This weekend Calgarians came out for the Calgary Home and Garden Show. They wrote reviews to get their $7 discount to get into the show on their favourite Calgary home improvement companies. (and some wrote on their not so favourite ones).
We were there with our booth near this giant house which we hear got some media attenion in the old school media (although we didn’t hear about it through the blogs and twitter).
On the first day we set out our booth to get some reviews.
The weekend was extremely busy despite competition from the Olympics. While the Calgary companies were exhibiting Canada won golds in long track speed skating, curling, short track speedskating and more. Good thing that Avenue Magazine had their lounge with some good TVs and couches so that attendees could relax and watch some good sports on TV.
There were some good booths to check out including such exhibitors as The Granite Guys, the winners of our Best of 09 Awards in the Tile and Stone Contractors category.
We’ve posted a bunch of pictures of the event up on our Facebook page here. Check them out and become a fan, of course.
But on a bigger, more exiting note. We here that famous twitter personality @homeshowterry will be around the Calgary Home Show tomorrow. Keep and eye out for him/her. (ya we’re still not sure…)
Tuesday night on some Toronto news network, Paul Gardner, partner and portfolio manager, Avenue Investment Management was on answering a call-in question about the Yellow Pages. He’s not a big fan, but he is a fan of HomeStars. He talks about something we embrace at HomeStars: The Democracy of the Consumer. It’s not about how much you pay, but about how much your customers appreciate you.
Watch the whole clip on the channel here, and go to 4:27 in to the clip to see his full thoughts on Yellow Pages, among other things.
He talks about his thoughts on the old amber lady include their partnership with Google and acquisition of AutoTrader.
It’s been a good week for media mentions. Andy Barrie also talked about us on Monday on Metro Morning.
You’re a home improvement company. You’ve got great reviews on HomeStars. You want to show them off. You’ve got a website, which links to your HomeStars page. But you want MORE!
At HomeStars we want to give our users MORE, so we’ve added the HomeStars site widget. It’s a 300×300 box you can embed right on your own site!
What does it do? It shows your most recent and best reviews to your customers from your web page, all dynamically. No work, no messing around updating links!
How does is help?
Show off your latest and best reviews right on your website
Clicking on the links takes your readers right to the review
Clicking on the “Read More Reviews” button takes your customers to a page to read all the reviews on your company.
Clicking the “Write a Review” takes your customers to a page to write a review on your company.
Want one on your page? Call us at 416-488-0312, or email at sales@homestars.com
In June we offered a promotion to the folks at Habitat for Humanity Toronto to upgrade their Restore Listings to premium because of the great work they do. We’re also expanding in Vancouver and have a number of new customers there, so we thought we’d get ahead of the curve and offer the Vancouver Restores, of which there are two, one in Vancouver and one in Burnaby.
We’re excited about this partnership. Be sure to go to their listings and write them a review if you’ve been a restore customer and have good things to say about them.
Also look forward to more news about the upcoming Habitat for Humanity contractor event BBQ in Toronto! More news soon!
We know our users love their homes! They are fixing them up and making their own neighbourhoods nicer. And we see great reviews come in from all the great contractors and home improvement specialists on our site on what a good job they’ve done.
So if you have a favourite neighbourhood, and want to show it off, head over to ZooCasa and make a video to enter the contest!
You can win prizes from ITunes, and ZipCar – Don’t we all want that?
Recently HomeStars partnered with Habitat for Humanity’s Toronto chapter. If you don’t know who this organization is, you should. They build housing for low income families, recruiting volunteers to assist. They recently finished a project called WomenBuild where a crew of all women builders worked to build a number of new homes.
One of the other projects they run is the Habitat University Class. In exchange for volunteering at one of their sites they will give you a one day course which includes
- A high level overview of how to build a house
- Tool identification and use
- Familiarization with lumber, drywall and other basic building materials
- Safe tool operation
- Plenty of hands on experience using the various tools and equipment
Additionally they offer further advanced courses with more detailed specifics. That’s just great knowledge for any homeowner, let alone a Habitat for Humanity Volunteer!
So we thought it was a great fit for HomeStars.
Habitat Toronto is funded in large part by 3 Habitat for Humanity Restores: one in Etobicoke, one in the east end, and one in what I call reno-town on Caledonia Road. If you’re looking for unique used home renovation supplies they are really worth looking into. I’ve found some great doors and windows there, including beautiful antiques and they even have entire kitchen cabinet sets. The inventory is always changing, so stop by often and take a peek at what they have.
If you’re doing your own renovation and you have things that are ‘gently used’, rather than use one of our many disposal services you can take them to the Restore for a full tax receipt on their value.
We’ve enhanced their listings on the site to make them more visible, and encourage everyone who has been there to write a review on the service you received while you were there!
We’re excited to be working with them. Keep an eye out for more collaborations with the organization, both in Toronto as well as their other chapters. We’ve got plans and ideas we’re working on and will let you know as they develop.
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
Join us at the Sports Centre Cafe, 49 St Clair W., at 5:30pm June 11th.
Facebook? Twitter? YouTube? MySpace? You’ve heard about them – Are they important for marketing your business?
Join us as Mark Evans, one of Canada’s leading social media experts explains the basics of social media marketing.
Mark Evans is an entrepreneur, enthusiastic blogger and one of Canada’s leading social media experts.
He’s worked for three Internet start-ups – Blanketware (a natural language search service that he co-founded), b5media (one of the world’s largest blog networks) and, most recently, PlanetEye (online travel planning).
At PlanetEye, he was director of community where I created and managed the company’s media relations, public relations and social media strategies.
Mark spent more than 10 years as a technology journalist for the National Post, Bloomberg News and the Globe & Mail. He writes several blogs, including Mark Evans Tech, Twitterrati and All About Nortel.
Last but not least, he’s one of the organizers of Canada’s leading Web conference, mesh.
In June we offered a promotion
Our friends down the street at 
It’s time to get together again and share a pint.
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