For those who say that social media is a fad might want to rethink their viewpoint the next time they sell their home.

LinkedIn has partnered with Rofo.com to create a real estate portal on LinkedIn, steering the real estate industry into social media.  The app will be called “Real Estate Pro,” and can be used by any agent with a LinkedIn profile.

“Real Estate Pro” displays residential and commercial listings and recently finished deals, but also posts market data within an agent’s local area.  Launched on the 23^rd, “Real Estate Pro” creates a localized marketplace for brokers, and updates directly on the profile page of the user.

View the video below to see more about how this new app works.

What would it look like to integrate social media more with marketing home products?

Diesel jeans, the makers of ludicrously expensive denim for the 18-25 year-old market, recently used Facebook as part of an interesting branding initiative –customers try on clothes at the store, and if they like the look, they can get a picture snapped of them in the new garb at one of the company’s photo-booth style kiosks. People can even log in to their Facebook account from there for instant photo posting to their wall. Finally, friends can “like” or comment on their friend’s purchase (example comment: “You’re spending HOW much on those?”).

I think it’s a great idea – you have a tech-savvy and designer-label-craving audience built for you in the Millennials (or Gen-Y, whichever you prefer).

Though each person is a unique snowflake, generally, as a whole, this generation would think nothing of sharing shopping preferences or a great butt shot with hundreds of digital acquaintances.

So would this generation share its home buying and product selecting just as freely as they would with retail decisions? You bet. According to the NAHB, Millennials are buying homes earlier than previous generations. They are also buying before getting married and are willing to buy higher density/smaller homes. And they’re checking out homes online and reaching out for opinions to boot.

There are already a few software tools dedicated to helping consumers either buy or rehab an existing home. Sherwin-Williams, Benjamin Moore and Behr all have iPhone-capable applications for color selection. Colorjive, Colorcharts.org and Smart Draw (links below) are great tools for creating, but not necessarily for sharing. You’ll have to manually share your creations – none of them have an instant “share” button like the Diesel Jeans kiosk.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see home product marketing take this turn in the not-so-distant future. After all, it seems as though the missing piece is simply a share button.

Check out a review of the Diesel process here: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/facebook/do-you-like-how-i-look-in-these-jeans/.

Colorjive
Colorjive is a fun tool. Users have to create an account, and then you can upload a photo of your house, play around with the selection tools, and then save up to three different versions for free (paid version is much, much more dynamic). It’s not a precise tool (so you won’t generate color codes needed to hop on over to your nearest big box) but you can an idea of what your house will look like in only minutes.

Colorcharts.org
The CBN Color Selector on Colorcharts.org is a complex and powerful software program that lets you visualize the appearance of thousands of colors. Like the color? You can instantly generate the precise CBN code so you can order the color mix from the big box or a dealer right away. The really cool part is that you can test out colors on different surfaces as well – colors will look different on stucco than they will on wood, after all! 30-day trial is offered for free.

Smart Draw
Smart Draw is another deep, powerful program that also keeps its eye out for those of us who might not be a structural engineer. SD has quick-load templates, dozens of house/room/floorplan designs and ready-made renderings of furniture, appliances, fixtures, wiring, plumbing, HVAC, landscaping, and more. Best of all, if you need help, they have free tech support.

Imagine being able to interact with your customers at the exact moment they see your product on the shelf, view your ad or read an article about your product. Imagine engaging with your customers the moment they shop for your product – or better yet, the moment in which they even consider purchasing your product.

2D codes are making this possible. The “next big thing in shopper marketing” makes it easy for marketers and suppliers to identify shoppers and offer information and incentives that will encourage future loyalty. These two-dimensional bar codes may be scanned with camera-ready smartphones, taking users directly to a screen that provides additional product information or special offers.

2D Barcode

The codes may be printed on packaging, displays, in magazines or on literature. When scanned with the built-in camera, a user’s smartphone reads the code and takes the user to a screen that can offer anything from loyalty rewards to how-to videos or special pricing.

As social media and marketing continue to work hand-in-hand, advancements such as 2D codes will only become stronger and more prevalent. The latest in highly targeted messaging is getting to the root of consumer interest and need. Consumers want better interaction with the brands they love… and brands in turn need to respond to these desires.

A major benefit of the 2D codes?

• They allow for two-way communication between the customer and the brand. Companies learn where customers are shopping, what they’re looking for and how to capture their attention. Customers have the chance to provide feedback by commenting, clicking through and by simply showing interest.
• The information users receive is incredibly flexible. Marketers have the ability to change coupon offers or notify the user of new information as soon as it’s available.

The opportunity marketers have right now is getting the word out about 2D codes. Consumer awareness is relatively low… even as codes are starting to appear in magazines and on store shelves.

Smart marketers will look into 2D codes as they appear more in our day-to-day living. In Amsterdam, for example, train stops have 2D codes posted to signs, providing train schedules and entertainment for those who scan with their phones.

I see this new way of marketing to and interacting with the customer taking off in a big way. Through what other mediums will we see these scannable codes?

Marketing Home Products in a Changing Marketing Landscape

As we all know, planning season is upon us…and what better way to prepare for our 2010 marketing plans then to identify the home products marketing trends for the upcoming year?

At K&A, we explored the latest and greatest marketing trends for 2010 and came up with our favorite five.

1.  Word of Mouth Marketing
Customers will leave you if they don’t see the difference between you and the other guy. And in today’s chaotic marketplace, this will continue to grow. That’s why word-of-mouth marketing, especially tech-based and mobile communications, will be more important in 2010 then ever before.

2. Social Responsibility
Being eco-friendly has gone mainstream. Customers buy from brands that are making a difference in the world; and as more and more young consumers–one of the biggest advocate groups of ‘being green’– enter the marketplace, you will continue to see corporate social responsibility gain momentum in 2010.

3. Customer Insight and Implementation
Tomorrow’s customers want a say in the development, improvement and branding process. Companies that create discussion forums and blogs on the company Web site, establish a presence on social media sites like twitter and Facebook, or use platforms like UserVoice or Get Satisfaction for customer feedback, allow customers greater input in the process and more trust in the brand.

4. Personal Branding
With the growth in use of social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as blogs, the lines between professional and personal have become blurred. Social media tools have become a professional’s online resume, portfolio and personality, all in one. In 2010, expect to see more personal branding that defines who you are and what role you play in your company.

5. Authenticity
Authentic branding will continue to increase in popularity in 2010. Customers want to know who they’re dealing with, buying from and what the company stands for. Customers have been and will continue to seek transparent and honest communications from brands they can trust.

For more insight into our top five marketing trend picks for 2010, tweet me at @stevekleber.

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The marketing and communications world has changed more in the past five years than it has in the last 20. Due to technology and the explosive popularity of social media, today’s home product marketers and public relations practitioners must walk a fine line between new and traditional mediums when communicating with their target audiences. As such, social media marketing tends to fall under the umbrella of public relations, vastly changing the role of modern-day PR professionals.

Despite the challenges of creating a balance between shifting job responsibilities and time spent on social media versus traditional communications, PR professionals actually have the upper hand in the new wave of communications. As more and more customers flock to social media for news, interaction, sharing, dialogue and engagement, PR professionals have enhanced opportunities to connect with the audiences they have spent their entire careers trying to reach. How exciting!

And as skilled, professional communicators, public relations practitioners are the most qualified group of individuals to handle social media marketing for your businesses. They are strategic, well versed in your company’s key messages, and trained to deal with a variety of internal and external audiences including the media and your important customer audiences. They operate within a strict code of ethics and understand the importance of the distribution of immediate and relevant information to a variety of target audiences – all within a tight time frame.

If you’re in public relations, embrace the change. Remember that social media puts the focus back where it should be – on the public. And if you are a home products business owner or executive, remember to leave social media up to the experts, not the interns!

Balancing Social and Traditional Communications

Yes, social media is changing the way the world communicates, but that doesn’t mean that every customer is using it. Despite the hype surrounding social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, we must not forget that traditional communication mediums play a vital role when marketing home products to our target audiences.

For today’s companies and home product marketers, it’s critical to strike a balance between social and traditional communications that is tailored to your specific brand. If your home products business is consumer focused, then social media channels may be a more popular way to reach out to your customers; if you’re operating in the b-2-b channel, communicating in trade publications and more “traditional” communications channels may be worth more of your time and effort. Your business model, industry and target audiences including their gender, age and race, will help you identify the best methods to reach them and influence their perception of your brand and/or their buying patterns.

It’s important for brands to implement a multi-faceted marketing approach that talks to customers when and where they look for information. Some brands claim that social media doesn’t work, but they’ve yet to invest any time and effort into making it a success. It can’t be a “build it and they will come” approach. Creating a Facebook page and Twitter account won’t do anything for your brand if you’re not participating in the conversation. Social media is about interaction and engagement and is only successful when effort is put into a transparent, two-way communications model.

The bottom line is that in today’s chaotic world, you need to balance your efforts between new (social media) and traditional communications. You can’t be talking to everyone, in every medium, and expect to do it well. Talk to those individuals who mean the most to your brand; and do so in the channels where they will hear you and join your conversation.

In June 2007, K&A conducted research on the economic power women have acquired in recent years, focusing on how home and commercial building products’ companies had realigned their attention to female markets. During our research, we found that an increasing number of women control the family purse strings and make the major household purchase decisions. In fact, we concluded that women made more than 80 percent of all household buying decisions. As such, we deemed this female buying group the Chief Purchasing Officers, or CPOs, of the Home.

MediaPost recently took a closer look at this demographic, and its findings mirrored our former research. In an article titled “5 Ways to Engage Women (And Moms) Online,” women were found to be responsible for approximately 85 percent of all consumer purchases. Many were also found to be affluent. The “Marketing to Women Datafile” reported one in five women earned more than twice their significant other’s salary, and in 2005, Gallup reported that one quarter of U.S. women lived in a household earning more than $75,000 per year, as reported by MediaPost.

Our K&A research further found that when it comes to their purchasing habits, women are extremely internet-savvy and use the Web to frequently research product, service and brand information and to make both small- and large-scale household purchases. These women find the Internet to be extremely useful when researching or learning about new products, purchases they may be interested in making or for general information collecting.

Armed with this insight, it should come as no surprise that as marketers in the home and commercial building products channel, we must reach out to this influential female buying group . . . and we must do so online.

Below are a few online marketing strategies, as reported by MediaPost, which will aid in effectively marketing home products to today’s influential women.

1.  Acknowledge that many women are busy with multiple responsibilities.
In short, keep your Web site navigation intuitive and simple; create a clean and simple design.

2.  Appreciate that women are individuals.
Throw away the stereotypes and focus on individual needs, desires and customizable options.

3.  Benefit from the value women place on authenticity.
Women value authentic brands and look beyond products and services to a brand’s social responsibility, sustainability practices, and community support and charitable giving.

4.  Understand that affluent women often expect more.
Feature clean, organized and high-end design.

5.  Recognize that women appreciate visual design.
Put time, effort and money into your Web site. Women take in all of the details and look at Web sites as a critical representation of your company, products and services. Invest wisely.

To download a free copy of K&A’s CPO White Paper, click here. To view the complete MediaPost article click here.

In my previous post, I wrote about some basic rules of thumb when using Twitter, especially as a marketing strategy. Today, I’d like to include some of the specifics Twitter offers, like using hashtags and how search is essential for new business prospects.

Let’s start off with a couple more basics:

• Know your audience. According to a recent poll, 69 percent of adults don’t know what Twitter is. Making sure your target audience is aware of the site is a good first step. If they’re not, create a Twitter presence, but put your focus on other areas for the time being. Keep in mind, however, that Twitter is expected to grow to 1 billion users by 2013; you’ll want to have an established presence.
• Connect with your customers. Listen to what they’re saying and do your best to meet their needs. Just knowing someone is paying attention to what you’re saying speaks volumes. Just ask any Empire State Building employee who received ice cream from a company that listened to their tweets.

Twitter Tools:

• Connect, connect, connect. Have all profiles and Web pages link to each other. This keeps customers on your radar, clicking from one site to the next. If you have a blog, include an option for readers to share the post via Twitter. You can even include your Twitter username on business cards!
• Use search to your advantage. See what others are saying about your company as well as your competition.
• Get organized. If you’re busy and on-the-go, or if there are multiple people sharing one account, using a service like Co-Tweet or TweetLater can help organize your life. These programs make it easy to schedule tweets in advance and keep track of followers automatically.
• Track trending topics. Hashtags, if used appropriately, keep tabs on trending topics, events or news pieces by labeling them. When you put a hashtag (“#”) before a word, it will be grouped together with other posts in which that same word includes a hashtag. When searched, all posts including the word labeled in this way will show up together.
• Follow the leader. Follow Friday is a popular way to let others know who you’re following on Twitter. It’s a way of saying, ‘Hey, check this person out – they generate interesting posts!’ Simply add “#FollowFriday” before your post, and list the names of those Tweeple you hold in such high esteem.

For even more tips, see a great post on essential tools for a Twitter strategy.

What have you found are the most beneficial uses of Twitter? Comment below, or follow me on Twitter @stevekleber.

There are countless statistics out there about Twitter users: who’s more active, who the loudmouths are, who logs on once in a blue moon and who didn’t get past the first step of signing up.

As you might guess, those who are involved in conversations and sharing online get the most out of the site. Twitter is becoming an essential and invaluable tool for companies, making positive differences in ROI, customer satisfaction and new business leads everyday.

To optimize efforts put toward your company’s profile, take note of a few rules to live by on Twitter:

• Keep a consistent brand image. Maintain a profile picture and/or background that is consistent with your other online accounts such as your Web site, LinkedIn profile, Facebook page, etc. When your picture or logo is consistent, your brand is much more likely to stick out in people’s minds.
• Build relationships. Social media is not all about you. Twitter doesn’t exist for you to sell your product or gain customers. Sure, it can lead to that, but it really shouldn’t be your raw goal. A more appropriate and realistic goal would be to establish your company as a genuine, knowledgeable leader in your industry that is in tune with its customers.
• There’s always time for personality. It’s great to promote yourself or your company and the benefits both offer, but potential and current customers need to know there’s a human behind those posts. Remember, there’s a difference between giving a play-by-play of your shopping trip downtown and tweeting briefly about a cool new store or restaurant you came across. Including a Web site address, Twitter account or a photo is always a plus!
• Re-Tweet unto others as you would have them re-tweet to you. Make sure what you say is something others will want to repeat. In the same way, if someone else says something noteworthy, keep it circulating in Twitter world, and give the original author credit.

My next post will cover more tips and specific uses of Twitter tools – both within the site and through outside sources. Follow me @stevekleber.

Customers Are Forever Interacting, Forever Online

According to trendwatching.com, there is an emerging trend of heightened online interaction, dialogue and conversation among customers and brands. Called “foreverism,” the trend is defined as the:

“Many ways that customers and businesses embrace conversations, relationships, and products. Driving its popularity is technology that allows them to find, follow, interact and collaborate forever with anyone and anything.”

Although this concept is not new, the online phenomenon is nevertheless still astounding, and will “forever” impact the way brands communicate with their core audiences from here on out.

Forever Online and Forever Interacting

From Facebook and MySpace to Twitter and LinkedIn, people around the globe are continuously updating their statuses and profiles and expanding their online footprints. As such, this provides a rare yet ample opportunity for brands to interact, in real-time, with their valued customers.

Below are some noteworthy stats from trendwatching.com:

• Facebook reached 200 million active users in April 2009. More than 100 million users log on to Facebook every day, while more than 20 million users update their status at least once each day.
• As of May 2009, MySpace boasted 130 million members; LinkedIn more than 40 million; and Twitter more than 30 million members. And China’s Twitter, TaoTao, now has nearly 50 million users.

• Overall, the share of adult U.S. Internet users who have a profile on a social networking site has more than quadrupled in the past four years and now stands at 35 percent of the population. (Source: Pew Internet, January 2009.)

These online footprints will live on forever because the Internet is a “massive caching machine” and most importantly, because the younger demographics will never stop communicating online.

According to social media guru Jeff Jarvis, as reported by trendwatching.com’s foreverism report,

“Thanks to our connection machine, they [young people] will stay linked, likely for the rest of their lives. With their blogs, MySpace pages, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, Seesmic conversations, Twitter feeds, and all the means for sharing their lives yet to be invented, they will leave lifelong Google tracks that will make it easier to find them. Alloy, a marketing firm, reported in 2007(!) that 96 percent of U.S. teens and tweens used social networks—they are essentially universal—and so even if one tie is severed, young people will still be linked to friends of friends via another, never more than a degree or two apart.”

Further validation of this theory includes the January 2009 Pew Internet study that found that 75 percent of adults aged 18 to 24 and nearly 100 percent of tweens have a profile on at least one social networking site.

With the trillions of people online, it’s no surprise that there are increased interactions between brands and their customers, and that they will be “forever conversing” on the Web. As a result, it’s critical for today’s businesses to adapt to online platforms and direct Internet-based, real-time communications with their target audiences.

For more information and for examples of big name brands communicating online, view the complete trendwatching.com “foreverism” trend brief here.