Did you know that every 60 seconds over 13k iPhone apps are downloaded, 90k tweets are shared, 168 million emails are sent? We found these and some other wild statistics on the Shanghai Web Designers site - nice infographic!

These common phrases have been driven, over and over, into our heads by the so-called "social media experts" for years now, so there's no doubt you're already familiar with them. I can't disagree - sincerity, authenticity, and some level of transparency are critical attributes you need to have if you want to be a successful social media marketer. But what I'd like to dig into today is a piece of advice that I've been thinking a lot about lately; one which would cause most people to flinch if it were offered up in front of a conference room full of paying attendees (fortunately no one would actually pay to hear me speak, so we won't have that problem today).  What I'm proposing is so radical - so out there - that not even the slimiest of social media gurus would admit to using it in their daily practice. And yet it's been used in wide practice for hundreds of years, by marketers, sports players, politicians, business leaders and many more people around the world.

So what exactly is this dirty, underhanded piece of advice?

Determine your goal (let's say it's to become a master social media marketer), find someone who's already achieved it (there's literally 1,000's of people to pick from), and imitate them (yes, I told you to imitate them).

Now before you get all up on your high horse and launch nuclear blog comments into my inbox, let's clarify what I mean.

Imitate what they do that's made them successful.

I didn't say plagiarize their work (blog posts, tweets, or otherwise). And I certainly didn't suggest you rip off their brand name or launch an exact duplicate of their service. What I'm suggesting is far more subtle. Imitate their style. Analyze what they do that makes them so successful, and use the same techniques in your own efforts. Consider them your role model. Not clear on what I mean? Well, let's take a look at a couple areas where you might start, then let me know if you still think what I'm proposing is unethical and/or unsound advice.

Where do they focus their efforts?

Are you still spending 2 hours per day tweaking the background colors and widgets on your MySpace page? (I sincerely hope not). Are they? (They most certainly are not.) So where are they spending their time at? Well, if you can determine that they make a concerted effort to focus almost entirely on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, then they must have a good reason for it. It's probably not a bad idea for you to focus 90% of your own efforts there as well. Disclaimer: This assumes they are in the same or similar industry to you. If they focus 60% of their efforts on fohboh.com but you own a dentist practice, obviously a social networking site for the restaurant industry doesn't work for you. Use common sense and do your homework.

How do they position themselves?

What's the general tone they take in their tweets, blog posts, etc? Are they the "newsbreaker" (always on top of breaking news/trends)? Are they the wise old sage (advice and wisdom)? Are they the sh*t starter (boundary pusher)? Look at what works for them, and if you think it would be a good fit for your business without being an outright rip-off of their style, run with it! You can always shift gears if you find it doesn't work for you. The point here isn't that you're going to do better as one or the other, it's that you've at least committed to one or the other. By taking a position you've established the foundation for your voice online, and provided people with a frame of reference they can get to know you in.

What are they sharing?

This point could almost work as a sub-topic to the one above, but now that you've determined the position you're going to approach communications from, what type of content should you be sharing? Again, take a look at what your role model focuses on. Would you say their tweets are more news-based sharing of information, or opinion-based critique of the market and participants? What are their most "liked" posts on Facebook - local interest stories about bunny rabbits and positive thinking, or bleeding edge tech pieces geared towards the early adopter audience? There's no shame in sharing some of the same content they do; if they're sharing it than it's most likely viral in its nature. (wow, I used *it* three different ways in that sentence) But instead of just copying and pasting their finds and using them as your own, bookmark their sources and get the scoop on them next time that hot viral video comes out. I guarantee that over time, you'll get so far down the rabbit hole of content that there's little chance you'll be seen as copying their style. But you've got to start somewhere right?

How engaged are they with their community?

We're all familiar with the word engagement, right? Well what do you think it actually means? Here's a good way to tell how "engaged" a company is with their Twitter followers. Go to their Twitter page and count, as a percentage of the first 50 tweets you can scroll through, how many of them begin with an @username followed by a message referencing a previous tweet. More than 50%? This company is seriously engaged with their followers. That means more than half of their outbound tweets are in reply to something a follower said to or about them. They're not broadcasting - they're interacting. This is likely one of the keys to their success. So how did this come to be? If they were an unknown entity previous to joining Twitter (like you), than it probably means they spent some time of their own @replying to people who they deemed influential or interesting. This is one way you get new people to follow you in the first place -- if you're able to positively contribute to their questions or discussions! Disclaimer: Don't. Be. An. Idiot. Seriously, use some tact and think before you tweet -- nobody likes a spammer. Only contribute when you think your comment will be seen as useful by the other party.

We're all adults here, so I assume you're savvy enough to have realized by now that I'm not suggesting you outright copy the entire social media plan of a thought leader in your industry.

Plagiarism=bad / imitation=flattery, right?

Successful social media marketing is not something you can just learn overnight, and the only sure way to get better at it is by simply digging in and learning as you go. In my opinion, there's absolutely nothing wrong with looking to those individuals or businesses who have demonstrated a superior level of expertise and attempting to use some of their same tactics to improve your own position in the market. As time goes on, take what you've learned along the way and apply it to new situations and audiences, and I promise you'll find your own voice.

One of the largest obstacles any of us face when it comes to marketing ourselves or our businesses online is simply knowing where to start. Think back to when you were learning how to play sports as a kid. Didn't you want to emulate the top athlete in your field? Each and every one of us wanted to be as good as they were, and someday enjoy the same level of success. But as time went on, we took what we learned watching them and slowly made it our own. What I'm suggesting is that you treat your burgeoning social media marketing career the same way - find the Michael Jordan of your industry and try to play the game just like he does. You'll never be able to. But if you pay close attention, stay focused, and practice hard enough, maybe one day you'll be as good as Kobe.

Like this post? Then you should sign up for the TurnSocial Playbook - every Monday we'll send you a newsletter with ideas for keeping your customers engaged on Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages, links to over 20 pieces of relevant shareable content, and 5 daily action items you can use to connect with customers in the upcoming week. Take the work out of social media by signing up at http://letterly.net/turnsocial.

Great infographic from the folks over at SearchEngineLand entitled The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors.

Click that link above and hop on over to their website to grab one of your own.

RSS

First and foremost, we've had lots of requests for us to introduce support for RSS feeds on the TurnSocial bar - so I'm happy to announce that we pushed an update over the past weekend that does just that! TurnSocial customers can now easily add any RSS feed they'd like to a toolbar directly through their admin screen - just one more way to deliver useful content to visitors on every page of your website. Don't want to use RSS content from your blog? No problem - why not get creative and share your Quora "Answers" feed? We look forward to seeing the myriad of ways our customers use the RSS feature to interact with visitors on their websites, and we're very happy to finally offer support for this long-desired feature.

Twitter Follow

It's always been great that visitors to your site can see what you've been up to on Twitter, but now with our built in Twitter follow button they can also follow you with just one click! No need to enable this feature - just check your TurnSocial bar, and you'll see that the update is already live!

Share

Another new tweak to the TurnSocial bar you may notice is an enhanced "Share" button, with a clear call to action next to the "Share" icon. We heard you loud and clear when you told us that you thought many people couldn't immediately identify the "+" sign as an area of the page to share from, so we've taken this as the first of multiple steps to increase sharing engagement. Have more suggestions for how we can improve the toolbar UI? Feel free to shoot me a message at matt at TurnSocial.com and let me know - I'm always up for hearing new ideas.

Between support for RSS, built-in Twitter follow capabilities, a few minor UI tweaks, and our announcement of support for Satisfacts Resident Ratings, the last few weeks have been quite exciting for us at TurnSocial. We have some very cool things we're working on behind the scenes right now, and I can't wait to share them with you over the coming months - so why don't you pop up that little Twitter icon on the TurnSocial bar below and follow us to stay up to date with what we have in store?

Thanks again for all of your continued support - here's to a great second half of 2011!

One of our goals at TurnSocial is to expand a community’s ability to market itself beyond simply showing/telling prospects about the property. The TurnSocial bar provides the context of the community’s presence on popular social networks, as well as local information about the surrounding neighborhood. How walkable is the neighborhood? What do current residents have to say about the area? What popular restaurants are nearby? TurnSocial enables access to social media profiles and location-aware content from WalkScore, Rentwiki, Yelp, and more directly onto apartment community websites to help prospective renters learn the answers to these types of questions. And now, with the addition of ratings from SatisFacts annual surveys and Insite™, its 365-day/year feedback program, we're helping to improve a community’s online reputation and marketing appeal even more.

SatisFacts is the multifamily industry’s leading resident satisfaction survey, retention and performance improvement service provider. Adding resident ratings from SatisFacts provides prospective renters with valuable information from their peers about an apartment community, while creating a powerful way for apartment marketers to enhance online lead generation. Every SatisFacts rating is displayed on a scale of 1-5 stars, and since it's built into the TurnSocial bar, will appear unobtrusively on every page of your website. Who better than current residents to tell new prospects how great your community is to live in?

When you only have a few critical seconds to make a favorable impression on new visitors to your website, every opportunity to highlight your strong points is meaningful. If you're not currently a SatisFacts customer and would like to get resident ratings for your community, email me at matt at turnsocial.com and I'll connect you with the right people - they've got plans starting as low as $1/per unit per year!

Take a look at the example rating we've added to the bar on the bottom of this page, and let us know what you think in the comments!

Facebook is massive, and getting bigger by the day. There's no denying its reach among American consumers, and myriads of companies are being funded and built solely on the premise that they're going to help you become a better marketer while capitalizing on the web of connections built by sites like Facebook. These companies are flooding the market with tools; everything from social media dashboards (which help manage your various campaigns) to automation software (which will plan your updates algorithmically, so that they're released within the optimal time frame to be seen by the largest potential audience of readers). RentMineOnline is a great example of a service which uses your residents existing social networks to source new leads and bring them into your sales funnel; it's one of the few examples in the multifamily industry that successfully bridges the gap between social media and traditional apartment marketing practices. Kudos to the team. Still, as good as their service is, it requires a "push" marketing effort - if you stop pushing (paying), the leads stop coming. That's fair -- it's a business!

So what else can you do to enhance your ability to "pull" residents into your community? To start, you can make it look like an incredibly desirable place for prospective residents to live. And what's the best way to showcase the people, relationships, and activities that make your community so great to the outside world? That's right ... Facebook.

Facebook As A "Pull" Marketing Strategy

Whether lurking on #AptChat or reading the comments section of some of our favorite #multifamily bloggers, I consistently hear people asking for advice on how they can get better at marketing their community on Facebook. "It's impossible to measure ROI!" "My PM's don't know what they should post!" "We don't see any leads come through Facebook so why should we waste our time?" I've got news for you: you're doing it wrong. I agree, it's incredibly hard, if not impossible to measure ROI on Facebook, and knowing what to post and when is something that you can only get better at with practice and time. (ROI isn't the ultimate measurement of marketing performance, either.)

What I most take issue with is the underlying premise: that Facebook should be treated like any other traditional "push" marketing channel, and held to the same standards when it comes to ROI. It's not, and it shouldn't be. The biggest opportunity Facebook presents for your community is the same reason millions of people spend hundreds of hours crafting their perfect public profile: Facebook lets you put your best face forward. It draws people into your world. Facebook is your chance to take what's best about living in your community and put it on display for the world - it's dynamic, it's alive, and it's the closest someone can come to knowing what it's like to live in your community without actually sharing your street address, if it's done right. Which begs the question - what does apartment marketing on Facebook look like done right?

The #1 Way To Use Facebook To Market Apartments

In all likelihood, every other channel you market to relies on a traditional "push" strategy. If you turn off the faucet, the water (or leads) run dry. The reason why many people look at Facebook and see nothing but a heavy time commitment with no measurable ROI is because they expect it to act like any other traditional push tool. It won't! Can we accept that Facebook may be best used as a means to pull new residents in, simply because they can't deny the attraction to your vibrant community? In the same way that millions of individuals use Facebook to showcase their best self to the world and draw others into their orbit, so should your community.

Which marketing tactic do you think is going to be more impactful on a potential resident in 2013 -- having to choose between one of the 20 text ads they see in a search engine results page, or landing on your community's Facebook page and seeing the glowing faces of residents who look, talk, act like, and enjoy the same things that they do? Which would have more impact on you?

The Opportunity is Now

Your competition doesn't get it. In two years, 98% of these same companies still won't get it. That's unfortunate for them, but it's great news for you -- it means there's an unprecedented opportunity for you to stand out in a highly competitive and crowded marketplace. If someone told you how big SEO, PageRank, and search engine results were going to be back in 2004, wouldn't you have thrown a large portion of your resources into managing your presence on Google? Imagine the benefits you'd be reaping now, 7 years later!

This kind of long term thinking requires discipline, short term investment without measurable ROI, and smart staffing choices, but if executed correctly your company can establish an almost insurmountable lead over your competitors in a few years time. When you reset your expectations of how Facebook works as a marketing channel, your perspective widens to include the new possibilities that a successful pull strategy can offer. Your level of success depends on how willing you are to commit.

We'll dig a bit deeper into what a successful Facebook "pull" strategy looks like in a future post, but for now I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the topic. How does your company view the Facebook opportunity? Do you have an example of a particular community which shines as a best practice example for the industry? Do you think my interpretation of the market opportunity is totally off-base? Let us know in the comments!!

One of the most common pieces of feedback we've received from customers is that they would like us to enable the ability for visitors to their page to follow them directly from the Twitter app. Unfortunately, until recently there were some very technical reasons that made that nearly impossible - even well funded companies (with plenty of developers) in the toolbar space like Meebo and Wibiya hadn't figured out a way to implement in-page follow. Fortunately for us, our technical co-founder David is a code wizard who can figure out just about anything when he puts his mind to it, and last week he finished a workaround that allowed us to include a "follow" button on every Twitter app we've enabled.

And then Twitter released this API update! Grrrrrrrr......

Oh well. We'll get over it. What matters is most is that whether using our current system, or the Twitter update which we'll soon implement, this is a big win for our customers. Earlier this week, you might have noticed a follow button living inside your Twitter app - with 2 quick clicks, visitors to your page can follow you without ever leaving the page they're on. Now there's even one less reason for them to ever "bounce" to interact with your social content. (If you don't see the follow button on your screen, try giving the page a hard refresh (control+shift+refresh) and it should show up - if not, please let me know!)

What's next? Well aside from cleaning up the UI a little bit, if you take a look at our UserVoice page, LinkedIn seems pretty high up on the list of requests. Maybe we can try to fit that in.....

Get your TurnSocial bar HERE.

VaultWare, a provider of apartment marketing and leasing solutions, recently announced support for 3rd party apps within their premium website offering, specifically mentioning TurnSocial as an example of how customers can make their website more interactive. We're honored to be mentioned as the featured app!

VaultWare's support for services like TurnSocial illustrates the increasing desire of multifamily companies to incorporate social and location-based media into their websites, and further establishes TurnSocial as the go-to product for accomplishing this somewhat complicated task with ease. We're proud to add VaultWare to our list of partners focused on building value in the multifamily housing industry, and look forward to a great year ahead as we continue to roll out innovative features targeted directly at property management professionals.

To learn more about Vaultware, visit their website by clicking here. If you're a business owner or agency interested in working with us on a custom solution for your customers, please reach out to me directly to discuss the opportunity at <matt at turnsocial dot com>.

Busy week, right? I had about 2-3 other blog posts lined up that I wanted to get out the door, but time got away from me and here we are - Friday already.

In any case, I wanted to quickly share a few interesting posts that I came across in the last week which particularly struck me as adding value to the "conversation". I recommend taking a few minutes over the weekend to browse through them, and if you have more than a few minutes, dig through the archives of some of the websites I've pointed out - there's a treasure trove of advice and content to be had if you just know where to look. On that note, here's this weekend's reading list -

How To Be Like Zappos in 3 Easy Steps - It's common knowledge that the company culture over at Zappos is one of the best in the business, so how can you take their lead and apply the same principles to your business?

How Online Marketing Drives Offline Success - KISSMetrics never fails to deliver insightful content, and this infographic connects the lines between the online and offline world in a way that should help any marketer bridge the gap. Hint: need something to share? People love infographics - so go for it!

A Blogging State of Mind - Get your head right! Think you know what drives your blogging decisions? Think again.

The Future of Community - What will the future of your online community actually look like? Chris Brogan shares some very insightful thoughts.

B2B: Social Marketing and a Cautionary Tale - Many marketers fail to accomplish their goals simply because they approach leads and influencers in the wrong way. This brief article is a great real world example of how easily things can go wrong.

Stay warm and enjoy your weekend everyone!