clients

07/28/2015 By Jason Bean Leave a Comment

Getting the Bigger Clients

It is very important for a business to be well administered and to appear professional under all circumstances. Here are some of the advantages for your business if it is obvious that is the case.

Sense of pride means better recognition

If a company takes pride in its appearance, levels of customer service, and other areas, it makes a big impression on potential clients. If a business gives the appearance of being badly run with low standards, customers will soon go elsewhere. Companies that have a sense of pride and are efficiently run will stand out from their competitors.

Uniform and dress code does matter

It is nice to be able to wear whatever we want, but in the business world there can be a negative arising from that. What staff members want to wear and a mode of dress that creates a professional appearance doesn't always coincide. Uniforms make your employees much easier for customers to identify and they will then be happy to approach a member of staff to ask for assistance. If you are a service professional, it can avoid having your presence in an area questioned thus hindering getting your job done. If your employees don't wear a uniform, it is advisable to have a dress code that every new and current employee is aware of. A uniform also gives the impression of a united workforce and helps promote camaraderie and team work.

Professional correspondence supplies are essential

When corresponding with potential clients and established customers, a company should have a professional-looking letterhead, email template, etc. Cheap paper, poor quality envelopes and labels printed on your own printer can look unprofessional. It doesn't cost a fortune to obtain high-quality stationery supplies. To save time when corresponding via mail, you might create your custom signature stamp. This can make bulk mailings a lot easier to deal with.

A great website means more opportunity

Any company these days is expected to have at least some online presence. A great website is well worth the investment. There are many website designers available that will put together a great-looking website that will create an internet presence to be proud of.

Social media connects you to the world

Facebook, Twitter, etc. are all great marketing tools that cost only time to participate in. A Facebook page can help send traffic to a website, and the website will in turn send traffic to Facebook. Social media is a quick and easy way to reach potential customers. Some website design services also offer media management services, such as regular blog posting, Facebook updates, and more. This is very useful if you don't have the time to do it yourself or an employee to dedicate to it.

Carefully consider your logo

A logo is very important part of your brand. For example, Walt Disney World uses Mickey Mouse ears for promotion. Just look at McDonald's and you can see the power of a logo. No matter where you are in the world you are likely to spot the McDonald's logo. Your own logo should be instantly recognizable and memorable but not too complicated in design. Less is often best with a logo design.

Utilize LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great way to network and interact with others in your business or profession. Other professionals can also offer reviews of your business or services that other users can see. Many companies use LinkedIn to discover business opportunities and recruit new talent to their firm. Don't be afraid to reach out to others and find your own opportunities as well. To maximize your exposure, have all of your employees create a profile on LinkedIn. The more people associated with your firm on LinkedIn, the more likely it is to be recognized by others.

Create a long-term marketing plan and revisit it annually

A long-term marketing plan helps you better budget for your advertising spend. You can often secure better deals on advertising by making a commitment ahead of time.

It is advisable to go over your advertising plan each year because circumstances do change. You might find that one advertising method is not bringing your business the opportunities and customers you expected, while another method is bringing you more. Be prepared to change direction with your advertising if required.

08/29/2014 By Jason Bean Leave a Comment

Make It Easy for Your Customers

Awhile back I was visiting a favorite ice-cream shop in Greenwood, INÂ called "Mrs. Curl"Â that my family and I really enjoy. There was a sign up in the window asking people to vote for them in a local contest that one of the news agencies puts on every year. As you can see from the image, in order for me to vote for them I would need to enter a very long URL. Being that was out at their location, I was more than likely going to have to do this from my phone, which would add another layer of challenge to the request. In this case, my first thought was to ask myself "Why wouldn't they use a URL shortening service like bit.ly?" The answer would probably have been that nobody there even knew what bit.ly was in the first place. If they'd used something like bit.ly the URL someone would have needed to immediately type into their phone would have been https://bit.ly/1Calux8 instead ofÂ https://theindyalist.cityvoter.com/best/ice-cream-shop/specialty-food-and-drink/indianapolis. Or, they could have even customized the URL to https://bit.ly/MrsCurlAlist. Or, they could have even used a big QR code that would have directed people to vote for them by scanning it with their phone.Â

It's sad to say but the majority of society would really always prefer to take the easy way out of a situation. That's perhaps even more true for consumers. As a business, we need to try to identify and alleviate the issues our customers face when doing business with us. The same is true for trying to get them involved with our brands on social media.

Have you really thought about the meaning and power of a "Like" on Facebook or getting someone to follow you on Twitter? Sure it's a great thing to have, more likes and more followers, but when you think about it, it didn't take much effort or commitment from your customer or fan. They were more than likely sitting down and used one finger to click a button on their mouse. Done!

The question though is are they engaged with you and your brand more than that?

Getting customer reviews for your business can be a huge win. That takes significantly more effort on your customer's part than just clicking a mouse button. You need them to go to your website, hopefully within a reasonable amount of time of engaging with you for a reason to even initiate a review, and then write a review for your services. Do they know where to go to leave a review? Would you rather them figure it out for themselves or would you rather direct them to a few of your preferred places for getting a review? Oh, and in case you were wondering, there's other reasons to get customer reviews as well. Remember, before the Internet you'd normally want to hear this kind of feedback anyway. It will either let you know you're doing a good job and you can commend your employees, or you'll find out areas you can improve and your staff may need training.

The point is, whatever you want your customer to do, think about what it takes for them to accomplish that task and try to eliminate any challenges you can. Make it easy, and you may just get them to do something a little more intensive than clicking their mouse on your website.

The results are in for the Indy A-List Voting, and Mrs. Curl finished in the Top 5. It may not have mattered because I'm not sure how close the voting was, but if they'd made it a little simpler for their customers, perhaps they could have pulled out the win!

07/04/2014 By Jason Bean Leave a Comment

How I Manage an Infinite Number of WordPress Installs

I love WordPress. For most of my clients my first recommendation to them is to get their website setup on a WordPress installation. This is for a variety of reasons but the core of which are the following:

provides the ability for them to manage their own content and updates as needed once launched
WordPress platform provides loads of opportunities for functionality and features through existing plugins and themes
availability of themes allow me to help clients focus on delivering great content and information about their business without them having to pay a significant amount of money for custom design work

There are some challenges with deploying WordPress on so many client websites though. Even though the client is capable of maintaining their own website and content, many frequently still don't. I understand. They're business isn't directly tied to being active and engaging online and creating content for their site. They're busy taking care of their customers and selling their products and services. (I won't take the time right now to discuss how their need for the one is much more closely tied to their need for being active and engaging online with their website and other content). So I frequently jump-in and help them update or change content. With WordPress I can jump in from anywhere I have an Internet connection or even my phone to make a quick change for them.

The other challenge that many of my clients and I'm sure yours also don't keep up with is the regular updates that are released for the plugins installed, the themes you're using and of course the core WordPress files.

I'm currently supporting, managing or hosting a couple hundred WordPress installs these days. Trying to keep track of all of them can obviously be a big challenge. The tool that I've found that really helps me accomplish this task is a little tool called InfiniteWP. What's amazing about this tool is that it's FREE! You install it on your own servers, about as easily as you install a new WordPress installation, Â and you're off and running. I have also implemented the fantastic reporting tool for MYSQL from InetSoft and it's just incredible, so if you need reports for users then that is where you should go.

What InfiniteWP allows me to do is login to a single online interface and both review and manage all the updates and interactions I need for each WordPress install all together in one place. They also have a number of premium addons like that of just seo services that allow you to take care of a bunch of other things like scheduled backups, security checks, SEO functions, deployment tools and much much more.

I'll say about InfiniteWP what I say about many other tools and systems people use to help manage tasks or responsibilities. The tool itself doesn't really take the place of you having to really keep an eye on and take care of things, it just helps you manage the time and efficiency with which you can do it all. For me, InfiniteWP allows me to provide a valuable and great service for my clients and helps me do it as quickly as possible and all within a familiar interface that helps me complete the tasks at hand and not get in my way instead.

If you're managing numerous WordPress installs like I am and would like some help with the process, be sure and check-out InfiniteWP. If you've got your own WordPress install and you'd like some help having it managed for you, and getting monthly reports of your online activity including social media actions in Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and LinkedIn, let me know and I'll let you know about some of the services I provide to my clients.

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