Although Google+ is still in the beginning stages of its life, it has captured the attention of some major companies and social media lovers. When branded pages were finally launched at the beginning of November, brands such as Pepsi, Cadbury, and Jet Blue were quick to jump on board and create some really interesting content. Because the few people using it are so social-media-savvy, they have been asking for real engagement and conversations from these companies. The brands who have experimented with the features offered by Google+ have been quite successful and have caught the attention of their customers.
One brand that has been especially successful is the American Red Cross. Although they don’t have the flashiest page, they have been engaging really well with their customers. Most of their posts are about real issues going on in the world and reason why you should care. From there, they have created real conversations with their followers without just telling them to give blood. They are focusing more on developing a dialogue rather than “selling,” which has been quite successful.
The USS Constitution Museum is a Boston, MA national landmark. A must see for everyone visiting Boston. The Museum collects, preserves, and interprets the stories of Old Ironsides and the people associated with her. They seek to create a positive, memorable experience for all.
In order to bring the story of our nation’s oldest commissioned ship to life, the Museum needed to reevaluate its online presence. Their new site enhances their current marketing efforts, appeals to a wider range of audiences, and sets them up for success with their future initiatives. Intuitive navigation allows visitors to quickly and easily find information on exhibits, tickets, donations and upcoming events.
Union Street Media’s work on the project included:
“How often should I write a blog post for my website?” has been The Question to ask since blogging began. The answers to this question vary and should because it really depends upon your goals and the niche or audience that reads your blog. Most that ask the question just want a quick answer and there isn’t one. Ultimately the question is asked because the person wants their blog to be successful. There is a certain logic in thinking that if I produce X amount of good quality blog posts then my blog will be successful. There are many factors that make for a successful blog and, combined with the updates to search engines and online social landscape, the success of a blog becomes somewhat of a moving target. Although there is a core structure to effective blogging, some of what worked in 2006 for bloggers isn’t going to necessarily work today. The good news is there are guidelines below that will help get you on the right track with how often you blog. By using the points below as a guide and then adjusting to your specific audience, you can determine an effective answer for how often to blog.
The easiest answer to this question is if you can blog at least once a day, you should. Most don’t have that much time to dedicate to blogging and yet do want some success. To measure success, at a very basic level, a blog is effective when it brings in the right traffic. (A quick side-note: you shouldn’t expect that just because you write enough blog posts you will automatically get traffic, it will still need to be optimized and promoted). There is also a nice balance between enough content and other time commitments in your work week. To get and maintain a steady stream of readers, you will want to write at least once a week. If you write more, you will see additional benefits but if you write less, your blog won’t generally be a strong addition to your overall online efforts (whatever they may be).
Image via Wikipedia
The harder question to ask is, why are you blogging in the first place? What are your goals? To write just for the sake of writing won’t get you were you need to go. When you review those goals and the benchmarks for their success, you may find an entirely different answer than the one above. To get an idea of how much blogging some of the professional bloggers do (such as those behind Wired, ProBlogger, Gizmodo, Engadget, etc.) take a look at the book Blogging Heroes by Michael A. Banks. Banks does an interview with 30 of the world’s top bloggers and the answers are not only insightful but contain over-riding themes (such as how often they blog and how much online content they read). Consider the varying perspectives from Hubspot, SEOMoz, ProBlogger, and Gigaom that offer quick answers to the same question of how often to blog.
We’ve had the privilege at Union Street Media of launching several new real estate websites.
www.nhhomes.com
Established in 1986, RE/MAX Properties specialize in all types of New Hampshire real estate services including exclusive buyer representation, exclusive seller representation, leasing, commercial as well as non-agency relationships. With some of the most productive agents in the State, RE/MAX Properties is consistently ranked in the top 100 of the prestigious Real Trend’s Big Broker Report of the most productive brokerages in the United States. They are responsible for about 20% of the real estate transactions in all classes that happen in the Nashua area and service an additional 25 towns.
Learn More About This Custom Project
Been thinking about using Twitter but have avoided it? Here are 3 compelling facts from online data to consider.
Although more people use Facebook than Twitter, they each have a different type of audience. As a social platform, Twitter has some very compelling facts to start using it (facts are from Hubspot’s 100 Awesome Marketing Charts):
Union Street Media on Twitter
Think of Twitter as not just a social media tool but as a search engine. Twitter provides a ton of exposure to people needing answers that can provide. Being a regular resource means that you will be there when they are ready to commit to a purchase.
We’ve had the privilege at Union Street Media of launching several new real estate websites.
www.byselrealty.com
New England Land Company has been a long time Union Street Media client. Being one of the top producing offices in Vermont, they draw a lot of attention. They wanted to update their website after recently being purchased by a larger office not native to VT. The website needed to reflect the new brand but still show their Vermont roots and let clients know they haven’t changed.
www.lisameyer.net
Lisa Meyer, a Century 21 Jack Agent is tech savvy and understands how the Internet has effected the real estate industry. She needed a website that had easy to use search tools so site visitors could find what they were looking for quickly and efficiently. Through an easy to use content management system, she is able to reveal her expertise and success in Vermont real estate while showcasing her specific market of Waterbury. The site design reflects Lisa’s connection to Vermont with photos of scenery and biking.
www.c21baribeau.com
Image via Wikipedia
In between reading exciting espionage thrillers and inspirational sporting biographies, I like to keep myself honest with a little online real estate statistics.
This month I delved into the National Association of REALTORS‘s Center for REALTOR Technology. To save you some time, I cherry picked what I believe to be the most interesting data and what it means for real estate professionals. (Skip to the bottom to get the summary, but only if you leave a comment!) You can also view the full report here
A survey of Realtors were asked:
Twitter provides such an easy way to share information. Tweets are quick to create, quick to read, and easy to share. The only downside is that it is hard not to have your tweets go out randomly and all at once. This is because most of us don’t have time to send tweets out all day long. Yet to be effective, to hit the target times when people are most likely to read, and not bury important tweets with another, tweets need to be spaced out. Luckily there is a nice free tool to make tweeting not only that much easier but have your efforts perform better.
There is some science behind using Twitter. Hubspot has done some studies on the best time to tweet. Their data shows some of the best times of the week and times of the day that work best for sending out tweets. For example, the best time to post if you want to get re-tweeted is generally between 2-5 pm and later in the week. If you want data more specific to your particular experience, you can try using Hubspot’s TweetWhen. Keep in mind though that if you don’t have enough retweets within your account, the tool won’t have enough data to provide any suggestions. In this case it is better to use the general guides from their study and then tweak after checking your own data.
If you want to take advantage of tweeting at the best time then use Buffer. Buffer is a free online application that makes it easy to amass tweets that go out at predetermined times. There are other tools that allow you to pre-publish your posts however Buffer takes this one step further. Buffer allows you to throw tweets into the application and it will automatically send the tweets at the correct times. You only have to set up your calendar once instead of each time you have a post. This makes it so much easier than trying to remember the best times to tweet each time you post. Set up Buffer with all the times you want and then throw in good posts as you think or find them. 
There is no real science behind just sending out tweets as you think of them. One tweet follows another at random times often burying a previously important item. At the very least you should use Buffer to space out when one tweet follows another. If you do use Buffer though did you know it can actually increase your followers? The data actually comes from Buffer so it is bias but why not give it a try in case it does work?
In the last few weeks, we’ve had the privilege at Union Street Media of launching several new websites. The Lynn Jackson Group, a Century 21 Jack office, located in Vergennes, VT, was looking for a new website provider that would be able to help them expand their market. Union Street Media had the right tools to do the job. The system allowed them to update listings and syndicate with Social Media sites with the added ability to create additional content pages on their website; a task that had previously taken up a lot of their time. The new website also allowed them to segment their MLS data, providing site visitors with recommended searches and more SEO authority.
In this post I wanted to turn my attention to an oft-misunderstood basic SEO practice—and one that I get a lot of questions about: the title tag.
The title tag is one of if not THE most important piece of text information that search engines look at as a signal of relevance on a web page. These innocuous words and phrases appear at the top of your browser. They also appear in search results and sometimes as link anchor text, from external links.
Title tag at top of browser
By HTML and XHTML law, a title tag is required on every web page document. Title tags are located in the source code within the Head section. For anyone not familiar with code, you don’t necessarily need to know that but it helps if you want to ask the right questions. It looks something like this:
Search Engine Optimization
