Along with technology, marketing is rapidly changing.  You hear it in the news and observe changes in our society every day about the way information is exchanged.  It takes time and energy to keep up with the changes and understand the interlacing that exists among these many new platforms.

Our clients have become successful in their field by being able to work hard and focus on their skills and the services they provide.  When partnered with our services, they can continue to do what they do best while someone else is able to focus on mastering their digital footprint.

We have identified several key marketing elements that when packaged together truly maximize our client’s effectiveness in their B2B objectives.  Our services position YOU as the expert and authority in your field.

Below is one of the most powerful testimonials to web 2.0 and the NEW marketing techniques shaping the way business is conducted today. Watch and let us know your thoughts…

Sperry Van Ness/Sentinel Realty senior advisor & managing director Tom Vincent, CCIM recently published a post on his blog about Twitter and commercial real estate. This is an interesting post explaining what the social media platform is doing for the commercial real estate investment industry, and has been retweeted and syndicated by many. Vincent says:

Those who have been in the commercial real estate industry for any amount of time know it lags the business cycle. Nobody gauges the economy by what commercial real estate is doing. Commercial real estate brokers, investors, and principals watch the economy, knowing that whatever happens there will be coming down the pike a year or two later for commercial real estate. It’s a frustrating way of life, but commercial real estate professionals have learned to deal with it.

Savvy commercial real estate investors always seek advice and counsel when it comes to making investment decisions. That said, all “experts” are not created equal – Those investors who have access to better, more timely information provided by more sophisticated advisors simply have an edge. So here are a few questions to ponder: How broad is your sphere of influence? Who are the “experts” you’re seeking advice from? What if I told you that you could have real-time, 24-7-365 access to the world’s best practitioners in every aspect of commercial real estate, and that this unfettered access was free – would you be interested?

To continue reading Vincent’s post, or any of his others on his blog, visit The Sentinel Realty Blogosphere.  Vincent is based in Chicago and represents properties nationally.

2009 was the year of Twitter for many businesses. What piece of technology do entrepreneurs need to be aware of in 2010?

“Most entrepreneurs still don’t know how to use Twitter. They still think it’s a social network to update their friends on the current state of their pets or the lines at Starbucks. For entrepreneurs, Twitter is the ultimate marketing platform, and they need to embrace tools like Tweetdeck, CoTweet and Objective Marketer.” –Guy Kawasaki, founding partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Garage Technology Ventures. He is also the co-founder of Alltop.com. Previously he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer.

“The common reputation of Twitter is that it’s frivolous, which isn’t the case. If it’s set up right, it’s a rich environment of lots of learning and sharing of important material. It’s not just ‘what I had for breakfast.’” –Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Centers’ Internet and American Life Project, as quoted in the Baltimore Sun

Drive traffic to your website. Twitter pairs nicely with your content marketing efforts. Whether you write a blog, run webinars, produce a newsletter, or create video or podcasts, Twitter can help you distribute your thought leading content and drive traffic to your site. When linking to your site, use provocative headlines to grab attention and improve clicks (the fifth most effective tactic). But beware: the least successful tactic is driving direct sales. Sales come from relationships. Twitter can and does help build and foster these relationships, but it can’t do the selling for you. (via HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog)

Just came across this fantastic slideshow explaining how people run into problems trying to determine ROI with social media.  There are a LOT of moving parts to track that are important to figuring out what’s working.  And, they must be measured against actual company financials and transaction realities to get the answer.  That means, not just sitting back and waiting for the answer to come from the person pushing out content on social media.  That person must be tracking the results of the activity and then team up with someone (if not the same person) who has data on business transactions and customer activity to compare the results.  Weighing these two areas against one another = ROI.  Anyway, still confused?  Meet some new friends who figure out the process…

Monogram Marketing just completed a great new web video for Tom Vincent, CCIM and Sentinel Realty | Sperry Van Ness in the Chicago area.  The piece promotes their listing in Villa Park, IL.  Our client is thrilled and we are please with the final product, as well.  Check it out below!

Monogram Marketing just completed a great new “Video Brochure” for Jim Tucker, CCIM and NetWorks Commercial Real Estate, marketing a listing they have in Richmond, The Learning Experience.  Our client is thrilled and we are pleased with the final product, as well.  Check it out below!

Most people recognize how important having an online presence — and a MIX of that presence — across social media platforms is today. While some of those people choose to hire people to work behind the scenes to help them boost that presence, others struggle with the prospect of not doing it themselves or how much it will cost.

Today, Entrepreneur.com posted an article that talks to some successful ghostwriters, how they work, and what they charge.  One blogger points out:

“Ghostwriting can have a seedy appearance: Somebody you’ve hired is pretending to be you,” says Katie Gutierrez Painter, a writer in Austin, Texas. “Before I started, I saw it the same way. But you need to look at it from the business, branding and marketing standpoint. It’s just outsourcing an employee to work under the name of the company.”

And what are they charging?

Ghost rates vary, but generally, it costs far less to create a ghosted blog or Twitter account than to launch a traditional PR campaign. McCord charges $18 to $32 per blog post, and $150 to $500 a month for multiple daily tweets. Lindsay Manfredi, a social media strategist in Indianapolis, charges $75 to $100 for a blog post, a fee that includes research, writing and editing.

Click HERE to read the full article.

Monogram Marketing just completed a great new web video for Mark Cukro, speaker/trainer for service and construction teams for industries like multi-family and apartment complexes.  Our client is thrilled and we are please with the final product, as well.  Check it out below!

The January/February 2010 issue of Commercial Investment Real Estate (CIRE) magazine offers a great in depth look into how the commercial brokerage industry is discovering and maximizing use of social media presence in the marketing strategies.  If you are commercial real estate broker and want to know how other are using social media AND what kind of results they’ve seen, just read below.

And, if you have been considering working social networking into your marketing strategy but aren’t sure how to take the first step, or want to contract someone to handle the management of this for you, Contact Us!

Social Media Savvy

Okay, I have to admit, even I — until recently — have kind of ignored using social bookmarking because I wasn’t quite clear about it.  I kind of knew what it was, but didn’t take the time to see how it could be beneficial.  I’m convinced.

Watch this very helpful, clearly presented 3 min video explaining… Social Bookmarking.

Okay people, it is time to do something simple and get ahead of the crowd.  One very frustrating thing I keep running into across web sites I visit and I want to stay on tap with is difficulty finding the social network icons or “buttons.”  Companies and organizations large and small are guilty of this infraction, and it’s really starting to surprise me.  I – along with God only knows how many other web-savvy people – am getting spoiled and lazy and in our world of instantaneous technology I am not going to take the time to a) comb through your site to find your twitter name or Facebook page, or b) perform a search on these platforms guessing how you’ve got your name id’d and hope for a result.

Granted, some are easier to find than others, but on more occasions than I’d like to recall, I’ve found no lead to twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc., and had to log into my account on these networks and spend more time than I should’ve entering multiple combinations of people or company names to try to find the person/organization I’d like to follow.  Twitter isn’t perfect.  Example:  I just searched Richmond grocer ‘ukrops’ and Twitter tells me: “We couldn’t find anyone named ukrops.”  I know they have one, and turns out, the search field requires the apostrophe before the s.  This wouldn’t slow people down, and good for Ukrops.com having their links on display, but imaging hoping to find an individual and running to that problem.  Take a few stabs in the search field and if you haven’t guessed the exact combination, you very well may give up and forget about it.  Lost opportunity! Read more »