Customers without a face

Today I was thinking about how crazy it is that you can sell things to people without ever meeting them, speaking to them or even emailing them. Buying online becomes so impersonal and automated but as cold as that sounds, it's actually really great! Who would have thought years ago that sales would go from in person, to through the mail, to over the phone, to over the Internet. Sure mail orders came before the Internet but the whole idea of having to send out a printed catalog was so expensive for printing and postage, and now all you have to do it list something online, someone finds you, puts in their card, and you never see or hear from them.

I first experienced this with graphic design when one of my design clients who had found me on craigslist had went from email to speaking over the phone and I didn't actually see or meet him in person until over a year later when finally I met him to drop off some lanyards to him and actually meet for lunch. I had no idea what he even looked like. To this day, I work with people even over the phone who I have no idea what they look like. What a strange concept it is.

The Internet definitely makes it easier to meet these faceless clients and customers and exchange work, products and money with them without worrying too much about the payment not going through. In a way, it's actually better because you can't make any judgements about the person. Like for instance, I got an email from someone who wanted to send me a personal check to buy one of my jewelry kits. I don't accept checks for that business because to me, it's too risky and takes too much effort to have to deposit the check, hope it doesn't bounce, wait until it clears and then days later send the product. And if it does bounce, your stuck with a bounced check fee from your bank. I only accept checks from clients that I trust and have an ongoing business relationship with. But I was thinking "well, maybe this person is older and doesn't have a credit card and doesn't know how to use paypal." I imagined that if I could see what she looked like and how old she was, I would be able to judge whether I think she was trying to scam me or not. But that's not really a good way to judge someone and either assist trust to them or not. I decided not to accept the check on the main basis that even if you don't have a credit card, you can still pay through your bank account on paypal. If this person found me online, chances are that they know enough online to purchase through paypal or at least have someone help them. Maybe I'm assuming too much one way or another but when it comes down to it, it's best to stick with your original policies.

Tips for getting your business seen on Pinterest

Pinterest isn't really set up for advertising. It's set up for sharing photos and information. But using Pinterest can help you get more traffic to your website and make more sales!

Here are some tips for getting your business seen on pinterest:

- Place your logo or website address as a watermark on your picture either in the center or better in the right bottom corner.

- Make sure you add a link to your website to your post. All you have to do is write the web address in and it automatically becomes a link.

- Use popular keywords to describe your product so that it can come up on google searches.

- Use tags like (gold like) ("celebrity name" like) (vintage inspired) ("celebrity name" inspired) for items that could be associated with common words that are looked up relating to your target market.

- If your product has a price that you would like to use in your advertising such a (only $2.99!) be sure to add that to your description because pinterest will add a little banner to the top left corner of your image to let everyone see the price right there at the top of the image.

- Place your images in folders that relate to the category you are trying to market to. For instance, jewelry could be in a folder titled "hot jewelry and accessories" or "my fashion style"

- Take great wonderful artistic shots of your product for pinterest. People are a lot less likely to even look at your picture if it is poor quality. Get professional photos if possibly, it makes a big difference!

- Make a step by step description or tutorial on using, wearing or putting together your product if applicable. There are a lot of "how to's" on pinterest. People like to learn about something if they find it interesting and if your selling something, helping them understand what your selling helps a lot!

- Be sure to post your pinterest posts to your Facebook so your friends can see your activity on there and repost it!

So far, I haven't seen a huge response from Pinterest, and I feel like it's better for some "one time purchase" products and not necessarily other products. So spend your social media time wisely and spread out your time between social media sites.

Don't ASSUME anything about someone's budget

If your in the type of business where you have to give out a quote to a customer, don't assume anything. Some clients that seem like they have unlimited funds can be the ones with the tightest budget.

No matter what, it's hard to know what to quote because you don't want to guess too high or too low. The best plan is to keep your prices at a moderate range and don't go by what you assume your potential client might pay. Clients are likely to shop around and find the best deal. If you don't have the best deal, they may like your skills, customer service, quality or willingness to get the job done quickly so don't fear if your prices aren't the cheapest, but don't blow them up either just because you see that the client is in an expensive location.

Another thing to keep in mind about giving a quote is to make sure all of the changes, exchanges and potential customer service issues are covered in your quote. Also, don't quote too low on the first job just to get in the door. Sometimes this can work if your using special one time coupons, but not if it's a potential ongoing paying gig. If you quote too low, they will expect to get that low price forever or they may look elsewhere if you quote higher later.

Get your posts seen in your fans newsfeed

Want to get your fans to see your business page posts without having to pay for them to see the posts on facebook in their newsfeed? Post a picture like the one seen here to give information to your fans about how they can set it so that they are actually getting your posts in their newsfeed. If they are really interested in your business, they will want to see your posts and do this. It can't hurt to ask! And it's always good to pass along this sort of knowledge.

You can now schedule a post on Facebook

Now you can schedule a post on your facebook page. Scheduling posts is great because you can schedule posts for your business page for your entire week or month without having to remember that you have to post again every few days. There are also several other websites that let you schedule posts like www.hootsuite.com A lot of blog websites like blogger let you schedule your blog posts also so that it automatically posts them at a later date. This is also great for when your going out of town but you want to keep up on your posts without having to jump on the computer while on vacation.  Here is some more information about how you can schedule posts to appear on facebook at a later date:

You can prepare a post and schedule it to appear later by adding a date and time in the future before you post it. You can schedule a post up to 6 months in advance in 15-minute intervals. 

From your Page's sharing tool:

1. Choose the type of post you want to add to your Page
2. Click the  icon in the lower-left of the sharing tool
3. Choose the future year, month, day, hour and minute when you'd like your post to appear
4. Click Schedule

If you choose a date in the past, the post will appear immediately at the appropriate place on your Page's timeline. All times correspond to the current time zone you're in.

Click here to go to the facebook forum page about this

Facebook gets greedy

We all know that facebook runs on advertising. Facebook will let you create a business page for free but to promote it to people in that demographic you want, you have to pay ad space on the side of the page. This makes sense. But now, facebook is making businesses pay just to send posts to fans who already "like" their page. So all the work you did to collect those fans, they won't even be seeing anything from your business without paying some more? I think it's time to go back to email maketing. Why bother putting time and effort into social media when no one is going to see it without paying more?

This is not very good ROI (return on investment) to me. On my page, it's telling me:

$5 reaches 700
$10 reaches 1,300
$15 reaches 2,000

So this just means that my post will show up on someone's busy feed. It's doesn't mean they will click, or respond or anything. I could pay less to reach someone's email address. Why did I bother to put all that effort into getting likes on facebook when I could have just stuck to email?

Here's info from facebook: http://www.facebook.com/help/promote

I wonder what some other companies are doing about this when a lot of their business rely on sending messages to their fans about contests, events, etc. Why are we bothering to make business pages? I'm starting to think turning a personal page into a business page is a good idea, although they try their best to only let you used real names for your profile name. I guess they have to do something in order to bump up their profits even more after going public. Thoughts?