Mediaboss Marketing

DRAPER, Utah, Nov. 21, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ --JP & Associates REALTORS (JPAR), the fastest growing 100% commission brokerage & franchise network in the country, has expanded its partnership with Inside Real Estate, providing their automated marketing solutions, CORE ListingMachine & Social to their growing network of agents nationwide. The automated marketing tools provide a powerful enhancement to JPAR's existing technology, B.O.S.S.S (Broker One Stop Shop System) powered by Inside Real Estate's flagship platform, kvCORE.

"We do believe that kvCORE is at the very core of our B.O.S.S.S. Platform, and that's helped us recruit thousands of agents across the network because in the end agents want tools that allow them to be more productive to sell more real estate, and very few platforms allow the productivity background like kvCORE," said JP Piccinini, CEO of JPAR's parent company Vesuvius Holdings. "We have no doubt that adding CORE ListingMachine and Social to this powerful platform will elevate our technology leadership and agent productivity even further."

JPAR's implementation of CORE ListingMachine and Social will empower their agents & teams with a fully automated listing marketing solution that quickly creates attractive, comprehensive and effective marketing campaigns for every listing. This robust automation ensures every listing gets branded and marketed effectively on behalf of the agent, driving a higher volume of leads and eliminating the large amount of time and resources typically involved in creating listing marketing materials and campaigns.

Key features of CORE ListingMachine and Social include:

"We're thrilled to be partnering with JPAR as they continue their strong leadership in the industry and provide best-in-class technology for their entire organization," said Joe Skousen, President of Inside Real Estate. "By leveraging the unique offerings of CORE ListingMachine and CORE Social within their kvCORE Platform, they are able to quickly grow and support new markets with top technology solutions."

About JP & Associates REALTORS: JP & Associates REALTORS (JPAR) is known for their acclaimed culture revolving around productivity and service. It is no wonder JP & Associates REALTORS has gone from the #1 independently and privately held brokerage in Texas to the fastest-growing 100% commission brokerage and franchise in the USA, as well as ranking as the 50th brokerage worldwide for home sales by REAL Trends. In 2018, JPAR trademarked the term "Exceeding Expectations," relentlessly going above and beyond for both their agents and clients. Now franchising across the USA, JPAR Franchising is set to take the USA by storm after entering 9 new states in its first six months.

JPAR operates multiple offices across Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, New Mexico, and Florida, is expanding nationwide, and offers franchising opportunities for entrepreneurial real estate professionals. To learn more about becoming an agent or franchising visit http://www.jpar.com.

About Inside Real Estate: Inside Real Estate is a fast growing, independently-owned real estate software firm that serves as a trusted technology partner to over 200,000 top brokerages, agents and teams. Their flagship product, kvCORE Platform, is the most modern and comprehensive solution in the industry known for delivering profitable growth at every level of a brokerage organization. Built on a modern, scalable and flexible architecture, kvCORE enables every brokerage to create their own unique technology ecosystem through custom branding, robust integrations and high-quality add-on solutions. With an accomplished leadership team and over 175 employees, Inside Real Estate brings the resources, scale and vision to deliver ongoing innovation and success to their growing customer base. To learn more about Inside Real Estate and kvCORE, visit insiderealestate.com.

SOURCE JP & Associates REALTORS

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JPAR Expands Relationship with Inside Real Estate, Providing Powerful Automated Marketing Tools to Their Thousands of Agents - Benzinga

Last week, we held an #SMTLive Twitter chat to share and discuss the findings from our recent report, The State of Social Lead Generation 2019 Survey Report.

Ever since Facebook was launched the early 2000s and social media took off as a means to connect, and share our lives digitally with others, businesses have also been taking advantage of social platforms in order to accomplish a variety of marketing and sales goals. For example, brands use social media to build brand awareness and loyalty, provide fast customer service, recruit employees, make sales. And, ideally, to generate leads.

For our survey report, we gathered close to 350 responses from fellow digital marketers to reveal some interesting social media lead generation trends happening today.You can download our full report here, but here are a few highlights from our conversation on Twitter last week.

Because social is constantly evolving and marketers need to keep up with the trends to remain relevant, we were curious to learn more about how brands are using social for lead gen today. How many brands rely on social for lead gen? What social platforms do they use to run lead gen ads? What types of ads work best for lead gen, today? ...And so on.

In our report, we found that the majority (64%) of our 320+ respondents already have a social media lead gen plan in place.

Interestingly,the poll we ran during our Twitter chat showed a similar outcome: 69% of participants said they already are using social media for lead generation. And 65% of those who already have a plan in place say their strategy needs improvement.

I think it's safe to say that social media is a major tool used by marketers today for lead generation, but not many of us have found the right system to accomplish this goal.

Which social networks are best for generating leads?

This one won't come as a huge shock to anyone; Facebook came out on top during our survey and during our Twitter chat as the main platform used for lead gen.

Once again, the poll from the chat complimented our findings from the report. Facebook took the lead as the best lead-gen platform, followed by LinkedIn and then Instagram.

Of course, every brand is different and each will approach their lead gen strategy differently. Some brands might find great success on Facebook while others will rely on another platform, like LinkedIn or Instagram, to reach their goals.

Regardless, the stats prove that Facebook is the go-to platform for lead gen. The question is, why?

Robin notes that "Facebook is the most affordable while also allowing for good targeting of leads."

This is the first question I posed during the chat that showed different results from our survey report.

We learned in our survey report that, in terms of social content and ads used for lead gen, marketers have found that images and video work best.

Although the poll didn't exactly reflect our report findings, the #SMTLive community agreed that video is extremely powerful, ranking video as #1.

To wrap up the conversation, we discussed a few best practices for social media lead generation.

Whether you choose to use still images or video, or you post an ad in the feed or in Stories, it's really all about how well you can make your content or ads blend into the user's feed.

There is an art to creating graphics and videos that both stand out (stop people from scrolling past) and blend in nicely to their feed of curated content. You want your content to look like your own, so working on templates that fit your style guide is a great place to start.

If you need some assistance or inspiration, here is a great article by one of our contributors all about building social media templates.

Hope you enjoyed the recap of this #SMTLive Twitter chat. You can read through highlights from past Twitter chats and RSVP for our next chat here.

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#SMTLive Recap: The State of Social Media Lead Gen 2019 - Social Media Today

Elliot Willis has been promoted from commercial director to managing director at The Hook Labs, just as it sets its sights on US expansion.

The start-up, founded by Andy Fidler and Gordon Bennell, is made up of two in-house divisions; the social marketing agency, The Hook Labs, and its media brand, The Hook. As managing director, Willis will build on UK success, and help it ease into the US by growing the sales, marketing and operations teams.

Andy Fidler, co-founder of The Hook Group, said: Elliot has played a key part in getting the business to where it is today and has built a great foundation for The Hook Labs to grow from.

Willis added: The future of The Hook Labs is extremely bright. Our team have worked hard to nurture small to global brands and ensure the highest possible delivery. I look forward to developing the next phase with our talented team and launching more high impact social marketing campaigns.

Willis has led teams at media companies including ITV, ChannelFlip and Endemol Shine.

In September, the group threw shade at agencies and media titles that fail to inform brands of the outcomes that can be achieved on social media.

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Elliot Willis promoted to managing director of The Hook Labs with sights set on US - The Drum

TikTok is either the next big thing in digital marketing, or simply the latest fad that will eventually peter out. Where you stand on this will come down to your individual perspective.

On one hand, TikTok's popularity doesn't appear to be slowing. According to the latest data from Sensor Tower, the short video app has now exceeded 1.5 billion downloadsworldwide, making it the third most downloaded,non-gaming app of the year (after WhatsApp and Messenger).

The app has proven particularly popular in India, as explained by Sensor Tower:

"India has been the main driver of TikTok downloads across the App Store and Google Play, with 466.8 million, or about 31% of all unique installs coming from the country. China has generated the second most downloads for the app, accounting for 173.2 million, or 11.5%.The United States ranks No. 3, generating 123.8 million downloads, or 8.2%."

US growth is good, but India, with over 1.3 billion total citizens, and a rapidly growing digital economy, may be even better for the app's longer-term future - if TikTok becomes the must-have app among younger Indian users, that will set it up for huge success, and huge advertising potential in that market.

Expanding on this, TikTok is also looking into new music streaming partnerships, which would enable it to not only connect its users to downloadable music from major artists, but would also facilitate the creation of its own music library, which users could then search through and add to their TikTok videos, streamlining the process.

TikTok's also experimenting with social commerce linksand new ad types which could expand on its potential for brands and businesses.

There's a lot to like for social media marketers, and TikTok could well be for real, and could be set for a major rise in 2020.

But then again, on the other hand...

TikTok is also under investigation over its potential links to the Chinese Government - or not so much its links to the Chinese regime as such, but more the obligations it could face, as a Chinese company, in regards to the data it collects on users. If the Chinese Government came calling on TikTok's parent company ByteDance and requested all the data it has as part of a broader surveillance effort, ByteDance would likely have to abide - and this is before you consider questions of censorship and the potential sharing of communist propaganda among the youth of external nations.

TikTok is working to distance itself from such claims. This week, Alex Zhu, one of the founders of Musical.ly, and a current leader at TikTok, spoke to The New York Times about such concerns and how his company sees it:

As per NYT:

"No, TikTok does not censor videos that displease China, he said. And no, it does not share user data with China, or even with its Beijing-based parent company. All data on TikTok users worldwide is stored in Virginia, he said, with a backup server in Singapore."

And if it were requested to turn over user data by the Chinese Government? Zhu says that he would turn them down.

But then, of course, TikTok would say that - whether that's how it would work in action is another thing. But the fact that Zhu is even addressing such questions, and doing PR interviews in America, shows just how concerned TikTok is about such reports. Other rumors suggest that TikTok has even considered re-branding entirely to further distance itself from its Chinese parent, while various company executives have sought to quell concerns around content censorship and removal on the platform -which reports have shown may not be as prominent as once suspected.

There are also concerns with its actual user counts - the app may have been downloaded 1.5 billion times, but downloads are not the same as active users, which TikTok has been less forthcoming about.

In combination, these concerns equate to a significant gray area in TikTok's rise, which could become a major issue. Or, as TikTok is keen to reassure, it could be nothing.

Maybe TikTok comes out next month at reports that it has 500 million active US users, which would be significant, and that, in turn, sparks a new wave of advertisers flocking to the app, regardless of these potential vulnerabilities. Maybe the various investigations into TikTok equate to nothing, and the app adds links for creators, and facilitates a whole new stream of monetization, succeeding where Vine failed. That could be enough to help it establish new foundations for ongoing success.

Maybe, we don't know at this stage.

Does that mean you should avoid it completely? It depends on your audience, the market you're trying to reach, it depends on where you stand on the above-noted issues and where you believe that TikTok is headed. If you have concerns about building reliance on a platform with several questions still swirling around it, you should probably avoid such, but the full picture is still not 100% clear on the app right now.

2020 could be the year for TikTok, and if it continues its rise in India, it could well be on track to become the next big social platform -and as such, getting in now and establishing a presence may be of some benefit. Or it could stumble and fall back.

It's hard to say which way things are headed, but it's something that will no doubt be debated by many marketing teams heading into the new year.

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TikTok Reaches 1.5 Billion Downloads, Seeks to Distance Itself from Chinese Government Links - Social Media Today

Social media was created to facilitate human connection, to amplify our interactive capability by providing new ways for us to share our lives and experiences, and relate to others around the same.

Social media gurus have been preaching along these lines for years - in order to succeed on social platforms, you need to 'be more human', you need to 'humanize your brand', 'it's human connection that matters'. And while there are many examples of such approaches leading to greater success for brands online, there is another, rising trend which largely goes against this, and brings into question the very future of the form.

That trend is the rising popularity of virtual influencers - computer-generated models which are gaining popularity, especially on Instagram.

Virtual influencers, as you can see here, run a broad spread of variation - from so close to real that you can't tell, to cartoonish, Sim-like characters which seem completely out of place.

But they are, indeed, rising - recently, social analytics platform HypeAuditor put together an overview of some of the top virtual influencers, and their performance stats over the last year.

And the numbers speak for themselves:

According to HypeAuditor's report:

"Virtual Influencers have almost three times more engagement than real influencers. That means that followers are more engaged with virtual influencers content."

That's an amazing trend, especially when you consider what it could mean for the future of influencer marketing. If these findings are correct, and virtual influencers are on such a significant rise, that will lead to more brands looking into the same. Virtual influencers are unpaid, unbiased, available 24/7 - and, evidently, very popular.

Is this the next wave set to flow through your Instagram streams?

In terms of who, specifically, is engaging with these computer-based characters, the profile shows that younger female users are more likely to engage with virtual influencers.

You can see that 18-24 year-old female users are significantly more likely to engage with these creations. Additionally, HypeAuditor's data shows that US users are far more likely to engage with virtual personalities.

So who are they, and why are they on the rise? You can take a look for yourself - HypeAuditor has also provided a listing of the top virtual influencers worldwide, along with their rising follower counts.

As noted, the characters themselves range from hyper-realistic to cartoonish depictions. The leading virtual influencer is lilmiquela, with 1.7 million followers, followed by the Bratz-doll like noonoouri(332k followers), the mostly real looking imma(159k) and the hyper-real Shudu (193k).

Most of the Instagram profiles for these characters note that it's a virtual or digital character within their bios, but as these types of models rise, it'll be interesting to see if more try to disguise the fact that they're not real - and whether regulations may need to be established on disclosure over such.

Right now, however, there are some limitations on virtual character use. Building realistic 3D models is expensive -maybe more expensive than simply using real people in some cases - but as technology advances, those costs will go down, and open the door to more businesses looking to utilize the same.

That could also, however, lead to new questions around depictions of realistic body types and their impacts on impressionable users. We already see such debates when looking at real models, and how young women, in particular, compare their bodies to them - but these characters aren't even real. No diet tricks can help you obtain a virtual waistline.

It's an interesting area, and one which is likely to come up for increased debate in times to come. HypeAuditor suggests that novelty is a key element in their current popularity, and as digital models become more commonplace, they'll lose some of that interest. But will they? Will we even know who's real and who's not in future?

The stats here would suggest that it's likely to become a bigger point of discussion.

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New Report Looks at the Rise of Virtual Influencers on Instagram - Social Media Today