Online Advertising. Marketing and Advertising Agency

New Oaks Real Estate Website

matth — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:24:08 +0000

White Space Media are pleased to announce the launch of our latest web design project. Over the past weeks the team here at White Space Media have been working closely with the Sales and Permanent Rentals team at The Oaks Group to redevelop their real estate portal.

Formerly hosted on a Windows platform, we have migrated their official website onto a Linux environment and supported by a WordPress CMS. This is the second launch of a real estate website using WordPress we have delivered in recent months. After last month’s successful relaunch of the Zinc Noosa holiday accommodation and real estate website.

It is commonly thought that the WordPress content management system is a bloggging tool. This is no longer the case. WordPress has been heavily redeveloped over the past year and can now offer all the features and functions to compete with any of the web’s leading open-source content management systems. WordPress is backed by an impressive and talented community of developers which mean that the showcase of WordPress plugins (or extensions) is massive. Marrying WordPress’s expertise in the area of blogging and SEO with their development community means that agencies like ourselves have a solid and extensible platform to build a variety of different functional websites.

The new Oaks Real Estate and Permanent Rentals website is live now and portfolios all of their impressive apartments and building complexes in and around Brisbane.

Social Media – Why you do it & what to use

admin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:27:32 +0000

Back in the day when WWW was all the rage (1998 – 2004) and everyone was talking about having a web page, the entire industry was hit all of a sudden by a huge amount of “website builder architect designer” people. Everyone was an expert, and the industry was full of geek speak mixed with smoke and mirrors that just made you feel really out of touch.

Well it’s here again, but this time Papa’s got a brand new bag. It’s social marketing and media and there’s so much of the same that’s happening that you’re heads going to turn.

There is a term in marketing called social validation – explained by Wikipedia as “a phenomenon in which people are more willing to take a recommended step if they see evidence that many others, especially similar others, are taking it“. In other words, do what your competitors do or what the social cowboys tell you to do.

So lets firstly clarify one of the big reason to adopt a social marketing strategy

Why do you want to build a relationship with your customers?

Here’s my thoughts on it – The primary aim of social marketing is “social good”, while in commercial marketing the aim is mainly “financial”.

So if you’re thinking that you feel it’s important to build a relationship with potential customers in which you provide insights and offer your opinion without the expectation of getting something in return, then this is a great start. Naturally what happens here is, you build a better relationship with your potential customers and as a result, they are more likely to consider you if you provide a solution to their needs. While you’re building this relationship you’re also building your brand – in a positive way.

What should your goals be?
There are loads to consider, however for the purpose of simplicity lets outline 2

Goal a: Acquire new followers
Goal b: Increase Loyalty.

How do you do that?

a) Add some simple social media connections to your website and email.

The immediate: For your website look at Add This. It’s a very simple process for your web guy to handle.

When you’re ready to create your twitter, facebook, linked and any other social media account – finding the simple solution to adding these to your site in place of the simple addthis system is daunting. We found a few tools helped us.

WordPress has some great social plugins – the one we use right now is Share & Follow
DandyID – Simply put, DandyID allows you to store your various online social identities in one place. They have over 300 social networks you can add to your profile. Obviously this is an overkill, however what they want to do ids offer the right choice depending on your needs.
For email signature we really like Wise Stamp. Using Thunderbird it was a snap to set up, and their tips and articles pages have loads of additional resources for setting up alternate options. Hotmail was not available at the time of writing this, however one of our clients has word from them that it is in the pipeline.

We will touch base and review more options here shortly (feel free to follow us on twitter and we will update when we post a new blog)

OK so to address Goal B – increase loyalty, I feel as though you have to give and help out others while using social media. So feel free to write about the things that you’re passionate about and things of interest to you as a business. This is basics 101. The second part to this is listen to what your followers and potential new customers are saying. To do this you can use a host of different platforms.

You can just log into Twitter itself or try using a platform such as the ones below. Some of the advantages of these platforms include the ability to manage both personal and business accounts as well as Linked In, Four Square

Tools For Managing & Listening

Hootsuite - huge interface with an iphone / ipad app as well as web and desktop versions. The ability to manage multiple accounts and a real nice statistic tool that brings in your Google Analytic account to help cross reference tweet traffic. Lots of power in this puppy and takes a bit of time behind the wheel to get the most from it, but well worth it.

Tweetdeck – very similar to Hootsuite, however it has some other subtle differences in usability. One of the tools I like here is the simple way you can view new followers to your twitter account and interact directly with them with a nice “howdy” back.

Sprout Social – my new favorite social tool. I love the simplicity of this one and also the power to mange my daily tweets. Like the first 2 you have the ability to schedule tweets and promotions, however the ease in which you can monitor competitors is very attractive. I also like the discovery tool which allows you to use a set of keywords to then be presented with tweets similar in nature – it’s a great way to research. They have mentioned to us that there is an app in the making for mobile devices as well – can’t wait to see that.

Don’t forget why you’re doing this while you emerge yourself in all of this technology – you’re here to give. One of the best ways to show your appreciation now you have a following is to reward the people that advocate your business and engage/applaud your followers. Offer solution and help, provide information to them that makes their life better, easier, faster, smarter. After all – recognition is a great thing to be able to offer someone and something we all enjoy receiving.

To be honest with you this post has grown far larger than I indented and there are so many social tools I would like to discuss, so perhaps I will begin again with a who’s what of social media and marketing in the next article.

While this is compiled – if you find a great resource for social measurement, please feel free to leave a comment and I will check it out.

WordPress Real Estate solutions

matth — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:19:18 +0000

Our second real estate website in as many months will be launching later on in July. White Space Media have been working with Brisbane’s real estate experts, IMProperty, and their associates in hotel and apartment accommodation, The Oaks Group, to develop their latest online offering.

For this new real estate and rentals portal, we are again using our popular WordPress & Real Estate solution. This development project has seen the search engine friendly content management system extend its functionality to encompass property management and property listing features.

After the success of the new Zinc Noosa website, we are excited to see the results from this latest WordPress Real Estate project.

If you would like to our WordPress real estate solution, contact us for an appointment.

PSD to HTML

matth — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 01:24:41 +0000

White Space Media work closely with a number of design agencies as well as independent freelance graphic designers to help support them from a technical perspective. If you have strong graphic design skills but no little about the web, then we can help you make the move over.

We have a number of services which appeal to such designers. Namely we offer a speedy PSD to HTML service whereby we will turn your PSD web designs into strict compliant HTML code. We will also assist you in blending this HTML code into a web template or theme to be used with your favourite Content Management System. Our preferred CMS are Adobe’s Business Catalyst and WordPress.

For a free, no obligation quote to turn your designs into live working websites, contact us today.

Contemporary Commerce

matth — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 07:27:20 +0000

An exciting new project has seen White Space Media team up with the people at Babo Living to create a clean, crisp website to portfolio their range of contemporary outdoor furniture and lighting products. These beautiful and modern products needed a website to match. Tony Fyfe, managing director at Babo Living, sourced the services of White Space Media from a variety of different web designers on the Sunshine Coast. The focus of the brief was to present their products in the best possible way and to marry this with a sophisticated e-commerce platform with an emphasis on usability. With assistance from Adobe Business Catalyst, WSM have were able to deliver on the brief.

Mimi Macpherson

matth — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 07:15:09 +0000

White Space Media have been invited to assist redevelop the online presence for Mimi Macpherson. The first stage of this project has seen the launch of Mimi’s Blog and Official website. Powered by WordPress, the web’s fastest growing CMS and one of our favourite web platforms, the site benefits from a clean and modern layout married with fresh rich media content.

WordPress Building Design

matth — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 07:01:35 +0000

White Space Media has completed the latest of our WordPress web design jobs. MRD is a small building design practice situated at Peregian Beach on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. His previous website was Flash heavy and content poor, as a result his search engine rankings were in great need of a push. WordPress to the rescue!

New iAds – Take a look at one of the first

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:45:31 +0000

This is a quick post to show one of the first iAds to appear on the phones over in North America. For those not sure on what the iAd is all about you can read more here, however essentially Steve Jobs from Apple is taking on everyone within respect to mobile advertising and has developed its own advertising platform for the iphone/ipad. Lots of controversy over this platform – however with Jobs stating that there will be 1 billion ad impressions a day on tens of millions of Apple mobile device users – you kinda have to take a look. After all – Apple has been pretty revolutionary to date.

Here is the first ad shown from Nissan – their new electric car featured

Backpacker Jobs

matth — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:33:44 +0000

White Space Media is currently working with local recruitment website the Backpacker Jobs Board to help improve their search engine ranking, build traffic with the aim to progress the monetization of their classified listings. The Backpacker Job Board is a central resource for backpackers and travelers looking to find work while touring Australia. White Space Media will shortly be releasing some exclusive advertising positions across the run of site of Backpacker Job Board. For details on our introductory ad rates for our backpacker ad network, contact us today.

Online Marketing Trends

admin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:30:40 +0000

Talk about a broad subject.

What we can say for sure is that online marketing trends keep changing a new technology develops and matures and rather than rehash some of the older methodologies used, we though we would explore some of the latest things we have been getting our hands dirty with.

You may or may not have heard about to the term “Buzz Measurement” or “Buzz Tracking”. In this post we would like to take a closer look at why it is important to know who is saying what about your brand on twitter, facey or any other social network.

So now that you’re finally using all of the social marketing tools to get your brand out there, how do you know that the message you’re sending or the message that is being perceived is actually being heard?

This social marketing thing we all do creates lots of chatter and in doing this opens up the doors for all past, present and future customers to comment (not to mention competitors). So with this in mind it may be a good idea to start looking at the measurement tools needed to track and monitor the masses as they rave about your company or beat you down.

Let me give you an example – we were looking into helping an airline carrier monitor some of the social aspects to a new service they were considering. In this evaluation we were able to track and monitor in real time posts and comments to outlets such as twitter re their services. One situation was when the air steward announced that there was no smoking in the terminal or on the tarmac and that it was a disgusting habit. Now I’m not a smoker, but you can bet the people on board that are smokers took offence at being labelled with the words “disgusting”.

So much so that one of these people actually blasted the airline on their twitter account the minute they had net access via their phone – this person had over 5,000 people following them and as a result this was re tweeted and so on ….

Obviously this was just the stewards opinion and not something the airline writes into it’s hand book – however when you upset a large demographic like this – all context can go out the window and damage is suffered.

Our advice to the airline when we saw this erupt live was a recommendation that there should be a memo that goes out immediately to all staff that they will need to be careful not to single out any one group providing this instance as a sample.

Now remember – it’s not all about looking at the negative. It can also be useful when evaluating the marketplace for your existing or new competition, or even to capitlaise on positive posts. Try creating your own blog page around these positive posts that will be picked up in the search engines easily or other social bookmarking utility.

So – what tools do we like to recommend …

http://tweetvolume.com/

http://hootsuite.com/

http://www.socialmention.com/

http://www.google.com/alerts

There are many others out there on the market, some free, some not – and others that will need more time to learn the way they work – however if you are serious about promoting your brand (who isn’t) and can afford to spend a few extra hours a week to monitoring the chatter – then buzz monitoring is essential.