Firstly, we need look at these two questions;

Why do people buy the things that they buy? Why do they choose particular places to buy from?

In order give a sensible answer, [...]]]>

Social Media, Facebook, Twitter and Web 2.0 are all words that you’ll hear around the business community, but how can these work for you?

Firstly, we need look at these two questions;

Why do people buy the things that they buy?
Why do they choose particular places to buy from?

In order give a sensible answer, we need to go back to first principles. Here are our thoughts…

Why do people buy the things that they buy?

People buy things because they either need them, or want them – this is nothing new. Social Media’s part to play is as a tool to spread the word about your product or service. I was watching a TV program a little while ago which mentioned something called “Dunbar’s Number”, which states that the number of people one knows AND keeps in regular contact with is about 150. If those 150 people know another 150 people each (yes there will be some overlap, but you get the idea) then it doesn’t take long to reach a lot of people.

Take our experiment of trying to Sell Our House Using Social Media. We’ve done nothing really apart from create a page and a blog post which we’ve posted links to on Twitter and Facebook a few times. To date we’ve had over 100 page views and it’s been picked up by several “Trending” sites according to Gareth.

Why do they choose particular places to buy from?

This is a bit more involved. Value? Convenience? Price? Location? Quality? Yes, all of them have a part to play. Notice I list Price and Value separately – they are different, but that’s another blog post!

What if all these are equal between two potential suppliers? My experience shows that people buy from people they like and trust. For this to happen they have to get to know each other a little. This is the “Networking” part of “Social Networking” and is overlooked at your peril!

There is a school of thought which suggests keeping your business and personal profiles separate – do business contacts really want to see pictures of your dog or know what you’re having for tea? Personally, I think they are better merged, because it helps to have the transparency and openness and any customer with any sense will ferret in your personal profile anyway! Either way, please remember that whatever you put on your profile, business or otherwise, will be accessible throughout the world…

Someone who does a great job of this is Mike Handley from Graphic Results (one of my clients and a constant source of social media inspiration). He has an informative blog and an open and honest writing style. This, combined with a good balance between business and personal posts provides interesting content that reflects Mike’s personality, drive and motivation for what he does. It’s no accident that he has over 2000 followers on Twitter and people like Theo Paphitis retweeting his comments – quite an achievement for a “Little design studio” in Derbyshire!

You, but more importantly your customers, can have a huge impact on your message (and sales figure) by “word of mouth” referrals to their networks. Treat your Virtual Network in the same way as your physical one by offering advice, help and support where appropriate – and don’t underestimate the power of testimonials and recommendations online.

In summary, Social Media is a platform where you can interact and ask people to listen to what you have to say. Be warned though, if you go in selling hard then you’ll quickly lose friends, followers and credibility. If you’re asking people to listen to you then make sure you have something interesting to say once in a while!

If you would like any specific help then please let us know and we’ll be happy to point you in the right direction!

I’m not trying to put web designers out of business [...]]]>

If you’ve already approached a web-designer and asked them about prices, you’ll have already heard ‘What do you want it to do?’  Having thought about it and told them, you probably picked yourself up off the floor after they told you how much it will cost!

I’m not trying to put web designers out of business here.  If you need an all singing, all dancing, visual extravaganza with fully functioning shopping cart, forum and blog with the minimum of fuss and you need your site to be unique in design and style, then you are probably going to have to pay them the rate they asked for (and if this is the case you would do well to approach Stylistic Web Design Ltd)!

If your initial thoughts are something a bit more basic; some static pages to get across key, useful bit of information about your company, who you are, what you do, maybe a blog, etc. then, if you are willing to do some reading and have a play about with technology, there are a couple of possible solutions for you.

You could use a What You See Is What You Get (WISIWYG) web-site development tool, such as FrontPage (2003 was the last version released, it was replaced by Expression Web) or Dream Weaver.  These are off the shelf packages, similar to Word or Excel.  They can be quite simple to use but the main downside is the cost.  My quick internet comparisons put Expression Web at £150 and DreamWeaver at £250.  They can also require a bit of technical know-how.

But another possible solution is Open Source Content Management.  Sounds a right mouthful doesn’t it?  But, in essence, it a framework onto which you can build.  Being open source, means there are literally thousands of developers around the world working on improving and adding bits onto the basic package for free.  They may be developing for their own needs but they make the fruits of their labour available to everyone.

Free doesn’t mean cheap and nasty looking either.  There are a number of these Open Source Content Management systems out there.  By far the most common is WordPress (found at www.wordpress.org/).  They describe themselves like this;

“WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.”

WordPress is used by many leading organisations.  Downing Street (www.number10.gov.uk/), CNN (business.blogs.cnn.com/), The Wall Street Journal (magazine.wsj.com) and Fox News (www.foxnews.com/opinion/index.html) all use it, so there must be something in it, right?

Many hosts may also include it as a ‘1-click’ install on your hosting package, greatly simplifying the install procedure and getting you up and running quickly.

You can download ‘themes’ to change the look and feel of the site and also ‘plug-ins’ to add or enhance functionality.  Once you get a feel for it and if you are prepared to do a bit of reading and learning, you can edit these to ‘tweak’ them for your specific site or develop your own from scratch.

This site uses WordPress.  It uses a ‘tweaked’ theme (the standard, free one wasn’t quite what Sara wanted…) and a number of additional plug-ins to control things like e-mail subscriptions, spam monitoring, Google Analytics and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Total monetary cost to Sara – £0.00 – just a bit of time and (my!) effort.

A bespoke web site with similar functionality from a web designer?  Somewhere in the region of £5-6000!

So hopefully the posts in this series have opened your eyes to how you can produce a web site for your business.  At the end of the day the most difficult thing to come up with are ideas… that’s why professional web design studios cost so much…

If you would like Above Parr PA Services to help you create your web presence, contact Sara.

Minky ready for networking

Minky always has an inbox full of emails about “performance enhancing” products, his bank needing to check his details (even though he doesn’t actually bank with them!) [...]]]>

Since starting this blog and getting himself known, Minky is getting quite a lot of emails – thankfully he has some help!

Minky ready for networking

Minky always has an inbox full of emails about “performance enhancing” products, his bank needing to check his details (even though he doesn’t actually bank with them!) and desperate widows trying to release their inheritance from evil dictators, but even though it’s rubbish it eats into his productive time and that costs him money! Considering what his “hourly” rate is he can’t afford to be sifting through emails, he’d be better off making (or selling) his product…

As professional administrators we know which emails are important to him and which are junk and can deal with them quickly and efficiently, sending him only the ones which are worth reading. With his consent we also reply to requests for further information about his products on his behalf, so that he has time to make those important follow-up calls that we all love doing…

Would you get better results if you only got the emails that were important to you?
If you would like to know more about our services, or have suggestions for future posts please send Minky an email and tell him what you think!