business | Aqua Vita

3.04.2010
Marketing Alchemy

How To Use Social Media Management Tools – 5 Tips

Published by Jessica Cox under Marketing Alchemy

Twitter eating up your time? Facebook filling up your schedule? Losing track of time on LinkedIn? You’re not alone. Time management is one of the top challenges for serious online networkers.

Social media management is worth the effort. Networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace can launch your message to the far corners of the net. You can harness this power for your business.

But managing these social networks doesn’t have to consume your day. Here are five tools to take back your day and streamline your social media circle.

Social Media Management Tool: HootSuite

Schedule a week’s worth of tweets and status updates in under ten minutes? It can be done! HootSuite schedules tweets for later publication on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Ping.fm. This is my personal favorite web application for handling social media.

Plus, with a careful Ping.fm setup, you can achieve social media nirvana, scheduling updates on Plaxo, MySpace, LiveJournal, and more. Truly mind-blowing.

You can keep an eye on your Facebook and LinkedIn social media networks here as well, with separate columns for various Twitter list feeds. Their reputation management settings allow for social media monitoring on your key terms. Clever.

They make it easy to use, too! There’s an iPhone App, and a quick-post button for scheduling updates while you browse.

Bonus 1: HootSuite gives you automatic link shrinkage and tracking!

Bonus 2: The adorable mascot. Look at those big eyes!

Bonus 3: It handles pages and personal accounts separately. Yes!

Social Media Management Tool: TweetDeck

TweetDeck is an application that lives on your computer, organizing the stream-of-consciousness into customized columns. It plays well with Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, and Twitter, and handles custom searches, @replies, and direct messages.

Bonus 1: TweetDeck is also on iPhone.

Bonus 2: It handles multiple accounts with the greatest of ease.

Bonus 3: It’s a multimedia star: drag and drop images into TweetDeck to share on Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace. You can record and share YouTube videos within TweetDeck also.

Bonus 4: Interactive notifications.

Social Media Tip: Import Your Blog to Facebook

This one is a huge time-saver. Facebook has a built-in tool to import posts from an external blog! The posts show up as notes, without you lifting a finger. Facebook will automatically update your notes whenever you write in your blog.

With this setting, you can import posts from Blogger, WordPress, or any other blogging platform with an RSS feed. Choose wisely: you can only import one blog.

Bummer: Imported blog posts cannot be edited.

Social Media Tool: Posterous

From one email, create dozens of blogs and social updates. Send blogs, pictures, and status updates to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and blogs.

This service spins all forms of multimedia into web-friendly formats. Bring them your photos, audio files and links, documents, video files and links. They will even resize photos to web-friendly size.

Bonus 1: Posterous redefines “easy to use”. Attach multimedia file to email. Send to post@posterous.com. Poof! Blog post.

Bonus 2: Posterous also offers a social media bookmarklet, for your browsing convenience.

Social Media Tool: Ping.fm

Post blogs, miniblogs, and status updates to over 40 social networks. From the popular to the obscure, this is one of the most complete network support for social media posting services. Unfortunately, multiple Twitter accounts are a bit tough.

For customized communications, you can create “posting groups” to focus messages. Your “professional” group might hook into LinkedIn, Twitter, Plaxo. On the other hand, the “Personal” group could send information to Blogger, Friendster, and so on.

Bonus 1: Ning support, very impressive.

Bonus 2: iPhone integration. Of course.

Bonus 3: Social bookmarking support.

Social Media Tip: Tools do not replace interaction

Imagine sending a robot to replace you at in-person networking events. Not the best impression to leave with your audience, right? In the same way, overusing social media tools can leave your network cold and disinterested. It can be tempting to take things to the limit with automation. But remember, there’s no substitute for the “personal touch” in networking, online or offline.

Like what you read? Sign up for our RSS feed!

2.19.2010
Marketing Alchemy

Leveraging Word-of-Mouth in the Digital Age

Published by Jessica Cox under Marketing Alchemy

Have you ever listened to one of your friends rave about a person they’re really excited about? After hearing them talk, you might say to yourself “Wow, they sound really great.” You’re looking forward to seeing them. You can imagine how great it will be to finally meet this person.

But when you get to that first introduction, their handshake is limp. Their eyes dart nervously around the room. They can’t string a coherent sentence together. They smell funny. Within seconds, you’re looking for the nearest available exit.

What happened? Your friend was completely sold on this person. But if your experience didn’t match up to their word-of-mouth, that praise turns to dust.

Word-of-mouth leads to research

Word-of-mouth is only the first step towards earning a customer. Have you thought about what they do after they hear a recommendation?

In the past, they might’ve looked you up in the Yellow Pages. These days, phone book usage has plummeted as more and more people look for instant information online.

The Internet allows people to research word-of-mouth recommendations within seconds. That’s right. People can hear about your business from their friends, colleagues, relatives, neighbors, and jump online to research you.

This is a significant shift. Before they ever step into your store, before they ever pick up the phone, they are checking you out online.

Take a moment to think about what impression your website gives potential clients. Are you satisfied with this or embarrassed?

Your website is your handshake to the world

Many times, your website hosts the first interaction between potential customer and your company. Make sure you’re sending the right message. Website design, content, usability, everything has to work for your clients.

Think of your website as your first chance to provide great customer service. Make sure you’ve done everything in your power to satisfy their needs for information, education, and convenience. What questions do people have about your company? What information do they need to do business with you?

Constantly think of ways you can improve their experience. This is a good faith promise that you will be there to help them every step of the way. Remember, these first online impressions can convert word-of-mouth recommendations into a customer, or drive them into the arms of your competition.

Word-of-mouth can echo across the web

The good news: word-of-mouth spreads just as fast online as it does in the real world. Review sites are springing up all across the Internet, and these opinions can make or break a prospect’s opinion about your business.

Yahoo! Local, Google Local, Yelp.com, InsiderPages, and a host of other sites are dedicated to providing consumers with information about your company. Make sure your information is updated, and encourage your happy customers to share the news about your company. And of course, make sure you post testimonials and reviews on your website as well.

Press releases and articles are another way to boost your credibility. People searching for your company can see a wealth of information about your success, philosophy, and business practices. Everything they need to feel secure doing business with you.

Word-of-mouth is still a powerful tool to drive business to your company. Your website can help convert these recommendations into satisfied customers.

Need help making that first impression? Give us a call; we can help.

1.01.2010
Aqua Vita News

6 Aqua Vita Business Resolutions for 2010

Published by Michelle Pierce under Aqua Vita News

People have been making New Year’s resolutions since time immemorial. And most of us make numerous personal ones. But what about New Year’s resolutions for your business?
What do you want to accomplish this year professionally?

Where do you want your business to be in December 2010?

I can think of a lot of things that I’d like Aqua Vita to accomplish this year. But here are a few resolutions we have for 2010 to make us better than ever.

1. Create monthly editorial calendars.

I am a planner. However, I am also a chronic procrastinator. (Go figure at how this works together, but it does. It also explains 90 percent of my college experience.)

This means that when I plan something out, I can wait until just about the last minute to knock it out, and I knock it out awesomely. However, if I don’t plan, I completely forget about it and then I have one of those panic attacks that happen about fifteen minutes after the deadline goes whooshing by. (Unlike Douglas Adams, I don’t much like that sound.)

So, with definite deadlines and a plan, I’m going to ensure that our blog not only updates on time, but brings you excellent content with every post. I’ve already gotten a head start on this one, with an editorial calendar that covers the first three months of 2010.

2. Spend 8 hours a week on AV exclusively.

This is difficult to do when you’re in a service industry. You spend so much time doing things for your clients that, more often than not, you forget to do things for your own business.

I would love to take at least one day a week to work on Aqua Vita Creative. Marketing, blog planning, social media, developing internal systems, whatever needs to get done to make us more efficient and more remarkable.

And while we’re talking about marketing…

3. Build client personas.

It’s something you hear from every marketer: you need to create a persona of your perfect client so that you know exactly who you’re talking to with your copy. Marketing materials without a definite audience wind up being too generic to be effective.

I know this. However, it’s only been in the past few months that we’ve sat down to start hashing out just who our target audience is. This year, our goal is to have two or three clear client personas built before the end of the first quarter.

4. Send all clients monthly reports.

Good news: We’ve done a great job with keeping in touch with all our clients and keeping them abreast of the work we’re doing. Bad news: They don’t necessarily have any reports to that effect (and neither do we).

Monthly reports are fantastic, wonderful things. Both you and your client know where you stand at the end of the month, and it makes it easier for both of you to offer suggestions and refinements. By the end of the first quarter of this year, we want to be sending these beautiful monthly reports to all our clients so that we can constantly improve our work.

5. Eliminate inefficiency and make shiny new systems!

“Efficiency” is one of our major goals for 2010, and we’re doing that two ways. One, by trashing inefficient processes. For example: doing remote deposit checking instead of having to drive to the bank every time we need to deposit a check. Two, reworking the way we create proposals and contracts so that they take two days instead of two weeks.

We want to put in place systems that allow us to spend more time doing productive things – working on our stuff, handling client accounts – and less time doing data entry, scheduling, pricing, and administrative tasks.

6. Hit up a bunch of tradeshows and conventions.

All right, we’ve spent enough time with our nose to the grindstone, working 14-16 hours days to get the company up and running. Now, it’s time to turn our focus to education and networking.

Whether it’s for our industry or an industry that we’re working with, we want hit up some tradeshows and conventions where we can hang out with people face to face. It gets kind of lonely staring at a computer screen all day.

And now…a bonus resolution!

7. Constantly upgrade technology and skill sets.

Getting a new business up and running is a whirlwind, to say the least. When you’re first starting out, you care less about how recent your software is and more about whether your checkbook will be in the black or the red at the end of the month.

However, once you’re established, it’s time to take your eyes off the aforementioned grindstone and turn them toward making your business more awesome. This means taking the time to upgrade skill sets and technology to make you more effective.

For example, a major purchase for me this year will be a new computer. I want to run the latest versions of the Adobe Creative Suite, something that pushes my current PC to the limits. Upgrading my machine will make me more efficient, as it saves me load times and lockups.

What are some of the New Year’s resolutions that you have for your business? Where do you want to be on December 21, 2010? Tell us in the comments below!

Are there any topics you’d like to see us cover in this blog? Shoot me an email at michelle at aquavitacreative dot com.

Picture by Optical illusion

12.31.2009
Eureka!

10 Things I Learned about Business in 2009 – Part Two

Published by Jonathan Cox under Eureka!

6. Know your products…

…inside and out. You can get an excellent feel for what works and what doesn’t by making note of your weakest products, your strongest products, and the price points each sells for.

Earlier this year, I spent a fair chunk of time and money creating a couple of new product packages for folks that needed a simple startup site. It wasn’t successful. Fortunately, I keep records of sales meetings on new products, so I began to review them to look for the problem.

After much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I discovered two things:

People didn’t like the configuration of the payment plan. They would rather pay 50% down, 50% after than to pay it over a year. It didn’t matter that it was no-interest financing. Since this product was for new customers and we hadn’t built up a history of trust, they felt bound by a year-long commitment to a company they didn’t yet know.
We were selling it to the wrong people. Because of the lower cost, we thought this would be ideal for individuals or businesses with less than 3 employees and a slim gross margin. In actuality, the product was more ideally suited to companies with 5-10 employees, but a heftier gross margin.

Never stop analyzing what you do and why you do it. Never stop analyzing your sales process, and your customer satisfaction levels with your products and services.

7. Know your customers

Only recently have I really begun to understand how freaking useful the concept of “target demographics” can be.

A few weeks ago, I decided it was time to stop making “educated guesses” on who our target market should be, and sat down to compile a list of our best customers.

By the time I had finished this list, I was staggered by how similar profiles were on the customers that we most enjoy working with. They were all within ten years of each other in age; most were the same gender, and all of them were hard working, long range planners with lots of passion and creativity within their industry.

Armed with that knowledge, I now know exactly where to spend my time and money in marketing. When I walk in to a networking event, I now know exactly what kind of person to look for. Conversely, I also know who not to look for, and sometimes that’s even more useful.

8. Know your employees

Your most valuable resources are your employees, and I’ve had the great fortune to work for very different leaderships types, and to observe how they utilized their manpower.

Here is, in my experience, the correct way to work with employees:

First of all, be selective in your hiring process. Never, ever hire in the initial interview, and only hire people who are able to prove, extensively, that they’re sane, talented people with a good track record. One of the nice things about this economy is that there are a lot of awesome, talented men and women out there who were laid off for some unfortunate reason. In difficult times, you can often find available talent that would otherwise be difficult to acquire.

Second, communicate often with your employees and listen very seriously to what they have to say, even if your immediate reaction is to disagree with them. If you’ve hired this person based on the criteria outlined above, they’re smart, experienced and gifted in their field.

By listening to employees and trusting their opinion when I’m less experienced on a topic, I’ve been able to save myself a lot of stress and heartache. And let me just say, it’s a good thing for my customers that I let my marketing, writing and design specialists make the hard calls on the projects that they’re working on.

Now, that said, there are times when even a smart, experienced and gifted person is incorrect, and you’ve got to have the guts to stand for what you believe is right, even if it means conflict. Conflict is uncomfortable, but if you can’t handle it you shouldn’t be running a business. You’ll get skinned alive by people who take advantage of accommodating people.

9. Know yourself

How passionate are you about what you’re doing? If you hate your job, you’re in the wrong industry. Quit being a pansy, save up a cash cushion and get the hell out. Go find something you LOVE to do, that gives you a sense of purpose and a feeling of accomplishment.

That said, I have a hard job. I often work 10-14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. It’s rare that I ever have a weekend off, and I’ve really had to bust it to make Aqua Vita a successful design firm, especially considering this is our first year as a full-time business, AND it’s a recession year. There have been whole weeks that have blended together as a blur of finances, planning, programming, phone calls, meetings and coffee drinking…but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I love what I do, and I’ve been told in no uncertain words by my customers that the work we do for them relieves stress, boosts sales, production and productivity…and it’s shiny!

I know that I’m in the right industry, that because I enjoy what I’m doing I’ll succeed at it where many have failed, and that I’ll have a hell of a lot of fun while I’m at it. After all, I get to an insider glimpse on how dozens of different business models work; I make pretty, functional things; and I play on the computer for a living. AWESOME.

10. Work your butt off and save

There you go: the secret to success. There are no magic pills, no financial fads or marketing schemes that’ll put that beautiful green in the bank. The best way to get rich and stay rich is to work smarter, harder and longer than any of your competitors, pay cash for everything, and save 5-10%, minimally, of everything you earn, forever. If you don’t have a 5-10% margin over your bills, get a second job.

As someone who’s played the credit card game, I can tell you that it sucks. Interest rates are higher than ever, and you DO have to pay those loans back. Shred those cards and never use them again, if you can help it.

Ah, and one more thing: A year ago, I would tell myself that if I couldn’t put huge chunks of money back, it wasn’t worth it at all. As an experiment, I went ahead and started saving 4% of my income, just to see what the emotional and fiscal benefits from it would be.

Now that I’ve completed that little experiment, here are my findings: It IS worth it, and I’ve gone from 4% to 15% of my personal income. The result is that I feel happier, less pressured, and freer in my financial decisions. If I want to take a vacation, I just reach into a little horde of cash I’ve set back for just such a purpose, and I pay for it with the lean green stuff. The result is a guilt-free, interest-free getaway.

That’s it folks! If you’ve got any comments, please post them below. I read each and every one, and I’m happy to answer any questions you might have about how Aqua Vita works, what we offer, and how I’ve turned the nightmare this year has been into a shining success.

See you on the flip side.

12.30.2009
Eureka!

10 Things I Learned About Business In 2009 – Part One

Published by Jonathan Cox under Eureka!

1. Be ethical

Times are tough, and sales are more difficult to come by in many industries. There are those who price gouge, or leave their customers high and dry at the first sign of complaint, and they get away with it, right?

It’s rough being one of the good guys right now, keeping prices fair and placing high importance on customer service and quality assurance. But don’t be duped. What goes around comes around. If you work hard and you’re good to your customers, it’ll pay back in spades.

The number one reason my company is thriving this year when so many are struggling is because of our customers. We call them to check in after a project is done, we give them discounts for purchasing our services in volume, and we’re on call for them 24/7 in case of emergencies. We treat them like family.

As a result, they continue to do business with us, and even refer new clients to us. Being ethical, even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard, always pays. Period.

2. Study, study, study

This one is so important, especially in our industry, where things are always changing. As the owner of Aqua Vita Creative, I spend a great deal of time studying ways to improve our products and production levels. I read books on marketing, finance, design, and programming.

I attend industry seminars, and this year I’ll be attending tradeshows and conventions to keep abreast of the latest technology that I can offer my customers.

Knowing your business inside and out gives you an edge over competitors that are just in it for a paycheck. It means faster turnaround times on jobs, which means lower expenses for you and lower prices for your customers, and lower prices mean higher demand.

3. Plan, plan, plan

The longer I’ve been in business, the more I see the incredible time and money saving practice of planning. There’s an old saying: “Plan your work and work your plan.” Man, that’s the truth. My experience has been that one hour of planning saves me 10 hours of work. That’s not an exaggeration.

Here are a few things I plan for Aqua Vita:

- Finances.I spend about a half hour every day planning Aqua Vita’s finances, specifically our budget, savings plan, and a plan for investments over the next financial quarter (new software, equipment, promotional materials, extended education, etc.)

- My days. I spend about 15-30 minutes every night preparing a To-Do list for the next day.

- Sales.I have a 30-minute sales meeting with my sales and marketing director every Monday morning to review prospects and sales for the week, and I have another 30-minute strategy session at week’s end to review the week.

I’ve seen incredible boosts in my focus, drive and productivity when I plan thoroughly.

4. Schedule everything

If it ain’t scheduled, it ain’t happenin’. There are plenty of sales guys, techs and marketing professionals who have no shortage of talent, but can’t keep a deadline to save their life. My observation has been that most of the time, it’s not because the person couldn’t meet the deadline; it’s just because a deadline wasn’t set at all.

Frankly, I’m astonished at how few people schedule things considering the nasty stuff that happens when you don’t. Forgotten appointments, angry customers, broken trust with employees, and hours wasted every day. Yeesh. Schedule everything you can as quickly as you can and save yourself the headache and heartache.

5. Always have a next step

When I first started in sales, I noticed that even though I was having some really great conversations with prospects, the relationship never seemed to go anywhere. Then I realized the problem: I was leaving conversations with no game plan for the future.

Now, I try to set up an action at the end of every meeting, call, and e-mail correspondence. This practice builds real relationships with your clients. You’ll talk more, and you’ll come to know and trust each other better than you would have otherwise. In my case, doing this has dramatically improved my sales, too, and I won’t lie: I like sales.

Check back tomorrow for the rest of the list!