Tag Archives: online

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Managing Your Digital Image

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Because the internet plays such a dominant role in life, it’s crucial that you take steps to ensure what’s posted about you is both accurate and positive. Information that appears online and is associated with you—your published content and information that identifies you—is collectively known as your digital identity. This information functions as a virtual introduction to you and tells your online story. Your digital identity is the foundation of your digital image and intended to be an asset. Because what appears online is basically immortal, it’s imperative that your digital image, defined by the published content and other information attached to you and your business entity, is presented in a flattering, trust and confidence-building manner.

It is assumed that prospective clients or employers will search your name and business online before making any meaningful contact to discuss your products or services, so it makes sense to periodically monitor and curate your digital identity to ensure that information is current and represents you well. Your primary objective when editing your info is to corroborate your digital narrative and the talking points you commonly share when meeting with prospective clients or employers. The core function of your digital image and the narrative it communicates is to confirm your credibility and build trust.

According to “Assessing Web3’s Building Blocks,” an article recently published by financial services giant J.P. Morgan that explores digital identity, four factors contribute to the digital identity (listed below). It is incumbent upon you to proactively examine the information included in your digital identity so that your online image and narrative will support your professional experience, education, achievements and, by extension, your personal and business brand.

In addition to ensuring that information is accurate, decide how you want prospects to see you. Remove text and images that don’t reflect your goals or brand. If a friend has posted a not-so-flattering image on a social media site and tagged you, ask him/her to kindly delete it.

  1. Identifiers: Your name, email, addresses and social media handles.
  2. Identity Attributes: Information about you, including educational degrees and employment history.
  3. Reputation: Your online persona, contributions, affiliations and followings.
  4. Digital Collectibles & Assets: Anything you own in digital form, commonly non-fungible tokens.

Always professional

Be mindful to consistently adhere to professional standards whenever communicating electronically, ever aware that text and images posted can remain forever, whether intended for public consumption or personal texts and emails. Be vigilant and safeguard your reputation; avoid committing to writing your uncensored thoughts about potentially sensitive political or religious topics. It may, as well, be wise to avoid expressing your positions on current events. You don’t want to worry about being compromised by a leak and ending up being canceled and in need of expensive and rarely completely effective crisis or reputation management services.

Social media listening and digital presence

It’s important to know what appears in an online search of yourself and it’s a smart idea to periodically consult the major search engines—Google, Bing, AOL, Yahoo and also Yelp, Yellow Pages, or other industry-specific ranking sites that would apply to your entity—and search your name and your business entity to examine the results and assess the quality and reach of your digital presence. To avoid or correct misinformation, take control by claiming and updating an existing listing and, if you like, create a listing for your entity if none appears. Furthermore, make it a practice to regularly conduct a social media audit on yourself, so you can remove problematic content before prospects and competitors see it.

You may also be well-served by investing in a social media listening campaign, a marketing strategy that refers to researching whether positive or negative conversations regarding you, your entity, products and/or services currently appear in social media and other online platforms. Social media listening monitors online channels to detect mentions of your brand, competitive brands and related keywords.

The use of (paid) social media listening tools enables you to gain an accurate understanding of how customers and prospects feel about your products, services and company by discovering what they say on social media channels. Through social listening, you can track all mentions of your brand on social media in real-time and get not only valuable insights into how customers feel about your products or services, but also verify what their pain points are and learn what they’d like to see from you in the future. Social media listening is also an excellent source of competitive intel, as it can monitor competitive brands, trending content and sentiment analysis on topics related to your industry to obtain a comprehensive understanding of what customers and prospects think about your competition.

Social media listening has become a major marketing strategy at national and global brands. It was originally thought that marketers at smaller businesses would not benefit from the practice, mostly because the cost wouldn’t justify the ROI. Yet over the past few years, social media listening is now considered essential and an increasing number of mid-size and small business owners and marketers recognize its value. The biggest motivators are likely greater affordability offered by marketing companies and the explosive growth of online customer engagement fueled by the pandemic shutdown. social media listening data can be used to inform everything from marketing and product strategy to customer service and support, helping you make smarter, data-driven decisions that will have a positive impact on your business’s bottom line. To learn more about social media listening services click: https://www.webfx.com/blog/social-media/social-listening-tools/#:~:text=7%20best%20social%20listening%20tools%20in%202024%201,5.%20Mention%206%206.%20BuzzSumo%207%207.%20Keyhole.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: ©The Bettman Archive. Gloria Swanson (center) as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950). Co-written and directed by Billy Wilder, the film received three Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay/Story.

Technology / Office , , Leave a comment

Step Up to Business Tech

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Are you operating your business as if it was still the 20th century? You may do a good job and generate enough revenue to reliably pay your expenses and take the occasional vacation but we’re 20 + years into the 21st century now. It’s time to catch up! Respectfully, I suggest that a few practical concessions to the present will improve your command of business management, save time and increase revenue and profit.

You don’t have to give up everything you like about last century. You can still listen to 80s music (like me) and rollerblade (I was afraid to try that). Help yourself sustain and build on the successes you’ve already created. Step out from behind your unease with the unknown and understand that to conquer today’s business challenges you won’t win without today’s business tools and the tools are digital. Fast access to accurate, actionable data is just one of the benefits you’ll receive when you take on a digital business solution or two.

According to a 2017 survey of 2000+ small businesses in the U.S. conducted by Google on behalf of mega-consulting firm Deloitte, 80 % of small business owners underutilize digital business tools (I think that finding can be extended to include Freelancers) and 40 % feel that digital tools don’t apply to their business. The survey was pre-pandemic but other than the introduction of videoconference sales meetings not much has changed, despite the fact that even pre-pandemic it had been demonstrated that prospects and customers expect to be able to communicate and do business online, whether or not the companies are e-commerce.

Here’s the reality—-mostly, prospects launch their buyer’s journey on the internet, using key words they hope will call up websites they can browse to investigate available options. When they find providers who look promising they dig deeper and, e.g., check out case studies and testimonials. They’ll use chatbots to quickly find what they’d like to see. They might click call-to-action buttons and schedule free consultation calls with companies whose offerings look like a fit. They’ll probably also search those companies on Yelp and social media.

Does your website measure up to the buyer’s journey described above? If not, it’s time to step up your business technology. Don’t panic! Accelo, Google Analytics, Constant Contact, Block, Calendly and others are here to help you analyze and use your website stats, support your email marketing and/ or newsletter or blog, get you going with a chatbot and overall help you to build a more profitable company.

Google Analytics —-Make sense of the numbers taken from your blog, newsletter, website and social media accounts and use the data to make smart decisions that improve your company’s sales funnel/ buyer’s journey and win more new customers. Are there pages in your website that seem to frustrate visitors and cause them to exit the site? Your data will find the problem so you can consider how to improve page experiences. Click to get more info and register your website and business.

https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/small-business/

Email marketing—-promote your products and services to current and potential customers. You’ll need to invite/ persuade prospects to provide their email address. Do not spam. The link is to an overview and comparison of companies that provide the services, including prices.

https://www.quicksprout.com/best-email-marketing-services/

Time tracking & invoices—-B2B service providers need to monitor time spent on hourly work assignments, as well as invoice client work on time, in order to get paid when the bills are due. See the features and cost overview and comparison of companies at the link below.

https://timeanalyticssoftware.com/19-best-billable-hours-tracker-software-in-2021/

Call-to-Action—-Ask your website designer to create this for you or DIY with an embedded hyperlink. Use CTAs to take your website and social media visitors by the hand and 1.) tempt them with timely and valuable information and 2.) persuade them to take a quick and easy action to get it (click me!). Sort of like what I’m doing in this post when I invite you to click below and learn how to create your CTA.

https://tinkseo.com/call-to-action-button-cta-design-guide/

Chat bot—-Ask a web or app development expert to set one up because my research shows that “plug & play” is a myth. Furthermore, think carefully about how to make your chat bot useful. What questions can the bot answer? Please click the article accessed at the link.

https://www.callcentrehelper.com/chatbots-examples-160804.htm

Mobile payments—-Secure, convenient payment is an important component of good customer service as well as a component of good cash-flow. Take a look and decide which system will be most useful for you and your customers.

https://www.predictiveanalyticstoday.com/mobile-payment-providers/

Online and in-person payments—-The customers of many small businesses are a mix of e-commerce and in-person, making it necessary to find a credit /debit card processor that offers acceptable processing fees for both types of transactions. Another consideration is the number of transactions that you’ll run: some businesses have many (often small) transactions and the fee structure will be an important factor. But if a significant number of orders are typically phoned in, then the keyed-in transaction rate will be a deciding factor. Bear in mind that according to American Consumer Credit Counseling, Inc., just 14% of shoppers use cash for every day or large purchases.

https://www.usnews.com/360-reviews/business/credit-card-processing/best-small-business-credit-card-processing

Appointments and calls—-Whether you invite a client or prospect to speak by telephone, video, or face2face, by way of a CTA button or email, creating the appointment online is a given. Check out this link and evaluate free scheduling apps that allow you to indicate your availability, clients and prospects to choose a time and will send a reminder to all parties.

https://fitsmallbusiness.com/best-free-appointment-scheduling-software/

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Leonard Nimoy as First Officer Spock in Star Trek (NBC-TV 1966-1969)

Professional Development , , , Leave a comment

Why Upskilling Matters

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A study that polled more than 5,670 global executives in 48 countries and was published in September 2019 by the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) found that as many as 120 million workers in the world’s 12 largest economies may need to be either retrained or upskilled as a result of the increasing use of AI and intelligent automation in workplaces. No surprise, study respondents indicated that new skills requirements are rapidly emerging, as other skills become obsolete.

For example in the 2016 IBV study, participating executives ranked STEM technical core capabilities and basic computer and software/application competency as the top two most critical skills for employees. But in 2018, the most valued skills were behavioral, not technical– willingness to be flexible/ agile and adaptable to change, as well as time management skills and the ability to prioritize.

Because you are a small fish Freelance consultant or small business owner, it would be wise to acknowledge that in order to successfully compete and sustain your venture, the quality of the solutions and value your company delivers is intimately dependent on the quality of your expertise. To maintain the efficacy and viability of your skills, continuing education is required.

Sometimes, Freelancers aren’t sure of which new skills it makes sense to acquire, especially when looking ahead to emerging technologies and the evolving priorities of clients. What might be a passing fad and what will probably be a keeper that calls for a pivot or retooling? You may not subscribe to the (sometimes costly) data that provides insights and analyses of market trends.

The advantage gained through digital marketing techniques is but one example of where many small operations should strive to catch-up. Many Freelancers and small business owners and leaders are not fully aware that their marketing tactics are behind the curve. Marketers at small ventures often haven’t seen how bigger, better-funded companies use digital tools and tactics to generate leads and move prospects through the sales funnel by using social media. They haven’t seen the evidence that shows how SEO key words and phrases can drive traffic to websites and social media accounts.

Unfortunately, upskilling education can be expensive. The good news is that obtaining professional education has never been more accessible than it is today, thanks to the pandemic-fueled explosion of online learning. In September 2020, I used a federal stimulus check to finance a 2-day remotely presented workshop (total 14 hours) to improve my ability to present remote workshops (or run online meetings, for that matter) and optimize the experience for those who attend.

For 12+ years I’ve taught business plan writing courses and other business-themed workshops at an incubator that for 26 years has provided coaching and other assistance to aspiring and current female entrepreneurs. It was easy to see that if I wanted to continue working with the organization, I had to master the subtle differences between in-person and remote instruction and communication dynamics.

In January the incubator, which operates 5 locations in 4 New England states, offered the rare opportunity of providing teacher training (at no charge to affiliated instructors). Last week, I completed the second installment of a 3-part (total 9 hours) remote workshop that’s teaching my colleagues and I the rationale for and fundamentals of an innovative business model canvasing technique that borrows from the lean start-up method. In the third session, we’ll learn how to present the business modeling method in our classes.

How can you find upskilling education that will be useful and reasonably affordable, as well as convenient? Once again, I’ll recommend the usually well-designed and presented professional development programs and resources available at chambers of commerce and other business or professional associations. Explore community colleges as well; they’ll mostly offer semester long courses but many now also offer day-long and half-day workshops that appeal to business owners and leaders. The available courses seem to have become more sophisticated and varied over the years, apparently in response to demand.

Visit websites and join mailing lists to receive advance notice of what might benefit you. Also, pay attention to thought leaders and analysts by listening to business-themed podcasts every once in a while, and reading the business section of your local newspaper. Do a search to locate articles and even studies that address your industry and customer groups and please, keep reading my posts. I’m here for you.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: John Houseman (1902-1988) as the redoubtable law professor Charles W. Kingsfield in The Paper Chase (1973, directed by James Bridges), for which he won the 1974 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Houseman reprised the role in the television series that was inspired by the film and broadcast 1978-1979 on CBS-TV and then on Showtime 1983-1986.

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B2B Selling: Virtual or Face2Face?

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Hand-wringing regularly ensues when business owners and their sales teams discuss the subject of B2B selling in the pandemic era of the digital age. Gaining access to prospective customers, especially, has never been more challenging. Work From Home has sharply limited personal contact between buyers and sellers and impeded the development of a mutually beneficial relationship that the standard face2face sales call enables.

I spent about a dozen years selling at a Fortune 100 company and built a 7-figure sales territory by driving around to meet customers and prospects face2face, developing and nurturing relationships and creating business. There’s lots of evidence to prove that the ideal sales call takes place In Real Time. However, there are exceptions. Much depends on the product or service being sold as well as the industry tradition.

Office-based sales reps at one time earned a nice living by using the telephone, the original virtual communication tool, to sell ad placements for magazines and newspapers. Sellers and buyers often developed cozy relationships that over time led to regularly appearing ads and excellent life time customer value for many accounts.

Telephone sales of ad placements in print and online publications continues, but customer lists and revenues have withered. Advertising on social media platforms, especially Facebook and LinkedIn, plus Google, Bing and Yahoo are robust and growing. With the exception of Google, which employs telemarketers to call prospects, email appeals and pop-up ads on the sites are the sales strategies. Other than a record of prior sales, customer knowledge and relationship development have been shunted aside. No one is complaining, so the practice continues.

Despite the new normal sales landscape, every business will eventually need B2B products or services of some sort. The traditional role of the sales professional—sharing anecdotal user experience data, recommending solutions that could potentially deliver the desired result, earning trust and building relationships—-is even more valuable in our prolonged state of uncertainty. The customer and the type of product or service being sold will guide you to the most effective sales approach, face2face or virtual, if you have the luxury of making a choice.

When face2face is best

New customer acquisition is more difficult in the virtual realm, whether telephone or videoconferencing. Many subtleties of voice, body language, or facial expression could be unnoticed by the seller or go unexpressed by the buyer in a medium that some consider to be unnatural or inscrutable.

Whenever possible, arrange a face2face sales meeting with prospects. You want to enable good communication so that the prospective customer will be relaxed enough to tell his/her story—- the problem or goal, the purpose, the deadline, the budget and the decision-maker.

You don’t want clunky technology inadvertently putting up a barrier. There’s just no substitute for the reassuring presence of a friendly, efficient and knowledgeable sales professional to encourage the customer’s confidence and trust in your organization and its products and services.

Especially in complex sales situations, virtual connections alone can’t match the ability of a sales professional on the scene, to draw out of the prospect the kind of full disclosure that puts all the cards on the table and allows for the best solution to be proposed.

When phone calls work


Cross-selling, up-selling, add-ons and renewals can usually be successfully achieved by way of a digital medium, including the phone. Many are weary of videoconferencing and will be relieved to work things out on the telephone.

The WFH environment presents a credible excuse to call customers to initiate a check-in to verify that they’re fully realizing the purpose and value of the solution that’s been purchased. The phone call can also open the door to a cross-selling/ up-selling pitch. Phone follow-up is especially useful when products or services are bought as a subscription (e.g., SaaS) or consumption-based (e.g., cloud services).

Usage by customers is the key to repeat business (and sales revenue growth) and usage is ruled by value. Technology companies have customer success managers who work mostly by phone and videoconferencing to help existing customers maximize the ongoing benefits of their purchase.

Leverage the virtual advantage

B2B sales execs are learning that effective virtual selling requires more than just shifting their usual face2face script to a videoconference or phone call. It’s much easier to make a call than to take a plane and for that obvious reason, virtual meetings make sense for customers located in geographies not easy to reach.

But the real power of virtual selling is realized by leveraging its unique advantages. Consider this—both buyers and sellers can easily pull into a sales meeting key stakeholders and experts from multiple locations—corporate HQ, region office, or WFH. Meetings can be recorded. Participants can quickly look up or verify information and share it on the screen. AI-driven prompts can be activated(e.g., about the preferences of similar customers) to guide the discussion.

Find the balance

Tailoring your product or service talking points to customer needs has always been a cornerstone of successful selling. Now, successful selling also includes tailoring your communication modes (when possible), employing the right mix of face2face and virtual selling, supported with email marketing outreach and online customer self-service, as appropriate.

Making a sale has always required fine-tuning the sales process to match the purpose, experiences, priorities and expectations of buyers. The question is no longer whether online digital tools will overtake traditional selling methods. Now the question is, how can sales professionals best integrate digital technology with traditional sales techniques to create value and trust and generate sales?

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: In 2020, Los Angeles filmmaker Jesse Orrall showed how he one-upped a few virtual meetings by creating a pre-recorded image of himself to substitute for his actual presence at the meetings.

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Make Doing Business Easy

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Do you know what business you’re really in? I have asked this question of readers before. It remains a question that every Freelance professional or business owner should periodically explore and confirm the answer. The unspoken motives that bring clients to your door (or website) are powerful. They will evolve and adapt to the times. In order to maximize the success of your venture, those motives must be understood in the present. The drivers that brought in clients five years ago may not be persuasive today.

Add to the mix that attention spans are short and seem to be getting shorter. We are used to 140 character tweets, sent by everyone from middle school teens to captains of industry. On August 25, 2020, it was announced that there were 100 million active TikTok users each month in the U.S, uploading and viewing 60 second cell phone videos.

Everyone wants what they want now, bring it to me fast and make the way to get it easy. Instant gratification. Folks have been working from home for more than a year and they’ve come to enjoy sitting at home in their jammies, only reaching for a professional-grade shirt when a video meeting demands their presence.

Online ordering and home delivery of everything imaginable rules the day. Despite the gradual lifting of pandemic restrictions across the states, it appears that many pandemic-driven customs will remain. Whatever is fast and easy-peasy —-convenient—-is now an expectation and that’s what it takes to win the hearts and wallets of customers. Anazon CEO Jeff Bezos is well on the way toward reaching his stated goal of becoming a trillionaire.

In other words, no matter what business you determine that you’re in, the operational aspects of the buying process must be easy, seamless and convenient as customers perceive it. Let’s look at how you and your team can set that into motion.

Technology to the rescue

The right tech solutions are your ticket to making it easy and convenient for prospects and current customers to do business with your organization. The right tech solutions can also make it easy and convenient for you, Freelancer or business owner, to more efficiently manage your company by utilizing targeted software, if you will, for certain routine tasks. You and your team can then apply the time saved to working on the business—-analyzing Key Performance Index data and using the findings to develop strategies and action plans that will most likely be effective, for example.

Bring convenience to your website visitors by installing a chat bot, programmed with a half-dozen concise answers to common questions that prospects ask, that make it easy and convenient to find what’s important while in the initial stage of their decision-making process. Add links written in a bold font and brightly colored lettering that call attention to links for company contact info, the blog or newsletter, case studies or white papers and your upcoming podcast or webinar appearances. Devise an appealing Call to Action and you’ll persuade visitors to learn more about your products, your services and you.

Check website tabs to make sure that visitors can intuitively find company press releases, articles published by you or about the company, customer testimonials and any business awards, nominations, or recognition your company has received. Get site visitors to decision-influencing information quickly and easily.

Enable the sale by installing e-commerce software that you’ve determined is a good fit to make ordering, shipping and paying easy to navigate and secure with encryption.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Hugh Laurie (l) as Bertie Wooster, British gentleman and member of the Idle Rich, with Stephen Fry as Jeeves, his sardonic but loyal butler, in the BBC-TV adaptation of the P.G. Wodehouse Jeeves stories.

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e-Commerce Insights

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Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.  Just because everything is different, doesn’t mean that anything has changed.  Way back in the middle of the 20th century, business owners and advertising/marketing specialists learned through experience that the response rate to advertising campaigns, known today in the internet age as the conversion rate, is about 3%.  When you distribute a marketing flier in a chosen geography to announce a new business, for example, either by door to door leafleting or through a mailing, you can expect that 3% or so of the recipients will show up and buy at some point.

In the internet age, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube will announce the grand opening.  The business owner will spend several thousand dollars to launch a website that’s e-commerce ready, with a user-friendly and secure payment system and reliable shipping.  Social media accounts are created, text and photos begin the digital marketing campaign.  According to Statista, U.S. retail B2C e-commerce sales in 2017 were approximately $409,208,000 and 2018 retail B2C e-commerce sales have been projected to reach or exceed $461,582,000.

That’s all to the good, but recent research indicates that the internet age has only barely advanced the original direct marketing response rate.  E-commerce sales conversion rates are about 4%, meaning that 96% of your website visitors do not buy.  Your website may be able to attract customers from all over the world, but no matter.  Whether your customers are down the street or in Amsterdam, aided by technology or looking at a flier that was left in the entrance of their apartment building, only a handful will respond to your advertising outreach.

The offline (i.e., in person) sales conversion rate is much more favorable, estimated at 30%. Why such a big gap between online and offline purchasing? Consumer behavior researchers note that trust is integral to making a purchase online or offline, but I’ve not seen research on why trust develops at a much greater rate in offline shopping. I suppose it can be attributed to seeing is believing?

There is another factor as well, one that seems to be overlooked when the discrepancy between online and offline sales conversion rates are compared and that is, the in-store sales help.  The good ones can lead a customer down the garden path with a nice smile, a warm greeting, knowledge of the merchandise and the ability to answer questions and reassure.  Good sales help are integral to generating revenue for the store.

Derrick Neufeld, Associate Professor of Information Systems at Western University’s Ivey Business School in Ontario, Canada and Mahdi Roghanizad, Assistant Professor at Huron University College also at Western University in Ontario, Canada, designed an experiment to study motivating factors in 245 research subjects and learn what might influence online purchases, from facts about secure online payments to the website’s font sizes and colors.  The research subjects were asked to visit the website of a bookstore in Australia that had been in business for 17 years and with whom none of them had previously known or patronized and to then make some buying decisions.

Neufeld and Roghanizad found, surprisingly, that objective information about privacy and secure payment systems have less influence on purchasing than do subjective factors in website design that signal trust.  Online purchases from an unknown entity, in particular, involve risk and potential customers rely more on subjective clues that communicate trust, such as “professionalism” and aesthetics, to make themselves feel comfortable enough to put their money down.

So how might you use this information to support online purchases from your company website? It sounds as if you’d be advised to work with a very talented web designer who understands both the aesthetic and technical aspects of the craft.  The e-commerce focused website must have attractive page layouts and fonts, expert product photography (and maybe a video, too), colors that psychologists have determined will appeal to customers who are known to buy your B2C product and a good overall flow to the website pages.  I recommend that even if it’s a second-tier priority, include a line that verifies the security and privacy of customer financial information.

Think of your e-commerce store in the way that proprietors of bricks and mortar locations do and create an experience that communicates the best that your brand has to offer.  Make your website an attractive, welcoming environment that offers quality merchandise, intuitive navigation and excellent customer service.  Make shopping a satisfying experience, as it is meant to be.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Photograph: Custom tailoring at Lagu Hong Kong Tailor in Hong Kong, China (2012)

Marketing , , , , Leave a comment

Take Command of Your Online Brand

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“Reputation, reputation, reputation. Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!” (Cassio)  Othello Act II, Scene 3

According to WebpageFX, a digital marketing and SEO company headquartered in Harrisburg, PA, about 25% of a company’s market value is directly based on its reputation.  Along with word-of-mouth reviews, which are indisputably powerful but nevertheless comparatively limited, a company’s reputation is significantly impacted through online sources.  Management of your organization’s online reputation, which is part of your brand, is a must-do.

The online reputation starts with the look and content of the company website and also encompasses reviewing sites such as Yelp, Angie’s List and Trip Advisor and the array of social media platforms from Snapchat to Facebook.  If you throw in content marketing campaigns that are distributed through email marketing, I wonder if the 25% impact figure is generous enough?

WebpageFX also reports that organization leaders now take online reputation management very seriously and 15% of organizations have followed through on an online reputation management strategy and 87% agree that managing online reputation risks is even more important than managing strategic risks.  Think about it—strategic risks are potentially costly, but when paid and unpaid haters flood the comments section of an influential site, the hapless company that perhaps has done no real harm can be shoved into the abyss.

Online attackers spew a shocking amount of vitriol and their diatribes seem to have a million-year half-life.  Blackmail can be involved as well.  I’ve personally witnessed the strong-arming of the General Manager of a lovely B & B by –are you ready for this?– a retired police officer who faked a problem in his guest room, refused to be placated by what most would accept as fair settlement for the “inconvenience” and threatened to ruin the business with bad Trip Advisor and Yelp reviews if his request for a free two- night stay (worth $450) was not granted.  Rumor has it that he’s played the game to the detriment of several small guest houses across the country.  A shoot-out at the OK Corral might be easier to win.

WebpageFX data showed that 91% of consumers search businesses online.  When I’ve gone to meet new clients, in particular someone who has been referred to me and whom I’ve not met,  they frequently mention that they’ve read this blog and viewed my website.  80% of consumers (presumably B2B and B2C) changed their mind about doing business with a company and 67% will not buy from a company that has received from one to three negative reviews.

Regarding social media sites, participation on the various social media platforms is a given for most Freelance consultants, business owners and corporate and not-for-profit leaders. The extent of your B2B client’s social media engagement as regards their external labor force along with your time and inclination, will determine which social media platforms that you’ll use. Maybe you’ll use one or two platforms, plus publish long-form content sent out as an ongoing email marketing campaign.

Just because you don’t use every available social media platform doesn’t mean that you should ignore those that you don’t use. To the contrary, claim all business listings and social media platform addresses, so that a competitor or imposter cannot assume your identity.  Start with your website. Your business name should belong to you alone. Protect your business and buy when possible your business domain name in the .biz and .net formats.  if there is a name that is similar to your company name and it becomes available, buy it and save yourself the potential for headaches down the road. Ensure that an imposter cannot claim your name and make sport of you, bear false witness, or commit other devious acts.

On your preferred social media platforms, maintain a reasonably active and consistent presence as you bring value to your readers.  Post content that will benefit your organization’s reputation and sales revenues.  WordPress allows posting to LinkedIn and my 100 or so connections expect to hear from me every Tuesday.

Finally, if you should receive any negative feedback online, respond quickly and diplomatically. Demonstrate that you regret the mishap and you intend to make amends.  As you publicly clean up the mess, you may win a few customers who like the fact that you’re human and you care.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

IMG_0015    Tall Ships Parade in Boston Harbor June 16, 2017

Marketing, Technology / Office , , Leave a comment

Time to Redesign Your Website?

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Have you become disappointed with your website, or are you merely bored? Have you been visiting the websites of your colleagues and contemporaries and thinking about how you may want to do a website makeover? Think carefully about your goals before making a decision.

What would I like the site to do for my business?

Ultimately, a website gives information about your products and services and communicates how doing business with you can benefit those who would become your customers. Your job is to develop a website that gives prospects the confidence to explore more seriously the idea of working with you. Whatever is on your site—text, audio, or visual—must support that action.

Older websites are likely to be static, rather than interactive. That means in order to update the site with new information, it’s necessary to pay a web developer to make  changes in text, photos, videos and lay-out. As a result, static websites often do not reflect much of what is happening now.

Some Freelancers depend upon their websites to pre-qualify prospects through the use of an online contact form.  Rather than posting your email and telephone number on the “contact us” page, there is instead a form for interested parties to complete, so that they will receive a call-back. Serious shoppers only, please!

Content marketing will be featured on the website.  Freelancers who produce a weekly blog or monthly newsletter typically include the link on their website.  Your social media platforms will likewise be accessible through your website, as will videos, webinars and podcasts that feature you in a starring or supporting role.  Case studies to help prospective clients envision how your insights and expertise might help their organization resolve challenges and achieve goals may be posted to the site as well.

How is my site under-performing?

Much depends upon the information you’d like your website to provide to interested parties. Your site can be a one-page affair that is basically an online business card.  You may list three or four services, a photo,  a 3-minute video clip of you in action (or not) and contact info and that may be quite enough to convince prospects that you are a capable professional worthy of consideration.  But maybe you would like to have a much more active and engaging site?

Up-to-date products and services list

If you’ve substantively altered—simplified, upgraded, expanded, or eliminated— the services and products that you provide, let your website reflect what is current.  As well, old content and photos might be replaced and updated with an accurate depiction of how you bring value to clients today.

Can I accurately measure how prospects respond to my site?

This step can be the key to your website design.  If you are serious about updating your site,  contact an analytics service and sign up to obtain data that will guide the development of your website.  There are a number of modestly priced website analytics services available and Google has a level that offers free analytics. Collect three or four months of data before you act.

To begin with, you’ll learn how many visitors the site receives each month and the pages that are most often visited. Now you’ll know what visitors want to know. You’ll also learn which pages are least often visited and if there are pages that are quickly abandoned for other pages, or seem to cause visitors to exit your site.  If you decide to update your website, ask your developer to build-in analytics or integration features, so that data will be yours at no extra charge, post-upgrade.

Is the site mobile-friendly? 

I write or edit three newsletters and the analytics for each consistently shows that about 50% of readers use mobile devices (smart phone or tablet) to read them. The other half use either desk models or laptops. Don’t frustrate your visitors,  make sure that your site is optimized for mobile.  Both interactive and static websites can be mobile optimized.

How’s the technology?

Recently, I met a truly brilliant MIT educated web developer named Al.  He showed me the site of a nationally known not-for-profit organization that on its website has an inoperable “donate now” button on the landing page.  It is imperative that all links and buttons on your website perform as intended on all types of devices.  Audio features must produce sound; videos must play; documents must download; ecommerce transactions must be secure.

“About us”

Trot out your brand story.  Connect with site visitors and concisely tell them what motivated you to start your business, how you developed your expertise, your vision and the company mission.  Share your guiding principles as the founder and business leader and discuss how that is reflected in your business practices.  Finally, let it be known that you love what you do and value the opportunity to work with clients. Recommended length of the text might be 200 words.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

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Social Media—Not?

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It is by now standard operating procedure for business owners and other self-employed professionals to have a visible presence on one or more social media platforms,  in addition to an online presence provided by a website.  We’ve  internalized the assumption that there is no way to either launch or sustain a viable business without an active online presence spread over an array of platforms.

The majority of my colleagues and competitors spend rather a large amount of time  researching and writing newsletters,  tweeting,  Instagramming, or linking with and friending sometimes 500 + “connections”. But really folks,  what is the demonstrable ROI of most of this effort?  Beyond a certain point,  I respectfully submit,  social media produces very little beyond siphoning off a chunk of scarce time and money.

How does social media provide a demonstrable ROI for Freelance consultants, who typically provide an intangible service? Our ventures run on referrals based on trust and reputation—how can that resource be communicated electronically? Alan Weiss, president of Summit Consulting and author of numerous books that address the consulting trade, including Million Dollar Consulting (2009), has for several years offered to split his (large) consulting fee with anyone who shows him how to acquire a client purely through social media or website channels and he signs a client as a result.  To date, there have been no takers.

The reality is that most of us in business are afraid to dial back the social media and so the practice continues. We fear that if we don’t participate,  our competitors will eat our lunch and customers will abandon us.  I’ve observed that in certain businesses and organizations,  social media and website marketing yield a good ROI.  A large collaborative of Boston artists and galleries has recently hired me to edit a newsletter and perform PR functions for an ongoing monthly event plus an annual special event and that is money well spent for the group.  Performing artists,  clothing designers, restaurateurs and professional organizations come to mind as excellent candidates for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram to provide outreach / engagement with past, present and future patrons.

Nevertheless,  there is a group of social media and website holdouts and at least a handful are making a good living.  Maybe they possess valuable competitive advantages,  such as excellent word-of-mouth,  always the best form of advertising,  and exceptional skills? Among that group are two interior designers who have more clients than can be handled (in three or four cities, mind you) and the owner of a small neighborhood breakfast and lunch restaurant that is always packed.  Three of the six most successful Freelance consultants with whom I’m acquainted do not even show up on Google.  Author Otessa Moshfegh,  a member of the internet-obsessed Millennial Generation,  has eschewed both website and social media and her debut novel is selling nicely.

I’ve learned that Ms. Moshfegh has a professional publicity team and that gives her a significant edge. Her team portrays her as elusive and not given to crass displays of self-promotion and that is good publicity (!). The consultants once worked for larger consulting firms and like any hairdresser, when they went out on their own, they stole clients.  Nevertheless,  they continue to grow their client lists without websites.  The interior designers seem to be known by the right people and receive lots of referrals. On an a laptop or tablet,  they have a few photos to show their work to prospects.  The restaurateur has been in business for 20 years,  a Starbucks opened across the street at least a decade ago, but he continues to prosper.  Patrons started Trip Advisor and Yelp pages for him and patrons control the reviews on those sites.

You may wonder how my website and blog perform for my venture? I did not work for a consulting firm, so the website I feel helps me look legitimate.  However,  no one has ever hired me as a direct and exclusive result of visiting.  This blog has shown prospective clients that I have a solid knowledge of business topics and that I have a certain writing proficiency. The blog has been a factor in my hiring, but the clients were a result of referrals and not this blog alone.

I do not advocate that Freelancers and business owners close down their internet presence.  Rather, I respectfully recommend that you consider the ROI of your investment and take heed of the analysis.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

 

 

 

 

 

Survival Strategies , , , , Leave a comment

Online Reputation Management

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Shakespeare, in Act 2 of his circa 1603 play Othello, said it best: Reputation, reputation, reputation.  It is the original personal brand and one of the defining realities of our lives.  As a Freelance consultant, reputation governs the projects offered to us and therefore, our income and the kind of life we’re able to live.  It pays,  in more ways than one, to cultivate a peerless reputation and guard it vigorously.

In the internet age  that is especially so, in both the personal and professional spheres.  Mistakes and mischaracterizations made in digital formats are extremely difficult to dodge, ignore, deny, or correct.  One’s online reputation is the ultimate flypaper.  Take steps to ensure that what sticks to your name is all good.

Images

Along with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest are the sites where images of you are most likely to be posted,  by yourself and others.  When cameras are around,  meaning whenever anyone has a cell phone,  which is about 24/7,  make sure that your behavior represents you and your brand well.

There’s nothing wrong with being photographed in an obviously casual gathering—just make sure that you (or others) are not in the midst of activities that could be misconstrued and reflect poorly on you sometime in the future.  If you regularly appear in photos that you know or suspect will be posted to social media sites, counteract with a photo of your own that shows you at work, paid or volunteer. Balance your accounts, so to speak,  and show that there is more to you than non-stop partying.

Content

Create and regularly post original content that makes you look smart, professional and successful.  On your LinkedIn account, announce when you will attend a symposium,  serve on a panel,  teach a course or workshop,  or have recently earned a professional certification or advanced degree.  If you’ve presented a webinar,  request the replay and turn it into a podcast for your website and YouTube.  If you write a newsletter or blog,  link to your website and LinkedIn.  If you’re on Twitter or Instagram,  produce streams of high-quality feed and images that convey the competencies and values that you want to be known for.

Twitter, Instagram and Facebook can feature glimpses into your personal life as well and it could all be for the good,  as long as you are strategic about what is revealed. Your volunteer work is always a safe bet.  Training for a marathon or even a fun and casual volleyball or softball league would be excellent.  Your parent’s wedding anniversary party would make another good personal aspect to include in your online narrative.  Be aware that narrative is the operative word.  Create the story that you want to be told, in a manner that makes you look wonderful.

Search

About every three months,  search your name and your company name in engines such as Bing,  Google and Yahoo and see what comes up in the first 50 listings.  Are you happy with what you see?  Try keywords related to your business along with your city and check your professional reach in a more profound way.

If you find that your business has been reviewed in an excessively negative and inaccurate way,  contact the reviewing site and request that the offending post be removed.  If customers have offered criticism that just may be constructive, address the matter.  Apologize and offer your side of the story.  Make amends if possible.  By doing so,  you’ll add to your credibility and customer service reputation.

It’s been reported that 70% of US employment recruiters have rejected potential job candidates when something about them that was considered unsavory appeared on social media.  Freelancers should assume that prospective clients will do the same.  Maintaining and monitoring your online reputation has never been more important.

Thanks for reading,

Kim