Customers are hard to win, and that makes keeping them happy a paramount task for any business owner.  One thing you might ask yourself is, what kind of procedures for customer service do I have in place–any?

I was speaking to a company today in an attempt to straighten something out (this has been going on for over a week and each rep I speak to gives me a different answer).  When I asked to speak to a supervisor, the straw that broke the camel’s back was “you don’t need to speak to a supervisor.”  Interesting.

One of the most important things as a business owner you can do is LISTEN to what people are  saying about your company online,  It is imperative to both thank people for good comments, and immediately address any negative comments when they arise.

TAKE A LOOK AT THIS QUICK VIDEO ON SETTING UP A ‘LISTENING POST’–It’s a great first step, and it’s FREE!

I hope this helps…

Preston Ehrler, Webvantix

In this slow economy are you finding yourself searching for opportunities, leads, new customers?  If so, why not try something outside of your comfort zone?  Do something that from a different standpoint, and move away from saying “No” all the time.  Check out the video for inspiration…

(@douglaskarr over at Marketing Tech Blog posted a great blog on failure and I thought I would share the video he had…it says it all!)

How have you moved out of your comfort zone?  Check out this post Do You Always Say No?

Subscribe to this blog via email HERE

Preston Ehrler, Webvantix

As I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis, one thing I’ve  noticed is that many of them produce content that is either too technical for most business owners to find useful, or too ambiguous to be of any value.

What we are attempting to execute here at “Help for the Online Novice” is to offer specific ideas, tips and tools that are quick to understand, and have a direct value to business owners who are working hard to market their companies through Social Media.

At Webvantix we are a company with talent that spans from programming, through web development and into online marketing and therefore will be working hard to bring a broad spectrum of  related content that can be quickly digested, understood and deployed.

Additionally, we are going to be introducing several outside “Guest-Bloggers” who are excited about the prospect of bringing their unique content to you.

Finally, as you may have already seen in recent posts, we will be creating our content in a varied-multi-media format that combines, text, video blogs and screen casting–who wants to read boring text all the time anyway?

If you’re interested in delivery via e-mail, sign up HERE

As always, e-mail me with any questions preston@webvantix.

Preston Ehrler, Webvantix

At Webvantix we have focused our blog on offering ideas on how local businesses, small and medium in scope, can utilize the Internet and Social Media Marketing to grow traffic to their sites and turn that traffic into leads and eventually customers. Therefore, we are changing the name of the blog from “Webvantix Web Trends” to “Help for the Online Novice, Tips and Ideas for Marketing Your Business in an Online World.”

With the focus of so many blogs soaring over the heads of most business owners who are not in front of their computers all day, simply because their business dictates they be elsewhere, our focus will turn to simplifying many of the aspects of Social Media Marketing and online marketing, and speaking directly to business owners who need help getting noticed online. Great ideas, fast, simple.

Get noticed, your business will thank you!

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Google has a new blog that is specifically centered around small businesses, the “Google Small Business Blog,” though regardless of your business size, I recommend it as a great aggregator of information from various blogs under the Google name.

In Google’s own words: “It’s a central hub that brings together all the information about Google products, features and projects of specific interest to the small business community.”

Additionally, I quickly show you how to add it as an RSS feed to Google Reader. Have a look…

Here’s the link to the blog itself: Google Small Business Blog

Any questions, please feel free to email me: preston@webvantix.com

Preston Ehrler, Webvantix

Professional website design is great and can be an enormous differentiator between you and your competition.  Yet, there are other steps you can take to help your site get noticed locally.  One of those is using the Google Places program, Google Tags.

Here’s an intro by Google.

They give you 30 days free, so why not check it out…

Preston Ehrler, Webvantix

There are several key Do’s and Don’ts when using Twitter.  The Do’s are really Do’s and the Don’ts are REALLY Don’ts.

Don’t—

SPAM or attempt to directly sell someone on Twitter, even if you know them.  It’s in bad taste, and could get you reported as a Spammer and/or Blocked.  If someone becomes interested in what you offer, they will reach out to you.

Send out the same Tweet over and over , Spammers do this.  If you want to schedule tweets to repeat, my advice is only repeat something twice in a day (every twelve hours).

Be negative to other people

Ignore those with less clout or influence than you…engage those that engage you and be honored that they sought you out.

Auto DM new followers–this has ruined DMs and made them almost worthless.  Don’t even consider it.  Auto DMs are impersonal, and mean absolutely nothing

Do—

Listen, listen, listen.  By using a platform such as Tweet Deck or Seesmic you can import your lists into columns and watch what everyone is discussing.

Re-Tweet what you find interesting, therefore giving credit where credit is due

Thank people when they re-tweet you.

Post links to interesting and compelling material that is relevant to what’s trending and what people are discussing.

Engage people and develop REAL relationships.  I’ve made some great friends on Twitter!

And finally, enjoy!  Twitter is old fashioned networking, but done over the Internet, and can bring a great sense of belonging.

Did I leave anything out?

Preston Ehrler, Webvantix

Many people feel intimidated by uploading video to their WordPress blog, even if they’ve had their website professionally developed. So, here’s a video that shows how simple it really is…

If you want to receive our blog via e-mail, just sign up over to your right>>

Let us know if this helps you,

Preston Ehrler, Webvantix

If you are a business owner considering a professional website redesign one of the things you should look hard at is understanding, very clearly, who your site visitors are and why they are landing on it.  Obviously you want your website to generate leads for your company, but first you must convert them from visitors into lead, yet before that you must ‘silo’ them to the correct landing page–essentially when they arrive on your homepage, you must quickly get them to the page that is specifically designed with content for who they are–not just a generic “Product” or “Services” page.

Here’s a great ‘Before’ and ‘After’ example

Be sure and sign up over to your right, to receive our blog by email.

Preston Ehrler, Webvantix

I was reading Chris Brogan over the weekend and he posted several several links that discussed Conversion, or turning your site’s visitors into leads and/or customers.

One of the links that was posted was this piece in Smashing magazine that discusses “Call to Action” buttons.  Have a look, I thought it was excellent.  If you’re looking to turn more site visitors into leads, a “Call to Action” button may be exactly what you need.

Here’s a visual example of one we created for a customer.  When a site visitor selects the button, an overlay opens right on that page, requesting information on their project.  Once the form is filled out and submitted, the site owner has a new lead–simple and very effective

Here’s the web page and the “Call to Action” button:

Here is the overlay that opens when the button is selected:

We will have more information about Conversion as well as driving more traffic to your site using Social Media Marketing via your Blog, Twitter and Facebook…check back often, or be sure and sign up to receive our blog via e-mail

Thanks for checking out the Webvantix Blog

Preston Ehrler

Webvantix