When you start off, you are building Brand Awareness within your network. Once you have earned the trust of your network, then you have positioned yourself to offer your products and services. Just as the sales call or unwanted knock at the door rarely leads to a sale, abusing your network leads to a shrinking network.

Let’s start with the basics and lay a good foundation for your social media campaign.

Process (Sales vs Awareness)

We examine  how the social process works and some of the benefits. We also define expectations of your social media efforts.

• While sales will come, you are building brand awareness with social media
• Define your target audience and expand it
• Develop a social media update schedule for 12 months (stick to it)
• Develop an outline of updatable topics that you can start to build content for
• You should have content on your website or blog that pertains to the update prior to pushing out the update
• Social involvement should be on all print and online materials (email signature, business cards, voice mail etc.)
• Be prepared to become active in your social campaign whether you handle it internally or outsource it. It’s not something you can pay for and set it adrift only to look for sales to increase. You must help craft the topics, write supportive information and provide suggestions. No one knows your company and or industry better than you.
• This process is like a marathon and not a sprint. It takes time, adjustments, effort, vision, patience and investment of time and money to succeed

Tools (Quantity vs Quality)

We define what tools we use and how we will use them. We also will discuss optional tools that can be added if so desired.

• Setup accounts with full account profiles
• Identify the kinds of updates that can take place on each network based on their character limitations
• Develop update schedule (day and time)
• Install a social widget on your website to show the latest update
• Identify optional services to expand your social network and traction such as social bookmarking, email blasts, video channel and blog development
• Create location to provide a click-to from the update
• Install tracking code for measuring updates effectiveness
• Prepare to grow your website and / or blog as you begin the social campaign
• Advertise that you are now on social networks and what type of information you’ll be providing

Performance (Fact vs Fiction)

We discuss how we define, measure, adjust and re-engage parts of the campaign. We set goals and milestones.

• Examine: Look at statistics to monitor traction
• Examine: Revisit your products and services from a client’s point of view
• Examine: Compare your architecture against your competition
• Examine: Have you done everything suggested in Process and Tools
• Adjust: Define and develop content for your top 10 products and services
• Adjust: Revisit your goals of social networking (sales vs awareness)
• Adjust: Take a moment to remember why you are doing this
• Engage: Implement adjustments based off of tracking and performance
• Engage: Are you as active as you could be with your social network?
• Engage: Promote your social network involvement at every turn

As you can see, it’s much more than just having an account. Social Architecture is about having a plan, the right content to educate people and the objectiveness to adjust to reach people in a new advertising medium. Social networking is just like in-person networking, you get out what you put in to it. Investing time, effort and yes even money is the best way to grow your network.

Welcome to Social Media Networking. Allow Studio490 to help you as you take the first steps toward growing your company.

1.    Utilization of Resources

A good alternative to adding a new department or creating a costly task force to complete a specific function is outsourcing. Some tasks may take up an inordinate amount of an employee’s time. By outsourcing, companies can free up their employee’s time which would allow them to do the important day to day function in a timely manner. This increases overall efficiency and improves employee morale.

2.    Reduces Operating Cost

Companies that try to do everything themselves may incur very high research, development and marketing expenses.  Keeping an employee trained and up to date with within certain fields can be costly too. Outsourcing the secondary functions to experts whose only function is one particular task can be much less expensive in the long run. Additional costs, such as SS tax, WC benefits and health insurance, are all part of hiring a full time employee. A company will not incur these cost with outsourcing to experts.

3.    Access to Experts and Specialists

Outsourcing firms are comprised of highly trained and very experienced specialists who know how to handle all aspects of that particular project. For difficult tasks, this allows for many companies to manage those complex projects. The employees will have more time to do their aspects of their job which would increase productivity and customer service. By outsourcing these projects, the company will not be confined to their geographic location.  The company will  have access to even a greater pool of experts by outsourcing through North America. (We are not talking about outsourcing outside of our borders. We want to keep the jobs within the USA.)

4.    Improve Customer Service

When an employee is bogged down with lots of tasks to complete, he/she is less capable of providing excellent customer service. Outsourcing permits a company to redirect its resources from non-core activities toward activities that serve the customer.  The level of customer service will increase because time and resources are being focused on that area.

5.    Improve Efficiency

Cost, quality, service and speed are critical measures that a company must aim for in improvements. This need to increase efficiency directly conflicts with the need to invest in the primary focus of the business. By freeing up time and resources, the company is able to concentrate on making money and growing the business.

Each plan starts with gathering ideas about your audience, brand, and specific goals or needs. We will study and research your business as well as your competitors to gather relevant information to plan the most effective solution.

Produce:

The content of your website or marketing tools tells others about who you are in relation to your philosophies, aspirations, and benefits of using your services. Content is the voice of your company. It will be used to inform, persuade, and entertain your audience. You will want to perform in the most effective way your medium will allow. We will craft the building blocks to help you with future conversations with your customers. Not only is the voice of content critical, so is the placement of the content. You want your target audience to be able to find you in today’s Google or Yahoo search engines. One powerful step in the process is placing targeted keywords and meta tags in your website, this will allow the customers to find you before your competition.

The design of your website will define the success of the message you are trying to communicate to your audience. As you build your Brand Equity, you will have a stronger presence in the market and to your target audience. We will work with you to discover how to communicate your message through designing and branding your identity.

Promote:

This step of the process is the most overlooked part of the development process. After your project is designed, we must create a connection between you and your target audience. We will work on creating and delivering your project through custom email campaigns, press releases, blogs, social media, and etc. By promoting your product/service, you are creating relationships with your audience and their desire for your product or service.

TJ and Dana Todd

Studio490

What makes a professional web designer is their ability to listen to the client and suggest the right business solution. Even though that solution may not be something the “Designer” does. A true professional should tell you what you need and not just what you want to hear. Most clients don’t know their meta tag from their link exchange, but it’s your web designer who should.

It does Studio490 no good to design and develop a web solution that never exceeds its clients business expectations. That simply makes a unhappy customer and they don’t return.

The Client

Just as it’s important to hire a professional web designer, we believe it’s important for the client to know what they are asking for. If they don’t, then be open to feedback from that professional. Know when you’re asking for a Lexus on a Yugo budget.

Spend some time learning what you will need to ask for before you find someone to provide that service. Look for a professional who has references, testimonials and samples. Ask about qualifications and how they do business. A professional will be more than happy to talk about their company.

Know what’s included and what is not in the scope of the project. Project Creep is very common in web development and it’s best to define what the cost will cover.

A committed web professional and a educated professional client is a winning combination. You can see our references to see.

Tj and Dana Todd

Studio490

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There are ways to get to the top of search engines and here are 2:

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Organic SEO: in which you constantly work on your site content, link exchange, keyword research, meta tags, title wording, networking, blog support (see Studio490.com), online marketing, promotions, email blasts, direct mail, web banners and more.

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Buy your way to the top by Pay-Per-Click: you pay to be listed above the fold when someone enters a certain keyword.

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As a reference, the term “DSL” was selling for 3.05 in 2005 and is now up to 6.24. So if you were the highest bidder for “DSL“; every 100 people that clicked on your link would cost you 624.00. As you can see it wouldn’t take much to blow your budget out of the water if you were going after a popular keyword.

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** Quote **

Successful SEO Needs Effort, Not Quick Fixes
By: Mark Nenadic

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If you want to be successful with search engine optimization, you need to commit yourself to achieving long-term results. This does take patience, but is necessary if you want to come out on top. The following tips can help bring you closer to your high ranking goal:

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Tip 1: Conduct thorough research for keyword phrases- Use effective keyword programs such as Keyword Discovery or Word Tracker. The paid programs of their software will help you generate the best keyword phrases for your business.

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Tip 2: Valuable web content- Don’t create a website that is overrun by graphics. SEO spiders will crawl right over these graphics and by pass you. Your website needs a reasonable amount of web content that is pumped full of valuable information. It needs to be clear and concise. And it should also convey your website’s message, which needs to include the keywords you’ve selected to rank high.

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Tip 3: Relevancy-  Ensure that all of your link anchor texts and title tags are relevant to one another, as well as to the web content that is presented on your site.

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Tip 4: Patience is a virtue- It will take almost a year, or even longer, before you begin to see any traffic from the natural results of search engines. Try not to let this get you down. Take this time to continue to improve your site and give the competition a run for their money. Eventually, your persistence, patience and positive thinking will pay off.

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** End Quote **

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While not having a website at all is still worse than not doing any SEO (search engine optimization), it’s not by much. If you plan on not doing any SEO to your site after launch or in production, keep your site lean with good content until you can afford to do some.

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Tj & Dana Todd
Studio490.

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Some questions that never seem to get answered.
1 – How do I check my email when I’m not at home?
2 – How do I save my user name and password so I can log back in?
3 – Do I have to shut my computer down when I stop using it?
4 – What browser should I use?
5 – Do I need to run system updates?
6 – What is a Blog?
7 – What is a MySpace?
8 – How do I find pictures online?
9 – When I save a file on my computer, where does it go?
10 – How can I stop the pop up windows?

and man many many more.

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Contact us for scheduling a visit, chat (IM) or phone call today.

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tjtodd@studio490.com

Tj & Dana Todd
Studio490