Last week at Inman Connect, a real estate technology conference, Jeff Jarvis discusses two ideas we believe in:

1) Real estate professionals can leverage their networks to become hyperlocal media resources. And by doing so, they benefit from building the community networks they need to source referrals for their real estate business.

2) Real estate professionals should be thinking beyond what used to be the work of real estate sales. As the industry changes and makes real estate a much tougher career, Jeff suggests that Realtors, as hubs of the community, can build new local businesses, like social media marketing, based on the work they do with their community.

“Social commerce” became a buzz word in the summer of 2010:

Here are eight new trends in social commerce that will appear in 2011:

1) Demand based shopping applications

Groupon demonstrated how supply in the form of retail inventory can be packaged into deep discount opportunities. Demand is the inverse – how many people in the community want 49ers tickets, a dinner at French Laundry, or the hottest electronic gadget? Applications will develop that meets demands from local shoppers. Requests can be input into an application, and addressed either automatically from an inventory warehousing system like Walmart or manually with a “bid” price and location for pickup.

The implications? By fulfilling demand direct from consumers in aggregate, both large chains and SMBs can fulfill orders far more efficiently and reduce sales and marketing overhead.

2) Identity brokering and qualification

The transparency of the social graph will facilitate transparent match making systems that expose all parties to a transaction. One example of an old marketing paradigm where identity data was hidden is the mailing list – tradeable, sellable, undifferentiated and an acknowledged source of spam. There’s always been a seamy side to traditional lead generation and affiliate marketing systems because one doesn’t get to “opt-in” before receiving spam or a phone call to your request for more information about, say, a home listed for sale.

With the detailed social graph, every match can be qualified. Supply/demand applications will evolve to create matches where both parties to a transaction can easily vet the other party before a dialogue takes place. The “Groupon” concept of offering a kind of reward to attract local business will extend to SMBs like accountants, lawyers and real estate brokers who haven’t yet participated in offering an online “daily deal”. Moreover, advertisers can qualify leads by researching them on social networks like Linkedin or Facebook. In fact, leads will presented not just as a simple name and email address, but as a profile based on their social graph so it’s easy to see whether that lead might be your best friend’s cousin.

3) The reduction of the sales force.

Why? Just as anybody can create a social media presence, anybody can now become a marketer and create a social commercial presence.

Online commerce distribution – getting the exact product to the consumer purchaser as efficiently as possible – disintermediates sales forces, which function as middlemen to provide conversion value. Now social/mobile commerce is set to do for local SMBs what Amazon did for national brand products – create the variegated distribution channels that make it easier for consumers to find and purchase what they want from SMBs.

Take group buying as an example. Hundreds of competing “Groupons” (including all the local media/news who advertise with Daily Deals) can’t all be knocking on every cafe in every city to source a deal. Deal aggregation engines such as Wantsa, TheDealMap and Yipit are/can create deal syndicates that present publishable deal inventory. Now publishers can trade off sales staff and marketing overhead for affiliate income from deals sourced by others.

Social commerce facilitates this trend because literally any business or media outlet can be an ad publisher. For starters, they can publish a free deal on Facebook Deals or Groupon Stores, and then escalate their marketing presence by adding their deals into syndication.

4) Social Commerce conversion – the call to action returns

Marketers have always tiptoed around social media marketing. They need to message their product, but not bluntly pitch it. Group buying succeeds at creating a call to action in the form of a time sensitive deal, but the most efficient social media marketing strategy is to engage the customer into discussing your product. Here are the methods for social commerce conversion:

The simple one-click Facebook “Like” (and corresponding “share” buttons on social media) is the quickest way to market deals across the Social Graph.

For consumers, checking reviews is the due diligence step. They already want what the business offers, and the 4-5 star reviews just converts them.

Conversion can be triggered by influencers, just ask any teenage girl. Marketers will court influencers with perks. New analytical applications will ascribe dollar value to the referral or “like” of individuals and groups.

Customer service becomes a marketing channel. Consumers respond to Zappos – inspired great service. Every business/brand should have a customer service landing page, whether it’s on-site or on GetSatisfaction.com

5) The emergence of the pure social commerce campaign – game changing brand marketing

Have a new product? Can’t get it into traditional distribution channels? And even if you can get it into Target, how do you market it to get consumers to notice it? This was the challenge facing entrepreneur Dr. Robert Wagstaff with his simple tongue scraping invention to counter bad breath. Expect more products to template the Orabrush marketing approach in the same way Zappos has become a beacon for great customer service. Here’s the ABC/Nightline video:

If you don’t watch the full video, here is the takeaway:

• YouTube = TV commercial
• Facebook = National media buy
• College business class = Business incubator

6) Facebook is a defacto platform for social commerce, but it may be too massive for local socialization

Facebook is just too big for most users. A Facebook page for a city or neighborhood can’t be customized to the individuals of the community. Granted, every business may eventually have a Facebook page for their customers because Facebook has become a defacto platform, almost like the archaic World Wide Web, or more loosely AOL in the 90′s. But social commerce will become relevant at a local level when online meets offline, creating virtual town squares where communities of local folk congregate. But they need on-the-ground participation and management to flourish as social vehicles, otherwise the sites are ghost towns.

How does social commerce become social at the local level? To get the consumers to aggregate around local commerce offline, there needs to be a relevant community overlay on top of the deals. For example, Japan has a social network of housewives who input the best shopping deals that day manually for the benefit of others in the community. Unlike a one-off Groupon deal where buyers are unrelated, the housewives form a local social network tied together initially in their pursuit of a deal.

2011 will see further development of these niche networks based on geographies, culture and industry. You can see this development happening with the launch of more exclusive social networks like Namesake, Quora and Path.

7) Globalization of social commerce

More than half of the Asian-Americans living in the US today were born in their native country. Melting pot Americans use applications like Skype to maintain their connection, but getting products they grew up with is still done by overseas shipment from relatives (personal note: we get CARE packages from Japan all the time). The next frontier for social commerce could be descriptively coined Cost Plus World Market 2.0. Overseas trading firms / commerce entrepreneurs can source timely products at lower prices mirroring native country labor costs, utilize just in time shipping and warehousing systems, and market via their global cultural social network systems. This is not an iterative variant of global, undifferentiated trading marketplaces like eBay or Alibaba, it’s a new window of opportunity for building the next set of global commerce properties that focus on very specific sets of customers. Here’s a good example of a social commerce site for Indian women – Exclusively.in

8 ) And obviously, location based apps will drive social commerce

I saved mobile commerce for last just because it’s the most obvious, and the trends have been well documented and recognized. Here are some of the things that consumers can already do on a location based app:

Check-ins are being monetized with deals and other perks on every LBS. But we all know that.                                                                                       .

The Christmas 2010 shopping season goes down as the year of the in-store price check. The store is now the showroom, and the phone app the cash register.

Here’s what’s coming in the future:

Mobile device as credit card. Obvious to anybody who knows mobile services in Europe and Asia.                                                                             .

Local shopping search in real time. Couldn’t find that sold out product at Best Buy? Apps will provide real time inventory to find what you need.

Extend real time demand based applications across other industries beyond retail – hotels, airlines, concerts. Looking for a hotel room at 10pm? The new apps will find you a good deal, mainly because any hotel inventory at 10pm is open for negotiation.

Related articles:

10 Media Predictions for 2010 – 12/17/09

How did I do? Reviewing 2010 – based on 2009 Media Predictions

10 Trends in Social Media 2009 – 1/1/09

One year ago, I listed ten media predictions for 2010. Here’s an update. Many of my predictions are still work in progress:

1) Community engagement will become the driver of new local media.

• One definitive result: 2010 brought the expansion of AOL’s Patch across almost 200 cities, each with a salaried managing editor. It’s important that new local media networks have footprints on the ground to be credible to the community.

2) Mobile + Local advertising = Penny Saver 2.0.

• Key result: The advent of Groupon as Penny Saver 2.0, and one of the biggest internet stories of 2010.

3) Mobile + Advertising + Pubsubhubbub = Alert systems

• Real time alert systems are still evolving, and will be an integral part of the demand side shopping systems we’ll see in 2011. For example, folks will soon be able to subscribe to local deals via location based applications like Facebook Places, Foursquare or TheDealMap for alerts from merchants they like.

4) Advertising as content

• By definition, content connotes value that is enticing and in demand. Again, Groupon ushers in a sea change in advertising with a group buying platform.  Deals have become a popular form of advertising content, and advertisers will continue to seek fun, value-based ways to make ads entertaining, as opposed to “meh” kind of promotions.

5) Everybody becomes a marketer

• Self service advertising applications and group buying platforms were launched this year – Facebook Deals, Groupon Stores, Chompon, Wildfire for Facebook – and are in the nascent stages of adoption. These new applications complement more traditional self service advertising methods such as Adsense and those on this list of self service ad systems.

6) Virtual socializing and webinar ubiquity

• Not quite. Last year, I had thought that synchronous group communication network via some form of simple instantaneous webinar system would appear. Instead, we’re seeing small group networks forming in more exclusive social networks like Namesake, Quora and Path; a kind of backlash to the massive Facebook society.

7) The grass roots web

• WordPress and the blogging platforms allowed normal folks to build blog sites without programming knowledge. The next stage is to make API based applications accessible to consumers. We’re now seeing third party white label group buying systems and API developers like NorthSocial.com offering services that enhance blogs, websites and Facebook pages with features that keep them updated and relevant. Unfortunately, there’s still no way for the nonprogrammer to build an application from an API without hiring programmers.

8 ) The stream is more important than the website

• Subject to debate. This prediction was based on my extrapolating the hypergrowth of stream based applications like Facebook and Twitter, and deducing that the stream would contain more real time information and dialogue than a website. Now we are seeing the merge of the stream into a website construct with the ascendance of Tumblr (John Battelle provides an elegant explanation about why Tumblr fits this bill)
• Websites and blogs have the requisite screen real estate to impart messages – marketing, political or otherwise – and to be positioned as the hub or reference point for delivering these messages. The stream feeds into the hub. Stream messages, say on Facebook or Twitter, are impermanent and often non-contextual if the message is part of a conversation. Websites are permanent and contextual, and Tumblr can easily be set up to be the hubs of this constellation.

9) Curation is the new syndication

• Yes. Huffington Post validates this on a macro level, and all of the local news systems – Patch, the new Yahoo Local, Outside.in, Fwix, The Breaking News Network – validate this on a micro level.

10) A new era of open social media

• Headline – January 9, 2010 – Read Write Web:

Stay tuned for 2011 predictions to be uploaded later this week.

In the 1960′s new media was television, and Madison Avenue evolved to show companies how to leverage the media through advertising. Advertising is now mostly associated with the commercial, a one-way message from company to consumer delivered via various media channels. We’re pleased to see Jeff Jarvis pronouncing this kind of advertising is “fucked”.

The evolution of social media as game changing marketing media is finally being evidenced by companies like Ford and Audi, which are both using Facebook to launch their new Ford Explorer and their Audi A7 today.

Like the Madmen who redefined brand advertising in the 60′s, a new corps of social media marketers is finally evolving within the major ad agencies after years of taunts that they either didn’t get it or more likely, didn’t want to jeopardize their established lucrative hold on corporate advertising budgets. It’s a reactive strategic move to remain relevant.

Social media marketing has proven to be far more amenable to ad hoc DIY solutions than traditional ad campaigns that require more extensive creative and media placement expertise than a Facebook page. More companies will develop their social media campaigns in-house because it’s the interaction between the company and its customers that counts, not as much between the ad agency and the customer.

At the local level, social media – based marketing applications will be more influential because small business didn’t use ad agencies. DIY advertising solutions are being developed by Adility and Wildfire that facilitate businesses in building promotional coupon campaigns. Using these tools, small business can create their own campaigns and solicit their own “media buys” like WildRivers in Irvine is doing with independent Breaking Irvine News:

Related articles:

Brand advertising doesn’t fulfill consumers’ real time needs

ReadWriteWeb reports Yelp and OpenTable, the two leading social apps for restaurant reviews and restaurant reservations respectively, have partnered so consumers can easily move from a Yelp restaurant review to making a reservation on Open Table without leaving the Yelp site.

This “mashup” of applications by process is not new; note Amazon reviews + fulfillment engine, eBay + Paypal. However, Yelp/OpenTable augurs a more efficient way for consumers to identify deals and consummate the transaction by combining not only complementary applications, but also complementary social networks. In an ideal online world, the process of finding restaurant deal coupons, checking reviews and booking the reservation should be portable across the constellation of applications:

“Open sourcing” applications by sharing APIs is starting a new wave of consumer utility. It’s much easier than going from site to site.

I was listening to NPR Radio this morning, but couldn’t find the audio on NPR’s site. They were discussing how the masses were choosing to receive their daily news based on their political ideology, and finding a comfort level in hearing broadcasters who reflected their viewpoints. According to the NPR reporter, this trend is affecting politics by inciting politicians towards more extreme, egregious messaging in order to engage their constituency. For example, an anti-immigration congressman may say something impractical, like building a wall along the Mexican border to metaphorically engage with a constituency affected by illegal alien labor.

Most people can see this political divide in the mass media as Fox vs. MSNBC, WSJ vs. NYT. The social media only makes these ideological media walls more compartmentalized because any viewpoint now has a voice. One can now consume media from chosen sources that only fit the way they think and view the world.

Then, friend Joe Pryor alerted me to a NYT article that first acknowledges the worrisome trend that people are starting to “live in partisan ghettoes, ignorant about the other side”. It analyzes a study by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business that measured ideological segregation on the Internet, and the conclusions are revealing:

The methodology is complicated, but can be summarized through a geographic metaphor. Think of the Fox News site as Casper, Wyo. If you visited and shook hands with the people reading the site, you’d be very likely to be shaking hands with a conservative. The New York Times site, they suggest, is like Manhattan. If you shook hands with other readers, you’d probably be shaking hands with liberals.

The study measures the people who visit sites, not the content inside.

According to the study, a person who visited only Fox News would have more overlap with conservatives than 99 percent of Internet news users. A person who only went to The Times’s site would have more liberal overlap than 95 percent of users.

But the core finding is that most Internet users do not stay within their communities. Most people spend a lot of time on a few giant sites with politically integrated audiences, like Yahoo News.

But even when they leave these integrated sites, they often go into areas where most visitors are not like themselves. People who spend a lot of time on Glenn Beck’s Web site are more likely to visit The New York Times’s Web site than average Internet users. People who spend time on the most liberal sites are more likely to go to foxnews.com than average Internet users.

In fact, I always liked the idea that Joe, who I could assume was Oklahoma conservative, was always sending me New York Times articles. And I in fact, enjoy watching Fox News just to see them punch holes in our local congresswoman Nancy Pelosi; you learn a lot. The conclusion is if the world is becoming more secularized, it’s not the internet to blame.

Get ready for the commercial social media...

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The latest Facebook metrics are powerful: 400 million active users (7% of the world), 50% of them logging on each day and spending more than 55 minutes daily on Facebook.

The sudden concentration of traffic on the social media led by Facebook has caught business by surprise. In particular, small and local businesses don’t quite realize their consumer is now spending a majority of their time on the social media, but they continue to rely on the old online standard: their website. Websites and blogs are critical as marketing collateral, but local businesses need to develop an online marketing presence that spans across the social media ubiquitously.

With all the buzz around Foursquare and Gowalla, why is hyperlocal media suddenly hot? Geolocation is changing the social media by providing nothing more than the tagging mechanism to define social networks by localities. Geolocation facilitates the development of a new, more practical, more intimate Twitter/Foursquare network of friends who just happen to be living down the street. It’s far more compelling to build a social network of folks you can have coffee with than the national networks than generally evolve in Twitter and Linkedin. I myself see this… I am starting to socialize with San Franciscans…

The Hyperlocal Marketing Opportunity

So we’re seeing social apps like Twitter and Yelp quickly adopting location “check-in” functionality, with Facebook in the wings. And this presents a huge opportunity. It’s a no-brainer for local retailers and businesses to see that they need to provide the most effective online venue for their local customers to “check-in” to. The new local “websites” are the Facebook business page, the new local advertising vehicle is the Twitter coupon, and the new reviews column is Yelp.

You haven’t seen them yet, but Facebook is primed to evolve into a massive Sunday advertising circular for local businesses:

And why not? It’s free. Enterprising local media publishers (for example, Breaking News sites) will curate and compile these merchants into local online directories.

Twitter will develop hyperlocal couponing systems that will be online equivalents of PennySaver coupons and Valpak:

And why not? It’s free. Couponing is effective because it is perceived by consumers as “found money” while straight advertising may now be considered “spammy”. You’ll see the advent of new local social media based advertising agencies that will create turnkey Twitter / Facebook / Foursquare couponing campaigns for merchants. And these campaigns will be accepted because online data is more efficient for tracking and analysis than traditional advertising channels like radio / TV or inefficient direct mail offerings like PennySaver. There is a defined ROI.

Conclusion

2009 was the year when the masses found Twitter and Facebook. 2010 will be the year when local business begins to recognize the power of leveraging Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and Foursquare et al to achieve a level of community engagement that standard “one-way message” advertising can’t achieve. It’s about being ubiquitous across the social media so your community of customers can find your services via their preferred channels – Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Related slideshow: Ubiquity marketing (Jan. 2010)

Related webinar: I’ll be discussing “The Impact of Geolocational Media” on the Virtual Bar Camp April 6 at 2:15pm, Room #4. Register and join our discussion.

The powerful launch of Google Buzz (Mashable | Google Buzz has completely changed the game) last week signals the arrival of the Real Time Web as a truly new media. It’s been well documented that Twitter has established itself a breaking news source. Google Buzz, Facebook and Twitter form a triumvirate channel for sourcing news media that will continue to grow in influence.

The real time web implies that online news will flow more and more through applications, not websites. The problem facing mainstream media is their dependence on traffic through their websites for advertising revenue.

The journalistic media on the other hand continue to try to erect walls that halt traffic flow through their websites, either by charging subscriptions (New York Newsday gets 35 subscribers after three months), by limiting access to their content by aggregators (Murdoch’s gambit with blocking Google from indexing Sky News content), or simply by not providing an RSS feed for syndication (Santa Barbara News Press and many other local publications).

Social media thrives on RSS to find, deliver and syndicate news from journalistic media, and it directs traffic back to the news source.  If the traditional news media continues to ignore social media sourced breaking news, they risk becoming irrelevant to their communities who demand this real time news. People will eventually find that real time news directly from their community via one of their social networks and news aggregation applications.

The title of this blog post took me a long time to figure out, and it still seems a bit off.

Simply put, the social media rewards value and service, and devalues self promotion and advertising. Up to now, most social media marketing methods simply wrap traditional push marketing methods into a new package. Facebook fan pages and Twitter broadcasting deals replicate websites and coupon advertising. In this new age of social media, push marketing appears obvious and may detract from the marketing intent. We’ve been advocating that entrepreneurial business people focus more on delivering valuable services to their community to attract business opportunities. One way to do this is to create local media resources.

The following slideshow describes how to create a new local media brand that leverages the many channels of the social media. The concept is simple: online media brands no longer reside solely on TV, on a website or as a Facebook page. Media brands now span all the channels of traditional and social media. Any local media property that delivers content across a panoply of channels becomes “ubiquitous” to the community. You’re always found. And if you or your company are behind the media brand, you benefit from association.

Social media reinforces the concept of branding because your brand is judged by what you do and who you are online. This couldn’t happen ten years ago, you would have needed to advertise who you were and what you did.