HomeStars – News and Updates
If you’ve recently done a large project on your home, one of HomeStars team would like to interview you about your experience.
Your story could be funny, heartbreaking or fabulous.
With your permission we’ll take some photos if you’re in a city close to us (or you can email some snaps) and we’ll write up your learning. Things like what you love best about the new features added to your home or what you wish you had known before you started.
Reno Road Story
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. [Confucius]
We are hoping your wisdom will make it easier for fellow homeowners.
Please send me a message here today.
Thanks! Nancy
Oh - PS we have a nice gift for you to thank you for your time…
Thank you Gift
Posted by NancyP
View Comments | Permanent Link
Hello to the Homestars .com community! I’ve been a part of the Homestars team since January of this year and it’s high time I finally introduce myself as the Content Manager here at Homestars. Content Manager? What the heck does that mean? Well please allow me to explain.
As the Content Manager I am responsible for a lot of things, from blog and forum posts to twitter and facebook activity. I also write newsletters! But most importantly of all I read ALL of the reviews. I work very hard to ensure that the information on our site is useful for homeowners and that reviews are from authentic customers of the company for which they are written. This process is not always 100% but I do have a few tricks up my sleeve for validating reviews.
In a recent planning session here at homestars, we identified trust as one of the key factors that will impact the success of our website. We are now developing new features for the site that will allow for more transparency around the review process and investigations we do on a daily basis. We are committed to making this site a trusted source for homeowners and home contractors. If you ever have any questions regarding any of the things I have mentioned here, please email me at colleen@homestars.com. (or here @colleenhomestar)
In other news: FUN FACTS: Did you know that the saying ‘in a heartbeat’ has been used in over eighty-five reviews on Homestars .com? I did. The word ‘disaster’ also appears in over 220 reviews, while the phrase “would hire them again” shows up in over 350 reviews. I’ve got a million of them!
I will be blogging here more frequently from now on so check back to see what’s up. If you have anything you would like to see more of or any feedback for me please comment here or send me an email to address above.
Thanks homestars see you soon.
Posted by Colleen
View Comments | Permanent Link
Cathy Rust, who wrote for HomeStars for a number of years and penned some articles that are still popular today, now has her own blog – A Mom’s Guide to Green Building Materials. Cathy has stepped out on her own and focussed her attention on environmentally friendly building with her own company called Butterfly Effect Consulting. A three time mom, she’s both an experienced builder and renovator, as well as an environmentalist and to top it all off, a Certified LEEDS Professional. (and if you don’t know about LEEDS, you should)
She’s decided to take a different and unique approach to blogging and dealing with green building by looking at it from a Mom’s perspective. As a mom, you can’t spend all your time seeking out the best environmentally friendly products, because you have kids running around constantly, so you’re looking for the quick and best solution.
She’s got some great early posts in the blog including a post about Snob, a store at Carlaw and Dundas in Toronto which focussed on quality African made products, and a look at the micro solar energy business.
If you care about building using good, environmentally friendly products, add her to your reading list. This applies to companies too. If you can show your clients you know how to preserve the environment, while building a great house, it may be the factor that turns that renovation lead and proposal into the sale. And you can follow her on Twitter here.
Posted by BrianS
View Comments | Permanent Link
Check out the latest monthly podcasts from FOCALPOINT e-NEWS! for February. As discussed in our January post, FOCALPOINT is an online lifestyle magazine and web site created by Jeffrey Stolberg with a line up of monthly podcasts from 10 of Canada’s top show hosts, authors and lifestyle experts. Have a listen to Debbie Travis, Sharon Grech, Bryan Baeumler and more….
Posted by NancyP
View Comments | Permanent Link
I’m really late on this post. There were the holidays and I was away taking a little time off. But as I left for down south there was a great article about us from Ellen Roseman, a great consumer/money columnist for the Toronto Star and YourHome.ca.
As a consumer columnist Ellen gets a lot of calls about all sorts of issues, including a lot in the Home Improvement industry. There’s a wide range of complaints, some about products such as roofing materials and consumer goods, but many are about both big and small companies in the home improvement industry. She can’t tackle them all, and in this era, why should she? Consumer can just go on and write themselves on the companies in question? Tell their stories about their experience.
As readers know, HomeStars will publish your review if there’s a transaction, and if not, there’s always our forum to discuss other issues with companies.
Always nice to get good press from a prestigious publication like the Toronto Star! Thanks!
Posted by BrianS
View Comments | Permanent Link
Ms. Overly Caffinated - aka Shannon
Over the holidays a moving company in Vancouver wrote in their blog about the Death of the Testimonial. While Google would take exception to that, having, allegedly, put in an offer for Yelp for $500M, the point that the moving company seems to have issue with is that, encouraged by our ‘overcaffinated sales rep’, old testimonials were appearing on his competitors pages.
But what’s wrong with an old testimonial? We’ve discussed in this blog about how when a testimonial is 10-15 years old, it not much use to a consumer, but the ones he’s referring to are maybe months old. As a user and reader, I do care how a company has done a few months ago. Even up to a year ago, especially if it’s with the same company management.
As users of HomeStars know, we are adamant about making sure the reviews are real reflections of homeowners experiences. If a company can find an old testimonial (but not too old) they can ask the person who wrote the testimonial to put it up on HomeStars. It does reflect the work of the company, and it’s important to a homeowner to know about the experience.
Perhaps the point he’s making is questioning whether it’s okay to ask a customer for a testimonial. We think it is. There’s no shame in asking for a referral or a testimonial. In the world of social media, I’ll judge people on their interactions with other people, and if companies interact well with their consumers, (and also respond to their reviews) those are the companies I want to do business with.
On the point of transparency, we try and be as transparent as we can be at HomeStars. Reviewers mostly opt to be anonymous, which we allow them to do, but many of them give their full names and addresses. We do our best to make sure that the reviews are real on our end. In our upcoming releases we’ll be allowing communication between homeowners through the site. So if you want to ask further details about a job or reviewer, that option will be available. It’s all part of opening up transparency, one of our mandates.
He’s right by saying readers should be skeptical of reviews. Of course they should. But volume counts. A company like Emerald Moving in Toronto now has over 90 reviews, and in his market, Vancouver, Rain City Moving has over 18. That’s some amount of testimonials, and likely to be real, or real enough for users.
So go ahead. Find some customers from last year. Ask them to write a testimonial for your company? You can even ask them to be transparent about the date of the job. It all helps other homeowners find the best companies to hire for their next move or home renovation.
Feel free to comment your thoughts. (City Move Blog doesn’t allow comments.., alas)
Posted by BrianS
View Comments | Permanent Link
The blogosphere is full of lots of great blogs on every conceiveable subject regarding your home, whether is DIY projects, modern design, home improvement, green home, energy efficiency….Here is a list of five blogs dedicated to decorating, design and architecture that are worth a look if you’re thinking of redecorating or even for the entertainment factor.
inhabitat is “devoted to the future of design, tracking the innovations in technology, practices and materials that are pushing architecture and home design towards a smarter and more sustainable future.”
Dwell: From the publishers of the popular magazine dedicated to affordable modern design is a website dedicated to providing resources and a further look into some of the magazine’s articles. “At Dwell, we’re staging a minor revolution. We think that it’s possible to live in a house or apartment by a bold modern architect, to own furniture and products that are exceptionally well designed, and still be a regular human being.”
Fresh Home: A blog dedicated to design and architecture, it presents you with the latest news in architecture and design, furniture and news from the design world.
The Mogg Blog: The Mogg Blog is to the interior design world what The Daily Show is to real news; a tonic to all the serious design stuff out there. These girls know how to poke fun at “art.” My personal favouite!
Posted by CathyR
View Comments | Permanent Link
The Business and Construction Times (www.bigbpublishing.com) inform us they growing. They seeking correspondents in these areas to contribute articles as assigned by the editor. They have issues in Hamilton, Halton, Peel, Grand Valley, London and Guelph and are accepting submissions/pictures on construction related topics.
They require a level of technical expertise, researching skills and a background in construction. You’re main responsibilities are writing project reports in your area. Send them a PDF resume, and a link to some writing samples. It’s is an unpaid position but is ideal for recent journalism grads who want some experience writing. Send something to the editor at: editor.bct@gmail.com
Posted by BrianS
View Comments | Permanent Link
Last week I posted an article about how to build your “Whuffie” - that is, your social capital among your customers and peers. It involves turning the bullhorn around and listening to your customers.
In this new paradigm, your customers now have a voice. They can talk about you, your services, and add to your reputation or bring it down. Your customers can now voice their criticisms and praise online, not just with HomeStars, but also on plenty of other sites on the net, such as Red Flag Deals, Smart Canucks, and other forums.
So what do you do when you get a customer criticizes you? The wrong answer is to threaten to sue them.
This morning we got word from one of our reviewers that one of our companies was threatening to sue her for a critical review. From what we can tell it seems like a valid review – a job was performed and money changed hands.
The company’s response, as has been their response in the past, is to repeatedly call the customer and threaten legal action. Does this build the company’s reputation? Would she go and tell her friends offline to use the company? I suspect not! The difference is that now the customer has social media tools, such as HomeStars, and other sites to voice her opinion. The customer could similarly post comments about the company on her personal Facebook page, or on Twitter. She could mention that the company was going to sue her.
What’s the answer? Listen, respond and engage. Make things right. Leave the customer with a good experience. Be honest and open. Explain the situation. Otherwise your actions will catch up with you.
Remember, it didn’t work in the music business, and it won’t work in home improvement.
Posted by BrianS
View Comments | Permanent Link
We just hosted an event Thursday June 11, with a presentation by Mark Evans on social media. Mark is an experienced consultant in his field.
Here’s a brief summary of his talk.
What is social media? It is a form of marketing where you have a 2 way conversation with your customers online, such as sharing content, posting events, and building a like minded community. There are hundreds of free sites to available to use, and the challenge is finding which to use. The good news is that there only a handful of good ones: youtube, linkedin, flickr, facebook, my space, twitter, word press, blogger,
delicious and digg are way up there in capabilities and widespread adoption.
Benefits of social media are high according to an e-marketer study – but the main benefit for businesses is the ability to engage with your existing customers in a meaningful, and relevant way. Top tools Mark discussed are;
1. Blogs: Are still the strongest and most effective way to communicate to your customers on a daily basis and share your knowledge. The dowsside is that they do take time and commitment to maintain. You should be posting a good quality article at least once a week, and if you can’t write, you should find someone that does in your company. There are lots of good / free blogging platforms available, and the most common are wordpress.com and blogger.com
2. Twitter: is a micro blog, where you can add posts or tweets that are up to 140 characters. So in basically about 10 words, you can share ideas, new products, events, sales daily. Dell has 80 twitter accounts and is using twitter daily to keep sales and offers top of mind. There are 30 million people using twitter right now and it’s easy to use. You can also monitor conversations in your industry by using a search tool about specific keywords. It’s a great way to provide additional customer service, answering questions and staying engaged in conversations specific to your business.
3. Facebook: The fastest growing demographic registering on facebook is 35 – 49 years old. There are 250 million people on facebook and it’s another way to engage in people (especially locally) that are interested in renovations on their home. They also have a ‘company’ page you can create – versus a personal profile page. See Starbuck’s page, or HomeStars for examples. On a company page you can provide news, new product announcements, add photos, video and allow people to become ‘fans’. Now they have facebook connect which will allow people to sign up to your own newsletter using their facebook password. So first step, sign up and get a company facebook page, and next step look at whether facebook connect can be used for people registering to your site.
Case Study: Argentinian wine called Fuzion, sells for $7.49 at the LCBO and has now sold more than >100k cases here already. They did no advertising or sampling but built online buzz and awareness on social media sites. Fuzion drove their message of a great tasting, great value wine through their fans on facebook and twitter.
Harnessing word of mouth recommendations is the most powerful tool you can have to get people talking about your product and service. More than 60% of people are influenced in their decisions by other people’s opinions. So sites that allow your customer to write about your company are your best way of staying top of mind and relevant to your audience.
Mark Evan’s last message – There’s no downside to trying some of these social media tools. There’s no cost to you. The downside of NOT doing it could be greater – as your competitors get on board.
Mark Evans can be reached at
ME Consulting, Digital marketing, Communications and Social media
markevans.ca
email: mark@markevans.ca
phone: 416-669-7028
twitter: @markevans
Posted by NancyP
View Comments | Permanent Link
About HomeStars