One of things we strongly advocate to clients is that they make the analysis of their traffic a priority. Simply put, if you’re going to put any time, effort or money into advertorial blogging, then you’ve really got to look at what is and what is not working. The obvious benefit being, better traffic and more new business!

We review California Olive Ranch’s {COR} data month over month not only to identify growth, but what might actually cause more growth. The service can’t really be automated; it needs to be based upon a sincere interest in identifying trends, solving problems and making a difference. Let’s ask VP Sales & Marketing Claude Weiller how traffic analysis has worked for COR: 

Frerecks: California Olive Ranch {COR} keeps a close eye on its’ traffic analytics data. We asked Claude if he could share a little bit about why?

Weiller: The analytics are a gold mine. The information – page views, unique visitors, etc. – tells us how we’re doing each month in attracting people to our Olive Oil for Chefs and Olive Oil for Consumers Blogs}. It’s also valuable to see the sources of the traffic: Google, Yahoo, other web sites or blogs, etc. And it really pays to see what topics we’re writing about are generating visits – like baking or deep frying with extra virgin olive oil, for example. That way, we can highlight these topics in future blogs or do related posts. Finally, we can see the geographic distribution of our readership – from countries such as Australia or India down to individual cities around the globe.

Frerecks: Are any traffic data points particularly important to COR?

Weiller: Page views and unique and return visitors are the most important yardsticks. Those are the basic numbers that tell us how we’re doing when it comes to attracting and retaining readers. When those numbers are compiled on a monthly basis we can see whether the overall trends are favorable or unfavorable – and adjust our blogging practices accordingly.

Frerecks: Has COR been able to identify new opportunities or direction from the data?

Weiller: Absolutely. We’ve expanded from olive oil culinary topics into olive health topics. Baking with extra virgin olive oil instead of butter has been a huge hit for us. We’ve been collecting additional baking recipes to write about and feature, underscoring how more and more professional bakers are making the switch to EVOO from butter. The change is not only for health reasons. But professional bakers tell us they like the flavor component that EVOO adds to baked goods. We’ve also seen strong interest in sautéing and frying with EVOO, telling us people want more information on these topics.

Frerecks: Does looking at your most popular pages, referral back links and key phrase searches help to determine what you’ll write going forward? 

Weiller: Yes. I’ll give you an example. We recently featured a menu that included almonds fried in extra virgin olive oil. That dish, popular in Spain, has been a good generator of traffic to the blog. In particular, a Spanish food blog in the U.K. picked up and featured our post, driving a notable amount of traffic to our site. That tells us that Spanish tapas dishes have a real following out there. Our posts about the different olive varietals that we use in our EVOO also have been a good traffic generator. That tells us we want to hit that topic down the road. Another thing we’ve learned from keyword data is that Olio Nuovo is a very hot topic. It refers to our limited-release EVOO that we crush and bottle right after harvesting the olives. The keyword data has spurred us to mention or feature Olio Nuovo in several posts. And, as I’ve said, the data we’ve seen about baking with EVOO has inspired us to pursue that topic more aggressively.

Frerecks: In summary has tailoring your blogging, based upon the traffic analysis you’re seeing, been a productive marketing exercise for COR?

Weiller: For sure. We’ve adjusted our marketing strategies in response to the data we get from our blogs, putting a greater emphasis on health matters in addition to culinary topics. We just devoted our entire monthly electronic newsletter to baking with EVOO. We interviewed professional bakers and featured several new baking recipes. We’ll be blogging about each individual recipe in the coming days and weeks.

Claude and his team certainly exhibit how to maximize the value of their blogs with month over month analysis. It’s one thing to get out there and share every day practical knowledge as an advertising strategy – to be a trusted brand these days you really must! It’s another thing to focus on what’s actually happening as a result of that strategy so that you’re always tuning for improved traffic, lead flow and new business.

Interested in blog traffic analysis services, please do not hesitate to get in touch. We can easily tailor a program for you.

 Related Posts:
•  “Lowest Cost Per Impression of Anything We Do… By a Huge Margin! It’s Been Somewhat Amazing.” – California Olive Ranch On Business Blogging
• Get Over How Much: Get Into Attracting High Quality Traffic!
• Bounce Rate: Are Site Visitors Translating to Leads?
• Hits aren’t necessarily traffic

Kinetic Knowledge wishes you a happy Thanksgiving holiday!

Holiday Reading:

• Understanding The New Advertising Environment [i.e. Social Networks, Blogs, SEO]
• Confused By Search Engine Optimization? Try This ‘Laypersons Guide To Understanding SEO’
• Online, Only Blogs Establish Brand!
• Bounce Rate: Are Site Visitors Translating to Leads?
• Understanding WordPress

Real Estate Video TV Blog

Leave it to top ReMax Los Angeles Real Estate Agent Connor MacIvor to jump in and adopt new advertising strategies. With Connor there’s never any hesitation. He’s fearless, with a clear vision for where he’s going. And now he’s perfecting the use of video content with his Real Estate Video TV Blog. With blogs already dedicated to local Santa Clarita CA Real Estate & Community, Santa Clarita Relocation and Santa Clarita REO we’re grateful to be able to ask him about his new strategy for your benefit below, but let’s look at video in general some first.

Video Content and Your Brand

Video content is something we’ve been looking at quite a bit lately. It’s become very cost-effective to create, host & work on video files with programs like Screencast, Camtasia, Eyejot, TalkFusion & Veeple; however, content and how you use it is never to be taken lightly. Content is your business asset and, ultimately, your brand! While YouTube and other FREE video platform sites are ultra valuable environments for their huge audiences, you have to understand both sides of the FREE coin. When you’re invited for FREE it’s a pretty good bet your content will be used to drive their revenue. Namely, Youtube can enter advertising of their choice on the front & back end of your video files. So while you can benefit from the vast YouTube audience, you have no influence in whether or not competitive or even compromising ads’ runs with it. Brings memories of my CBS days and Airline Execs’ moaning the horror stories of their ads’ accidentally running against morbid plane crash programming. Not good. Simply put, we think it’s important to create mobile video files easily used in different platforms. Some that you can control! Certainly branded blogsite platforms offer an ability to upload and also describe video with text, thereby, preparing it for Google and the other search engine indexes. Blogsites also offer a branded presentation of video direct to your audience and simultaneously to various social network audiences, via RSS feed. Our client demonstrates this with his completely dedicated Santa Clarita CA Real Estate Video TV Blog Site.

But enough, let’s ask Connor for his experienced view.Frerecks: “So Connor, you’ve created a complete Video TV Blog. Why?”MacIvor: “Well, it’s not just video but audio snippets & explanations as well. People like to watch TV – we ourselves are not much into any regular programming, but I have heard more and more people run their lives around television programming. We don’t think it changes when it comes to the Internet – people love to watch and see something more than just text. Search Engines love it as well, so it’s an attractive strategy for us.”Frerecks: “Has there been positive feedback or directly related new business?”MacIvor: “You know Chris, it’s not just one thing when it comes to our marketing plan and model. We hit from all different areas. Nothing as of yet can be correlated to new clients, but the video email that we utilize is certainly commented on. That has secured clients for us over our competition! And, in a short period of time, Google Analytics shows Santa Clarita Real Estate TV doing really nicely for us – very sticky, which is always a good thing.”Frerecks: “Are your video files mobile?”MacIvor: “Yes, we use a local cam & Eyejot to create & host them. I can store unlimited video files. It gives me some customization capability and embed code for loading into other platforms. For instance my blog, a website or the video aggregation sites. And that’s the trick, YouTube, Zipvo, ScreenToaster, Utterli all have my video and audio files too. The content is never viewed as duplicate either. It’s all fresh and just another way to dominate in the search engines. It’s another way to be the subject matter expert, in whatever industry you operate.”Frerecks: “Do you feel video is an effective compliment to text & image content?”MacIvor: “It’s not necessary to build a video/audio only platform. When it is incorporated into a regular blogsite – the ability to describe the files with text is very powerful. It certainly shows you’re different when it comes to the type of business you are operating. It’s also a highly personal presentation of us, not just text which in some cases might even be outsourced!”Frerecks: “As always, great stuff Connor and thanks for sharing with everyone!”

By committing to consistently publish great EVOO content, minimum twice per week *per blog*, California Olive Ranch [COR] was able to generate average month over month *increases* in page views of 72%, in unique new visitors of 384% and in back links of 646% in six months time. Simultaneously, COR amassed over 1,400 direct blog subscribers.

In early April 2009 COR’s VP Sales & Marketing Claude Weiller launched several online marketing initiatives, including a comprehensive business blogging test. Our post ‘Building Community For Extra Virgin Olive Oil Lovers’ looked into what Weiller was looking to do at the time, including two blog channels, one targeting Chefs and one Consumers. Immediately he went about campaigning with COR databases in search of direct subscribers. He automated content, via RSS feed, into various social networks accounts like Facebook & Twitter, deploying a comprehensive package of social networking tools. He added lead capture capabilities and a series of additonal offsite search optimization tools as well. And then finally, in order to insure there was an understanding for what was & was not working and so that adjustments to further maximize benefits could be made quickly, he had us develop a series of monthly traffic & subscription data point analyses.

Let’s ask Claude himself for his impressions on his first 6 month’s of blogging:

Frerecks: “Claude, can you tell us what online advertising you committed to when you launched the recent COR campaign?”

Weiller: “Well, we basically tested three activities. Specifically, we did a keyword search campaign focusing on about 250 terms. We also did a banner ad’ campaign. Finally, we tested a membership sign-up campaign. These spanned a 3-month period and were separate and distinct from our blogging efforts.”

Frerecks: “At 6 months, what is COR’s impression of business blogging?”

Weiller: “We are extremely pleased. The more appropriate answer is ‘we are thrilled by the results of our business blogging.’ We were also surprised by the month-over-month growth in readership along with the incredible number of back links that we have secured. I would not have predicted the levels we achieved prior to the initiative. It’s just been amazing!”

Frerecks: “Can you talk about how COR’s visibility online has changed?”

Weiller: “Absolutely… in several ways. For instance, our online subscriber rates have grown by 5 X in 6 months. The growth has been steep and continues to grow each month. We are also getting more and more questions from consumers and chefs asking for information about olive oil. For instance, one chef emailed us that he uses our blogs to teach/train his wait staff about olive oil. An instructor at a culinary school in the southeast uses our blogs (in part) as course material and mandatory reading for some of his culinary classes involving olive oil. We’re also getting readers to refer our blogs to other interested parties [chefs referring other chefs], which drives new customers. Probably most important has been our Google and Yahoo page ranking results. After 6 months we are now on page 1 for all targeted organic search terms, which we identified at the beginning of the campaign. And, when looking at the costs of any other advertising, it cost us next to nothing!”

Frerecks: “So, you have achieved community and/ or interaction with your target audience?”
 
Weiller: “It’s been somewhat amazing. We are now back-linked by literally thousands of blogs and websites. We’re getting dozens of email questions every day about olive oil-related topics that people want to learn more about. We’re getting meaningful traffic from Twitter and Facebook [which we feed into via RSS] and we never thought that would amount to anything. We’re also getting customers from around the country asking us about our product. It’s worth pointing out that our online readership is now in 5 continents and probably 25 countries around the globe!”
 
Frerecks: “Versus other forms of advertising, has business blogging been cost-effective?”

Weiller: “It’s the lowest cost per impression of anything we do… by a huge margin! It’s remarkably effective on a financial level. We probably spend 1/3 to 1/2 the levels we spend on other medium than we do on blogging to acquire a new customer. It’s just amazing! It’s also very cost-effective from the standpoint of driving new readership. Blogging allows us to maintain that relationship [via subscription] month over month. We found that blogging attracts very loyal readers, who are engaged with our brand. After 6 months, 97.3% of our subscribers remain subscribers. It eventually drives those readers to buy something on your site, giving us an opportunity to quantify who is reading more than others. Ultimately, we can reward our most loyal readers with things like free shipping or complementary product. That just makes every $1 spent on blogging remarkably cost-effective for us.”

When approached correctly, Business Blogging brings incredible benefits for a business. With their commitment, COR proves it. Sure, you need spider friendly blog solutions, a discipline for publishing quality content and there’s got to be a reaction to your content [links, bookmarks, subscriptions, SERP selections, time on site, etc.], but it’s all within a business’ grasp.

In 6 months COR has not only developed an incredibly active & loyal online community for their brand, but a reliable & cost-effective advertising tool that drives new business!

Folks, we can not emphasize the value of RSS subscription to your business enough! RSS subscription keeps you on radar screens: it’s modern day advertising in an environment where your target consumers can be as discerning as they please. Gather your databases and get them familiar with RSS subscription and the fact you’re committed to sharing useful information… and it will drive more sales!

Manhattan banker, turned local Rye NY real estate agent, Judy Croughan is a new blogging services client interested in more local visibility. She represents a perfect example for how RSS recently worked for us, Kinetic Knowledge.

Judy’s dabbled with blogging on a Rye NY community oriented blog site for a couple years. Approximately 12 months ago she began to think about establishing her own local brand. Some searching on Business Blogging Solutions led to a conversation and a direct subscription to our advertorial business blogs.

Let’s look at how RSS subscription served as a sales tool, allowing us to stay on Judy’s radar for when she was ‘ready to buy’:

Frerecks: “Judy, Have you been receiving our blog posts via subscription since we first spoke last year?”

Croughan: “I would say that I have been reading and receiving your posts for about a year. I remember that I initially signed up to receive your free ‘Business Blogger’s Bible’ for pointers and then started following your posts. I was always interested in incorporating video and when I saw the post, ‘Should You Tube be in your marketing mix?’ From there, I was hooked!”
 
Frerecks: “Beyond YouTube, has there been useful information? At least enough to keep you interested in how to maximize the advertising potential of blogs for your business?”
 
Croughan: “Yes, for instance, I appreciated your recent post that Nielsen reports that people are spending 67% more time on blogs than they did last year!”

Frerecks: “Can you tell us a little about why and how you’ve been dabbling with other blogs?”
 
Croughan: “I started writing on a local blog about 2 years ago and have since posted on some other real estate sites. Certainly more cost effective advertising than print, and I also find that with approximately 90% of people starting their real estate search online, it is a faster path to reach savvy, more educated, home buyers or sellers. In fact, I recently sold a house to a couple relocating from Chicago who found me online, and we had a wonderful experience. They were exactly the kind of clients you want to connect with online- familiar with the price points in the local market as they had been previewing properties online beforehand, they had read my blog posts and seen my You Tube video, so they had a sense of my personality and work ethic and that we would be in sync, and that contributed to a very positive work experience.”

Frerecks: “Has that blogging effort built a local brand online for you personally?”

Croughan: “I think it has begun to develop my public presence in the sense that I am recognized as a hardworking real estate professional who is connected to the community, but developing my own blog gives me more content control to connect with those educated buyers and sellers that I am looking for.”

Frerecks: “In the scope of a web presence, where does blogging/ publishing sit in terms of an advertising priority?”

Croughan: “I am incredibly passionate about the possibilities of expanding my business online and in many ways, it is a no brainer to develop a high quality blog site for the price of a one time print ad. Although I believe that advertising in community publications does have value in effectively reaching the local audience, a potential client may miss my print ad for a variety of reasons- they may throw the publication away, be out of town that weekend & miss the issue, etc. – but my online articles can come up again and again if they are positioned correctly. Also, I can provide more timely information online without having to wait for the “lead time” that it takes  for print articles to be published. I also like the idea that I can vary my content at will to suit my buyers and sellers. If I hear about an important real estate development that I think people will be interested in, I can write about it immediately, and include the related keywords and links that will position me in the search engines. I also think readers get a truer sense of my personality through a blog vs. a static website.“

Frerecks: “Would you say getting those posts via RSS [converted to email] is why we’re doing business today?” 
 
Croughan: “Yes, definitely!”

Related Posts:

• Invite subscription to your Business Blog!
• 10 Reasons Business Blogging is the Top Marketing and Advertising Value Proposition!
• Business Bloggers, You need to consider yourselves a source of [modern day] Trade Media!

Related Sites:

• Judy’s Rye NY Real Estate Blog
• Judy’s Community Rye NY Blog
• Judy’s Website

Dr. Thomas Dandrea has practiced physical therapy, chiropractic treatment and wellness in Monmouth County NJ for 11 years. He bases his Monmouth Spine & Rehabilitation Center in bustling Wall Street commuter town Red Bank NJ. About 8 months ago Dandrea looked into the development of a new web strategy, first a website and more recently a  Monmouth County NJ Chiropractic Treatment Blog. Nowadays he says, “Web is 90% of our marketing focus. The rest [10%]is word of mouth by nurturing existing relationships.” And while he’s just beginning to hit his pace, the effort  brought him 13 new clients in June of ‘09. Here’s what he shared recently about his success:

Frerecks: “Hi Tom. So, how does a Blog fit into your marketing scheme?”

Dr. Dandrea: “Currently, our blog is one major spoke in our channel strategy. By creating a wealth of valuable information surrounding physical therapy and wellness online, we have begun to create a loyal readership. Our blog has created a mechanism to constantly stay in touch with our customer base and always stay fresh within their minds.”

Frerecks: “Are you seeing good local organic indexing to date?”

Dr. Dandrea: “We have begun to see good indexing around niche terms that were eluding us on the main website. Also the blog has actually begun to compete with our website, which means that we now have double the amount of presence on the major search engines.” - see http:blog.monmouthspine.com at No. 4 in 16,000 indexed pages for the search red bank nj chiropractic tips

Frerecks: “I understand you attracted some good PR recently. What happened with New Jersey View Magazine?”

Dr. Dandrea: “I was contacted by a writer from New Jersey View Magazine. They wanted to write a story on chiropractic and the wellness industry. She was searching and came upon some my online content. She decided, after reading through some of it, I would be an excellent candidate to interview. Subsequently, we had an online interview which is going to be published in the upcoming issue.”

Frerecks: “Ultimately it comes down to new business. Have you gained new clients as a result of your web presence?

Dr. Dandrea: “Our web presence over the recent months has grown to become an intricate part of our overall marketing strategy. Because of the constant content creation and optimization, we continuously see new patients finding us via the web. Also, with the continuous tweaking and maintenance of our sites, the quality of the patients’ finding us via the web continues to increase. Last month, for example, was our best month with 30% [= 13 new clients] of our new business coming from the web.”

Frerecks: “Is the Monmouth County Voice of Chiropractic Treatment too big a goal?”

Dr. Dandrea: “Actually the sky’s the limit with my new web strategy… and certainly with my Blog!”

Howard Brinton’s STAR POWER® Systems, a National leader for real estate education and conferences, recently dug its heels into the development of a highly visible and optimized web presence. Brinton’s troop maintains such an incredibly intense connection with it’s international following of top producing Realtors®, via traditional marketing resources, the urgency to build a more optimized web presence hadn’t become a priority until late Summer 2008.

In an environment where Realtors® leverage resources such as search, social networking & RSS to research educational resources, STAR POWER® realized they needed a more relevant & timely stream of consciousness to generate:

• Targeted search discovery
• Voluntary RSS subscriptions
• Links, bookmarks, forwards, and recommendations
• Differentiation as a dedicated, knowledgeable, trustworthy content provider
• Marketplace branding
• New lead opportunities and sales

Prior to this effort STAR POWER® had maintained a real estate education services blog, albeit inactive for months, and a website. Rather than adopt difficult and expensive search engine optimization tactics to achieve their goals, they decided instead to use their existing online foundation to pursue a sustainable presence with a commitment to content creation & distribution. Namely, they committed to blogging! The idea being that not only should they pursue long term web optimization, but a plan that could keep costs low, cast the STAR POWER® brand far & wide and set an example their flock could easily adopt themselves.

With a minimum 8-10 post per month blogging goal between August ‘08 and June ‘09 the STAR POWER® blog has seen:

• an increase in total Monthly Page Views of 260%
• an increase in total Monthly Unique New Visitors of 243%
• an increase in Monthly Return Visitors of 444%
• and no signs of leveling off anytime soon with trend curves that point directly upward.

Additionally, newly blogged content is simultaneously submitted into various social network environments, visitor bounce rates [no. of visitors that visit one page and leave/ supported by a new design] have decreased by a total of 56% and more and more direct subscribers sign on each week.

Regarding web optimization and a visible presence for those searching, STAR POWER has established a 1st page presence in Google, where previously they had no placement, for targeted search phrases like:

• No. 1/ 127,000,000 results for the search – real estate conferences and education
• No. 5/ 103,000,000 for the search – real estate conferences 
• No. 7/ 87,000,000 for the search – real estate conferences 2009
• No. 11/ 83,800,000 for the search – real estate conference
• No. 20 / 162,000,000 for the search – real estate education

And countless other important key phrases… making only the sky a limit for STAR POWER® Systems! Note: search results change constantly and they have also become more personalized [based upon historic activity], meaning one person may see different results than another, but that generally the results you see are similar to those others see. Regardless, highly ranking positions for countless target phrases and the vast amount of searching activity justifies the effort. Clearly.

For West Islip client Netter Real Estate, serendipity is having The New York Times get in touch to discuss and then to write about their Blog in a Business Section feature.

In the article ‘Brokers Enrich Web Approach’ The Times looks into how Realty Firms are leveraging the web to reach home buyers, saying blog posts are an increasingly common tool of the trade. One Long Island Realtor suggests “The buying public is more technology-savvy than years ago. They prefer to shop online before they buy.” Netter’s Michele Lasker goes on to add she is, “often updating [the Netter Real Estate blog] with new listings, postings from agents, and news and information about the area. The blog has a loan calculator, Web feeds and a link to Netter Real Estate TV.” She says, “It’s good information and it gets our name out there.”

This kind of recognition is just another great example of how sharp realty firms like Netter establish their brand online with blogs. There’s a ‘leap of faith’ for a business to commit to blogging; however, by proactively sharing good information for anyone’s use the benefits can be enormous. We thought we’d check in with Michele to hear more:

Frerecks: “Hi Michele. For everyone’s benefit, can you talk some about your recent blog activity?”

Lasker: “Lately our real estate blog site seems to get more and more attention. We try and keep our posting consistent with 2-3 times a week. We get feedback in the form of comments from viewers ranging from simply enjoying our useful information posted to questions about information on the site. We also get a few calls a week about information found on our blog site. We average about 5 calls a week just from the blog site itself. However, it is impossible to have an accurate number of calls directly from the site. When we ask callers how they heard about us many just say “I don’t know. I typed [whatever it is they are calling on] into Google and you’re site just came right up.” This is great to hear that we are attracting so much attention from google, and other search engines!”

Frerecks: “Were you seeing this kind of activity prior to dedicating a 2-3 X per week effort to the Netter blog?”

Lasker: “No, but our more recent dedication to blogging has definitely increased lead activity.”

Frerecks: “And how did The Times find you?”

Lasker: “The author, Marcelle S. Fischler, asked Kathy Engel, president of the Long Island Board of Realtors (LIBOR), for a popular blog website in the area. LIBOR manages the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island. Kathy got in touch with me and explained that in her search she came across our blog site. She asked if I would be willing to be interviewed by the New York Times about our blog site and I said yes!”

Frerecks: “What were they looking for?”

Lasker: “The article was about real estate agents and brokers using the internet and new technologies to advertise. They discussed sites such as facebook, you tube, craigslist, and listing book. They were also specifically looking for a real estate blog. They came across our blog site in their search for a popular long island real estate blog. The article came out it print on Sunday, April 19th in the real estate section.”

Frerecks: “Congratulations Michele! A job really well done and, on behalf of our audience, thanks very much for sharing.”

Top Illinois Realtor® Bryan Bomba was recently interviewed on the popular video site That Interview Guy.

In the interview, Bomba discusses the success he’s had online as a local real estate marketer AND also the development of his brand. The focus of the dialogue being a custom branded business blog, which he uses to publish local real estate & community coverage for his target marketplace.

Note that by establishlishing a trusted, local and authoritative brand, Bryan actually demonstrates how it can translate to new business.

Michael Krisa’s ‘That Interview Guy’ focuses on tactics and strategies of the nation’s top real estate professionals.

Related Posts:

• Hinsdale IL Realtor® Bryan Bomba on Discipline for Business Blogging
• Howard Brinton speaks with Hinsdale IL Realtor Bryan Bomba about Blogging