Social media is transforming the way we do business and acquire customers.  Old school marketers fed the public catchy marketing phrases and flashy graphics to get them to remember their brand or product. 

The new gurus of marketing use the power of social marketing.  They focus on building two way open conversations via  Facebook, Twitter, You-Tube, Digg, Flickr, and blog comments.

Consider a well-directed and implemented social media campaign as a referral program on steroids.

Word of mouth spreads like wild fire,  through the power of constant open channels of information.   Your television commercial, print ad or radio commercial for your Sarasota business must be perfectly timed and placed to reach your demographic. Once the ad airs, it’s gone.  With social media the conversation lasts and lasts.  Search engines continue to spider that conversation long after the initial conversation.    What if your customer wasn’t watching your TV spot that day, or didn’t even pick up a newspaper.   Ooops.  That money is gone.

 Your referred customers are your most valuable “catches” and will most likely make a buying decision.  Your return on investment (cost to acquire each customer for your Sarasota business) will be low, while  the quality of the customer acquired will have a high value to your business.

Content and ongoing conversation drives awareness, today.  Traditional advertising is still here, but open, two-way conversations are much more effective then one way communications to your audience.

Social netwoks don’t necessarily shorten the sales cycle for business but it does keep the information flow more open and allows for a deeper relationship than e-mail campaigns, banners, etc.  Personally my business email box is brimming each day.  I simply don’t have the time to open and read each one.  Think about that before you invest or anguish over low open rates on an email campaign.

Repeat after me, social media isn’t just for kids anymore.   Big business is paying attention, and so should yours.  A smart social media campaign strategy should be in the hands of every Sarasota business!

Understanding who your users are is a integral step to building your Website.   Profiles describe the individual characteristics of your visitors.  We create profiles as a way to more deeply understand your users.  With this knowledge, you can then tailor your Website to exactly match their needs, and therefore create a good user experience for them.

Traditional profiles for user groups answer these kinds of questions:

1.   Who are my users?  What are their demographics?  (Demographics are an audience breakdown based on various characteristics such as age, sex, income, education, etc.)  

2.   How comfortable are they with using the Web? 3.   Do the users have any disabilities or challenges in seeing for example?  (Remember there is a large base of senior customers in Sarasota. I’m not in my golden years, but I appreciate type that I can read.  Your copy should be  large enough and black enough without having to squint.)

4.   How often do they use the Web?  For example,  daily, a couple times per week, once a month, once a year?

5.   Hardware. Are they using smart phones to access your Website, laptops, or desktop computers?

6.   Browsers, Operating Systems.   What browsers are they using?  Check with BrowserWatch.com to see which are the most popular browsers being used today.  This will give you a good indication of the various browsers the Website will need to be designed for.  What operating systems do they use?

7.   Overall computer experience. 

8.  Task knowledge.  How familiar are they with the task at hand? 

So ok.  Go ahead and give it a try! Just take out a few sheets of paper, your favorite pencil and a cup of ‘joe. Think about the points we mentioned above and write down who your website users are. (If you are thinking, “But this is silly, Diane and hard, and boring, blah, blah, blah, whine, whine.” Toughen up bucko. You may be tempted to be very naughty and skip it. But before you don’t do it, ask yourself why do the big boys spend thousands of dollars on usability studies? (hint, hint!)

If you do a little ground work now, you will be ensuring your Website is really designed for your users and not just serve as a brochure for your company.  This bit of effort will pay off quite well for you in the long run. Remember, be very, very quiet. We are huntin’ customers. So be patient, and give it a whirl.

Hi there!  So you have decided you would like to make or redesign your Sarasota Website.  Congratulations!  Here are some great tips to help you get started.

Want a Website that attracts customers?  Then you must think like your customers.   Shhhhh, we’re hunting customers.   Don’t start spending your time and resources before you have a final audience in mind.

( Top secret insider tip:  Your Website isn’t really for you, or your designer’s ego, or programmer’s elegant coding ability.  It’s for your customers to be able to find stuff they are looking for.  They are only going to give you about 10 seconds so you better make it clear and snappy.)

User-friendly, user-centered. 

This should be your mantra as you begin.   What does this mean, and how do you make your Website user-centered?  Ok, we’ll learn all about that but first let’s have a little fun shall we?  You’ve been sitting at that computer all day, me too, so we  deserve a little break.   Here’s a nice lesson from our friends,  the  Talking Heads.  While watching it I’d like you to concentrate on the lyrics…”and you may ask how did I get here?”

Did you get my secret message for you?  After the Website is finished, you don’t want to be faced with pesky thoughts like…. ”This isn’t my Website,  These aren’t my beautiful customers… My God, What have I done?  Or worse yet, My Website is the same as it ever was!   “How did I get here?”   Gasp!  Heaven forbid!

Never fear, grab my hand.   I am here as your friendly Website producer guiding you through the jungle of decisions.  Together we can make  a friendly, user-centered Website that is will be just right for your business.

Tip 1
Ok, remember our mantra, “user-friendly, user-centered”?  Focusing on your potential customers and what they really want will help you to create the most effective:

• Interface design
• Writing style
• Message
• Information design
• Functionality 
• Branding  



In order to get your friendly customer to buy, you need to help them efficiently get what they are looking for.  Also don’t forget  your Website should be interesting enough that they tell their friends, and they come back for more!

Ultimately what you are looking for is to increase your overall conversion rate or sales.   Your customer finds what they are looking for, and as a result converts to a sale by contacting you or purchasing your products. 

Ever notice everyone’s Website looks the same these days, or darn near it? 
Why is that? 

Do a search on Google and take a look at Web Designers portfolios.  See what I mean?  Now do a search on Website templates.   Shhhhh…I just exposed something top secret.  If you hear of a missing Web designer in Sarasota,  you know the boys have kidnapped me and sent me back to New York. Not that I blame them Website design isn’t easy if you are good. We must keep constantly on the go as technology and applications change like the wind.

But, the simple fact is the Internet is being quickly populated using Website templates.  They are churned out by numerous companies selling to Website designers that resell to you.    Sure they are pretty, slick got all kinds of flash.  But if you are serious about building your brand, do you want to look exactly like everyone else, including your competition?  Didn’t think so.  

Your brand is everything.   After custom designing Websites since 1998 we have learned a few things about that.   We specialize in branding, usability, information design, and creating a unique site for your exact target audience.   A template spun out of a factory and sold to a thousand other people for $40.00  is never, ever going to set you apart or be memorable in any way.

• Your Website is your brand.  Not a carbon copy of everyone else.  Remember  that movie “Multiplicity”?  A copy of a copy of a copy is always a bad idea.  Repeat after me, genuine, unique, authentic.
  
• Your people are not smiling stock photos.  They are unique, breathing individuals that are actually real.   Be proud you are carbon based!
•  Your message can’t be spun out of a mumbo-jumbo marketing menu.  Use real words, written by you not boring canned spiel.
• Be relevant, dare to be different.  Be yourself.
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Oh and out of interest of self-disclosure our blog yes indeed does use a WordPress template. Out and out  blasphemy,  I know.  Geez…(red faced indeed) But I promise if I ever get a day off to custom design it as soon as I can.  But  I’m too busy making custom Websites for customers,   Here’s the portfolio to prove it.

Golden Nuggets from The Real Life Social Network v2 – Document Transcript – Google Social Media Expert Paul Padday

Resource:  http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2#text-version

THE SOCIAL WEB IS NOT GOING AWAY The social web is not a fad, and it’s not going away. It’s not an add-on to the web as we know it today. It’s a fundamental change, a re-architecture, and in hindsight its evolution is obvious.

The web is undergoing a fundamental change Make no mistake about this. Everyone in this room will need to learn how to design social features on websites. Whether you like it or not.

The web was originally built to link static documents together (left), but evolved to incorporate social media (center), and we’re now seeing a web built around people, where their profiles and content are moving with them as they visit different websites (right).

When we use search engines today, it’s a pretty solitary experience. We get millions of web pages in our results, yet we don’t see any other people. But notice how often we send other people links to what we found, search in the company of others, and talk about our search results when we meet.

Buy this? No. People are increasingly using the web to get the information they need from each other, rather than from businesses.

People are increasingly likely to find out about products and brands from their friends rather than from your business. It means that it is much harder to control how people first come to experience your messages. We’re also seeing a much bigger shift in how people spend their time online. People are spending much more time interacting with other people, and much less time consuming content from websites. This shift is not about any one particular social network. It’s about people connecting to each other online.

So this shift is much greater than any one social network, and much more complicated than deciding where the ‘share this’ buttons go. Almost all the sites and apps we design from now on will have embedded social features.

Controlled Open The social web, and all social media that operate within it, is a way of thinking as opposed to a new channel. It’s not about sales, or ads, or click-through rates. It’s about pursuing relationships and fostering communities of consumers. Itʼs about rethinking how you make plans when your customers are in the center and in control.

Understand behavior, not technology.

New technology doesn’t change how our brains work. Social networks are not new. For thousands of years, people have formed into groups, built strong and weak relationships with others, formed allegiances, and spread rumor and gossip. The emergence of the social web is simply our online world catching up with our offline world. As technology changes the tools we use to communicate, we still use the same behavior patterns that we evolved over those thousands of years.

No explicit goals Focus on motivation There are two problems with focusing on technology.

174,340 fans Now what? The first is that people often don’t know what they are going to do with the things they build. There are so many Facebook fan pages with hundreds of thousands of followers yet nothing is happening. So 100,000 people became a fan of yours on Facebook. Now what? This is the fan page for the magazine seventeen. There are 174,000 fans but no conversation. You need to look at things like Facebook fan pages and think: “How is this going to fundamentally improve my relationship with my customers?”

What are you doing? I’m social networking! The second problem is more subtle, and it’s complicated and messy so people tend to ignore it.  When have you ever heard this? People donʼt say things like this when they are on social networks.

Social networking is a means to an end. You need to understand what the end is. Focus on what motivates people to use new technology. Technologies will come and go, but the fundamental social behavior patterns of people will remain the same. A better long term strategy for business is to understand people’s motivations for using new technologies, and not the technologies themselves.

Understanding sociability is complex. Understanding the end is not simple. In fact, it’s very complex. I’m going to try and map out some key behaviors that matter. If you come away from this talk thinking that designing for the social web is complicated, that’s a good thing. It is! We don’t have to understand it all today, we just need to start with a solid foundation from which to build.

Be genuinely you.
Your company doesn’t need to appear as a cold,  faceless institution.  Your business is made of people.  Yes,  real live carbon-based, funny, interesting people who would be great to know.  That’s the beauty of using social media, you are opening the doors to your company by being approachable.   You or your employees can show their sense of humor,  ask for opinions, truly interact with your customers, talk up the cool products they’ve been working on, and  hey even post up a nice photo.

Be Responsive.
Be sure to be fast and responsive.  When people ask questions, give them answers.  Thank people when they write in.   Be polite, considerate and warm.   Social media is a two way conversation.  If you ignore people, they will get turned off and just go away.  Boo.  Not good for business.

Marketing blah blah is boring, and no one is going to read it anyway.

Let’s face it people are in a hurry.  They are running with their i-phone or Blackberry with a cup of coffee and have a need for speed.  People have come to your Website or to your social media community for a reason, and need to quickly scan and get the goodies and go… and they want it NOW.   Provide relevant information that people really, really  can use and your target audience is interested in.     Just be passionate about what you do, and your little light will shine all on it’s own. 

Post Regularly.
Yep.  It is a lot of work, but you just can’t post to your blog or community and leave it like a unattended ghost town for three months.  It’s a social media faux pas, that will leave tumbleweeds flying.  Try posting to your business blog at least once a week or even more.  Readers who are loyal followers  will anticipate and look forward to your  Twitter posts or updates.  Old articles from last year on the front page are definitely a no-no.  Especially if you’ve been quite vocal and suddenly fall silent.  It can be like a friend has suddenly disappeared.  So sad, Mr. Sarasota Businessman you just lost a potential customer.

Add Value.
Share useful tips, handy tricks and professional insight.  Time is a precious and rare commodity these days.    If people take the time to come to your social media site, whether Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, or a Blog…give them something useful.   Make listening and reading your posts worth their time and effort.  They will come back and bring their friends too.  You know what that means, more customers.  Yeah!!

Listen to what people are saying.
When you are mingling with your consumer base, you are at ground zero for marketing intelligence.   Listen, listen, and listen some more.  Then let people know you appreciate their suggestions and feedback.  Hey we always can improve somehow. 

Ok that’s all I’ve got for now it’s midnight and time for me to get some shut eye.  But stay tuned for more social media tips for Sarasota business.

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Feel free to contact me at:
diane@SarasotaWebsiteDesign.co, dmichel@Soflexonline.com
941-355-3227, ext. 13

Diane’s Social Media Tips for Sarasota Business – Part 1

Social Media and How to Successfully Use it for Marketing Your Business

Social media is everywhere these days.  We hear about it all the time…Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, seems like someone is always talking about it.  But how can it benefit you as a Sarasota based business?  Well, first it’s an entirely new way that people are communicating and interacting with others from around the world.   Social media and communities are growing exponentially.  As a saavy business,  you really need to understand this new playing field and how you fit into it.

Who really has all that free time to twitter away, and post on Facebook, or network on Linkedin?  The point is a lot of people do, and a lot of them are your potential customers. You as a business owner cannot afford to overlook the powerful, viral benefits of social media.  It should be an integral part of any saavy business strategy.

Need a little convincing?
Check out the following video to help you really understand the explosive power of social media. 

Video on the Explosive Growth of Social Media

 

A carefully planned social media campaign can help your Sarasota business go global by:

• Increasing your company’s visibility
• Driving traffic to your Website through word of mouth
•  Reach new customers you would of never been able to before:  in multiple languages, around the clock.
• Spread the word about that new product you’ve just come up with
• Gather real consumer opinions, and catch the pulse of what’s important to them in the real world.
• Break down formal stodgy “corporate” barriers.  Make your company approachable, and humanize it!

Free Advertising 

Come on, nothing is really free.   Well, yes this time it really is.  The best part about Social media is that it costs nothing to get your brand and message out there.  Nada.  Kiss  pay for click campaigns that eat up your budget goodbye, or at least reduce your dependence on them.  Social media marketing,  is particularly a great match  for small businesses in Sarasota and everywhere for that matter,  looking to increase their Internet sales and marketing economically.  Think smarter, extend your reach, and don’t pay!  Sounds good.

Social Media Campaigns – The Results Speak for Themselves
I have personally ran numerous campaigns throughout Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.  I was really pleasantly surprised with the results, and I think the effort it takes is truly worth it.   I have over 3,000 professional members in business to business Linkedin groups.  Individuals who work for Motorola, Microsoft, Sony, IBM, the list goes on and on.  These are people I would of never dreamed I could of connected with.  But thanks to a carefully planned social media strategy I was able to make it happen.     So if you’d like let’s help our Sarasota business community thrive!   In these next blog postings I can share some tips  on Social media and how to use these Web marketing techniques to your advantage.  See you next time!

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Feel free to contact me at:
diane@SarasotaWebsiteDesign.co, dmichel@Soflexonline.com
941-355-3227, ext. 13