We are often asked by potential clients about our web design process and although we have a little infographic on our ‘what we do‘ page we decided that this information could be presented in a fun way. We were approached by Claude from Kinetext who produces text based videos for businesses and we worked with Claude on a script, which he then turned into the fabulous video below.
Let us know what you think of the video in the comments! 
Why companies insist on punishing their loyal customers that they depend on I’ll never understand. Whats more, they do it over and over and again and expect them to come back to them.
This vent is against so called “fees” that business like to use to punish their customers. The fees I want to focus on are the ‘late fees’ that are synonomus with the video rental industry. It is their bread and butter that they reply on and the extra income that comes from this is a large percentage of their revenues, yet they understand to some extent that customers will fight tooth and nail to avoid paying that extra $1 fine.
In all honesty, if your business is not getting the results you want, there is one thing you can do right now, without question, that will help your business in leaps and bounds.
Pick up the phone!
Talk to previous customers that you have done business with. Talk to your current customers. Talk to customers that enquired or stopped purchasing 3 ,6, 9 or even 12 months ago but chose not to go ahead. Whoever it may be, human contact can go a long way in helping you succeed.
I was going about my daily morning wake routine, which generally starts with a few barely audible groans as I wake up and use gravity to roll out of bed and stumble over to put the kettle on while I rub the sleep out of my eyes and attempt to recollect the evenings dreams. (I should mention that unfortunately, not enough of those dreams involve scantily clad Swedish vixens having pillow fights). After I’ve made my coffee I usually fire up the computer to read my RSS feeds in Google Reader, then see what inane ramblings my friends on the other side of the world have made on the “Zuckerberg Platform of World Domination”…err, I mean Facebook.
This morning one of my mates had a status update about her “managing to assemble some IKEA furniture after several hours” and it got me thinking.
Gone are the days were we would look up a business in the yellow pages or a local directory.
Our first point of call is the internet for all out research.
On a recent holiday I took to Cairns I asked a work colleague for advice on what to do and see while there. This was the reply I got. It struck me overwhelmingly just how much of our decisions are now made through the internet, and just how disadvantaged businesses who do not have an online presence have become.
Here is the email that was sent to me:
I’m currently in the process of designing some concepts for the sennza Facebook Fan Page and I thought that it would be a good idea to have a nice grid based template to start with for future Facebook Face Page projects.
I’ve got a free Photoshop PSD download for anyone who needs it. The details of the grid layout are as follows:
Anyways, hopefully this might come in handy for a few people so here is the link to the download: Free Facebook Fan Page Photoshop Template
Edit: I’ve updated the previous file to include the new “Like” button as opposed to the Become A Fan button.
Companies and businesses have been using media monitoring services for many years to monitor what is being said about their brand and also their competitors across various media including print, TV, radio and online. Many companies are lucky enough to have the budget to employ Social Media Managers and Social Media Specialists. Their role is to keep an eye on what is being said about their brand and to interact with both existing clients and prospective clients on social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs and forums.
This is an excellent because you are being proactive about your brand and you can expand both your client base and online presence by doing so. Many SME’s and even corporate clients can’t justify the expense of employing someone to monitor these networks and this is where they can use Google Alerts.
Google Alerts is a tool that any user with an active Google Account can use to monitor keyphrases on a daily, weekly or an as-it-happens basis. Essentially Google Alerts lets you know of any mentions of keywords or brand names that have been mentioned as they are indexed (crawled by the Googlebot).
Why not spend a couple of minutes setting up a few alerts for your business? You could use Google Alerts to monitor the following items:
Interacting with people online is vital for your business and it will help increase your online presence. Be prepared to encounter both positive and negative feedback. Simple things such as thanking followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook, helping a customer with an issue about your brand, answering questions about your business all make your company more approachable, more human and more transparent. Your existing clients will love it and you’ll increase sales and get more mentions online.