by Scott Howard | Dec 3, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Continuing to turn the spotlight on some of my advertising partners at WOWO Radio, today it’s Doc Dancer Heating, Cooling, and Generators. Doc Dancer has been a Fort Wayne institution for nearly 70 years. (These articles are not paid for by anyone, they are simply may way of sharing with you some of the excellent people and businesses that I get to work with.)
Many people over the age of 30 can sing their iconic jingle, “He’s the Doc that Loves to Make House Calls, let him call, let call, let him call on you!” 
That tune was stuck in my head ever since I was a teenager. Little did I know that Doc Dancer was owned by the parents of one of my classmates when I was in High School. Fast forward to 1998, the year I moved back to Fort Wayne and that was the year that Doc Dancer was taken over by my old high school friends Bill & Nancy Berning. A few years later, my wife and I join the same church as Bill & Nancy and the past few years, Nancy has been one of the volunteers that I get to work with on some neighborhood projects through our church.
Back to Doc Dancer…
This summer around the 4th of July, the temperature in our house climbed up to 80+ and it was our first experience at calling Doc Dancer. We were dutifully impressed. First class techs and everything.
After experiencing Doc Dancer service first hand, I began working with Nancy to create an overall marketing plan for Doc Dancer to help them connect with the kind of customers they wanted to help. As we were discussing which marketing and advertising options to keep in 2016 and which ones to discontinue, WOWO became one of the options. And starting this week, you can hear WOWO’s Pat Miller talk about them every week as the exclusive HVAC contractor he endorses. Not only did Doc Dancer pass my personal credibility test, but they also passed Pat’s. The Christian values that dictate the foundation of their business and how they treat both their employees and customers along with everything I’ve learned and experience is why I am proud to have them as one of WOWO’s Advertising Partners.
by Scott Howard | Dec 2, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Continuing my series of introducing you to some of my advertising partners that I’ve been working with the last couple of years. These are businesses that spend money with me to advertise on WOWO Radio. (They are not paying for this article.)
Today, I want to introduce you to Comfort Keepers. I’ve known Julia and Matt Anders, the owners of the Fort Wayne franchise for more than 10 years. When I worked at another radio station in town, I had them as advertising partners and helped them launch their weekend talk show Heart to Heart.
Heart to Heart now airs on Sundays at noon on WOWO except when it is preempted due to WOWO’s sports commitments. WOWO airs the Indianapolis Colts and the Indy 500 and some of those NFL Pregames start at noon giving Matt & Julia the day off from coming to the WOWO radio studios, but this Sunday they’ll be on live.
Comfort Keepers provides non-medical one on one care. Take a look at their website for a complete listing of services.
I’ve watched Julia and Matt and the Fort Wayne Comfort Keepers grow and grow and grow over the years. For awhile they kept moving to new, bigger offices in an office park on the north side of town every few years until they purchased their own office in a converted home on the southwest side. The physical location doesn’t matter because they come to your home or the home of your loved ones to provide care.
It was the summer of 2001 when they began and September 11, 2001, a day that changed all of our lives, is also the day they signed up their first Fort Wayne client. Today they continue to provide Heart to Heart Care to hundreds all over Fort Wayne and the surrounding area.
by Scott Howard | Dec 1, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
I am going to take a few days this month and introduce you to some of my advertising partners that I’ve been working with the last couple of years. These are businesses that spend money with me to advertise on WOWO Radio. (They are not paying for this article.)
Today, I want to introduce you to A-Z Coins and Jewelry. 2016 will be their 40th anniversary and I’d link to their website or Facebook page, but it needs updating. I’m working on that, as one of my projects for them next year. 
A-Z spent most of their 40 years in Glenbrook Mall, but a couple years ago moved over to the Northcrest Shopping Center. They are in the strip next to Five Guys as we say on the radio.
When I visit them it’s usually Michelle and Barry that I see. Tell them you heard about them by reading this when you visit.
A-Z is a haven for collectors of coins, currency and a host of other goodies. For a long time they were known as A-Z Coins and Stamps but the stamp collecting hobby has diminished and Jewelry has taken over. Looking for a unique gift, visit my friends at A-Z. 
by Scott Howard | Nov 17, 2015 | ScLoHo's Fort Wayne
As we head into the Christmas Holiday Season, there is an event that begins next week that has been going on for over 20 years in Fort Wayne, the Fantasy of Lights. Details are here.
by Scott Howard | Oct 27, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Search Engine Optimization. It’s been a “thing” since 1997 according to Wikipedia.
Here’s the basic premise. The Internet has close to 1,000,000,000 websites right now. How in this World Wide Web is anyone going to find yours?
Directories were created and that was okay for awhile then this company called Google came along and developed an easy to use simple way to find stuff online. The modern Search Engine was born and by the end of 1998, techies were praising Google.com:
“PC Magazine” reports that Google “has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results” and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.
Jump ahead 10 years to 2008 and I’m telling some of my radio clients that they need to blog regularly. At least once a month, but once a week is better. At this time, I’ve plunged myself into the blog world with over 3,000 articles I published on my own blogs that year alone, on a part-time basis.
The blog articles I was writing and sharing were being picked up by Google. Let me explain. If someone was to do a Google search for something I wrote about, I occasionally would appear on the first or second page of Google. Now Google is much more sophisticated these days and there are companies that specialize in optimizing websites for Google which still has over 65% of the search engine use market worldwide. Bing is #2 with around 20% of the market.
When I launched this website four years ago this month, I worked for Cirrus ABS, a website development firm in Fort Wayne and learned a lot of stuff I could be doing S.E.O.-wise for this site, but I didn’t. I was too busy working at my paid job and writing articles on the side to take the time to add those extras to my articles.
Time Travel with me to December 2013, about 23 months ago. That’s when I returned to radio to work at WOWO. I was given permission from management to write about WOWO and radio and advertising and marketing and just about anything I wanted because they trusted me.
As I went about my work at WOWO as an advertising sales person who prefers to offer advertising and marketing consulting 1st before the selling part of my job, I started writing about my experiences with WOWO radio and recently I noticed a trend.
People were paying attention. Mary, whom I’ve known for a few years was recommending articles I wrote to her clients. But this month in particular, I was getting phone calls, text messages and emails to my ScLoHo email account from strangers wanting my help with advertising, marketing and some were specifically wanting to advertise on WOWO. It was time to do some research.
I cleared my cookies and browser history and did a search for WOWO Advertise and was pleasantly surprised.
7 of the Top 10 Google Listings pointed to ScottHoward.me
The first three listings linked to our company website at WOWO.com But the rest all went directly to articles that I wrote over the past 22 months.
I sent a note and screenshot to my friend Kevin Mullett at Cirrus ABS who decided to investigate further wrote back, Maybe even more impressive. “radio advertising fort wayne” “fort wayne radio advertising” “fort wayne radio” incognito. Depends on how people are searching.
This is what I call the power of Accidental SEO. I almost called it lazy SEO but that’s not really what happened because I haven’t been lazy. I write and publish 5 articles each and every week on this website/blog. Many of them, but not all mention WOWO. That’s not being lazy, that’s being diligent.
The reason I called it Accidental SEO is because I didn’t add all the extra tags and metadata that would help Google find me and boost my results. I just wrote a blog and didn’t stop.
Maybe what I have done isn’t duplicate-able by you. Maybe it is. You’ll never know until you start and don’t stop.
If you want to be found online in a more purposeful way, I can help you with that with the services of the Federated Digital Solutions division of company. Contact me and we will see what is the best path for you.
by Scott Howard | Oct 1, 2015 | ScLoHo's Fort Wayne
#TBT A few months ago, a friend of mine and I were talking about places in Fort Wayne, Indiana that don’t exist anymore. Mike mentioned “The Mouse House”, a cheese shop that used to be on Wells Street, a few decades ago. I didn’t remember the place since I grew up in another part of town, but I Googled it and found a blog that I haven’t visited in awhile.
Kris started her blog at the end of 2007 and hasn’t updated it in 5 years, but check it out for a narrative history of Fort Wayne, told by a former resident.
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