Negative reviews are one of the most sensitive topics of branding. Unfortunately many business owners, especially growing businesses, will have to face a negative review at some point of their business life.

While some customers will provide feedback to the business owner in a constructive and private way, others will go on a mission of letting everyone know about their negative experience publicly in the Internet.

When a negative review has been placed in a third-party website, there is nothing you can do to take it down. This negative review can financially impact on the business, and emotionally on the owner.

A few weeks ago I got my first negative review in my Etsy shop. And it sucks.

As any passionate business owner I want to have great products, be way ahead of my competitors and make people’s lives a bit happier or easier with them. For that reason, I put so much work, effort and care in my products. And I had so many positive reviews so far… And all of a sudden, an unhappy customer spoke up.

In today’s post I’m sharing some lessons learned from this experience on how to minimise the risk of having a public negative review in the Internet and how to deal with it if it happens.

HOW TO AVOID NEGATIVE REVIEWS

To avoid negative reviews, you must identify sensitive areas of your business that could cause stress, frustrations or disappointments to customers.

The most obvious one is there may be a problem with your product.

However, when the product is not right, buyers usually go back to the seller to resolve the issue. This is a great opportunity to know what and how you can improve.

The first thing I learned from my own experience is that when a customer leaves a negative review online it’s not always because there is something wrong with the product. Problems with the product are usually resolved offline.

There are other reasons that make a buyer go from a constructive private feedback to a negative public review.

1 | The buying experience

Complicated online shopping processes, delays or long waiting times or poor post-sale service, are some reasons that can piss off buyers in a very bad way. To avoid unhappy clients that go to complain online you can:

1. Ask for private feedback - A follow-up email, a client satisfaction survey or a simple phone call can give the buyer the opportunity to tell you about their experience. The business owner will also have the chance to apologise, find a solution or compensate the buyer. If the buyer has been heard and helped they will normally forget their negative experience and won’t take the issue to the public space.

These feedbacks will also help you to identify and rectify problems in the sale circle and implement solutions to avoid headaches of future customers.

2. Have a great post-sale service - your product may have some issues, be in bad condition or damaged during delivery. Put in place an action plan for any possible scenario, by having return policies, money-back warranties, etc. A customer helpline is also another great way to help clients with their issues and make amendments.

2 | The communication

Sometimes your pre-sale information (on listings, brochures, website, etc ) can mislead the buyer or create false expectations. Some things you can do to avoid this are:

1. Provide plenty of information – every piece of information that you can provide to potential buyers before they buy your product, will help manage expectations and avoid disappointments:

• Clear and complete descriptions on your product, including measurements, technical specifications, materials, etc.
• Images of the product and other graphic information, or previews for digital products
• Video-demos to showcase your product or teach how to use it.

2. Use plain language to avoid confusion. Avoid technical terms or jargon.

3. Answer questions that potential buyers may have, fill in the blanks, and clarify any doubt on the product and its use.

3 | The Marketing Strategy

Your product is not right for everyone. As Len Markidan, head of Marketing at Groove, explains in this other article:

"Often, a bad review simply comes from a customer discovering that your product is not the right fit for them."

Here is where there is a highest risk of getting an online negative review. Rebecca White, co-director of Tourism eSchool, explains in this other article on 5 ways to get a Tripadvisor negative review that the simplest way to get a negative review is to attract the wrong customer.

This was my negative review:

“Really disappointed with these blog planner printables. They seemed promising in the pictures and the description but there's so much stuff included which you don't really NEED yet there's a lot missing from it that would be extremely handy to have.

It would be great if the pages were slightly editable at least... especially for the checklists.”

She was right. My product was designed to be a comprehensive organisational tool for bloggers, whether they’re new bloggers or professional ones with very successful blogs. But what was wrong with that?

If the blogger buys a planner with 40 templates and only uses 10 she will feel she’s wasting her money on a product when only will be using 25% of it. But if the blogger pays the same amount for a 12 pages planner and uses 10 she will feel that the product was very useful and ended up utilising 83% of the content.

It’s not about the product, it’s not about the service or the misleading information, it’s about how suitable the product is to meet the client’s specific needs.

The problem here was that I was trying to appeal every type of blogger with a very comprehensive product. However, some bloggers could feel overwhelmed.

Some lessons learned from this:

1. Narrow your niche – As explained in this other post on Most Common Challenges of Marketing Design Services, the wider your niche is the more confusing your business gets. Narrow your niche and study their motivations, common problems and specific needs. That’s the base of your marketing.
2. Specialise your products – create products or services carefully thought to satisfied small groups (niche) specific needs. For example, instead of having a thick planner with 40 templates aimed to any type of blogger, I created two planners with half of the templates aimed to two different groups of bloggers: starters and professionals.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU GET AN ONLINE NEGATIVE REVIEW

1 | Contact the buyer offline

Show them that you care, hear their part of the story, show empathy and understanding, apologise even if it’s not your fault and try to resolve the issue in the private space.If you can resolve the issue or compensate the buyer, they may be willing to change the review or even remove it.

2 | Reply online

If the buyer doesn’t respond, then you should reply the online review in the most positive and professional way. When handled right a bad review can become an opportunity to create a positive image of your business.

The response should be also the same: show empathy, apologise and offer help to resolve the issue if the buyer gets in touch.

3 |  Dilute the negative review with positive ones

Even if you got one negative review, many potential buyers won’t see that as an issue if you have hundreds of positive reviews.

For example…

Every time I get a feedback or a suggestion for improvement from any of my buyers I update my planners and resend them to those who bought the product in the last 12 months. I noticed that this ‘free-update’ brings a good amount of positive reviews to my shop.

So as soon as I got this bad review I proactively updated and re-send the products to my buyers to hit a few more high scores.

Buyers may not give you 5 stars for a good product but they will for a good post-sale service.

4 | Learn and Move on

A negative review is not the end of the world. It would be very naive to think that everyone will always love your products. If you get a bad review, learn from it and keep on working on your business excellence.

One last note…

False or inappropriate reviews can be removed. Contact the site to explain the case and if they agree that the review is malicious, dishonest or completely irrelevant they will eliminate it.

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Your Turn

Have you ever have an online negative review? What was about? What did you do to deal with it? Share your experience!

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Everyone has heard about the wonders of social media marketing, and there is a tendency to want to be everywhere.

It’s a common belief that social media is easy, fast and free-of-cost, but this is just a false myth. Being everywhere means either, that you have resources to keep your social media platforms active, or that you will end up posting anything - without a business purpose - or nothing at all.

If it’s not done properly social media marketing has the risk of making you waste a lot of time and money, rapidly spread wrong information or a negative image of your business and even lead to legal issues.

If you’re thinking about using social media to promote your business, this post is a good start point. To save you time implementing a social media strategy, below there is a list of 10 things to learn or do before jumping onto this trend.

1.    Have a mobile-friendly website

Most of the traffic led by your social media pages will come from smart phones, iPads and tablets. To avoid frustrations to your visitors, make sure your website is mobile-friendly. Use the Google Mobile-Friendly tool to test your website and determine in a few seconds whether it’s mobile friendly.

If your website is still not mobile-friendly take a look at this 5 Step Plan To Mobile Friendly Websites, by Netology

2.    Have a blog

Social media platforms will allow you to promote but not to tell the story. To share best practices, successful stories, news and other interesting information about your business, you will need a blog. This will act as landing page for many of your social media content.

To know how to start blogging get this free beginners’ guide to blogging, by First Site Guide.

3.    Learn the jargon

Know the meaning of words like hashtags, retweets, mentions, etc, as well as how to use these functionalities in social media platforms.

This article by Hubspot offers a glossary of social media terms.

4.    Find your audience

Not every social media will bring the same benefits to your business. Take some time to study each channel and find out where you have better chances to connect with your target audience and how.

To determine what platform is more suitable for your business, also read this other post on What Social Media Should I Use To Promote My Business Online published previously on my blog.

5.    Have an editorial calendar

Find out your hot publishing times and days, and use an editorial calendar to help you create content on regular basis, i.e., a few times a week, and even several times a day for Twitter, and be consistent with your publishing days.

Download my free social media editorial planner here (PDF file)

6.    Set a social media marketing plan

Identify the ultimate goals of your social media platforms. These goals can be:

• Building brand awareness,
• Attracting new customers and growing sales, or
• Building strong relationships and customer loyalty

Produce content aimed to reach these marketing goals and post with a purpose.

Here is a great post by Buffer on how to create a social media marketing plan.

7.    Sign-up for a social media management tool

Free tools like Buffer or Hootsuite can save you a lot of time, as they allow you to manage different social media platforms from a single dashboard.

In this other post Search Engine Journal selects these top 10 tools for managing your social media accounts.

8.    Create beautiful images

Get a good camera and lighting equipment, download Photoshop Express for your smart phone and learn to take great photographs for your social media posts.

Rebecca Corliss of Hubspot reports on a social media study that using images on Facebook pages increased shares by 53% over the average post, and posts with images have an increase of 104% in comments.

Try PicMonkey and Canva to help you create images.

9.    Learn to write for social media

You will have to learn to craft your posts to produce short, creative and engaging content, entertain and inform your followers, plus show personality and a unique style.

To learn how to write social media posts for business also read this other article by Jeff Molander.

10.    Join the conversations

Don’t just expect people to follow you. Join groups, participate in chats, follow others and so on. Social media is a great way to build strong relationships with existing clients, prospects, supplier and collaborators, media outlets and bloggers, and local communities.

Jill Shaw, Social Media Specialist at Infusionsoft, give us 8 excellent tips to use social media to forge authentic relationships.

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Your Turn

What had you liked to know before starting to promote your business in social media?

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One of the main reasons why I became a freelancer was to find the perfect work/life balance. But it wasn’t as easy to achieve as I thought it would be.

Everyone wants to find a good and healthy work-life balance. Many of us quit our jobs to go and work for ourselves in pursuit of that lifestyle.

However many sole entrepreneurs and small business owners still struggle to find a good work/life balance. We face different challenges to those who work for others, but we still find it hard for reasons like:

• We’re passionate about what we do, what makes it difficult to take breaks away from our jobs and focus on other daily routines.
• We have to wear too many hats. We do everything ourselves and there are always too many things to do and not enough time.
• We often don’t have specific working hours. We work while our kids sleep, weekends and public holidays. We never have a 9-5 job.

Building a business and looking after your family while staying productive, happy and healthy is the ultimate goal of any small business owner. So today I’m sharing some of my best tips to achieve an elusive work/life balance for those who work for themselves.

1.    Start the day with a good morning routine

When you work from home, who is going to notice you didn’t have a shower this morning or you are still in your pyjamas at 4 p.m.?  Your morning routine could be reduced to go from bed directly to your computer.

But something I learned from working from home is that a good morning routine sets a positive tone for the rest of the day.

Anyone’s routine can be different. You may want to start your day with a beauty ritual, a healthy breakfast or going for a run. But don’t rush to start your computer, instead identify a few tasks to help you start your day in a healthy and positive way before jumping into work.

This other article on How To Craft A Morning Ritual To Supercharge Productivity by Richard Lazazzera gives great tips to start your day with a good morning routine.

2.    Plan the day ahead

This is a topic that I personally love - and why I have an entire shop specialised in planning. All those hours spent in researching organisational methods and creating planning solutions for my shop has taught me a simple but essential thing about productivity: 10 mins of planning a day can save many hours of unproductive work every week.

My Mondays start by making a list of things to do along the week, combining work responsibilities with family activities. Then I schedule time to do each task, book appointments and prioritise.

To help you get yourself organised and plan your week ahead download the Free Printable Organisational Set that you can download from my Printable Library.

3.    Set timeframes to do things

When you do a creative job it's easy to lose track of time. That’s why it’s important to plan not only what you have to do but also for how long.

While some ideas come easy, others take time. The longer I spend on seeking a great idea the harder it gets to find it. For that reason, I try to limit the time I spend working on a project to no longer than 3 hours a day. Having a timeframe helps me know when it’s time to stop and do sometime else.

4.    Take breaks and days off

One of the best things of being self-employed is you can take breaks and holidays whenever you want. I sometimes stop working for a couple of hours in the middle of the day to do some outdoor activities with my 3-year-old son. Others my husband and I take a day off in the middle of the week just because it’s our wedding anniversary.

Some people feel they can’t afford to take time off when running a business. They work every weekend, every public holiday and their life become a long working session. Breaks are essential to disconnect for a few hours or a few days, reset yourself and go back to your work activities in a better frame of mind.

5.    Focus on one big project at a time

When you are new in business you try to get as much work as possible to grow your business fast. But one thing you soon learn is that trying to manage several projects at the same time can bring a lot of stress and have a negative impact on your business.

Multitasking increases the chance to make easy mistakes, and make it harder to meet deadlines, which could end up damaging your professional image.

By taking on no more than one or two big projects a month I ensure I dedicate as much time as need to work on each project, giving my clients the attention they deserve and reducing significantly my level of stress.

6.    Reduce the use of the phone

Being constantly on call is one of the worst sources of stress. I try to avoid the phone as much as I can. Trying to help a client while I’m chasing my 3-year-old boy all over the playground and without having the project information in front of me, won't prove to be very helpful.

Instead, I tried to schedule phone calls or set face-to-face meetings when I can. This way I make sure I’m well prepared before talking to a client, to answer their questions or address their concerns.

7.    Eliminate low profitable jobs

When you love your job, you could make the mistake of working on things just because you love what you do, but not because they make money. If you want to see your business growing, focus on revenue generation.

Identify areas of your business that generate more revenue, or clients that bring more profit and focus on growing your business on these areas while reducing the amount of hours spent in less profitable ones.

When you have built a good client base, you can set a minimum fee per project and turn down jobs that don’t make the minimum fee.

8.    Build production processes and automate tasks

As I explained in this other post on How To Resolve Common Challenges Of Marketing Design Services by identifying repeated tasks on a project and automating processes you can save yourself time to spend on other critical parts of your business or just enjoying family time.

For example, one of the things that I found easy to automate is client communications. Let’s say that a new potential client wants a new logo, clicks on my Branding Services page, see my logo design package and click on Buying Package. The system will ask for company and billing details that will automatically be sent to me by email. The client will receive a welcome email with the invoice, a design questionnaire and further information about timeframes and next steps. These automatic communications usually save me a lot of time while providing the client punctual and quick information on the project.

9.    Choose freedom over money

An elusive work/life balance usually costs money. Not money that you have to spend in achieving that balance, but money that you won’t be able to make, because you will have more time for yourself.

You will have to turn down opportunities or outsource work just because you are over-capacity. We all have to learn to say no to work to be able to spend more time with your family. Making less money is the price of living a healthy and happy life.

In this other post published previously on my blog you can also find a list of Free Essential Tools for Small Businesses. Many of this tools can help you work smarter and spend less time working more time living that the life.

Inspiration board image credits from Kikki.k; Fantas-tisch and Fashion & Style

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Your turn

As a sole entrepreneur or small business owner, what are your main struggles to achieve an elusive work/life balance? What are your best tips to overcome those challenges?

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Yes, we know… blogging is extremely useful for expanding your brand presence, improving your visibility in search engines and growing your web traffic. There is also a strong correlation between blog post frequency and customer acquisition.

However, with the big amount of blogs populating the blogosphere, it’s getting harder and harder to make your blog stand out the crowd. So the question is how small business owners can produce high-quality content for their blogs and websites to differentiate themselves? And how can they produce this content in an inexpensive way?

When we talk about producing high-quality posts, written content is not the only way to deliver your message. There are other dynamic and creative ways to present your web content that will engage your readers much better and make your blog or website stand out.

As I explained in this other post on how to write for blogs, the process to write a good blog post can be summarised in three simple steps:

1. Identifying a common struggle of your target market (choosing the topic)
2. Writing about a possible solution to that problem (crafting the content)
3. Presenting this solution in the most visually appealing way (adding value)

In today’s post I’ll focus on this third step, by introducing 8 different ways to create highly engaging content to add value to your blog. By utilising any of these web content formats you will give your readers something to take with them - to save, print or share - after visiting your website and reading your posts.

1.    Infographics

They are a visual representation of information or data. They can be very useful to explain technical information or to quickly convey the key points behind complex data. Infographics can make your post more visually appealing and easier to understand.

Infographic formats include timelines, flow charts, annotated maps, graphs, etc.

A good infographic is an excellent SEO tool that can generate high-quality natural back-links. A well-designed infographic on a hot topic can be also shared across many social media platforms.

How to produce your own infographics

If you don’t have design software such a Photoshop or Illustrator, or simply don’t have design skills, you can still create infographics with the help of some free web-based tools like Infogr.am or Easel.ly. In this post published by Creative Blog you can find other 10 free tools to make your own infographics.

2.    Podcasts

They are audio-content that your visitors can download and listen in their own time. For many internet users, podcasts are a more convenient way to consume your content, as they can be listened while the user is performing another task, like driving, walking, commuting to work, etc.

Podcasts are a more dynamic way to present educational content or blog interviews. The interview can also be transcribed or summarised in a post.

How to produce your Own podcast

A great tool to produce podcasts is Audacity, an open-source editing and recording program that’s compatible with most operating systems and works well for beginners. To find out more about how to use podcasts to grow your business read this other article by Digital Trends:

3.    Video

Video formats are another way to produce visual and interactive content for your blog and website. Studies have shown that posts with videos attract 3 times more inbound links than plain text posts.

They are great ways to present how-to and DIY posts or tutorials.

Within the video formats, you can also find webinars. These are live, interactive online meetings. Viewers can attend live sessions and participate by asking questions or can watch recorded video after the session at anytime.

How to produce your own video-tutorials and webinars

Although this option seems difficult to produce, current technologies allow everyone to easily record videos from any device (including smart phones) and upload them on to YouTube. Also, screen-recording tools, like Camtasia, can help you easily produce video-tutorials on software or digital tools.

Here is also another great post on How to Do a Webinar Using Free or Inexpensive Tools, published by Right Mix Marketing.

4.    Slideshows

Online presentations are another way to share knowledge in a visual way. The advantages of using online presentations are:

1. Any company produces presentations on regular-basis, so they may be a material that is already done and you just need put it online.
2. They explain a topic in-depth combining text, images, charts, embedded videos, sounds and other interactive elements.

How to produce and share your slideshows

MS Powerpoint is the most popular tool to create slideshow and pretty much everyone who knows how to use a computer, know how to use this tool. Another alternative to create presentation is Prizie (from $10/month)

Once your presentation has been created, platforms like SlideShare allow users to easily upload and share their presentations and PDF documents.

5.    Case studies

Case studies are short explanations of a project your business has worked on for a client. They describe a problem, show how you implemented a solution and detail the achieved results.

Case studies are a very effective piece of content marketing, as well as a great way to build your business credibility and position yourself as an industry expert. They allow your business to share its success and prove potential clients that you have experience resolving their problem.

Case studies can be presented in a dedicated blog post or web page, like I do in the Featured Projects of my website, or in a PDF document than people can download, print and read on paper. The length of the case study will determine the format. If it contains more than 1500 words is better to put it on a PDF document.

6.    White papers

White papers are reports on one specific topic to sum up research done by your company on the topic, discoveries from a customer survey, or statistic information collected by digital tools or technology.

White papers are typically short in length, and people can download them from your website in PDF format.

White papers are great to create back-links. Also industry publications or any other media outlets could be interested in publishing your work, which would give your company an excellent free promotion.

How to produce your Own white papers

A white paper usually a very professional document that has to be created with design software such as Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign. To know more about how to how to write an effective white papers and use it to promote your business also read this other article by OC Search.

7.    EBooks

eBooks are an essential part of any successful inbound marketing program. However they can be also time-consuming and more difficult to produce. eBooks are more extensive in length, and not only they need good content, but also a good design. For that reason, they are not usually available for free.

However, when they are given away as a freebie, they are a great way to build your email list. To do this, ask the visitor to subscribe to your list before downloading the document.

How to produce your Own eBooks

If you have a collection of interesting articles or blog posts on a similar topic, you can compile them in an eBook. To format your document you can use MS Word, but if you intend to sell the eBook I’d recommend leaving the layout and formatting to a designer, who can professionally do it with InDesign.

8.    Downloadable templates and free tools

When you write a how-to post, it could be a good idea to give your readers a downloadable template to put into practice what they just learned in your blog.

Like ebooks they are also a great way to grow your email list, by asking the reader to subscribe your newsletter to download the template.

In this other post on how to create a professional style guide for your blog or website you can see an example of downloadable workbook or template to implement what the post explains.

How to produce templates

Depending on the template they can be simply created in MS Word or PowerPoint, or professionally done in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.

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Your turn

When visiting a blog, what's your favourite way to access the content?

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A brand style guide is a document that contains a set of rules and visual guidelines to ensure consistency across every piece of marketing material that a company produces.

Every company should have a visual style guide with brand use instructions for different media, including websites. Big corporations usually have a comprehensive brand style guide that covers many aspects of the company brand strategy, from mission, vision and core values to brand usage and implementation.

However, in the small business field, many are online businesses and blogs, or rely mainly on the Internet to promote themselves. For this reason, the brand style guides are usually reduced to website style guides that contains web-specific rules and guidelines.

In today’s post, I’ll be focusing on website style guides, as small business owners will probably find these ones more useful and relevant to their business needs. I’ll take you through the process of creating a visual style guide for your website or blog with the help of a template that you can download at the end of this post.

This exercise will take you less than 30 minutes but will save you a lot of time and headaches in future website updates and expansions.

A website style guide might seem unnecessary for a small business. Some common questions that may come to your mind are:

“Why is a consistent visual style so important to my business?”

Your website is a reflection of the way in which you do business. It shows the amount of attention, dedication and care that you put on what you do and the quality standards that your business has.

A consistent style shows professionalism and builds credibility among your market.

“Why do I need a visual style guide? Aren’t the styles specified in the .ccs file?”

Yes, they are. However the visual style guide will present every rule in an organised way making it easier to find. It also gives you instructions for exactly how things should be done, and sometimes even insight into why, making it also easier to understand.

“My designer created the styles and already knows every rule, do I still need a visual style guide?”

Yes, you do. You might need to work with a different designer one day, and this document would save him/her a lot of learning time by giving clear instructions on how things must be done in your website.

If your don’t have an in-house designer, he/she may be working with different clients at the same time, thus having a style guide will make their lives much easier.

“I designed my own website and I know every style by heart, do I still need a style guide?”

Yes, you do, because after a few months you may have already forgotten the hex code of your colours, the font family for subtitles, or how many pixels you left between two elements. Then again the style guide will save you a lot of time.

It’s usually the web designer’s job to create this document, but if your designer didn’t facilitate it to you, or you designed your own website, a style guide is also quite easy to produce by yourself.

To explain each of the components that should be included in your website style guide I’ll use one of my recent jobs as example: the redesign of the lifestyle blog ChicDeco.

1. Colour

The website colour palette can be divided in two groups:

1. Primary colours - usually black or grey and another colour
2. Secondary colours - other colours that could be used when a variety of tones is required, for example charts.

ChicDeco blog primary and secundary colour palette with Hex codes and RGB

Web colour are expressed in Hex codes, a six-digit number used in HTML, CSS, SVG to represent colours. Your website visual style guide won't need CMYK or Pantone specifications.

Tip: don’t choose too many secondary colours, instead play with saturation, tint and shade.

2. Typography

This section will specify which web font families were chosen for type of text in your website, as well as font weights, sizes and colours. Web fonts can usually be found in Google Fonts, which has the biggest open source directory of web fonts.

The most common written elements in website are:

• Headings and subheadings ( <h1>,<h2>, <h3>,... )
• Menus
• Body copy ( <p> )
• Text links ( <a> )
• Button text
• Quotes and boxes ( <blockquote> )
• Image captions

ChicDeco blog typography specifications including font family, sizes, weight and colours

3. Buttons

Buttons are common in forms, but are also a good way to call to action with words like “subscribe”, “download”, “book”, “shop”, etc. They are usually use to draw the attention to those part of your website that encourage the visitor to interact with the site.

Your website may have 2 or 3 different button styles with two versions of each, one off and another one for mouse-over functions.

Social media icons could also fall into this category. They usually are an invitation to follow your page or share your content in their social media profiles.

Apart from buttons, you may also want to specify here styles for input fields, used in contact forms, sign-up boxes, blog comments, and any other interactive elements.

ChicDeco blog text buttons (active and hover), back-to-top buttons (active and hover), social media icons and icon buttons.

4. Iconography

A pictographic library of vector icons, totally free and customisable with CSS, can be found in Font Awesome.  But if your website requires more specific icons, a icon set should be also specified in the website style guide.

ChicDeco blog icon examples

5. Infographics and charts

Infographics are commonly used to summarise the content of a blog post or a web page in a visual way, to make the content easy to understand, sharable and visually appealing.

Charts also help to present data in a visual way and make complex content easy to understand.

Although not every website or blog may need charts and infographics, if yours it's content heavy, and talk about technical issues, industry data or other complex topics you should also have some rules and guide lines for infographics.

6. Imagery

Having a well-defined image style can help your blog or website deliver your message, create an emotional connection with your visitors or readers, or just make your content more visually appealing.  

Defining an image style will bring clarity and visual consistency to your blog or website. You can also specify other image related aspects like, minimum image sizes in post images to avoid pixilation, image borders, image caption positions or even board layouts.

ChicDeco blog food styling board example

ChicDeco blog product boards

With image s you could also define some pattern styles for backgrounds, if your blog or website will need them.

7. Header

If the header in the first thing that your visitors will be when visit your website or blog, why did I left this one for the end? Because, web and blog headers usually combine some of the elements mentioned above.

If you don’t have a brand style guide, your logo specs can fall into this section. Your header might contain images, typography and other graphic elements.

In this section you can also specify logo variations for social media avatars and favicons or header style for your social media pages or email newsletters.

ChicDeco blog header with logo, responsive menu (letf), search button (right) and social media icons (top-right)

8. other visual elements

Although the elements above are the most common ones in a visual style guide for a website or a blog, you may also want to complete your guide with a few more specification on:

• Advertising banners
• Sidebar titles and elements
• Social media styles
• Menus and submenus

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Your Turn

Along the years that I spend working as brand manager for one of the Big Four, the brand style guide was the most utilise document in day-to-day job. It used to be a thick document that covered all possible uses of the brand to ensure consistency across the world.

Today I tried to produce a simple workbook that you can utilise in your day-to-day website editing and updates, keeping it simple and functional. You can download this document by clicking on the button below and fill it with the relevant information or use it as a guide to create you own visual style guide from scratch.

Download template

Download template

Every day there are more companies that trust bloggers to build their brand reputation. Blogs are a powerful tool to connect brands with their target market, by introducing and recommending products or services to their readers.

Since online advertising is becoming more ineffective every day - 80% of people totally ignore paid ads on search engines and websites – blogs are now a very popular and cost-effective way to promote any business online.

A few years ago, third party blogs used to be a great way to promote a business for free. However, as blogs started to grow in popularity, and became more professional and effective as marketing platforms, bloggers’ inbox got inundated with press releases, content submissions and many other requests.

Today it’s harder to get your brand featured by a popular blog than what used to be a few years ago. It’s also not so common anymore to get those features completely free.

If you are a small business owner or an entrepreneur looking for ways to collaborate with blogs, in today’s post you can learn the key benefits that external blogs can bring to your brand as well as the most common collaboration ways.

How blogs can benefit your brand

I’ve been a blogger for over 7 years (through my other blog), and have worked with hundreds of brands. Although blog collaborations have been widely used by many brands all around the world for many years now, people is still unsure how blogs can benefit their brands.

Here are the key benefits that collaborating with third party blogs can bring to your brand:

1. Reach - Lead traffic to your site can be hard. Your business may have its own blog to increase traffic and leads. You have probably written more than a docent of posts already and still have noticed no improvement in your stats.

Many popular blogs receive thousands of visitors every day and can connect your brand with large audiences in a faster way than your business blog.

2. Search Engine Optimisation - Getting featured by blogs is an effective way to increase your link popularity, which can also improve your position in the search engine rankings.  

Many blogs have already been online for a while, update content on daily basis, have a well-targeted readership, good online reputation and are pretty adept at getting near the top of search engine result pages. A link from a popular blog can be a gold coin for your business website.

3. Influence - According US research 81% of blog readers trust their favourite blogger’s advices, and 61% of consumers have made a purchase based on the recommendation of a blog post.

Bloggers can try products and make recommendations based on their own experiences and opinions. Those recommendations are read by thousands of readers, and the majority of them will trust the blogger’s advice.

4. Content Marketing - Good bloggers can turn their blog content into effective marketing materials, creating content that is relevant, valuable and interesting to their readers. When the content is good chances are that readers comment, like or share the blog post.

Effective ways to get blog features

1.    Quality visual material

In today’s visual world, beautiful images are your best advertising. Unless the blogger is a good photographer – or works in conjunction with one - professional and styled photographs are difficult to get by bloggers. However, every blogger knows good visual content can set a blog apart. So if you can produce those high-quality images, bloggers will be delighted to feature your brand.

Although producing that visual material will have a cost for the brand, this is a good way to be featured by blogs at no cost. Bloggers may find your photos in your website, blogs or social media channels, and approach directly to you to ask permission to publish the images.

Those photographs can become a great marketing investment if they can also be used in your website, your marketing collateral, press releases and social media. Articles with images get 94% more views over those without an image.

2.    Sponsored content

A sponsored post is when a blogger receives payment to publish an article that includes at least one contextual link to the sponsor's website.

According to a recent report from Zig Marketing, 67% of bloggers say paid sponsored content is their most profitable revenue generator. Fees range from $25 to $500, depending on their Google PageRank, traffic, link popularity and keyword strength.

When approaching blogger always ask for their media kit. In this document bloggers provide information on fees and blog stats.

While some bloggers may accept an article written by the company – or a guest post - I only accept sponsored posts in my blog if I write them myself, for two reasons:

• I want to a keep consistent style and make sure that my blog is written in my own voice.
• Articles written by inexperienced bloggers may end up being boring, low quality or overly sale content. If they’re written by an agency it could be even worst, as they may try to include links to several of their client’s websites, even if they aren’t relevant to the blog audience.

To know more about how much bloggers charge for sponsored content, also read this article published by Marketing Profs.

3. Product reviews

Bloggers usually write about things that they have experienced, discovered or learned. So another efficient way to get some links back to your website is by sending one of your products for them to try and write about it.

While the main topic of a sponsored post doesn’t necessary has to be the brand or its products – it could be any other related topic that gives the blogger the opportunity to include a link to the sponsor’s website – in the reviews the blogger has to talk directly about your product.

Before approaching a blogger to ask for a product review take into account that:

• The product has to be relevant to the blog readers.
• Ask the blogger first; don’t send your product without knowing whether the blogger will be interested in reviewing your product.
• Many bloggers might also have a minimum value of product to accept reviews or they may still have a fee (see chart above).

4. Giveaways

Bloggers can run giveaways on their blogs, and call their readers to participate in the competition by commenting the post, or liking or sharing it on social media.

Although, giving something for free seems like a great way to build up your social media base and lead traffic to your website, it's not always easy to make people participate. To run a giveaway through a third-party blog take into account that:

• The prize must be relevant to the blog audience and worthy enough for readers to participate.
• Participation process must be simple and easy, just following the brand in social media, sharing a post or leaving a comment will be enough effort for readers.
• Giveaways also take time and a lot of promotion efforts so bloggers may still have a fee to run the giveaway through their blogs.

To know more about running giveaways also see read this article published by Today Made.

5. Events and Meet-ups

If you are organising an event to promote your business, you can also invite some local bloggers to attend. If the blogger attends and likes your event she/he will also write about it.

Before you approach a blogger to invite them to your event, take into account that you need to give a good reason to the blogger to take the time and effort to attend your event by:

• Offering an exclusive event for the bloggers, like a free workshop on an interesting topic relevant to bloggers.
• Offering something in return to thank them for their attendance, like a free subscription on a valuable online tool or industry magazine or a gift bag.
• Having built a previous relationship with the blogger – by previous collaborations with their blog – to give a blogger a reason to attend

In this article by Bonjour Blogger you can learn more about how to organise an event for bloggers, or you can also read my article on event marketing for small business, to learn to plan and host a memorable event.

6. Affiliate Marketing

The reason why this is a favourite way for many brands to advertise in blogs is because they only pay for it when a sale has been made through the adv. Through affiliate advertisement the blogger will get a percentage of the sales lead through their blog.

Popular affiliate sites in Australia are Commission Factory,  LinkShare, Clix Galore or DGM, or you can also use popular sites like:

• Share A Sale
• Commission Junction
• Amazon

If your blog topics are more diverse, you might consider a program such as VigLink.

To know more about affiliate marketing in blogs you can also read this article by Amy Lynn Andrews.

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Wrap Up

Now that you know how bloggers usually collaborate with brands you can use what you learned in this post to design your own marketing strategy to promote your brand in blogs. even though these ways to collaborate with blogs are not the only ones, they are the most common and widely use.

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Everyone knows blogging, when done right, can be a very powerful marketing tool at no cost for any business. The problem is finding the time to blog when you also have a business to run, and do it right. Unless you're one of the few people who like writing and are actually good at it, we can agree that blogging is hard.

In today’s post I’m sharing my 6 step formula to write blog posts. Knowing this formula can bring clarity to your own blog, improve the quality of your posts and save you time blogging, so you can spend time growing your business.

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STEP 1 - CHOOSING THE TOPIC

Write for a niche

The start point of any of my posts is to think that most of those who read my blog are small business owners who have a question or problem about marketing, branding or design. They visit my blog to find an answer to their question or a solution to their problem.

Your blog content must be aligned with your target market interests to make it worthy for your business. Write about topics that will be useful to your niche.

The ultimate goal of every post must be helping people with struggles, making their lives easier/happier or their business/career more successful CLICK TO TWEET

In a previous post published in my blog on how to resolve common problems of marketing design services, I explain the importance of finding your niche and focusing your marketing efforts on it, that includes blogging.

Identify typical struggles

Now you know your blog posts must be useful to your niche, the next question is how to identify challenges your target market faces in their day-to-day lives. The answer is simple. To identify areas of design, marketing and blogging where people usually struggle and talk about them in my blog, I take notes of questions commonly asked by clients, blog readers, social media followers, forum participants, and even comments in other blogs.

Create lists of topics

My blog is organised in six simple categories that I need to fill with content on a regular basis. With the help of Trello, a project management system, I create lists of topics by category and plan my editorial calendar to bring a variety of content in an organised way.

STEP 2 - OPENING LINE

In the first couple of paragraphs of your blog post you must create a connection with the reader and give them a reason to keep reading your post until the end.

Describe the problem

My blog posts always start with a common marketing or design problem that creative businesses and small business owners may be facing. For example, you may want to start blogging to help your business grow but don’t know how to align blog posts to business profit (that could be the problem here).

This first sentence is not only an introduction of what the post is about, it’s also a good way to create a connection with the reader by describing one of their possible challenges that they would like to overcome.

Highlight the post benefits

I then describe the purpose of the post, which is usually how to resolve the problem and how the solution will help my readers improve their work/lives.

For example, how your business can benefit of a good blog post? A good post can:

• improve your website SEO,
• help you promote your business in social media,
• lead traffic and get repeated visits,
• start conversations with your target market, and
• convert visitors into customers/clients

(those could be the benefits of reading this post)

In another post found in Coschedule.com on How To Write Irresistible Blog Post Introductions, Julie Neidlinger gives us another six good ideas to use in your blog post introductions, and keep your audience reading until the end.

STEP 3 – ORGANISING THE BODY CONTENT

Outline the post

To develop the content you may want to start by organizing your thoughts through a post outline: break up the topic in main points and each point in a few main ideas.

TIP: don’t start writing directly in front of the computer. Plan you post with pen and paper to come up with as many ideas as you can, without being distracted by Google research, post formatting, etc.

Research the topic

Now that you have a clear idea of what you want to say in your post you can research the topic to fill blanks or find data that can back-up your ideas.

I usually read other blog posts on the same topic to find out how I can add new insights or different perspectives to what has already been said by other bloggers on the same topic. A good tip for this is to also read their blog comments and see where you can fill the blanks.

TIP: Do not research the topic just to collect ideas from different websites and do a collage of ideas in your blog post. Research to find out what has already been said, and therefore is redundant or less relevant for you to say in your blog post.

Content formatting

You have put your ideas on a piece of paper and they probably look messy and confusing at this point. Now it’s time to bring your ideas on to the computer and start drafting and giving shape to your content.

As I explained in this other post on how good copywriting can impact in the conversion rate of your business, the keys to make your content clear and easy to read are:

• Place your key ideas at the top
• Use headlines and sub-headlines
• Keep the content simple with short sentences and paragraphs
• Include bullets and numbered lists
• Choose familiar words and avoid jargon
• Use active voice

STEP 4 – ADDING VALUE

There are millions of blogs in the blogosphere, so let’s be honest, to make your blog stand out, you’re going to need a bit more than just clear and easy to read blog content. That’s why it's important to add a few more extras before taking your blog post online.

Add valuable sources

Add supporting evidence and data to back up your points and increase credibility among your readers. Link to valuable sources and provide proper credit to external sources.

You can also use real life examples to make the content easier to understand and also to prove experience and knowledge. For example, in many of my blog posts I try to use real client examples to take the reader through the problem and the solutions put in place.

Add visual appearance

Illustrating your post with images and infographics will help your readers understand easily your points. Also, posts with images and graphics are also more likely to be shared in social media than others with no visual elements.

Play with content styles to make the text more dynamic and easy to read, and add quotes and boxes with links to Twitter to make the content not only more visually appealing but more sharable too.

A Must-read: Great post with a simple 6 step formula to write blog posts, by @GrafikaStudioAU CLICK TO TWEET

Close with a call to action

A good blog post is also actionable, that means that its content must inspire people to do something or encourage them to take action.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, write with the intention of helping people somehow. If they can learn from your blog posts they will keep on coming back, and some of them will ultimately become customers.

STEP 5 - CRAFTING A TITTLE

Leave the title for the end of the process, as it’s easier to come up with a good headline for a post once the content is ready. The title must be engaging for readers and descriptive for search engines.

The heading of the post is one of the most important aspects of on-page SEO. It must be keyword rich and marked up as H1 in html.

TIP: Google prefers 65 characters or fewer before it truncates it on its search engine results pages.

STEP 6 – POLISHING & OPTIMISING

Readability Check

Once you have finished writing your blog post, don’t hit the “publish” button just yet. Read and re-read your text and ensure the content flows from point to point. Make sure the ideas are clear, the sentences are short, the content is easy to read and there are no redundant parts or confusing ideas.

TIP: Take a break and come back to your post later to do a second and a third review.

Grammar check

Before publishing your post check grammar, spelling and punctuation. If it’s necessary ask someone to proofread your text, as sometimes, no matter how many times you have read your post, there may be some things that have been missed.

To make sure you don't forget anything you can use this editing checklist.

Optimise for Seo

To optimise your blog posts you can use these helpful writing tips base on what Google likes*:

• Google likes text
• Google likes formatting
• Google likes freshness
• Google likes accessibility
• Google likes outbound hyperlinks
• Google likes you to tell it where you are
• Google likes experts

* Source: The State University of New York at Plattsburgh

Part of your search engine optimisation work will be adding the right html format to titles (H1) and subtitles (H2), test your links to ensure there are no broken links, rename images to add keywords, add ‘Alt’ text and optimise image sizes.

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Wrap up

Now you are ready to start righting great blog content that can increase traffic to your website, engage your audience and help to find customers/clients to make your business succeed. Download my infographic by clicking on the button below and use it as a reference guide for your next blog post.

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Social media has become a favourite way to promote a business for free. Any business wants to have social media presence, and there is a tendency to want to be everywhere.

Signing up for a social media platform and create a business profile doesn’t cost anything, but keeping your platform active requires a big amount of time, dedication and resources. So, before signing up for any social media platform, determine first which one is best for your business, depending on the nature of your products or services, the business personality and your target audience.

In this post today I’ll take you through the most popular social media platforms to help you identify which one is the most suitable for business.

Facebook

Facebook it’s the biggest social media platform on the web. Everyone is on Facebook, so every brand and business wants to be there too. Even you can reach a very large audience through Facebook, it’s also highly competitive.

What you see on Facebook depends on your previous interactions with every page that you follow. If you don’t like, share, comment or follow links in any post of a fan page, Facebook will stop showing posts from that page in your feeds.

Therefore, you may have thousands of Facebook fans, but not everyone sees what you post on your page. If you want to reach your entire group of fans, you have to pay and boost your post.

To know more about how Facebook feed filters work, read this article 'Facebook News Feed Filters emotion Study', published by The Guardian.

Facebook is for your business if you have:

• Cool photos of your products
• Amusing or inspirational videos of your business
• Useful articles and links to valuable resources
• Contests and giveaways
• Discounts, coupons or package deals
• Upcoming events, webinars, conferences, workshops, etc

 

A great example: Mr. Wonderful

Mr. Wonderful was established in 2013 by a couple of Spanish graphic designers. They used to be a small design studio. Not anymore. With a huge social media success they have become one of the most popular brands of scrapbook and stationary in Spain.

Their Facebook page is great because their posts combine clever copyrighting, beautiful images and links to interesting resources, a winning combination to get lots and lots of responses from their followers. They share new products, company updates, events, etc, with beautiful and well-styled images and graphic copy.

Twitter

Twitter is described as a microblog site with a 140-character text limit. It’s a very fast-paced social network with a very short life span, which means that you have to post as often as you can.

Twitter is a great way to start conversations with people on the Internet. While everyone recommends Twitter for customer service, I personally find it a great platform to thank people who have interacted or collaborated with my business somehow. For example, thanking a blogger who mentioned my products or services in a blog post or congratulating a provider for putting together a fabulous event that I attended.

Twitter is for your business if you can…

• share frequent company or industry news and updates (at least 2 – 3 times a day)
• start conversations and answer questions about a topic of general/industry interest.
• listen and help customers with doubts or even complaints.

Google+

Google+ is similar to Facebook but with more marketing features (like hangouts and +1s). As it’s owned by Google, everything is posted there will rank highly in their search engine.

 Google+ is for your business if…

• Seo is an important part of your digital marketing strategy
• You share cool photos or videos
• You have useful articles and resources that can be shared through a link
• You want to promote upcoming events, webinars, workshops, etc

Pinterest

Pinterest is the platform for quality visual content, being more suitable to promote products than services. However, many businesses have found the formula to sell their expertise on Pinterest sharing knowledge through infographics.

Pinterest is for your business if you…

• Target women between 25 – 45 year old
• Are in the photography, design or lifestyle industries (fashion, design, home decor, food and luxury brands)
• Sell products online, as it allows including a backlink to your product page on your site.
• Have professional and styled images of your products
• Share images that are not in your website or will be only for a limited time.

A great example: Elle&Co

Elle&Co is the brand of a young and talented designer who has managed to make Pinterest the main referral of traffic to her website. Her main target is creative businesses for a female young market, so Pinterest was the perfect channel to reach this target. Even she doesn't sell physical products, infographics and clever graphic headlines grab the interest of Pinterest users.

 

Instagram

Instagram is another photo and video sharing platform with includes some filters and photo editing tools. You can only post on Instagram from your Smart phone which means that you can share more casual images - and less professional - than in Pinterest.

Although you don’t need to share here professional images, many businesses put a lot of effort in sharing beautiful, well-styled and perfectly lighted images of their products, making their brands stand out in Instagram.

Uploading professional photos saved from the Internet directly on to your phone can take away the connexion with the brand, as your audience expects to see a more informal side of your business in Instagram.

Instagram is for your business if…

• Your business is in the lifestyle industry
• Your target audience is mainly female between 18 – 35 years old.
• You can take beautiful images of your products with a consistent look and feel directly from your Smart phone.

 

A great example: My little fabric

My little fabric is the business name of Aline, an amazing French graphic designer and photographer, so there is no surprise here how beautiful her Instagram is.

 

Another great example: The Villa Styling

Australian stylist and photographer Louise Roche uses Instagram to showcase her work, publishing amazing photographs quite regularly. In spite of her professional and high quality visual content she doesn't promote her business on Pinterest. Instead she uses Instagram, and let her website visitors pin her photographs to their own Pinterest boards through sharing tools under her images.

Youtube

Youtube is a video sharing platform. After Google, YouTube is the second largest search engine. Like Google+, since Google owns it every link in YouTube will rank quite well in search engines.

Youtube is for your business if…

• Seo is an important part of your digital marketing strategy
• If you’re a mediapreneur in the video production, movie-making and music industry!
• You can produce your own videos to share your expertise (through video-tutorials, vlogging, etc)
• You can produce video-demos of your product showing how they’re different from everyone else’s.
• You can produce a very cool, watchable and sharable video that will go viral.

 

A great example: Oh Joy!

American graphic designer Joy Cho made of blog a global fenomenum. After one decade of blogging Joy has now implementing her own Youtube channel for those who rather watch than read.

 

Linkedin

Linkedin is the largest professional social media platform for business people, where you can share your expertise and professional skills. It connects recruiters and job-seekers, and it’s also great to connect with industry fellows.

You can share expertise through linkedin groups, as well as get referrals and recommendations from those who have worked with you.

Linkedin is for your business if you…

• Are a B2B business (like coaching, consulting or business development services)
• Share professional and informative content
• Offer links to career-oriented articles and resources
• Post jobs and career opportunities.

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Wrap up

If you are a small business owner, select a maximum of three o four platforms to promote your business and create a clear and well-organised plan to keep your platforms alive. Don’t try to be everywhere just because everyone is. It’s better to have just a couple of active social media channels to promote your business that a long list of dead channels where you only post once in a blue moon.

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YOUR TURN

What social media platform are you using to promote your business and why? Which one is working the best for you and which one is not working at all?

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Sources:

Which Social Media Site Should You Be And Why, by Social Media Today

Which Social Media Channel Should I Use For My Business, by Y Marketing Matters

Over the many years I worked for big international organisations I never had to worry about software. It was always provided and paid by the company and all I had to do was to demonstrate I could use it.

During all these years I got so used to working with different virtual tools that they became essential to do my everyday work.

But when I started my own business, software became an expensive cost that I couldn’t always afford. Therefore, I needed to find similar solutions to the ones I used to use in my job, but at a minimal cost.

Last week, as I was organising my bookmark folders, I realised over the last couple of years running my business I managed to find a good set of free tools that I couldn’t do business without. These tools might be equally useful for many other freelancers and small business owners, so I collected all of them in this post today to tell you how I replaced expensive software with free and open-source solutions saving a huge amount of money to my small business.

Time-management Tools

1. Trello

I used to work with a notepad next to my desk to organize my daily tasks and a desk full of project plans, calendars and post-its. But when I started to work from home – with a 3 years old constantly around – I had to keep my desk completely empty. So I found Trello.

Trello is a free web-based project and task management tool to make to-do lists, checklists, workflows, deadline reminders, etc. Trello has replaced all my sticky notes, notepads, planners and workflow charts with a simple and very easy to use tool, where I keep all organized in just a virtual dashboard. I can connect from any computer, share dashboards with others and work collaboratively online.

2. Evernote

This tool has replaced my ideabooks with a simple virtual workspace. I find Evernote really useful for blogging or developing creative projects. When an idea comes to my mind I take notes in Evernote, when I see something inspiring in a book or magazine somewhere I scan the image and take it with me, when I’m researching online I’m constantly clipping websites and articles and save them in here too, etc.

Finance and invoicing

3. FreshBooks

When you work for an external company, there is usually a finance accounts team looking after everything that has to do with payments. When you work for yourself you’re your own accounts team. Invoicing my clients used to be a daunting task for me, until I found FreshBooks. This tool allows me to create, send and manage invoices online and even collect payments online by credit card, Google Checkout or PayPal.

If you work with others (employees or contractors) it’s also a great way to track the time that each of them time dedicate to their projects and pay them accordingly.

Even though this app has a small monthly fee, it saves me a lot of time, and in business, time is equal to money.

4. Wave

I also love Wave as it’s similar to Freshbooks but 100% free! However, if you work with employees or contractors, Wave has some limitations, like for example, the payroll feature is only available in US and Canada. But it’s still a great way to invoice clients and keep accounting books up to date, and it can also be integrated with credit card payments.

sale tracker

5. Square Up

As I also sell digital products, I used Square Register to tracks my sales and inventory, send digital receipts, access analytics and create reports for me to analyse what’s working and where to improve. Their card processing feature is currently available in the US, Canada Japan and Australia.

Document Sharing

6. Dropbox

This popular cloud storage service allows me to store my documents in the cloud instead on my computer (saving a lot of space), share them with clients and collaborators and access to them from any computer, so I can travel light! Dropbox is free up to 2GB of storage.

7. Google Drive

This is the other popular cloud storage service, that offers up to 5GB of free storage, but as everything with Google, you need to access through a Gmail account.

Both are very similar and I use one or the other depending on the client’s preferences.

8. WeTransfer

One of the most common problems that many of us usually have is that we work with very heavy documents that need to be sent to by email and we end up constantly getting notifications of quote limit reach from our email provider.

Many email providers also limit the size of the attachments to 10 MB, so here is where WeTransfer saved my life. It allows me to upload heavy documents and send a notification to their receptor to download them from his end. There was a time where I had to constantly send CDs and USBs by post, that’s not necessary anymore.

Even though WeTransfer doesn’t allow you to store the document for longer than 48 hrs, it’s still my favourite to send big files that cannot be sent by email.

Communication tools

9. Skype

In my old company I used to have a videoconference room with a huge screen and an audio system to meet and work with virtual teams all around the world. Now I have Skype at home and love it!

This free video conferencing system not only saves me a lot of money in international calls, its instant messaging feature is a great way to be connected with clients or collaborators, send quick messages and share files, making me less dependant on the email.

I also use constantly the sharing screen feature as it offers the possibility to run virtual training sessions and assist my client with technical issues not matter where they are (or where I am).

10. Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts used to offer something that Skype didn’t offer for free: group video calls. Now Skype also offers this feature. Google Hangouts does the same than Skype but it requires every account to have a Google Plus account, which adds an extra task in the registering process.

Client MANAGEMENT

11. Zoho

Since I started my career in Marketing and Communications, InterAction seemed to be the standard CRM for big corporations. Now I use Zoho to manage my clients and love it. It has so many features: account management, lead management, sales tracking… and yes, it’s totally free!

12. Really Simple Systems

Before finding ZoHo I used to utilised Really Simple Systems, a web-based customer relationship management solution with full suite sales, marketing and customer support platform. It has a lot less features and functionalities than ZoHo, which it’s not necessary a bad thing, as it’s actually much more simple and easier to use, and provides enough features for freelancers and small business owners.

Marketing

13. MailChimp

Although both Zoho and Really Simple Systems have an email marketing feature integrated, MailChimp is the most popular email marketing system. What I love about it is that is integrated with SquareSpace and many Wordpress pluggings, making the entire setup process much easier.

MailChimp allows me to collect email subscribers, design e-newsletters and email communications, send them to my email lists and track statistics.

Social Media

The most common problem in social media marketing is time management, as having a strong social media presence requires time and skills to engage, listen and respond to your audience.

14. Hootsuite

This social media monitoring tool allows me to schedule posts, manage all my social media activities and track analytics in just one platform.

15. Buffer

After using Hootsuite for a while, I found Buffer who does exactly the same than Hootsuite but with a much user-friendly interface.

Although both systems support Facebook, Twitter, Google + and Linkedin if you also have Pinterest or Instagram you will need Viraltag - for Pinterest scheduling - and Schedugram - for Instagram - to manage these other platforms.

Image editor

16. Gimp

As a multimedia designer for me it’s a priority to buy design software like Photoshop but there’s a great open-source image manipulation software that does photo retouching, image composition and image authoring too, and that software is Gimp. So unless you are a designer and need Photoshop integrated with other design tools (like Illustrator, InDesign, etc…) you can save a good money downloading this other software for free.

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You turn

Which free tools do you find essential to manage you business and why? Do you know any other great tool for small business?

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Photo: Finance Planner by Grafika Studio

Design services are something that every business needs, but they’re not always a priority in tight small business budgets. When the budget is very limited knowing where you can save money without compromising quality can make a huge difference in the final result of your design project.

In today’s post, I share some tips to maximize your design budget, whether you want to build a website by yourself or hiring a professional designer to do the job.

Plan your design project carefully

The first step of any design project is a good planning.

Having a project plan will give you a clear understanding of how much everything can cost and how much time each part of the project will take.

For example... if you need to build a website, you can:

• Make a list of every task/item that your project requires: domain, hosting, email services, website builders, design software, etc.
• Research solutions and prices for each of them.
•  Write down what is included in the price, as different provides offer different things in their packages.
• Compare prices and read reviews.

Then, you can take your project plan to a designer and discuss your budget. Your designer may be able to adjust the budget by taking off unnecessary things or adding others that you may have overlooked. A designer can also give you an estimate on time and cost to complete your design project so that you can compare.

This exercise will help you decide whether you want to do everything by yourself or it’s worthy to hire a designer.

Use web templates

If you are building the website yourself, web templates will make your life much easier. If you are hiring a web designer, a template will also make your total website cost more affordable.

Bespoke web design is a lot more expensive than building a website from a pre-made template. Web templates speed up the process of building a website allowing the designer to complete your project quicker. In the business world time is money so, the less hours the designer has to dedicate to build your website the more money you save.

The hard thing is to find the right template to suit your needs. Finding a template requires a lot of research and a good understanding of all different web components included. Wordpress catalogue is so large that finding what you are looking for can take you a long time. Squarespace gives less choices but this can actually save you time finding a template for your website.

Some web templates can be edited to suit your specific needs, but then again customisation comes at a cost. You will need to hire a web developer to edit your template, adding an extra cost on your website budget.

Buy ready-to-use graphic components

Like templates, ready-to-use components not only can help you build your website quicker but can also save you money as your designer doesn’t have to create every graphic element from scratch.

For example…

If your website needs photographs, it’s a lot cheaper to buy stock images than hiring a photographer to take photos. In the same way, it’s cheaper to buy a ready-made icon set than designing one specifically for your website.

Some great places to find ready-to-use design assets are:

• creativemarket.com
• envato.com
• graphicburger.com

Choose flexible and scalable solutions

If you are building your first website, you may want to do it in two or three different stages. By dividing your project in stages you can launch a basic website and then add new features and functionalities as your business grows.

For example…

If you want to sell products online, you can start selling through third party websites and have a basic website for your business. Then, if your products sell online, in a few months time you may want to add a shop and sell your products directly from your own website, saving money in third party commissions.

To upgrade your existing website, you probably don't need a complete new site. Your current website could be redesigned or extended with new features. However, depending on the website, the platform in which is being built and the number of changes required, it might be cheaper to build an entire new website that re-designing and upgrading your existing one.

For example…

If you have a shop in your Squarespace website and want to add a wish-list feature, unfortunately Squarespace doesn’t have this functionality just yet. For that reason, your entire website would have to be migrated to Wordpress to be able incorporate that feature.

This is also why good planning is important, if the wish-list was in your add-on feature list for future stages, Squarespace wouldn't have been the chosen solution in first place.

Negotiate design packages

Many designers offer their services in packages at a discount rate. By working with the same designer in different design projects you can get packages and discounts that can also save you some money.

For example…

If you are looking to have a new brand and website designed, ask your designer if there is any specific package that combines both projects.

Hire a design consultant

If you feel confident enough to build your own website, you might want to consider hiring a designer as a ‘consultant’ to can give you some guidance along the way. As your designer doesn’t have to build your website from scratch you can save some money by doing it yourself. But your designer can still help you with:

• Reviewing your budget to make sure that you haven’t overlooked any important cost and advising on areas where you should spend a bit more and others where you could save some dollars.
• Giving you access to discounts and special rates from providers. Designers usually go shopping around comparing solutions and prices from different providers, negotiate prices and get discounts for bringing repeating business.
• Training you on the relevant website builders and giving you a hand if you get stuck while building your own website.
• Identifying and avoiding mistakes that can incur unnecessary costs. For example, you may find a fantastic hosting offer and grab it. Then you find out this offer has hidden fees and end up paying more with that provider than with others.

 

Wrap-Up

In summary, a good designer is someone who understands people’s budget constraints and maximize the money available according to the client’s business objectives. If your budget is tight, your designer can research and find the best solution for your design project to suit your budget.

Here is a checklist of important questions to ask your designer before starting a website project, as they will have a critical impact on your design budget.

1. Do you offer a free first consultation to discuss my project requirements?
2. How much does the annual hosting and domain registration of my website cost?
3. Do you custom design or use templates?
4. Do you charge by the hour or by the project?
5. Can my project be split in two or more stages?
6. Can additional add-ons and optional functions be quoted separately?
7. How much does it cost to update my website post sign off?
8. Do you offer a monthly maintenance option?
9. Do you offer free CMS training?
10. Do you offer design packages?
11. Do you offer consulting services? (in case you want to build the website yourself)
12. What are the ongoing charges after my website is completed?

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Your turn

• How much do you think is reasonable for a small business to spend in building a website?
• Would you build a website yourself to save your business that cost or are design services a necessary investment?

One common question that many clients and potential clients frequently ask is “why my website is not converting visitors into customers/clients?”

The conversion problem has a lot to do with your message, the way in which you deliver it through your website and its impact on your audience.

In today’s post I explain some of the most common reasons why many websites don’t convert properly and how to fix those issues by using the example of one of my latest website projects: WA Mortgage Advice Website.

Too much copywriting, too difficult to read

Your website must offer relevant information about your business. But too much information is overwhelming and will make visitors feel intimidate and leave without reading your webpage.

Writing for the web is completely different than writing an essay or a paper. Website copy must be scannable, actionable and shareable.

• Scannable means that your visitors understand your key messages by just glancing at your web page.
• Actionable means that your content encourages people to take action.
• Shareable means that your visitors find your content useful and will share it so that others can also benefit from it.

For example…

My latest project is a mortgage broking website. The financial industry has a complex language with a lot of jargon. A clear and easy-to-read copywriting was an essential part of this website project:

For more tips on how to write for the Internet also read this article from Enchanting Marketing: Writing For The Web Vs Print .

Important information hidden below the fold

Not only it’s important how you present the information, but also where you place it. Information positioned in the upper half of a web page and so visible without scrolling down the page is what we call above the fold. Everything else is below the fold.

If visitors have to scroll down to find important details in your website, chances are that they leave without even noticing them.

Analyse your web copy and extract one key idea per page only. That idea must be positioned at the top of the web page. Further information and details can be placed after.

What are those key ideas?

• Your unique selling proposition
• Your key benefits
• Call to actions like ‘book’, ‘enquire’, ‘call’, ‘download’…
• Contact details

Tip: banners and header images should not take more than half of the screen; otherwise they will be hiding important ideas below them and below the fold.

Lack of credibility

Your website may not be encouraging trust among your visitors. Some reasons may be:

• Visually unappealing design - it’s all about creating a good first impression. A clean and well organized website design speaks about your professionalism and how much you care and invest in your business and clients.

Avoid too many colours, graphic elements or call to actions that can cause distractions and make your visitors get lost.

• Lack of contact information – for many people who search for a product/service in the Internet, location convenience is important. For many others working with people who are accessible and easy to reach when they need them is essential.

Your business address, direct phone numbers and email addresses or even an online chat app can help you gain credibility and trust among your audience.

• Lack of social proof – social media followers, reviews and client testimonials can help you build credibility in the Internet. Focus your marketing efforts on connecting to people through social media and getting feedbacks from clients and industry experts.

Lack of direction

When visitors land in your website, they don’t know what they have to do. You have to show them the path, indicate what comes next and what they should do while visiting your site. How? With call to actions. 

A call to action is an invitation to interact with your site by:

• Signing up for a newsletter
• Downloading information
• Making appointments/bookings
• Getting a quote
• Etc…

The more they interact with your website the better will get to know your business.

Lack of attraction and engagement

Relationships are key for any business success, and especially to sell services. Visitors who are in need of your services want to know you first before hiring you.

How do you build a relationship in the Internet? Engaging your visitors through social media, newsletter sign-up forms, blog and comments and everything else that allows you to keep conversations and communicate with your visitors after leaving your site.

In this other post I explain how to grow your business by building relationships.

Tip: proof you’re willing to help not just to sell, but by answering questions in social media and blog posts, and offering free tips, free first consultations, etc.

Wrong message, wrong keywords

Another common reason of poor conversion is often the message itself. Being too generic, trying to appeal a broad audience or offering too many services can confuse the audience or make them leave your website with the feel that you are just ‘another one’.

But being too generic and too broad also has another consequence: poor keyword strategy. If your keywords are too wide, you may be leading a lot of traffic to your site, but only a small percentage of those visitors are actually potential clients.

To avoid this you must:

• Find what makes you different and unique and highlight this differentiation in your home page, above the fold.
• Be specific, target a niche and narrow your offer to only those services that you know best.
• Focus on long tail keywords that are more specific and have less competition in search engines.

For example, if my client, a mortgage broking business, focused on generic keywords like ‘mortgage’, there is so much competition already for that word that chances are that he will never get noticed. Instead we focused on long tail keywords like ‘First home loan advice’.

Wrap-Up

In conclusion, conversion rates have a lot to do with your website copywriting. Learning to write for the Internet can improve significantly your leads and opportunities obtained through your website.

Something I learned from working with designers and creative businesses is that many of them usually share similar challenges marketing their business. In this post today I’m bringing five common challenges shared by many clients and industry professionals.

Challenge 1  /  Finding Your Uniqueness

One of the biggest problems in the design industry is the over-saturation. There are so many designers out there that makes it really hard to get noticed.

People always have the same question about your business: “why should I hire you over thousands of other businesses in your industry?” Having an answer to that question is vital to your business.

Solution: If you want to stand out, find a specialisation

There two simple ways to find what makes you unique and different to everyone else:

• Find a niche – take a look at your clients and see if you can identify anything in common, at least in some of them. It could be the same age range, same interests, same lifestyle, etc. If you offer services to other businesses, see if some of them belong to the same industry. If you find a pattern you can claim a specialisation in a particular niche and focus your marketing efforts on it.

For example, I focus on designers and creative businesses, as many of my clients belong to that industry. Having experience on that particular niche offers an immediate competitive advantage to new clients: they can benefit from the lessons I learned working with other similar businesses.

• Find an area of expertise – As you cannot be an expert for everything narrow your offer to only those services that you know best. This focus will bring clarity to your business, and help you identify the skills you need to develop and master that particular area of expertise.

When I talk about specialisation, many clients get concerned. They think by claiming a specialisation they may lose business opportunities. Specialising yourself doesn’t mean that you wont be able to provide other services or work with other industries, but it will help you stand out in this over-saturated market.

In this other post I explain how offering a wide range of services was one of my own first mistakes and specialisation was one of the lessons learnt from my first year in business.

Challenge 2  / Finding New Clients

Another common struggle for many small businesses is finding new clients. Again the market oversaturation makes it difficult for many new businesses to build a portfolio of clients. Tight start-up budgets makes it hard to invest in marketing and advertising which also minimises the opportunities to gain new clients.

Solution 1: get new leads by word of mouth

Family and friends can help promote your business by word of mouth. Also target your local community, small businesses like supporting each other. And above all leverage your existing clients.

Finding a new client is the result of many hours of work, communication efforts and meetings with prospects. It’s easier to sell a new product/service to an existing client than find a new one. Focus on giving your clients the best possible service, as chances are that they will use your services again in future or even refer some new business to you.

In this other post I explain how building relationships can help grow your business.

Solution 2: Share information and help others

Many of those who use Internet everyday are looking for answers to resolve a problem. Sharing your knowhow through your website or blog can help others resolve problems and help you build relationships with potential clients, while positioning yourself as an expert in that particular area.

Having a blog, writing a free ebook, creating video tutorials or offering free e-courses are different ways to share your knowledge with others in the Internet.

In this other post I share some useful tips to treat your blog as a business and make it profitable.

 

Challenge 3  /  Keeping the cash flowing

Many small businesses constantly go from very busy to very quiet times. Unfortunately money stops coming during those quiet times and you never know when it will start coming back again.

Relying on selling only customised services to clients can be a risky strategy for a small business. Situations like not being able to find enough clients to support your business, losing some clients or needing some time off could have a negative impact in your cash flow.

Solution: Diversify your offer

If you find a niche, explore every business opportunity within it. Find other needs that this niche may have and that can be complimented with products.

Sell products, not just services. Those products can be physical or digital goods (i.e. anything downloadable), courses or subscriptions.

For example, I support my business by selling different types of digital products in third party websites. In periods of low activity I focus on producing new designs to add my catalogue.

Challenge 4  /  Publishing Your Pricing

When someone looks for a design professional the first question in their minds is “how much is it going to cost me?” If you don’t have pricing in your website, many people might assume your price range is above the average.

However, quoting design services is a complex exercise that needs to take many different things into consideration. Every project has different specifications that need to be discussed with the client before you can quote their jobs.

On the other hand, charging your clients on an hourly basis can end up being unfair for the client. Experienced designers can come up with ideas quicker and can complete a job faster than a junior designer. Even if the hourly rate of a junior designer is cheaper you could end up paying more for their services.

Solution: package your services

Packaging your services as if they were products will allow you to set a fixed price. You can always re-calculate the price of any project that requires some extras or add-ons but at least the client gets an idea of how much your services can cost. It will also save you time quoting jobs and replying enquiries about your rates.

 

Challenge 5  /  Being Over Capacity

This might actually be something very positive for a small business. The problem is that if you don’t have a team to support you in busy periods, you may struggle to keep up with everything on your plate.

How to manage several projects at the same time, look after existing clients, promote your own business and find new clients without losing your sanity? The answer might be ‘outsourcing’, but before thinking of hiring some extra help you can try something else more cost-effective.

Solution: build production processes

Organise your job in steps that can be repeated in every project. To do this, you can use the quiet periods to create templates of proposals, emails, etc that you can customise quickly for every new client. This way when you are overcapacity, you can save time in managing clients and projects to spend some more in providing a good service.

This other post by Lauren Hooker of Elle and Co. explains how to use 17Hats to organise your process and client workflow.

Here is also another interesting reading found in Mighty Deals blog with six ideas for increasing your customers to your design services.

Surely, these are not the only challenges that designers and creative business have to face, or the only solutions to the problems above, so feel free to contribute! Leave a comment and share any particular challenge that you face or/and any solution that you came up with for them.

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