I know, it’s been almost 4 months since my last post. I have an excuse – I had my third child born to us recently and just graduated from grad school two weeks ago. I have been busy!

I am back and thanks for reading.

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Did you know one of the best ways to reach your customers locally is getting involved in Social Media? With smartphones and broadband internet connecting people ever so closely today, you are going to get a little behind if you are not already using Social Media to represent your business.

Are your customers on Facebook?

Initially, you might wonder which Social Media platform you should use to best leverage your time spent communicating.

The best platform is whichever the medium your customers are currently using. So for example, if you find most of your customers using Facebook, then you should start creating a Fan Page about your business on Facebook.

Don’t know what to say?

To keep conversations fluid, it’s important to update your page with information that interests your customers. Many businesses make the mistake of only sending promotional messages. However, instead of seeing Social Media as the potential market, it’s important to treat it as a community where you contribute for the benefit of those who belong in your network.

What should you contribute?

This depends on how well you really know your customers. If you’re a professional, you should understand their pains, the language they use to describe their problems, which products and services they have used in the past. If you’re able to identify these issues, your customers will feel that you understand them. And if they feel your business is the ONLY viable option when it comes to their problems, you just successfully differentiated your business from all others your customers have dealt in the past. Now it will be up to you to continue keeping their patronage.

Should you hire a PR person?

You could, but I would recommend against outsourcing this task to third party 100%. But, I also should mention that PR firms are tired of business owners not listening to their suggestions, and if you are going to allow third party to get involved in your communication with customers, pay them good money and get them craft a strategic proposal just for your Social Media campaigns. Get a few recommendations before hiring anyone and trust their ability to improve your business.

If you’re a do-it-yourselfer

Log on to Facebook and start looking up at least 3-5 Fan Pages of your competitors. 1) Observe how they are communicating with their customers, 2) pay attention to areas currently underserving their customers. Once you have gathered ideas to improve, 3) build your Fan Page illustrating that your business could fulfill the needs.

CHECKLIST:

Let’s go over this post together again.

1. Find out what medium your customers are using most – mostly likely Facebook
2. Get to know your customers’ needs, pains, problems and hot buttons
3. Look for 3-5 Fan Pages of your competitors and look for areas you could improve
4. Build your Fan Page with items “currently missing” among your competitors
5. Articulate your benefits to your customers by serving the network you belong

I promise you by following these steps, your customer loyalty will increase. The goal is to make your Social Media presence worthy for your customers to spread news about you. If you’re passionate about your business and if what you do truly speaks to your customers, they will bring people to your Fan Page.

Hope you liked this post and please leave a comment!

Tak

P.S – no I am not currently available for hire

P.S.S – well, if you’re a non-profit, I might do consultation for you at no charge

Photocredit

Today, I interviewed Shannon Noack, who is the Creative Director of Snoack Studios, Maricopa based designer, successful blogger and small business owner. Shannon has great passion for designing, and I was fortunate enough to pick her brain on this topic. Shannon’s ability to network with other business owners generate referrals and repeat businesses, let’s hear what she must say!

Shannon, tell us a little bit about yourself – who are you? How long have you had your business in AZ?

Great to be able to do business with an AZ native. You mentioned that you have had several articles published on popular design blogs.  In fact, that’s how I found you.  Tell me what kind of approach you took to get your articles published on blogs?  Did you know anyone who worked for the blog?

I started blogging for others by chance actually. Jacob from Six Revisions tweeted that he was hiring more writers for his blog and I thought it would be fun so I followed up with him and started writing for Six Revisions. After a few posts came out on Six Revisions I was contacted by other blogs to write for them as well. I enjoy writing and designing is my true passion, so writing about design-related stuff is enjoyable for me.

Wow, so networking with others using Twitter certainly helped you initially. Did you know him other than Twitter or only through following each other on Twitter?  Also, what kind of tweets do you generate?

Yes, I think networking on twitter is quite a valuable resource! I’ve found fellow designers to work with, clients that are in need of design services, etc. It’s been a very valuable tool for me professionally. I didn’t know Jacob or any of the people I write posts for outside of our initial twitter connection. I usually tweet about design-related material like design blogs I’ve found interesting, new sites that I like, and cool design resources. But sometimes I’ll tweet about other stuff that I find interesting like freelancing, small business, and marketing stuff. I love that twitter allows you to make connections though, and I’ve found responding to tweets, requests or questions from others to be beneficial in building relationships.

So, you mentioned “building relationships”, and I assume you’re mostly connected with people online. With the emergence of Social Media, and other than Twitter that you mentioned, what else are you doing to ensure your relationships with clients and business partners are developing? Do you stay connected online or do you take relationships offline? Do you have Facebook “Fan page”?

I am very connected to people online, but also make an effort to connect offline as well. I think it’s best to have a good feel for both avenues. I participate in local networking events, and I’d love to go to trade shows in the future.

Many people love face to face contact especially for business connections, and it’s refreshing to talk to someone in person instead of chatting online. Maintaining relationships with existing and past clients is best done through online efforts, blogging, emails, social media, IMing, etc. I just recently created a Facebook fan page, and I’m loving the new avenue to interact with clients and professional contacts. You can find the page here.

Do you attend local Maricopa events?

Yes, I do live and work in Maricopa and love participating in Maricopa events! They have lots of local events with vendors that advertise their services, but I haven’t participated as a business just yet, although I’ve looked into joining the Chamber of Commerce in the future. The Chamber is certainly a great way to meet local business owners and network with people in your immediate community. The networking events I’ve attended have been in Phoenix, which does provide a larger audience and I do consider the greater Phoenix area a part of my local community.

I am always curious where people learn their designing skills. So, how did you get started in designing? If you were to start all over, what would you do?

I first learned about graphic design as a profession in high school, and took some beginning classes where I learned Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and QuarkXPress. This is where I fell in love with design and knew it was what I was meant to do with my life. In college, at Northern Arizona University, I majored in Visual Communications and took graphic design, web design, and art courses, gaining more design knowledge. But I think the majority of my skills today have come from working in the field as a professional designer. If I were to start all over I wouldn’t change a thing actually.

You don’t need a degree to be a designer these days, but I believe I learned some valuable things in high school and college in my design classes. Experience working with others and learning from other designers is also something that is valuable for any designer, and I highly recommend it. A lot of designers start freelancing and working for themselves right out of school but you miss out on lots of opportunities to learn from others, it’s something I wouldn’t change at all.

If I want to learn designing skills, but want to be taught by someone, could I take technical classes at community college? I don’t need to become a pro because I could hire you, but would like to learn photo editing skills and basic designing and such. What would you advise?

Yes, I believe most, if not all, of the community colleges in the Phoenix area offer some type of design course. Basic photo and design skills should be easy to come by at a community college, and you can even find classes on basic web design these days too. I don’t know enough about these courses to speak about them unfortunately, but basic skills like learning photo manipulation in Photoshop should be easy to find, and I would think worth your time to learn.

I’ve also heard good things about Lynda.com which is an online tutorial resource where you pay for tutorials on a certain subject like web design or Photoshop. I haven’t used it myself but I’ve heard wonderful things about the site. There are also free beginner tutorials that you can find online but doing some searching around if you’re looking for a way to learn and teach yourself. People usually find it easier to learn from someone, but it really depends on your learning style and how advanced you’d like to become.

Wow, I loved what I saw on Lynda.com thanks for sharing everything you’ve shared with us today. So how should people find you? Also, give us the rundown of all the services your company does.

Lynda.com is great, lots of resources on one site. Thanks for the interview, I’m always to happy to connect with others in the Phoenix area! People can find me at my websitesnoackstudios.com, on twitter @snoackstudios.com, on Facebook, or through email Shannon [at] snoackstudios.com The services my company provides are any kind of design you can dream up, websites, print work, and branding are my specialties. I work with small and large companies that are brand new or have been around for a while to come up with a great look for their company that fits their target audience. I strive to help business get to the next level through marketing and design services that will elevate their brand. Looking forward to connecting with you all soon!

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Shannon Noack is a designer in Arizona and the Creative Director of Snoack Studios. Designing is her passion in life and she loves to create websites, logos, print work, you name it. She also blogs regularly at the Snoack Studios blog and you can connect with her on twitter @snoackstudios and Facebook as well.

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Every week, I meet Mesa business owners ask me this question.

Should you create Social Media profiles for your business? When I mean by Social Media, I refer to Facebook Fan page, Twitter account, etc.

Conversations About Your Business Are Already Taking Place

You might be too busy to create a Facebook page for your business. But the fact of the matter is whether you like it or not, conversations about your business is already taking place.

If you Google your business name and find people talking about your organization, hey, congratulations, at least you’re worth talking about.

The danger is when nobody is talking about your organization. It probably means your business is good, but not great to the point worth spreading.

I think it’s a reality check here.

When to Create Facebook Page or Twitter Account

It’s not necessary to create Social Media profiles to spread stories about your organization, but if you have zero web presence, it’s a good place to start. Ask yourself this question – what’s the purpose of creating your profiles? Is it to provide customer service? To create fan pages to support your fans? To communicate better with your customers and clients?

A good way to assess the need is whether or not your target population isalready using Social Media to communicate with others. If many of your clients are already Facebook users, it’ll provide another channel for your business to connect with the people who matter to your business.

However, let’s say you’re creating a Twitter account just to communicate with your employees. If none of your employees tweet, it’s probably not necessary at this time.

Social Media, if used successfully, keep your conversations fluid. If your primary communication is email, it’s not always necessary to create a Facebook profile. Likewise, if your business mostly deals with telephone calls, creating a Twitter may not better your current communication.

Social Media Connects You to Outside World

One thing Social Media makes possible is you can reach people outside your current and immediate influence. So, for marketing purposes, if you’re looking for ways to reach more people, you should create Social Media profiles.

Start showing up to Mesa Chamber of Commerce meetings with your business cards and ask if anyone is using Social Media successfully to approach people in your industry. If you meet other business owners who can point you to the right direction, start connecting with them and exchanging methods that help each other.

Currently, my web traffic comes about 8-9% from Twitter and %15-20% Facebook. While my Twitter happens to be connected with local to greater Phoenix folks, my Facebook is deeply connected with people I frequently associate with weekly — they all bring different people to me.

Creating Facebook profiles and Twitter can eventually move you to create YouTube videos and other Social Media profiles. You’ll be amazed at what kind of business relationships you can form with people you only meet over Facebook, Twitter and other Social Media network.

In the meantime, at least you might want to grab your username that represents your business name before anyone else taking it. To see if your username or profile name is taken, visit KnowEm. KnowEm allows you to check for the use of your brand, product, personal name or username instantly on over 350 popular and emerging social media websites.

Don’t get scared, it’s just the Facebook, right? Start reading my past articles I’ve written to find out how other Social Media savvy business owners are utilizing Facebook and Twitter.

If you’d like follow me on Twitter please let me know!

Darryl Web, Tribune

I’ve written in the past Mesa should display provocative art work to draw visitors to the city.

Build something that gets people to talk about.  But it cannot be anything boring because that won’t get anyone to talk about.  By “boring”, I mean, it cannot be museums, ballparks, theaters, and all other stuff that other cities already own.  Those buildings are too safe, and since people in different cities already have those, they won’t come out of their way to Mesa, not worth visiting unless the city builds something spectacular.

Well, it looks like they were already thinking about doing something like this for a long time — If you drive down on Main, you’ll see 25 foot tall God Bless America statues. The city is borrowing it for a few months. Wait to Go, Mesa!!

This takes the guts to do, and some will resist to this seemingly idea. But it’s far more effective than placing some boring, safe, nothing special bronze statues that no heads turn to see. It’s provocative, controversial, and that’s what art is meant to do.

Bring more people to downtown, Mesa.

Yeay!

Sometimes I say, “I am too busy with school!”

And others say,  ”I am too busy for school!”

Neither one of the mindset moves us to accomplish anything important.

The only thing that matters is things we actually do.

I enjoy writing even though I am not the best one at it. But to make up for the lack of insight, I try reading more than others.

Then there are many who are already brilliant, insightful, courageous, empowering, and inspiring people who think about writing and never do. My guess is they’re telling themselves nobody would read anything they write.

But if you’re worried about whether or not people would read your articles, I don’t think you’ll ever write anything. If you’re TRULY passionate about something, and you’re overwhelmed by the need to share what you know, I think you’ll write.

And if your topic speaks to others, and if others share the same values with you, people will find you because that’s how the Internet works.

Every day, though, people think about doing important stuff. But if all we do is think, all these thinking won’t translate into anything worthwhile.

In fact, the only thing that matters is anything we do. So, next time you feel the “itch” to write about something you’re passionate about, just remind yourself that you are a great writer.

English is my second language, but that doesn’t stop me from writing.

The world needs you, your community needs you, and your family needs you, so go write something that matters to you. Soon, you’ll find yourself leading others who share the same values as yours.

Southwest Airlines is attempting to recover public relations after messing with the wrong guy this past weekend. Kevin Smith, film director with 1.6 million Twitter followers @ThatKevinSmith at the time of incident was removed from the passenger seat after he had already seated.

“Because It’s Our Policy”

Similar things happen every day although we never hear about it while getting silenced under the name of policy. In fact, many organizations implement policies to make people “go away” (even though they know it doesn’t sound right). The reason we never hear about it is the policy remains unchanged for the most part because good employees don’t question why it exists within an organization.

The lesson learned here is organizations are too busy today looking outwardly about ways to bring customers and forget what’s neglected inside. Instead of looking outwardly and spending millions of dollars investing in new advertising ideas, why not use Southwest Airlinens’ lesson as an opportunity to reevaluate what you can improve internally in your own organization?

WHY Do You Do What You Do?

Most organizations, particularly large ones, have things that don’t make sense even to its employees. When this happens, it disconnects the organizational ethos that bonds the values of employees together. As a result, employees become discouraged to create initiatives that could otherwise produce great ideas. They lose the very WHY of what they do for work and soon only start describing the HOW and the WHAT they do.

Fear Kills Our Creativity

We experience the same stuff while growing up. To be a good employee, we don’t question the system already in place, and we’re supposed to let schools design the way we should behave at work. After learning this way for a while, we become too scared to make mistakes, to appear wrong, and delegate the brave work to the quirky folks who are not afraid to look different than others. This fear kills our creativity, the very thing we use to challenge the status quo and start looking outwardly until our creativity gets completely replaced with spreadsheets and multi-tasking skills.

Does the Policy Meet the Objectives?

If a policy doesn’t make sense to anyone, especially to people who work for your organization, it’s less likely that makes any sense to your customers. Too late, though, if it ends up sabotaging the very thing you worked hard to build. So before this happens, such policy needs to be revisited.

We’re often too busy doing umimporant stuff every day at work (like answering emails) and lose time to do really important work, and these initiatives only take place in an environment where dreaming is encouraged.

What Is Really Important for Your Work and Organization?

That’s the ultimate question you need to answer yourself. What is it that you need to stand for? If you can give one thing to the world better than anyone else you know, what would it be?

Write that down and this will become the manifesto that spreads your idea. And if it speaks to others, and if there are others share the same values as you do, pretty soon you’ll find yourself leading others.

And to do this, you cannot care about what others think of you. Your organization, your community and your family needs you. Share your passion and empower others with possibilities they never knew it was possible to reach.

New Orleans Saints won its first Super Bowl title. Pro athletes repeat mundane and boring practice all their lives to make ONE play that determines the outcome of the game. Every day, I believe the most of our lives are filled with mundane stuff, but they are what give people inspiration in times of need, making everything else we go through worthwhile doing.

I am often reminded that great results occur as a residual effect of doing these small, boring, and mundane things.

How about you?

Congratulations, Saints. Your fans, your city and your team needed the victory – you earned it and deserve it.

I watched Miss America over the weekend. All pretty and smart girls from all over America, competing for the title.

Most girls respond to questions thoughtfully, but I believe people want more than just the safe answers. Inspiring people aren’t usually the safest ones, but having decided that their belief is more important than their fear of looking stupid on television.

Safe answers are boring, they’re just a click away. The braves, they don’t necessarily overcome fear, but are authentic, passionate, courageous, and sometimes even introvert.

Brave people aren’t always charismatic, but they do it anyway. 

That “doing” is what gives brave people charisma.

If you own the iPhone and do some cool stuff with it, get Google Voice.

With Google Voice, you can read voicemail like a text message, receive incoming calls to your home to ring your cellphone, desk phone or even office phone.

It means, when your friend calls ONE number, all of your phones ring (you can set setting, of course).

The best part about it is free — it’s by Google, you know?

The only catch is you’d have to be invited. Yes, it’s by invitation only. Google loves doing that to you.

Here is the link, send your email and wait for the invitation — https://www.google.com/voice