Rob's Blog

Extreme Makeover to build new home for Andy and Heather Cowan

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:18:01 -0700

ABC's Extreme Makeover Home Edition and Hallmark Homes announced today the next deserving family to receive a new home.

Hallmark Homes released the following information this morning on the HallmarkExtreme.com website:

Good Morning Cowan-Brown Family

"Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" will rebuild the home of the Andy and Heather Cowan, factory workers who struggle to support their four children Ryan, 16, Trevor, 13, Mason, 8, and their daughter Kori, 12, who is battling a congenital blood disease.

At six-years-old, Kori Cowan was diagnosed with a congenital blood disease affecting her immune system. Kori has developed polyps in her nasal cavity and behind her eyes. She has already endured 17 operations as a result of these painful growths, which must be surgically removed. Doctors believe these polyps may be the result of environmental issues facing the family's home, including an extreme mold infestation. Ryan, Andy and Heather's oldest son, has also fallen ill and has gone to live with his biological father – tearing this close-knit family apart.

Despite the daily struggles Kori faces, she has not let her disease slow her down. During one of her stays at the blood clinic, Kori was inspired by a little girl with whom she shared a room and....Read Full Story at HallmarkExtreme.com

URBaCS, a Central Indiana software development company, is assisting the build by managing the website, communicating with sponsors and volunteers via text messaging system, and coordinating the social media campaign. To learn more about how URBaCS can help your business with The Next Big Idea visit URBaCS.com

Web Directories

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:29:52 -0700

This week we will turning our attention to on line directories. One of the better ( and FREE) ways to increase your results in search queries is to be listed on some of the top web directories.

Google and Yahoo have the most well known. Bing.com's local listing center and BOTW Local (Best Of The Web) have created very good local directories.

Have you come across a really good local directory recently? We are especially interested in directories that are based around towns and cities.

We will be putting our results together in a 6 part post starting next week. If you have any feedback on your experiences using web directories let me know and I will include your information.

Home Builder Photo Galleries - Examples (5 of 5)

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:43:02 -0700

This is the last post in a five post series about homebuilder online photo galleries. So far we've discussed the importance of online photo galleries, ways to build a good photo gallery, some simple ways to search optimize your photos so they can be found, and we have taken you outside your comfort zone by encouraging you to post more pictures than you may be comfortable putting online. In this post we'd like to show you a few good examples of builder photo galleries from around the web.

The majority of your customers will visit your website before they visit your model home. More and more of your customers are engaging in social media every day. And more of these users are taking and uploading photos (more than 1 billion are uploaded every month between Flickr and Facebook alone).

What does it all mean?

It means that we need to take advantage of every opportunity available to us to get our message in front of the buying public. A well optimized photo gallery is... Read full article

Home Builder Galleries - How many pictures Post 4 of 5

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:59:48 -0700

In this blog series we've outlined the growing importance of online photo galleries, how to build a good photo gallery, and some ways to get your pictures online using free photo sharing tools. In this post, we'd like to explain why you should upload more photos than you're probably comfortable sharing.

Notice: This article may conflict with traditional "Marketing Director" wisdom. Don'tblame them.

Go to any homebuilder photo gallery. My guess is you'll find between... Read full article

Builder Photo Galleries - Where to post photos. (Post 3 of 5)

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:09:31 -0700

In the first article in this blog series we outlined the growing importance of photos to the online world. In the second post we showed you how to build a photo gallery that helps generate search traffic and spread your message virally. With today's message we'd like to help you get your photos online using some great free services.

There are literally thousands of online photo sharing websites on the net. We only talk about two in this post, Flickr and Facebook. You can.... Read full post

Home Builder Photo Galleries - The Right Way (Post 2 of 5)

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:49:35 -0700

This our second post about on line photo galleries. The emphasis of the series is how New Home builders can increase traffic to their website using photo galleries in a way completely contrary to the advise of their marketing department. Home Builder Galleries - The Right Way In the first article in our Homebuilder Photo Galleries blog series we showcased the explosion of online photos. In this post we'd like to outline how your photos should appear online. We'll be outlining best and worst practices that we've seen from homebuilders. Most builders already have a series of photos embedded on their website. Read the rest of the story here Stop back tomorrow for post 3. Where to post photos

On line search optimized photo galleries. What, How, and Why Post 1of 5

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:10:16 -0700

Over the last two weeks we at URBaCS have been researching and writing about on line photo galleries. We wanted to look at how they can be used by new home builders to increase traffic to their website. We posted our results on the URBaCS Blog. Over the next five days I will be elaborating on what we have found and some of our feedback.

Home Builder Photo Galleries -Intro to the blog series ( Post #1 of 5)

Homebuilder's aren't using photo galleries to their full capabilites so we'll be spending the next week discussing what builder's should be doing to use photos as a tool to drive search traffic and engage prospective home buyers. With today's down housing market we are all doing business differently than we did just a few short years ago. Most of the old marketing stand-bys don't work like they used to, and we are all looking for new ways to make our marketing dollars stretch further.

It's all about the numbers

Ask any new home sales professional or Realtor and they'll tell you it's always been about the numbers. X number of traffic units leads to Y number of sales. Click here to read the full post.

Stop back tomorrow for post 2.

It is the "wave" of the future

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:15:07 -0700

I have been writing this year about new technology, the changes in our economy, and the effects on how we do business. Our friends at Google are always looking a few years into the future. Last week they introduced Google Wave.

Google Wave is the next evolution in the way we communicate. The developers took a look at how we communicate via the internet and decided traditional email wasn't up to today's speed, so they are breaking the old rules and developing a new way to communicate, "waves". Email, instant messages, photo sharing, scheduling, and more

I won't waste your time telling you about Wave, when the developers can do so better. Here is a link Wave to see a presentation from Google to a group of developers that explains it all. It is a bit long and at times technical, but it is good information worth knowing.

Communication is such an integral part of the housing industry. Our team at URBaCS has been working to stay at the cutting edge of new technology and find ways to adapt it to fit the needs of builders and Realtors. We will continue to bring you new information as we find it. To learn more about what we do, visit www.urbacs.com. To learn more about our products for builders, visit Builders, To learn more about our products for Realtors, visit Realtors

Why don't builders make better use of photo galleries?

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Tue, 26 May 2009 07:48:14 -0700

Why don't builders make better use of photo galleries?

Each year Builder magazine does its top 100 list. Last week while going through the list, I visited the website of the top 15 builders. What I found, is that it is very hard to find a picture gallery of their homes.

Over 78% of home buyers will visit a builders website before they visit the model home. We also know that the model home is one of the best selling tools in a builders arsenal. Make a quick visit to the Flickr or Picasa websites and you will see how popular posting photos on line has become.

Some of the builders websites have nicly produced videos of a few of their homes. This is helpful, but still lacks the full benefit of a large photo gallery. There is something compelling about a "next" button that pushes us to click to see what the next picture is going to be.

Here is an example of two photo galleries;

Centex photo gallery

Estridge photo gallery

Which of the two of these is more compelling as a sales tool? Centex has a nice slide show. No titles, descriptions or tags. Estridge has titles so buyers know which home they are looking at, tags so the pictures are easy to find by category, and descriptions so they increase page rankings by search engine's.

The technology is available. Realtors have found the benefit of adding pictures to their listings. So I ask again... Why don't more builders make better use of photo galleries?

Are you offering Analog service to a Digital world?

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:51:21 -0700

The winds of change are continuing to accelerate. The way we do business needs to change as well... if we are to keep up.

This year is the year of the social networks. Twitter and Facebook seem to be the flavor of the day for now. How many of your co-workers have Facebook accounts? I guess the better question is to ask, how many of them don't? It was not too long ago that Facebook was only something that college kids were on. Now it has gone main stream.

How about cell phones? I know many of you can recall the days before cell phones. Can you even imagine doing business without cell phones today? It would be imposable. Our clientele expect that we will be available for them at a moments notice.

Text messaging is coming into it's own this year. This is partially do to the popularity of Twitter and similar applications. But it can also be attributed to the maturing of the medium itself. This is the first year that the number of text messages will exceed the number of phone calls. More and more Realtors are finding ways to incorporate text based marketing into their marketing plan.

So what is the next technology change? Photo Messaging

Many see the next change coming as digital images become more Mobil. Platforms like Fliker, Facebook and MySpace have trained us how to post pictures on-line for years. Cell phones are now equipped to take, view and send pictures far better than they could even as recently as 12 months ago. According to a recent survey by PMA Foresight;

About one-fourth of all US mobile subscribers sent or received images or video through their cellphone.
Photo/video sharing is the top multimedia activity on the cellphone in the USA, ahead of games, downloading of ringtones, applications, and more.
Photo messaging activity is highest in the months of December and August.
Most notably, the 2008 M:Metrics survey recorded a 60 percent increase in the number of cellphone subscribers involved in photo messaging from the same survey period in 2007.
Participation in photo messaging increased across all age groups, as well.

So what does this mean for the Real Estate Industry? We had better start providing access to more and more digital pictures of our listings. Consumers will need to be able to view pictures of our listing from their cell phones while standing in front of the property. They will want to be able to email pictures of our listings to their spouse, friends, and coworkers. They will want to create photo albums of homes they are considering on their cell phone.

Photo messaging is the next wave. So start getting ready.

It is a busy world.

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:03:31 -0700

No wonder we are all tired.

Jayson posted this great bit of information from Sprint on the URBaCS blog.

Check it out it's good. SPRINT

More from the Estridge Extreme Build Site

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:28:03 -0700

While walking around yesterday, I noticed all the vehicles in and around the worksite. These are work horses of the guys and gals who are donating their time. I thought I would share them with you.

Insulation and Windows. Two things you don't want to go without.

The Landscapers are planting trees all through the neighborhood.

Looks like top of the line heating and cooling for the McFarland family.

Nobody goes hungry on this worksite.

Can't make a cake without busting a few eggs!

Same goes with building a dream home. You need something to take down the old one.

Remember to HELP!

People who don't get enough credit

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:37:33 -0700

URBaCS is volunteering services to Estridge during the construction of the Extreme Makeover home in Indianapolis. We are helping organize a food drive and getting information out about the build through Twitter and Facebook. Follow the build and receive status updates on Facebook, or Twitter.

While walking through the build site today, I was struck by how many people have come together to help make this dream a reality. Just walking through the parking lot and looking at all the different trucks and trailers, was amazing. Everyone has been hit hard by the economy, especially contractors, but they are donating their time and resources anyway. As Paul Estridge says, "Giving when things are going well is easy, giving when things are tough is hard."

So here's a little credit for the companies who are giving right now.

Kelich Crane Service

Certa Pro Painters

Dealers Wholesale

Mainscape

Lunar Construction

Thanks to all. Your giving is appreciated.

I will post some more as the project progresses

Exteme cold and wet

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:00:35 -0700

On Sunday I participated in the "Braveheart Charge" with the cast of Extreme Makeover Home Edition, Employees from the Estridge Company, and around 500 other volunteers. So, when the show airs May 17th you should not have any trouble picking me out of the crowd.

Unbelievable

The amazing thing about the project is that Estridge and the EMHE Team is going to demo the old home, build a new home, and furnish it all in 106 hours.

The Weather

I live in Indiana. In Indiana, we experience all four seasons each year. In late march, in Indiana, it is possible to experience all four seasons in a single day. We had one of those days for the Braveheart Charge. The day started warmish, turned cool, started to drizzle, turned cold, turned to rain, sleet, snow flurries, and then the sun came back out after it was ok to go back inside.

The Charge and Demolition

There was a good turn out for the charge. A large mass of people charging down the street and congregating in front of the doomed home. A helicopter was flown in and the demolition was started by dropping a large weight on the home with the word "Knowledge" written on the side. The big equipment finished the job. In a few hours, nothing of the home was left.

Helping others

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:46:02 -0700

It is easy to help others when times are good. Exceptional people help others even when times are tough.

I attended an event earlier this week where one of the speakers made a profound impact on me. The speakers name is Paul Estridge Jr. The event was a kick off pep rally for Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Paul's company, The Estridge Company, is building the next home for a deserving family here in Indianapolis.

What struck me about the event is the manner in which Estridge is approaching the project. It would be too easy use the large exposure of Extreme Makeover Home Edition as a way to self promote, but What Paul Estridge Jr. wants to do with this large platform is to help the community as a whole. The Estridge Company is going to use their participation in the show as a way to help family's in need all over the city.

Pauls vision is commendable.

Realtor Bloggers Needed - Extreme Makeover. Home Edition & Estridge Homes

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:32:16 -0700

Estridge Companies is building the next Extreme Makeover Home Edition home right here in Indianapolis and we need help from Realtors.

The "door knock", announcing the family, is less than a day away. From there, Estridge will demolish the family's old home and build them a brand new dream home in 106 hours. ABC will be shooting the 2-hour season finale here in Indianapolis, which will air on May 17th.

Paul Estridge Jr. truly believes this opportunity is about more than just one family or one neighborhood. He has said time and again that we as a community can and should use this event as a catalyst to help one another.

So, in addition to volunteering to help build the dream home, Estridge has created other opportunities for everyone to get involved. They are leading a food drive to help feed hungry Hoosiers (learn more at ExtremeFoodDrive.com). They will also be launching a Facebook video campaign where they're asking people to work together to build something great. Also, M&I Bank has established a mortgage fund for the family.

We need your help to spread the word, drive participation and donations. We encourage you write about the event. To help you, we have a handful of behind-the-scenes passes to help you blog about the event. If you are interested in visiting the build site and writing about some of the many great stories surrounding the home contact me at rob@urbacs.com.

Estridge will also be Tweeting about the build with 106 + hourly Twitter updates. We would love to include any of your posts about the event in our Tweets. So even if you choose not to visit the build site, but write a post about the event, make sure to send me a link.

Where has all the time gone?

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:42:26 -0700

I can't believe it is March already. Daylight savings time has kicked in. Spring is almost here. March Madness is just around the corner. My last post was December 2nd of 2008. Oh my! Where has the time gone?

It has been a busy first quarter for us at URBaCS. At the end of last year we started working on a project with a company called Connective Mobile. We started talking with Connective Mobile's Adam Small about integrating Connective Mobile's text messaging and voice messaging technology with our Referral Builder application. What we came up with is a completely new application using the best of both companies knowledge and technology.

We are almost finished with the project and are putting the final touches on a new product for Realtors and New Home Builders that we are very excited about. Both URBaCS and Connective Mobile will be marketing the new application under our own unique names. We will be marketing our application as Lead Builder.

Lead Builder will allow you to quickly create an individual website for each of your listings, where you can display an unlimited number of high quality photos. The website is designed to be viewed on cell phones and computers. Each listing will have a toll free number where prospects can call to hear a recorded message about the listing. Each listing will also have a short code where prospective buyers can receive a text message on their cell phone with your contact information, listing information and a link to the website.

The best part of integrating all these technologies is that every time a prospect uses Lead Builder to get information about your listing, you are instantly notified. The system captures the prospects contact information so you can follow up with everyone looking at your listings.

We are very excited to introduce Lead Builder to the public. We will be going live within the next 14 days. I will update you on our progress. We are hoping to find some active Realtors to test Lead Builder for us. If you know anyone who is an early adopter of new technology, forward this post or have them contact me directly.

Are you mobile?

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:30:03 -0800

Are you mobile? I mean really mobile. It's a question you should be asking yourself. A cell phone has become part of our required business tools. They keep us connected. Today that may not be enough though. Is your cell phone generating leads for you?

Ahh... Now I have your attention.

My business partner, Jayson Manship and I met with the owners of Connective Mobile today to discuss their company and share information about developing market trends. We were pleasantly surprised at what we learned.

Connective Mobile has created a S.A.A.S. application for real estate professionals. They call it Pro-lead Suite. According to their website Pro-lead Suite is " An innovative lead generation tool that utilizes both text messaging and hosted toll free numbers to ensure that home information is always available to prospective buyers." I think it is more than that. It's just plain cool.

You put a yard sign in front of your listing. When prospective buyers want information about the home, they send a short code text to the service. Within seconds the prospect receives a text message giving them instant information about the listing. They then have the option to place a call to you, receive an automated email with more information, get directed to your website for more information, or request that you call them at a later time. The end result is that you capture more prospects than you would with a traditional information box.

Today and in the future, we have to work smarter and more efficiently. This one service cuts out, buying an information box, printing flyer's, delivering flyer's, and re-stocking flyer's to the information box. Your time is spent where you makes the most money, in front of clients.

There are some more good applications to this technology. I'll be discussing those ideas in upcoming posts. Until then I'll be looking for other great ideas to bring you about the changing technology of today's new media. At URBaCS we are committed bringing you the best people with the newest ideas to help you make money in this challenging environment.

SEO - The Auto Body Specialties Project

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:24:31 -0800

Earlier this week I outlined the Auto Body Specialties project I am working on. My goal is to help a poorly optimized website get found.

So far, I have created a couple of wordpress blogs and have started bloging about the business. I am including posts about the services and vendors who they use, and linking to the vendors websites in the blog roll. I am using as wide a range of keywords in the text of the post to make sure the blog comes up in as wide a variaty of searches as possible. Each post has the usual terms you would expect; collision repair, auto body shop, restoration, insurance, and auto insurance. Where I am seeing some success is in the off terms such as Van, SUV, ATV, RV. It is easier to come up high in page rankings for SUV than it is for car or auto.

Bloging about the insurance companies is going to be good as well. There have only been two post about insurance, but the Auto Body Specialties blog is showing up on page 1 when you type in the search terms State Farm SUV Claim Lafayette.

Today I am signing them up for a Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn account. I want to see how we do with those. On December 1st. I will add some additional social sites and measure the results.

Check out the Auto Body Specialties blog and let me know if you have any other ideas on topics to help create a long tail.

Auto Body Specialties is Lafayette's premiere collision repair center for cars, trucks, SUV's Van's RV's and ATV's.

Twitter for Business: How Does It Work and What's the Value? Part 1

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:43:58 -0800

Great Post by Paul Chaney. I liked it so much, I am subscribing to his blog. If you want a great explanation of twitter read this.

Via Paul Chaney:

(First, sorry for my latency in posting of late. Was away with my wife Amie on the trip of a lifetime to NYC! Travels are over; getting back to business.)

One of the questions I'm getting A LOT is "What's up with Twitter?" and "How do I use Twitter for business?" Let me say at the outset it is an amazing app with manifold uses. Companies as large as Dell have created a business model around it and solo entrepreneurs (real estate agents included) are proving its case as another channel for business development.

It's my aim to answer the above questions, at least in part, by not only sharing my own thoughts, but providing links to others who've addressed these as well. It will take me far more than the 140 character limit Twitter allows. :-) In fact, this will be a multi-part series.

Let's start by attempting to define Twitter.

Wikipedia Definition

First, the wikipedia definition: Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

OK, stop right there! What the heck is "micro-blogging?" While I don't know who cooked up the term, it's a suggestion that Twitter is a blogging tool, one limited to 140 characters. Hence, "micro" blogging.

Why 140 characters? Because the guys who dreamed up Twitter (Biz Stone and Evan Williams, the same guys who created Blogger) saw it as an SMS (text messaging) tool. In other words, it was first conceived as an application for mobile devices, but one with a web-based interface.

Even though it started that way, Twitter's user-base largely ignored the SMS side of things in favor of the web-based version. At one point, due to bandwidth and thru-put demands on Twitter's servers, SMS capabilities were actually shut off. Essentially, Twitter started out as one thing and became something else. (More on that in a moment.)

Better Definition

A better explanation was one given to me by a gentleman (whose name I don't recall) I met at a social media conference in Houston a few month back. He referred to Twitter as a "high latency instant messaging application."Huh?

Twitter is like Yahoo! Messenger or AIM or any number of instant messaging applications, only you aren't compelled to respond immediately, if at all. Hence the term, "high latency."

Best Definition

In my opinion, Twitter is best defined as a social instant messaging application. "Social" in that you friend others who then see your posts and follow them (the term in Twitterese is, in fact, "follow," though it means the same thing), and "instant messaging" in the sense that it has that feel to it.

What it really is is a conversation stream that you jump into at any given moment in time and start talking. Participation is the price of entry. (More on that in a later post.)

More from Wikipedia

"Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them," says wikipedia. "The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Twitterrific or Facebook."

Twitter's Evolution

As mentioned above, Twitter started out as a mobile application, but morphed to something that was largely web-based, thanks to its users. And, I mean, let's face it, if you're following a few hundred people, do you really want to get text messages from everyone of them? You can pick and choose who to receive such messages from of course, but even if you've limited it to a handful, if they're avid Twitter users, you're phone will still be dinging all the time. In my view, it's overkill. If you like the SMS component, that's fine, but I'd limit it to a select few.

Back to the evolution...

Speaking of the user-base, Twitter's founders have been fairly well-receptive to the way Twits (one term for Twitter users) are using the app. For example, at some point people started using the "@" symbol to address a single individual via their Twitter handle (e.g. @pchaney). It was a way to delineate that the message wasn't for everyone, but for that specific person.

It wasn't long until Twitter incorporated the activity as part of its functionality. Not only that, they added a direct messaging capability enabling users to send private messages to individual users.

That's enough for this post. I'll be back tomorrow soon with another talking about how to use Twitter, explaining proper "Twittiquette" and sharing the rules of the road.

In part 3 (yes, there will be a part 3 and a part 4; I told you it would take more than one post.) I plan to delve into some of the applications that have developed around Twitter thanks to its API (A geeky acronym which stands for Application Programming Interface. It's a way for one application to be used by or integrated into another.)

Part 4 is where the water really meets the road in terms of how to use Twitter for business. I'll provide some practical, real life examples, including some from fellow agents. Look for that early next week.

SEO - The Auto Body Specialties project

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:16:43 -0800

I have been experimenting with blogs and keywords for search engine results. I have two projects going right now. The Jon Guy, GuyCO project and now a new one. The Auto Body Specialties Project.

Auto Body Specialties has nothing directly to do with Real-Estate, but they do have a website that is almost invisible to all search engines. Body shops are not where you would expect to find lead thinkers on Internet technology. So to discover that the website for Auto Body Specialties was not optimized was no surprise.

What was surprising was that there is no text visible for the search engines to find. The very few pages on the site are all done as images. With no text to be found from the search engine point of view, this site doesn't matter. There is no content.

Here is a screen shot of the home page

The problem is that the text is overwritten on the image. There is no text on this page. By adding text to the page, keywords will be able to be found by the search engines.

How can this website be found?

The only way to improve the search ranking of this website is to scrap it and start over from scratch. This will happen eventually, but what I am going to do in the interim is to help them create a couple word press blogs. We will use these blogs to start building some key word optimization.

I will update you periodicly as to our progress.

The Jon Guy, GuyCo project Part II

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:32:35 -0800

Blogging Works

In an earlyer post, The Jon Guy Project, I outlined some ideas on helping Jon and his company GuyCo improve their online visibility.

When I first started speaking with Jon, the only way to find his website was to type GuyCo into the search box. Using Jon's name or any key words associated with his name, industry, or community came up with no results.

Activerain Matters

Here is a recent Google search result.

Wow

My two Activerain blog post came up higher on the search results than both Angies List and Jon's website. Activerain is a powerful tool to help you get found. Use it well.

Twitter - It really works

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:30:34 -0800

To tweet or not to tweet

I have been struggling with Twitter and the value it brings. The more I play with it, the more I find the value in it. My business partner, Jayson Manship has been more active with Twitter than I have and he predictably had better results. Jayson has used Twitter search to find people in the new home building industry and is now following quite a few. They in turn are following him. This resulted in a builder in Canada contacting us about our business. Jayson's Twitter activity also resulted in a mention in a Builder Online about new ways builders are using Twitter to connect to buyers.

Get Noticed

My success with Twitter has been through the Activerain feature for having my AR blog posts automatically posted on my Twitter page. This has resulted in several new followers. If you have not taken advantage of this feature yet you need to. Just click on your "my settings" button. You will find a place to type in your Twitter name and pass word. Once you have saved your settings, every time you add a post to your Activerain blog, an announcement will be added to your Twitter page. This has been an invaluable addition to my Activerain account.

If you want to learn more about Twitter or other social media visit the URBacs Blog

Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Aim

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:11:23 -0700

That's the punch line from an old hunting joke describing the guy who never hits what he is shooting at and can't understand why.

Are you guilty of doing the same thing with your marketing strategy?

If you are still shooting your marketing dollars in the same direction you did two years ago, you may get the same results as Mr. Fudd.

Change is a word we have heard a lot of lately. We don't need to wait for change to happen, it's happening all around us right this moment. For the housing market a change occurred in mid 2005. It looked light a slight down turn, but most of us were busy and didn't pay attention. Then we had a bigger shift downward in 2007 with all the foreclosures making the news. Then in early September the credit crunch turned into a crisis. Unfortunately for the new home building industry all of the recent change has been negative.

If you are in charge of marketing or sales and you work for a builder, you have seen your budgets slashed. Your personnel have been reduced. Yet some how, you are expected to maintain or increase sales.

In 2001 I was I had a marketing budget of close to $800,000.00. $160,000.00 was allocated to the local news paper for advertising in the Sunday Real-Estate section. 20% of my marketing budget was allocated to one resource for which I could not define my return on investment. But everyone told me I could not afford to not be in the paper.

Same with Billboards, magazines, and directional signs. Large chunks of money spent without the knowledge of what I was getting in return.

But sales were good, I had the money, so I spent it.

Today, new home builders who want to survive can't afford to shoot, shoot, shoot, aim and hope they hit interested home buyers with their marketing message.

Technology has changed.

The old way of invasive advertising is dying. People now are more in control of the messages they receive.

No call lists. User controlled media like TIVO and Ipods, IPhone and the Internet have taken away our ability to get our message in front of our target audience.

The old fashioned method of word of mouth now becomes back in play. Because there are now so many ways to screen information we need to turn to trusted sources to get our message in front of consumers. People talking to people about products they like and use.

The URBaCS Referral Builder is designed to help you make contact using trusted sources. You as the builder can give each of your homeowners their own personal website to post and share pictures of their home with friends and family. You customers now have a platform to tell more of their friends about their new home. Your message and branding is embedded throughout the site so your information is getting to your targeted audience. It is affordable and effective.

The Jon Guy - GuyCo project

Rob Wagoner (Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:53:28 -0700

I have an associate who I am attempting to help. His name is Jon Guy, President of GuyCo. GuyCo is a new home building and remodeling company based out of Avon Indiana. My goal is to improve Jon's organic search engine ranking.

My suggestions to him so far are as follows;

Create a simple blog. If nothing else post monthly news letter on it.

Create a LinkedIn account

Create a Facebook account

Create a Activerain account

Create a Twitter account

By simply creating and using these accounts a minimum number of times a month Jon should see an increase in his organic search rankings.

Outside of some obvious SEO fixes for his website. What other ideas have worked for you to improve your visibility on the organic search engines?