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You’ve been leaving phone messages and playing telephone tag with a top prospect all week. With just a few questions left, you’re sure you can turn this prospect into a client.

Should you continue to try and reach her over the phone?

Or can you effectively answer her questions by email, and convert her without a conversation?

That greatly depends on the type of person she is.

According to one study, email is most effective with those people whom you have a competitive relationship with. If you have a more cooperative relationship, face to face is the best choice.

But as we become more web based, and your client isn’t necessarily in a place for you to meet face to face, its becomes more important to use email effectively.

We live in a visual society.

Email is great - you can answer a lot of questions that way. But what about adding a video? Or a photograph of yourself? Especially if someone likes relationships, the idea of seeing you or listening to you answer a question may help convert them.

Also, post different profiles on social sites, and write a variety of articles and papers on different sites. Rather than just relying on a simple email, connect to a variety of sources online (not just your website and blog) and showcase your knowledge. People like trusting those who build relationships with others. And social sites can easily show how you’re connected to others.

Question of the day: I’ve been working with a web designer, and trying to get it to the point I like it well enough to actually release it to the public. The problem is its been 9 months since I hired him, and I don’t feel like I’m any closer now to releasing it than I was 9 months ago. He took my ideas and put them up, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted. I’ve been tweaking, rewriting, tweaking some more … you get the picture. What should I do?

I’ve run across this question several times over the past week while I’m out and about talking to people.

What if you would have released your website 9 months ago? What could you have achieved?

Maybe several new clients.

Maybe linking up with an association for a speaking engagement.

Maybe a book deal.

Who knows. You never got your site up and running, so the entire past 9 months was like you didn’t exist in the online world.

Website is not synonymous with perfection. Having a website means you put out some information, and you tweak it. And tweak it. And tweak it some more. Websites are never perfection. Instead, they are a constant work in process.

Try something. If it works, stay with the same theme and add more. If it doesn’t, change things around a bit.

When you have a website, you have a base to build on. You have your starting point.

And from there its all downhill. 

image source Digital Direct Multimedia

In traditional markets, you created content, used it once, and let it die. The white papers went into the drawer, never to be seen again. Instead, you started a new paper, and changed the content around to reach out to your current target market.

In the online world, content never dies. Post it online and it will continue to work for you again and again.

AskPatty.com, has created a site that trains and certifies auto dealers to serve the female customer base. Instead of approaching a car dealership and feeling intimidated or overwhelmed, a woman can head over to AskPatty.com and receive a ton of information on the entire car buying experience. On her site, content is king. She gathers content from a variety of sources, and uses it on her blogs both in written and audio format. Content is also syndicated through RSS feeds to a variety of other sites, like Mommytalk and Twitter.

So how can you be an online content expert?

1. Gather all of your existing content. From white papers, to brochures, to articles; anything that you’ve used to promote your business can be turned into quality content for online promotion.

2. Create new content. Hire a ghost writer/blogger if you aren’t good at writing articles, or are short on time. Create as much new content as you can that directly relates to your current target market.

3. Post your content to your blog on a regular basis.

4. Syndicate your content to as many online resources as possible.

5. Monetize your website/blog in such a way that you are making money from your content. It may be ads; it may be sponsorships, it may be product or service purchases. Bottom line: have a way to make money from the traffic you’re driving to your site.

Repeat steps 1-5.

Want a lot of great publicity? Play off of what’s happening in your community.

Qdoba has a great campaign now on their website, Taste Bud Politics.

Enter their site, and you can vote for your favorite U.S. Presidential candidate. At the same time, tell them if you’re a taco or burrito kind of person. They you can look at the results, and see where you stand. Look at the entire U.S. standings, or state by state.

They’ve also placed videos on there, giving away T-shirts to people depending on if they are a taco or burrito. How much did this cost them? Not a lot - just a new web design and the ability to get it out to people that will use it.

How much exposure is it getting them? A ton. From videos on YouTube, to writeups in newspapers and trade publications, they are receiving a to of referrals back into their website.

Now whether this turns into new customers or not remains to be seen. But it is driving traffic.

What can you do to play off current events?

When you’re at a conference, it’s easy to fill up a notebook with a ton of good tips and ideas. The difficult part is going back through that notebook, and doing each great idea you came up with, and visiting all of the resources you found.

Today I spent some time going through some of the resources we came up with the last two weeks at our conferences. One in particular stood out. 

Akoha, a play it forward game, is a brand new company that’s taking the Internet by storm. The site is currently in beta and won’t be released until 2009, but they are accepting beta testers to start the process.

You receive a deck of cards with different missions:

• buy someone a cup of coffee
• give someone a book
• donate an hour of time

Once you’ve performed the action on the card, hand it over to the recipient for them to “play it forward”.

The cool part is with the card, you can log into the website and record your information. From there you can trace where the card has been, and how many times its “played forward”!

So I registered as a beta tester. Can’t wait to get my first card…

One of the best things about being online is the ability to take control. I’ve written about many websites in the past that allow you to be creative, and actually create your own product.

In August, Keds Studio uploaded a new division - Zazzle - that let’s users create their own shoe, using several Keds shoes as the platform. In just a matter of minutes, you can choose your favorite colors or designs for the entire shoe, inside and out. Then you can start in with the decorating. Upload photographs or graphics, and place them into your shoe design. In minutes, you can have an amazing pair of shoes that are uniquely your own.

Since their launch just a couple of months ago, more than 30,000 designs have been created. While the shoe does cost a bit more than what you would pay in the store, the concept and design is unique - put whatever you want on your shoe.

This is intriguing enough for most people. But I found one other thing that caught my eye - the ability to share your shoe design with others on the site. Save and upload your design to their gallery section, and you can earn money from any sales that occur from people buying your design.

Imagine a young designer with a ton of ideas, yet limited in the ability to show off her designs. She can head online, incorporate some of her thoughts into this system, and set up her own gallery o f shoes. With a little bit of social networking, she can soon be on her way to having her shoes noticed by some VIP’s.

Imagine the possibilities.

I read an interesting article today. Chunka Mui, co-author of Billion Dollar Lessons answered a few questions pertaining to his book.

As a small business owner, I’m like every other small business owner - very passionate about what I do. But I know I’m not alone when I say that some of my ideas didn’t hit the mark. I tried something and continued pushing it even when it didn’t sell.

So how do you know when to move forward and when to pull out with your ideas?

Mui provided an interesting answer.

The question was:

How does one choose between “staying the course in the face of doubt” and “embracing change”?

When you begin to see change in your marketplace, make a series of predictions. Then track your predictions. If the change is faster than you predict, it’s time to get out. If it’s slower, you may be okay.

It’s time for me to make a few predictions for the rest of 2008.

When you start a website design, you start with several things.

1. First, you take a look at a clients existing marketing. What do their brochures look like? Do they have a logo? What look are they trying to achieve?

2. Second, you talk to them about strategy. What do they hope to accomplish with their website?

Small businesses have different goals than larger businesses. In many cases they simply are in need of a site that captures the attention of potential clients, and explains their services in just a few pages.

Our goal with Day Marie of Organized By Day was to get her online, and showcase her services and her professionalism. With a dynamic logo and corporate colors already in place, we set out to create her website. We kept a clean design - with an organizer you can’t have anything but clean design! And we used photos from her own portfolio to showcase the work she’s accomplished.

Thanks Day Marie for becoming a part of our Vision Client Family.

Imagine sitting in a class room. The instructor stands at the podium and gives his presentation.

Off to the side is a big screen with a projection system attached to the instructor’s laptop. He refers to a PowerPoint presentation, and intermixes it with live Internet displays to further the instruction process.

Two other screens are on display at the front of the room. Both are interconnected to various chatrooms and microblogging sites where people are attending the class via satellite from locations all over the world. They watch through streaming video, and can communicate with both the instructor and the audience by making posts within these sites. Their comments are instantly posted to these big screens, allowing them to give feedback and have communication with everyone in attendance.

With over 100 people in attendance, each has a laptop and actively takes notes throughout the training. They also search for supporting sites as the instructor speaks, and perform a variety of other tasks at the same time, such as emailing, blogging, microblogging, searching, etc.

They can snap a photo with their camera phone or Flip video camera. They can plug in and upload photos instantly to their various accounts, allowing them to remember details within their notes.

Sound like something that will take place years from now? Think again.

I attended a blogging convention over the weekend, and was amazed at the interconnectivity. The speakers did more than speak - they communicated and interacted every second they were on the stage. They adjusted their ideas, answered questions, and communicated in a way to interact with everyone.

As an audience member, you not only paid attention to the speaker, you had access to streams of thoughts from multiple users both in the room and across the world.

Does this enhance your learning? Definitely. It’s much easier to get your thoughts into the stream of discussion, and actually have control over how much detail is covered during the presentation.

Will it eventually be used in all forms of class room training? [yes, even down to the elementary level] I sure hope so. This is how kids will learn what they need to know in the future, and how they can grasp the knowledge they need to move into certain areas of specialization.

Learning the “old” way is no longer applicable to our lives. With the tools and technology available, its amazing how fast we can learn and communicate with people just like us - around the world.

The future is now.

We’re thrilled to be taking on an exciting new project that will allow us to use our Internet marketing skills and strategies to create a buzz for Sprawling From Grace. Sprawling From Grace is a documentary created by David M EdwaEMotion Pictures Productions; one that will open your eyes to the real issues we face today and into the future with suburban sprawl.

Our goal with Sprawling From Grace will be to launch its online sales strategy, and to open up the marketplace using social media and social networking as our primary tool. David and Nancy have set the stage with a number of showings around the country - most recently at the Democratic National Convention. We will help them continue that buzz in the online world,  and provide both consulting and online production work to help build online communities that will both promote and purchase the film.

We’re so excited to be able to take on fun and inspiring projects like this one - thanks David and Nancy for joining the Vision Client Family!