Eastbrook 2009 Summer Picnic

All seemed to have a great time at the somewhat impromptu Eastbrook Summer Picnic at the Grand Rapids Township park. I know that there are many that I missed with my camera. Please send me any pics you may have taken and I will add them to the folder. Thanks to everyone who worked hard to make this a fun and successful event.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

This week's updates to eastbrookhomes.com

There have been many updates to the website over the last couple of weeks in addition to the normal. Here is a quick snapshot of some of those changes:

• Wooded Valley has been added to our Lansing communities (the area map will be updated next week)
• The homeplans page now includes two new cottage plans (1449 - Primrose and 1657 - Alcott) in their own section
• Cottage features sheet has been created and added.
  
• The 1558 - Auburn has been added to the hometown collection.
• The Hearthside has been updated to reflect it's upgrade from 2150 to 2200 square feet.
• Many changes in the the existing floorplans and elevations are to numerous to itemize (Jim and Jeff V. have been very busy)
• Current advertising efforts are works in progress on the web (now playing: Name the Couple, and Pottery Barn gift card promotions)

Please take a look at what we have on our website. Let me know if you find anything that needs to be changed. We try to review all of the pages and content but it is easy to miss details when you have looked at the same page 50 times. Your fresh set of eyes will keep our site "typo-free".

Have a fantastic weekend!

Recent SPAM

I wanted to share with you some information sent to me from our e-mail filtering service. Please take a minute to read:

We'd like to provide you with an update on recent the spam attacks which are occurring in our environment.

Our message security vendor has advised us on high volumes of bogus Microsoft downloader and other messages that contain links to download malware. Spammers have created false Microsoft Outlook notifications and Amazon/World Pay confirmations, and added links that prompt users to download a fake update or invoice.

The security service has detected and blocked the vast majority of these attacks, and continues to release protections to stop the new mutations. Their capture rate is over 99%; however, the attack volumes are so large (in the hundreds of millions of messages) that a 1% passthrough rate means that a few messages may end up in your inbox.

For best security practices, if you see any suspect security notifications or messages:

* Do not deliver these messages from your Message Center or Quarantine Summary.
* Delete these messages from your inbox.
* Do not click on any links in the messages.
* If you need to access any of the services listed in the email, visit the website directly.

Please be assured that our security service considers virus and spam protection as their highest priority, and continues to be on the cutting edge against new spam attacks and tactics.

Know that we are doing everything we can to make using the systems at Eastbrook safe and efficient but that it is a continuous battle to do so.

Thanks and have a great week!

Time to Get Social

Social networking is a relatively new phenomenon that we would be remiss to overlook. Please read on to see how you can help our marketing efforts in very simple ways.

According to Wikipedia,

a social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.

As for Eastbrook's role in this new frontier, we have focused on the the most well-known and, consequently, most used services: Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogger and Twitter. We have also started to dabble with Picasa and YouTube. I am continually evaluating our presence on these networks and looking for others that maybe a good fit.

Why bother? Consider this:

• Upwards of 80% of home buyers are researching their builders on the web, most of these before they ever walk in the door of a model.
• More and more we are hearing from customers who found us first on the web.
• We can quantifiably identify traffic to our website as a direct result of our social network marketing efforts. Most notable is Facebook which generated over 800 links to our site in the last 30 days.
• Each time a link to a page on the Eastbrook Homes website appears our visabilty and "page rank" are increased. This improves where we appear in "organic" searches (the primary, non-paid results from a search engine search).
• These networks provide yet another outlet to get our message out to, not only the public, but to various media outlets who may be inclined to interview and pursue articles.
• Social networking is even playing a major role in politics because of it's prevalence check out this article regarding Iran.
  

Here are some ways you can help:

1. Link to us - make sure you are linking to our website in your profiles on the networks you are a part of. There is usually a place for employer web site or favorite web sites. Get our links out there.
   
2. Word of mouth - direct people to, not only our site but to "Find us on Facebook" or "Follow us on Twitter"
3. Use links in your messages - I have encouraged you all in the past to add links to our website in your message signatures. You can also create a link when you reference us in the body of your messages. This is especially useful to direct readers to a particular page on our site. You can copy and paste the address from your browser directly into your document or message (example: http://www.eastbrookhomes.com/communities/ccs.html) or you highlight text and use the hyperlink button in your tool bar for a cleaner look (example: Lowing Woods)
4. Be a Follower, Friend and Fan - network from your own accounts to ours and to others. Use these network sites for what they are intended - Networking! Specifically this means subscribing or following our blogs, being a fan on Facebook, following Eastbrook on Twitter, etc. There is a link section at the bottom of this blog for reference. (please keep in mind our corporate policy on restricting personal use of these sites during business hours)
   
5. Buttons - there are a variety of icons/buttons you can copy and paste (see our home page or below for some) to connect people with our various outlets.

Twitter



Facebook




Please comment here or e-mail me with questions. I would like to make it very easy for you to add value to your communication through the use of social media.

SPAM and Viruses

You may have noticed a recent increase in the amount of spam you are receiving in your Eastbrook inbox. I have just modified the settings on our filtering service to counteract this latest group of bogus e-mails and am fairly confident that we will see a reduction.

Here are some statistics you may find interesting:

• we received 91,637 messages to eastbrookhomes.com last month
• 68,072 of those messages were blocked as blatant spam
• another 11,865 were quarantined as probable spam
• only 11,700 (12.8%) messages were legitimate
• even using conservative calculations, the filtering software saves us upwards of $2,000 a month in wasted time deleting unwanted messages
• the savings above does not include the potential time and damage caused from a virus infection or other form of malware
• messages go through at least 3 levels of filtering and 2 separate virus checks before they hit your mailbox
  

Here are some tips to help us fight the problem of SPAM:

1. Make sure your anti-virus and anti-spam software is up to date. We obviously take care of this for Eastbrook computers but make sure you are protected at home as well. An excellent software free to home users is Avast. We also have complimentary licenses for Vipre we can set you up with.
   
2. Do not open messages that are clearly spam - just delete them
3. NEVER click on any links from an undesired message - this includes unsubscribe links. at best, clicking on a link legitimizes your address to the source as a legitimate recipient or, worse, unleashes a virus into your system.
4. NEVER respond to spam messages - same reason as #3.
   
5. Use disposable e-mail addresses. Free addresses are easy to obtain and plentiful on the web. Set-up a gmail or yahoo address for the express purpose of using on web forms so that your real address is not input.
6. When you do need to use your real e-mail address, only use it on known reputable sites that have privacy policies and security in place (usually a padlock icon in the status bar)
   
7. NEVER click on attachments!
   
8. Use common sense. If something looks suspicious, don't click on it. Remember - spam and viruses are often sent from infected computers and can appear to be from someone you know. Don't be fooled!
9. Don't forget to check your quarantined messages periodically to ensure that there are no legitimate messages snagged by the servers. No matter how careful we are it is impossible to insure that there are no "false-positives"
10. When you receive a message from a friend or co-worker of a supposed virus outbreak or other warning, do not forward until you have checked it out first. Snopes, McAfee and Symantec all have good searchable databases. You can also Google a portion of the message and get good results. Most of these warnings are hoaxes - Don't add to the problem by forwarding!

Thank you for your help in keeping our systems as spam and virus free as possible.

Make sure you fill-in your e-mail address (yes, your real one) in the box on the right to subscribe to this blog. Not only will I be using it to communicate important information but it has traffic benefits for our site.

Thanks again.

td

Sweet Home Alabama Web Changes and Other Stuff

This week is bringing in changes for the web site for the Alabama (Eastbrook Southern) web presence. We are moving toward pages that, although sharing the general theme (style, colors, etc.), will be unique in their content and navigation. We are still working out the details and integration and this will be a process that will take a little while to accomplish. It does require a fair amount of change in structure behind the scenes but I look forward to the finished product.

Things to look for yet this week in the Alabama pages:

• modifications to The Preserves community page
• addition of "Printer Friendly" community page
• "Alabama Only" plans and elevations on their own page
• Alabama specific About Us and Green/EarthCraft House pages
• printer friendly version of these pages
  

The new pages will currently be available as links from The Preserves community page. Soon will come the change in structure which will allow for a Alabama home page that will be the landing page for the Eastbrook Southern specific items. This will be available from the main home page.

Other changes we are working on this week in addition to our usual updates:

• integration of our inventory home page with ePropertysites.com pages
• Facebook ad and research on further marketing
• circulation of press release regarding Cobblestone acquisition on the web including our site and Twitter and our rss feed (more on these in a later post)
• developing homes.com strategy
• further development of the Media Room to complete video, galleries, blogs, links and team bios sections.

As you can see, we have a great deal of things under way and our efforts appear to be paying off. Our number of visitors to the site is up significantly and we are seeing some of that web traffic convert to prospect traffic! Stay tuned for more updates from IT.

Please subscribe via e-mail by using the box to the right.

td

Welcome to the Eastbrook IT Blog

This blog is intended for communication for, with and about the Eastbrook Homes team. It will be primarily centered around technology as its name suggests but may address other items as they affect us. Always the goal will be to encourage and assist us in doing what we do best - "Delighting our customers and building each home as if it were our own!"