Rob's Blog

Good Evening

 

Blog Indiana 2008

 

I just returned from the Blog Indiana 2008 convention held at the IUPUI Campus Center. This was the first gathering of bloggers in Indiana. The conference had over 25 sessions and panels. Bloggers of every level from new to professional were on hand.

 

Just getting started

I type with one finger, two if I'm in "The Zone", and I have a difficult time sticking to a coherent thought when I write. I did not know what to expect at this convention. I was afraid I was going to be surrounded by a bunch of people who would be so far out of my league, that I may not even understand their language.  I did meet a few of those... but. Much to my surprise I found a number of people with even less experience than I had. I met a lady who had just made her fifth post. She found out about the convention and came, to learn what she could accomplish. I also met a librarian from Carmel. I heard her tell her story of how she was so shy it was hard for her to put her picture on her blog. I discovered that even though this was an event that technology was the centerpiece, the individual people were what made it all work. I found it all very fascinating.

 

Breaking myths

I am still sorting through all I learned this weekend, so it will probably be a couple of days before I work through all I learned. Tonight I am going to put into practice two lessons I learned this weekend.

1. Keep it short.

2. Use humor at your own risk.

In conclusion I just want to report that I spent the entire weekend in the company of bloggers. They were all pleasant, intelligent, helpful and fun. I learned a great deal and met some interesting people. I will be a better blogger for attending. AND in contrast to all the pre-conceived notions about bloggers... No one showed up wearing their robe, No one was walking around with a bag of Cheetos, and I didn't see any-ones Mom dropping them off at the door. (I hope I just didn't get myself baned from next years convention)

 

 

Stumblers

 

Stumblers blogs are interesting places themselves. Every time you "discover" a new site, comment on someones site, discovery, or write in your journal, you are creating your own stumble blog entry. Most of mine early on were random things I came across. My later stumble blog posts were directed to driving traffic to specific places. Many stumblers create fantastic visual blogs. There are channels on SU so you can stumble only pictures, video, music, or people. (stumblers) By stumbling only stumblers with similar interest you can find some great information about almost anything you want. Take the SU tutorial for a full discovery of the site.

 

Final Word

SU is entertaining, informative, addictive, and you can be either very productive or waste an incredible amount of time playing around. Learn to use it in a way that is most appropriate for your situation. Ask other stumblers for help or advise. There is even a guy on-line named Mr. Helpful. He is happy to give you advice on almost anything. Play around for a while and if you come up with more useful uses for SU let know.

 

Yesterday I wrote a little about stumbleupon.com. SU for short. For the first year I was "stumbling" all I did was use the stumble button and discover new websites. I gave thumbs up to the ones I liked, and thumbs down to the ones I didn't. The majority of sites I did neither, because I was afraid I would mess up the type of content I was receiving. Then I discovered that I had the ability to add and subtract my topics at will. Get a new interest, add a new topic, or in most cases, add a new topic, learn a new interest. In itself just using the stumble button is entertaining enough, but there is more.

Stumbleupon gives you a personal blog. You can use it like you would a traditional blog. Write down your thoughts and post them for others to read. You can use your blog to rate and comment on websites that you stumble upon, and the best part of all you can discover websites no one else has put on the system. When you discover a website you get to decide what topic it comes under, add tags, and be the first to review the site for content and usefulness. Once you have "discovered" a site it will  start showing up when other stumblers with similar interests hit their stumble button. The more people who give the site you discovered a thumbs up, the further and wider the site becomes distributed.  Nice to know but how can you use this information?

All of us here at ActiveRain have at a minimum a blog. Most will have a personal web site or page. Some will post information about homes they have listed on these and other web based media. Here is how SU can be useful. Any time you are viewing one of your pages that you would like other people to find, click on the thumbs up button and "discover" your page.  You can then pick a category (such as real-estate), place tags Such as your name, company, community, etc) and hit submit. Now when other people in the stumble community are stumbling, if they have an interest in real-estate, they may find your information. This is a great way to drive additional traffic to your message. If you want to see what I am talking about, here is a link to my blog on SU. I use this blog for some business and some fun.

 

SU can help you drive more traffic to your web-page or blog. It will be highly random and mostly uninterested, but it will be a lot and spread all over the world. Since this is a totally free way to get information about you out to a large number of people, it is not a bad option to help with your overall marketing plan. Just don't spend the entire day "stumbling" and hope the phone is going to ring!

There is much, much more on SU. Stop back, I'll tell you more tomorrow.

I belong to another social networking site called stumbleupon.com. You may find it to be a useful and entertaining tool.

SU as it is known by its members can be used in many different ways. SU relies on the community to provide feedback on websites on the Internet. When I started on SU, I only used it for research. When you start, you download the "Stumble Button", choose topics that you want to know more about, and start stumbling.

When you click on the stumble button you are taken to a randomly selected website base on your topics of interest. Once you have looked at the site, you can give it a thumbs up or down rating. If you give a thumbs up, SU will pick more sites similar to the one you liked. If you give it a thumbs down, SU will start to learn what you dislike and not bring you similar pages. The more you use the site, the more refined the content becomes to your interests. I found this to be a great research tool. The information available on the Internet is so vast I don't know what I don't know. Stumbleupon will help you discover things you did not know you wanted to learn about. I started with topics such as; business,real-estate, marketing, computing, Internet, and  finance.  This brought me lots of unique websites and gadgets I didn't know were out there.

SU has a lot more to offer, and I will go into to more in a later post. Should you have any questions about getting started on Stumbleupon feel free to send me an email.

Wow... when it rains here, it pours. Thank you to all of you who commented on my initial blog post. I have never joined a community with as many active, friendly, courteous, and professional members. Thank you for making me feel so welcome.

I am fairly new to blogging, so my posts will be very simple and straight forward. In a sense I write more of a journal than what would be considered a traditional blog. So if I break any blogging rules or guidelines, feel free to point it out to me. I appreciate the education.

 

I mentioned in my first post that I had created a web application for new home builders. That is somewhat of an exaggeration. The real brains behind the idea is my business partner Jayson Manship. Jayson just joined our community as well. Visit him on the link I just learned how to create. (Very Cool!!!) Jayson is the architect and backbone of our web application. Early on he designed the outline of the system for our programmers. After they created the core, Jayson took over and with our in house programming team has finished the application. We call it URBaCS.

 

Our goal was to create a simple, efficient, and low cost tool for builders to help them increase their marketing efforts and sales through a more effective system of word of mouth advertising. "Man. that last sentance makes me tired just writing it." The simple version is, it  spreads the word about the builder further, works good and is cheap! We choose photo sharing as the primary tool because of the recent explosion in the technology. It seems that everyone in the country has a phone that takes pictures. Most news story's on AOL are picture slide shows with text. According to com.score, Myspace uploads over 8,000,000 pictures a day. Facebook, YouTube, and communities like ActiveRain all have become very mainstream. Over 44% of American Internet users now post on blogs, discussion boards or participate in other social media outlets. We felt that if we could give the builders customer an easy outlet for their natural enthusiasm about their new home they would use it. We were right! 

Well my finger is getting tired now, so I am going to quit typing soon. In the last two years of getting this venture started, both Jayson and I have learned quite a bit about social bookmarking and marketing. I'll pass along some of what we have learned. You may find it useful for your business.

Stop back soon, and I will tell you some more about URBaCS. If you are interested, you can also learn more at the URBaCS Blog.

 

Thanks again for the warm reception.

 

 

 

Hello active rain members. My first blog entry is going to be a simple one. It is a brief introduction of myself. My name is Rob Wagoner and I am located in Noblesville, IN. I have been the new home industry since 1996. First as a sales person and then as a sales and marketing manager. As the housing market slowed, I was continually asked to get more sales using fewer resources in a shrinking market. It seemed like an impossible task. During a Builders Association of Greater Indianapolis (BAGI) golf outing, one of my sales people and I started talking about the changing market and technologies. We came up with an idea I was very excited about. Using new technology to spread one of the oldest methods of marketing (word of mouth) further than traditional marketing was able to do. We created a web application for builders called URBaCS. That all I have for now. Check back later and I will tell you more about URBaCS. Till then.... GOOD SELLING!!!