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People

Shad Bookout, formerly of CORT Business Services and For Rent, has started his own company. Sept. 4, 2012, marked the official launch for OpinionsVary, a social media and reputation management firm based in Central Florida. OpinionsVary was formed with the goal of helping businesses become more effective and meaningful in their social media programs.

"Often, the power of social media is overlooked," explains Shad, owner and chief social officer. "It is important that everyone takes the time to understand their online presence. Businesses are challenged by time, energy and a lack of knowledge on how to succeed in utilizing social media."

OpinionsVary offers a variety of services to not only enhance and improve a company’s social media presence, but also their "in person" social presence. OpinionsVary’s services menu includes, but is not limited to:

Creating and establishing professional social media pages (i.e. Facebook, Twitter)
Creating and providing meaningful, relevant and interactive content for social media pages to increase traffic and brand exposure
Targeted social media marketing campaigns
Online reputation management and monitoring
Creation and hosting for blogs, vlogs and live streaming events
Social media and brand message consulting
Education: Teaching sales, marketing and social media techniques to your group or business
Professional pitchman services for trade shows and conferences
Master of Ceremonies (MC) for corporate events and activities

These services provide practical and cost-effective solutions for the needs of many business models. With these services, small businesses are able to more effectively compete against their larger competitors with bigger budgets. In addition, larger businesses are able to free up man power hours while creating a better, more effective public relations presence for their company. Often, companies both large and small can translate more sales from having a better, more meaningful presence in their marketplace.

"Social media is a language like any other. You would not go work in a different country without being able to speak the language effectively, or at the very least having a translator. OpinionsVary is that translator for your social media and online reputation," Shad said.

Companies

Augusta, Ga.-based Grace Hill, Inc., a provider of online education and learning management solutions for the multifamily housing industry, announced it is sponsoring the 2012 Multifamily Training Benchmark Survey. The survey will deliver crucial industry-specific training metrics to multifamily property management companies and learning and development executives.

Multifamily property management executives are invited to take the survey, which will take approximately 20 minutes to complete and will be available until Oct. 12, 2012. The survey is open to all multifamily property management companies, and should be completed by one associate who has access to data on learning and development spend, staffing and delivery methods. A summary of the results from this study will be published in the Multifamily Training Benchmark Whitepaper available on Oct. 19, 2012. Participants will receive a copy of the whitepaper by email so they can benchmark how their organization’s training program compares to others, see industry-wide training stats and learn the best practices and opportunities to maximize the results of their education program. Results will not identify participating company names or specific company data.

FAA is a federation of 11 local affiliates, representing over 490,000 apartment homes in Florida. Both community and associate members in good standing of a local affiliate are automatically memebers of FAA and NAA.