What content do you have lying around?Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose.
There’s a long-standing phrase in the real estate industry:
The three most important words? Location, Location, Location.
Upshot: bad house, great block better than great house, bad block. Or, near the good schools better than far away. Or…
In advertising, back in the day we’d hear that the three most important words were:
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition.
The Three Most Important Words in New Media Marketing?
Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose.
Content is King. Content you already have on the shelf? The King’s Court. Or a whole bunch of Princes.
Where’s that paper you wrote two years ago? You know, the one you thought would be a good white paper but you weren’t able to do anything with? Should you look it over, see what’s there, share it with your world?
Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose.
That video you did six months ago? The one that was clever, showed your ability to position yourself as a thought leader, led to a few more page views, maybe a couple new contacts?
Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose.
An important thing to realize: it might be new to your audience. It could be old and stale to you, but that’s just because you have seen it a dozen times.
We used to do this as fledgling sportscasters, back in the day. You have to give the same score update every hour for three straight hours in what, for a college student, is a crazy early time of the day. (6 a.m.?) But the people who wake up at 7 and 8 have no clue what happened, and they want you to tell them – and have energy when you do so.
The challenge was to breathe new life into the old story – which can’t be done if you just have a “blow the dust off the old stuff” mentality. So you learned to do that pretty quickly, or you found yourself lower down in the pecking order of fledgling sportscasters.
We are NOT talking about lame “article spinning” programs. Quite the contrary.
Google changes their algorithm all the time, so it’s highly possible that the article spinning program you bought last month will be rendered useless this month.
What we are talking about is either doing more writing yourself to refresh your content, or finding folks you like working with who can write and re-write for you.
In any event, find stuff you have that’s good, and share it again. We’d LOVE to read it.
Borrow this artwork if you'd like.Had it up to here with Social Media Snake Oil Salesmen? So Have We!
Gah! Lots of craptastic marketing going on, especially those who are selling themselves as the Social Media Rockstars but lack the social proof to back it up.
Social. Proof.
What is it? Well, it is what it sounds like. Take a look at the “Social” universe, any slice of it will do, and look for “Proof” that Mr or Ms Craptastic knows their shit. (Yes, I said it.)
3 Steps to Social Proof
Step 1: Transparency.
I’m going to borrow liberally from Olivier Blanchard’s thank you to Jack Scrib. Great stuff. Here’s a link: In Praise of the A-list.
For us, this sort of runin with the snake oil types ACTUALLY HAPPENED over the period of a week or so, recently. A breakdown:
I tweeted a link to my discovery of a Pakistani firm called Groupin. (Okay, I tweeted it a couple times, and it was a link to my own blog post. I do that to catch people at different times of the day and in different time zones. It works. So sue me.)
Late in the afternoon, in the public Twitter stream, up pops a response from someone, let’s call them @JaneAJohnson. (NOTE: When someone has their full name AND a middle initial, I run scared from their Tweets. It’s a knee-jerk reaction, because I have actually BLOCKED all of the tweets from some dude whose company sets up Twitter accounts for people using that setup on every single account.) Jane says “Groupin sounds like they’re similar to these guys.” Link follows. Whaddya know, another Daily Deal site!
Simple question from me, in response: “Is that a client?”
Tumbleweeds for four days.
Finally: “yes, they are, you should follow them.”
No. Es. Bueno.
Further sleuthing uncovered these facts: “Social Media Agency.” “Lots of content that appears to have been written just for search engines.” “No contact people, just phone numbers.”
Total Bullshit. See step two.
By the way, if this is you: call me. I dare ya.
Step 2: Authenticity.
Ah, WYSIWYG. Not always the case. F’r instance, if your name rhymes with “Floss,” you’re probably just out there re-purposing stuff from ages ago. Over and over again. And you’re sharing it many many times over on different accounts on different media. Over and over again. And you’re talking about how great you are in the comments.
Yeah, you’re probably a “bot.” Or you have dozens of bots representing you.
We’re all for repurposing here at Area 224 HQ. But, to a point. The authentic you may actually be an Uber-Goober – but give us something new, will ya?
Just because you’re a Social Media Consultant does not mean anything.
If your name DOES rhyme with “Floss,” call me.
Step 3: Engagement.
You can fake this one, right? Sure. Go ahead. Fake it.
Don’t talk to people online after you say stuff inviting their comments. Use your position of power, linkage, mass followers or whatever to broadcast your shit, but not anyone else’s. Fail to share notes of encouragement, don’t retweet anyone or anything that doesn’t mention you.
“But I’m so busy focusing on tweeting for my clients, I don’t have time to tweet for myself!”
Bullshit.
This ain’t about follower numbers, people. I interact with some really really engaging people whose streams are all “@ responses” and whose mission is to interact and engage. And you can normally tell this by looking at their volume of tweets (in the 10,000) – and you can ignore their volume of followers.
I see some damn clever Facebook marketers who ask questions and then….holy crap they watch the comments and actually respond to them?
They write on YOUR wall and, when you say something in response, they keep the dialogue going!
Go ahead. Say it. “Engagement” is just a buzzword. Fine. Put a different wrapper on “having conversations with people.” And then come up with your Social Media Consultancy’s Having Conversations With People Strategy.
Are you the one this is directed toward? Call me. Seriously.
Social Media Highlight of the Week? One errant tweet from Red Cross, and one classy follow-up – not just from the Red Cross itself, but the brand mentioned (Dogfish Head) and its community (craft beer folks). Go to the source for this one:
NOTE: Red Cross true to its mission. Person in charge said, pretty much, “mistakes happen, and we deal with life-and-death issues all the time. This is not life-and-death.”
Toyota had a Mommy Blogger “incident” that they handled swiftly. You can read the background here, in Shelly Kramer’s excellent summary.
NOTE: Brands get ripped on all the time on the web; in this situation, Toyota was well within their rights to go after the team that made it seem like they were authorized, when, in fact, they were not. And Toyota scores serious points for how quickly they moved on this one – setting the record straight in real time.
And a Twitter client called “UberTwitter” got suspended. Twitter took the step of telling us on their support page – but…honestly…the more interesting piece on the Twitter blog was this one:
But Act on What?…For the Love of Mike, if Your Realtor is doing any of this…
Make no mistake, every single industry is seeing a cultural shift. Gone are the days when Ye Olde Tyme ways of Marketing, Selling and Promoting your business will be effective.
AND, Realtors are the Absolute Worst.
You may argue that you ARE one of the Realtors who is doing it correctly. Good on ya, mate.
Realtors who use Social Media effectively are in the minority.
In fact, the biggest mistake Realtors are making with Social Media?
The lack of a Personal Niche-Driven Brand.
Here’s what we mean: the typical search for real estate on the part of the buyer goes one of two ways.
Way 1: Drive down street, see For Sale sign. Proceed to Google, iPhone, or some other method of choice to get more information about home. Then make decision on what Realtor to potentially use. Decision based on several factors. Findability and “shelf of the mind” are the top ones.
Way 2: From comfort of own home, using computer, laptop, iPhone, iPad or other device, Google some long-tail search term. “El Paso Texas homes $400,000.” See who pops up. Surf their web presence, decide to use them, or return to beginning and start over.
Do you see either of these equations involving any of the following:
Vanity URL – 123anytownlane.info?
Foursquare checkins?
National Real Estate Brand searches (e.g., ReMax.com)?
Facebook search?
And here’s where most Realtors — 99% or more — mess this up.
The Vanity URL is a waste of $10.
Foursquare checkins have no value in the real estate business. If your Realtor checks into their office, question what they are doing for you.
Most National Brands don’t have the search thing figured out.
Oh, and Realtors on Facebook trying to sell you on their services? NO. On their personality, or their ties to the community….yes, eventually.
What’s a “single” Realtor – the one who so desperately needs clients – to do?
Build a Personal, Niche-Focused Brand.
Personal: John Smith, Realtor.
Niche-Focused: John needs to look at his last 12 listings or sales and find out what his niche is. “West Side.” Then, it’s about building community in the West Side.
This is where your online extension of the off-line you comes in handy.
Takes time, but when it works, it can work wonders.
Pets.com Sock Puppet, cc, FlickrNOTE Groupon has updated their blog and let more comments in – including ours. Original text from earlier this morning is here:
Groupon. Much will be said about their “poking fun” at the plight of Tibet, at the expense of half-price Himalayan food coupons. Our beef?
“Your comment is awaiting moderation.”
For a social (commerce) darling, we expected much better in terms of blog, and response, from Groupon.
First of all, see here – the Groupon blog – where they explain their reasoning and, it seems, how pumped they were to get actor Timothy Hutton.
Then, see here – which hasn’t been updated as of 3:05 AM Central Time, Monday, February 7:
You’re telling me that “Annie” is the ONLY person who commented?
No – because we commented – but were told “Your comment is awaiting moderation.”
Hint: if you wanna be truly “social,” have someone at the helm at least letting a few more comments into the mix. Also, this is a great place to score feedback, at better than 90% off, since the feedback is mostly free.
GoDaddy. We, for one, can’t wait to see the “.co” extension spread like wildfire.
We jest – but GoDaddy lost the Brand Bowl in this case to one competitor: Network Solutions. Who didn’t even run a Super Bowl ad. Instead, they hired Cloris Leachmann and made fun of GoDaddy.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn25Lb8dick
For the love of Mike, they’ll even let you embed the ad on your own blog.
The buzz before the game was so great that, by the time GoDaddy showed who their spokesperson was – Joan Rivers! – they were out-hipped by “Go Granny.”
Note: We don’t use either company for anything here at Area 224 HQ. But, from a purely “social” standpoint – clever, meme-worthy, promoting sharing, truly social – Network Solutions kicked GoDaddy’s bottom.
