Hmmmm …
This is a question that has been on my mind lately – how to eliminate, or at least scare off, those pesky green caterpillars that like to munch on my brassicas! (more…)
10/03/2010
25/08/2009
how do you interact with pictures?
You’ve all seen them – those great looking sites … probably made in Flash, with cool whizzy animations, dramatic graphics, all the funky stuff.
And we all know that sometimes images can be a lot more powerful than words.
Except, you can’t interact with them (unless of course your images are moving, and it’s an embedded YouTube vid or a Ustream live feed).
And right now, interactivity is where it’s at. Thanks largely to what most people are calling social media or Social Media. I like to call it interactive media – and it’s something I’ve been participating in online for maybe 10 years now, primarily through message boards and forums.
Not a huge number of different ones, a small, select group … I have started a few, currently moderate one, have been a very active participant in three or four.
One of them is an online Success Team (once again, a la Barbara Sher) that originated from her message boards … we started out with 7 or 8 members, had a few fluctuations over the years, now down to just four of us and these days we probably all blog more and post more on Facebook than we do on the message board itself.
The thing that has held that little group of women together – since none of us have met in person, are the words we share, the words about our lives, our families, our jobs and businesses, our sorrows and our joys. And in more recent years, technology has allowed us to share some images too … which is great since two of our members are artists and it is always a treat to see their work.
My membership of the SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) message boards, firstly Camp Sark, and then the Marvellous Message Board (MMB for short) took me to the US to stay with women I had only ever met online – a hugely brave thing for me to do at the time, and a wonderful adventure I will always remember.
Then there’s the Tavern – where I am one of the “buxom wench hostesses”. This inspiring group of women is spread between New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the UK, Europe, the US and Canada. Over the years I have laughed, cried, lived and loved with them. They are some of the most supportive, intelligent, creative and downright hilarious women I have ever come across and my life is richer for having them all in it. Some of these women I have met in person, some I have had in my house, some I have travelled to meet in Melbourne for our “wenchfest”.
Once again, we mostly share in words, but we also upload pictures of our lives, the places we live, people we love, food we make … all that jazz.
Then of course there are the raw boards, the most important one to me being a spin off from the Tavern (yeah kinda like a sitcom). Started by my friend Lucie Walker in Canada, this board has also been a powerful source of information and inspiration for my raw food journey, and her blog is a font of tremendous wisdom.
I guess this truly is a stream of consciousness ramble tonight, but my point is that our words are very powerful for building bonds between you and the very real people who are out there reading what you have to say.
Never forget that.
Don’t be afraid to open up and share, and be open to the fact that the internet has become an incredibly powerful way of building relationships from one side of the world to the other, and of helping bring about change on an international level.
Oh and, back to those flashy websites that are all about the look. So often they have no soul – they just look pretty, but we get bored with them really fast, because they are not a place where people feel comfortable about hanging out. Bit like a fancy show home where you are afraid to sit on the white leather couches. It looks really cool, but you wouldn’t want to live there.
To me, the trick of creating websites that really work is making your site feel like a place people feel comfortable – and want to come back to. Because you have interesting stuff to say – and because you are happy to listen and have made it possible for your customers/readers/members to get onboard and share.
If you have a moment please share in the comments some of the online places you feel relaxed hanging out in.
Thanks again for reading.
Karen
18/08/2009
your site feel like a ghost town?
Can you almost hear wind whistling through the unpopulated streets?
When you set it up, perhaps the pressure was on to simply get something on line, and you didn’t really have any client stories or depth of content to load anyway?
Ok. I mentioned in the tangerine skies post about how you can build content like press releases to make your company look established – even when your business is new or newish.
One of the things that visitors to your site, particularly those who might be potential clients, are looking for, are stories and examples from your existing clients.
They will be looking for testimonials of some kind, and case studies that clearly demonstrate the benefits of your products and services, and show how you work with your clients.
So what do you do when you are just starting up and you don’t have any clients to talk about yet?
I have two suggestions:
- Give your product or service away to a few clients/customers (or provide it at a reduced cost) in exchange for their agreement to provide you with client testimonials for your site. Please be clear that I am not suggesting you buy their support, but rather, that you provide something in exchange for them helping you out. If they don’t enjoy your product or service, don’t try to persuade them to say otherwise. These testimonials need to be genuine to really work for you.
- Create scenarios of how your product or service works. Create a “case A”, “case B”, “case C” that show pricing structure, how your product or service resolves a particular problem, how it is delivered etc. Once you have some real case studies you can replace these, but they at least provide a base for your customers to see what the experience of working with you would be like.
I suggest you stay away from creating fake (sometimes badly written) testimonials from non-existent customers and illustrating them with stock photography. The chances of it being very apparent to visitors to your site that these are not genuine, is very high – and immediately your credibility is undermined.
So, be creative, do what you need to do to get your product/service in front of customers – even if they are not paying full price, and focus your attention on getting their feedback as soon as possible.
Another source of testimonials that are becoming widely used, particularly in the tourism and hospitality sectors, are sites like Trip Advisor, which provides a free widget that can be added to your website, and a chance for your guests to make comments about your business and rate it. These can be incredibly powerful – for good or for evil … but of course, if you are getting bad reviews, then you need to do something about your product/service – don’t blame the reviewers!
That’s all I have for tonight.
Have fun driving the ghosts out!
Karen
