On Beautiful Verbs

Real estate ads tend to be filled with adjectives and adverbs. But online consumers have short attention spans, making brief messages with strong calls to action more effective than flowery rhetoric. A verb-based marketing approach, similar to the “like” and “share” buttons on Facebook, could be used to help buyers better understand what it feels like to live in the home. The industry must first define its core verb — whether it be “visit,” “watch,” or “move” — before such a marketing approach will take off. Independent computational media researcher Nick Diakopoulos found that tweets using more verbs and containing shorter messages were more likely to be shared by users. Sellers who adapt to the shift from database search to verb-driven search could bolster brand association among online users and inspire them to action. | Read More