Online Reputation Management - Dunkin Donuts vs An Army of Davids

OK, before I start this, I want to make it PERFECTLY clear that with this post I am just OBSERVING and COMMENTING on the power of online media to move corporate America around almost at will right now. I am NOT taking sides in the controversy that follows. I am NOT. I AM looking at the power of the online component of public opinion and how this has affect big business in managing its online reputation.

Rachel Ray did an adviertisement for DunkinDonuts where she appears, holding a cup of their iced coffee. Her wardrobe (by all accounts professionally chosen and NOT chosen by her) included a black and white scarf similar to ones worn by Palestinians. This was noted by a blog LittleGreenFootballs and soon it was “on”. The rest of the story is recounted here in the New York Times.

I thought there were 3 interesting points from this story and its ocverage in the news:

1) As the Times noted, corporate America seems to react very quickly to pain and kill these stories off with dispatch. Much easier to re-shoot a different ad than to be controversial. I am not sure that I agree with that 100%. Maybe it’s easier, but is it better. In my opinion, Dunkin donuts and Rachel Ray could have actually parleyed this into even more exposure and THEN cleaned it up.

2) As Bob Parsons of GoDaddy noted in the Times…one of the ways of knowing that your advertising is working is when it offends some people. I agree with that point 100%.

3) But the most important takeaway is that the interactive nature of the web tends to create the EXACT effect that Glenn Reynolds was referring to in his book, An Army of Davids. Bloggers, social media types and others from the web world now wield HUGE power to promote agendae and rally for change.

If you seek to avoid controversy, the web isn’t your kind of place. Does your business have a plan to deal with that controversy and turn it into positive exposure for your company. Do they even know what 2,500 “diggs” means?

Seriously. They should.

It’s Analytics Time… (basic principles, but important)

I have taken lately to writing about the BASIC Principles of website management and search engine marketing that seem to be getting overlooked. Today’s subject: How often do you track the traffic that comes to your site? How tightly do you analyze it?

One of the lost arts of online marketing lately seems to be simply looking at analytics and asking the “W” questions:

Who’s been visiting my site?

What time did they come to my site and does that play into any of the above?

The answers to these questions need to be reviewed OFTEN to see the trends “magically” appear. We did this with a group of real estate bloggers the other day and the results were easily seen (using Google Analytics).

Who: Very easy to get down to geographics and see (maybe not the names) most of the usable marketing information about who’s visiting your site.

Where did they come from: If you have not done it lately, look at your TRAFFIC SOURCES and REFERRALS. You can not only see which site they came from, but what keywords they were searching for.

Why did they come? You can find much insight into that by the Keywords they were using. You can also see if you are hitting the target by the BOUNCE RATES that come from each phrase. Did they get what they were looking for? Is there a way to GIVE them what they want or at least offer it to them for a piece of information if not a price?

In some industries, even factors such as what time of day they came to your site matters.

So if you haven’t spent some time digging through your analytics lately, IMO, now’s a really good time.

Best;

Eric

Trulia Widgets and Link Hoarding - Who wins the title of Interloper King

Noone wants to be on the bottom of the heap. No one wants to come in last place and no one–I mean no one, wants to be crowned Interloper King in the online real estate marketing industry. There is no glory in inserting your company between a home buyer or seller and the real estate professional there to serve them. It is a tough business that is (by its nature) symbiotic as best, parasitic on average, and cannibalistic at worst.

The following is my opinion on how the world of Interlopers shakes out. I am an interloper. WHAT? YES. I feed my family by helping REALTORS market their listings! So what distinctions separate me from Trulia? Several things:

1. I am building the REALTORS’ online web presence FOR THEM. It is THEIR asset. They own it and control it. It is their world. I just live in it. This separates me from HomeGain, Trulia, Zillow, REALTOR.com and any other website that is NOT owned by a REALTOR.

For the longest time this has been the criteria that I have used to determine how deeply I would participate in a site. No REALTOR ownership–no go. REALTORS do not teach clients to rent houses, they teach them how to BUY homes. Why RENT your online presence when you can CREATE it.

Now that that is said, there are varying degrees of Interloping going on out there. We (in my opinion), would be remiss in not pointing them out. The next distinctions separate out the competitors further.

2. To what extent is the third party site actually promoting themselves or are they honestly trying to facilitate the connection between client and REALTOR in the most expeditious way possible? This was brought up by Louis Cammarosano and it gave me some pause today. It is possible IMO for a third party company to create advertising solutions that help REALTORS market homes in a way that spends less time marketing them and more time promoting the REALTOR. When you factor this criteria in, HomeGain quickly moves into spot Number 2 in terms of being a REALTOR friendly enterprise.

3. Then comes the channels that the interlopers market in. In other words, where are they getting their traffic from? Are they going in channels typically not done by REALTORS and ADDING to the exposure that a REALTOR gets or are they competing with a REALTOR in the same channel? Trulia is now using the Widgets and Listings to compete HEAD ON with REALTORS for search engine positioning in Google. Google San Diego Real Estate or Phoenix Real Estate and you will see what I mean.

Zillow, whether through ignorance or choice has not gone that route. Making them (somewhat) better than Trulia (wouldn’t take much.) but they (as of today’s date are STILL no following listings). This, in my opinion, along with the fact that they are using a REALTORS own listings to compete with him, puts them clearly in the adversary role. Zillow and Trulia (in my opinion) have a parisitic relationship with REALTORS, and Trulia is actually trying to kill off their “valued partners” and go cannibalistic. HomeGain is a more symbiotic relationship. It is still renting web presence vs buying and I still disagree with that as an overall practice, however, I have grown weary of watching people screech at REALTORS about being “transparent” while they are not being transparent with us. Likewise, I have grown sick and tired of them getting links FROM REALTORS and then not returning the favor.

Trulia wins the title of Interloper King in the real estate industry. Zillow is #2 with a bullet IMO.

Just my thoughts.

Bloggers: Watch your Widgets (and their links)

One of the most common practices on the Internet today is the practice of giving a “link” back to the developer of a website, or of a piece of code as a way to say “thanks” and to recommend them to others. With the popularity of blogs and bloggers, the bloggers want to add cool new stuff to their blogs and yet they lack the coding experience to do it. So a developer comes along and builds a “FREE” widget. Widgets take only a second or two and the blogger has a REALLY COOL new tool on their blog.

Then their blogging friends see it and do the same thing. Imitation, after all IS the sincerest form of flattery! Soon an entire industry is using these widgets and there are thousands of sites linking back to this little old developer who smiles wryly and enjoys HUGE respect from the search engines due to his link popularity (a large component of the algorithm in many search engines). The search engines are giving the developer credit that he deserves for coming up with a popular widget. I have NO disagreement with the search engines doing this. It is well earned.

BUT what happens if that developer is your competitor? And what happens if they use that to attempt to rank in the search engines ABOVE you? Then, the price that you paid for that cute little widget that does something cool on your blog just got outrageously expensive both for you AND your industry. One more thing…When you install a widget, you are not giving them just one link. You are giving them a link from EVERY PAGE in your blog. That could be hundreds or thousands of pages! That better be one GOOD widget to be worth that! Here’s a case in point:

In the real estate industry, imitation in marketing tactics is rampant. I think the only industry that rivals it maybe preachers “borrowing” cute stories for other preachers in their sermons on Sunday. So Trulia decides to launch Trulia Widgets. They develop Trulia Stats and Trulia Maps and real estate bloggers start lapping them up. What the bloggers don’t realize is that they are linking back to Trulia multiple times on every page and post of their blog! Eric Bramlett pointed this out on the Bloodhound Blog and it has since been picked up on Active Rain and many other of the major real estate blogging platforms.

Trulia is using this newfound link strength to go after rankings on the search engines. Don’t believe me? Pick a medium size or small town in your area and type in City real estate or City homes for sale. Do it for a few cities around you. Now do you believe me?

THE TAKE HOME LESSON:

For the record, I am NOT saying that all widgets are bad. They are not! I think giving credit to the developer of a piece of code is a good thing (within reason). BUT I am saying that before you put a widget up on your blog and send a link to the developer from EVERY page in your blog, CHECK OUT who made the widget. Make sure that you are not handing a competitor your vote to outrank you in the search engines.

REALTORS: Take down your widgets that link to people who compete with you locally, unless of course you want to hand them the #1 spot on Google. Just friendly advice from someone who cares.

Microsoft ends bid for Yahoo…

Yesterday, Microsoft President and CEO Steve Ballmer publicly announced the end of Microsoft’s bid to acquire Yahoo. In recent weeks, the bid had grown, largely on impressive 1st Quarter results by Yahoo. From Mr. Ballmer’s press release:

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” said Ballmer.

OK, so what does this mean to search engine marketers? Not much and more of the same. For the most part, the only search engine to be optimizing for is Google anyway. Yahoo does not carry near the traffic and is bleeding relevance. Is it possible that the impressive 1st quarter stats were window dressing and will fall in the next few months. My research would say yes. Is it likely that Yahoo stock prices will fall now that Microsoft has ended its bid. Highly likely. Could this force Yahoo back to the table with Microsoft. Ummm..yeah…that is a possibility. Will it happen? Who knows…

I am interested in others’ opinions on this…what impact do you think it has?

Real Estate Webmasters Website Raffle by Team Eric

First of all, we won the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World SEO contest. With that win came a great prize, a website and IDX created by Real Estate Webmasters and donated by Morgan Carey.

It is one of their template websites with a CORE IDX (awesome) and comes with free hosting for life. This is several thousand dollars worth of real estate site! VERY COOL.

As part of the contest, we connected with the Eco Preservation Society in Costa Rica. They are a non-profit who is concerned with conservation of the rain forest and the other wildlife rich areas of Costa Rica. Here is more about them!

Here is a video about them:

We would like to raise money for them, so here’s how we are going to do it!

It’s RAFFLE TIME!

How to ENTER:

Step 1: Donate via the Pay Pal button below $35 gets you ONE TICKET, $100 gets you FOUR TICKETS!

Here’s the button!

Step 2: The winner will be drawn on June 1, 2008 by Kevin Peterson of the Eco Preservation Society and his decision will be final, and the winner will be notified by email. THE WINNER MUST MEET THE ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS!-SEE BELOW.

ELIGIBILITY:
To be eligible to receive the prize, you must be a REALTOR in good standing with the National Association of REALTORS, you must have access to a freestanding IDX data feed from your board and you understand that you are responsible for any board fees associated with getting the feed (they are usually pretty small if any, but please be clear that they are yours to pay). Finally, the contest winner is subject to the final approval of Morgan Carey and RealEstateWebmasters. If you have a question about your eligibility, PLEASE ask BEFORE buying a raffle ticket. This raffle void wherever prohibited by law.