You are here: Home / Archives for Engage

The Value of Conversation

collaborate!Does your website “talk” to the visitor? Not literally speaking. As I witness and learn more about the new business environment, I see a recurring theme. Relationships. Conversations. There will always be someone who can do what you do cheaper and faster. How do you differentiate yourself from the growing pool of competitors? Interaction. Conversations. Relationships.

Tools to help your business and website interact with customers.

Social Media

I am not going to start ranting about all the different methods and tools out there. There is already enough blog posts that explain the value of all the different tools.  If all you do is sit and watch the Twitter and Facebook streams then you will never gain anything.  Create a conversation, jump into a conversation, even if it has nothing to do with your business and service.  Check out Linkedin Answers and see if you can share knowledge and create trust.

Sliders on the homepage

Simple tool that will communicate your message out in a short time period.  Get straight to the point and it will lock your visitor in.

Blog Comments

Reply when a visitor comments on a blog post.  The worst thing you can do is let it sit there and age.  Get it while it’s hot and interact with the reader.  Maybe they will make a point that you missed.

These are just a few tools that help create and nurture relationships.  Visitors want to know you are listening and will see your businesses value when you engage them.  How do you interact? Any other cool tools you use engage your visitors?

 

Filed Under: Business, Business Model Innovation, Innovation, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , ,

The Beginning of Your Small Business’s Digital Presence

stepping forward
You always have to start somewhere.  An Idea.

What is your next step?

Start off asking yourself this question, “How do you describe your organization/business/client in one sentence?”.  Seriously, one sentence.  Not as easy as it may seem.  You need a confident, solid answer.  This is the foundation of your idea and business.

“NLI will take your idea and create a beautiful, innovative website”  The goal and purpose of Next Level Innovation is stated in one sentence.  What is your single sentence?

If you are having trouble creating your sentence, lets take a step back and ask ourselves the following three questions.

What three words describe your organization/business/client?

What makes you unique?

What makes your company stand out in the crowd?

When you find an answer to each, describing your business in a single sentence will be easier than you first thought.

Filed Under: Business, Innovation, Journey, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

If Time Wasn’t an Issue…

Army Arts & Crafts Contest deadline is June 30 090616
If time wasn’t an  issue this child theme probably would be complete now.  Maybe.  I could just use a few more hours in the day.  From a time management point of view I have seen some improvement though.

Good news is I will have two clients sites up and running this evening, so extra time should be flowing in now (hopefully).  What would you do with the extra time? I am going to fill it with some reading and cosmetic work to my site and the soon to be released child theme.

This brings me to a thought, what is the best practice after completing work for your clients? During the work with clients you learn new techniques, but you also want new business.   I think its important to sit down if time allows and review your previous path of work before you  move forward to a new client.  Set the new client search to a passive mode until your ready to rock again.  WordPress is growing and evolving every day, so giving yourself a chance to catch up, learn, and try things out is important to your clients and your business.

The new info you learn may create some time savings… Something I would enjoy.

Filed Under: Business, Innovation, Weekly Innovation, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , , ,

Engaging a Customer

Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with a potential, better yet, soon-to-be customer.  He found us through one of our vendor’s website and felt we could help him accomplish his big idea.  Now his idea is a few steps outside of our “normal” scope but it is well inside our capabilities as a company.  Since this isn’t our bread and butter as a company, I had to take the opportunity to engage the customer and learn what his long term plan was quickly.   After about 20-30 minutes of basic back and forth we came to a position where I could begin the design process and get it heading in the right direction.  I made sure I talked the customer through the process so there would not be any surprises when he received the quotation.  After everything was completed the soon-to-be customer told me he felt comfortable with the situation and was looking forward to seeing what I come back with.

Lesson Learned: Engage the customer, be honest about the process, eliminate all surprises and most importantly keep the communication channels open and constantly update them.  Keep them involved through the entire process.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: , , ,