Relationships. What do relationships mean to clients today? What do relationships mean to businesses? Is it something that focuses on driving the most traffic to your web site and getting clients to buy products or services? Or is it having a large number of followers or fans on Twitter and Facebook?

Building real relationships with clients and followers means different things to different businesses. The focus of building relationships and relationship stewarding is shifting in many directions.  Some forget that there’s more to relationships than occasional Facebook and Twitter updates sent to fans and followers. Others rely too much on web presence and forget to exercise their people skills in person.

Dictionary.com puts it this way:
relationship (noun)
1. a connection, association, or involvement.
2. connection between persons by blood or marriage.
3. an emotional or other connection between people: the relationship between teachers and students.

Relationships are a unique connection between people. It is more than a monetary and business transaction.  A relationship sets humans apart from other earthly creatures. The same goes for a business that reaches out to consumers to sell services or products. It is almost impossible to avoid relationships, regardless of how they are manifested.

So, relationships are harbored in a number of ways: in person, through websites, social media, e-mails and lots more. Clients tend to speak out their opinions on web and traditional mediums. Our job is to listen, understand, explain or even change our approach.

Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are tools that help drive the communication. They help, NOT replace. It is by no means the only form of communication that yields lasting relationships. It is easy to get caught up in the sea of clients, followers, comments, complaints, suggestions but if we focus on building relationships and not tearing them down we can really hit a home run with our clients.

Here are some approaches to building and stewarding client relationships. Start as simple as listening. Listen. Don’t try to jump in the conversation forgetting your initial role. Continue with transparency- tell people what is actually going on, sugar coating might lead to more damage.  Add corporate social responsibility, which means caring about the community, the environment and employees by acting for the benefit and not harm of others through company services and products. Insist on actually caring about clients by inspiring two-way communication that educates, encourages and morphs into lasting relationships.

What do client relationships look like for you?

How do you continue stewarding relationships when your main desire is to make a profit?

Here are some extra resources:

http://www.conversationagent.com/2009/03/top-10-reasons-why-your-customers-are-being-difficult.html?cid=6a00d8341c03bb53ef011168c1f60a970c

http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2009/07/3-steps-to-building-a-successful-community/

So, here’s the deal. You can create a website, but is it a quality website? You can create a website with a bunch of information loaded with industry speak that visitors don’t understand, lacks in visitor interaction, and that only focuses on what you believe people want to hear, but that will probably help your bounce rate more than it does your conversion rate.

Bounce Rate – the percentage of visitors to a site who leave quickly, rather than explore the same website.

Conversion Rate – the percentage of visitors who convert into customers rather than just visit a website and leave.

When it comes to building a website, the root of all evil is thinking egocentrically and not keeping the visitor in mind. The main purpose of the website; to attract and convert visitors. This means meeting the needs of potential visitors through a useful, interactive and quality website. The following website tips will help you get on track for building a quality website.

Information Architecture (IA) Process

Your potential visitors need to see and feel the specific focus of your website that caters to their needs. The information architecture process is essentially the structuring of your website in a way that users can effectively find and interact with the information you have available; this means being “user friendly.” The structuring of the website includes defining the way pages will link to each other as well as specifying the actual position of information within the individual pages. For each type of visitor (ie: for colleges it would be prospective students, current students, parents, etc.) there should be a well-defined, and hopefully short path to each piece of information they may find helpful.

Optimal Web Content

Findable: Your web content affects your website performance in a number of ways, and one of the most important is the way in which it affects how you are found. For search engine optimization, you need to write copy that is both resourceful and uses key phrases effectively. Web pages should use key phrases throughout the web content, including titles and image descriptions. This approach informs search engines about the various subjects on your website. It is important not to overuse key phrases (this is known as “stuffing”) as this can cause a website to be “blacklisted” by search engines. This is just a chip off of the search engine optimization iceberg, but I could not have left out the subject when discussing web content.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – bettering the traffic to a website in terms of quantity and quality of visitors.

Key phrase – a phrase for which a website is attempting to be a result for in search engines.

Blacklist – in the context of this article, a blacklist is a list of web sites or web pages that have attempted to trick a search engine into believing they provide more information on a subject than they actually do. In response, search engine negatively weight their website in search results.

Understandable: In addition to being findable, your web content must also be understandable. When visitors land on your website, they want to know what you are about and how you can meet their needs. The last thing they want to do is have to go elsewhere and research unfamiliar acronyms and terms. Writing web content with the user in mind means avoiding the use of unfamiliar terms, acronyms or industry speak unless you provide a definition.

SEM, PHP, JSP, IMAP, XML, HTTP, SOAP, CPU, MVC, SEO, URL, SQL, AJAX, FTP, TCP. Even though these terms are second nature to me, it wouldn’t be nice of me to use any of them without providing some sort explanation… Be sure to have someone outside of your industry review your web copy in order to eliminate any such language.

Quality Images

It is always a good idea to match the quality of your images with the quality of your website and this usually means shooting new photos for a new site. Rather than just going out and taking random photos, it is a good idea to decide what pages the website will include and shoot photos for those pages. The photographer should also keep in mind how the images will be used on the website before taking them, because websites often call for landscape images and to avoid having narrow images when cropping them for the website.

Time Investment

If you are looking into building or redesigning your website, remember that this process will take a significant amount of time and usually ends up cutting into regular business tasks. Photography, writing the web content, as well as coding the website are best left to professionals. Professional web development firms go through the information architecture process and use professional copy writers, photographers, and programmers which is why I would recommend finding an expert and investing your time in what you do best – running your business!

Coding a website – the process of turning a design into a navigable and interactive website. There are many best practices that take years of experience to perfect. Template website are good for low/no budget projects, but the benefits of expert programmers will not be actualized.

Avoid Back Pedaling

Search engine optimization (SEO) and content management systems (CMS) are often left until the end of a web building project or forgotten about altogether. Rather than me re-explaining SEO, take a look at the SEO hand guide we made here are Ashworth Creative – I think it is quite good, but you be the judge! Finally, content management systems allow website owners to update and maintain their own websites through a simple interface. This keeps visitors coming back for the newest information – not just to attract and be a resource for one-time visitors. This makes your website more dynamic and interactive, which often yields better long term results for your company.

I hope this article was helpful – please take a second to leave me some feedback and let me know about you – maybe I can help!

What problems have you encountered when building a website?

Did you overcome these problems? If so, how?

On the way home from school when I was a child, we would stop at a corner sweet shop. I knew my mum and dad liked the shopkeeper and his wife, he was dead friendly and always spoke to us kindly. Needless to say, I looked forward to eating his sweets and the short jaunts to his cozy shop.

Branding yourself is no different from the corner shop concept. As you and I know branding has more depth than a logo or corporate identity. It is you and the value you offer to your clients, the way you treat your employees and serve in the community and in this digital age, your presence online. Your brand embodies all that you are and do. Almost everyone is trying to implement some type of online branding strategy, some are doing brilliantly whereas others are not doing so well.

You could benefit from some online brand loyalty. Here’s why. Online consumers spent over $200 billion in 2007, according to www.bizreport.com. This means that the web is a great resource for loyal customers willing to spend money on your products and services. About 70% of American families are in a constant search for local products and services on the web, according to www.dotster.com.  So, start the branding.

Here are a few ideas to get you thinking about online branding strategies for your company:

Develop Consistent Content and Messages

It’s not a bad idea to take your current branding strategy and freshen it up a little – an inside look at your companies DNA or branding document should prove to be beneficial and will develop messages that can be used throughout all marketing mediums.

Take a Look in the Mirror

Synergizing your look online with your traditional marketing materials is a must (We’re hoping your current materials look stellar – otherwise it may be time for a brand overhaul). Confusion is not what you want when a loyal customer takes a gander at your site. We have clients that only use our SEO services and when we check the analytics data they have a high bounce rate as their website does not reflect the quality of their services or their printed materials. Food for thought.

Social Media Plan

The power of social media is getting stronger with Facebook leading the herd plus Twitter and YouTube hot on its heels. A social media commitment only makes sense. What is so great about social media you may ask? Remember the shopkeeper and how my dad knew him? He was in my dad’s network of friends, that’s what social media can do for you today. You can create communities of interest and connect with pockets of similar interests, which are made up of people situated locally or all over the world. Within these networking sites people get to know you, track your progress, the services and products that you offer. As we all know people like to buy from and patronize companies they know and like.

Enter the Blogosphere

Blogs are the new sitcoms. People tune in every week (sometimes everyday) to see what the newest happenings are in their favorite areas of interest. As a company, keeping a blog can help direct an influx of traffic to your site that would otherwise not find you. Blogs also give your company credibility in the field.  All in all the more knowledgeable you are in your area of expertise the more you have to offer to your clients, customers and patients.

Overall, a top-notch online branding strategy is essential to surviving in the long term. Just check back to the stats if you disagree. We’re looking forward to hearing your comments, suggestions and ideas.

http://www.buzzlogic.com/blog/2009/08/the_great_brand_chase.html

http://www.clickz.com/3633673