Five Ways to Grow Your Business

For the longest time now I have contemplated creating and running my own business. If not have my own, I want to work building up smaller businesses. I found this interesting article on SocialMedia Today that shows five ways Snapchat can help you grow your business. It is well known that social media marketing is a growing network for businesses. But did you know that you can now add Snapchat to your list of ways to grow your business?

Snapchat has become one of the fastest growing social apps. With their main demographic being people between the ages of 13 and 34. many of these users also are on other social media apps and share their snaps on other networks.

Here are five things you may not have known that Snapchat provided for you and your growing business.

1.       Provide Something Unique

Snapchat does not allow you much time to display all things you might want to convey to your viewers. This may seem come across as a problem but it just opens a way for your company to dig into the creative side and share just key or exciting things about the business that they may not originally get to see.

2.      Teaser Content

This goes along with being unique. Use that 10-minute window as a teaser for the viewers. Show small amounts of what is to come for the business. If you keep the content funny and surprising, you can create a whirlwind through media and people will begin to spread it through word of mouth.

3.      Offers and Promotions

Snapchat can become a great way of advertisement for your business. It also opens the opportunity to send out offers and discount codes to customers.

4.      Tell a Story

The ‘Stories’ feature gives you the opportunity to share a story for a 24-hour period. Here you can display a story or events from the day giving your customers insight to what goes on during a typical day at your business.

5.      Giveaways

When you first create your Snapchat presence you want people to add you. You can easily get this by giving away tickets, but saying to have the opportunity to win the customers need to add you on snapchat.

I hope you could learn from this just like I did. I think it is a great thing to consider especially if you are looking to have your own business or work for a business that is trying to grow. 

The numbers of it

Imagine it is a Friday afternoon and you are riding in the car. Talking with others, heading someplace you’ve been waiting to go all day. Then it happens. You hear a scream, and then it hits you. The car goes flying forward, you sit there in shock.

We have all heard the lectures repeatedly about drinking and driving along with texting while driving. We hear it especially when we are first learning to drive. It is ingrained into our brains at a young age. We listen to this, but often do not think the bad outcomes could happen to us. Many people know someone who has been effected by some sort of distracted driving.

By the time, I got out of the car the man that hit us was stumbling towards us attempting to apologize. Then he fell, if you got close enough you could smell the alcohol on him. I was in shock; did we just get hit by a drunk driver?

Now in this case luckily no one was injured. But this is not always the case, and often it ends much, much worse. Since this is a topic that hits very close to home for me, I wanted to share with you all some of the statistics that come from distracted driving.

51

Every 51 minutes in America someone is killed in a drunk driving crash. This is roughly 27 people every single day.

120

Every 120 seconds someone is injured in a drunk driving incident.

9,878

9,878 people were victims of a drunk driver.

4

You are 4X more likely to crash while texting and driving.

5

Five is the minimum number of seconds you take your eyes off the road to send a text.

I can only hope that these numbers effect you as much as they have affected me. Whether you can relate to this or not I want you to know that an incident like this sticks with you for the rest of your life. So, next time you go out and drink, please do not drive, do not add to these statistics. Likewise, with texting and driving, just do not do it. Be the one to make a change and possibly save some lives.

The Little Blue Book: Volume Two

This week’s readings come from chapters seven and eight of “The Art of Social Media.” So, I have a few questions for you all. First, do you have or even know what a Google+ account is? Next, do you know how to run a Google+ Hangout on Air (HOA)? With all honesty, I had no idea what it was until taking this class.

I would like to just share a few of the handy tips on how to run a Google+ Hangout on Air. One thing to know before beginning is that, HOA is like having your own television channel.

1.       Equipment is key:

Having items such as; a webcam, microphone and earphones, great lighting (particularly on your face), and a collapsible background. You can add a periscope type device to ensure you are looking your viewers in the eye. They are not all necessary, but it could make your life easier by making the simple purchases.

2.      Is structure important?

The answer is YES! You should typically plan, script, and organize everything for your HOA. This creates the opportunity to maximize the event.

3.      Have an event page with a custom header:

The page ensures you can maximize participation because the viewers can add it to their Google calendar. The header is important because it provides an increase in visibility.

4.      Allow access in other locations:

It is a good idea to embed your HOA into places like a YouTube URL, in your blog, or on a website.

5.      Solid Colors:

It is a fantastic idea to wear solid colors during you HOA. If you wear a patterned shirt this can cause the “moiré” effect. This is the illusion of waviness in the video.

I hope you learned a few things from these tips and continue to look more into the life of Google+ Hangouts on Air.

The Little Blue Book: Volume One

For my Social Media class, we have weekly readings from books that provide helpful and key hints to building your social media profile. Our first readings come from a little blue book called “The Art of Social Media” by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick. I have learned so much from the book and I have only read three chapters so far. A few points have really stuck out to me and I would like to share some of them with you each week.

One of the first things that really stuck to my brain is something that may seem like common sense but at the same time is often forgotten. This would be to stay consistent throughout each source of media. By this I mean that you should typically keep your profile picture the same for each site. By doing this it creates a basis for people to be able to search for you and find you quicker than if you have different images on each site.

Another key point that is made is to stay brief. It is human nature to make snap judgments, so we want to be able to look at a profile and instantly know how we feel. It is the same idea when it comes to the content on your page. So, the idea is to keep it simple. You need to be able to capture their attention quickly and effectively. If not, they will move on and never look back. Keep it sweet and simple and you will be just fine.

A third thing from these chapters is to be organized. On sites like Facebook and LinkedIn if you reach the four paragraph range it would be a good idea to use bullets or lists. When posts become too long people tend to get bored and lose interest in the post. This leads them to stop reading and can turn them away from whatever the topic may be. But you need to be organized to create room for your reader to breathe while reading a post that is longer in length.

So, these are just a few of the things I learned from the first three chapters. I know I will keep them in mind and hope you all do the same.  

Things Our Majors are Tired of Hearing

We have all had those moments when people say, “Oh, you go to Ohio Northern?”

But have you ever had people say things such as:

“Are you a Pharmacist?”

“Engineer?”

“Law student?”

When the answers are no they always ask:

 “Then what do you do?”

For me the response is Graphic Design with a minor in Public Relations. Now I know some people are in those majors that I named above, but there is something just different about being in an art major. People seem to misunderstand what happens within the Wilson Art Center.

Since many of you may not know these things I figured I would just share with  you some of the things I have personally heard from people outside of my major.

1. “So you just draw pictures?”

Yes and no, the design process is more than simply just drawing pictures all the time. It consists of many more steps including: brainstorming, sketches, critiques, roughs, critiques, final project, and (you guessed it) more critiques. It is the buildup of more than just a simple picture.

2. “You’re so lucky you don’t have tests.”

 We have very few, if any tests. The amount of time though that most students put in studying for tests and exams is the equivalent to the design student’s studio time and working in the lab to finish a project. If you question it just put yourself in my shoes for one day and live through a critique from Professor Rowe, then tell me I have it easy. The projects we have are our versions of your tests.

3. “I wish I had a fun major like yours.”

Okay, so I admit it, I think I do have a fun major to an extent. Just like any other major though it can be very stressful and not every project is going to be your cup of tea.

4. “You’re lucky you don’t have textbooks.”

This is a lie, depending on the class, yes, we have textbooks. On top of that the amount of supplies we get are an extra cost that adds up far more quickly than you might expect it to.

These are just a few of the things that people in my major are tired of hearing. I hope that I have helped clear up some of these things. Maybe some of you can relate to this within Graphic Design, and maybe even within your own majors. Feel free to add some of your own, “Things Your Major is Tired of Hearing!”

Building Customer Loyalty

While researching recent activities in the social media world, I found an article on SocialMediaToday that I feel can relate to my future career in Graphic Design and Public Relations. This article focuses on ways to create customer loyalty with social support.

It is becoming increasingly common that if you have an unhappy customer, you could lose more than just that customer and a few of their friends. With the rapid growth of social media, the word of dissatisfaction can spread like wildfire. In the design industry, the client and their audience are the key aspect to success. If you make them unhappy they can jump on Twitter, Facebook, etc. and spread the word for the service they received. As bad as it may be they can drop your client basis rapidly and if you work for any firm, the end solution may not be what you desire.

Just one angry comment can take a while to recover from. According to Chan, 88% of customers are influenced by customer service reviews. They are also ready to jump on adding reviews, especially the ones that can ruin a person’s career.

The following are six tips to delivering support on social media.

1.       Use a monitoring tool to catch these complaints:

A monitoring tool can catch the mentions you get from your client base on social media. You may also get real time alerts for your company and product names. This ultimately saves time when you are searching to find out what people say about your service.

2.      Don’t ignore the complaints:

I find it shocking that companies would ignore their online complaints. It is a crucial element that you respond to these complaints in a timely manner. Giving your clients that response can help you from losing the client. They want to know that you care about their needs and wants, and that you will try to solve the problem as soon as possible.

3.      Have real people manage your social accounts:

Copy-and-pasted responses can be one of the worse things you can do when dealing with a dissatisfied customer. It will become annoying to customers if the realize they are not talking to a real person, so hire humans to talk to them. The personal aspect is huge when it comes to solving a problem.

4.      Use the opportunity to build rapport:

In the end, do not be afraid to respond and try to have fun with it at all possible. Try to connect with the customers.

5.      Continue the discussion in private, if necessary:

It is important to know when to make a conversation private, or take it off social media altogether. Some information just cannot be shared publicly.

6.      Create an efficient process for transferring queries:

Make it so that if you must transfer a customer from person to person that the process is quick and harmless. They want to know that when you are taking their time that you are explaining the situation to the next person. Customers get tired of continually repeating the service they need.

In the end, you need to build customer loyalty. Believe it or not they need to know you care!