| Corporate address | 265 State Route 34, Bldg 2 Colts Neck, NJ 07721 |
| Mailing address | P.O. Box 162 Middletown, NJ 07748 |
| Corporate address | 265 State Route 34, Bldg 2 Colts Neck, NJ 07721 |
| Mailing address | P.O. Box 162 Middletown, NJ 07748 |
By creating and automating the sharing of expertly-written, engaging real estate content, Post Café allows its users to effortlessly grow a strong online reputation and stay top-of-mind with their audience.
He also recognized that staying active and getting the right exposure in front of his clients on social media had a tremendous value in referral business. If done right, social media marketing represented an enormous opportunity for real estate professionals whose main source of leads is referrals. However, Post Café’s owner saw too many realtors struggling with social media because they lacked the time and experience necessary to manage it themselves, and the funding to hire a social media agency to handle it for them.
This lack in the marketplace for an easy, effective and affordable solution for real estate professionals looking to establish themselves as leaders in their space on social media was the impetus behind the birth of Post Café. While automated social media posting was nothing new, the fact that Post Café posts would drive to original articles written by industry-experts that lived on a realtor’s own custom-branded website, was.
This project was unique in that the client needed two distinct websites to serve very different needs:
Because the business model was truly the first of its kind, they needed a site that would successfully introduce the Post Café concept and its benefits, as well as provide a concise, yet compelling explanation of how it works.
The client needed a site that could seamlessly manage new user registrations, record their preferences and process their payment for the service.
Because the target demographic was time-strapped real estate professionals, the interface needed to be as straight-forward, yet intuitive, as possible.
All articles posted by a realtor via Post Café would drive to a page within the platform that is custom branded to that realtor, including links to their personal website and contact information.
Post Cafe’s homepage features creative copy, engaging imagery and a new-visitor pop-up video to introduce the service in a concise yet compelling way. Behind-the-scenes, we implemented a conversion architecture system to help convert visitors from the several lead capture mechanisms set-up throughout the site.
Realizing that Post Café was attracting subscribers who lacked the time or technical savvy to manage their own social media marketing, we gave them an experience that was as user-friendly as possible. We crafted a streamlined user interface for the dashboard, while still providing for the customization and flexibility that Post Café had promised.
As Post Café was a groundbreaking model, we knew we would be building the site in phases based off of user feedback and interaction. In Phase 1, the site was built to provide automated posting to a subscriber’s Facebook page only. Shortly thereafter, we added integration points with Twitter and LinkedIn APIs to provide these platforms as optional add-ons to subscribers.
The functionality of the site evolved as well—in its first phase, users were offered the option to preview and select from a menu of upcoming articles, and to prioritize or skip particular articles. Not long after, we optimized the design to allow the user to customize the messaging that accompanies each post for each platform, to select longer-form content and to control the times when posts went live on their social platforms.
In order to account for several subscribers using Post Café within the same geographic region, an automatic randomization process was established to control which posts appeared in a user’s dashboard at any given time.
Recognizing that being able to prove ROI was key to subscriber retention, we also built a simple-to-navigate but intuitive reporting system that would allow the Post Café user to track and analyze several engagement KPI’s, including reactions, comments, shares and clicks. We expanded user package options to allow subscribers to increase their activity based on measured success.
Finally, we wanted to make the site as easy to control for the administrators of the site as it is for their users. In building the subscription-based ecommerce platform, we automated many of the functions, including regular charges, user updates and automated email streams for billing, password changes, declined credit cards, etc.
Historically, when a realtor posted a link to an article on social media, it would drive the user to an external website. But with Post Café, a user who follows a realtor’s link is brought to that realtor’s own branded blog. The co-branded webpage automatically populates with the realtor’s photo, contact information and company logo.
