All Posts, Social Media
Search the Internet about social media, and you’ll find a host of results on how to use it, what mediums are out there, making money with it, and how to use it best. You’ve read all about Twitter, than Twitter makes updates and you don’t know where to begin. Same thing with Facebook. You hear all about how many millions of users are using it, yet you can’t seem to get your Fanpage past 50 fans. Let me tell you, they’re ever changing sometimes week to week, so if you’re not understanding them now, it could be harder to find the relevance to your bottom line.
Before I get into the return on your investment with social media, I’d like to first talk about the various mediums and some basic effectiveness. If you think that all it takes to be successful in social media is just a few minutes a day with thoughtful posts of inspirational quotes mixed with posts about your website, sales, and products; you’re seriously mistaken. Don’t get into social media with the intent on trying to sell. You’ll quickly become frustrated with the lack of interactions and see it as a one way conversation.
Twitter is great for short conversations throughout the day. You can jump in any active conversation, trending topic, or subject. Its real-time so the chances of hearing back from someone minutes after your replies are quite high.
Facebook Fan Pages are best with fewer posts each day. Another words, you may come up with a great post about a subject, then concentrate on following up with your fans as they post comments to your original post.
Linked In has so many avenues to engage with people, you can literally spend hours on that site and forego any actual productivity. From answering questions, to posting in groups, to connecting with old colleagues or new prospective clients; there’s plenty to keep you busy.
YouTube can almost be seen as one directional since you are mostly posting videos. However that’s just the beginning. Once posted, you’ll have the opportunity to follow along with the viewers feedback via the comments below your video. So post a great instructional video and you’re likely to get comments and questions for more information or encouraging words to post more videos.
Return on Investment. Well this is a hot button that seems to change often. At first I used to say that there was no money in social media. Whatever efforts you put in, you wouldn’t find the same in profits. I’m starting to change my stance on that because I’ve learned that you can’t use social media to sell. At least not blatantly. What I mean is, think of it as a networking meeting. You can’t just walk into a room full of people screaming to the top of your lungs about the sales and services you provide. Instead you walk in and court each person you make eye contact with. You meet people and ask who they are, what they do, where they’re from; then engage in light conversation. Maybe they sound interested (follow) in what you do, but not enough to be compelled to purchase something from you on the spot. However what you say about your industry and brand intrigues them to keep you in mind (comment/@reply) to tell other people about. You leave them with a great impression (post) and move on to meet someone else. The more people you meet, they more impressions you make. With the increase in impressions, the more traffic your website and business phone starts to get. You then start to become an authority on a subject matter. When that happens more people start to pay attention to what you say and post. And now because you’re respected, when you do offer a special or a sale (not often) they share your offer with others or purchase some for themselves. You couple all of that with analytics to gauge where you were most influential each day of the month and you replicate your best efforts the following month. All while keeping track of your lead performance, site traffic, and other metrics.
I know this sounds like a lot; and to be honest it’s all of this and more. Sure anyone can do this. Not everyone will be as effective or as diligent so choose your mediums and efforts wisely. The worse thing you can do is start and abruptly stop.
Have some other tips on social media and how to bank more for your buck? Please share in the comments below.
All Posts, Marketing, Web Design
As 2011 starts to get closer to end, we as entrepreneurs and self startups all start to think of what we will improve on for the coming year. We reflecting on all of our accomplishments for this year, as well as any pitfalls that we learned from. As a designer, 2011 had many new apps, design improvements, and devices that helped contribute to our creativity. For all the small businesses out there, here are some great items you should implement to your website for better engagement and ROI.
Video – Having a 30-90 second video on your homepage is a great way to briefly talk about your products and services. It gives your visitors a great visual look at your products in action or how truly effective your services are against your competition. My only suggestion is to turn off the auto play option on your embedded video. There’s nothing more frightening than a loud video that automatically starts playing even before a website loads and your visitor scrambling for a mute button or just closing out of your site all-together.
Call To Action – Most everyone who is on the internet has an email address. They’ve got a Twitter handle, a cell, phone, and a physical address. Though they have all of this, it doesn’t mean they’re just going to hand it over to you for nothing. Give them a reason to give you their contact information with something they are looking for too. Could be a short e-book on how to make their own business card out of clip art for starters. Or how to find the best hosting company with the most options for a WYSIWYG editor. Change your CTA maybe each month and see which “gimmick” lands you the most leads. And tailor to suit after that.
Google Analytics – I can’t stress enough how having data is vital to your website. Knowing how many people view your site with some free site-hit button at the bottom of your page is so 90’s. How about knowing which pages people view the most; or how long people stay on each of your website pages; or what buttons and links they click on. What browsers they use (mobile, Firefox, IE, etc). There’s so much more Google offers you for free in data it will blow your mind. What’s key about all that data is that you continue to use it to tweak your site.
Social Media – I don’t need to beat the horse on this one, but your newer potential clients are out there talking about your products and services. They’re talking about you and your competition. If you want free crowd-sourcing social media will give it to you in a lot more than 31 flavors. Your business needs to join and be part of the online conversations that are happening right now. Take advantage of using specials with FourSquare Check-ins or Facebook Places. Check your listings on Yelp. Promote a one day sale with Twitter. Host a webinar and post it on YouTube and inspire people to watch and share it.
You – Yes you, you need to be on your website. For those of you that think a website is only important just to have and not to monitor and keep up with, you’re wrong. I’ve seen too many websites (good and bad) fail to keep updated. Plan a date with your website at least once a month. Our team at Design Theory make it a point to reach out with our clients at least once a month to discuss their website performance, things learned from the previous month, and new ideas and tactics we’ll try for the following month(s).
So what do you plan on doing with your website for 2012? Anything more than what we’ve listed above? Share in the comments below. We’d love to dialog with you.
Web Development
A while ago, I wrote a post that had some people going huh, why’d you put PHP there when there are so many other languages you could have chosen?
Admittedly, I did overlook some potential candidates–Ruby on Rails comes to mind. Also, like any programming languages, PHP has its quirks and limitations, which make some programmers cringe. However, it would be well worth your time to learn PHP.
As more and more individuals and businesses come online, many of them are turning to content management systems (CMSs) in order to quickly and easily manage their site. Three of the top open-source CMSs–WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal–are all written in PHP and many businesses hire developers to create and maintain their sites. WordPress.org reports that 22% of all sites in America are currently running WordPress. That’s a more than decent market share–and an enormous potential customer base!
PHP is pre-installed on most hosts, making it easy to get your hands on. There are also localhost platforms that you can install on your own computer to test your work prior to launching it.
Its capabilities,while not unlimited, are certainly remarkable. Facebook, with over 800 million active members and more than 900 million objects–apps, groups, pages, ect. is built with it!
So, how do you go about learning PHP?
Start at the very beginning.
Over the next several weeks, I will be publishing a series over at 1stwebdesigner.com detailing how to create your own WordPress theme and plugin. In addition, I now offer tutoring which will give you some one-on-one time to get started on or brush up your PHP skills
Marketing
These days we have so many ways to talk about our businesses, products, and services both online and off. From talking about a new addition to your business or soliciting visitors to your brand using social media. The point is, we’re always looking for ways to grab attention to our business. Enter Testimonials. There usually isn’t too much focus on grabbing the feedback we receive from clients when finishing a new design project. Usually the great gratification is a nice email or phone call appreciating the hard work and efforts followed by a nice check or direct deposit. However I’d like to challenge you to sift back through some of your conversations with not only your recent clients but ALL of them in an attempt to modestly “brag” about your design skills.
Testimonials sometimes come in few different ways. Could be a follow-up phone call from a firms executive team thanking you for putting together such a great new website redesign. Or an email from a marketing director who never worked with a designer that actually put to life their exact thoughts for a brochure. Personally, anything you can get in writing is fantastic because you’ll always have their words exactly. A phone call is good too, but try to ask them if they wouldn’t mind being quoted and their testimonial being used on your media.
So how do you use all this to brag? Let me show you a few great ways:
On Paper: A hand written letter from a client may be harder to get than some other means. But most won’t mind typing up a few sentences (or paragraphs), in Microsoft Word and printing it on their company letterhead and mailing it to you. I’ve actually visited a few storefronts where they had a cork board in their entrance that was full of letters from clients. It immediately give you a sense of validity towards that establishment.
Via Email: A really easy and may be a more common way of receiving a testimonial is via email. This is because it’s short, direct and to the point. You can even provoke a client to send you one by pre-emptively sending them an email asking for their opinion or grace of your recent or past work.
From a Phone Call: This one could be a bit tricky. Since we’re all busy, phone conversation usually start one way then drift to another before the call is ended. So remembering what was exactly said (verbatim) may be a bit tricky if you don’t write things down immediately after the call. Also getting the “ok” at the end may sometimes be hard or awkward to ask for.
From Your Website: A great way to capture testimonials that’s almost effortless is your own website. It’s already up right? Why not make it work a little more for you. Setup a page that can be linked from your Contact Us page that will be solely for testimonials. I’ve provided some links to some nice examples below. You don’t have to get crazy elaborate. Mainly you want to have an example of the work you did next to the text of your testimonial along with the clients name. Maybe first name and last initial to keep a bit of their identity hidden.
Testimonial Examples Link 1
Testimonial Examples Link 2
So after all this, I’d love to hear your own success and stories with testimonials. Share with us in the comments below. We can all learn from each other.
All Posts, Web Design
One of the things we web designers often talk about when we’re around each other is our client stories. And while I won’t get into most of the topics or details, I do want to highlight a few important ones that are pretty common. Those being, clear understanding of responsibilities of the designer, of the business owner, on-time deliverables, and contract and payment.
I like to refer myself as a junior web designer. This because I haven’t been around for over a decade doing web design, but I have been around long enough to experience the highs and lows of the industry. Especially when it comes to my responsibilities as a web designer. First and foremost, I am to be the authority on such a subject matter when it comes to my clients. I must assume they know nothing, and take the time to adequately discuss anything that doesn’t make sense to the client. I’m not saying that non industry people are handicapped at all. But I do think its unfair to talk a bunch of techno babble under the pretense that a client understand everything I’m talking about. I also believe I have a responsibility:
- To return phone calls or emails in a timely manner.
- Clearly explain my prices and estimate for work to be done
- Ask questions about what the client would like to see done
- Get existing examples of websites & designs that the client likes
- Secure a deposit before work is started
From a client’s side, there can be quite a few things needed that may not become clear until deadlines are approaching. One example is “content.” It is always the business owner’s responsibility to provide content for their website. As a designer, we can easily charge for copyrighting if necessary, but otherwise it’s up to the client to take the time to write out their bios, services, products, prices, and even provide the graphics and logos for the site. In a lot of cases this is where pricing for websites starts to climb. What at first seemed like a $1,500 job has now turned into a $2,600 job after creating graphics, artwork, content, research, and implementation. I can’t stress how important this is because of how it will seriously drag a project that would normally take 2 weeks into several months of back and forth missed calls and unanswered emails.
Milestones for each web project will vary, but each project has them. From getting a contract signed with initial payment, to full site testing and launching, there are some goals that need to be tracked and reached before further work is started. Most designers will keep the client informed with over estimated time lines. This is not because we’re lazy or anything, its to give enough time to get things in order or received from the client with a realistic turnaround time for completion. If we think we’re going to be late on a deadline, its our responsibility to inform the client. If the client can’t seem to finalize something – they need to understand how that affects the overall time line for their project.
My last point is securing a contract and payment. Let me skip to payments because this is dearest to just about every freelancer out there. We need this upfront not because we need to pay our overdue light bill. Its more so because we need to get you truly interested in getting us the materials we need to really undertake a project. If we don’t secure a preliminary deposit from you, we’ll most likely be waiting for months before hearing anything from you. I won’t generalize that statement to everyone, but I will say most. Each designer has their own way of breaking down a project’s payment percentages, but their important to sticking to the deadlines.
Now as for a contract; this is important to all parties. A working contract protects the designer for their work, what is fully expected of them, and also the client for what is eventually owned/owed to them.
Search the Internet about social media, and you’ll find a host of results on how to use it, what mediums are out there, making money with it, and how to use it best. You’ve read all about Twitter, than Twitter makes updates and you don’t know where to begin. Same thing with Facebook. You hear all about how many millions of users are using it, yet you can’t seem to get your Fanpage past 50 fans. Let me tell you, they’re ever changing sometimes week to week, so if you’re not understanding them now, it could be harder to find the relevance to your bottom line.
