1. Marketing Tip - 8 Benefits of a Business Facebook Page

2. Tech Tip - Your Phone's Camera

3. Business Tip - Consumer Attitudes The New Age Of Thrift

4. Building Better Business Relationships

Let's connect on Linkedin

Marketing Tip:
This is a video I created for the wonderful HP Newsletter on the benefits/features of business Facebook pages. I'm still considering doing the workshops by the way.
Video 8 Business Page Benefits of Facebook
http://hpbroadband.com/program.aspx?key=Facebook

By the way if you aren't a subscriber to their small business or enterprise newsletters - you must. I would say it's the most information rich, what's in it for you newsletters I've ever seen a company produce.

Australia
https://h41183.www4.hp.com/?Country=AU&Language=GB

NZ
https://h41183.www4.hp.com/?Country=NZ&Language=GB

If you would prefer, here's a written list with slightly different details instead of a video
In case you didn't know, I have over 500 articles online

Tech Tip
Hope this is simply a reminder. If you have a smart phone that can take video or photos, keep it handy during business hours. Why? To name just a few:

1. Record video testimonials
2. Take before and after pictures
3. Show visual examples
4. Show how-to's
5. Show examples of your work
6. Take pictures of clients, prospects to put on Facebook and tag
7. Good shots for your marketing, websites, social media sites

Business Tip

Let your images sell for you (a touch more on the power of photos)

Put Photobooks to work for your business. A photo book is an actual hard or soft covered book you make yourself from your photos. You select the combination of pictures, the orientation, the layout, text to write with them. They vary from 14 to 20 pages and different sizes. They’re relatively inexpensive and quick – if not immediate to do.

So why do I think photo books are such a great concept for almost every business, school  or charitable institution?

Two reasons. First you know a picture can say more than a thousand words. Use it to your advantage in your business to help you get your message across. Second the importance of projecting a professional image for your business.

Perhaps you are using photos to illustrate your work now, or have been shown pictures. But how many simply use a plastic binder with the photos in see through leaves? Yuck. That is not professional enough especially in this competitive market. More importantly you need a way to stand out and differentiate if you don’t have the cheapest price in town.

Here are a few of my ideas as a starting point on whom and how to make more sales using photo books. Take these ideas and apply them to your business:
As a professional portfolio

• Hair Salons. Hair styles, cuts and colours for men; for women.
• Building firms, developers, architects. Building styles and options.
• Kitchen designers. Kitchen configurations, cabinetry.
• Real estate agents An additional marketing piece (to the internet video) to send to a keen buyer for a high priced home sale.
• Landscape artists. Finished garden configurations and settings
• Caterers. Food, menu options available.
  

Let the photos sell for you

• Electricians, plumbers, installers, carpet cleaners. Before and after photos with testimonials from clients typed in.
• Dentists – Before and after smiles for whiteners, braces, caps.
• Hotels and conference centres. A photo book for each of the ways a room can be set up. They’d have a wedding portfolio. The corporate conference option. The awards ceremony option.

Tell a story, walk through a process

• Building plans from work in progress to the finished building.
• The steps a bathroom goes through when renovating.
• Travel  agents a book each for different  cruises, intrepid journeys, luxury trips

Show off facilities

• Hospitals, day care centres, hotels, restaurants

Fundraising charitable institutions
As an alternative to the normal chocolates and activities that schools, kindergartens and sports teams undertake for fundraising.

• Organise for parents to create their own discounted photo books with the discount going to the organisation as a fund raiser.  It can be a do it yourself or even an evening get together with laptops and internet access to send them off online.
• A photographer can go onsite at sports events, school balls, theatre productions to create a photo book and simply take orders. Why even the All Blacks, the All Whites, the Silver Ferns and the White Caps should be using them as memorabilia.

Gifts, promotional items, thank you’s

• Luxury item purchase thank you’s. A photo book of their brand new car or home for them to share with people.
• Calendar in commemoration or as a business thank you
• Take home items after events, conferences
  

Building Better Business Relationships
I was asked to comment on how businesses are using social media by a reporter for the NZ Herald this week.

I had to comment that I thought most would fail. That as a professional speaker my experience talking to tens of thousands of business people in almost every industry, is that I find 999 out of 1000 companies don’t do relationship marketing.  It’s much easier to simply broadcast out with advertisements, or to their database with a pure selling/me orientation. So will the leopard change its spots for social media? I doubt it.

The best way to boost business income is to get more from the people who are already your clients or to turn prospects into clients. The way to do this in my book is to build a delicious database of your clients. Your prospects. Of people you’ve met while networking. People who find you from the internet. This becomes your permission marketing database, your golden goose.

The only way to keep it that way is to build relationships, adding value, making 'them' more successful. This can't be done through only a 'me, me, me' approach.

What is secondary is the medium you use to carry the message. Email. Letters. SMS. Phone calls. Facebook, Linkedin, Blogs. So how do you build the golden goose?

• You should figure out a communication strategy
• You should have business goals in mind
• You have to add value
• You have to target
• You want to get it viral
• You have to make it interesting

I wasn't going to mention this in the newsletter ( it's a conference offering) but I've started a subscription service providing weekly business content that is automatically uploaded on your blog, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter accounts - plus you can use it in newsletters and your website. This means you don't have to do a thing - and you have automated interesting and valuable content your clients and prospects would like.

If you'd like to find out more, shoot through an email mailto:subscription@successis.co.nz

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Published by SuccessIS. Debbie Mayo-Smith International Motivational Business Speaker and Author, 35 Chelmsford Ave, Glendowie, Auckland NZ. Phone 64 9 575 5359. Copyright 2010 SuccesslS. All rights reserved. SuccessIS is committed to protecting your privacy. We do not sell, trade, rent or otherwise disclose any personal information you provide to us.