Most businesses today rely on traditional marketing methods such as in-person relationship building, networking, trade show booths, or some form of display advertising, possibly direct mail, or even internet advertising for generating new revenue.  These methods still work and will continue to work at some level for quite some time.  But what about adding your social media strategy?

Our new social media strategy has us working on increasing our social networking for the past month or so now, and it’s been a lot of fun. The discussion on Twitter has been great, and we’ve “met” a lot of interesting people. Our Facebook fan page has grown, and we’ve been pleased to acquire quite the international fan base.  The Bizmanualz policies and procedures group on Linkedin is growing.

Elements of a Social Media Strategy

Your social media strategy has three important elements that begin by understanding your market, your goals, and your approach.

1. Understand the Social Media Market:

• What do people think about your brand?
• Your points of views?
• Where are the conversations online?
• What are they saying?

2. Identify Your Social Media Goals, Objectives and Success Measures:

• Awareness
• Engagement
• Popularity

3. Define Your Social Media Approach To Delivering Content:

• What social media websites do you need to post to online?
• How often?

The Social Media Market

At Bizmanualz, we use AddThis so that our users can share Bizmanualz content to 330 of the most popular social networking and bookmarking sites (like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon and MySpace).  You will notice the share icon at the bottom right of every webpage.  Click on the share icon and then you can select from 330 of the most popular social sites. 

There are hundreds of social media websites to add to your marketing plan, but if you are new to social media, then the place to start is with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Linkedin.  Each one has their own focus which attracts a different group of users.  Let’s start with Twitter.

 Twitter

Today Twitter has over 500M accounts.  What is Twitter? Think of twitter.com as a microblog. Your posts (called tweets) are limited to 140 characters so you can’t be wordy.  The idea behind twitter is to socialize.  Engage others with a reply/comment to their posts.  Twitter can be used to publish important news, find new employees, get advice, or take a quick poll.  Think instant information.  If you are trying to understand your market then just follow the tweets…

If you like what others are saying then you can “re-tweet” the post to the people that follow you — your Twitter followers.  Building Twitter followers is an important element to your social media strategy.  Without followers you really don’t have a social media program.  They best way to get followers is to ask…

Ask people to follow you on twitter.  Provide your twitter handle and a benefit of what they will see in your tweets.  For example, we would like you to followBizmanualz on Twitter.

Bizmanualz Twitter

Follow Bizmanualz on Twitter

Follow @bizmanualz

Follow us – twitter.com/Bizmanualz to get expert tips everyday on business process design, business policies and procedures, and business process improvement – Follow our Twitter posts.

What can you tweet about?

You can turn your twitter feed into an online newspaper using Paper.li to do all of the work of generating fresh news from your twitter account.  Check out the Policies, Procedures, and Processes News!

Twitter can be used to publish information, collect information, and engage your market to discover new information about your market.  That is why we urge you to Follow our Twitter posts so we can learn more about you — our market.

How can you follow all the tweets?

Millions of tweets are occurring on Twitter each day so we use Tweetdeck to filter keywords, mentions, and understand the traffic.  Without a Tweetdeck application it would be very difficult to follow all the information moving about on Twitter.  Of course there are many other application for understanding your followers.  More on that later… Once you have a twitter account then you are going to have to create a social media policy.

Social Media Policy

Your social media policy must address: Who in your organization can post? What can be posted? And Who is going to reply to others?  Your social media policy reinforces your social media strategy and lays the foundation for how the company brand is managed within the social media market.  If you are going to start with Twitter then you will need a Twitter policy.

We started talking about Twitter.  Next up for your social media strategy are Facebook, Pinterest, and Linkedin.  Together they represent important social media destinations for your business.  With so many social networks, which is for you?  Between Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, social networking for business can be complicated. Which is for you?  Let’s take a look at the big three.

Facebook

Facebook has over 1 Billion user accounts and is growing.  If you have employees then somebody at your company has a Facebook account, which means you have a social media policy, one way or another.  So you might want to create a few social media policies and procedures to support your social media strategy.

Facebook is like a social watering hole.  It is a place where people add friends and post pictures, videos, links, or messages that everyone you are connected to can then comment on.  Commenting on what everyone is posting is part of the fun.  Facebook is a social center.

Organizations can use Facebook to create a page as their social center.  You can then add your twitter feed, blog posts, event information, and pictures about your company.  People then interact with your company page by posting comments or “like” what you post.  A “like” provides feedback that what you are posting is a post of interest by someone else.

Your Facebook page acts as a central repository for your pictures, events, blog posts, products, etc.  If your company is focused on the business to consumer (b2c) market then Facebook is great.  If you are focused on business to business (b2b) then Facebook will take more work.

Like Bizmanualz on Facebook

‘Like’ us – facebook.com/bizmanualz

Become a Bizmanualz fan on Facebook.

Pinterest

A relatively new photo-based website.  Fashion and design are popular on Pinterest, which is a good place to post pictures of your cool offices, neat artwork, or great looking products.  Popular pictures can be liked and pinned onto your own wall for your friends to see.  We have used it to pin process maps, process pictures, and other photos.  If your business has a design element, then you need to pin it on Pinterest.

Linkedin

The ultimate business focused social networking site – Linkedin.  Some think of Linkedin as a great place for recruiting new employees.  Everyone puts there resume online and then connects.  But it is more than that.  You can find people important to your business,reach out to them, and get introduced through a connection of yours.

Linkedin can be a great sales lead site to find people that work at a company.  You can also create a LinkedIn Group, which is a forum for like minded individuals to start discussions.  LinkedIn is recognizing the social aspect of social networking and moving more toward becoming a true online community and not simply a job board or business networking arena.

With Linkedin there are:

1) Message “Announcements”
Group managers can now directly message all of their members via email. Previously, we could post discussion topics, but depending on a user’s preferences, he or she may not have received the message until the end of the week-too long of a delay to utilize that application in useful ways.

2) RSS Feeds
Instead of going in manually and posting News articles of interest, or even your company’s own articles and blog posts, you can easily feed your blog into the group. And, the email says, the items will automatically show up under the “News” tab. (Done and done.)

3) Job Listings
Group managers now can enable (or disable) the job listing board within the group.

While LinkedIn remains the online community of choice for the business-minded, much more needs to be done to enhance its usefulness like Twitter, Facebook, or Google.

The Bizmanualz policies and procedures group on Linkedin is just that, for anyone interested in discussing policies and procedures.  You can ask a question, post a job, request help, or comment on what others are talking about.  Linkedin is not like twitter or Facebook.  It is more of a business network than a social hangout.  But I guess you can make it what you want too.

Join the discussion on Linkedin.

The post What is Your Social Media Strategy? appeared first on Bizmanualz.

Management Strategy

The goal of strategy is to describe how and why the Company is going to achieve its goals and objectives AND to that end, the Company must ensure that its strategies are aligned.  Marketing strategies should identify customer groups the Company can serve better than its competitors and tailor its product offerings, prices, distribution, promotional efforts, and services to those target market segments.  Good marketing strategies helps the Company concentrate its efforts on the markets it can serve best.

It is crucial that the Company’s management strategy takes into account all aspects / functions of the Company, so that the whole organization proceeds in the same direction with the same purpose.  The Company’s strategy is more likely to yield positive results if all employees, contractors, etc., understand and agree with them.

Strategy is the result of relevant research and analysis, as appropriate; and synthesizing the parts into a cohesive unit to develop the Marketing Plan.  But actions taken alone are just tactics.  In order for your business to survive and grow your Marketing Strategy Plan must be competitive.

Competitive Strategy

Management Strategy

Creating strategic growth is based on a strong foundation that is competitive.  Michael Porter outlines three “generic competitive strategies” in his book Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors: cost leadership, differentiation and focus.

Free Sample Business Procedure Templates

Cost leadership Strategy

A strategy of achieving leadership in an industry or line of business by offering products or services at a lower cost than your competitors.  A Cost leadership Strategy requires a focus on efficiency, tight cost and overhead internal controls, and cost minimization in areas like research & development.  In other words it requires a system of policies and procedures.  Your Policies and Procedures Strategy provides the basis for a sound cost leadership strategy.

Differentiation Strategy

A strategy of achieving leadership by creating a product/service that is perceived throughout the industry as unique.  A differentiation strategy may take the form of design, brand image, technology, features, service, or other dimensions; ideally, the Company will differentiate itself along multiple dimensions. A focus on quality could be a key differentiator.  Getting Quality awards help strategy differentiation.

Focus Strategy

A strategy of achieving leadership within a particular target market by serving that market more effectively or efficiently than competitors trying to serve a broader market is a focus strategy.  This may enable the focused Strategy company to have cost leadership or differentiation within a tightly focused target market, or both.

Deploying Your Strategy

Your business growth requires a clear strategy.  Your strategy could be based on cost leadership, differentiation, or a sharp focus.   So let’s get started.  Create your Strategy Team and come up with a clear competitive strategy, with vision and action steps.   Don’t delay.  The New Year is right around the corner.  Managing Financial Strategy Means Business Success.

Download Free Sample Business Procedure Templates to see how easy it is to edit MS Word Templates to build your own business policy and procedure management system with internal controls.

The post Setting Strategy for the New Year appeared first on Bizmanualz.

How Do You Get Started Writing Your SOP Manual?

Having an SOP manual is great but the question most often asked is how do you get started writing an operations manual?  Well it is a lot easier than you think. Follow these five steps and you will have a well-defined SOP manual of your critical policies, procedures, and forms.

1. Map out your core processes.
2. Define each core business process activities.
3. Document each activity into a series of steps.
4. Determine the required records, forms, and management metrics.
5. Build your documents, reports, and graphs, that form your management system.

Writing Standard Operating Procedures

Start with a Process Map

First, start with a process map of your top level processes.  For most companies your top ten core business processes are divided into support processes (accounting, human resources, information technology, quality, and management strategy) or your realization processes (sales, product development, purchasing, fulfillment, and service).  Not all companies have all ten core processes.  Now that your core operating processes are defined, you are ready to move on to defining each process.

Define Your Core Processes

Second, define each core business process and its activities.  Think top level once again.  In the sales process, how are your orders converted into a shipped product?  Orders are received, entered, picked, packed, shipped, and invoiced.

Document Your Procedures

Third, document each operation from start to finish.  Let’s take the sales process.  How do your sales orders arrive, who takes them, how often, under what criteria, who touches the order next, what do they do, and so on… Just follow the sales order through your system and define each step.  You SOP manual is slowly building…

Implement Your Records

Fourth, determine the required records, forms, and management metrics.  Do you have a standard order form, confirmation checklist, pick sheet, or invoice?  We need to know what forms are used, where they are located, and who maintains them in case we run out and have to get more.  Next identify core metrics for each activity, the transaction volume, and timing.  We will need these next.

Combine Into Your SOP Manual

Finally, we are now ready to put together the SOP manual and start using the system.  Start the operations manual with your core processes mapped out in step one.  Explain each core business process with the material from step two.  Then dive into each process with the individual procedure steps outlined from step three.  Add references to each record or form needed as you touch on them in the detailed procedure steps with the notes from step four.

To get the most value out of your SOP manual, you will need to use it over and over again.  Updating it as needed.  Use the metrics as your daily management system to ensure you are getting the results you expect from your business.  Now you are managing by procedures that you built from your SOP manual.  To see some procedure examples, download free SOP samples from Bizmanualz.

The post How To Write Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) appeared first on Bizmanualz.

What is Cost of Quality?

The cost of quality is typically explained as consisting of four elements: prevention, appraisal, internal failure and external failure costs.  But I have a simpler explanation.  Your business has three things to worry about:

1. what is productive work,
2. what work do you need to perform to ensure work is productive,
3. and then there is unproductive work or waste.

Your cost of poor quality consists mainly of the unproductive work.  The goal in quality is to focus on the productive work, ensure your work is productive, and get rid of the unproductive work.  Sound simple?

It could be that simple accept it can be difficult separating the productive work form the unproductive work because they can look the same.  After all, if you have a lot of waste, then you need the unproductive work to manage the waste.

For example, let’s consider inventory handling.  If you have a lot of inventory (in lean, inventory is considered waste), then you will have material handlers that are needed to move the inventory along.  Your inventory handlers look like productive work.  Ask them and they will tell you that they are being productive moving inventory around the plant.  Management thought it was productive work when they bought the forklifts, right?  But if you can design a system of balanced work cells that align the work in a single piece flow (like an assembly line) then you don’t need forklifts to move the material from one work cell to another.  It just flows…

Therefore, inventory, the forklifts, and your material handlers all contribute to your cost of poor quality.  As we look around the company we can find many examples of unproductive work masquerading as productive work.  It just takes a lean eye to tell the difference.

Cost of Quality in Sales & Marketing

Every processes contributes to the cost of poor quality.  Sales and marketing are processes that do contribute to the cost of quality too.  For example, sales people can enter the order wrong, can contribute to lost sales with a faulty sales process, or spend too much time with the wrong customers.  Marketing can provide too many features for development to work on, poorly define the market, or fail to provide the correct marketing information to sales.  Customer service people handle complaints, problems and customer issues.  But, if you had few issues then you would need few customer service people.

Sales and marketing are frequently looked at as excluded from quality.  Many people think quality only relates to manufacturing (sometimes this is because quality reports to manufacturing).  The bottom line is bad inputs = bad outputs, which can trickle down to manufacturing failures caused by sales and marketing failures.  You are only a strong as your weakest link…

The next time you review your enterprise strategy for growing sales, make sure you take a look at your Cost of Quality metrics, which will tell you everything about how capable your business is to respond to your customers, competitors, and employee demands.

The post What is Your Cost of Quality Strategy? appeared first on Bizmanualz.

What drives your customer service (aka, customer relationships), anyway? Your company policy, of course. Your mission and vision drive your overall company policy, in which you lay out your overall objectives that guide your strategic plan. From there come your sales and marketing plans, your operational plans, and so forth. You might think of your policy as a juncture of internal and external forces.

So, why do I bring up this subject? An article appeared last week on “Mashable” that makes a very good point about the importance of a strong, well-written company policy to your customer relationships.  This article explains why no one reads privacy policies, and they cite Facebook and others as examples.

Why don’t customers read privacy policies? The article has several answers, including:

• The longest privacy policy of the “top 1,000″ websites takes 45 minutes to read at 244 wpm⁽¹⁾; and
• The average of the privacy policies cited takes about 10 minutes to read.

It’s not just privacy policies, of course — it’s every kind of policy. They’re lengthy, full of confusing verbiage, and put off their audience. They do neither the company nor its customers any good. So, why are wordy, obtuse policies (in “nanofonts”) foisted on customers?

• In the modern business environment, legal departments owe their employers a duty to protect them. Unfortunately, this is often interpreted to mean “let’s cover every contingency we can think of”. Clarity is invariably sacrificed for thorough attention to detail.
• Modern culture seems to have promoted discord, vitriol, and revenge over cooperation, conciliation, and harmony. I don’t know where this warrior mentality worked its way into business but being humble and nice is now a sign of weakness. This line of thinking leads companies to draw in and protect rather than be exposed to danger.
• Companies seem to prefer “customer acquisition” over “cultivating relationships”. They need (or they prefer) the quick payoff rather than the slow-and-sure.

What’s most puzzling is that the last issue persists even though the need for short-term profits is what largely brought about the current global economic recession. When will we learn?

If a company had as one of its stated purposes “to reduce customer goodwill and retention”, they still couldn’t do a better job of driving people to look for alternatives than by writing bad policy. Badly conceived, poorly written company policy is avoidable; well-written policy is a necessity.

“So, what is a well-written policy?”, you ask. It’s a policy that’s:

• Clear;
• Concise;
• Direct;
• Easy to comprehend;
• Not written to its audience but written with that audience foremost in mind; and
• Written with SMART objectives behind it.

What’s your company policy? Does everyone understand it? Does it help your customer relationships? Call or write and let’s talk policy.

Download free sample policies and procedures in easy to edit Microsoft Word templates to quickly and easily create your own policy and procedure manual the fastest way possible — using Bizmanualz policy and procedure templates.

* * * * * * *

⁽¹⁾Font type and size have something to do with that figure, as do the complex wording and convoluted syntax common to “legalese”. Naturally, we read faster and retain more of some documents than others (Novels v. Contracts, for example). I recommend checking out these sites and others for more information on reading speed:

• TurboRead - http://www.turboread.com/interpretation.htm.
• Speed Reading Center - http://www.speedreadingcenter.com/average-reading-speed/.
• Free Speed Reading - http://www.free-speed-reading.com/articles/what-is-the-average-reading-speed-of-americans.

The post Gain Customer Loyalty and Respect with Well-Written Policies appeared first on Bizmanualz.

But Is Management Strategy That Simple?

No, it isn’t, and here’s why.  Deciding what you’re going to do is the easy part, at least for some.  Picking a market, studying the customer, and then defining the action steps are the fun part.  In fact, vendors have made a wide range of tools to help you with the strategic planning.  We have pro-forma forecasts, balanced scorecard deployment matrices, performance scoreboards, and project management tools to organize our resources.  So, with all of these great strategic management tools, why isn’t your management strategy working?

Your Customer Is Only Half of Your Strategy

That’s right, your business is about your customer. However, your strategy must address what you are not going to do as well as what you are going to do.  Too often, a company will spend all its time focusing on the future actions necessary to enter new markets, acquire new customers, and build new revenue, and they’ll forget their current markets, customers, and revenue streams. And, what about their current cost structure and expenses?

This is where the company’s management strategy might be a little weak — in the planning area.  There are those areas in your business you have to let go of, retreat from, and take resources away from to implement your new strategy. Balance is the key.

How often have you listened to management talk about “great new market possibilities”?  About how “the grass is greener” and “the future is so bright”? They might wax poetic about new markets, new products, new possibilities, new directions, and new revenue sources.  They only problem is…most of us can’t do two things at once very well.  Your management strategy might detail all the new actions you can take to get from point A to point B but how much thought has gone into the repercussions of those actions? Do you risk your current customer base, your brand, your expenses, and so forth for the sake of “potential”?

It’s easy to think about all the things you could do to open a new market…until you realize you have to reallocate your resources wisely. Few of your departments will readily let go of their current budgets, resources, or way of life to make room for the new strategy that you are laying out.  This is a classic buy-in problem.

Management Strategy is About What You’re NOT Doing

So, how do you improve your management strategy? Focus on what you are not going to do with as much time and effort as you spend on creating all those nifty action plans. Sure, you’ll define your market and your customer like before, but add another step that defines who IS NOT your customer and why.

Why? Because you cannot be all things to all people. Instead you have to focus on where you’ll get the most bang for the buck, the greatest leverage, and your maximum return on investment (ROI).  This is what management strategy is all about.  It is about what you are not going to do as much as what you are going to do.

If you are expanding into new markets, it’s important to know what established markets you’re leaving behind, so that you can maintain your focus on the markets that will result in a “win-win” situation.  Focus is power!  To get the power, don’t try to be all things to all people, customers, or markets.  Make sure your management strategy describes who your market is not to prevent you from making a classic strategic mistake.

The post Is Your Management Strategy Working? appeared first on Bizmanualz.

I’ve been buying online for a number of years. And, regardless of the current state of the economy, more and more people are buying online, too. According to one estimate, 60% of consumers shop online at least once quarterly.

As most of us are becoming more familiar, and comfortable, with purchasing from websites — as our numbers continue to grow — questionable or outright illegal selling practices are also on the rise. How do we know that the websites we’re buying from are legitimate?

Here are a few things you can check for before you make the decision to buy from any website.

1. Detailed Information

One of the most obvious signs of a website’s sincerity and competence is easy availability of information. Unless you have something to hide, there’s no reason to skimp on such things as detailed product descriptions, delivery information, pricing, and even company information — the company’s history, physical location, and a variety of ways (names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, etc.) of contacting someone at the company.

A somewhat important, but often overlooked, detail is a website’s “whois” domain registration information, on registrar sites like Godaddy or Network Solutions. Most of the shady websites I encountered had their domain owner information masked under private registrations.

Always feel free to email or call the company to get an idea about their business practices or customer service standards. See if you get hold of a “real” person or if you’re just sent to voicemail.

2. Recognized Brand

Most big-name, well-known online retailers like “Amazon.com” or “Buy.com” are safe bets, as are websites recommended by people you know or the ones  you have previously bought from (and didn’t have any complaints about). I say “most” because in rare instances, a third-party crook could be enticing you to visit a make-believe website simply to steal (or “phish”) your information.

Make sure that the address bar of your browser always begins with “http://subdomain.name-of-the-retailer.com”, where “subdomain” is “www”, “store”, or something similar. Avoid shopping from websites that have an IP (internet protocol) address — usually four sets of numbers — following the “http://” in the address bar (e.g., “http://123.456.789.012/”).

3. Encrypted Data – Secure Transaction

When you shop from a website, all information you enter (like your contact and credit card information) are transferred from your computer to their web server. You want this transfer to be encrypted and secure. That’s what the SSL (secured socket layer) certificates do, so that a third-party cannot easily “eavesdrop” on your transaction and steal your personal information.

There are two ways to ensure that a website has SSL certificate installed. First, look for “https://” in the address bar, especially when you’re in the area of the website where you’re asked for sensitive information, like the shopping cart checkout.

Second, look for a padlock icon either on the address bar or towards the bottom right of the webpage. Many sites also use logos of SSL providers. Feel free to click on those logos to verify proper encryption.

4. Clean Record – Assurance is the Key

Other things to look for are the company’s record. Check to see if the company is a member of the local Better Business Bureau. If it is, you can check for any complaints against the company and, if there were, how they handled those situations.

Also look for website reviews online. Keep in mind that sometimes these reviews can be skewed by a small number of dissatisfied customers, or jealous competitors, but look for the reviews themselves to see if they’re consistently good or bad. Consistently poor reviews indicate potential problems or a pattern of misbehavior within the company.

5. Customer Satisfaction Is Our Primary Goal

Safe shopping at Bizmanualz.com

Here at Bizmanualz, we’re mindful of the concerns our customers have about online shopping. We are proud of, and deeply thankful for, the trust thousands of customers have bestowed upon us over the 15-plus years we’ve been in business. We adhere to strict website security standards and take your privacy very seriously. Shoppers recognize this and, as a result, customers from around the world visit our website, view our samples,and buy our products.

We’d love to hear from you about your online shopping experiences, both negative and positive. Also, if you have any questions or comments about our own online security standards, please feel free to call us at 314-863-5079, contact us online, or leave a comment.

Thank you, and happy holidays!

The post Safe Online Shopping – Vigilance is the Key! appeared first on Bizmanualz.

Try adding more salespeople (resellers or distributors), assign them a sales quota, and let them loose in a territory and see if your sales grow.  If you start getting more sales, you know your company is driven by sales.  If your sales fail to grow, try adding marketing activities. For example:

• Expand your website;
• Increase your public relations efforts;
• Add a company blog or a periodic newsletter;
• Expand your advertising or pay-per-click (PPC) program on the internet;
• Add more keyword focused pages to your internet marketing;
• Experiment with direct mail or email marketing;
• Attend (more) trade shows or events;
• Host your own conference for your customers and leads; and/or
• Add new products or enter new markets.

You can also try increasing your overall sales and marketing effectiveness by introducing more control over your sales and marketing cycle. If you’re unable to grow your sales by either adding sales people or expanding your marketing activities, it’s time for a strategic review. There are only two ways to grow your revenue — sales activities or marketing programs.

When neither of these works, it’s time to change your strategy.  Your business strategy is what drives marketing, and marketing is what drives your sales.

Sales and Marketing strategies and plans are critical for any business. Why leave them to chance?  The Bizmanualz Sales & Marketing Policies and Procedures manual contains procedures for developing strategy, adding sales people, and creating marketing activities. These prewritten and fully editable sales and marketing procedures can help you quickly and effectively take control of your sales and marketing processes to achieve consistent results.

What drives your organization? Sales? Marketing?

The post Is Your Company Driven by Sales or Marketing? appeared first on Bizmanualz.

We regularly send out e-mails, to continually keep our name in front of potential (and existing) customers. Some of us even have LinkedIn^TM and Facebook^TM pages (Figures 2, 3) where we invite not just commentary, but participation and engagement.

We have a plan for strategically managing our web presence. In that plan, we:

1. Establish SMART objectives;
2. Develop and implement the various aspects of our web presence (web pages, newsletters, social media, etc.);
3. Monitor, measure, and analyze to see if we’re meeting planned objectives;
4. Make changes to the plan, as needed, and implement them; and
5. Continue to monitor, analyze, change, ad infinitum.

Why does that 5-step plan look familiar? It’s the “Plan-Do-Check-Act” (PDCA) cycle! It’s how companies ensure product quality, continual improvement, and customers who are more than satisfied — they’re actually advocates!

Figure 1

Ask yourself, “Are we doing that?” Do we have a plan, or did we just throw something out there so we could say, “We have a web presence”?

Figure 2

Without a clear, comprehensive plan, your web presence can do you more harm than good. If you’re lucky, prospects and customers contact you about broken links, inconsistencies, and the occasional link to a product you discontinued months or years ago. In reality, most of your target market just “walks away” and never comes back.

Figure 3

The best advice I can give you is to establish a process of developing, implementing, and maintaining your company’s web presence before you build a single page online or send out a single e-mail. To do that, you need to understand:

• What your company stands for (its vision and mission);
• What you want to accomplish in the short and long term (i.e., what objectives you have for your web presence, specifically, and how – and if – those objectives tie into your company’s overall objectives);
• How extensive your web presence could (or should) be; and
• Why it’s important to establish a system of internal controls early and not let your efforts, accidentally or otherwise, go off target.

If you haven’t had a program for managing your web presence up to now — not a problem! There’s no reason to believe that because you’ve been working without one, you can’t implement one at any time. It may seem difficult at first, but the reward is unquestionably well worth the effort.

Take a few steps back and reevaluate your situation from a user’s perspective. If you have a particularly trustworthy customer, one you can count on to give you an unvarnished (but not a brutal) opinion, ask for their input. Find out whether they’re getting what they want from your web page and your social media. Find out if their objectives align with yours, and vice versa.

Refresh – reinvigorate – your web presence a little bit at a time. You don’t need to get everything done in a day or even a month or two. Work on the “low-hanging fruit” first, then move on to areas where your weaknesses aren’t so problematic.

And remember — stick with the plan! Keep reminding yourself — you only get one chance to make a first impression!

* * * * * * *

If you see an inconsistency or error on another company’s web site, do you say anything or do you let it go? Does it make a difference if they’re a vendor/customer of yours or not?

The post 5 Ways to Improve the Quality of Your Web Presence appeared first on Bizmanualz.

A good place to start is the NetTop20 directory of Ezine Directories. Directories I found include:

• Ezine Listings;
• The Ezine Directory;
• Ezine Articles;
• New List (Ezine Universe);
• Best Ezines; and
• Jogena’s eZine Directory.

Now we’ll just sit back and watch the Internet traffic roll in…right?

What do you think? Do ezine directories work? Are they worth the investment of time (and money)? Have you any firsthand experience with them?

The post Do Ezine Directories Provide Value? appeared first on Bizmanualz.