Thursday September 09 , 2010

Tim's Blog

What is Twitter?

Tim Bramwell

Jan 20 |07:03 AM

When I get to talk to people about what I do, I frequently get asked to describe the Twitter phenom. Most people have heard of it, but don't really understand it or grasp the power of Tweeting for business or personal branding reasons. Most of these conversations center around the initial concepts of using Twitter as a way for one person to tell another person what the author is having for lunch that day, or what type of shoes they are looking for. But Twitter can be (and is) used for much more.

The fact is that Twitter is an immediate delivery communications platform whose uses are just being understood and enhanced on a daily basis. For instance, major PR campaigns are created that use Twitter as a key platform for research and demand generation. 

So back to the heart of the issue -- What is Twitter?

Here's a link to a short video that should make it easier to understand Twitter's structure and basic functionality. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGbLWQYJ6iM&feature=player_embedded#

Once you get the basics, come back here periodically for ideas of how you can use it to achieve specific goals in your business.

(BTW, you can follow us on Twitter @creativerevenue, or if you are in the real estate sector industry specific information is published @mycondodox)

 

On Page Optimziation

Tim Bramwell

Jan 11 |06:15 AM

When a website is built by the web designer, it is important that the important pages be well optimized. This is often an overlooked area by web designers. Page optimization refers to the meta description, meta keywords, meta title, alt tags, and header tags. There are too many websites where these elements are ignored, which significantly increases the need for the entires sites's SEO. In other words, you can save a significant amount of money when you optimize important pages. It also helps the spiders to crawl your website and also index the pages properly.

Another element that plays an important role towards the success of a website is testing, with a focus on multi-variant testing. Multi variant testing allows desigenrs and develoeprs to measure which pages and page elements are are better preferred.

Multi variant testing allows the designer to determine which creative element or group of elements, including content, achieves the defined objectives. Multi variant testing is usually focused on key pages, such as the home page. For large, multi product sites, or those with online commerce functions, additional pages should be tested. When correctly implemented, important key performance indicators such as increased site traffic and page conversions can be achieved testing layout, background colors, content, site images, and landing pages. An important point to note is that all elements may not generate the same increase in conversions.
   

The Importance of Backlinks

Tim Bramwell

Jan 07 |07:02 AM

Your SEO strategy must include quality backlinks to incrase traffic and build link popularity.

As you gain more knowledge about search engine optimziation, you would have come across the word “backlinks” several times. For those new to SEO, you might wonder what backlinks are and why they are essential for the success of websites.

Simply put,  a Backlink indicates a link from another site to your website. These are also known as inbound links and their quantity indicates the popularity of the website. Backlinks are considered as votes by search engines, so based on the higher number of backlinks your website has and the higher the important of websites linking back to yours, will determine the trust rank your site is assigned.

Backlinks today are an important part of the SEO process because when you build quality backlinks, your website stands a higher chance of getting indexed faster by the search engines. Over the long term,  backlinks also help in boosting quality traffic to your site. in addition, building backlinks improves your page ranking and ultimately your ranking in the search engines, resulting in improving search visbility.

But it's not enough just to have lots of backlinks; The quality of backlinks that helps in achieving a better ranking in search engines. When calculating the relevance of a website to a particular keyword, search engines take into consideration the number of quality backlinks to that website.

A backlink is considered as a quality link if:
  1. It links back to your site with the keyword which you are optimizing for; and
  2. The website linking back to yours has the same theme as your website. When your website contains an inbound link from another site and that site has content related to your website, this inbound link will be considered as more relevant to your website. However, if this inbound link comes from a site that is totally unrelated to your site content, then it is considered as a less relevant backlink.
For instance, if you have a real estate website and you receive an inbound link from a property management, then this backlink will be considered more relevant and of higher quality when compared to a backlink from a skiboot manufacturer's website.

Today, search engines are watching for websites that build quality backlinks slowly over time. Though it is quite easy to maneuver links on webpage's in order to attain a high ranking, it is much tougher to manipulate search engines with inbound links from other sites. This is also one of the reasons for backlinks gaining increased importance in search engine algorithms. Search engines assessment for quality backlinks has become even tougher lately as there are some webmasters making use of unethical techniques and deceiving search engines to attain a higher ranking. These techniques are not only illegitimate but can also lead to your site getting banned.

Building quality backlinks could be a very time consuming and tedious process requiring patience and effort. However, it is a crucial step in creating blogs or any website since the quality and relevancy of backlinks can determine the success or failure of the site.
   

Updating your marketing in 2010 (for Real Estate Service Professionals)

Tim Bramwell

Jan 05 |00:53 AM

Now that we've started the new year, the thought of every self-employed real estate service provider (Realtor, property manager, mortgage broker, etc.) should be turning to "What do I need to improve my income this year?". Now is the time for reflection and determining what needs to be done to learn from past mistakes and ensure success for 2010.


I'm no different. As I have been talking with real estate service professionals over the past few weeks, I realize that less than 50% are working with a current marketing plan. When I ask what the goals are for the upcoming year, the responses are typically very general about 'getting more business' and/or 'improving income', without a supporting action plan. IMHO, if your goals are to get more business and improve your income, these aren't goals that need to be stated ... these are the underpinning of every business person's psyche and should be understood to be everyone's goals.

One constant that will impact the upcoming year is that the real estate industry is change  --- if it's not the regulatory side, then consumer buying habits are changing, the type and availability of product inventory, and vendors selling habits continue to change. For those that have been in the business for a few years, it's sometimes easy to rely on what served us well in the past, and not update our marketing goals based on upcoming change. People entering the industry are not making that mistake, especially the younger and/or hungrier Realtors and Mortgage Brokers. They are using every tool in their marketing arsenal to create a niche and get themself known.

So perhaps the better question is; "What are the things that are going to consume your time and energy that will contribute to getting more business and improving your income?" Many of the people that I have spoken with have not taken the time to plan their activities for the upcoming months, and factor in the regulatory/industry/product/communications changes that will have an impact.

What can you do in the the next few days that will help?

Creating a Marketing Plan starts with a realistic assessment of where you are right now. In the next few days of relative relaxation you have the opportunity to learn from others what they are doing, and assess how the regulatory/marketing/technology changes will impact you. Take your best guess about the upcoming changes. Some are known.  Regulatory changes, such as planned tax increases will provide some positive market movement before their implementation.

Other issues, such as formulating an online promotions/communications strategy might mean that you have to educate yourself about how social media marketing works, and how you participate. Here are some online marketing ideas to start with:

  1. Write about the neighborhoods that you work in or want to work in. Better yet, work out a relationship with someone to share the workload. You new best friend(s) could be a local flower retailer, community organizations, banker .... whoever also wants to create local content and needs another distribution channel.

  2. Take and publish photos and local walking videos

  3. Collect and syndicate hyperlocal content (see #1)

  4. Promote local services, such as retailers. It's a Win-Win situation.


Lastly, consider the content management environment that you need to achieve your newfound online marketing goals. A house is built from the foundation upwards, and so is an online communciations/marketing plan. Don't get caught up in the trap of spending too much time creating and managing content, and not enough doing your business. Have a strategy to achieve both elements of your marketing plan.

Welcome to the New Year. It's already a time of excitement and change. Take a few days to get prepared .. and enjoy a prosperous 2010!

   

6+ tips to use Twitter (for newbies)

Tim Bramwell

Dec 15 |00:00 AM

Yesterday I made a bried presentation about Social Media Marketing in front of real estate professionals. As it was presented as "introductory" presentation, when I asked how many were using social media marketing, there were few that admitted it.

Almost everyone was interested in using Twitter, and so I presented a list of 6 tips that anyone can use to try out Twitter and feel comfortable in doing so. For alll those realtors, lawyers, and other who work for yourself, this is Micro-Blogging 101; I hope that you find it useful.

1) Use a personal e-mail address for your Twitter account, even if you have to create a new Hotmail or gMail account.  If you lose access to your Twitter account after you leave your job, you may never be able to retrieve your password if you use your company email address and leave that company.  Make certain that you own your brand.

2) Use your real name for your Twitter account.  At a minimum, claim it before someone else does.  You will be thankful in the future that you did this now.  After all, it's your brand.

If you have a company name (that you own), you may even consider two accounts to keep one for personal tweets.

You will be asked for more information as you create your Twitter account, but everything can be changed after the fact by going to your “Settings” tab at the top of your Twitter page.  Every privacy option or profile customization setting will be here.  Be sure to check out:

Complete the “More Info URL” and your branded “One Line Bio.” Be sure to include your keywords (think search engines here) in your bio.

If you do not have a blog or a company website, then use your LinkedIn Profile URL.  

If you are unconfortable in adding your city when completing the location information, consider adding a broader geographic area like a state, or county name. Be sure to put something in here.

4) No need to go mobile yet. There is a “Mobile” tab which is to the right of the “Password” and  ”Settings” tabs.  There is no need to enable Twitter on your cell phone until you are comfortable with that, so avoid the temptation until you’re hooked.

5) Use a professionally branded picture ... probably the same one that you use on LinkedIn.  Why would you use anything different?  Keep it professional here.

6) Just because you can set your background image of your profile using the  ”Design” tab, doesn't mean that you should . Use the default image with a color scheme that you like.  If are that 5-10% of the population that know something about creating graphics, then go wild.

Other Do's and Don'ts

DO

  • Find industry experts, local businesses and local people relevant to your properties
  • Follow them; Listen to them; Learn from them
  • Converse – Re-tweet interesting tweets, reply often, ask and answer questions
  • Add value – Tweet good articles, good ideas and good answers
  • Be transparent and add personality
  • Keep your brand message consistent (use your keywords where possible)
  • Respond to your @mentions or direct messages

DON’T

  • Don’t spam your twitter community with your available units
  • Don’t use twitter as a billboard to tell us about your specials
  • Don’t direct message (DM) people with your specials or offerings.  Save that for your opt-in email lists
   

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