Posts Tagged ‘duluth’

Duluth Realtors, Take Heed of These 5 Warning Signs

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Duluth Realtors need to begin taking seriously their online web strategy, if they want to reap real results from the web, before their competitors do.

Phil Sexton and Max Pigman

Photo Credit: Phil Sexton

1. Customers Are Demanding It

Look at this blog post from a Twin Cities resident trying to sell his home.

While the software the blogger is referring to, from Edina Realty, is by today’s standards fairly sophisticated, he is not highlighting how amazing it is that his home can be found via this online service. He’s instead lamenting the lack of analytics data the company provides. What he does receive, he complains, is numbers with no context. As your customers increasingly go online first to research buying or selling a home, their demands and expectations will steadily increase as well. Anticipate these needs and deal with them before they become a headache.

2. Your Competitors Are Gearing Up To Doing It

So often everyone waits for the next guy to jump in. No one wants to lead. Right now some local Realtors are dipping their toes in, while a bunch are waiting to see who gets in the water first. Based on what I’m hearing around town, and who some of my own clients are, I can guarantee that a year from now one or several realty companies and a lot of individual realtors in the area will be blogging. Then the rest will be scrambling to get started, late.

3. Realtors in Larger Cities Are Engaged In It

Visit the St. Paul Real Estate Blog, or http://www.minnesotainvestmentrealestate.com/ and you’ll see real-life realtors actually engaged in blogging as an integral part of their business. And it’s not because they want to say they’re bloggers. It’s because they routinely receive qualified leads via these mechanisms.

4. It’s How You’re Discovered

Meet Ken Van Dyke, of Ken Van Dyke Home Inspectors.

He’s not a big Internet guy, nor does he run a blog, but he works hard to make sure he’s listed at the top of local searches when someone types in “Home Inspector Duluth,” and it’s paying off. He told me recently that the amount of people finding out about him via Google search is steadily rising, while the number of people who use the phone book is steadily falling.Now, he said, nearly 100 percent of his leads come from the Internet, while zero come via the phone book.

5. Other Realtors Are Increasingly Using the Same Strategies Offline.

Yesterday I received a monthly letter from my Realtor. I haven’t purchased a house in two years, and have no intention of purchasing another any time soon. But he sends me a useful piece of information (this month it was on properly figuring out my home’s value) in order to keep top of mind, in the hopes I’ll use him in the future, or refer him to someone. In case you’d like to use him by the way, his name is Brok Hansmeyer, and he does great work. While he doesn’t run a blog, and is just dabbling with Twitter, he’s running a drip-marketing campaign, designed to keep him top of mind. The web provides similar types of benefits. Next time I know someone who needs a Realtor, either my friend Brok, or the Realtor in my BNI group will undoubtedly get my business. Why? They’ve built a relationship with me. Doesn’t really matter to me whether it was on or offline. What matters is that they did it, and therefore all the advertising in the world isn’t going to get me to give a referral to you. Because you, Realtor X, never bothered reaching out to me first.

This isn’t to scare you (okay, maybe a bit), but it’s more importantly designed to serve as a wake up call, to be sure you’re moving toward using the web increasingly for your business.

So what do you think? Are my warnings overblown?

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Posted in Getting Started, Social Media Strategy, Socialmedia | View Comments

How To Get Started in Video Marketing

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Welcome to all those who sat through my Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce session on video marketing on August 2.

Here are the notes I promised from the session. Those who didn’t attend are also welcomed to read my notes as well of course. Feel free to e-mail me via the link on  your right, or hit me up on Twitter @Garmoe, if you have more questions.

Using YouTube and video platforms:

Stats on video watching form webvideouniversity.

  • #3. That’s the ranking of web video in a list of the top 10 most influential marketing mediums compiled by Deloitte LLP (it was beaten only by television and magazines).
  • 70%. That’s the increase in web video viewership from 2008 to 2009.
  • 84%. That’s the number of U.S. based Internet users who watch web video.
  • 11. That’s the number of hours, on average, that every U.S. based Internet user spends watching web video each month.

Benefits of using video:

  • People are statistically much more likely to watch a quick video than read a document.
  • With video you can show exactly what you’re doing, instead of just describing it.
  • Often showing something is much easier and more effective than explaining it.
  • It takes less time than writing long instructions.
  • Many people are visual learners, so they learn something better with video.
  • People can connect better with you through video because they see you. It’s easier to trust someone on video, because they can’t pretend to be someone else.
  • When they meet you in person, it’s like they’re meeting you for the second or third time. They are already familiar with you.
  • You can use video to build your qualifications as an authority/expert on a certain topic.
  • You can produce instructional videos on how to use your product, so you don’t have to explain the same issue repeatedly. Often this provides a more satisfying answer to your potential customer as well.
  • Many people aren’t writers, so video is easier and less intimidating.
  • It’s relatively cheap to get into. Most of you are within $200 of having everything you need for now.
  • The norm in online videos is basic quality, not professional quality.

Examples:
Here’s an example of a video that was made with little equipment and no experience.

  • But you don’t need a dramatic event to have your content spread.

  • If your work is on the computer, you can have tutorials you record online.
  • Could work to show people how to fill out a form, or how to perform some sort of artistic work.
  • You videos must be short. Ideally less than 2 minutes before people lose interest. Max on YouTube is 10.
  • You can start out with the equipment you have. Most computers have a web cam.
  • Growth in mobile devices just makes video increasingly far more popular.

Typical questions:
You can self-host the video, or use a video sharing site like YouTube.

YouTube is free, but you don’t have control of the video, and people are technically watching the video through YouTube, so you can’t monetize that. The nice thing is you can put the video anywhere you want, on a blog, or Facebook.

TubeMogul: A site you can syndicate your video for YouTube, Vimeo or Blip.TV or Yahoo

Or you can get self hosting through AmazonS3 where they pay about 17 cents per gigabyte of bandwidth and so the average person who puts a lot of videos out there, they may only incur about $25 or $30 a month in bandwidth costs by self-hosting their videos.

What to buy?
Simple video camera w/ lapel mic
Kodak Zi8 $200 or less
Canon VIXIA $300-$1000

Lapel mic: Audio Technica 3350

For lighting: use daylight, or use daylight florescent light bulbs and that will match the color of light

Computer microphones best bet is just to get a USB condenser microphone. It’s going to be kind of a big microphone but it plugs in with USB, it will work on Windows or Mac. There’s all sorts of models out there like from Samsung and Audio Technical Company all run around $99. Blue Yeti

What I use: Logitech USB Headset 250

Software:
On windows is that they use Sony Vegas and you can go to sonycreativesoftware.com or you can just Google Sony Vegas and you can download free 30 day trials and basically for around 80 and 100 US dollars you can get a really nice video editing software suite from Sony.

You can also use the built in video on the flip cameras.

Mac side, Mac’s come with iMovie, which is all most people should need, if you want to go a little higher end Final Cut Express works well.

For screen capture software:
For Windows computers, use Camtasia

Most Mac users meanwhile, tend to use Screen Flow

Screen Jelly for 3 minutes of time to record a quick video.
http://www.screenjelly.com/watch/z_qTKiVUdeQ


The biggest mistake people make is waiting to have the perfect collection of equipment. Start where you are and build from there.

Don’t edit your videos. Do them in one take.
Or story board them, shooting 10 seconds at a time.

Ready to go deeper?

Webvideouniversity.com is a good place to further educate yourself on video.
Or Get Seen is a great book on the topic.

A great post by Duluth area internet marketing company AimClear, regarding optimizing video blog posts.

http://www.aimclearblog.com/2009/08/27/youtube-ranking-factors-15-guerrilla-tactics/

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Posted in Benefits of Social Media, Marketing, Video | View Comments

Google Needs To Know You Exist, So Tag Correctly

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Google Fiber Twin Ports

This is the eighth installment in a series titled, How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times, explaining how PureDriven helped vault the Google Twin Ports initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed fiber network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.

Lesson 8: Developing An Online Tagging Strategy

is Critical to Getting Seen Online

Word Cloud of Obama's speech to Congress

Photo Credit: Jason Morrison

In our efforts to attract Google to Duluth, we knew we wanted the public involved, and we knew we wanted everything we did to be seen by Google. Your business also needs to get exposure, once you’ve invested the time having a website developed, or put your Facebook page together. So is lots of words and pictures the key? Yes, and no. If you have a gorgeous website, but no content, then Google won’t see you, and therefore neither will anyone else.

If however, you have a lot of content, but not the right keywords in certain slots, that can seriously hamper your efforts.

So first, define your strategy. For example, we wanted attention in a lot of different places, so everywhere Google went online on the issue of Google Fiber, a video we shot, an article done on us, something we wrote, or our Facebook group would display prominently.

Our strategy was to make our entire online effort strong, not only googletwinports.com.

So we focused on optimizing every piece of content we put out. We told people exactly how to write their headlines, so collectively our YouTube videos would rank high for terms like “Google Fiber.” We wanted hefty levels of chatter and engagement. So we had volunteers chatting all day long on our Facebook Group, keeping people engaged in the process.

If your business wants exposure online, step one is normally creating the website or blog. Step two meanwhile, is making sure the pages are all tagged correctly. For a short primer on where to stick keywords, visit our first search engine optimization instructions page. And to see where those tags physically go, click on our second search engine optimization page.

One caution however. We’re currently upgrading our keywords, so what to pay attention to are the spots they go in. Pay no attention to the words in the boxes. If you need help choosing keywords, visit this excellent site called Google Insights For Search.

So Remember: If you want to be found on the web, you’ve got to have content filled with keywords not just in your copy, but also in the correct spots on each of your website pages.

Go ahead and post questions or comments down below, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

To read the first post in this series, visit “Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times”

To read the second, visit “In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage”

To read the third, visit “When Running Big Projects, Simple Tools Work Best”

To read the fourth, visit “Steer – Don’t Order – Volunteers For Best Results”

To read the fifth, visit “My Mistake Was Not Viewing E-mail as Critical”

To read the sixth, visit “If You Can’t Be Yourself, Be Someone Else”

To read the seventh, visit “ A Google Fiber Tip: Connect, Don’t Chastise Competitors “

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Posted in Blogging for Business, Google Twin Ports | View Comments

A Google Fiber Tip: If You Can’t Be Yourself, Be Someone Else

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Google Fiber Twin Ports

This is the sixth installment in a series titled, How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times, explaining how PureDriven helped vault the Google Twin Ports initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed fiber network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.

Lesson 6: If you can’t be yourself, someone else, literally
Meet my good friend, Speedie Gigabit,
This little man was created by local designer Brian Barber, and it was possibly one of the most successful ideas of the campaign, which I initially balked at.

Luckily, PureDriven as a whole and the rest of the volunteers at Google Twin Ports loved the idea of the character. My main complaint was that it served as yet another project our staff didn’t have the time or resources to manage. In fact however, it turned out to be a fantastic way to rally our supports and speak to them on Facebook. Here’s why it worked so well for us, and you might want to consider having a mascot or single person represent your business online.

1. It gave our volunteers a unified voice online. Right now, if your business uses a Facebook Fan page that you are an administrator of, every time you make a comment, it’s like the company logo responding. If you’d rather respond as an individual, you have to remove your administrative privileges from the Fan Page, and then get someone to make you an administrator again, when you want to change the page in some way. Here’s an example of when I post something on our company’s Facebook page.

Even though I’d like the person to know who I am, responding as the page’s owner, makes the logo appear, where ideally, I’d like my face to be.

In some cases, an employee might also want to respond to a customer. But if he or she responds as an individual, an introduction explaining he or she works for the company would have to preface every comment.

But a mascot, or even one person creating a personal profile on behalf of the company, solves that dilemma.

Whether it’s a person or a mascot, the personal profile can respond to comments and take part in conversations, with a clear, singular voice, instead of multiple individuals respond to comments, or having the company’s logo appear by each answer.

But in the world of Facebook and sites like it, real pictures of real people are preferred. And people do business with people. So having a picture of a real person on Facebook and especially Twitter to represent you, is ideal.

Because our campaign was a regional effort, we went with the mascot. It provided a “person” yet didn’t identify the entire campaign around one real face, as would be best for solo-entrepreneurs and candidates for office.

On a Facebook Groups page there is no company logo issue, but you still want that unique person or logo people can latch on to. And even if you’re a private individual with your own business, having two private accounts – one as you, and one as your public persona – is often most effective on Facebook.

A friend of mine runs a new business called Sgt. Steve, for weight loss and coaching. His real name is Steve, but when he responds to a customer or potential customer, he uses a separate Sgt. Steve account, to go along with the persona, and to keep people from wondering, “Is this someone named Steve, or THE Sgt. Steve?”

So how do you create a second private account?

All that’s required is a second e-mail address. If you don’t have one, just sign up for a free one at Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail.

So Remember: Having an additional private Facebook account to speak to customers either with a picture of a person or a mascot, can give your business or organization more of a voice online, and it’s more personal than a logo talking to a customer.

To read the first post in this series, visit “Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times”

To read the second, visit “In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage”

To read the third, visit “When Running Big Projects, Simple Tools Work Best”

To read the fourth, visit “Steer – Don’t Order – Volunteers For Best Results”

To read the fifth, visit “My Mistake Was Not Viewing E-mail as Critical“

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Posted in Blogging for Business, Campaigns, FanPage, Google Twin Ports | View Comments

In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

Google Fiber Twin Ports

This is the second installment in a series titled, “How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times,” explaining how PureDriven helped vault the GoogleTwinPorts initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses of all sorts, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.

Lesson 2: Why Getting Paid Is Overrated

Credit: FutureShape

Google only gave communities about 45 days for the entire project, making a nimble initiative critical. Many volunteers came forward, along with a handful of local advertising agencies and people

willing to work for money.

Because of Minnesota disclosure laws, asking for money from Duluth to hire a firm or firms would take too long. So if a company wanted to help, it had to do so with the understanding that it would be strictly on a voluntary basis. It was a frustrating thought, considering we’d heard anecdotal information that other communities were handing their organizing committees checks of $10,000, $20,000 or even $30,000. We on the other hand, had to work completely for free at the beginning, even spending our own money for incidental costs like food and parking fees, with no guarantee of being paid back. But this lack of money ultimately translated into a boon for us. 1. Organizations only interested in the project if they could make money off it, quickly vanished. 2. That in turn allowed for those lesser known individuals and organizations who showed up for mainly altruistic reasons to take over, such as the TwinPorts Commonwealth, which co-managed the project with PureDriven. Companies like Outcom Consulting and ProPrint also pitched in for free. And others lowered or nixed their prices altogether. Had we had money to spend, what we got for free wouldn’t have been so free. To see a complete list of all the companies that helped out or supported the project, just visit GoogleTwinPorts.com.

So Remember This: Not having money is sometimes a wonderful thing. If you’re a business, consider getting involved in a project with no guarantee of getting paid, because often it will in fact pay off in the long run in ways you didn’t expect. PureDriven probably received more than $50,000 in free advertising, simply because our name was attached to the project, which was being talked about throughout the area and all over the Internet. When money isn’t the object, the people you want to work with – because their motives are in the right place – tend to materialize, and those who may be talented but only in it for the money, fade away.

If you missed Lesson 1 of our series, just click here: How to Get Your Client on Page 1 of the New York Times.

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Posted in Campaigns, Google Twin Ports, GoogleAnalytics | View Comments

Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times.

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Google Fiber Twin Ports

On Feb. 10, 2010 Google announced a nationwide contest to build one or more test locations for ultra-high speed Internet, which would run between 100 and 1,000 times faster than what it currently available. By several measurements, the Google Twin Ports initiative was the most successful at getting grassroots support and national attention based on this share of voice report. This is a series of posts on how we did it.

Google wanted communities to show them two things. 1. The engineering of the city, and logical pros and cons of Google trying to build this test bed in their community. 2. Whether the community as a whole liked the idea, by voicing grassroots support. This is the story of how PureDriven and a cadre of dedicated volunteers together vaulted our effort spanning the Duluth, Minnesota and Superior Wisconsin communities – an area commonly called the TwinPorts – to national prominence (Step 2). Traditional stories about our effort ran nationwide; our mayor was interviewed on CNN; and video and photographs of him leaping into Lake Superior for Google showed up on the front page of the New York Times, CBS and CNBC, and hundreds of other traditional and online news outlets. Overall, the Google Twin Ports effort ultimately was discussed or mentioned more than 1,500 times online according to data collected by PureDriven.

We tell this story to explain what worked for us, so businesses and grassroots organizations can build similar successful efforts, and avoid our missteps. What is written here is also only the opinion of me, Patrick Garmoe (although it was reached after talking with other volunteers informally). As a full-time staff member of PureDriven, and a 10-year veteran of print journalism, I led the public relations effort, and therefore had first-hand knowledge of the tactics used here. Each of the blogs posts in this series will begin with a short story, followed by tips you can apply to your efforts to gain both traditional and online exposure for your company, cause or initiative.

We will be posting the full collection prominently on the blog indefinitely.

Lesson 1: To really get on the national radar, you need both real news, and an image that encapsulates what you’re selling. Ours was cheap camera footage of our mayor, Duluth Mayor Don Ness, leaping out of the freezing waters of Lake Superior. (By the way, the mayor was going to leap into Lake Superior as part of fundraiser for Special Olympics anyhow, so it wasn’t any more work to do it in the name of the Google project as well.

I knew early on we needed something that without words, would really show how much we wanted Google to come, something the public and media would respond to, and catch fire online and on the web, because it was so funny, or interesting, or crazy.

The day before the Polar Plunge, I heard about the leap. I called around that Saturday morning to videographers I knew. No one was available. So I grabbed my $100 Flip video camera that I use for video blogging purposes, and shot this video.

I took a couple hours to edit it that weekend with iMovie on my iMac, (it was the first time I used that particular software by the way) and slapped it online our PureDriven’s  YouTube account. The image didn’t pick up steam immediately, nor did I expect it to. I knew that if this effort became a national story, traditional media organizations would need visuals. Ultimately that’s exactly what happened. CBS news ran a story, along with CNBC, and likely dozens of other news networks across the region, and even internationally. That’s why I assume the New York Times eventually asked for a picture, which we were happy to provide (the one that ultimately ran in paper was from our local newspaper, the Duluth News Tribune. I’ve included a link to the picture below.

Duluth Mayor Don Ness Leaps into Lake Superior

I believe CNN saw the New York Times story, and therefore opted to call our mayor to be on its morning show the next day. Whether it’s local or national media, television takes its story list from newspapers and websites. During the same segment, CNN also interviewed the mayor of Sarasota, Fla., who also happened to have pulled a public relations stunt that got them coverage in the same New York Times story. There are thousands of cities competing for Google. Why did Duluth get so much attention? Because we did the best job coming up with a visual for news organizations to show.

As of this writing, we’ve had nearly 40,000 views of the video on YouTube. That isn’t bad for an unrehearsed piece of footage that took only five minutes to shoot. Not even the part on the end where our mayor challenges other mayors to jump in Lake Superior was rehearsed.

So Remember: As long as the picture isn’t fuzzy and the audio is decent, quality often doesn’t matter. The video looks jumpy, because I was racing around without my tripod. Don’t over think video. Just start filming. And it’s best to get a newspaper or website to tell your story. Because often the television stations look at what the newspapers do, and copy it, especially if there’s footage they can show.

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