE MORE PROBLEMS YOU SOLVE FOR  YOUR CLIENT THE MORE LIKELY THEY ARE TO BUY FROM YOU AND STICK WITH YOU.
5. What does your other clients say about you? It is far more effective and believable what someone else say you are the greatest, just think for yourself, how many times have you made decisions to go with someone because of a friends recommendation? So make sure you get testimonials highlighting how you solved other clients problems and your prospects will be far more inclined to believe that you can solve their problems.

So, make sure you know your market, their likes, dislikes, fears, pains and motivations. Then establish whether your product will full-fill any of those needs then and only then you should even consider investing time and money in it. NEVER spend your time or money until you have answered the above questions.

It is easier to change direction before you spent the big bucks and if the idea is not viable, cut your losses and move onto the next big thing, don’t be a fool because you know what they say about a fool and his money.

As always, please share the article with your friends and all comments are welcome…

BUT if you want to earn the big money and be your own boss then you better acquaint yourself with the most effective marketing and selling techniques available, otherwise you are going to have a very tough time, believe me.

This article to day is all about what I believe it the ultimate marketing tool in real estate marketing today – the local blog, a showcase of the neighbourhood, the happenings, the businesses and the people, it’s timeless and serves you 24/7.

We also look at further education and books to read, lets face it when you work for yourself you NEVER stop learning and trying new ideas to help you succeed, it’s as simple as that.

If you’re a real estate blogger, you have undoubtedly heard the experts sing the praises of hyper-local blog posts. And you may be a great hyper-local blogger yourself. But, I saw a post recently on (what a surprise!) Active Rain that was written by Jeff Dowler, and he gave me a new perspective on those type of posts.

After attending Ross Hair’s Social Media Marketing Camp, he came away with the following: Make sure your hyper-local posts are timeless. Naturally, you want your posts to stay in search rankings – forever, if possible. So, when you are writing a hyper-local post, think about what you can do to make it relevant now and in years to come.

What Makes a Hyper-Local Post Timeless?

What can you do to make your posts timeless? Here are some ideas:

1. Write Posts About Your Communities – If you write about a community, that information will still be interesting to people researching potential neighborhoods for years to come. So, don’t concentrate entirely on current events in your communities – talk about the communities themselves. People will really thank you for that. As one who is often involved in researching communities to write content for clients – trust me - information about communities and neighborhoods is sorely lacking on the Internet.

Don’t ever think that what you know about a community is “common knowledge”. I’m constantly amazed that even city websites don’t help promote the city. Seems odd that the city lists their departments and contacts, garbage pickup schedules and meeting times for the City Council, for example, but they rarely talk about the city itself. I just don’t know what their development folks are doing; they’re not reading the website for sure.

Think of what you’d like to know about an area before you’d buy a house there, and keep in mind that someone researching on the Internet will have a very difficult time finding out what it’s really like.

2. Keep Your Posts Updated – To be timeless, you can’t have information from 5 years ago and expect that people will continue to find that information useful. A comment on Jeff’s post talked about going back and updating hyper-local posts. That’s a great way to add new content to the post to keep the search engines interested.

You could also create a tag called something like Atlanta Community Updates, and assign that tag to your community overview posts. Then, let’s say you post an update about a community each year – each of those posts would have something like this at the top: Follow SmallTown’s Evolution With Our SmallTown Community Updates (a link to the related tag). That way, you can keep fresh information at people’s fingertips.

Property Magazine

The Real Estate Industry has Improved Due to Apartment Marketing Property Magazine It is growing over and above other commercial real estate. The recovery that started in early 2010 is growing stronger. For those who haven’t heard of the real estate investment trust, it is formed by investing in mortgages or properties. …More at The Real Estate Industry has Improved Due to Apartment Marketing – Property Magazine

3. Date Your Event Posts - I guess this idea won’t keep all your event posts timeless, but you will be found easily for the latest one. Based on Google’s search suggestions, it’s obvious that people often attach a year to their searches where the timing is important. So, if your town has a Christmas Parade each year, write a post with the title: SmallTown Christmas Parade 2012. For events, things change. Different things will be happening each year, the event will be on different dates and may even be in different places. So, make sure that people don’t get frustrated trying to find the current information….More at From the Web: A New Perspective on Hyper-Local Blog Posts

Real estate SEO may help you advertise your new development communities better. Obtaining a better internet presence lures in more and more people to your site. Better website traffic signifies far more potential buyers for your new homes ……More at Real Estate SEO – New Methods in Online Marketing

For any real estate agent, real estate marketing is definitely necessary. Marketing is the best way to get people to realize what you are selling and in this….More at What Is Real Estate Marketing? | Destination Raleigh

Inman.com

MRIS and Imprev Announce Integrated Real Estate Marketing Center MarketWatch (press release) My Marketing Center will provide a vital marketing tool for MRIS’s “Gen M” (new generation) suite of real-time, integrated business tools, accessible by nearly 45000 Mid-Atlantic real estate professionals based in Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia, … Imprev to power MRIS marketing centerInman.comall 8 news articles »…More at MRIS and Imprev Announce Integrated Real Estate Marketing Center – MarketWatch (press release)

Suggestions To Keep in mind When You Are Marketing In The Real Estate Market http://t.co/4x4q2zZA

— GoldInsurance (Gold Insurance) (@GoldInsurance) Tue May 15 2012

Image by MikeBehnken via Flickr

Inexpensive guerrilla marketing campaign wows crowds http://t.co/Oktu6tnE

— LorettaDelsura (Lore Dezeure) (@LorettaDelsura) Tue May 15 2012

Never Cold Call: Alternative Sales Tool to… http://t.co/R2O2iusJ #agent #customers #effective #estate #marketing #method #person #real

— TipsforbeautyA (tipsforbeauty) (@TipsforbeautyA) Tue May 15 2012

Real Estate Does Not Have to Be In The Title

I am o.k. with him not being impressed yet. It took me a while to catch on to the importance of reading and keeping great books. I love reading a great book that inspires and drives me to achieve, to create and to grow. So I am always quick to point out to not only my children, but to others as well, that the title of the book has really nothing to do with the lessons it can teach us.

I am not a huge fan of the real estate investing genre mostly because I find much of the background of the writers to be suspect and thin. I am also not one to get caught up in glitz and glamor of fad techniques that many book titles espouse. I have learned my lessons hard as a real estate investor and simply don’t care to read about ‘No Money Down’ techniques or someones explanation of how they made it ‘Rich’ using some obscure method of entities, buybacks, creative financing and purchase options.

Don’t take that wrong. I am not saying that you cannot find good and valuable information in some of those books and I am not saying that every author that writes real estate titles is selling potions and pipe dreams. I just find it hard to read how-to-books today when all the inspiration I need is right in front of me. Never before has it been easier to find success in the real estate investing arena and it has never been easier to fail!

What I am saying is that the title does not have to include the words real estate investing in order for you to learn valuable lessons as an investor. Here are five books that are on my shelf that sit right in the middle of my real estate investing section so that my kids never get the wrong idea about what to read to be successful.

I am a big believer is education. Every once in a while I write articles about sites, or resources or even books that I think every investor and business person should read. I am not sure if there is a better way to really get focused and be sure we are making smart decisions and putting ourselves in position to have long-term success. We have to continue to educate and learn. I would love to hear your favorite books that help keep you pointed in the right direction!…More at 5 Books That Keep Me Focused As A Real Estate Entrepreneur

So go ahead and share this article with those you love…

I have to thank Gerhard van Rensburg (Bowtie Solutions) and Andre du Toit (The Big Positive Guy) for their invaluable input and assistance in spreading the word amongst real estate professionals both principals and agents. Many thanks also to REBOSA and IEASA Western Cape for allowing me to post links to the survey in their Facebook groups and pages.

All in all, this survey has been presented to in excess of 4000 real estate professionals via Facebook, LinkedIn, my blog and direct e-mails.

These are the results… 

As you will notice we asked most of the participants involved in the industry to participate to attempt to get a balanced overview that is representative of the whole industry and not just a segment. Whether or not we succeeded is up to you to let us know.

Judging from the answers above, only about a third of real estate professionals are moderate to happy with their current marketing plan.

It seems that a whopping 83.3% of agents realise that they can no longer rely on the office to do all the marketing. It is a fact that top agents have 10 and more ways through which they market themselves.

Less than a third have a fixed marketing budget, which is a BIG problem because, in all honesty, you can ONLY expect results from regular and consistent marketing, a little here and a little there gets you nowhere…

It seems that the bulk spends between 5% and 15% on a marketing budget, with only 20%  of property professionals spending between 20% and 30%, so if your results are not where they should be, which part of the 20/80 rule do you fall into?

This is an interesting result with most of the respondents making use of the company website, for sale boards, e-mail marketing, flyers and newspaper adverts, which leaves a huge gap for the 10 and more marketing channels to dominate in the other areas.

This is an interesting one because if you don’t know where your leads are coming from how do you know where you are wasting your marketing budget?

Another interesting statistic, pretty much what I expected, with most agents being on Facebook. The next thing to look at now is how effective your time spent on these platforms are and how to get a better conversion from your efforts.

Another interesting statistic because, with 44% of agents not knowing where their leads are coming from, how accurate is the table above? What it does show is that less than 25% of leads come from, arguably, the most expensive and shortest lifespan marketing methods. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

This last statistic excites me, of course. More than 95% of the respondents indicated that they are aware of the FACT that they can get more leads with a more focused and targeted Internet marketing campaign.

In conclusion, thank you to all of you who participated, I really appreciate it. Please take a moment to let us know your opinion, use the comment box below…

My take from the above is the following; as a whole, real estate professionals are only partly satisfied with their current marketing efforts and results. They don’t have aggressive enough marketing budgets, especially for these tough times where we need to do double the work for half the results.

The market is slowly admitting that they are no longer getting the results they used to from their most costly and short lived marketing avenue, print. The market is also realising that to compete more successfully they will have to up their online presence, perhaps taking from the print budget to invest in the Internet budget.

So, please do leave you opinion here, it is valued…

IPC or Independent Property Consultants is a group of real estate principals working on a shared office model which means most of the IPC estate agents are in fact also business owners, with a vested interest in their clients well being.

You can see a selection of their properties on their Port Elizabeth Property website. Their offices in Newtonpark is managed by Marion Engelbrecht and here competent complement of admin staff to oversee the successful execution of every property on their portfolio from listing through to registration.

So if you are in the property market in the Western Cape, IPC Properties is your one stop property shop, if not from the head office, one of their franchise offices will be able to assist you…

Currently it’s estimated that more than 50% of search quesries are for video, the predictiona are that by 2015 90% plus of webtraffic will be video. As technology improves and becomes more accessable this is not an un-realistic prediction.

The alarming fact is that less than 10% of local business and real estate agents currently use video marketing as part of their marketing mix, can you spot a gap, here?

What is Online Video Marketing?

Online Video Marketing is just another way of marketing; you can upload videos about your business and testimonials about your services and products that will fly off the page and make customers want to patronize you! Give into the social media frenzy and start using it today, video marketing is free (aside from making the videos, you don’t have to pay to host them on the world’s largest media site) and you’ll be able to get your message out there faster than ever before.

What are the Benefits of Online Video Marketing?

• Get found faster by people who are interested in what you have to say.
• Share your content across a variety of platforms, from Reddit to websites and a variety of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook they’ll do your advertising for you.
• Video marketing online is MUCH cheaper than what you would pay for a traditional ad spot locally or nationally; you’ll also have the creative freedom to create the commercial you want and reach a much larger audience.
• With the potential to go viral and visibility for the rest of the life of the internet, it’s a hard thing to beat for the price and convenience.

How to Get Started with Online Video Marketing?

If you want to get started with online video marketing, you need to have a place online to call your own. Sign up for a Google Places site, a Facebook Fan Page, or even your own website. Then sign up for YouTube and begin making your own videos, post them to your sites online so people will find them. Make sure your videos are tagged right and in the right category, so people can find your videos even if it’s just by accident! Create unique videos that get your message across, and you’ll be on the road to video marketing like a pro!…More at Online Video Marketing Tips and Tricks

Some tips for businesses using videos on Pinterest! http://t.co/fEaOYkNo #Pinterest #SocialMedia #SMM

— RebeccaLouiseRL (Becky Dickinson) (@RebeccaLouiseRL) Thu May 10 2012

Video Marketing Tips: Yes, Video CAN Help Your SEO – Here’s How!…More at Video Marketing Tips: Yes, Video CAN Help Your SEO – Here’s How …

#smallbusiness #ukbusiness #Video_Marketing #VideoEmail #VideoMarketing Tips to Raising Your #B2B Online Video Results http://t.co/nMFHMtMZ

— Ballisticltd (Go-Ballistic.com) (@Ballisticltd) Thu May 10 2012

Video Marketing Tricks for Realtors RealtyBizNews At the end of the video, there needs to be a clear call to action. When making real estate videos, it’s important that they are shot in a quiet atmosphere. You need to ensure the lighting is dead right, and select appropriate background music for the … …More at Video Marketing Tricks for Realtors – RealtyBizNews

Great tips re power of #video and keyword research for #search #marketing. THX JJ! http://t.co/94kZnMx3 via @ducttape

— ShareOMarketing (Glenn Cressman) (@ShareOMarketing) Thu May 10 2012

ReelSEO Online Video News

Reuse, Recreate and Repurpose: Tips to Raising Your B2B Online Video Results … ReelSEO Online Video News I hadn’t heard of either but the topic was quite interesting, it was about Business-to-business online video and offered some tips an reusing, recreating and re-purposing existing content to better leverage that B2B online video presence, … …More at Reuse, Recreate and Repurpose: Tips to Raising Your B2B Online Video Results … – ReelSEO Online Video News

It’s a fact everyone is starting to wake up to the importance of video marketing for their business, there is a lot of information and tips in this article, make sure you get the facts and do something about it…

NB! Make sure you claim your free blogging planner at the end of this article….

FACT: Just like some half baked attempt at traditional marketing e.g. dropping pamphlets once and expecting business to flood in, Internet marketing and blogging is the same, you are deluded if you think that one blog post or property listing on a website will roll in the hot leads.

However it is a proven fact that regular blogging in a planned and focused manner brings in business and area control far better than other more traditional ways.

This is the one place online where the small guy, the hyper local business can still dominate Internet search and crowd attention ahead of corporates and portals, yes, your blog can turn you into the local authority for real estate or any other business in your area.

It is also a well researched and proven fact that people buy from people that they trust, sees as an authority, know on some level, all factors that a blog will help you overcome even before a physical meeting.

Did you know that world wide 56% of companies have increased their marketing spend on blogging and Social Media, 57% of companies reportedly have acquired leads from their blogs, so can you. 

FACT: Businesses who blog at least 20 times per month gets 5 times more traffic to their website and 4 times more leads than businesses who don’t blog.

So yes, you are right I am trying to prove to you why blogging can be a very powerful tool in your marketing mix. Add to this the fact that it is and online presence of you and your business that is there 24/7, 365 days a year and not just an expensive flash in the pan like a traditional advert in print or on the TV.

Do you know what the biggest problem is with most estate agents marketing plans? 

• Total lack of a plan or thinking they can do one or two things and rely on the principal for the rest. Wake up call – the top agents in any company have upwards of 10 to 15 marketing avenues….
• CONSISTENCY! This is a big one, any once off marketing is purely a way for you to sooth your own guilty conscious and has very little affect if at all on your success apart from slowly sinking you ship….
• Insanity – believing that the old methods repeated over and over again without results will deliver results, says it all….
• Impatience – expecting results too soon, this ties in with consistency. It is a proven marketing fact that a client has to see your message at least 7 times before they might take action or recognise it the next time around.
• In the end it is all about relationships and conversion, even your online and Social Media contacts need to be cultivated and met offline for the best results…

So my friend marketing is serious business and should be approached as such, you must have a plan and then you must implement that plan and award it a realistic budget, else get out of the sandbox, as simple as that…

The harsh reality is and will be that those who don’t will ALWAYS be surpassed by those who are willing to pay the price and half baked measures just makes it easier for the winners to take all the business…

So to this effect I’ve compiled  a Blogging Planner to help you with your Internet marketing efforts and it’s available to you for free once go to my Facebook page, like and share this post with your friends, click here to send me an e-mail telling me that you did and I will send you a free download link to this 10 page guide.

Without a doubt I believe that an area focused blog for an estate agent is the one marketing tool that can no longer be ignored. Will you make the effort and reap the rewards?

Yes, no? Yes you might have some work to do no you need to make sure you approach this markting strategy right to get any results from it, below you’ll find some compelling reading from leading authorities on the matter.

As business people most of us are the gusy getting tyhe job done and if you are anything like me I’m often halfway down the road before I might pause to have a look at the instruction manual (I’m working on it, believe me).

A properly constructed Social Media marketing strategy has the fuel to blast you business onto the next level and it has the longevity to keep on delivering 24/7, 365 day a year, provided you build your foundation right and manage it to grow. Below is a great article from Hubspot, make sure you click the link below to read more….

13 Ways to Make People Hate Your Social Media Presence

1) Launching a Private Social Media Account

Social media is about talking with and meeting new people. It’s right there in the name — social media. So why on earth would you set up a social media account and then set it to, gulp, private? That’s exactly what CVS did when they launched its CVS_Cares Twitter account. If you had tried to follow them around launch time, this is what you would have seen:

Seriously? Well, luckily they learned their lesson and now have a fantastic, active, public account! Remember, the benefits of using social media for your business are virtually wiped out when your social media accounts aren’t public — it prevents you from growing your reach, getting visibility for the content you publish, and growing referral traffic and leads back to your website.

2) Having a Disproportionate Follower:Following Ratio

Have you ever seen an interesting tweet or gotten an alert that someone new is following you on Twitter, open up their profile to learn more about them and see if they’re someone you’re interested in following, and see one of the following screens?

Let’s break down each scenario, starting with that first set of data. This particular tweeter is following 825 people, but only 21 people have decided to follow him/her back. Why might that be? Well, the account only has 8 tweets. That’s not enough content to convince people you’re a worthy account to follow. Instead of maniacally following hundreds of people with the hope that one follows you back, spend time writing interesting tweets, linking to great content that you and others have created, and retweeting others’ tweets to build relationships and earn your followers.

Now let’s take a look at the second set of data. 4,044 people are following this person, and he/she has only returned the favor for 5 people. What gives? We just got done talking about how social media is a social platform … and that doesn’t sound like a two-way conversation to me. In this particular scenario, there are enough tweets to back up the large followership, but a lack of reciprocation such as this can rub many people the wrong way and prevent you from growing your social media reach at the highest rate possible.

3) Writing Updates That Are Too Long

Did you know that Facebook lets you post an update that is 63,206 characters long? Nokia did. In fact, when Facebook expanded the character limit this past February, they took it as an opportunity to test the limits with this expansive status update on their Facebook page. If you’re counting, I cut it off a little less than halfway through.

Obviously, this was a joke (and a great marketing move!) by Nokia, but it certainly proves a point. Is anyone going to read so much text? If your updates are even approaching the length of the update in the screenshot above, get yourself an editor stat. In fact, data from Buddy Media shows that the ideal length for a Facebook update is less than 4 or 5 lines — posts under 80 characters receive 27% more engagement.

4) The Airing of Grievances

You know what no one cares about? This.

Late last year, a Boloco employee tweeted about disliking her job at Boloco. Bad move, but pretty common. What ensued was a dramatic Twitter firestorm from the Boloco CEO, a truncated version of which is pictured above. It all started when he took to firing the employee over Twitter, and then tweets shot back and forth about the situation, attracting horrified onlookers.

The lesson? Keep your personal business to yourself and off of social media — whether you’re an employee, or an employer. If your brand, or employees representing your brand, go on a rant like this, you look petty, unprofessional, and offer nothing of value to your audience. There’s not much else to say on this one except if you’re thinking about using your social media presence as a soapbox to rant and rave, step away from the keyboard and walk away. Your PR team will thank you for it!

5) Talking Smack About Competitors

It’s not just public rants that make you look petty. Attacking your competitors on social media makes you look just as unprofessional, and gives your more sensitive customers another place to send their business. Does anyone remember the Whole Foods case from the early to mid 2000s? For 7 years, Whole Foods CEO assumed an online identity completely unaffiliated with Whole Foods, visited forums and blogs, and posted complimentary comments about Whole Foods while smack talking a smaller direct competitor — who they then ventured to purchase. Aside from an SEC investigation when this was all uncovered, this type of behavior makes your organization look extremely unprofessional. Even if you’re tempted to draft a snarky Facebook update or pointed tweet, hold your tongue and rise above!…More at 13 Ways to Create a Cringeworthy Social Media Presence

Social media strategy on a shoestring budget http://t.co/l4jPObmK via @Oysterpromotion #SocialMedia #Marketing

— actinicdesigner (Shreadsoft Limited) (@actinicdesigner) Mon May 7 2012

What is Social Media Marketing?

While social media marketing is different things to different people, for organizational success with social media marketing some social media elements are critical. So, what IS social media marketing?

1. Social media marketing is community.

First and foremost, social media marketing is community. So, building your social media marketing strategy requires you build something that looks more like a friendship than a commercial relationship. In our study on commercial relationships, we found common elements of a commercial “friendship” were : self disclosure, trust, reciprocity, empathy, and collaboration. Notice, these elements look entirely different from traditional advertising.

Let your hair down and be a REAL person in social media. Don’t automate posts and don’t only share content about the organization. Share something about yourself.

2. Social media marketing is about creating value.

Traditional advertising is about creating awareness, interest, desire, and action (AIDA). Done right, traditional advertising also creates positive sentiment about the brand.

Social media is about creating value to consumers. But, how do you create value beyond solving customer problems with your products? Relieve their pain in other ways. For instance, you can share discounts and deals that reduce the cost of your products. But, you can go beyond this simple marketing device to create even greater value. Delta listens to Tweets from customers and provides customer service to displaced passengers. Best Buy funnels installation queries to idle employees. Dove creates a campaign to help women feel good about themselves even if they don’t look like a supermodel.

The keys here are knowing your customers and listening to them — something entirely different from traditional media.

3. Social Media marketing is testing and tweaking….

More at What is Social Media Marketing? 5 Things … – Business 2 Community

RT @Mallikarjunan: The 2 Most Powerful Words In Your Social Media Strategy http://t.co/JwbSbXRG #socialmedia

— GorankaR (Goranka Radojcic) (@GorankaR) Mon May 7 2012

Image by Social Media Max via Flickr

 

RT @MyDigitalVidya: Participants creating their Twitter Marketing strategy here in Muscat in our Social Media Workshop. http://t.co/NQRc5uLD #DVCamp

— Rohitsuri254 (Rohit Suri) (@Rohitsuri254) Mon May 7 2012

Always remeber, you need to be able to meassuer your return on investment and you must have a base, that you own and control from where you build and to which you send the traffic generated from your dsocial Media Marketing strategy.

There is tons of information out there about this subject, take your time before choosing your stategy, make sure it is one delivering results, use the comments box below to share ideas with me and I will gladly advise you.

Below is an infographic done by Gus van der Walt one of our account managers on Internet marketing statistics from around the web.

There are some very interesting and even surprising facts e.g. more than 40% of  Facebook users are older than 35 and companies that Tweet get 3x more leads from their blogs than those who don’t.

Make sure you get the facts on how many people skip TV adverts and my favourite blogs get 55% more traffic than websites but see for yourself.

So please hit the LIKE and TWEET buttons supplied on this page if you like what you read and want to share…

Why is it important to do do SEO? NOT just a bit on your website but across an entire Internet marketing campaign compromising numerous platforms. What I like about the book Optimize is it’s focus on wholesome SEO.

People are far more inclined to listen to you or do business with you if they see you as an authority on the matter, this FACT gives the switched on local businessman/women a great opportunity to rise above the competition online through simply positioning him/herself as the local authority on the subject.

Lets be realistic, how much return do you really get from you flyers and adverts in print media these days, it all cost a lot of money and it’s effectiveness has diminished drastically.

On the opposite side of the coin, if you are not getting results from the Internet it’s simply because you are doing it wrong, which is good news because get it right and you are at the dawn of a great new lead source.

Why would I use a term like SEO Cape Town in my articles? Why is it relevant to incorporate popular/relevant search terms into you online postings from property listings to Facebook postings.

Below is a recent blogpost by author Lee Odden  on the reason behind his book called “Optimize” that goes into detail into the subject of cross platform intergration and optimisation in a holistic way…

Image by IntelFreePress via Flickr

Essentially, Optimize it’s a more holistic view of content and social media optimization than what you’ll often hear at events, read in other books and online.

So many optimization efforts are focused on chasing exploits and loopholes only to be shut down by search engine quality efforts. Why not focus on quality in the first place?

Optimization using keywords and links is making room for a new set of signals and tactics resulting in the need for a more customer centric approach.

Many online marketers “get” the value of SEO, social media and even content independently, but working them together in a way that makes sense is often a challenge.

“Optimize” is organized in 3 phases (here’s a preview) and starts by answering why it makes sense to integrate search, social and content as well as practical examples for B2B, B2C, small business, a Fortune 50 and use case examples within organizations for marketing, public relations, customer service and recruiting.

There’s guidance on conducting audits for SEO, Content and Social Media for benchmarking and ongoing performance.

The second phase is by far the largest part of the book covering tactics and implementation ranging from customer segmentation and persona development to search and social keyword research, developing a content plan, on-page web page and social media optimization, social network development, promotion for links and measurement.

The third phase provides examples of bringing it all together and assessment for training and processes to scale an “Optimized State of Mind” to the rest of the organization.

Optimize is designed to be useful as a end to end guide for anyone that creates digital content in an organization that wants to extend the reach and usefulness of that content.

That includes marketing, PR, customer service and other departments. The customer centric approach works as well for B2B as it does for consumer focused companies.

Optimize is also a great reference tool for experts. At the same time, Optimize can be used as a reference for those marketers and communications professionals that are experienced in a particular area and not others. They get the “why”, they need the “how”.

At the moment, there are a handful of reviews, webinars and interviews about Optimize but more are coming.  So far, I’ve had several speaking events specific to Optimize in Minneapolis, New York and Chicago with another coming up this week in Leeds, UK and then Antwerp Belgium. In between I’ll be visiting a number of regional events.

I owe a ton of thanks to the TopRank Online Marketing team for chipping in and helping out in a variety of ways. We’re really building something special at our agency and the real growth is just beginning now in 2012.

Thank you too, to Mike Grehan, Vice President & Global Content Director for Search Engine Watch, ClickZ and Search Engine Strategies for writing an awesome introduction.

A HUGE thanks goes to the following search, social media and content marketing smarties for giving early endorsements of Optimize (many are best selling authors):

• Chris Brogan - Human Business Works, Author, Speaker
• Ann Handley - Chief Cupcake Officer, (Oops, I mean Chief Content Officer) MarketingProfs, Author, Speaker
• John Jantsch - Duct Tape Marketing, Author, Speaker
• Melanie Mitchell - SVP Search Marketing Strategy, Digitas, Author, Speaker
• Scott Monty - Global Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager at Ford Motor Company, Speaker
• Brian Clark - Copyblogger Media, Recovering Attorney, Entrepreneur, Speaker
• Joe Pulizzi - Junta42, Content Marketing Institute, Author, Speaker
• Mel Carson - Digital Marketing Evangelist, Community & Social Media Manager, Speaker & Blogger at Microsoft Advertising, Speaker
• Bill Hunt - BackAzimuth, SEO God, Author, Speaker
• Jay Baer - Convince & Convert, Author, Speaker
• Michael Stelzner - Social Media Examiner, Author, Speaker
• Amy Lamparske - Director, Digital Communications at Walmart
• David Alston - CMO Radian6, Speaker

I couldn’t imagine a more impressive group of people to give their approval for a book on this topic.

So many people have reached out to me, unsolicited to offer help to promote the book through speaking, interviews and social shares. I really, really appreciate that! After sharing insights with our readers for over 8 years it’s great to see that kind of appreciation to help get the word out about Optimize.

If you’d like a practical content marketing book that does a deep dive into both why and how, especially when it comes to SEO and Social Media Marketing, then I hope you’ll check out Optimize: Amazon – Barnes & Noble.…More at Optimize – How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing

RT @ksushil7: Optimize This! 10 Q&As on Customer-Centric Marketing with Lee Odden. http://t.co/UOZPYcUD

— coloredopinions (Vincent Harris) (@coloredopinions) Wed Apr 18 2012

I think it is vital that ALL business realise the importance of having a web precence that counts and the SEO Cape Town will no longer be a foreign term to them.

Job : Hercules CA – Search Engine Marketing Manager – to optimize processes. Mine .com’s onsite search logs and… http://t.co/2om8jmxB

— natural__foods (Natural Food Guide) (@natural__foods) Wed Apr 18 2012

It is a fact that more than 90% of your clients start their searches ONLINE using their computers, tablets and smartphones, will they find YOU?

WordPress SEO Tips – How to Optimize your WordPress Posts http://t.co/rnRo6Bfs

— shenikaree (Shenika Reeves) (@shenikaree) Wed Apr 18 2012

The SEO Cape Town initiative will benefit your business big or small, but so will it your competition so like always it’s a matter of who gets there 1st?

Within Internet marketing you find Blogging, Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), Paid advertising like PPC and Fcaebook ads, also free classified adverts and of course e-mail marketing and mobile marketing.

It is no longer a lone website somewhere in cyber space, no, it is now a full blown Internet marketing campaign the address all  aspects, starting with immediate traffic and lead generation through Social media and blogging moving into the long term.

FACT: Internet marketing is the most effective, cost effective marketing any business can invest in today.

It is also a fact that local business needs leads now and also in the longer term but mostly today, so any Internet marketing campaign has to address this urgently… 

Through recent years many people have learned the secrets of Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing. More and more sites have seen the effects articles have done for the traffic of their sites.

Some have even created sites devoted entirely to providing articles that could be read by their website visitors and have links that could lead to many sites that are related to the topics and subjects of the articles.

Several industries have heavily invested in and benefited from internet marketing and online advertising.

Some of them were originally brick and mortar businesses such as publishing, music, automotive or gambling, while others have sprung up as purely online businesses, such as digital design and media, blogging, and internet service hosting.

Technological advancements in the telecommunications industry have dramatically affected online advertising techniques. Many firms are embracing a paradigm that is shifting the focus of advertising methodology from traditional text and image advertisements to those containing more recent technologies like JavaScript and Adobe Flash.

As a result, advertisers can more effectively engage and connect their audience with their campaigns that seek to shape consumer attitudes and feelings towards specific products and services.

Internet marketers also have the advantage of measuring statistics easily and inexpensively; almost all aspects of an Internet marketing campaign can be traced, measured, and tested, in many cases through the use of an ad server.

The advertisers can use a variety of methods, such as pay per impression, pay per click, pay per play, and pay per action. Therefore, marketers can determine which messages or offerings are more appealing to the audience.

The results of campaigns can be measured and tracked immediately because online marketing initiatives usually require users to click on an advertisement, to visit a website, and to perform a targeted action.

Make sure you have the facts and a strategy you can get a free copy of “The TOP 5 Mistakes Business Make When Advertising Online” click on Local Internet Marketing for the link.