I found an interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor this afternoon about how kids increasingly don’t know much about King (aside from the fact that they get to miss a day of school because of him). I’ve certainly come to take King’s struggles and achievements for granted, and this piece made me stop and really consider why today is a national holiday.

That, of course, is unrelated to the Marketing Monday Roundup, for which we’ve compiled several other interesting articles about technology, social media, and online marketing. Here are the winners this week:

Why Social Is So Disruptive to Traditional Marketing
I appreciate Judy Shapiro’s piece in Social Media Today because she helpfully articulates the shift from a content distribution platform to a community distribution platform. She also serves as a model of a marketing industry veteran who’s adapted to the new landscape (or rather, is adapting) and is embracing new ideas about what marketing is in the social web.

Justified – Beginning Steps To Proving Your Internet Marketing Point
Carrie Hill’s post on Search Engine Land is specific to using Google Analytics and AdWords to measure marketing success — which is useful in and of itself — but I also like her opening point about the need to justify marketing expenses and why it’s essential to have clear metrics to measure your success.

11 useful tips for marketing your brand on LinkedIn
A well-written, concise set of tips from Katerina Walter on The Next Web for how to use LinkedIn as a business.

What’s in a gTLD?
We’re accustomed to a rather limited set of top-level domains: .com, .net, etc. We’re now seeing the expansion of TLDs to the point that someone could conceivably own “.beaches” and license the subdomains of it (for instance, “spain.beaches”) to others. This insightful column in The Economist nicely contextualizes this development.

Online Shoppers Are Rooting for the Little Guy
Not exactly a triumphant story about small businesses rising above the online retailing behemoths, but an encouraging New York Times piece nonetheless for small and mid-sized retailers.

Here’s a graphic showing how the program works:

Resellers use our program to create marketing content for their own clients. They then sell this content to their clients at the regular price.  After they bring on 3 clients, they start earning 30% on each client they subscribe, or if the Reseller is paying, he or she gets a 30% discount for each client account.

Benefits of the program:

1. vFlyer’s platform is intuitive yet powerful.  Both of vFlyer’s services use a “fill-in-the-blank” template approach for adding content, greatly simplifying the content creation process.

2. Customization. vFlyer provides an extensive range of themes and layouts to choose from.  In addition to the ability to upload photos, videos, custom headers and integrate social media, users can also create their own themes allowing them to match their branding.

3. Flexibility. With vFlyer, you can grant access to an account to a client so that they can log in and make edits themselves or simply restrict access to yourself. You can also set up all of your client accounts under one login, making access to all of them super easy.

4. Save time while creating higher quality content.  The vFlyer platform is easy to use, enabling users to create professional-looking high quality content quickly and easily.

Interested in learning more? Check out the new Reseller page and the Reseller FAQ’s. To sign up, email reseller [at] vflyer [dot] com, or call 800-594-5930 x 5.

Z’s Outdoors also makes good use of various module types on their site, especially the map module, which they use on each page, and the Facebook Like module, displayed on the homepage. Now visitors to their website can immediately see how many people “Like” Z’s Outdoors on Facebook and “Like” them themselves.

Finally, one thing I really like about this website is that they prominently display their phone number at the top. I always find it annoying when I have to search around on a website just to find the phone number. It may not seem like an important detail, but shouldn’t your website be a source for phone inquiries? If people can’t find your phone number on your site, it’s unlikely you’ll be hearing from them. So take a note from Z’s Outdoors’ playbook and show your phone number, large and in charge!

Learn more about creating a website for your business or sign up for an upcoming vSites for Beginners training!

When it comes to capturing leads, two contacts are better than one. Nobody likes getting sent to voicemail; now, with two phone numbers, email addresses and faces on each flyer, prospects are twice as likely to reach a live person. Co-listing agents, we heard you! You can now feature both agents equally across your vFlyer account. In addition to name and number, include your email address, profile photo, and member association logo—all the details you need to share with potential clients.

And now, the all-new social media toolbar. In today’s industry, social media has become fundamental to successful online marketing. At vFlyer we’re committed to empowering users in this new space, and the social media toolbar does just that. Are you active on popular online networks like Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube? Show off your social media savvy with recognizable icons linking directly to your various profiles, and automatically displayed across your vFlyer account. Drive traffic to your blog, convert prospects into fans, and let your clients and prospects get to know you a little better.

For more information and instructions on both new features, please take a look at our help center.

This is just the first of a series of enhancements coming to the vFlyer service in 2011, and we hope you’ll find the new features useful. Thanks to all of our fantastic users who continue to come up with great ways to improve our service—please keep the feedback coming!

One way to quickly gain broad exposure is through syndication, or the automatic distribution of a listing to multiple websites.  vFlyer is one of a number of online services that automatically submits listings to online marketplaces and classifieds sites.  In this post, we’ll break down the various sites to which we syndicate and give you an idea of the exposure our platform can yield.

vFlyer partner site traffic in millions of viewers each month:*

1. Google Maps 35.8
2. Indeed 12.6
3. Yahoo! Real Estate 6.4
4. Zillow 5.1
5. Trulia 4.1
6. Simply Hired 4.0
7. Oodle 3.9
8. eBay Classifieds 3.7
9. Backpage 2.8
10. AOL Real Estate 1.4
11. FrontDoor 1.4
12. OLX 1.2
13. Vast 0.9
14. HotPads 0.9
15. Geebo 0.25
16. Cyberhomes 0.12
17. Jobalot 0.11

*Traffic data from Compete.com. Compete compiles data from a panel of over 2 million consumers – read about their methodology here.

You might be asking yourself, why are vFlyer listings showing up on Google Maps? About a year ago, real estate and rental listings submitted to Google Base were integrated into Google Maps as part of the retiring of Google Base’s search interface.  So while vFlyer continues to send a data feed to Google Base, housing listings now appear on Google Maps. There’s even a separate real estate search option in Maps that allows you to find real estate and rentals in a particular area.

Second on the list with a whopping 12 million unique views per month is the job site Indeed, a job “aggregator” site that, unlike some large job boards (e.g., Monster.com), has recently enjoyed tremendous growth.  An emphasis on search engine optimization has allowed Indeed to capture a huge amount of traffic straight from Google, and for vFlyer users looking to hire, this is good news… indeed.

Getting back to real estate, let’s have a look at the top five real estate-specific sites on the list.  Yahoo! Real Estate comes in first with 6.4 million viewers, Zillow is second with 5.1 million, Trulia third with 4.1 million, AOL Real Estate fourth with 1.4 million, and FrontDoor fifth with 1.4 million.

With the exception of AOL Real Estate, all of these sites show overall growth in the year 2010, with Trulia up 1.17 million unique views per month, and Yahoo! Real Estate up 1.16 million compared to this month last year.  These are companies that, despite a poor housing market, have continued to gain traffic by improving their portals and enabling online consumers with more information.  With Yahoo! Real Estate and Zillow recently teaming up, Yahoo! Real Estate has gotten a nice boost in listings, and Zillow has become an absolute must for syndication.  Combined, traffic on these two sites challenges Realtor.com, the longtime leader in the space.

Let’s now take a look at some of the broader online marketplaces and classifieds sites to which vFlyer syndicates: Oodle, with 3.9 million unique views per month, eBay Classifieds (3.7 million), Backpage (2.8 million), OLX (1.2 million), and Vast (0.9 million).

Check out eBay Classifieds (shown in red), with a stratospheric jump of over 3.6 million monthly visits in the past year.  As many vFlyer users will recall, this site used to be known as Kijiji.  While the name remains in Canada, Kijiji USA was rebranded as eBay Classifieds at the end of March.  This seems to have been an effective move by eBay (note the difference between March and April), and with a parent site (eBay.com) ranked #22 worldwide by Alexa, there’s reason to believe eBay Classifieds will continue to grow in the near future.

To put this all in perspective, let’s look at Craigslist.  With nearly 60 million visitors last month, Craigslist is the undisputed king of classifieds sites.  This should come as no surprise to most of you, but the magnitude of difference between traffic on a top real estate site like Trulia and Craigslist is quite staggering.  Just for fun, let’s throw in Facebook and Twitter as well.

These are three of the top 10 sites in the US (according to Alexa): Facebook at #1, Twitter at #9, and Craigslist at #10. To answer the question I posed earlier, these are now the most important places to establish oneself online.  But let’s not discount the other classifieds sites we reviewed.  Diligent Craigslist posting and staying on top of the social media game take a big chunk out of one’s marketing resources (read: time).  Syndication is the proverbial low-hanging fruit of online marketing.  While these sites alone may not generate the number of leads you might get from posting regularly to Craigslist, they still account for a huge amount of online traffic; having your listings syndicated to them by vFlyer allows you to “pluck the fruit”, and leaves you time to focus on building your audience through Facebook, Twitter, and your blog.

I’ll finish with another question: what role does listing syndication play in your online marketing?  And are there any other classifieds sites that you’d like vFlyer to syndicate to?  (Sorry, Craigslist is not an option.)

If you’re reading this post, you’ve probably heard plenty about social media. You’re most likely aware that it’s an incredible phenomenon, privy to some fantastic tales of success, and evaluating your role in it all. Here at vFlyer, we want our users to be equipped with the knowledge and tools to succeed online. To that end, we’ve put together an article outlining some best practices for social media marketing. We call it “Social Media 101 for vFlyer Users.” Below are some of the highlights. To read the full article, head on over to vFlyer’s help center.

Think of your web presence as a house in the midst of a block party. Inside your house are your friends and family – your existing customers. You want them to have a great time; you want them to feel welcome, special, and happy. But you want your party to be the biggest and best on the block! People walking by (casual internet visitors) need to see how much fun your guests are having and want to come inside. Social media can help your guests have more fun and attract passers-by to join the party.

An effective web presence should include the following components: a website, blog, Facebook Page, and Twitter account. Your website is the center of everything, and the end destination for the traffic you attract. Your blog is your official company voice, and your Facebook and Twitter accounts are outposts in the raging rivers of social media. Start with this basic framework, then gradually add more as needed.

The content built on this framework should address the following questions: Who are you? What do you do? and What’s happening now? Your content should also offer visitors something they want, be it news, inspiration, humor, advice, or resources. Most importantly, keep your content fresh! Even if your readers are just a select group of friends and family, get in the habit of creating new content. One day, thousands of visitors will traffic your site, and you’ll need to serve up fresh content to keep ‘em coming back for more. Fresh, clean content! Not a bunch of ads or a six-month-old blog post.

Online, one should be bold enough to write about something already covered by 100 other bloggers, real enough to state his or her true intentions, and outgoing enough to friend, follow, and comment on anything and everything he or she finds interesting.

Finally, focus on yourself! This may sound selfish, but I think Chris Guillebeau got it just right: your message is what people want to hear. If I’m interested in what somebody else has to say, I can follow somebody else. I’m following you because I want to hear what you have to say, so say it!

Genuine humanness is what we all respond to online, so here’s another piece of advice: throw all the social media advice you receive, including our article, right out the window, and just be your own crazy self on the internet. Nobody’s made it very far without ignoring at least most of what they’ve been told. In any case, let us know what social media strategies work or don’t work for you – we’d love to hear about it.

vFlyer Voice enables vFlyer business subscribers to record narration for their flyers over the phone, making the process as easy as recording a voicemail greeting. Here’s how it works: you simply enter your phone number to receive an automated call from our system, follow the instructions, and record your narration. You can listen to your recording and re-record if you want. Record narration in two ways: image by image, or for the entire photo slideshow. In the first case, each photo is accompanied by a different segment of narration, turning your landing page into a step-by-step walk-through of your property, product, or service. The second option plays one narration through the entire slideshow. This lets the viewer explore the photos at his or her own pace, and is especially effective if you want to give just a brief introduction to your product or service.

For real estate agents, vFlyer Voice is comparable to a virtual tour: a multimedia presentation designed to give internet visitors a strong impression of your listing. Whereas some virtual tours are full of photo effects, slick transitions, and cheesy background music, a flyer equipped with voice narration offers a more direct approach. Home buyers want to know exactly what the house is like, inside and out. To this end, vFlyer Voice is a powerful tool. Combined with clear, well-lit photos, a few words of narration give viewers a complete picture of the home, minus all the fluff. Click the image below to see (and hear) a good example of a flyer that uses vFlyer Voice:

In short, use vFlyer Voice to make your flyers your own. With all the competition online today, people respond best to ads with a little personality. So grab your phones, practice your pitch, and try recording some voice narration for your flyers today! Or learn more about vFlyer’s complete online marketing solution here.

A few days after we posted it, we received an email from “craigslist.org” notifying us that our post had been flagged and removed. We had gotten a few spam emails previously from people who either claimed they wanted to buy our items but needed some personal information from us first, or that had nothing to do with the post at all. When I opened this email, however, I immediately thought that it was an authentic message from Craigslist. It referenced the post, after all, and had all the trappings of an official Craigslist email.

Upon closer inspection, though, I noticed that there was an option to remove the flag from the listing, which Craigslist doesn’t support (why would Craigslist allow people whose posts have been flagged to immediately re-post them?). Also, mousing over the links in this email showed URLs made to look like Craigslist links but that would actually go to a completely different website (“accounts.craigslist.org.user.authentication.login.atlanticaquasport.com” is NOT the same as “craigslist.org”). So, I immediately sent this email to my spam folder where it belongs. Done and done.

I’m relating this rather unremarkable story because so many vFlyer users post their flyers to Craigslist and probably receive these types of “phishing” emails. Here are some tips to remember when you receive an email related to a Craigslist post:

1. Be skeptical. Craigslist doesn’t send people a lot of emails. If it’s not an email you were expecting (for instance, the self-publishing or post confirmation email), there’s a good chance it didn’t actually come from Craigslist.
2. Don’t believe offers of protection from flagging or restoring a flagged post. They are fake.
3. Look at the sender’s email address. The name may say “Craigslist”, but the email address could be a Gmail or AOL address, or an address of some other domain. Even if the email address ends in “craigslist.org”, don’t immediately assume that it’s from Craigslist.
4. If there are links in the email, mouse over them without clicking so that you can see the URL (that is, the web address of the link). If the URL doesn’t look right, don’t click the link.
5. NEVER give personal information such as your name, address, phone number, or social security number in an email to someone you don’t know.

For more information on avoiding email scams, take a look at this page from the National Consumers League’s Internet Fraud Watch.

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Thanks to everyone who made such great holiday custom themes this season. And thanks to all the vFlyer users who made custom themes this past year. 2009 saw the creation of hundreds of custom branded themes, only some of which we showcased in our blog. We’re excited to see even more branded themes in 2010! If you’re interested in having a custom branded theme created for you, contact us at support@vflyer.com.

And finally, Happy Holidays from the vFlyer Team!

If you’re interested in getting your own custom branded theme, vFlyer can help! We have in-house designers who can create a custom theme for you based on your specifications. If interested, simply email support@vflyer.com. The regular price for this service is $149. There is a special through the end of the 2009 for just $99.

We’ll be back this coming Friday with another Custom Theme of the Week, so if you’ve created or seen a custom theme and think it should be spotlighted, by all means, let us know!