the dangling carrot
cultivating your business vision
How to Not Be Your Own Company’s Worst Enemy
Mar 1st
In these times of economic turmoil, people are taking comfort in many things – food, meditation, family, and in what they know in business– even if it is bad for them. Since we started our company, we found that our prospects and customers have been emotionally tied to their company name, logo, processes, system of bookkeeping, etc. But, in the last few months, we have seen these emotional ties turned to unbreakable bonds that are not making good business sense. Some people are becoming their own worst enemy in business.
When making business decisions, we recommend that your choices reflect what your customers want/need – not what you feel “connected to.” This is not easy – it took a few weeks for us to decide on “Creative Carrot Studios” as a company name as we were emotionally tied to it! Unless YOU represent your target market, put yourself in your customers’ shoes – what would they want, like and remember and use this information when making marketing, pricing, distribution, etc decisions.
Social Media Hits the Mass Marketers!
Feb 25th
I recently saw an online ad that said, “Earn $x.xx with social media.” Like every other product – social media is going through its life cycle. Web companies, marketing agencies, and web savvy business owners have not only realized the value of social media tools, but have also educated themselves on how to have a strong (but not intrusive) presence on the web. Unfortunately, this very powerful tool has reached the hands of the salesmen of yester year – the “Get it NOW, NOW, NOW” in-your-face marketers.
Social media is fabulous when browsers want to find your information. It is offensive, when the messages/information is being shoved down the browsers’ throats. So, be wary of “Social Media Experts.” Just like in all business, a few buzz words do not a social media expert make. Use common sense – if someone suggests that you post personal stuff about your dogs and how many times they ate today, or your high scores on the latest games – think about if this information is valuable. If it is worthless to you, it will probably be worthless to others, too!
You can do your own research – there is plenty of great information on the web about social media, there are true social media consultants, and take online or local classes on social media. Creative Carrot Studios is teaching a class on Social Media Basics & How to Use Social Media for Business on March 12 and April 9. For more info, contact Business Building Blocks 954.427.3880 or email info@creativecarrotstudios.com
Not Another Networking Event!
Feb 15th
This blog is for all of you business networkers out there who may be growing wary of the weekly networking grind. In order to stay “fresh” and to skip happily to a networking event, we attend only events where we can grow the business and grow personally. We recently attended a Professional Athlete Business Summit whose keynote speakers list included Shark Tank’s Kevin Harrington, and TLC’s and Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Lisa Nichols. The speakers were captivating and so were the attendees – I met a person who gives away (for FREE) browser software that protects children on the Internet.
We do still attend the occasional Business Expos, but we find that the quality of the attitudes of the people attending these events is not at the level (I am being polite) of those attending the “positive” message events – as the attendees actually want to be there. We also receive more customer appointments and referrals than when we attend networking business card exhcanges. The “fresher” the event presenters, the better we do as a business, and I hear THANK YOU’S instead of complaints!
Happy Networking!
Solid Business Plan a Necessity for Social Media
Feb 7th
New Management Solutions in Coral Springs, Florida (www.newmanagementsolutions.com) has requested that we provide a 2 class series on social media. The first class covers the Social Media Basics and the second, How to Turn Social Media into $. We have scheduled the classes with a 3 week break in-between them – allowing the student to apply what they learn at the primary class, and to do some research (yes – we give homework).
In developing our own business as well as the classes we understand how vital it is to really have a solid roadmap for the business to follow and a truly targeted market niche. People have all heard how important social media is to establishing credibility, engaging customers and prospects, and creating awareness and relationships. So when people learn how to use the Social Media tools – they want to use them right away. But unless – they have really identified their target audience, so they join the RIGHT groups, and hone their message, they may attract attention, but it may not be the right attention!
We strongly recommend that businesses either take a business plan writing course, have a professional review their business plans/ assist in writing the business plan, as the cost of making a bad first impression (a non-targeted one), is very expensive to overcome.
Clean Programming – a Path to SEO
Feb 1st
We have a client whose website was designed by another company. The site is attractive and the copy is good. But – there is always a but – there are no keywords (the words that people type into Google or Yahoo or Bing, etc to find what they are looking for on the internet). This makes it very difficult to be found unless you are using pay per click. So – our services were retained to provide the keywords.
There are many factors that determine your rankings in the search engines. One of the factors is when the description that shows up when you are found in the search engines, your keywords, and the content (the words) on your pages are consistent. If the same words are in all three places, the search engines are happy. Also the words in your copy need be easy to find (not a lot of junk in the programming). Just like a person browsing your pages – the less work search engines have to do to find what they need – the happier they are.
When we looked at our client’s website programming (how the site was built), the coding was a mess. We could add the keywords to the site – but the search engines would not be able to find the content on the page. The search engines would not be happy & thus the site not found. Now, we have been retained to clean up the code too. So – the lesson is, to ask your web design companies if they follow the W3C programming standards – as you do not want to have to pay someone else to clean up the coding.
Is my Business Ready for a Website and Online Presence?
Jan 18th
As an online presence is vital to survival in today’s marketplace – it can also be lethal if your business it not ready! What does READY mean? It means that you have a detailed and defined business plan outlining who your target market is, who your competition is and how you are going to differentiate yourself, what your plan to market is, what your pricing structure is, what your customer service entails, and what your budgets are going to be. With any of the above being unknown, having anyone create a website that truly suits your needs, is unlikely.
As it takes a few months to have your SEO and social media efforts really take hold, we recommend that our prospective customers have an “Under Construction Page(UC)” created with some quality copy (start generating a buzz about your company). This UC page can begin to drive traffic while you define your business plan – which is your roadmap to success.
How do you learn to define your business? We recommend that you take some classes for entrepreneurs that walk you through the above topics. We attended the Business Building Blocks Series (for more info go to www.BBBseries.com). We also recommend that you hire a consultant who specializes in writing business plans (we hired www.ecouncilinc.com). We have learned that it is much less expensive to do things properly the first time with professional help, than to do it incorrectly ourselves!
So I have a Blog. What do I do now?
Jan 11th
We created a blog for a client last week. I trained him how to use the blog, how to post, how to edit, how to approve comments, etc – that was the easy part. The difficult part is encouraging the client to have enough confidence to actually write the blog posts. This client (the owner of Dolce Amore Cafe) is an incredible chef and an entertaining person. He knows more about fine cuisine and the vitamins, anti-oxidants, and minerals than anyone I know. I explained to him that a successful blog post is a gift.
Blogs should be:
- Information that customers want or need
- It should be provided freely – the customer should not have to sign up for anything to access your blog
- About what is in it for the customers if they attend if you are promoting an event
- Written like you are having a conversation
- Showing off your stuff – what you know and that you are an expert in your industry
- 2-3 paragraphs (a Tasty Tidbit). If it is a long topic, break the blog into sections
- Enjoyable to read (not necessarily entertaining – but a pleasant experience)
- About topics that will drive traffic to your site (but is not already included on your site)
Please do NOT give away the store – do not provide info in the blog for which you would normally charge customers – e.g. this post is about what we recommend for Blog posts, I did not tell you how to create a Blog because we charge customers to do that!
Happy Blogging!
Social Media 101
Jan 3rd
Social Media 101
More and more businesses are realizing that in order to be successful, they need to have a strong online presence. We spend time educating our clients. So … I am including a mini-social media class.
The purpose of social media is:
- Generate traffic to a website (& increase your search engine rankings)
- Engage with customers and prospects in a dialog
- Establish credibility
The Big Four:
- LinkedIn- http://www.linkedin.com – Engage businesses
- Facebook – http://www.facebook.com – Engage individuals with a Personal page or set up a Fan Page for your Business
- Twitter – http://www.twitter.com – Engage individuals by sending out announcements and providing people with useful information. And remember to subscribe to others’ tweets.
- Blogging – your blog can be set up as part of your own site or as part of a number of free or paid blogging sites. Post (write about) 2-4 paragraphs about how you have helped other people, or provide them with free useful information. Also, solicit and respond to feedback from your customers.
Help! My Web Designer Says He Owns My Domain and Website!
Dec 27th
It happens way more often than you think. We have customer after customer come to us asking for changes to be made to their existing website. They either want updates on their existing pages, pages or a shopping cart or a blog added, or to have the site search engine optimized. As most of our customers are experts in their field, and not experts in web design or hosting, they are unaware if they:
- are locked into a hosting agreement
- own their website
- own their domain name
Regardless of who your web designer is, make sure you find out the answers to the following questions:
- How long is the hosting agreement and can I have the username and password for the hosting company?
- Will I own the website and the images upon making the final payment to the design company?
- Will the domain name be registered in my name or in the website design company’s name?
The answers to the above information can be verified at www.whois.domaintools.com (go to the Registration Tab). For example, if a website is hosted at www.oneandone.com, a customer should see that the domain has been either set up in his/her name, or was set up in the designer’s name – but is transferrable, and that the “customer agreement” with the designer includes the transfer of the domain name.
We recently spoke with someone who had no idea that her domain name was owned by the original web designer, and that her domain and hosting were not transferrable. So, she either has to pay the web designer as long as she wants the site maintained, or leave and lose the domain name and have the site recreated.
At Creative Carrot Studios, our customers all own their domain names, and websites and images upon receipt of final payment.