Web Browser Wednesday
Having toolbars in a browser can be both frustrating and convenient. On one hand they can often cram a lot of useful functionality into a small area, but on the other hand they eat up precious space that could be used for viewing websites. After all, we know what your browser can look […]
Windows; Mac
As you may recall sLife is a free application that you can use to monitor which applications you use on a regular basis, and then graph the usage on a pretty chart. Previously sLife 2.0 application was only available for Mac users, but after four months the Windows version has […]
The following quote found within a Wall Street Journal article on Facebook advertising really jumped out at me:
“I haven’t heard of anyone purchasing something off an ad on Facebook,” says Angie Tulgetske, vice president of RE/MAX Preferred Choice Properties, which resells timeshares and spends thousands of dollars a month on search ads but avoids social-networking sites. “I wouldn’t think any of my marketing dollars would be spent advantageously there.”
Rather than relying on anecdotal evidence and hunches, why not test it? It’s pretty clear that a ton of people who own or can afford to buy homes are spending a significant part of their day on Facebook.
It would have been nice to see a quote in the WSJ from someone who is seeing success with their Facebook ad spend (they do mention that FOX is spending a ton of money and they’re not stupid) but it’s clearly going to be tough to find someone willing to go on the record in front of all of their competition.
This reminds me of earlier resistance to pay per click advertising. People would say, “I never click on ads,” which somehow translated into, “no one clicks on ads” which clearly isn’t the case based on Google’s revenues.
With ad networks like this, early adopters tend to see amazing returns because the competition among advertisers is so much lower. Can you imagine how amazing it must have been for real estate agents back when they could pay ten cents a click rather than a couple dollars?
That’s where Facebook is today.
Book of the Month: The Driver: My Dangerous Pursuit of Speed and Truth in the Outlaw Racing World
Gadget of the Month: Kensington Mini Battery Extender and Charger for iPod and iPhone
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Amazon has offered a “Subscribe and Save” features for quite a while now where customers receive a discount if they’ll agree to automatically purchase a given product on regular intervals. This feature seems to be most common among grocery and household items that people tend to repurchase regularly.
I’ve been meaning to try this for some time, but doing so proved trickier than I imagined. Why? Because I haven’t put much thought into how often I restock products around my house.
Amazon’s grocery items seemed like a good place to find something to try. However, Amazon tends to sell grocery items in bulk, so rather than projecting when you’ll run out of an item you need to project when you’ll run out of 6-12-24 boxes of something.
But then I found Wheat Thins - something that you can almost always find in my house. Amazon sells them in 6-packs, and offers a 15% discount if purchased through Subscribe & Save. The longest time period for Subscribe & Save is 6 months, so as long as I can make it through one box of Wheat Thins a month, this should work out well.
I price shopped this and it looks like I’ll save around $0.80 per box, or $9.60/year on this cupboard staple vs. buying it locally.
Now I want to scale this to other products. Any suggestions?
Book of the Month: The Driver: My Dangerous Pursuit of Speed and Truth in the Outlaw Racing World
Gadget of the Month: Kensington Mini Battery Extender and Charger for iPod and iPhone
Web Site of the Month: Google Docs - Used to Write Technology Evangelist Posts
Technology Evangelist Podcasts: Subscribe to Podcast Feed
Technology Evangelist Videos: Subscribe to Video Feed
Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a special edition that focuses solely on recent news and tips regarding Windows 7 that we never got around to writing about. There’s been so much good Windows 7 stuff that we thought it deserves it’s very own WrapUp article!
Don’t forget to send in your own tips, […]
A few years ago we posted an ad from a CompUSA store that reminded us what prices were like for laptops back in 1994. This was before the Internet really started to take off as a means to sell products, but these days a lot of people are turning to the web to save a […]
Read the full post by clicking here.Here’s a helpful tip for those of you who have just started using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, or you’ve been using it but haven’t figured out how to create Distribution Lists. Distribution lists make it easy for you to send one message to multiple people that you frequently email without needing to enter in all […]
Read the full post by clicking here.In real estate, some of the easiest business to win is generally from your own network: your family, your friends, and friends of theirs.
After that, you’re generally prospecting against other agents who have their own networks, so you’re essentially in the position of stealing business away from their networks.
So what happens when sites like Facebook help people keep in better touch with their networks? It certainly seems possible that real estate agents engaged in sites like Facebook will have an easier time closing business with a larger percentage of their network.
I searched for “real estate” within Facebook after logging into my account just now. After doing that, I clicked the “people” tab and found out that I’m currently friends with 20 real estate agents. Among those agents, I have between zero and 21 mutual friends. Some I know fairly well and some I went to high school or college with. To me, this is a reminder that real estate agents advertising to me have virtually no shot at winning my business away from one of the 20 agents I’m connected with on Facebook. And, of course, there are other agents I know well who aren’t on Facebook yet.
(This isn’t to say that all 20 of those agents have equal levels of experience, skills, or work the same geographies.)
My 21st friend in real estate. The one who knows what she’s doing but isn’t on Facebook yet, is missing out on a big opportunity. She’s no longer getting her name in front of me at the same degree 20 other friends are. And I’m just one of hundreds of people in her network that she’s not touching, virtually, on a regular basis, for free.
Going outside of my friend network doesn’t disappoint either. I can still find out way more about prospective agents when I research them within Facebook than I can on their own websites. Why? Because they share so much more about themselves, such as where they went to school, who their friends are, what other jobs they’ve had, where they like to travel, their tastes in movies and music, and dozens to thousands of photos of themselves and their friends. None of this can’t be done on their main business sites, but they don’t seem to realize that they should.
If you’re not engaging with your current network through online tools like Facebook, you’re opening up the door for all of the other real estate agents they know.
If you’re not sharing information about yourself online through Facebook and on your business site, you’re making things easy for your competitors who do.
Book of the Month: The Driver: My Dangerous Pursuit of Speed and Truth in the Outlaw Racing World
Gadget of the Month: Kensington Mini Battery Extender and Charger for iPod and iPhone
Web Site of the Month: Google Docs - Used to Write Technology Evangelist Posts
Technology Evangelist Podcasts: Subscribe to Podcast Feed
Technology Evangelist Videos: Subscribe to Video Feed
Most of you probably know that our blog is powered by WordPress, and last week version 2.7 Beta 1 was released for anyone who felt compelled to try it out. In the past I’ve never used a Beta version of WordPress on this blog, but I normally give them all whirl in a test environment […]
Read the full post by clicking here.A few weeks ago I bought the WunderRadio app for the iPhone because it did something most other Internet radio apps couldn’t: play local stations via MMS streams. I flipped through the screenshots and read through the reviews to see if it could play Clear Channel stations (namely KISS FM), and there was plenty of […]
Read the full post by clicking here.
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