First I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all our clients who have been loyal to us over the past few years and friends and family for loving and cheering us on.

2011 was a tough year with a heavy dose of challenges and opposition and yet we walk away from the year with an even greater resolve to keep going forward. We’ve had some successes and sad to say, failures as well but we end the year with a surplus of good. Throughout all our experiences, we are keen to make note of the lessons to be learned in business and especially relationships.

We take this opportunity to share with you a few invaluable lessons we learned while working with our web development clients and hope you can apply them to your life and business.

Most Prospects Just Want Someone to Talk to

Its as basic as that, clients just want someone to talk to. It is very important to remember that clients are emotional, they are humans and they need their requests to be satisfied on every level and its not solely about getting the work done. There are quite a few prospects who contact me who complain that of contacting an average of 3 to 5 web design companies, we were the only ones who actually had a frank discussion with them about their needs. Other “larger” web design firms refuse to talk and developers are guarded by receptionists and sales reps who will not divulge information about what it will take to get the job done but would rather have the customer wait in queue for someone to call back and take them on a bureaucratic merry-go-round.

Most prospects have very basic knowledge about the web and need someone to guide them. They know the end result but they may have no clue on how to get there. Take the time to listen and educate your prospects. This builds trust since you have empowered them to make the right decisions  before they have spent a dime; and we all know that trust is what secures business.

Keep It Simple

Quite a few clients have expressed that they feel foolish asking certain questions because they consider themselves “technologically impaired” or just way out of the loop. As techies, our demeanor may tend to be tough and can be at times aggressive and impatient based on the vast knowledge we have of the field. Be humble, show them that you care by having a “real” down to earth conversation and not one filled with jargon.

Forget jargon unless you are specifically asked about it. When the customer understands what it will take to complete a project, understands and can relate to its vast benefits, when you can clearly express their vision in a manner that they may not have initially been able to articulate, you will have won their hearts. There’s nothing more satisfying to a prospect at the beginning of a project than knowing that you understand and can share their vision.

Be Available & Offer Updates

Ensure that your clients can reach you. As developers, we can get very busy, balancing programming and design with life can be a mammoth task but let’s keep it simple here – just be there to talk when clients need you. Preempt your clients by offering frequent updates on the work you’re doing for them, show them that their timeline is important to you. They will appreciate this and helps build trust and respect for the work you’re doing. When they reach out, ensure you are available to communicate.

Your Business Has Multi-Million Dollar Potential

Especially, for freelancers, never consider your business to be just an “on the side thing.” The effects of that approach creeps its way into your attitude towards your work and eventually results become lackluster. If you’re not in it for the long-haul then forget it.

Print business cards, design a letterhead, have a dedicated number for customer queries and clients, use invoices and receipts, register your domain and setup your personalized email, just do things big! Visualize yourself and your company at its best and operate on that level at all times. Clients will notice, respect your work and appreciate the value you bring to the table.

Honesty is Still the Best Policy

Maintaining integrity in business is an integral component for long-term success. Unfortunately, there is bad within every set of good ventures. Do not follow in the footsteps of those who have disappointed customers and have not made an effort to make amends. Ensure that clients receive what they pay for. Establish policies and terms and conditions and stick to them. Offer a realistic timeline that you can satisfy comfortably, never promise more than you can give just for the sake of securing business. Be honest.

Match the Customer’s Profile

A basic rule in customer service is listening and understanding your customers and prospects. Some know exactly what they’re talking about and know the technologies while others need guidance. Listening is the key to figuring out the task at hand and the client’s needs – it sounds simple but many of us don’t listen and tend to ignore the fine details. Remember, gems are hidden within the details. Once you get an appreciation of the prospect’s status then you will be excellent at articulating their vision and showing them how everything will work. This ultimately leads to sealing the deal.

Conclusion

2012 has started great and learning is a never ending journey. We look forward to more throughout the year and strive towards even greater accomplishments while we wish the same for you.

Whether you are a customer, prospect or fellow developer, please share your thoughts and experiences with us in the comments section below. We look forward to hearing from you.

We are proud and excited to announce the launch of our latest online brand, TechDasher.com. TechDasher is the most recent project we’ve initiated that will cater to the technology driven online community. It is a new technology news website that focuses on delivering timely, relevant tech and trend analysis and commentary as well as the news that affects Jamaicans and the wider Caribbean tech community.

The appetite for innovation and new technology is growing and we intend to satisfy the hunger and interest Jamaicans are developing in technologies that affect us here in the Caribbean. We have also identified that we can bring a bright new perspective on how technology news is delivered locally and we will fill the growing need.

Our main areas of focus include:

• New mobile technology & trends
• Social media
• Business development online
• Technology innovation
• New online startups
• Market analysis & statistics
• Regions: Jamaican & other Caribbean territories

Follow and like TechDasher on our main social networks: Facebook & Twitter

Its very obvious that there is a huge shift taking place worldwide where businesses find it very difficult to keep afloat, either because of a rise in cost of goods, increased operational costs and / or stiff competition. There is a lot of talk of the global recession and that its the worst time to do business, but I say, there is never a bad time to do business. In fact, this challenging period is when businesses should take the opportunity to truly shine and focus on only what is necessary to excel; and only the remarkable ones do.

There is one huge mistake that many businesses still make and that is advertising via traditional media. Their mindset is glued to tradition that the more you spend in television and radio ads, the greater the returns and although advertising is an investment, not all methods yield the same results.

The Problem With Traditional Media Ads

Regardless of how clever, unique or inspirational these types of ads may be, consumers are typically immune and the majority ignore them. I personally view television and radio ads as interruptions since they rarely provide any value or tell me something I don’t already know. Just think about it, how many times have you ever bought a product or used a service because of a TV or radio ad? I know you cannot give 5 instances. So why would you invest huge amounts of capital into a practice that does not appeal to you or the mass?

Effective Methods

The average consumer today is more informed, empowered and not easily wooed. If your product or service claims to do something spectacular, there will be those who do their own research online to compare prices and check feasibility. So how do you please and attract this tough crowd? How do you appeal to the new age of youngsters who hardly ever watch local television and spend 90% of their free time online? A simple answer is social media.

Consumers now require that you interact on a more personal level, make services and ideas fun and interactive and you will need to go where they are. In our last post we mentioned that the average Facebook user spends up to 421 minutes per month browsing the site and that’s just Facebook. There’s YouTube, Twitter and a host of other distractions with Facebook and Twitter being the most popular. What all this means is that you need to market where the crowd is and where there is a crowd there’s flowing money.

So create social media profiles, start promoting them. Use it as a medium for thanking your customers, offer the best deals, find out what people really think about your company as well as what they don’t like and just be extraordinary. You do not need to pay a market research firm to do this for you, your customers and prospects spend their time online, reach out to them. They will not hesitate to publicly share amazing deals or talk about how much you helped them.

Customers Are Still Emotional

As hard as consumers have become to please, they are still human and as humans we have emotional needs. People buy products and use services that are useful and make them feel good inside and out. Whether it food, clothes or gadgets. Reach out and build loyalty and brand awareness by making each customer feel special by communicating with them directly or even randomly before they ask for your help.

Lose the corporate suit and become a regular person that everyone will feel comfortable approaching. Engage them, build trust, provide value in every conversation and you will never find more loyal fans and customers.

Conclusion

The only thing that remains constant is change and the same strategies that worked 10 or 20 years ago are not guaranteed to work today especially in a completely evolved marketplace. Go back to the drawing board, analyze what customers really want, what they respond to and start interacting and building relationships today.

CEO’s and Marketing Specialists constantly endeavor to develop and execute unique marketing strategies for developing and growing their businesses and as we dive deeper into the digital age, we cannot ignore the power and potential of social media. Here in Jamaica, more companies have started to embrace its ability to truly connect with prospects and strengthen relationships with existing customers.

General Statistics

Currently, 61.1% of web users visit social networks and there are over 500 Million users on Facebook; with approximately 311,000 users in the Jamaican network and 125,975,000 users in the US network. This represents our audience. The average user spends 421 minutes per month browsing the site; much greater than most other websites and advertising is most effective where users spend most of their time online.

The Results

Recently, we assisted one of our clients with taking that first step into social media and they gained 591 new fans within a 30-day period through the use of a very simple Facebook ad for a fairly new product. Throughout this campaign, the ad had a total of 9 Million impressions and 3,349 clicks. The most important element of this type of advertising is the ability to specifically target prospects within certain demographics which will in turn make advertising more effective. Facebook also provides an excellent reporting platform for monitoring ad performance and tweaking and changing existing ads.

These 591 fans gained will now be exposed to regular product updates, coupons, discounts and other publications that will be geared at maintaining a strong relationship with fans and loyal customers and at a minimal cost.

Conclusion

Users are actively becoming fans of companies online.  They are looking for information, coupons, discounts, samples, news and are there just to show their loyalty.  Most fans will refer at least one other fan when they are pleased with a business or product they are a fan of, so you should see an increase in referrals.

Don’t miss out on the simple, yet powerful opportunities that exist with social media and its potential for helping to expose and grow your business.

Give us a call and we will develop a strategy tailored for your product or service and gain you maximum exposure online.

Based on a report from Internet World Stats.com, Jamaica has seen a growth of 2,535.20% in internet users since the year 2000, which is now at 1,581,100 Jamaicans and is growing. That is a local penetration of 55% and represents a usage of 16.7% of total Caribbean internet users with the Dominican Republic being the largest user of the internet in the Caribbean at 32.6%. St. Lucia has the highest percentage penetration at 88.8%, then Antigua & Barbuda at 74% and St. Vincent & the Grenadines at 72%.

The figures for Jamaica are expected to improve at an even greater pace since companies such as Claro and Digicel Jamaica have begun to aggressively target the mobile internet market with low cost, portable broadband solutions. As more Jamaicans begin to embrace the power and convenience of the web, businesses should strategically place themselves online to capture the attention of the new web generation, who are spending the majority of their free time online.

As more Jamaicans spend more time online, greater opportunities arise for advertising through social media and other unique methods. Thus sustaining an online presence through your own websites or social media is quickly becoming a prerequisite in the mind of the Jamaican shopper before doing business.

We should take advantage of this information and recognize the possibilities in online business ventures. With more locals online this offers a much wider audience for promotions and also a brand new niche for service providers who were not previously online.

Its time for Jamaicans to leverage the benefits of the internet through business.

To learn more about creating and maintaining a fresh and effective online presence, contact one of our consultants at 577-2553. We would be happy to help you grow your business online.

There is, undeniably, a revolution taking place online and in the business world because of social media. Increased revenue streams, greater advertising opportunities and worldwide reach, stronger and more interactive relationships between customers, prospects and companies, brand development and much more. This is quickly becoming our standard and reality here in Jamaica as we embrace the social and economic benefits of social media and the internet.

The opportunities for Jamaica and other Caribbean companies are endless and popular Jamaican household brands and service providers have already started to enjoy the benefits, build closer relationships with their customers and increase overall brand awareness.

Watch the video below and see the power of the social media revolution explained and get an idea of things to come.

Below you will find all the statistics mentioned in the video.

1. Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old
2. 96% of them have joined a social network
3. Facebook now tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
4. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
5. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
6. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…
7. Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year
8. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
9. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.”
10. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India
11. Yet, QQ and Renren dominate China
12. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
13. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
14. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
15. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the  populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama.  Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
16. 50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
17. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
18. Instead they are distributing: eReaders + iPads + Tablets
19. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
20. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
21. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube
22. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
23. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs in existence
24. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
25. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour
26. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
27. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
28. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
29. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
30. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
31. Only 14% trust advertisements
32. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
33. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
34. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas
35. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
36. 60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily
37. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
38. We will non longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media
39. Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
40. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second
41. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years
42. Bonus: comScore indicates that Russia has the most engaged social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network

Discussion

Feel free to share your views of social media in Jamaica and how it will impact the way we do business now and in the near future.

Over the past week, I’ve been talking a lot about practicing search engine optimization in such a way that benefits can be gained through social network sites and other forms of socializing on the web. (Check out my previous article on How To Use Social Media To Effectively Improve SEO on our sister blog Sam’s Web Guide) Google now has an exciting new service called Social Search and what this does is provide relevant search results from conversations and posts your friends in your circle may have published in addition to regular organic search results.

The whole idea is that your friends and other contacts play a key role in your online life. These persons that you are connected with publish all types of information through tweets, blog posts, status updates, etc. This means that you can now have access to this public social web content that has special relevance to you. So this is where focusing on Keyword Optimization for Social Media plays a huge role and will especially affect these types of social search results.

Take a look at the videos below to get a broader picture of where Google is heading.

Also take a look at this video by Matt Cutts who is a part of the Google Search Quality Group. He will dive a bit further in the details.

Well that’s it. Are you convinced that you should start doing some SEO when using social media? I know I am.

The Relevance of Search Results Improved

Through Google’s Social Search, more priority is placed on getting results from our social circle, which is presumably more trustworthy than some random results from the search engine. We have a great deal of control over who and where social results come from and as Publishers what information is made available through google social search.

So go ahead, sign up for a Google Profile Here and start experimenting to realize the benefits of Social Search.

Discussion

The face of search is changing rapidly as search engines find more unique ways of providing the most relevant search results. Do you think that this new service from Google will improve your overall search experience? Will you start optimizing for social search results? Give it a try and leave a comment to let us know what you think.