With the support and encouragement of Lauri Walker from CCSE, we put together this brief interview discussing the benefits of green building and remodeling.

Case Study – Marrokal Design & Remodeling

Prior to the event, I had pitched the idea for using online video promotion as an added benefit for event sponsors. The video was shot with a Flip Mino HD Camcorder (sorry for the plug, but it really is a nifty little camera) and edited with Windows Movie Maker. Following is a log tracking Marrokal’s search ranking in select keyword niches over time:

Friday, April 25 – Keyword research conducted using SpyFu and the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.  Based on this research, we decided to focus on the following keyword terms: “Green Building Remodeling San Diego,” “Green Building Design San Diego,” and “Green Building Construction San Diego.”  As a baseline measurement, Google searches were conducted with the target keywords prior to distributing video.

Green Building Remodeling San Diego:

Top Ten Results in order:

1. Local Business Results by Google
2. www.egreentopia.com
3. www.jacksondesignandremodeling.com
4. www.berkhome.com
5. www.sdcounty.ca.gov
6. www.remcondesignbuild.com
7. ecolifeconsulting.com
8. energycenter.org
9. www.marrokal.com
10. www.nahb.com

Green Building Design San Diego:

Top Ten Results in order:

1. www.usgbc-sd.org
2. www.co.san-diego.ca.us
3. www.greenprogress.com
4. www.ciwmb.ca.gov
5. www.sandiegogreen.com
6. www.signonsandiego.com
7. docs.sandiego.gov
8. www.goodcleantech.com
9. www.meponline.com
10. www.greenerdesign.com

(Marrokal shows up on page 5, in the 47th position overall)

Green Building Construction San Diego:

Top Ten Results in order:

1. www.co-san-diego.ca.us
2. www.usgbc-sd.org
3. advancement.sdsu.edu
4. www.berkhome.com
5. www.dprinc.com
6. www.signonsandiego
7. www.buildcwc.com
8. www.sddt.com
9. www.ecovian.com
10. www.k2contracting.com

(Marrokal shows up on page 3, in the 28th position overall)

Footage was distributed across the Internet on Friday, April 25 with the following attributes:

Title: 

San Diego Remodeling and Green Building Design w/Marrokal

Description: 

http://www.marrokal.com

Marrokal Design & Remodeling is dedicated to providing the utmost in quality, service and integrity in full-service home remodeling in the San Diego area.

Conventional building construction needlessly consumes large quantities of wood, water, fuel and other materials. A green built home conserves these natural resources. If you are looking for a one-stop, green remodeling design and construction solution, contact Marrokal Design & Remodeling.

Keyword Tags:

San Diego, Remodeling Contractors, Green Building Design, Green Building Construction

Saturday, April 26 - Literally overnight Google search rankings were updated to show the YouTube video posting and others.  Over the course of the day other sources began to show up on first and second page rankings of Google searches.  During this period, additional footage and links to YouTube video were distributed to Blog.com and Technorati.com, as well as various podcast distribution sites and social bookmarking sites (Digg.com, delicious.com, etc.)

Sunday, April 27 - The following updated search rankings are provided as of Sunday evening:

Green Building Remodeling San Diego:

Top Ten Results in order:

1. Local Business Results by Google
2. www.egreentopia.com
3. www.kewego.com – Marrokal video
4. www.viddler.com – Marrokal video
5. Video results for Green Building Remodeling San Diego:
   www.empivot.com - Marrokal video
   www.youtube.com - Marrokal video 
6. www.berkhome.com
7. successwithstrategy.blog.com - Marrokal video
8. www.jacksondesignsandremodeling.com
9. www.remcondesignbuild.com
10. ecolifeconsulting.com

Green Building Design San Diego:

Top Ten Results in order:

1. www.kewego.com - Marrokal video 
2. usgbc-sd.org
3. www.greenprogress.com 
4. www.co.san-diego.ca.us
5. successwithstrategy.blog.com - Marrokal video 
6. www.signonsandiego.com
7. www.sandiegogreen.com
8. www.ciwmb.ca.gov
9. www.viddler.com - Marrokal video
10. Video results for Green Building Remodeling San Diego:
    www.empivot.com - Marrokal video
    www.youtube.com - Marrokal video
11. www.greenerdesign.com

(Marrokal.com shows up on page 6, in the 58th position overall, additional video links to MySpace Video and DoGooderTV show up on pages 4 and 5)

Green Building Construction San Diego:

Top Ten Results in order:

1. www.usgbc-sd.org
2. www.co-san-diego.ca.us
3. www.berkhome.com
4. successwithstrategy.blog.com - Marrokal video 
5. advancement.sdsu.edu
6. www.dprinc.com
7. www.kewego.com - Marrokal video 
8. www.mccarthy.com
9. www.bdcnetwork.com
10. www.sddt.com

(Marrokal.com shows up on page 4, in the 31st position overall, an additional video link to emPivot shows up on page 2.)

Over the next week or two, I will continue to monitor Marrokal’s search rankings in these categories – we are still waiting for Google to index the podcast distribution channels, as well as some niche blog sites, so it is possible that rankings will improve in the next few days.

Stay tuned.

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• SEO for Business Strategy – Overview (2)

My brother-in-law Jeff owns a custom garage door installation company in Asheville, N.C.  Hamilton Door Company was named after his hometown of Hamilton, Ohio, where his family originally immigrated in the 19th century and began a tradition of high-end manufacturing, producing some of the finest products in their field.  For the last two years, Jeff has worked hard to build a company from scratch that has grown to become the number one dealer of Carriage House Door Company products in Western North Carolina.  A born salesman, Jeff’s hard work and dedication has brought him a great deal of success in this field, but when it comes to his online presence, he lags far behind his competitors.

Jeff Benninghofen of Hamilton Door Company

Like many small business owners, Jeff knew that he needed a web site but he knew nothing of HTML, PHP, CSS, or any of the other tools necessary to build a decent custom site.  Instead, he signed up with his web hosting company and used their templates, along with some pictures of his family and his product to put up a website quickly and easily.  Jeff was even savvy enough to contact customer support and get a quick lesson on keywords and META tags.

In spite of clever local radio ads, networking with builders and business groups, and forming tight relationships with purchasing decision-makers, every time a potential customer searches Google for “Asheville Garage Door,” they are presented with obvious results (Asheville Garage Door Services) – and Hamilton Door Company is nowhere to be seen.  In fact, even if someone thinks they know the name of Jeff’s company and they do a search on “Hamilton Garage Door,” Jeff remains invisible.

I thought I had solved my invisibility issue, but alas, I am only promoting David Hall at Asheville Garage Door everytime someone searches locally. THAT P!$$ES ME OFF.

 
Now I’ve never been a fan of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – the practice of desiging web sites to maximize page ranking in search engine (Google, Yahoo, etc,) results.  SEO always seemed to be full of voodoo and wierd practices to me – coming from the old-school online world, I still believed that “if you build it, they will come.”  But the more I thought about Jeff’s situation – here was a guy who was doing everything right to create a business, working hard to build and manage customer relationships, giving back to the community he loves, and yet in spite of his best efforts, his online presence is virtually non-existent – I realized that search engine results pages (SERPS) are perhaps one of the last examples of pure competition in the business world.

Even when you include all of the sponsored links and AdWords ads (items which most people have learned to ignore anyway), Google still does a really good job of delivering relevant content to users who are searching for specific things.  If a potential customer is searching for your products or services, they will be presented with thousands of choices grouped ten per page.  Google has a complex and ever-changing algorithm they use to filter search results in such a way that the most relevant will rise to the top.   If a user does a specific search for your goods and services and your business is not represented in the first or second page of Google results (and I’m being generous here by including the second page), then it may as well not exist. You have lost a potential sale and your competitors are waiting right there to take it from you.

No one knows exactly how the Google algorithm works, but you can read a brief description of the concept here.  In spite of the fact that Google changes the algorithm whenever they see fit (always in an effort to present relevant content to their users), SEO experts strive to work the system in order to achieve the highest page rank possible.

Over the next couple weeks we will follow Jeff’s efforts as he strives to improve his page rank and ensure that his web site is working as hard as he is.  Future topics will include Identifying Your Market, Evaluating Your Competition, Choosing Keywords, Creating Content, Building Links, and Promoting Your Business.

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• Using Online Video to Promote Search Engine Results (0)

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’ve at least heard of Twitter. You might be an active Twitter user (sometimes referred to as Tweeple), you might have a Twitter account that you never use, or you might have been able to avoid the whole phenomenon (so far) – but chances are good you have heard of Twitter and you probably know a few Tweeple yourself.

I’ve always been turned off by the cutesiness of Twitter – it’s ‘Tweeple’ are known to send ‘Tweets’ at regular intervals in which they inform their online network of such fascinating activities as breakfast time, nap time, and a gaggle of other mundane tasks.  These Tweets are short (up to 140 character) text messages that are primarily meant to be sent and received via mobile phone.

There are several web-based tools that make make it easy to use Twitter to update all of your social media accounts (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) – thereby making Twitter a good hub for those people who want to simplify the task of updating their MySpace profile, their Facebook status, their Yahoo profile, their Yammer account, their Flickr log, and on and on.  At first glance, Twitter seems like a perfect tool for those who think they are more important than they really are.  Who cares when you get your haircut or what your teeth brushing habits are?  But enough people are fascinated by this capability – I suspect more fascinated by the potential than by the actual content – that Twitter users have grown at approximately 10% per month for the last two years.  Current estimates place unique Twitter users at about 3.4 million. This growing user base, combined with a few high-profile examples of Twitter’s power as a less mundane broadcast tool have many people (and investors) re-examining the usefulness of such a service:

• In 2007, Twitter users helped to provide updated information regarding the San Diego wildfires.
• In 2008, the Mumbai terror attacks were closely followed by Twitter users around the world.
• In 2009, a Twitter user posted what is recognized as one of the first photos of the US Airways crash in the Hudson River.

As TechCrunch and Slate Magazine have pointed out, one of Twitter’s new great values is as a search engine:

By collecting millions of people’s immediate thoughts, Twitter is building the Web’s best database of “real time” information, these people argue. And that collection might be very valuable—when people want to know what’s going on in the world right now, they’ll increasingly check Twitter, not Google.

For business intelligence, this means that millions of people can potentially talk about YOU – your products, your services, your brand name, your company.  They can also talk about your competitors – and they can talk about those trends that might affect your future business environment.  Want to know what people are thinking about gas prices? Check Twitter.  What about people’s feelings about the Housing Bailout? Even more powerful, is Twitter’s ability to narrow a search by location – are people in San Diego talking about home foreclosures differently than people in Cincinnati?  You bet they are, although with this example you might need to do a little digging to spot the differences. 

A good forecaster should be able to identify these key issues before they become strong signals, and therefore have a better sense of upcoming trends – rather than feeling the need to react to the wave after it has already arrived.  That’s the power of a good weak signal detector – by processing these signals early on, your organization will be able to react in a powerful and effective way, rather than having to spend excess resources on a crash response program.

Check out the Twitter chatter on these local San Diego companies:

• WebSense – a leading web security/filtering firm also specializing in e-mail security and data-loss prevention.
• Avaak – a new company developing personal wireless video networks for fun and security.
• SAIC - a leading defense contractor and engineering firm with strong ties to the San Diego community.
• WD-40 – the ubiquitous cleaner and lubricant is also the parent company for several household brands.
• Sempra Energy – the parent company for San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas.
• Aptera Motors - a Carlsbad company developing a plug-in hybrid automobile promising 100 mpg.

Each of these companies could benefit by monitoring Twitter (as well as other sources) for those signals that could potentially affect their business – whether it’s gauging customer loyalty, discovering product evangelists, measuring public opinion, predicting upcoming trends, or keeping track of the competition.

Try a Twitter search of your own and see what you can find (don’t forget to try the Advanced Search option.)  Chances are, if you’re interested in it, then someone is talking about it – and if they’re not now, they will be soon!

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• Strategic Management for Project Professionals (0)

Last year, The Economist began a series of profiles on “the world’s most influential management thinkers, past and present.” The first to be profiled was H. Igor Ansoff – considered to be the Father of Strategic Management.

(Link: Management guru: Igor Ansoff | The Economist.)

The Economist’s profile of Ansoff is a nice overview of who Ansoff was and how he fits in history, but a couple additional points are worth making here:

Ansoff has strong local ties to the San Diego area: he was a distinguished professor at USIU (now Alliant University – located off Miramar Road) for 17 years, where he honed his theories, published books, and mentored future strategic thinkers – his son is currently a professor at Alliant and at least one of Ansoff’s students carries on his mantle by teaching Ansoffian strategic management at the University.

Ansoff was one of the first people to identify and define environmental turbulence and how it effects business decisions.

Following up on the idea of environmental turbulence, Ansoff introduced his Strategic Success Hypothesis, which states:

A firm’s potential is optimum when the following three conditions are met:

• Aggressiveness of the firm’s behavior matches the turbulence of its environment.
• Responsiveness of the firm’s capability matches the aggressiveness of its strategy.
• The components of the firm’s capability must be supportive of one another.

Ansoff was an engineer, and Russian-born at that, so his language is not always the easiest to understand, but the general idea here is that any business must evaluate the turbulence of the environment in which they operate (Ansoff provides a 5-level scale ranging from Repetitive to Unpredictable) and match their strategic aggressiveness, capabilities, and responsiveness as required. Otherwise, resources will be wasted and opportunities will be missed. It is important to note that overly aggressive strategy in a low-turbulence environment is just as wasteful as slow responsiveness in a fast-paced environment.

In my opinion, the Strategic Success Hypothesis is one of the most under-valued tools of business management today. By understanding the importance of aligning the ‘triplets’ of Ansoff’s equation (turbulence, aggressiveness, and responsiveness), any organization can quickly and easily evaluate where they are, where they are going, and what they need to do to get there.

I will discuss the Strategic Success Hypothesis in more detail later. In the mean time, here is a list of some of Ansoff’s books and writings:

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

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• Strategic Management for Project Professionals (0)

Click here for more information.

Here is the course description:
 

Overview

Over the past twenty years, project management has matured dramatically. At the outset, it was primarily concerned with getting a job done under cost and schedule constraints. Today, it is a key component of the business strategies of enterprises, since in today’s project-based enterprises, strategic goals are achieved through the execution of projects. Consequently, project professionals need to get up to speed on strategic management principles and practices. They need to understand how to define objectives and goals that dovetail with the enterprise’s strategic direction. They need to be familiar with major strategic planning concepts, including gap analysis, core competency, balanced scorecard, and value chain. With insights into the strategic management process, they will be able to select and plan projects so that they dovetail with their enterprise’s overall strategies.

Instruction

• Course modules containing cutting-edge knowledge developed by renowned experts in project management
• Course Textbook: Strategic Thinking: A Four Piece Puzzle, by Bill Birnbaum
• “Think and Review” section that helps you review key points of the modules
• Answers to the “Think and Review” section
• A final exam which contains multiple choice and true/false questions
• Certificate of Completion, which makes students eligible for 15 PDU credits (given upon exam completion).

What You Will Learn

• How to articulate vision and mission statements
• How to derive strategic goals from vision and mission statements
• How to develop objectives and strategies to achieve strategic goals
• How to link an enterprise’s internal practices with its external environment
• Using gap analysis to determine what efforts need to be carried out
• How to achieve focus in strategic planning by identifying the enterprise’s core competencies
• Using a balanced score card to develop a big picture vision of whether you are touching all your key strategic bases
• How value chain analysis can help enterprises achieve competitive advantage

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• Balanced Scorecard Overview (Part 1) (0)

“When I look around the NFL, I’m amazed by how many people have a dream and how few have a vision,” he said. The difference, he said, is that a dream ends up being passive, accommodating disappointment. A vision, he said, “captures the imagination. A vision is something that consumes you like a fire, won’t let you eat, won’t let you sleep until that vision comes to pass.”

Gwenn Knapp, S.F. Chronicle

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Here are the descriptions of the two Balanced Scorecard breakout sessions:

1) Effective Strategy Formulation, Planning and Management Using the Balanced Scorecard
Howard Rohm, President & CEO, Balanced Scorecard Institute

Successful scorecard systems are built, implemented, and sustained by paying attention to five guiding principles. First, organize the scorecard effort like it’s a marathon race, making sure the system fits the culture of the organization; second, build down from a shared vision of the future; third, craft the strategic story on how the organization creates value for customers and stakeholders and develop a strategy map; fourth, measure what matters strategically, and fifth, make strategy actionable for everyone in the organization. Presentation take-aways from this session include:

•    Understand how you can apply best practices to your scorecard initiative
•    Learn how to build employee buy-in to the new system
•    Learn how to incorporate customer and stakeholder needs in strategy and system development
•    Learn how to use a disciplined framework, customized for your organization, to build your scorecard
•    Learn how to overcome challenges and sustain your scorecard system for the long-term

2) The Balanced Scorecard
Gerald Taylor, President & Managing Consultant, The Performance Management Group LLC

The Balanced Scorecard presentation is an overview designed for those who wish to understand the basic principles and applications of the balanced scorecard as a tool in a company’s strategic management system.

As a result of the overview, each audience member will be able to answer the following questions:

1.    What is the Balanced Scorecard?
2.    What is the value of implementing the Balanced Scorecard?
3.    What is the most feasible approach to implementing the Balanced Scorecard?
4.    How would a company go about implementing a Balanced Scorecard?

Moreover, the audience will learn the elements of how to create an overall company vision that is tangible and fits with the prevailing company strategy.  The audience will also learn how to define specific and distinct departmental mission statements that articulate directly into the overall company vision.  

Part of the presentation will consist of an overview of strategy mapping.  It will focus on:

1.       Establishing company critical success factors.
2.       Defining executive level scorecards and related strategic objectives.
3.       Translating strategic objectives into mid and manager level scorecards.
4.       Articulating scorecards into operational goals and objectives.
5.       Tie and link operational goals with each employee function.

In the next couple days I will try to address Mr. Taylor’s first four questions above and I may dive into Strategy Maps and other topics at a later date. In the mean time, here are some links and resources for your own exploration:

Links: Balanced Scorecard Institute, Articles and Whitepapers, Balanced Scorecard on Wikipedia

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