René Fabre - Social Media Marketing

Let’s go back to 1969 - 1974 for a minute. (web 0.0) It was a different recession. Actually, two separate recessions side by side. The 69-70 recession was attributed to the Fed’s raising interest rates. The recession of 73 - 74 was blamed on OPEC for raising oil prices and the Vietnam War. It would appear we’re in a somewhat similar (yet more complicated) mess today.

As an emerging adult embracing my American dream, that was the world I entered into at 20 something.

Some of us here on AR recently have shown a little frustration about things and change. It is a challenge for sure to stay positive, an even bigger challenge to make things happen in this wacky unpredictable market. We’ve all revealed a little fear; we stumble on occasion trying to keep a positive attitude. We hurt (and rightfully so) when we see our associates get out of the business and/or lose their home. It cuts fearfully close when that happens to someone in our immediate family, with friends, clients, and coworkers. These things are far more serious than why someone stopped blogging.

As those of you who know me, my work in the Pacific Northwest is creating contemporary solutions for effective marketing. Many of you are making the effort to experiment with social media and internet technologies to build your business and are seeing results. You might not be having your best year, but you are getting business and it’s coming from places it never did before. You’ve begun your journey and I’m proud to be a part of it.

We live in such a rapidly changing landscape and none of us knows what the future holds. The only thing we do know is there’s more change coming. This is just the preamble. When the Clinton’s talked about the global village back in the 90’s and the bridge to the 21^st Century, I don’t believe this is quite what they had in mind. In retrospect, I think they were a bit naive (and rightfully so). We don’t know what we don’t know.

Regardless, we are certainly in one big village now, and for the first time in history we’re personally wired in (with instant multi-media access) to almost every person (and/or group) on the entire planet. We don’t hook up with everyone, but we can. The cool thing about living in our free society is that as long as we pay our cable bill we can join in the conversation, and that’s changing with public WiFi spots.

We’re watching the birth of real time internet. It seems anything can happen anywhere in the world and we're there. This past few weeks we witnessed amazing events and the whole world spontaneously chimed in while they were happening. We shared opinions about the election in Iran, riots in China, and the death of Michael Jackson. This is like an awakening. This is a total shift in our collective behavior. We don’t watch the news, we’re there as it unfolds, we're a participant.

Father, Father... The sleeper has awakened!

Paul Atreides, Dune by Frank Herbert

TV and radio were all over these events, yet most went to their computers and flocked in mass to the internet to watch, respond, share, and converse about it. Ironically, TV and radio depended on technologies like twitter, text messaging, cell phones, and snatching amature videos from the web that were taken and uploaded by people who were there on the streets when it was happening. So many millions of us did that during and after Michael Jackson’s funeral that it slowed internet traffic on the entire www for hous and several networks crashed from the shear volume of people online.

Now it’s the recession of 2009 and a new generation of 20 something youth armed with their American dreams are emerging. They are the first generation that totally grew up in a hi-tech multimedia interactive environment. “Talk about a different world view!” I often think, “They may work with me someday, they might become my customer, and they could end up my competitor.”

This new generation, the first time homebuyers we hear about from the talking heads are said to be upwards of 60% of the market over the next couple of years. They've integrated technology into the fabric of their lives like no ever has. There’s an added dimension to their life experience. They process information differently than any generation has before them. Regardless of what technologies we use, what networks we hang out on, if we want to be successful with them we’d better learn how to talk to them, develop a relationship, and gain their trust.

We either embrace or resist this new age. It has new rules, a new paradigm, and a lot of new technology that influences how we interact with each other. Some of us are zealous and early adopters. Some of us resist change and hold out, perhaps with a virtual chip on our shoulder. (ha ha)...

A future worth having is going to be based on good relationships and community. It will be more about cooperation and inclusion and not defined through its exclusion.

These times hold great challenges and we’ll get through them.

Technology brings us an ever growing array of tools for solution, but it does not bring us any wisdom. That part is up to us. Anyway, it’s not about the technology, by itself it’s meaningless, but leveraging it to communicate, now that’s powerful.

“There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”

Alexandre Ledru-Rollin

We’re very fortunate here on Active Rain. It is an amazing community of talented people that converse, share, instigate debate, and generously lend a helping hand when asked. This in itself is a powerful means to discover what the future holds. The answers will reveal themselves if we keep talking and ask the questions.

“Together everyone achieves more. There are no limits to what we can accomplish together. I am more than I am but less than we are.”

Wally Amos

Reach out to people in other places. If we only hang out in the same old small town bar all the time and talk to the same people about the same things, never venture out, and feel all comfy about how agreeable we all are we’re going to miss out. Take what you are learning here and bring it to others in different communities. Talk with them and ask a lot of questions. Compare and share what you've learned here. Invite them to join us. Bring that experience back to the Rain and we’ll all be richer for it.

“We are the people we’ve been waiting for.”

Hopi Indian saying

Episode 3: Matt and Rene' talk to The Virtual Meeting Coach, Meri Walker...

excerpt...

In their jobs as the Pacific NW internet marketing team for Ticor Title, Matt Sweet and Rene Fabre, spend a big chunk of their time helping Realtors, bankers, and other folks in the real estate industry understand why the old models of advertising and business communication don’t work anymore… and why the new models do.

As Rene likes to say, young and old alike, people all over the world have become “searchers.” We go online daily now to self-educate and to find what we need.

So, the question is, how can people possibly choose to buy your products or services unless they can easily find your compelling presence online?

Matt jokingly called this third conversation, “I Get By With A Little Yelp From My Friends.”

Take a look and a listen as the three of us talk about ways to use online review sites like Yelp, Amazon and others to help people searching for things they want FIND YOU in the process of their searching...

Read the entire blog post here at: Quit marketing to the crowd that already left the building

More about Meri Walker

One of the most important things we can do in this great big social media experiment we are currently involved in is to simply stay in the conversation. We don't need to agree, that's not what it is about. We just need to keep talking (ie: communicate, participate). No one knows it all, infact most of us know very little... Yet, if we keep getting together, experiment, and keep talking and sharing our experiences, the closer we are to understanding the new reality and age that is emerging. Regardless of our own personal opinions, it will be what it will be.

In music we use the term: "You gotta be bad before you can be good." And history demonstrates over and over, Bad often = Good, according to the public (consumer).

This isn't the first worldwide web, excuse me! Our web history actually takes us back to 1825 with the invention of the electromagnet. As a professor of arts and design at New York University in 1835, Samuel Morse proved that signals could be transmitted by wire. He used pulses of current to deflect an electromagnet, which moved a marker to produce written codes on a strip of paper - the invention of Morse Code. (I learned it in Boy Scouts and I'm still just a punk kid in retrospect.)

I love that dude, he was first and foremost a fellow artist. 

The message remembered is, "What hath God wrought?" sent later in "Morse Code" from the old Supreme Court chamber in the United States Capitol to Baltimore on May 24, 1844. This was the real birth of the internet! Crude as it was then, from that day forward the world changed and was rapidly globally connected for those that understood it's potential...

It's not about what's right, wrong, or indifferent... It's about exploration. It's not about the answers, it's about the questions. We live in an age where top down no longer functions the way it use to. Many business models are now unsustainable, yet (hard to wrap our arms around it) simple random cooperation does. We live in the age of the amature. We should celebrate, not freak. The more the consumer knows the more they're going to want/need the consumate professional to represent them with their business dealings. That's not a bad thing, it just is. The bar got raised for everyone.

Anyone who's been around for at least a couple of decades has been inundated with media and its one way hype. Simply put, we're all a part of that and no big mystery. By that I mean, I can do better. I'd rather participate and be the writer, producer and actor than couch potatoe my way through another one way input like TV. (most of the time, anyway)... I at least, actually want to talk with you.

It's about understanding how much of the old business model is broken and there is a new way to conversation. It blends business and social in ways we never anticipated. It's more casual, more social, more real. Duh... I feel more comfortable doing business with someone I know and trust. What a thought.

(Now there's the real mystery)...

As a net searcher, I really don't give a crap what you're selling until I want it. So get over it. But if you're interesting, I might check you out. Show me something. I might come back and check you out.

We're here, let's talk, let's enjoy, let's share... One of the activities I am very dedicated to is talking to everyone in our related real estate industry in person to ask at least one question: "Where do you think it's going?"

Simply put, we're in this together... Sadly, many have already checked out... For me, I do not have this fear. "The future is here, it's awesome!" We have more opportunity now than we ever had before, it's just different... "So let's get busy."

At Ticor we make a concerted effort to practice what we preach, then demonstrate. I love the roundtable networking conversations because it's about sharing. We all learn so much from each other and (the big hidden secret is) we have a lot of fun. I hope the insurance commissioner doesn't make sharing against the law.

To meet every other week with a group of business professionals and talk about life, the universe, the internet, is very compelling. I say friend up and converse... We have several groups on many levels going... The video below is Janet Matzke's Tacoma group. We meet at the Java Fusion on 6th Avenue in the Narrows District of Tacoma. If you're in town, hopefully we'll see you there.

Have an awesome 4th of July and holiday weekend... Take a sec for silent prayer and thank those that kept our dreams and freedom alive...

That's Keller William's very own Scott Cowen (saying, this is Matt Sweet)...

Purple [born in or to the purple, of royal or exalted birth: Those born to the purple are destined to live in the public eye.]

If you want to enhance your presence and carve out your own royal estate on the web you need to show up as a noble in the Google Index. In order for that to happen there are a few basic fundamentals that must take place.

Your profile is your most important foundational building block. Make sure that everywhere you are on the web that uses a profile is detailed, well written, and complete. You need to walk right up to the Google Index, knock on that door and tell them in a clear loud voice with authority three things...

1. Who you are.
2. Where you are.
3. What you do.

Do you have a Google Profile? This is in all likelihood the most important profile you can have online. Why, because it sits right smack on the Google servers and it’s hardwired directly to their index. Your profile here isn’t your resume; it’s your main connection point identifier as to everything you are on the web.

Fill out the Google Profile as completely as you can and anytime you join or get involved with a new social media site, blog, or join a community, be sure to comeback and include the URLs.

Tell it where you’ve lived, where you grew up, and where you live now. Why? Think about our training, we’re a society of online searchers... When we Google anything, how do we do it? Most often it’s where and what, or what and where.

Some of the profile info is not visible to the public, so let it know all the email addresses you use. They act as unique identifiers to claim your content.

This is really important because you are helping Google index everything that is you on the web. Your goal after all is to populate the index with as many references to you as possible with a clear path back to you (inbound links). It sounds techie, but it’s not. In fact when you consider the time you spend online and wonder if its quality time or not, ask yourself this question; “Is what I’m doing online right now making a contribution to my index entries with links back to me?” If not, you’re time there might be best spent differently or elsewhere.

Think of it like this; “Hey Google, it’s me, ‘THE’ Rene’ Fabre.” (Knock, Knock) I’m the Rene’ Fabre you want to pay attention to. (Not those other French dudes in France I compete with on occasion for web attention and there's that other one roaming around China right now taking and uploading pictures to the web.)

Google’s response: “Prove it.” OK, I will...  

I’m the Rene’ Fabre at Ticor Title Company and I live in Renton. I’m the IT Marketing Director and my region is Washington and Oregon. My specialty is internet marketing, social media, and technology development and solutions. I’m the Rene’ Fabre on Activerain, Linkedin, Biznik, renefabre.net, Facebook, Ticorweb.com, Yelp, and Twitter etc. I frequently give talks, roundtables, workshops and classes on internet marketing, contemporary prospecting, and lead generation. I have taken my conversation online and I participate in numerous communities.

So (and therefore) any conversation you find via these and other sites with my name are from the one and only me. Please Google, tie all these activities neatly together and associate them with me and put it in my very own special [Fabre_René] folder (that you have reserved for me) in your index.

Thank you...

Sincerely and best regards,

me.

Everywhere that you are online that includes a profile, complete it. If you don’t you’re missing out. Google wants to deliver up the most relevant and best search results it can. (And it does a pretty darn good job at it.) To be included in those results Google needs to be clear that you are a professional (with authority) and you know what you’re talking about.

How do I gain authority? I participate by delivering up meaningful conversation (content) on the subjects I claim to be an expert. The content of my conversation online gets reinforced by who I say I am in my profile(s). I need to be talking to people online and have them talking back to me. After all, that’s what networks do, right? And that in itself is the golden rule of the net. What drives the internet? Simply put, content, new content, and changing content.

For example: you have a Linkedin.com profile...

What do you do? How long have you done it? Where do you do it? You want the description of you and your work to use words that tie you to your geography (state, county, city, neighborhood) and your experience, your participation, and the expertise you have in your area of business. Unlike the Google Profile this one is definitely a resume online. You want history. It’s hard to be recognized as an authority if you don’t have any.

Associate with others (friend up!), it’s a network. Remember, if you belong to a community, it’s made up of people conversing. Communities are conversations and conversations are markets. If the profile includes an area for testimonials (this is important), by all means do so and include at least three. If you have someone, not you, stating you did a great job, that’s a great big vote for you being an authority. 

Do not use exactly the same language in all of your online profiles. No shortcuts, don’t just copy and paste the same thing in all your profiles. Change up your language a little from place to place. Why, because each of these cyberspaces is a different community and has a different context for conversation. As human beings, we’re not exactly the same person in everyone’s eye. We’re a little bit different in each community because the conversation is different. Tweak your profile to maximize your presence in that community.

Google’s spiders crawl all public content on the web (as do the other search engines). Widgets and Gadgets are cool, but good old fashioned text with well crafted descriptive words and good grammar will take you far up the index when it comes to search engine visibility.

Google, on its 10^th birthday last September had well over a trillion unique pages in its index and it’s growing exponentially every month. Make it easy for Google to index you. If Google has your profile as a guide, knows your listings, your blog, your conversations, your comments, and all the sites where you hangout, it will be able to pull ‘all that is you’  together much faster and efficiently. Like a planet, you’ll have gravity and the laws of attraction will be in place.

Photo credits:

Gary Larson, The Farside   

Amnesia, I’m not bored...

OK, sounds great... so how do we manage all this again?

Stay tuned...

Market Update: Carnation, WA 98014

The city of Carnation, Washington, is a picturesque small town on the very eastern fringe of the greater Seattle metropolitan area. It’s tucked up next to the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. The city was incorporated in 1912 as Tolt, Washington. A few years later (1917) it was named Carnation, then in 1928 it was renamed back to Tolt, then finally in 1951 (twice and forever) it was renamed back to Carnation, after the research farm Carnation Milk Products.

It’s an interesting local history. Elbridge Amos Stuart (1856 – 1944) founded the Pacific Coast Condensed Milk Company in Kent, Washington in 1899. It was based on the newly developed process of evaporation. Now days we don’t think much about fresh milk, it’s delivered fresh and cold everywhere. But before refrigeration readily available fresh sanitary milk was rare. Stuart had his ups and downs with this new business and method for several years. His partner left him in 1901 with the company and over $100,000 in debt. He pressed on with the simple idea that milk was a staple and never lost faith that quality milk came from healthy cows.

He believed in this idea so much that he purchased purebred bulls and distributed them to local farmers that were his distributors. This led to the creation of a breeding farm, the Carnation Farm. With each successive generation came a better healthier cow with better milk production.

One day on a trip to Seattle Stuart walked by a tobacco shop. He saw some cigars on display named, Carnation. There you have it ... the Carnation Evaporated Milk Company.

"Carnation Condensed Milk, the milk from contented cows".

It’s funny the things you remember as a child, but I remember riding to Newcastle to see my Great Grandmother. There was always a can of Carnation Evaporated Milk in the kitchen. She loved it with her coffee and tea.

A.E. Stuart served in the company directly until, as Chairman of the Board, he passed away in 1944. The company sold to Nestlé in 1985 for 3 billion...

Today, Carnation is a small town in an absolutely beautiful rural area. It’s outside the urban growth boundary and has a lot of small farms and equestrian properties. Much of the zoning in the area is 5, 10, and 15+ acre minimum per household. You’re about an hour out of Seattle on light traffic days, 30 minutes from Issaquah, and 45 minutes from downtown Bellevue. There’s no shortcuts, you have to go around Lake Sammamish north or south to get anywhere west.

I hope they never build a freeway there. I like the fact that it’s unspoiled and somewhat remote yet on the fringe of the Northwest’s largest metro area. If you head 20 minutes south to Interstate 90 you’re on Washington’s main east/west corridor. There are a lot of very beautiful (absolutely awesome) estates in the area, but Carnation hasn’t lost its old world charm and still has plenty of quainter homes that depict its rural history and roots.

You can follow the City of Carnation on twitter at: @carnationwa and they have a Facebook page. Notice in the RTS (residential transaction study) that the unplatted (or acreage) properties are on average just under 8 acres.

	The data used in this report is deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. Ticor Title cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracies. © 2004-2009 Ticor Title Renton WA 98057