Twitter is Down & Facebook is Slow

As members of MFI we are mostly social media mavens. As socialites (well at least the digital kind), we rely heavily on community outreach using Twitter and Facebook. Now that we are experiencing a social media natural disaster we have time to focus our efforts elsewhere. For example, I've been meaning to become more active on MFI and find this to be the perfect oppurtunity to do so. I'm excited to be the creator of an MFI discussion thread and look forward to creating many more. My question to fellow MFI-ers is how are you compensating for the loss/lag of Twitter/Facebook?

Hey Buildium!

In what ways are those sites being down restricting you guys?

This morning (EST) Twitter was down due to a denial of service attack ( bit.ly/yCVBd ), which resulted in many Twitter users to focus their social efforts on Facebook, which then slowed down Facebook ( bit.ly/hWFk9 ). I've just now been able to access Twitter. Few... the attack seems to be over! My question still stands, what would you do if you were suddenly stripped of these two services for a prolonged period of time? Would you go back to business circa 2002? Re-focus your efforts on other sites you've been neglecting?

I guess what I am asking is, in what ways have Facebook and Twitter become essential outreach tools in your marketing plan?

As a vendor for online property management software, social media is an important aspect of our marketing plan due to the fact that our products are webbased, and that our customers and target demographic tend to be web savy. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have proven to be effective tools in engaging our customers, leads, partners, competitors, and the property management community as a whole. While others engage us with their thoughts and comments; providing us with new perspectives on familiar problems. Why rely more heavily on Facebook and Twitter then other more industry specific social networks? One reason is size. Yes, FB and Twitter may not be as targeted, but through the network effect of our followers and fans we are able to reach an exponential number of people. I don't want to downplay the importance of industry specific networks, becuase our marketing plan calls for a presence in them too.

I'd like to start quantifying the volume of leads that come from sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Does anyone have stats on the effectiveness of social media generating solid leads? Or is it a more effective tool for community building?

Jen
I find that it is both. Real engagement and interaction with both of those communities has resulted in leads. Participating on twitter has lead to a few "DM" which want more information on what I do.

The same has taken place for facebook. Regular engagement with all my friends on this site has lead to facebook mails stating that they want more information on what I am doing. They always come when I least expect it because I try to carry on social interaction with all of these individuals the same way I would in an office setting, or if I was going out to dinner etc.

Hope that helps-just my experience so far

Hey Jen,

Todd Katler, of Level One, presented the slideshow pasted below at the 2009 AIM conference. Slides 27-30 address Social Media and lead volumes.

That report states that .05% of leads come from Social Media sources.

www.slideshare.net/AIM_Conference/measur...-2009-aim-conference

Thanks Jonathan!

Thanks Matt! I appreciate the data.

My pleasure. The entire slideshow is very informative and nicely punctuated with Mr. Katler's special brand of Dad humor.

Regarding the .05% there is much to be discussed on this point, especially with how social media is best incorporated into the multifamily industry. Not only that, but which sites are best for which aspects.

Twitter may be more oriented for B2B networking, Facebook may be best as a supplement to a resident portal.

At our site, we have found that our integrations with the above sites work best at qualifying leads. A renter will post to Facebook or Twitter to see what their friends and contacts think and then, if they hear back positively, they contact the property and schedule a time to see a unit.

The goal with the integration is not to drive leads from these sites, but to further qualify the leads that MyNewPlace does send to properties.

We quantify leads from Twitter and Facebook via analytics. We also ask every lead how they heard about us. Right now we receive daily leads from Facebook and Twitter, but there is more to social media then just generating leads. Today, we actually put lead generation towards the bottom of our list of why we engage in social media. We use social media to communicate with the property management community and our current customers to learn and gain feedback. Staying involved helps us improve our products, and our commitment and actions to improving our products will ultimately generate an increase in leads.