Business

Always Be More Productive

By Gunner Technology | September 7, 2010 4:25 pm | Business, Marketing, Productivity | Leave a comment

If you’re a digital development and or marketing agency, you should obsess over how to better server your clients and formalize your process.

It’s such a competitive industry. If you’re not on track, you’ll get run over.

About 30% of my time is spent educating myself and trying out new methods and tools to keep me and my company on the cutting edge.

Each week, I read dozens of resources that help me. Here are the best I found this week.

10 Useful Tasks for Slow Times

By Gunner Technology | August 31, 2010 3:15 pm | Business | Leave a comment

What do you do when business is slow?

For me, business has never been slow ;)

But if business were to slow down, here are some business-focused things I’d do.

  1. Built out my custom CRM application to be the most robust CRM tool for digital agencies
  2. Find a virtual assistant
  3. Create automated lead generation tools that trolled Twitter and Foursquare and populated my CRM app
  4. Blog — a lot
  5. Write a book
  6. Start making custom decks to pitch the big boys
  7. Start a podcast
  8. Update my design on my various social channels
  9. Finally get rid of the default look on my Blog :|
  10. Record video client testimonials

If you’re looking for more, check out 10 Useful Tasks for Slow Times.

So tell me, what would you do, friend?

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Why no one cares about your content

By Gunner Technology | August 30, 2010 3:15 pm | Business, Marketing | Leave a comment

Man, it hurts when no one cares about your content.

Even if your produce great content, it can go unliked, unshared and forgotten.

A post over at hubspot by David Garland offers seven great reasons why this happens and what to do about it.

Dave boil it down to:

  1. Bad Web Design
  2. Lacking Ease Of Sharing
  3. Product Focused Content
  4. Not-You Focused Content
  5. Lack Of Passion
  6. Unclear, Boring Or Ridiculously Long Titles
  7. Oops, I Forgot My Marketing

Check out 7 Fluff-Free Reasons Your Online Content Isn’€™t Spreading for a detailed explanation of each and what you can do about it.

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Social Media Strategy: What is your Business’?

By Gunner Technology | August 24, 2010 11:35 pm | Business, Social Media | Leave a comment
ESOC's Control Room
Image via Wikipedia

Big shout out to Social Media Examiner.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone over Social Media with a client, explaining how effective Social Media can be if done correctly.

Social Media is nothing I can do for your business.

I can help set your website up for social media integration and can give you on going training, campaigns and strategy.

But that’s a slow process. First we must set your overall Social Media Strategy.

  1. Prerequisite – Buy in
  2. Determine Your Goals and Objectives
  3. Research, Research, and Research Some More
  4. Create a Digital Rolodex of Contacts and Content
  5. Join the Conversation to Develop Relationships
  6. Strengthen Relationships
  7. Measure Results
  8. Analyze, Adapt, and Improve

Please, please, please, please understand that Social Media is not a one-time deal. It requires full-time expert service and the philosophy must be a company-wide adaptation.

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10 Ways to Grow Your Business With Social Media

By Gunner Technology | August 19, 2010 9:22 pm | Business, Social Media | Leave a comment

Once your business has a Social Media presence, the next question is always.

“How do I grow it.”

Fortunately Kwame Boame offers a very solid list of 10 Ways to Grow Your Business With Social Media.

I’ve done all the things he suggests other than write an eBook (I’m planning on it) and turning my blog posts into slides.

I also recommend checking out Vark for some good exposure.

What do you think? How do you generate leads from Social Media?

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30+ apps to help your Business on Facebook

By Gunner Technology | August 15, 2010 9:22 pm | Business, Social Media | Leave a comment
Facebook logo
Image via Wikipedia

If you’re a business, you pretty much need a Facebook page these days. But how do you get started?

Fortunately there are tons of apps out there to help you. Check out these 30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook that cover Blog Promotion, Business / Self Promotion, Communication, Networking, Collaboration, Audio/Visual and more.

Inolvr and Wildfire are other great apps that can help your brand and business.

Once you’re set up, I suggest you check out How To Use Creative Specials To Boost Your Facebook Presence for some examples of how you should and shouldn’t use your new presence.

What would you add?

How to Start a Freelance Web Design Company

By Gunner Technology | August 13, 2010 9:22 pm | Business | Leave a comment

Working for yourself is great, but some people just don’t know how to get started.

Shannon Noack of Snoack Studios shares five steps for starting your own web design company.

Step 1: Find a Business Name

Step 2: Create a Website

Step 3: Start a Blog

Step 4: Get the administrative and financial stuff sorted out

Step 5: Get Your Social Media on

This is a pretty skimpy list and makes it sound easier than it is.

This describes, at a very, very high level how to start a sole proprietorship and neglects a lot of necessary items.

For more of the administrative stuff, I recommend you check out an old blog post of mine on starting a corporation.

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10 Ways to Work More Productively

By Gunner Technology | August 9, 2010 2:27 pm | Business | Leave a comment
Productivity model (Saari 2006)
Image via Wikipedia

Whether you’re a freelancer or not, you should strive to be as productive as possible, check out this article from FreelanceFolder for 10 tips to increase your productivity.

The tips include:

1. Organize Your Work Space

2. Plan Your Day, Week, Month, Year

3. Do Similar Tasks Together

4. Work in Focused Chunks of Time

5. Take Frequent Breaks

6. Use Tools to Systematize and Automate Common Tasks

7. Learn to Delegate

8. Cooperate with Your Personal Style and Body Clock

9. Eliminate Distractions

10. Harness the Power of Music

I think this is a pretty solid list, but I don’t like to take breaks. I like to blow right through and get in the zone.

The most important on here is to group like task. I organize my days according to specific tasks.

Monday’s are for meetings

Tuesdays are for touching base and following up

Wednesday is for blogging

Thursday is for miscellaneous chores

Friday’s are for fun stuff

Saturday’s are spare stuff that didn’t get done during the week

Sunday is church and off.

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Tips for growing your business online

By Gunner Technology | August 3, 2010 6:54 pm | Business | Leave a comment
Image representing Blip.tv as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

Blip.TV is a video sharing platform for independent web shows. Since opening its doors five years ago, the owner  has seen her business grow from a really small niche of video bloggers who were producing original video shows, to thousands of users using the site to host their own shows and upload produced videos.

On Mashable, she shared a list of 5 Tips to grow your business.

Read the article for details, but she lists:

  1. Don’t Try To Be All Things To All People
  2. Learn From Your Customers
  3. Hire Experts
  4. Engage and Connect With Your Community
  5. Don’t Obsess Over Funding

I have two things to offer. First, if you can take anything from this list, take #3. Don’t assume you can do something better or cheaper yourself!

For example, if you can clean your house and get the job done pretty well in four hours, and your hourly rate is $200, your paying $800 for a pretty clean house, but if you can hire someone to clear your house really well, and they charge $100 an hour and can do the job in three hours, you are actually netting $500.

The same is for Web Development, SEO and Social Media. Find someone who can do it better and cheaper. Replace yourself!

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How can my business find a Social Media consultant?

By Gunner Technology | August 1, 2010 2:27 pm | Business, Social Media | Leave a comment

Pam Moore gives great advice. One of her latest pieces, Social Media Consultant: 65 Tips to Differentiate the Good from the Bad certainly does’t fall short.

It’s a pretty through list, but I’d like to add to it.

If you’re looking for a Social Media consultant, and a perspective “consultant” tells you they can get you 10,000 Twitter followers in a week, run like crazy.

First, anyone who can get 10,000 followers in a week (assuming we’re not talking about a mega brand) is getting the wrong kind of followers. Probably bots or other zombie accounts that are set to auto follow anyone who follows them.

So you’ll be left following tens of thousands accounts with 10,000 in return, and it’s clear what you’re doing.

Plus, what’s the point?

Unless your business gets paid in followers, you shouldn’t accept that as your metric.

You want ROI. You want customer loyalty. You want brand sentiment.

These are deeper metrics that goes behind follower count.

Your Social Media consultant better know that.

Also, I disagree with Pam about the free lunches.

If you’re a consultant, don’t turn down these opportunties.

Don’t give away your business, but talk this stuff out. Give a fee freebies and, you may be rewarded with a great campaign idea you can leverage with this lead or another one.

Oh, and just expense the lunch.

Check out this links for more information.