BuyRIC.com is a Real Estate Magazine

By
Marcus Cyganiak
 – September 6, 2010Posted in: Blog

BuyRIC.com - The Online Real Estate Magazine and Directory

BuyRIC.com is a website that both Kris Cyganiak and myself, Marcus Cyganiak, founded on October 9, 2009 and launched online one month later on November 9, 2009. We are “The Online Real Estate Magazine and Directory” and the “RIC” in BuyRIC.com stands for Residential, Industrial, and Commercial Real Estate.

BuyRIC.com aims to be your online source for Real Estate industry related news, content, and articles with stories, advice, and commentary from local industry professionals as well as from around the world. Our Directory section allows you to easily find and connect with local Realtors, Mortgage Brokers, Designers and other industry professionals.

We’ve developed each section of BuyRIC.com to be unique, interesting, and informative with a new perspective. But first and foremost, BuyRIC.com is a “Real Estate Magazine.”

BuyRIC.com Home

BuyRIC.com Home - Real Estate Magazine

The home page of BuyRIC.com is a hub for most of the content flowing through every section of the website. It features a slideshow reel of all the latest content along with blocks of featured stories below. In essence, you can think of the home page being the “Table of Contents” for the BuyRIC.com “Real Estate Magazine” styled website.

BuyRIC.com News

BuyRIC.com News - Real Estate Magazine

The News section of BuyRIC.com features exclusive media and content from credible sources combined to create unique news stories pertaining to the real estate industry. All of our articles are written in original form, with references made to either primary or secondary sources.

BuyRIC.com Realtors

BuyRIC.com Realtors - Real Estate Magazine

The Realtors section is devoted to helping Realtors become more successful by promoting themselves in a community format along with their peers in the industry to a much wider audience of potential customers.

This section allows a Realtor to showcase their knowledge and expertise in the field to an online audience in a hyper-local format. Realtors are be able to promote their brand with original news, opinion, and information from their local target market or area, right down to the neighborhood level.

Realtors in this section are also able to educate the public as well as prospective clients on their knowledge of the real estate industry through written content, pictures, and video relating the business of real estate and Realtors.

BuyRIC.com Mortgages

BuyRIC.com Mortgages - Real Estate Magazine

The Mortgages section is devoted to helping Mortgage Brokers become more successful by promoting themselves in a community format along with their peers in the industry to a much wider audience of potential customers.

This section, like the Realtors section, allows a Mortgage broker to showcase their knowledge and expertise in the field to an online audience in a hyper-local format. Mortgage Brokers are be able to promote their brand with original news, opinion, and information to a broad audience or down to their local target market area.

Mortgage Brokers in this section are also able to educate the public as well as prospective clients on their knowledge of the mortgage brokerage industry through written content, pictures, and video relating the business of real estate and mortgages.

BuyRIC.com Projects

BuyRIC.com Projects - Real Estate Magazine

The Projects section, which has not yet launched, will showcase stories and profiles of current real estate developments within a given region or location. It will allow Project Companies to become more successful in their marketing efforts by providing these companies with a central location to enhance all their online project marketing efforts and updates.

Whether it is a new residential subdivision, new condos, new townhomes, or a new mixed use development, this section of BuyRIC.com will be devoted to all this and more. The content will be a heavy use of combined multimedia, photography, videos, graphics, and written content.

BuyRIC.com Directory

BuyRIC.com Directory - Real Estate Magazine

The Directory section of BuyRIC.com can be looked upon as a catalog. It facilitates searches for Realtors, Mortgage Brokers, Designers, and future Projects in a localized format, specified by city. For example, below is the “Mortgage Brokers Directory” for Vancouver, BC, Canada:

BuyRIC.com Directory - Real Estate Magazine

Each Directory placement features a unique graphic, either provided by the client or designed and produced by BuyRIC.com. The uniqueness of these graphics supports our claim in being a multifaceted “Real Estate Magazine.”

The Directory section is also a landing zone for all the information about a particular Realtor, Mortgage Broker, Designer, or Project.  It connects people on our website to the person or company they are interested in. Through here, all of their specific information and content on BuyRIC.com is accessible.

BuyRIC.com Lifestyle

BuyRIC.com Lifestyle - Real Estate Magazine

The Lifestyle section of BuyRIC.com features lifestyle stories that cover a wide variety of topics that affect real estate in regions, cities, and communities worldwide. All featured content in this section is created in original form, from the written portion to the incorporation of media through photographs and video.

BuyRIC.com Design

BuyRIC.com Design - Real Estate Magazine

Design related stories are featured in this section of BuyRIC.com, in addition to advice and commentary from local professionals and featured articles from around the world.

BuyRIC.com Blog

BuyRIC.com Blog - Real Estate Magazine

The Blog section provides Realtors, Mortgage Brokers, Designers, and Industry Professionals with an active area to post links to stories, listings, personal blogs, or any other content including their day-to-day activities, hobbies, and/or interests. This is an area where people can discover the true personalities behind each professional featured and showcased on BuyRIC.com.

BuyRIC.com Buzz

BuyRIC.com Buzz - Real Estate Magazine

BuyRIC.com Buzz is a secondary source for real estate related, economic, and business news content online. This section pulls content from outside sources with full credit to its respective owners.

You can become a part of BuyRIC.com and our “Real Estate Magazine” through our Membership Services directly by clicking here.

The Process of BuyRIC.com Meetings

By
Marcus Cyganiak
 – August 30, 2010Posted in: Blog

BuyRIC.com

Meetings are currently an essential part of BuyRIC.com’s Membership success. How do they work? Well you’re about to find out!

On any given day, we’ll schedule a meeting with a real estate industry professional and it doesn’t matter what time of the day or night it occurs, but typically they take place during the morning hours or afternoon. The meetings always involve myself, Marcus Cyganiak, and co-owner Kris Cyganiak.

The professionals we meet with are predominately mortgage brokers and realtors, but we plan on expanding our horizons to the likes of designers, project companies, and other entities within the real estate industry in due time. Where do our meetings take place? Well, that’s up to you because we’ll come to you!

In addition to signing up new Members, one of the great things we get out of each meeting is feedback. We get to hear it firsthand and we value that tremendously because at the end of the day, BuyRIC.com is a service website for our Members. We want to use your advice to make BuyRIC.com an attractable venue to showcase everyone’s individuality, brands, companies, and any other real estate related venture.

One of our secret formulas for success during our meetings is our third partner in crime – the Apple iPad. This boosts our meetings with potential clients to a level of hands-on interactivity. We’re able to properly demonstrate the usability of BuyRIC.com with the iPad, rather than trying to explain all the steps involved. The potential client we’re meeting with also has the chance to use our iPad and test out BuyRIC.com.

In some cases, since BuyRIC.com is updated on a live basis, updates to the website will occur during our meetings, which just goes to show that the activity level here at BuyRIC.com is prided with consistency in a real estate magazine format with an exclusive directory of professionals.

To schedule a meeting with BuyRIC.com regarding our Membership Services, please use our Contact form, or email us directly at info@buyric.com.

Become a part of BuyRIC.com through our Membership Services directly by clicking here.

BuyRIC.com Site Map Updated

By
Marcus Cyganiak
 – August 28, 2010Posted in: Blog

The BuyRIC.com Site Map has been updated with new landing pages that have been established on this website over the past few months. The site map also includes author pages for the Realtors, Mortgages, and Blog sections, along with exclusive BuyRIC.com Profiles.

A site map is basically a table of contents for a website. It is a list of pages on a website accessible to crawlers or users.

To visit the BuyRIC.com Site Map, click here.

BuyRIC.com RSS Feeds Page Updated

By
Marcus Cyganiak
 – August 28, 2010Posted in: Blog

BuyRIC.com RSS FeedsNeed a quick and easy way to follow BuyRIC.com on a daily basis? Well all you need to do is visit one of our RSS Feeds and subscribe by using a third party reader such as Google, My Yahoo, Blogline, or any other service that’s available. RSS Feeds allow for a one stop hub for all the content you want to view on the fly.

The official BuyRIC.com RSS Feeds page has now been updated to include all main sections of this website. Individual RSS author feeds will have to be found within any given section of BuyRIC.com.

Visit the RSS Feeds page by clicking here.

BuyRIC.com Website Design with a Purpose

By
Kris Cyganiak
 – August 23, 2010Posted in: Blog

BuyRIC.com

We have all been to too many websites that are like The Matrix film; confusing with too much information and nothing stands out.

The Internet audience is very fickle. Complicated websites often result in frustration. If a website visitor can’t find what they are looking for or find the site too confusing, they leave. 

So that is why from the start we were driven to create a website design with a simple and clean format that’s easy to navigate and understand.

BuyRIC.com is just that, very simple and straightforward with the site divided into separate sections of content provided in a meaningful manner making it easy for a visitor to find what they are looking for.

The main sections of BuyRIC.com include: News, Realtors, Mortgages, Projects, Directory, Lifestyle, Design, Blog, and Buzz. Additional content and information is readily available on the “footer” and “side bar” of the website.

Each of these sections follow a similar design principal but will be unique. No two sections of BuyRIC.com will look exactly alike. We have a lot of design freedom and we are implementing that to create a better user experience. But our branding, look, and feel is consistent across the entire site.

Social media venues are the future of Web 2.0 and we are including them heavily into BuyRIC.com. In fact, each section of our website has quick and easy access to a range of social media networks on the top header, the bottom footer, the right-hand sidebar, and even within the content sections. We even have a summary page for social media that shows the current list that continues to grow.  You can access this list by clicking here.

We have also designed our site to be very mobile friendly for the Apple iPhone and other current generation of smart phones, as well as the Apple iPad and iPod Touch.

Go ahead – take a look at www.BuyRIC.com on your iPhone or iPad.  You will see that it is very easy to interact and navigate our site with those devices. In fact, you may even notice that we use “Mobile Active Links” on our website.

All these design features were incorporated to enhance a users’ website experience and create an easy and friendly environment to navigate our members’ content.

Become a part of BuyRIC.com through our Membership Services by clicking here.

Branding with BuyRIC.com

By
Kris Cyganiak
 – August 20, 2010Posted in: Blog

BuyRIC.com

If you look at every successful company, without a doubt it can be said that one of the most important factors in achieving their success is the branding of their products or services.

Branding is all about creating an identity that will ring true in a potential customer’s mind when they think about the products or services that they need. A prime example would be, do you think Q-tips or cotton swabs?

Coke, KFC, Budget Rent a Car, and Google are all brands that are top of mind when you think about their respective categories. Even being a a famous celebrity is just a form of image branding.

Looking at it from the outside, being a Realtor or a Mortgage Broker is very similar to being a Celebrity. The more people know about you and like you, the more successful you will become.

Realtors and Mortgage Brokers need to invest in their online personal branding in order to promote their services and build the trust of potential clients by creating an online identity for the services they are looking for.

Remember, customers’ opinions of you can be formulated even before you ever meet them in person through perceptions or impressions created by recognition, advertising, and exposure, or lack of it.

The biggest impact you can make is by exposing them to yourself and your BRAND.

Our goal at BuyRIC.com is to not only help you get found on the Internet, but to also allow you to enhance your online presence and your online identity with personal branding, gaining you more customers, more opportunities, and more success.

The key is self-promotion.  We have coined the phrase: “Estate Yourself” to illustrate this concept.

The main thing to remember in this new Internet age is that you’re not just selling homes and mortgages – you’re also selling yourself and your BRAND.

BuyRIC.com is here to make real estate your online success based-business.

Become a part of BuyRIC.com through our Membership Services by clicking here.

Understanding Social Media with BuyRIC.com

By
Kris Cyganiak
 – August 19, 2010Posted in: Blog, Social Media

BuyRIC.com

Social Media is the current “buzzword” with online marketing. Everyone is promoting the virtues of using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for online success.

In today’s times, these social formats cannot be overlooked.

You may already know that Facebook is the most widely used social network in the world with over 500 million users, or that Twitter is the social equivalent of instant messaging, or that YouTube is touted as a personal broadcast medium. However, what you probably don’t know is that there is a big difference between just using them and using them effectively in your business.

Here are some points to consider when using social media for business with each of the following:

Facebook:

  • Have you ever tried to search for a local realtor or mortgage broker on Facebook? Go ahead, give it a try. I’m sure that you will be surprised with how few local results you get.
  • What is the point of adding Facebook friends from all over the world if your customer base is in the Vancouver area?
  • Facebook can be considered somewhat of a closed network with huge privacy restrictions and barriers. People don’t “have to” follow you or be your friend.

Twitter:

  • Tweet away, but is anyone “worthwhile” following you?
  • Tweeting without “targeting” is like shooting in the dark.
  • Tweets can be fast and furious, its easy to get overlooked.
  • It is a lot easier to follow on Twitter than be followed.

YouTube:

  • Google will only search the title of your video, not the content.
  • Most videos go unnoticed with very few views unless promoted properly.
  • YouTube can be a liability if used incorrectly. Sometimes “exactly the same” is boring.

You need to have a social media strategy. Each one of these social networks has its online niche and can be a very valuable and indispensable addition to your overall online marketing efforts, if used correctly.

BuyRIC.com will allow you to do just that by leveraging our social media strategy to your advantage. We will target our social media efforts to provide our members with the greatest benefit by supporting their efforts in the local market with both personal and content exposure, allowing potential customers to find you on these social networks.

We will use Social Media to drive traffic to BuyRIC.com by using content marketing techniques that target the real estate industry, potential clients, and customers for YOU, our members.

Become a part of BuyRIC.com through our Membership Services by clicking here.

BuyRIC.com Design Section Coming Soon

By
Marcus Cyganiak
 – August 18, 2010Posted in: Blog

BuyRIC.com Design

You may have noticed during the past week that we have a new link at the top of BuyRIC.com, and that’s a navigational link to the new Design section that we will be launching soon.

This new section will include design related articles and featured stories that are related to the real estate industry. This will include expert advise, opinion and commentary from professional home stagers and interior designers. This section will also include a wide range of features that highlight current trends and and exceptional design in real estate both locally and from around the world.

Our first partner for the new Design section will be Heather Kleim of Epic Empire Designs, a company she established after living in Florence, Italy for several years. Both Kris Cyganiak and I met with her earlier today in Burnaby to officially welcome her to BuyRIC.com, it is great to have her as part of our team.

With the launching of the new Design section comes new categories being added to the Directory section of BuyRIC.com. With Heather Kleim being a home stager, the first new category added to the Directory will be Home Stagers. Over time, once we welcome more designers onto BuyRIC.com, you will see an array of more categorized designers added to the Directory.

The Design section is planned for an official launch at the beginning of next week.

How Does BuyRIC.com Work?

By
Kris Cyganiak
 – August 18, 2010Posted in: Blog

BuyRIC.com

To create an effective website you cannot afford to avoid Search Engine Optimization (SEO) along the way to establishing an online presence.

Getting traffic to a site has everything to do with SEO. Most people use Google as an information gateway to the Internet and unless they are specifically trying to find you, in most cases they won’t.

As we have said before, it is a lot easier to get lost on the Internet, than to be found.

SEO is used to direct or bend traffic on the Internet. The traffic is always there and it’s always flowing. Getting the traffic to find you is what SEO is all about.

In real estate we always hear the saying “location, location, location.” Well, there is a version of that saying for the Internet as well and it’s “content, content, content.”

On the Internet the biggest influence of online traffic flow is content. The saying that “content is king” cannot be underestimated. However, if no one knows about your content, they will never see it. That is where SEO comes into play.

There are three types of online searches:

  • Organic (Regular Google) Searches.
  • Directed or Non-Organic (Pay Google for AdWords) Searches.
  • Natural (go to a “Directory” and find what you are looking for) Searches.

Google searches are based on localization, in which Google provides search results to a user’s query based on the geographic location of their computer or mobile device.

Google also uses intelligent algorithms to provide results based on relevance and clustering of content. That is why there are enormous SEO advantages of being part of a community of content on the Internet.

With BuyRIC.com, we are exploiting the same natural fact that furniture stores and car dealerships are more successful if they are located in a cluster next to their competition. So the premise of BuyRIC.com is to be the “Real Estate” equivalent of the “Auto Mall” on the Internet by content clustering real estate and mortgage broker information down to a local level.

This clustering not only enhances online exposure, but it also increases SEO effectiveness by drawing multiple regular organic Google searches from multiple search queries on related topics focused on a local level.

It’s similar to standing next to a famous person at an event – you can’t avoid being noticed.

SEO is also a top priority for us at BuyRIC.com. Marcus Cyganiak, part owner and designer of BuyRIC.com, is almost fanatical about it, as it is easily the “most important thing” on any website.

We’re sure that a lot of you already know that it can easily cost over $100.00/hour just for SEO consultation and then monthly fees can be a minimum of $500.00/month to well over $2000.00/month for high content sites. If you’ve ever tried to tackle this yourself, you already know that it is well worth the fee’s charged to get SEO done right for you.

Become a part of BuyRIC.com through our Membership Services by clicking here.

Why is BuyRIC.com Effective?

By
Kris Cyganiak
 – August 17, 2010Posted in: Blog

BuyRIC.com

Today’s consumer, whether they’re researching a movie, a medical condition, a real estate or mortgage related matter, turn to the web before picking up the phone or leaving their home.

They are connected to the web from work, home, and in growing numbers directly on their smart cell phones. The web is, in most cases, the first place they go to look for real estate information. But more importantly, it’s the place nearly every home buyer and seller ends up when researching homes, figuring out how much to offer, who they should work with on their transactions, and how to navigate the home buying, selling, and financing process.

In order to succeed online, real estate and mortgage professionals must “capture” the attention of this new and ever growing customer base.

However, just having a website will not guarantee success. It’s like having a phone number that no one knows about. And just like with phone numbers, the easiest way to find what you are looking for online is with a local directory.

BuyRIC.com will do exactly that by providing an industry specific Directory for Realtors, Mortgage Brokers, and Projects on a local city-by-city basis. 

This will enable you to be easily FOUND on the Internet by exactly those people you are trying to reach in your business, instead of being LOST or having them overlook you.

Become a part of BuyRIC.com through our Membership Services by clicking here.

Page 1 of 3123