This presentation was shared with the Associates Committee of the Builder’s League of South Jersey on March 9th 2010. Anthony, owner of the New Jersey virtual tour company, Samurai Virtual Tours,  was invited to speak about how businesses might make use of social media like Facebook Pages. During this presentation we discussed the basics of social media, the importance of determining goals and strategies,  Facebook Pages, the importance of analyzing and some tools used to measure social media ROI.

Click the above image to experience the 360 degree virtual tour.

Samurai Virtual Tours captured over 400 photographs and carefully processed them to create 20 HDR panoramic images. These 360 degree images were combined to create a custom virtual tour and video tour of the award winning Magnolia Place model home by Piersol Homes.

Virtual tours such as this one are used by home builders as marketing tools. Piersol Homes showcases the virtual tour and video tour on their website with a link from their front page. In addition the video tour has been converted to DVD so that it can be played in the sales office and distributed to potential new home buyers. Using these high quality interactive images as marketing tools serves multiple purposes such as:

• saving sales people time showing homes to uninterested buyers
• serving as a way for interested buyers to revisit a property as many times as they wish or even share the views of the home with family and friends
• branding, interactive media keeps people on a website longer while providing an enjoyable and memorable experience

Take a moment to experience the Magnolia Place virtual tour and feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.

You can also view the video tour below.

On January 27th Anthony, owner of  Samurai Virtual Tours,  spent half a day teaching a group of  business professionals about LinkedIn, Skype and Twitter. The class was sponsored by the Gloucester County Chamber of Commerce and held at the Gloucester County College in Southern New Jersey. The presentation above was used during the class. It was built by Anthony using the new presentation software Prezi.

Click image to view interactive virtual tour of Swarming Local News session at BCNI Philly.

Chris Krewson and Wendy Warren from Philly.com and the Inquirer spoke on how blogging and social media platforms like twitter have changed the way breaking news can be communicated to the public.  The room was filled with journalists, students, and small business owners who were ready to participate by answering questions, sharing their own concerns, and trying to win free t-shirts and jump drives for giving good answers.

Going Hyperlocal at BCNI Philly

We also attended the Going Hyperlocal session which was presented by Bill Bostic, Publisher/Editor of the Linglestown Gazette.  Bill shared his passion of announcing the local news that the major papers normally overlook by using a hyperlocal blog, which is a blog that is concentrated on one area or town.  The group discussed ways to generate income to support the blog by having local businesses contribute through paid advertising while allowing them to provide useful content to the community in the blog’s posts.

Overall, BCNI Philly was a great success, and we were glad we could be a part.

Click image to see interactive view of BCNI at Temple

Sean and others at BCNI Philly

On April 25, 2009 we attended Philadelphia Bar Camp News Innovation held at Temple Unviersity.  The event was organized by Sean Blanda and had over 125 attendees including representatives from local news papers, bloggers, citizen journalists and more.  The above interactive 360° image shows a close look at the schedule board and some of the attendees during the lunch break in Annenberg Hall.

Ms. Hare and Carusi Students raise money for March of Dimes.

Thanks to Twitter and Staci we heard about the Earth Day Festival at Carusi Middle School in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Saturday was a beautiful spring day so with camera and microphone in hand, Samurai Virtual Tours paid a visit to this great event. This, the 1st Annual Earth Day Festival was presented by Sustainable Cherry Hill and the Cherry Hill Public Schools.

Among the businesses, vendors, and exhibitors Carole and I met some of the Carusi Middle School students and their teacher Ms. Hare sharing with event attendees about the March of Dimes and the upcoming March for Babies event. Students excitedly shared with us about how supporting them as they walk in the March for Babies on April 26th will help to prevent premature birth and birth defects.

Learn more about the March of Dimes, the March for Babies and the Cooper’s Mustangs team from Carusi Middle School by visiting http://marchforbabies.org/cooper_carusi. Please do consider supporting them with their goal by donating or walking.

To experience the 360° interactive image with audio click on the image above or here.

Click image to experience the 360° interactive panorama of the marketing discussion panel.

On March 27th South Jersey Biz Buzz and its marketing committee held the “New Rules of Marketing, PR and Advertising” event at Pine Hill Golf Club. The discussion panel addressed the audience with methods and ideas regarding employing conventional and unconventional means to better market themselves and their businesses. Adam Sokoloff chairman of the SJ Biz Buzz Marketing Committee was moderator of the event and led the panel in discussion about using print, PR, video, the internet, and social media for marketing and advertising.

Click image to view the 360° interactive panorama of the panel.

Panelists’ areas of expertise and knowledge of marketing, PR and advertising today was varied. The views shared from the panel ranged from “print is not dying only evolving” to “pray for PR” to “there are lots of free or inexpensive ways to market yourself on the internet.” Simple and practical tips were shared during the discussion and question and answer times. Some practical tips included the importance of registering your own domain name and having a website, using professional printing services instead of do it yourself solutions, and signing up for social media tools such as Twitter or Facebook.

One of my favorite suggestions from the panel came from Susan of  Suasion Communications Group who says business people should meet with editors to tell instead of to sell. Susan encouraged the audience to meet with editors to establish relationships. She shared how she had used this technique in the past and found that often when editors where searching for stories that related to her business she would be called upon for the story. Susan’s suggestion reminded me of the importance of building a network before you need it.

Useful WP Plugins

Learning is a pleasurable experience for me. I can spend hours searching and surfing the web in search of solutions to problems, ways to make the tools I work with run better, looking for new ways to improve our virtual tour service, or just finding out what the latest buzz is about out there in internet land.

The last day or two I’ve been looking into improving the experience here on this blog. In doing so I’ve been exploring some ways to combat the inevitable and quite frankly annoying comment spam that is sure to pester any blogger at one point or another. One type of spam I recently encountered was a short “Thanks!” comment that was associated with a non existing url with a questionable name. Basically, it appeared to be a form of spam in which someone leaves a short comment in order have their url linked to. Comments aren’t for spam they are for encouraging conversation…your welcome if you enjoyed a post, but please let’s make comments more relevant and beneficial to those who read them both blog owners and users alike.

It was great to find a new plugin today to help us in the battle against useless and unwelcome comment spam. The short comment spam solution proposed by ShoeMoney, an internet marketing professional and blogger, was built into a the Minimum Comment Length WordPress Plugin by Joost who regularly writes about SEO and Blogging and who is also the creator of the very useful social bookmarking plugin: Sociable which is currently in use here are Samurai Virtual Tours Blog.

The Minimum Comment Length plugin allows the blog owner to choose the minimum character length of a comment and returns a customizable error message to those commenting with messages that fall below the minimum determined character count. A great and simple idea to help eliminate some spam and encourage good, relevant, and beneficial conversation.