Randall Zats has owned a vacation rental property since 1999 in a resort at the Pointe Santo condo complex–one of about 140 units. He endures the struggle of independently marketing his property to travelers through the likes of VRBO and HomeAway which have hundreds of thousands of vacation property listings around the world. Unfortunately, unlike hotels which manage hundreds of rooms each night, when rental owners are booked, the lead just gets lost in the shuffle.

Randy became an entrepreneur when he realized that his vacation complex could rent more units if they shared leads, rolling them to another owner if the first property was already booked. That’s how InCircleRentals was born, a location-specific lead-sharing “home owners’ association” for vacation rental owners.

Too often, an entrepreneur with a mission and a budget gets swept away in the tide of fast-and-flashy marketing without taking stock of the opportunities. Fortunately, Randy is an accountant by trade, so it wasn’t hard for him to understand the importance of strategic research prior to designing (let alone launching) a marketing campaign.

Since he has a limited budget and a global audience, digital and social solutions are ideal for his product. We are assessing the opportunities in paid and organic search, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Message Boards, LinkedIn and influencer relations. This preliminary report will reveal which platforms have the greatest potential ROI, and which overarching strategies can separate his ideal customers from the masses.

We look forward to helping Randy and InCircle Rentals become an asset for the vacation home owner.

A blogger, a marketer and a programmer walk into a bar.

No joke—that’s what happened at BlogWorld Expo in Los Angeles last weekend. Of course, the bloggers, marketers and programmers were joined by mobile developers, graphic designers, podcasters, affiliate networkers, video editors, and ebook publishers, and they spent some time at the LA Convention Center, too. With so much digital know-how under one roof, the event made a great case study in how to apply communication technology. Here are three ways we are applying social media in the real world:

How to Make Friends and Influence People

While working the crowd at an evening networking event, one first-time attendee asked me how he could find and connect with like-minded people. We downloaded a simple Twitter app, and I showed him how to follow the BlogWorld conversation by searching for its official hashtag, #bwela (more than 7,000 people tweeted about the event, hitting 30.4 million followers with 323 million impressions). It brought up attendees’ real-time reactions, and he quickly found a couple comments that resonated. He responded to them in-kind and arranged opportunities to meet that night or later that weekend. He even set up an appointment with a potential vendor.

Moral: Social media is a searchable database of what the world is thinking, and who specifically is thinking it. Research and reach out!

Breaking News

Event staff and attendees live or die by the conference brochure, which lists the dates, times and locations for every event, along with speaker bios, the list of exhibitors and directions to the bathroom. It’s the end-all source for conference information…except for when it’s not. Exhibit booths are moved, speakers cancel and the west bathrooms are closed for cleaning from 1:00 to 2:00 instead of 5:00 to 6:00—last-minute changes that a pre-printed publication can’t communicate. That’s why future BlogWorld events will feature a conference app complete with schedules, bios, evaluation forms, GPS-enabled maps, and important updates direct from the conference staff. Now, staff and attendees can communicate in real time with the right information.

Moral: If you have a central “bible” for your event, project or client, use technology to put it in a digital location where it can be easily accessed and updated.

Say It to My Face

Events like BlogWorld exist because even social media experts know that technology cannot replace in-person communication. More than two thousands attendees solidified business and personal relationships with handshakes, hugs and the other 95% of non-verbal communication, but where does that leave the tens of thousands who could not attend? BlogWorld was careful not to leave them out in the dark by offering a virtual ticket—the ability to listen to and watch presentations in real time or post-production, expanding the event’s intellectual footprint even further. With 22 simultaneous breakout sessions, the virtual ticket was a must, even for event attendees.

Moral: Social media is rarely meant to exist in isolation. It’s a communication add-on that increases audience and adds dimension.

Closer to Home

BlogWorld provided a couple particularly valuable developments for House and Hoffman, as well. First, we have the opportunity to expand our influencer relations program by teaming up with the host of a popular podcast for bloggers. While interviewing successful bloggers over the past three years, this individual has built a thorough network of influencers. He is interested in helping them find business partnerships that will fund their projects while exposing their audiences to quality products and services.

Second, we have the opportunity to become affiliates with BlitzLocal whose mission is to create a million jobs through social media marketing for small businesses. We will train with their enterprise clients and test their small business analytics and marketing software.

Third, our contract with BlogWorld is being extended to June (New York City) and November (Los Angeles) of 2012, so stay tuned for more punch lines.

McDonald’s McRib advertising campaign adeptly employs the scarcity principles of advertising, which are 2.3.1 “State that an attractive product is scarce when it is true” and 2.3.2 “Restrict sales of the product.”

The “I’m gonna miss it” line in the commercial McDonald\’s McRib Commercial (Honeymooners) creates the sense of urgency needed to drive people into the stores to purchase this limited time offer. Over at TheWeek.com they have an article “The McRib’s suspiciously ‘limited’ availability: 4 theories” that explores why they think the McRib is only available for a short time, rather than year round like most of the McDonald’s menu items. Their third theory draws right from the “Scarcity” principles:

“3. Scarcity feeds the hype
The McRib’s cult following has a lot to do with the fact that you can’t always get the strangely ribless sandwich, says Nicole Carter at Inc. “Scarcity works.” McDonald’s has created a self-sustaining buzz machine in which fans post online about “‘confirmed’ and ‘possible’ sightings of the McRib across the United States.” If the McRib were as ubiquitous as the Big Mac, there’d be nothing to exult over.”

Read the whole article http://theweek.com/article/index/221366/the-mcribs-suspiciously-limited-availability-4-theories