Peter Fletcher | Business2

How to use Foursquare to build a hyper-local brand

by Peter Fletcher, on 3rd February, 2010 • 5 Comments

Foursquare is rocketing up the social media popularity chart. It’s hyper-local social networking that lets you share insider info on your favourite hangouts. In their words:

Foursquare aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people for doing so. We do this by combining our friend-finder and social city guide elements with game mechanics – our users earn points, win mayorships and unlock badges for trying new places and revisiting old favorites.

The service allows you to check into a location – coffee shop, restaurant, movie cinema – using your GPS coordinates. That lets your friends know where you are and what you’re up to. It’s a great way to meet new friends who enjoy the same places.

Foursquare users are encouraged to share brief tips about the places they visit. These experiences are then shared with others who check-in to the same place. For example, if I leave a tip about a special blend of coffee at The Imp, the next time you checked-in there Foursquare would pop up a notification telling you that I suggested you try The Imp’s special blend coffee.

Here’s a few tips for agents wanting to get the most out of the service.

Get an iPhone and download the Foursquare app

Foursquare works brilliantly on the iPhone and on Android powered mobile devices. It’s a two-second operation to get working on the iPhone and it works like a charm.

Link your Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook accounts

It’s not often I recommend linking social media services but this is one exception. Once your accounts are linked when you check in on Foursquare your Facebook and Twitter status will be updated automatically (you can turn this off if you want to do a private checkin).

Add your own business location to Foursquare

Provide clients who check-in to your location regularly with loyalty rewards. Offer incentives for people to write tips that mention you by name e.g. “Go to Jones Realty and ask for Sally Jones. She knows Jonesville like the back of her hand.” It’s a great way to generate word-of-mouth referrals.

Check-in to a local coffee lounge

Invite your friends to catch up for an early morning coffee. Be spontaneous.

Introduce it to local businesses

The more people who check into a location the more tips it generates. Suggest they offer discounts or special offers to Foursquare users who write tips about their business or who become the Mayor of their business. Offer to show them how it works and how they can make sales from using the service. Become their social software go-to person. Help them out by introducing their business to your Facebook and Twitter network.

Check-in when you’re doing a home open

Let your friends on Foursquare, Facebook and Twitter know you’re out working hard. Your Foursquare checkin provides a map to your location so friends in the area can stop by for a chat.

Advertise that the property is open for review on Foursquare

Mention in your web advertising that you’ve added the property location to Foursquare. Invite home open visitors to write a review. Their review will be available to other Foursquare users.

Ask your colleagues to check-in when they show the property

Get them to add a brief review while they’re at the property on an agent caravan or when showing buyers.

Have you come across any other ways to use Foursquare?

This article was originally posted as How to Become a Local Legend Using Foursquare on The Real Estate Marketing Maven.

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What would you do if you were Enzo Raimondo?

by Peter Fletcher, on 24th December, 2009 • 27 Comments

What would you do if you were Enzo Raimondo?

If you enjoy a high profile it’s inevitable that, at some point, someone’s going to want to take you down. Do a Google search on the name of any celebrity or public figure along with the word “sucks” or “stupid” and you’ll find some pretty disturbing stuff.

In real estate circles Enzo Raimondo has a high profile. As the boss of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria he represents the interests of nearly 1900 real estate businesses. No doubt it’s a tough job.

As with many public identities Raimondo has his fans. He also has detractors. Notable among the latter are Neil Jenman and Peter Mericka. They appear to be obsessed with Raimondo posting regular invective on their websites aimed squarely at Raimondo.

Jenman and Mericka attack the person. They hurt feelings to create a reaction. They’re internet trolls.

The word troll conjures up images of a colourful lure being dragged slowly behind a boat to catch an unsuspecting fish. It also brings to mind a malevolent mythical Nordic monster. But whatever the imagery the association is one of cunning and mischievous deception aimed at provoking an instinctive or emotional response.

In typical troll fashion their attacks on Raimondo are usually personal and devoid of substance. For example, Mericka states : “Enzo Raimondo, CEO of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV) is a master of the partial-truth”. The statement is directed squarely at Raimondo describing him in a way that obliquely questions his integrity without taking a stand.

In a similar vein Mericka claims that “… real estate agents don’t want consumers to be independently informed about property valuations”. Just how he is able to know for certainty what is in the mind of all agents is unclear. He presents no corroborating evidence to substantiate his claim, instead demonising all agents by making a sweeping, unprovable assertion. It’s typical troll behaviour.

Many trolls hide their real life identities behind fictional characters and pseudonyms. Take the recently suspended fake Enzo Raimondo Twitter account as an example (a cached version is currently here). The unidentified troll took on Raimondo’s name as a pseudonym posting a number of tweets that linked to a WordPress blog entitled Enzo Raimondo. In turn each of these posts linked to either Jenman’s Real Estate News or Twitter account or to Mericka’s The Australian Real Estate Blog. In both instances the troll made use of free services – WordPress and Twitter – to attack Raimondo personally whilst avoiding any likelihood of being held accountable for their actions.

So just why do trolls work the way they do? The answer to that question would take up the contents of an entire PhD thesis. What really counts though is the end result, not their motivations.

If we take Mericka’s Twitter bio on face value he’s a “consumer advocate”. Jenman similarly claims “consumer advocacy” as something he does for love. Outside of these self-disclosures I can only speculate about their motivations. But what can be stated with certainty is that four of the top ten results on a Google search (as of December 23, 2009) using the term “Enzo Raimondo” are from either Jenman or Mericka. Two men with a passionate belief – trolls if you will – are winning this battle hands down. Their personal crusades are damaging the reputation of Raimondo and the Institute he represents.

It appears that Raimondo has made a few positive, and at least one defensive, move to advance his position. In the first instance he has a static web site that employs a number of SEO measures to help it rank number one and two in a search. He’s also joined LinkedIn, which gives him position four. A 2003 press release found on Real Estate View gives him position eight. Position three, a profile on wotnews.com.au is a lost battle as both Mericka and Jenman have almost the same number of mentions as does Raimondo.

What I find staggering is the complete absence of any mention of Raimondo on reiv.com.au in the above search. I went looking and could find no Raimondo profile page on REIV (perhaps I overlooked it) and the only textual mention of his name was a few pages buried deep within the site. It is as if the team at REIV have chosen to give Mericka and Jenman a free kick at Raimondo’s head!

Defensively Raimondo, or one of his team, may have taken steps to put a stop to the fake Twitter account as it appears that the account has been reported for misuse. This would help explain the account’s suspension.

So to the point of the article, what would you do if you were Enzo Raimondo?

There is much that could be done. I don’t intend to catalogue every move available to Raimondo. That’s a question for you to help answer within the comments. Rather I will leave the final word to Seth Godin.

Lots of things about work are hard. Dealing with trolls is one of them. Trolls are critics who gain perverse pleasure in relentlessly tearing you and your ideas down. Here’s the thing(s):

1. trolls will always be trolling
2. critics rarely create
3. they live in a tiny echo chamber, ignored by everyone except the trolled and the other trolls
4. professionals (that’s you) get paid to ignore them. It’s part of your job.

“Can’t please everyone,” isn’t just an aphorism, it’s the secret of being remarkable.

Godin here points to the stark contrast between creators and trolls. Trolls tear down while professionals create. And creating means producing content. Lots of it. It also means building a community of similarly creative people, to lift, to extend and to carry a message.

Is Raimondo doing enough? I doubt it but I’ll leave it to you.

If you were Enzo Raimondo what would you do?

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How REA buries agents in search results

by Peter Fletcher, on 30th November, 2009 • 14 Comments

How REA buries agents in search results

Google doesn’t like duplicate content. People suspected of using it to manipulate search results are punished, often by their site being banished from a high rank in a search.

Duplicate content is often legitimate and Google understands this. Take property listings for example. Jane Smith is a real estate agent. She uses MyDesktop to upload a new listing to her site. As part of the MyDesktop service her listing is uploaded to reiwa.com, domain.com.au and realestate.com.au, all via an XML feed.

It makes sense for Jane to pay for this service. She enters her listing details once but gets exposure on a number of sites. But that’s not the end of the story.

Jane is interested in more than selling her listing. She also wants to attract new listings. To do so she wants to be found in a Google search and this is where duplicate content becomes an issue.

When Google finds duplicate content they look for instructions from the webmaster about how they want a page indexed. These instructions are found within the page meta tags and help the search engine deliver the most relevant results to the end-user.

However, when Google finds legitimate duplicate content – a property listing on multiple sites for example – without these instructions they are faced with a choice: Which page of content do they deliver in the search results? Their response is to “… always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.” What that means to Jane is the original content, the page she created when posting the listing on her website, may well not be what a web searcher finds. And she’s trying to build a database of subscribers to her e-newsletter that’s bad news.

Let’s look at a real-life example. I conducted a Google search using the phrase “2brm unit for sale Victoria Park”. It’s a search term that might be conducted by either a buyer or seller. The first page of the search results contained no results from real estate agents. All were from listing portals or site scrapers. Starting to see my point?

The one that caught my eye, though, was from realestate.com.au (REA), the first entry in the search results. It included a link to a listing profile page, which contained the very same information as the original listing page on the agent’s site (when these properties are marked by the agent as sold these links may stop working). In this instance Google has determined that, of the two pages of identical property description, the one from REA was the most relevant. The agent has missed out on a visitor to their website and a chance to add to their email database.

Google’s recommendation about syndicated content, and that’s what agents are doing with their listing data, is this:

Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites…it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.

In other words Google wants to index the original content, but they need help.

Let’s look at Google’s suggestion in two parts as it pertains to the above example.

First, REA does provide a link to the agent’s website, just not from the listing page and not to the original listing page (article) as recommended by Google. There’s no way for Google to know which piece of content was the duplicate. Furthermore, when they do provide a link to the agent’s site (from within the agent’s profile page) it’s hidden by a rel=”nofollow” tag. What this means is that the link is ignored by the search engines. The agent gets no Google love from the REA link and no boost in the performance of their site in a Google search. It’s all one way traffic in favour of the portal.

Second, REA don’t add the noindex meta tag to the duplicate page. If they did the page wouldn’t be indexed and therefore wouldn’t display in the search results.

Agents who think that the reason for a web presence is just to advertise property will have no problem with the portal’s behaviour. Buyers are finding their properties and that’s all that matters. But agents who want to build a brand using the Internet will have a different viewpoint. These agents provide content to REA to advertise their listings not so the portal can dominate search results.

I concede there’s more to SEO than just dealing with duplicate content. Even if it wasn’t an issue some agents manage their websites so badly they will never be found in the first page of a search. But agents who take pride in their website and their brand are right to be peeved at REA’s ethics. And they’re also right to look to the membership organisations to which they belong to step up and help them compete.
It’s high time for agents to demand a fair go.

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