inside the office

Over the summer, I had the pleasure of attending PodCamp Boston. One of the first presenters that I listened to was Guido Stein, passing on some tips to getting started in podcasting. There are more of the technical than creative vein, but good stuff, nonetheless.

Recording Audio

• GarageBand is great. Sadly, only available for Macs. However, the default file format is MP4. Go to “Share” and change for iTunes/MP3 for best results and most versatility
• Use Levelator to unify audio levels in the recording *before* doing any other editing. This is especially important if you have more than one person on the recording, and are not in the same location.
• Audacity is a pretty good and easy to use editing tool for getting rid of mistakes & deadspots.
• Speaking of mistakes, if you do make a slip up while recording, leave about 5 seconds of silence after, so it will be easy to find while you’re editing

Recording Options

There are many ways to get audio into a file on your computer. The key, though, is getting it the best format possible. I’ve suffered through podcasts that were obviously recorded over the phone or similar, and one person is LOUD and you can hear paper shuffling, sniffling, everything, and the caller is so soft that you want to turn it up to hear him/her, but you’re eardrums get blown out when the first person comes back on.

• Headset – with so much VOIP techonology being used, there are many headsets on the market these days. Find one that comfortable, with good sound quality. I use one that was actually designed for Sony Playstation, but it’s lightweight, comfortable, and delivers pretty good audio quality.
• USB Microphone – the cheap $7 versions probably aren’t going to give you the best quality but if headsets aren’t your deal, try a standalone microphone.
• Digital Recorder – this could be a great option if you plan to be recording your podcast when you’re not at your computer. You can transfer the recorded file to your computer later for leveling & editing.
• VOIP – some VOIP tools like Skype allow you to record a call, which could be an ideal solution if you have multiple people on the recording from different locations. Please remember to run the file through and audio leveling program, through, to be nice to your listeners.
• Another option is a service like drop.io, where (I’m told) you can call in and set it up to automatically post the recording to your podcast. Neat.

To test out a microphone, record something and play it back. Make sure the output levels are satisfactory, and quality is good – no scratchy noises, pop, background noise isn’t too loud, etc.

Next time, I’ll share some of the tips I’ve picked up for how to publish your podcast, and where to get it listed to maximize your exposure.

Until then, I’d love to hear how you currently or plan to record your podcast…

When was the last time that you experienced GREAT customer service? It seems that over the last decade or so, many businesses have adopted a model of striving to provide only adequate or good customer service. Most of the time, clerks and cashiers in stores barely smile or acknowledge you when you are at the register, and employees that you encounter randomly in the store seem to be hoping that you won’t ask them for help. I dread having to call customer service for most companies and if I am in the unfortunate position of needing to contact technical support, I make sure that I have drinks and snacks and get comfortable for what is likely to be a lengthy phone call.

I have, in the last several months, had many occasions to contact (or be contact by) customer service for several companies. Earlier this year, the car adapter for my Microsoft Zune MP3 stopped working just a few short weeks after I purchased it, I was not looking forward to contacting the company about this. The big box store that I had purchased it at wouldn’t help me without a receipt, which I could not locate. The product, however, was still under the manufacturer’s 90-day warranty. I called, explained what had happened, and the astonishingly nice gentleman on the phone said that he would have a free replacement sent to me the next day. That’s it. I didn’t have to jump through hoops, cut through any redtape, or kiss a frog to make it happen. Two days later, my new adapter showed up and works great.

Just a few weeks ago, I was having some issues with the speaker in my Blackberry. Basically, I could no longer hear my phone ring because the speaker was not working. So, after I put my daughter to bed, I grabbed a drink and some snacks and called customer service for my wireless company. The rep that answered my call was very pleasant and, after verifying that my device was still covered under warranty, arranged to send me a replacement device. While waiting for the system to process everything, he and I even had a nice little chat about how nice it was to find a pleasant person on the other end of the phone.

On the other hand, I happened to be around when a client was dealing with an overnight shipping company today. They had requested a package pickup at a specific building. Someone in the client’s office spoke with a rep from the company who said that she would contact the driver and relay the request to them. The driver either did not get the message or did not follow through with the request, and the package did not get picked up on time. When my client called the company to request a credit, she encountered a rude customer service rep who insisted that my client was mistaken and that no live person had spoken with my client’s colleague, that the mistake was my client’s fault, and they would not be credited. I have had similar unpleasant experiences with the same company looking for packages that were not delivered on time or were lost in transit and somehow ended up several states away for no apparent reason. How difficult would it have been for this company to apologize for the mistake and issue a credit in the interest of continuing a potentially lucrative relationship with my client?

When dealing with your clients, remember that every contact that you have with your client – on the phone, by mail, email, blog, social media, and even your voice mail message – is an opportunity to leave them with a GREAT customer service experience. Most consumers will tell up to 10 people when they have a bad experience with a business, but will only tell up to four people when they have had a good experience. At the very least, that should be enough reason to strive to give good customer service (so your customers aren’t telling 10 people about their bad experience). And, when you can provide a GREAT customer service experience, you just might shock your customer into telling people about the experience. They might even blog about it!

So, when was the last time you had a GREAT customer service experience? I invite you to share you experience below…

So, you may be asking why a web developer is writing about Business Plans and Marketing Plans. To put it simply, I have a vested interest in my clients – current & future – clearly knowing how their business is doing, where they want it to go, and how it’s going to get there.

Developing a marketing plan will help you keep on track to achieve your goals, and the plan should be your step-by-step guide to getting there.

1. Target Market
   Refer to your Business Plan for this information. Your target market are the people who’s problems you’re going to solve. Knowing their location, education level, income level, pain points and strengths will help you to tailor your marketing message to be the most effective.
   If you find that you have more than one target market, or that there are extreme difference among segments of your market, consider developing different marketing messages to appeal to each of these segments.
2. Marketing Goal(s)
   What do you want to accomplish over the next year? Make sure your goals are specific and measurable. A goal of “get more clients”  or “increase sales” is not enough. Without specific, quantifiable goals, it can be easy to give up to quickly, or for goals to seem too daunting to be realistic.
   Doesn’t something like “get 10 more clients” or “increase sales 25%” sound much more attainable?
3. Strategies & Tactics
   A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Tactics are the specific actions taken to get there. You’ve identified your goals and your target market. You know what you want to do and who you want to help. How are you going to get your message to them?
   Be sure to include all media that you plan to employ, such as direct mail, your website, email marketing and social media marketing in this section.
4. Cost & Budget
   Now that you know what to do, figure out how much it’s going to cos and is this cost within your budget? You can come up with greatest marketing plan or campaign that’s ever been conceived for your industry but, if your business can’t handle the expense, it’s not going to do you any good.

The web used to be a great land of “build it and they will come” options. However, the proliferation of websites for every business venture means that your customers have many more options than ever before. A simple search for the topic of choice will direct an interested party to hundreds of websites. If yours is on the list, what is it about your site that will encourage users to stay longer, to look around more and, possibly, to buy your products or engage your services. Below are a few things that you can do with your website to make your website more user-friendly, and increase your odds of visitors hanging around a bit longer.

1. Consistent Navigation – Having consistently placed and ordered navigation on your website makes it easier for visitors to find their way around your site. Navigation that’s always in the same place on your site, and links in the same order allow the user to feel comfortable in their surroundings. Navigating a foreign place is always stressful – eliminate that stress for visitors to your website.
2. Well Organized Information – Most people agonize about the look and layout of their website but many people forget to consider how the information the site will present is organized as well. Also known as Information Architecture, carefully planning the organization and presentation of your site increases the ability for users to find the information they are looking for on your site. Make sure each page has a clear topic – and only one. Trying to fully inform a visitor about several topics on one page may confuse them and encourage them to leave, quickly.
3. Clear Call to Action – Do you know what you want the user to do when they’re on your site? Let them know! And make it easy for them to do what you want them to. Do you want users to sign up for your newsletter? Have the newsletter sign up form located at the top of your page (preferably on the right side). Do you sell products on your website? Make it easy for users to add products to their cart, and easy to checkout.
4. Use Common Terms for Common Actions – If you have a shopping cart, call it that. Or shopping bag or basket, or some other term that the average person will recognize. It may be tempting to come up with some cute or witty name for your shopping cart, newsletter, or other features on your site but if your visitors don’t know what they mean, it doesn’t do you any good.
5. Write with the user in mind – Who is the target audience of your site? When you (or your copywriter) is writing to copy for your site, make sure you keep your audience in mind. What is their technical or educational level? Writing too simply may turn off highly educated or technically skilled visitors, while writing over the heads of less skilled or knowledgeable users could cause frustration and leave them searching for a website they can better understand.

One of the most comment questions that I get from new web development clients is about what kind of information to include on their brand-new website. Specifically, they want to know what pages and information their visitors will expect to be able to find. Here’s the top 5 pages or information areas that I recommend to new clients:

• Contact info:  Your web site should include an easily accessible, comprehensive contact page with a real address and phone number, not just an email address. If you operate your business out of your home and don’t want to give out a home address, obtain a PO box from your local post office, or other places that offer these types of services, such as the UPS Store. Similarly, there are many services where you can obtain a secondary or alternate phone number for your business without the traditional expense of installing a second line in your home of office. (Stay tuned for a post about these services next week.)
• An ‘about us’ page:  You hope that your index page does a good job of explaining your site, but sometimes consumers want to know what ELSE you do.  An about us page gives you a chance to let your visitors know about you and your company, as well as an opportunity to show off additional services and products that may not be relevant to the website if the site is directed to a very targeted audience.
• Security/privacy policy page:  Are you collecting visitor data on your website? Do you have a newsletter sign-up form, or some way for interested visitors to request more information? What about site statistics – do you have a script that tracks information about your visitors, such as location, type of browser, operating system used, and monitor resolution? I’m guessing that the answer to at least one of these is yes.  So, if you’re collecting any sort of consumer data, people want to know how you use it.  Even if they only skim, just the presence of a privacy policy can go a long way towards building trust with your clients.
• FAQ:  Do you find that your visitors and potential clients ask you the same questions over and over? To save your time, and offer better customer service, you should have a “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ) page on your site.  Does it have to be called “FAQ”? Well, that’s debatable. If you can address the primary questions, for instance, on your home page, and then link to a page called “Customer Support” or “More Information,” you can win the same customer service points without the sometimes ill-fitting title of FAQ. Don’t forget to update your FAQ (or whatever you call it) if you find you are getting repeated questions from potential customers that aren’t already addressed in this area.
• Site map:  In a perfect world, visitors would have no trouble navigating your site, and will always know exactly which page contains the information they want, and how to click their way there. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. A Site map is a page which lists all of the pages of your site with direct links to access them. Additionally, a well-done, XML-based site map can be submitted to Google for optimal indexing, which can help increase your search engine results. (Look for more information about this in an upcoming post.

One of the great sessions that I attended at PodCamp Boston 4 was about Podcasting, led by Guido Stein. Guido covered many great tech tips about podcasting, from Recording to Editing to Posting and Interacting with your listeners. All of Guido’s great tips are available online. One of the things that was discussed is the importance of editing your recording before posting so that you are presenting a quality podcast to your listeners. All of these tips immediately sprang to mind when I was listening to a back issue of an SEO podcast. Seriously, those people needed to be at Guido’s discussion.

The podcast in question started out okay enough – catchy into music, brief description about what the podcast was about, and what they would be discussing in the episode. Then it went downhill. In that episode, they were interviewing the creator/spokesperson for Knowem.com, a web service for checking the availability of your branded or favorite username at hundreds of different social media sites. Great concept, and I was really interested in learning more about it. However, the podcast was filled with lots of dead air as the hosts were busy checking out websites and having a private tour of some of the enterprise level and soon-to-come features of the service. Hearing the hosts say “Wow” over and over made me want to know what they were looking at but since it was a sneak-peek that couldn’t be shared with the audience yet, it left me frustrated not knowing what they were so excited about. I think a better way for this to have been handled would have been to share the sneak-peek with the hosts off the air and have them talk about it during the podcast, and not spend/waste so much time with checking email and viewing websites that you can’t even describe and discuss with the listeners.

So, this brings me to my podcast point of the day: if you’re going to be intereviewing someone during your podcast, be sure to have your questions/topics outlined before you start, and be sure to edit out dead air before posting.

This question recently came up, so I thought I’d put a quick how-to up here for future reference.

Basically, there are two ways you can do this – by individual document, or change the default file format to Word 97-2003 compatible.

Save individual document as Word 2003 format

1. Click on the Office icon button in the top left corner of the screen.
   

   Office button in Word 2007

2. Select “Save As” & “Word 97-2003 Document” from the flyout menu
   

   Save as Word 97-2003 Document

Change default file format to Word 97-2003 compatible

1. Click on the Office icon button in the top left corner of the screen.
   

   Office button in Word 2007

2. Click on “Word Options” button at the bottom of the menu
   

   Word Options button

3. Select the “Save” tab from the left-side navigation and change the selected file format in the drop-down box to “Word 97-2003 Document”
   

Hope this helps. If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment below, and I’ll do my best to help you out.

One of the many topics of discussion this week at BizBuilderCT was about beginning with the end in mind. There were several newcomers to the group, both experienced entrepreneurs and new business owners. Regardless of experience level, a common theme that we all face is how to take the steps necessary to accomplish our goals.
For example, one of the visitors today has been in business for about a month. She is a graphic designer, and has been working as an employee for others for about 14 years, as well as doing some freelance work on the side. As a function of the recent economic issues, she finds herself having to run a business that was never really part of the plan. The actual work the business performs is the easy part; it’s all the other stuff that she’s unsure about. What should she do?
The answer she received was to determine her strengths and weaknesses, prioritize which things she would have to learn how to manage and which could be outsourced, and focus on what steps needed to be taken to accomplish her goals. The best thing about this advice? It’s universal!
Sure, those are all great things to tell a new business owner. They are also great things to tell an experienced business owner. Without goals, you never know where you’ll end up. And without a plan on how to accomplish those goals, you may never get there.

We all know the importance of routinely backing up our important files, right? Software systems and online services abound that make this seamless and easy for you. But what happens when your backup fails?
It is important to have two backup systems. Ideally, one should be on site and one should be off. Use archiving software and an external hard drive (never backup to your primary drive – this defeats the purpose!) for routine backups. You’ll also want to have a backup kept off site, such as CDs or DVDs in your safety deposit box, or at your best friends house.
Why two backups? Having one on site is great for when you accidentally delete a file, or your hard drive crashes. But if something happens to your office, such as fire, flood or theft, that completely compromises both your primary hard drive and your external, you’ll be very glad to have an off-site backup that you can retrieve data from.
Many computer security software suites, such as those from Norton, McAfee, or TrendMicro, have backup options available with certain flavors of their software. Frequently, external hard drives will also come with backup software, either already installed on the drive, or packaged on a CD with it. Depending on your needs, it becomes a matter of finding which software fits your needs and your lifestyle best.
Web-based services such as Carbonite and Mozy run in the background on your computer, and copy the files that you designate to their servers for safe keeping. You can set the backup to run daily, weekly, or even constantly, so that it updates every time you save changes to your files. This is very convenient, but can also be problematic if you have a major error with a particular file, and don’t realize it until the corrupt file has been backed up through your automatic service, whether on site or online. Having this secondary backup can help save you hours and dollars of recovery time and effort.
What’s your favorite backup system?