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Chances are if you see me tapping away at my BlackBerry I am not sending some goofy text message to a friend. I am probably composing the next blog post, brainstorming teleseminar ideas or preparing a testimonial for my website.  It is this last item, testimonials that I want to explore today. 

By using your phone to compile client testimonials you will create more social validation for your business and justify to your significant other your purchase of that cool, new gizmo. This process is so insanely simple that once you understand it your website will become filled with the social proof needed to influence prospects to become profitable customers and clients.

Voodoo Soup: What you will need

1. Smarphone: iPhone, Blackberry, Droid or any phone with a camera and audio recording capability
2. Audio record:  Knowledge of your phone’s recording process
3. Photo:  Break out the instruction manual and memorize the procedure for taking and naming photo files

Get ‘er done!

Any time you find yourself in front of someone you have wowed (a client, business associate, network group member, you get the point) ask that person if you can take a few minutes of their time to capture their experience with you. Once they say yes (charisma assumed here) whip out your phone and snap a photo. One captured, rename the photo (your client’s name/testimonial) for easy retrieval later.

In this next step turn on your phone’s voice recorder and begin the interview.  Ask your evangelist questions like:

1. How did (insert your name) help you?
2. What does (insert your name) do that is not easily imitated?
3. What would you like others to know about (insert your name)?

Be sure to put the phone close to your mouth when asking questions and close to your fan’s mouth when he or she answers. This will isolate your talent’s voice against distracting background noise.

As social creatures we are biologically wired to seek the opinions of others to help us shortcut the decision making process. Give your website visitor’s the opinions they seek and simplify the social proof gathering process by using your phone to collect enthusiastic raves about you and your business.

What do you think about your phone now?

In order for your website to deliver a regular stream of new business it needs a regular rotation of fresh content and updates. In addition to a dependable content management system that enables non-technical users to manage updates you will need bodies, human beings to keep the store shelves straight.

Your dream team

The number of people you assign to website maintenance duties will vary depending on update frequency, the number and variety of required changes.  Simpler business models can get away with a single site manager but more complex sites will require a larger team with more diverse skills. No matter your organization’s size below are some categories of content that will require your team’s attention:

1. General updates: Home page changes, product promotions, etc will require regular updates to keep repeat visitors engaged.
2. Newsletter management:  A veritable digital magazine, your newsletter will require an editor to decide what makes it into each addition, someone to write stories, add images and links.
3. Blog updates:  Blogging once a month or even once per week won’t cut it if you want to build a loyal following.  Think production of three to five new posts per week, editing, offsite promotion for each post and now we are at the front door of a successful strategy.
4. Email response:  That’s right if visitors can inquire, they will and you had better be prepared to respond.
5. Online store updates:  Someone has to manage store items, track orders, manage fulfillment, provide customer service, etc.
6. Tracking/reporting: To determine if your web strategy is working you have to know how it affects traffic numbers and conversion rates (the % of visitors taking a desired action).

What to look for…

I know this is a lot more than you expected but you would be hard pressed to find a successful business devoid of hard work.  No matter how you cobble together your team (outsourced or internal manpower) the team needs to bring these skills to the dance:

1. Graphic design skills:  Images are a huge part of your message; so the ability to edit, crop and adjust artwork is important.
2. Copywriting skills:  Perhaps the most overlooked but most important skill is the ability to write in a persuasive way.  Hey, the goal here is not pretty pictures but sales!
3. Organizational skills:  All of this effort takes coordination and working towards hard timelines.

If your website is going to inspire buyer trust, generate repeat visits and drive new business having a capable maintenance team in place is an indispensable piece of the model.

Bonus prize inside

Bringing on the right virtual assistant, one skilled in the kung-fu of web maintenance can be a boon for small shops with limited resources.  Listen to our seminar to get the skinny on working with virtual assistants to maintain your website and download the seminar audio file and next action worksheet while you’re at it.

Are you pulling out all the stops to convince website visitors to become buyers vs. browsers but getting no traction? To get people to buy at your site requires more than flash and pop; in fact flash usually does little more than get in the way of persuading buyers. Often the action you should be aiming for is not a purchase but something else.

What, I don’t want people to buy?

Settle down, of course we want site visitors to buy but with the exception of the most motivated prospects the act of purchasing is a longer-term decision making process and to influence the decision you must get your message in front of your prospect multiple times (8 at least) before overcoming purchase inhibitors (apathy, fear, uncertainty, competition, etc).

What action should I prompt?

Good question, to overcome resistance consider motivating your site visitors to join your mailing list, subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed or agree to receive blog post updates via email.  The marketing team at Oprah Magazine brilliantly frames it as, “inspiration in your inbox”. By doing this you lower the initial cost of doing business with you, reduce buyer fear while at the same time sending a regular stream of informative content that establishes you as the authority among the voices competing for your prospect’s attention.

How do I get them to opt in?

Another excellent question because to make this work you must create a compelling reason to join your lists.  To encourage mailing list registrations, consider the following incentives:

1. Give away a free informative e-book in return for an email address
2. Give a free audio transcript of one of your seminars
3. Offer free telephone seminars where an email address is required for notification

If you don’t direct your site visitors to take some action at every point of interaction, guess what? They won’t! Build up an inventory of useful content and use it to leave visitors with no option but to take action.

It looks like the Google guys are at it again making our lives better or taking over the world depending on where you sit.  With the official launch of Google Wave this week, Google has made an attempt to bridge the chasm between email, wikis, instant messaging and social media creating a truly interactive communications system where groups can collaborate to make decisions, create documents, flush out new ideas and catalog the entire process.

My web development team is spread out over several continents and having the ability to collaborate, pulling in rich content from the web and documenting the process for future reference has real potential. But before you get too excited, the devil is in the details. Even if your business team is not as geographically diverse you can use Wave to make your posse more effective and to build relationships with customers and clients.

Smiley Face: Wave benefits

1. You can keep waves private, invite defined groups or let the public
   in
2. In real time you can drag and drop web content into the wave (video, google maps, photos, etc)
3. Co-create documents with your team
4. Embed waves in your websites and blogs to add fresh content
5. Pull people together to quickly make decisions and document the process (the playback feature shows a recording of a wave’s history, how the wave was built up)
6. Wave robots can interface with other systems like Twitter that have an Application Programming Interface (API) enabling interaction with social web communities.
7. The translation robot enables real time translation, so you can communicate with people who don’t speak your language

Thumbs Down: Negatives

1. You will need other tools for voice and video chat
2. Requires the Google Chrome browser (with a special plugin), Safari or Firefox browser.  Currently there is no support for Internet Explorer which is a bummer for a product touted as anywhere/anytime access
3. With large groups it can be challenging to make heads or tails of the communications stream, the wave
4. There are no controls to pause input from your wave guests, so the “conversation” can really get out of hand quickly

Is Wave the future of web communication and collaboration?  Well, I’m not ready to cancel my Twitter or DimDim (web conference) accounts just yet.  After a few generations of refinement and evolution I believe Wave will become a useful tool for business cooperation but for now it feels a little like the iPad, a market test for the integrating multiple tools.  Add voice, video, tighter integration with the Google Apps environment and I think they have something but what the heck, it’s free!

If you are like me you were not raised on an entertainment diet of World of Warcraft or Nintendo’s Mario Kart and you can still remember the story of the Pied Piper; the little guy who traveled about the countryside playing a repetitive, hypnotic tune that none of the mice could resist.   Today I will reveal to you the mystical secret that Mr. Piper used to gain sway over his audience and how you can do the same with visitors to your website. Okay, get your thinking caps on and sharpen your number two pencils. Put down that DSi!!!

The Piper’s Secret?

He would never tell you this but the Pied Piper’s success lies in the theory of thought repetition which puts forward the idea that by implanting a suggestion in a person’s mind you give it structure and turn it from a wish into an expectation.  To make this work in your businesses you must find a “truth-message”;  a statement speaking to a proven, factual solution that your business delivers to a real problem your prospect faces. As a website development firm our truth-statement is that people do business with those they like and trust and to win new business your website can and should build trust. Your truth-statement will be different but you get my point. Truth-message in hand, you then implant this message in your website visitor’s mind by creatively presenting it in a way that your prospect can’t argue with or resist. Your next task is to repeat this mantra until it becomes tangible in your prospect’s mind which is why businesses without a web content strategy (regular blogging, monthly newsletter distribution, informative seminars, etc.) will fight upstream to establish their message.

When choosing a product or service your prospects will ask friends, do online research and look for clues that a provider can deliver the promise. Decision making is a process that takes time, so be like the Pied Piper repeating your melodic song, your truth-message to your audience and customers will follow you instead of you chasing them.

What is your song?

If you are like most business owners you never have enough time to complete all the tasks necessary to make your business thrive.  Blogging, sending a monthly newsletter and hosting seminars are great ideas but you just don’t have the time, right? Like you I have struggled with this same dilemma as have many of my clients, which is why I decided to pull together a free Q & A conference call with a very smart person to answer all of your questions about hiring and making the best use of a virtual assistant.

Hiring the right virtual assistant can literally free up hours in the day by removing tedious tasks from your plate but the key is hiring the right person and having a plan to organize your VA’s work. 

Free Q&A Call….

On Thursday May 6th at 7pm, EST I will be joined by super VA Ninja Angela Myrtetus president of Independent Projects to answer all of your questions about working with a VA to reclaim your calendar and turn your business around.

Space is Limited…

Because the call is free we have to keep seats to a minimum, so register today.

I recently had a website client who obsessed so much over trying to project the image that his company was bigger than it was in reality. After several weeks of searching for stock images of board rooms filled with smiling executes I posed the question, “what if we embrace your small size, emphasizing the benefits of high touch and client focus?” As it turned out we were onto something.

The truth about size…

Prolific blogger and consultant to many a Fortune 500 company, Chris Brogan runs a very small business and he makes no attempt to hide its size.  He is small and does not fit the corporate cultural mode but he has valuable social media expertise that his clients don’t and because he gives them baby-like attention, the big boys come to him in droves.

Being a small firm; even a one or two person shop reduces overhead lowering costs that you can pass along to your clients. Your light weight puts you in a better position to adopt new technologies and processes than your larger competitors who have entrenched work forces and huge capital investments to contend with.  Finally as a small fry, your business can more nimbly partner with complimentary firms and reduce the time it takes to get your products to market.

Power to the people…

There has never been a better time to be small.  With so much free and next to free technologies available your small business is well positioned to thrive, so be what you are…be small.

How do you take advantage of small?

Fear is the most powerful motivator in the animal kingdom and make no mistake your prospective clients are in a decision-making jungle when selecting among the many providers in your market. Your ability to overcome buyer resistance will have an immediate and positive impact on your website sales.

Before we dive into a discussion of a few tools to overcome buyer’s remorse let me say that you must first be confident in the quality of your service and the way you deliver that service to have the confidence to put these tactics into motion. Consider the following as you build or revamp your website copy:

1. Guarantee:  Offer a no questions asked money back guarantee or a make-right deal for your customers.
2. Free trial:  Let prospective customers try your service before they buy.
   Bite sized chunks:  Similar to the free trial offer you provide prospects with a free piece of your offering. For example if you run a paid employment site offer prospective employers 5 free resume searches.
3. 24 hour customer service: Knowing that there will always be someone a phone call, email or forum post away from solving their post purchase problem goes a long way toward comforting the resistant buyer.
4. Referrals:  People look to others to help them make decisions, so get ahead of the process by building a referral system that proactively introduces your company to the friends of your clients and business partners.

Fear of wasting money on a bad decision overrides the interest generated by your stated benefits.  To bring prospective customers around you must be prepared to overcome their resistance.

How do you overcome the resistance?

Do you keep a separate list of local media contacts as part of your email marketing strategy? If not perhaps you aren’t aware that building relationships with reporters, editors and bloggers for the purpose of pitching story ideas is an incredible opportunity to create awareness and  establish your authority.

The how…

In your bulk email management system (AWebber, MailChimp or a proprietary email application), create a separate mailing list called media. Once your list is created add press contacts to it making sure to include contact info for local reporters, television news station assignment desk editors and bloggers who cover your area of focus (your beat).  You want to avoid sending mail to anonymous “info@” contact addresses if at all possible.  Communicating directly with the person who will either write your story or assign it to a journalist increases the likelihood of your story getting picked up.

Another tip, take a few of these people out to lunch to establish a relationship and get a better feel for their story needs. Reporters get hit with hundreds of emails each day with business owners foolishly trying to influence them to write a story about their product or business. With a relationship in tact your email is more likely to get opened and read.

“I don’t have time…”

Okay don’t get negative on me now. That is your lizard brain (your mental resistance) trying to derail your successful push. To free up calendar time consider the following:

1. Hire a virtual assistant to research local media contacts
2. Find a lawn maintenance person to cut your grass (there’s eight hours each month)
3. Employ a PR agency to execute your PR strategy

Success takes hard work and sacrifice and as the great philosopher Forrest Gump once put it, “That’s all I have to say about that.”

What do you have to say?

“Success leaves clues and reading is one of the
best means to absorbing such clues…”
Anthony Robbins

Beyond the hail of ooohs I would have never guessed this little pixel book would become one of my greatest business development tools.  That’s right my Kindle helps me win new client relationships and it can do the same for you.

Because I have instant, downloadable access to some half a million book titles, newspapers and magazines I am able to efficiently consume information about my focus expertise increasing my value to clients and inspiring trust that our web development team will get the job done.

More than smart

In addition to making me smarter (okay, stop laughing) the device allows me to easily highlight and notate text and because my notes are in digital format I can easily export them to create book summaries that I offer to prospective clients increasing my attractiveness.

Instant audio book…

If sharable, digital notes weren’t enough the Kindle can turn just about any book it stores into an audio book with a digitized voice that reads the book aloud. Plug this guy into your car stereo and turn dead driving time into new insight. Some publishers have disabled the audio feature but I have a feeling that the groundswell from users will get publishers to see the light.

If the knowledge you share with prospects is your chief trust-building asset (hint: it should be), then the Kindle is the new killer business app! iPad’s work pretty good too but they are so freakin’ big.

Bonus…the eBook Wars