Our friends over at Duct Tape Marketing penned a great post this week titled, Facebook Is Not The House;
Let me be very clear on my thinking on this: Facebook is not the house, Twitter is not the house, your social profiles spread far and wide are not the house.
Your hub, your blog, your website—that’s the house. Build the house, fix the house, decorate the house and invite the party to the house, because it’s the one thing you can own and control. It’s an asset you can grow rather than space you simply rent.
Your activity in social media is all about building a persona and brand that draws people to the house, whether you’re a plumbing contractor, consultant, or someone that wants to create a path to a better career. Build rich and engaging hubs on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or wherever your prospects hang out, but remember you’re always going home.
Focusing too much attention on your Facebook play is like spending a bunch of time decorating and fixing up a neighbor’s house while they are traveling Europe for a year or two. It may be a nice place to throw a party or entertain, but you don’t really own it.
You Are Creating Digital Assets
We have said for some time that your company blog IS the cornerstone of your Branded Media, and that Content Marketing far and away outpaces Facebook Marketing. John has an interesting analogy of Facebook being a “rented space” and your blog and web site being an “owned space”
That line of thinking helps gel the thought that the content you create for your Branded Media, or said differently your Digital Footprint becomes an asset. In traditional terms, an asset isn’t an expense. What we are seeing with our own Branded Media at The Urbane Life is that after nearly (800) posts and over (2,000) comments, a certain amount of momentum surfaced, and while we still need to do regular postings, the result in terms of search and discovery, (a new term by our apartment marketing nerd, Mark Juleen) carries itself.
But, you have to start, we didn’t get (800) posts and thousands of inbound and outbound links overnight. They are all built one article at a time, and one comment at a time. As John points out, make sure you are building your own house, and not just fooling around on someone else’s, like Facebook.
Eric’s background is rooted in the rental and real estate industries. He founded metro Detroit’s Urbane Apartments in 2003, after serving as senior vice president for a major Midwest apartment developer. He established a proven track record of effectively repositioning existing rental properties in a way that added value for investors while enhancing the resident experience. He also established The Urbane Way, a social media marketing and PR laboratory, where innovative marketing ideas are tested. Eric has been featured inEntrepreneur Magazine and Business Week Magazine.
Eric Brown
Eric’s background is rooted in the rental and real estate industries. He founded metro Detroit’s Urbane Apartments in 2003, after serving as senior vice president for a major Midwest apartment developer. He established a proven track record of effectively repositioning existing rental properties in a way that added value for investors while enhancing the resident experience. He also established Urbane Media, a social media marketing and PR laboratory, where innovative marketing ideas are tested. Eric has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine and Business Week Magazine. You can connect with Urbane_Media on Twitter. Eric also writes regular articles for the following publications; Multi Housing News Social Media Examiner Search Engine Guide
Follow Me:
Related Posts -
The challenge is creating content We posted recently posted an article, How Many Channels Can You Manage. The point of the article was to point out to our readers that web traffic and digital exposure to your brand or apartment community come from many different places. Most everyone has heard of Flickr and You Tube, yet how...... -
Own Your Social Media Failure or Success We had a new client in the Urbane Lab recently that we had prepared a proposal for who was piping mad. As he read through our offering he commented that this is mostly the same as what the last "Social Media" shop promised, but didn't deliver. He was pretty distraught with his...... -
Curated Marketing Articles Here are some weekend reads and links that we found interesting and of potential value for your business and apartment marketing trek. They are in no order, enjoy the weekend! Twitter Profiles Now this was not a scientific, data filled test haha, if you been on my blog long...... -
Leverage Your Social Reach Partnership marketing has been around for a long time, and may have been refereed to by many other names. Brands of all types align themselves with other brands they believe will help them "Sell More Stuff" However, as the Directional Flow of Marketing winds continue to change the relationships we have with prospects,...... -
Becoming a Media Partner We have had a great run with a series of Partnership Marketing events this spring and summer, and we are on the lookout for like arrangements in the future. Although they looked a little different, and spawn a new name, Media Partner, they served the same, or even better purpose of......
Related Websites -
Using Article Marketing for a Blog One of the most popular things on the Internet today is blogging. In fact, if you notice the trends over the past few years, bloggers have gotten a bit of notoriety and attention even in the news. Bloggers are becoming quite an influential group in the news category and for...... -
Do You Want To Do Article Marketing? Discover How To Do It! For web-based ventures to realise financial success, they're going to need a constant stream of traffic and a straightforward and effective promotional technique. Traffic is the lifeblood of the web, and if you and your enterprise do not have any online exposure or can't get your target market to find...... -
Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs Amazon says: Stop pushing your message out and start pulling your customers in Traditional “outbound” marketing methods like cold–calling, email blasts, advertising, and direct mail are increasingly less effective. People are getting better at blocking these interruptions out using Caller ID, spam protection, TiVo, etc. People are now increasingly...... -
Starting Out in Article Marketing Having an attractive website is not just enough for you online business. Adopting the right search engine marketing strategies and building web links are equally important to draw the targeted traffic to the website. This involves using highly informative and quality content articles that can boost the search engine...... - How To Get More - Article Marketing Tips If you've never used article marketing for generating targeted traffic, then you're seriously missing out on something. In this article we will be discussing some simple yet effective article marketing tips that give you long term results. Whether or not you intend to target a specific niche market such as......
Gr8 analogy … i’ve always used term “mother ship” for our website & my blog, but House works, too, probably even better. Might have to change my terminology. Thx for post Eric. @visionmidmichigan; kathybackus@wordpress.com
Build Your Own Branded Media
@Kbackus, I actually like the term “Mother Ship” Start with the right base and your Social Media program can grow nicely, Thanks for stopping by,
[...] We are starting to see an additional benefit lately as well. On our own efforts to build our Own Branded Media we are starting to see velocity. [...]
[...] model). Or is it the cost per lease that bothers us, or that we all just want to build our own Branded Media. Although there are a few companies really starting to build their own Branded Media, and doing [...]
[...] Facebook Has Become a Leasing Lead Generator September 15, 2011By Eric BrownNeed Help With Your Facebook Marketing We have written a lot about Facebook Marketing here at The Urbane Lab, both good and bad. We are starting to shift our opinion about this monster platform and seeing it as a leasing lead generator. Each month we are watching Facebook climb up the rankings as a real Traffic Source for our web sites that we manage. Our Living The Urbane Life Facebook Page has risen to #8 as a Traffic Source for our Urbane Apartments Web Site. Also of particular note is that our On Line Magazine, The Urbane Life has also crepe into the Top List! Yes, that is called Creating your Own Branded Media! [...]
[...] your Digital Footprint isn’t in the thousands, or tens of thousands your “community” is not large [...]
[...] pass through the digital marketing arch and start to transition their resources toward internal Branded Media, it seems there will be a plethora of opportunity for those who took the time to create a Digital [...]