“I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules did not apply. I never thought about who I was hurting… I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled. Thanks to money and fame, I didn’t have to go far to find them. I was wrong. I was foolish. I don’t get to play by different rules. The same boundaries that apply to everyone apply to me. I brought this shame on myself.” Tiger Woods

From sportsmen and women to entrepreneurs, we’ve all heard it before, “Without pride you can’t win,” and in some respects it’s true. Have pride in your work, have pride in your company and it’s goals, but too much pride goes before a fall.  And harboring pride in your “Business Owner” title can lead to arrogance and will hinder your growth exponentially.

Pride can lead an entrepreneur to closed-mindedness, keeping them from seeing great opportunity where they least expected it, and keeping them clinging to an idea all the way into the ground. To succeed, you need to understand that entrepreneurs have to take their lumps, get their hands dirty, and always, always, always remember why you got into this in the first place.

After one month on the job and no clients on the books, Emily W. realized her dreams of becoming a successful realtor were in grave danger due to her pride. “I didn’t want to be a sleazy salesperson, but I had very little cash reserves left and couldn’t stand the idea of going back to a desk job, so I broke down and went door to door in my neighborhood handing out flyers and chatting with residents. It was incredibly humbling, but I made several connections, signed two clients and four months later I’m still receiving referral calls as a result of that one day.”

In this world of saturated marketing many business owners believe they can set up a website and a Facebook page and the clients will come rolling in. With such arrogance and poor planning, these businesses waste precious time and money up front before coming to one of two eventual realizations: 1) you need a plan, or 2) you failed.  With a plan, and the dedication to stick to it, you will stay on track and allow your plan the time it needs to take hold. That being said, no plan should ever be set so firmly in stone that it can’t change with the natural course of your company.

After Mike B. started his construction project management company, he signed contracts with former employers and some of the nation’s largest construction companies. He felt great. “Only one month on my own and I’m hiring left right and center. I was working with the biggest brands in the industry and feeling like hot stuff.” He soon realized that the big guys didn’t pay on time. Instead they preferred to wait until the project was complete; sometimes a year after his work was complete. “I still had employees to pay and ended up taking more high-end residential and office improvement work to cover the difference. The work was more creative, the clients were easier to work with and it made me happy.” Fate and humility had pushed him into a different market and he found his niche as a result.

The average entrepreneur starts their business after years of climbing the corporate ladder, with a sense of entitlement and self-importance tucked firmly in their dress shirt pocket.But pride comes before a fall. As the President, Owner, CTO, and CFO of your own business, it can be easy to forget that you are also the receptionist, file clerk, data entry person, and salesperson. And unless you accept these roles as easily as the fancy titles, you won’t have a business at all.

The post As an entrepreneur, Pride Can Go Before A Fall appeared first on Abask Marketing.

This speech changed the way I do business: http://bit.ly/10v6i9f Neil Gaiman has spent his life making decisions based on his one goal – to be a writer. He considers this goal to be his mountain. He looks at every decision with the question: does this take me closer to climbing my mountain? If not, don’t do it. Makes perfect sense doesn’t it?
Now, every decision I make must satisfactorily answer one of the following questions:
1. Does this bring me closer to my mountain?
2. If not, will this make me money fast? If the money doesn’t come quickly and it isn’t bringing me towards my goal, it’s wasting my time. And the answer is no.

The post Entrepreneurs’ Delight: Move towards your mountain every day. appeared first on Abask Marketing.

According to a study set up in September, 65% of complaints go unnoticed on Facebook. A separate study in October measured 70% of companies ignored Twitter complaints.

So what’s the problem with controlling the responses of customers online?
Trust.

Ignoring customers can hurt a company in so many ways. The complaint stays up on the wall for all other customers to see and as we know from the popularity of many retailers’ customer ratings, these complaints are trusted by other customers. Even poor ratings can help sales more than no ratings.

In contrast to earlier online word-of-mouth studies, we found that higher ratings do not lead to higher sales, but the number of posts is significantly associated with movie sales. These results suggest that consumers are not influenced by the persuasive effect of online word-of-mouth, although they are affected by awareness effect generated by the underlying process of word-of-mouth. Businesses shall therefore focus more on the mechanisms that facilitate dispersion of underlying word-of-mouth exchange rather than try to influence online ratings.

(Do Online Reviews Matter? Scholars from George Washington University & University of Texas)

Dismissing customers is even worse. The purpose of a social networking site is to be social. For a business this means engaging customers. By shutting down the customer voice, you won’t sweep the situation away, you’ll add fuel to the fire. If someone is angry enough to post to your Facebook page, they’ll be sure to find another outlet when their comments are deleted, including their own Facebook wall, blogs, Twitter pages and LinkedIn groups.

In fact, a simple response not only stops the spread of anger, it can actually turn an angry customer into a happy customer at no cost to the company. “83% of complainants that received a reply liked or loved the fact that the company responded.” Talk about an easy way to garner customer loyalty!

It’s a very simple process to handle online complaints:

1. Respond as quickly as possible.
This shows customers and clients that they are important.

2. Apologize.
Regardless of the issue, you are surely sorry that there is an issue.

3. Take the complaint to email.
Don’t remove the complaint from your wall, but mitigate the spread by offering a different option. Reach out to the customer by providing them an email to contact you.

“I’m so sorry to hear you had a bad experience. We pride ourselves in looking after our customers and I would like the opportunity to investigate the issue further. Please email me with details at complaints@company.com (include specifics you may need) and I will respond as soon as possible.”

In my experience, you won’t receive an email. Complaints usually die once a customer feels validated.

4. Don’t make promises you cannot keep.
Don’t promise to fix something that you can’t. Sometimes a complaint is about an employee rather than your product or service. By promising to fix it, you may be throwing an employee under the bus. Instead, apologize and promise to look into the problem.

Companies should never be disappointed that they receive complaints online. Conversations online can only help your search engine ratings, complaints provide an opportunity to improve services and by responding in the correct manner you can build a relationship with your customer, something that was becoming increasingly difficult before the age of social networking. The bottom line: if someone is complaining about you, they have high expectations of your company and your product or service and there’s nothing bad about that.

The post How to handle complaints on social media sites appeared first on Abask Marketing.

Fort Lauderdale Magazine feature article

Abask Marketing President and Owner Rebecca Amesbury Batisto recently had a feature article published in the new Fort Lauderdale Magazine. Click the thumbnail to read the article in its entirety.

The post Feature Article: Fort Lauderdale Magazine appeared first on Abask Marketing.

Thinking thinking thinking.

Blogging inevitably shocks those that are new to it. They are amazed by the amount of time it takes to put together one successful blog post and then the time that must be spent pushing that post out to an audience. Between the ideas, the research, the search engine optimization and the marketing, each blog post takes an average of four hours to complete. And this is something you should be doing on a weekly basis at least in order to keep your audience coming back for more.

One of the most common reasons blogs are abandoned is the sheer lack of ideas. Of course original ideas are the best, but sometimes we all draw a blank and have to rely on a list of standards to help spur a blog post idea. Here we are sharing our list of ideas and some examples of how we, our clients, and our friends have used these ideas in the past. While you’re reading this, keep in mind the purpose of your blog and always bring your post back to that purpose.

5 Things
Write a post that chronicles 5 things about your line of business.

5 things to consider when developing a logo.
5 mistakes photographers make on their websites.
5 ways to successfully market a giveaway.
5 apps a blogger should download today.

How I can make your life easier.
Write something that entices customers or potential customers to call you.

Pruning palm trees without knowledge causes damage, PALM has knowledge…
You’re tired and deserve a vacation. Harbour View Villa can make all the arrangements for you…
Your company’s charitable ventures are all over the place, Kelly’s business can clean up your processes…
You’re building out your office, but are afraid costs will get out of control, 1020 Consulting manages costs…

How to …
A simple how to is always useful and timeless; however, it can be hard to be original and always remember to bring it back to the purpose of your blog. For example, “Here’s how to choose the right online platform for your business. Abask Marketing can make this even easier by handling social media for you… call us!”

How to handle complaints on social media.
How to finish your writing projects.
How to design a business card.
How to Boost Your Company’s Creativity.

Look at us posts!
It’s imperative when you’re building your business to show how good you are. Post pictures of things you have produced, anything that shows a level of success, and encourages customers to do business with you. Gdiapers does a good job of this by showing customers the human side of their business, regardless of how big the company is becoming. 

Your Portfolio/ Items.
Your office/ location.
Company Gatherings/ Parties
News From The Inside (company news)

Reviews.
You’re an expert in your field, right? So prove it. Review things, but always make sure those “things” are relevant to your business. And be honest, but never give a negative review to something if it will affect your business down the line – a vacation rental might not want to give a negative review of an airline if that airline could recommend customers to stay at the vacation rental now or in the future!

Best of Brands: How does the Nike brand stack up?
Best of Brands: Ole Smoky Moonshine packaging design review.
Best of Brands: The Dodge Dart commercial, reaching the audience?
Best of Brands: The future according to Corning.

And of course, here comes our purpose piece: If you’re reading this, you’ve probably realized that it’s more difficult to write a blog than you may have anticipated. That being the case, why not let us give it a try for you? I’ll make you a deal! You let us write one blog for you for free and, if we get more visitors to come to your site than any of your previous blog posts, you pay us then. Drop us a line if you’re interested!

The post Blog post ideas for any blog appeared first on Abask Marketing.

Here are 5 apps I use to store away blog ideas. Each of these are free and none are too cumbersome to use.

The Evernote iPhone App

1. Evernote
Writing drafts, note taking, dictation.

I LOVE this app. I use it for every note I take, no matter whether it’s a shopping list or a blog idea. It syncs with my iPad, my computer and my iPhone. I can even share notes with coworkers, so they can take a look at my blog notes and make updates of their own.

I can dictate notes to the app (it doesn’t scribe them, just saves the audio file), write my blog posts and save them to copy and paste to WordPress later (you’ll find some glitches with saving drafts on the WordPress app). I can also take photos and save them here, but I have some other apps I prefer to use for that.

The Instapaper iPhone App

2. Instapaper
Saving Articles

Instapaper has a lot of competitors (including Pulse and Evernote), but I still like it for basic simplicity and the fact that it’s a start-up – I feel I should always support fellow entrepreneurs when possible. It allows you to save entire webpages and online articles to read later. I find this helps me to stay on track. For example, I’m writing a blog about topic a, I do some research and come up with an article about something else that could be interesting, I hit Read Later on my menu bar and carry on with my research for topic a.

I can then read the article on my phone, my iPad, or even my Kindle (yes, I really do have all three!)

The Pulse iPhone App

3. Pulse
Collecting and saving news.

We have a couple of Pulse addicts in our office. Pulse collects stories from online sources or your choosing (newspapers, blogs, magazines) and delivers them to your phone (or iPad), updating the articles as new ones are published. It has a super simple interface and allows you to have different tabs for different types of articles. On top of this, as you’re reading your articles, if you see one you’d like to reference later, you simply “star” it and it will get saved for you to read later.

I’m not crazy about the website, it feels busy and confusing to me, but the app is one I go to daily.

The Flickr iPhone App

4. Flickr
Photo collection

Before I tell you why I love Flickr for collecting ideas, I should say that I use it for posting, BUT not before I use other apps to make edits to my photo, including copyright stamping. Stay tuned for that blog!

I love Flickr for collecting ideas because it’s so simple. Abask manages several blogs that require images from out on site (party planning, landscaping, construction, and master carpentry to name a few), so all of our employees (and clients when possible) have this app attached to our account. While out and about they snap photos and upload them. Now we have all our photos in one spot to refer to later.

[Quick preview of our next apps blog post - we later can download the original photos from Flickr, optimize each one, watermark it and then reload it on to Flickr for future use. There are ways to do this on the fly also, so stay tuned for that blog]

The Pinterest iPhone App

5. Pinterest

What could be better than getting other people to come up with ideas for you? Pinterest allows us to use other people’s ideas to build our own ideas, whether they just tweak an original idea or present an idea for us to build upon, it’s an app that can really get your creative juices flowing.

Pinterest can also help us to market our own blogs, but that’s a topic for another time!

WordPress iPhone app

6. The one you’re wondering about: WordPress

Coming soon: 5 apps for posting a blog on the fly.

The post 5 Apps for Building Blog Ideas appeared first on Abask Marketing.

The art of the giveaway

We’re talking about giveaways a lot at this time of year because we see so many of them around, on Facebook and Pinterest and even in our email inboxes.

Should you be jumping on the bandwagon? Well, a successful giveaway or any kind of offer, requires planning. So, while you may have missed the boat for this holiday season, here are some pointers to get you ready for giveaways in the new year.

1. Know your “friends.”

I’m talking about those people that you’ve already done business with. These are the people you want to reach out to first. These people already know the value of your business and would most likely jump at a deal. And, even more importantly, you know them. You know what they like, so make sure you highlight specific aspects of your deal that will entice your customers to come back for more. This might make more work for you as you pare down your recipients, but it will save you in the long run. You wouldn’t offer winter boots to your Caribbean customers, would you? Getting the wrong message to the wrong people can lose a customer for good.

2. Timing is everything

You know your target audience and you know when the best time to offer them a deal is.

Think about what they might be doing while you consider your giveaway – are they in their car, sitting in standstill traffic on a snowy day while you’re offering them a trip for two in Tahiti? Are they back at work after the holidays feeling sluggish when they receive your friendly offer to help them get back in shape?

Here at Abask Marketing, we keep a calendar of dates that are important to our clients and we reach out two months ahead of time to “plant the seed” (January: help health clients reach their customers; February: help vacation rentals with their romantic getaway deals; March: corporate clients are writing their quarterly goals and budgets…). That way we can tailor our offers to fit your needs.

So, always offer your deals to friends first, but understand that timing is everything.

3. Make the buying easy.

Don’t make your customers jump through hoops. Nothing you offer should require more than one mouse click and no more than ten questions on a form. Obviously for a giveaway, you will have to collect information (don’t forget the contact information), but don’t ask for information that makes people uncomfortable and don’t expect anyone to give you more than 5 minutes of their time.

4. Help them help you!

You’ve seen it ten thousand times. “Share this on Facebook for an additional entry into our sweepstakes.” Ask your recipients to share your offer and give them something in return. The key to doing this is keeping it simple (see step 3!)

Here is an example of just this, done poorly:

This U2 giveaway is too long-winded. It should be so much more simple, and with such a cool prize, a bigger photo or more photos would help it to stand out.

And here is how it should be done:

Erincondren.com sent this giveaway on Facebook. Simple, clean and with easy-to-follow directions.

Using Facebook for a giveaway is an easy way to get new fans, and keep your offer contained in one place. Abask can set up any kind of promotion you need.

5. Wrap it up pretty!

One of the things ErinCondren.com is known for is their packaging.

When you receive something so pretty, you look forward to receiving it again and the same should go for anything you send out to your customers.

Whenever you are reaching out to your customers, whether through newsletter or Facebook, entice viewers to read by making it pretty to look at. Going back to the timing – when we send out our Valentines Day promotion, we make it look like a Valentines Card so that we entice readers and let them know immediately what the purpose of the promotion is.

For more ideas on how to do a giveaway, visit our Giveaway Pinterest Board. If you would like help on putting together a giveaway or offer campaign, please contact us info@abaskmarketing.com

The post 5 things: The secret to marketing a successful giveaway appeared first on Abask Marketing.

10 ways to increase productivity

As a small business owner, I know how difficult it can be to get through all of the tasks you have in any given day. And, on the days when you only half complete half of your tasks, you feel like a failure. This feeling can pile up and eventually sink your self-confidence, your business and your creativity. So, let’s stop the cycle now and get back on the way to success.

Here are ten things you can do to improve productivity today.

1. Keep a list

This might sound counterproductive, but don’t sit down and jump right in.Take twenty minutes at the beginning of each day to list your tasks. First, write your whole work task list, carrying any over from yesterday and prioritize the top three. That way your task list isn’t quite so daunting and you are more likely to complete the tasks of that day. This also allows you to be more realistic with planning client meetings, and estimating deadlines. Once you have your work tasks figured out, go ahead and add your home chores – groceries, pick up kids, vacuuming – just because they’re mundane tasks that are part of your daily routine, doesn’t mean they aren’t time-consuming and productive. By adding them, you’ll have a better handle on your whole day and will be able to cross off and credit yourself with the many things you do each day.

Only twenty minutes spent planning will save you hours throughout the week that you would normally spend figuring out what to do next and allowing yourself the opportunity to squander your time browsing websites.

2. Designate your time.

The average attention span is dwindling. Chances are a few of you have already stopped reading this blog to check Facebook!

The more distractions we have, the less attention span we have, and while your deadline for a proposal may be today, it would be a lot more fun to check Facebook and see if anyone commented on your kitten photo, and then… oh look! Joe posted pictures of the wedding, and who’s that… before you know it, you lose an hour. By designating your time, you force yourself to stay on track until one thing is completed. For example, 10am is my writing hour. I write for one hour, whether it’s a blog for my site, or a client’s, a freelance article, or copy writing for a brochure – it’s what I do during that hour. I don’t answer the phone, I don’t check emails or Facebook, or post on Twitter. I write. And because writing is the biggest bread-winner for me, that hour is the longest period of time I designate daily (every other block is forty minutes with twenty minutes for email time/wiggle room in between) and it’s at my prime productivity time.

By designating your time into blocks, you’ll cross off more tasks each day and notice your focus sharpen the more you do it.

3. Check email intermittently.

As I mentioned, each of my blocks is forty minutes. That allows me twenty minutes in between, to get coffee, stretch, check my task list, or respond to emails. I don’t check emails every time I get bored because that can derail my whole day. Instead, I work it in to my twenty-minute wiggle room and honestly, I try to respond by phone whenever possible because it’s faster, more comprehensive, and more personal.

4. Send reminders.

As you plan your day and schedule your designated times, you’ll see the meetings you may have scheduled for the day. Send reminders to those people you’re meeting to avoid the “I’m running late” or “I forgot.” Of course, the meeting reminder also allows clients to get out of meetings, so if it’s a client meeting that you already know is shaky, you might want to call – you’re less likely to get a rejection and more likely to be able to rebook if they do blow you off.

5. Get ahead.

This can be really tough if you’re already swamped, but if you can spare a couple extra hours to get ahead, you’ll reap the benefits ten fold. Whether your job is developing websites, managing construction projects, landscaping, or accounting you have the ability to get ahead. Spend an extra two hours each week working on your task list.  If you find those hours are spent simply keeping up with the daily three tasks, the next point might be helpful to you:

6. Designate.

Take a good hard look at your life. Something can be designated to somebody else. Whether it’s mowing your lawn, picking the kids up from school, managing your accounting, delivering bids to clients, or sales calls there has to be something. Figure out the expense of designating, choose wisely (don’t pick something you love to do), and keep it on your task list. Just because someone else is doing the work, doesn’t mean you can’t get credit for being the project manager.

7. Never eat lunch alone.

You eat every day, right? You probably have at least one meeting a day, right? Take both and combine. Time is short and meetings tend to drag out and lose focus, so meet over lunch. You’ll find yourself much more productive because we’ve become trained to spend only one hour for lunch, and your meetings will be a tad more casual, with less presentations and more face to face conversation, which is never a bad thing.

And, on those rare days when you don’t have a meeting, eat with a friend. Or even a stranger. You never know where a business opportunity might lie!

8. Make meetings at odd times.

It can be such a waste of time to have to wait for people, so help people to remember your meetings by scheduling them at the 15s. In other words, “Let’s meet at 3:15.” People are more likely to remember something out of the ordinary.

9. Try the 3: 2: 1 ratio rule.

Do three things for work. Do two things for home. Do one thing for yourself. Every Day.

Three tasks for work is easy to understand. Two things for home might be vacuuming, or laundry. And one thing for yourself could be working out, or happy hour with a friend, or a manicure.

10. Learn to say “No.”

Sometimes you just gotta say no. Try it: “No. I can’t join the PTA.”

“No. I’m not going to be able to pick you up from the airport that day.”

“No. I can’t finish it by 4 o’clock.”

Don’t apologize, don’t feel bad, and don’t give excuses, just say no. It’s honest, it’s refreshing, and doggone it, it just feels right!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s 11 o’clock and I have work to do…

The post Ten ways to improve productivity appeared first on Abask Marketing.

Day Blue Designs Business Cards integrating their luxury woodworking.

Business Cards have become integrated into the daily lives of all working folk. Considering most business cards end up in someone’s trash can, it’s important to create a design that is simple enough to read quickly, but also stands apart from competitors. Here are some of the elements every business card should have, as well as some thoughts that could be good for specific industries.

1. Name and Title

Use your first and last name. Avoid qualifications such as M.A. unless you’re a doctor of some sort. Your title should imply your qualifications and if you need to add more, use a separate line. Many companies struggle with what titles to give employees and end up with a roster of inconsistencies across the board, such as some Associate Vice Presidents and some Assistant Vice Presidents, or a whole host of promoted employees carrying around the 1000 business cards that were ordered prior to promotion. Titles might seem like fluff, but they’re actually quite important to get straight before your company soars.

As a company grows quickly, it’s important to provide organizational clarity wherever possible and that gets more difficult if there are 50 VPs and 10 Chiefs.

cnn.com

2. Contact information

A business card without the most basic contact information is like a flat soccer ball. It’s only good for the dog to chew on.

Your contact information should include your address, phone number, email address, and website. Some businesses are based solely on Facebook, in which case use your Facebook address instead of your website. If your business is interactive marketing, such as mine, you’d better include your social networking sites. But cleanliness is key, so don’t clutter the card with fax machine numbers if you never use your fax, or five different email addresses when you actually only need one. Make it known that you are easy to reach by having the bare necessities and nothing more.

3. Licenses and Certifications

If General Contracting is your business, include your license number. When you end up in the clients’ rolodex, this makes it easy when they realize “I don’t know if I checked if he’s licensed.” But more importantly, it helps you stand apart from the competition. Again, cleanliness is key, so only include those licenses and certifications that are necessary to conducting everyday business.

4. Logo

Your logo is your brand. It’s how people remember you. For this reason, your logo should take up 1/3 of the space on the front of your business card. Imagine flicking through a stack of business cards. Yours should be easy to recognize so that your clients can find you when they need to.

5. Extras

I recommend having a design on the back of your card with your logo included, but this will cost extra. Having a different color run the span of your card’s back will separate you from the pack, so it may be worth while to spend the extra $25 up front if it brings in one additional client.

Taglines are good when your line of business is not clear. My business card has three words below the logo: “Interactive. Print. Design.” This allows my card to tell potential clients which aspects of marketing I offer when I’m not around to explain. Taglines can be considered clutter though, so consider whether or not there is a different way to explain your line of business. DayBlueDesigns is a luxury wood working company. Instead of a tagline we provided a wood design with their logo embossed on the back of the business card. The result is clean and clear.

6. Other considerations

Die Cuts and special materials. Business cards that are cut into unique shapes or using special materials, such as metal, always stand out from competitors. Unfortunately, they also cost a considerable amount. I interviewed with a marketing firm that represented itself as “high-end” and had their employees carry metal business cards. The effect was impressive and did convey the luxury they were intending, however, their clients also saw them as expensive from the very first meeting. The business went under after 2 years.

Another business I have encountered recently uses die cut business cards in the shape of a water drop to represent their plumbing business. It is effective, although expensive, but you have to fold the card to get it in your wallet, it’s not easy to pull out, and the effect doesn’t look quite as sharp once the top of the drop has been ripped off.

Cost. Business Cards can get very expensive when adding colors to both sides, die cuts, or special materials. It can be easy to get carried away. Keep the initial purpose in mind and try to stay as simple as possible. The cluttered card may convey a lot of information, but it also conveys two other things: your business is messy and, more importantly, the purpose of a business card is to contact you. If the card says everything you have to say, no one need use it to contact you!

The post What should your business card include? appeared first on Abask Marketing.

The post Through the looking glass: a glimpse into the future? appeared first on Abask Marketing.