by Joseph Graves | Jan 28, 2014 | 30 Day Blog Challenge, Workshed News
Superstar or Slacker?
If your website was an employee, what type of an employee would it be? Would it be a superstar or a slacker? Fortunately, great websites (unlike employees) can be built.
Simple not Easy
Creating an awesome (a technical term describing effectiveness) website is one that compels visitors to take action and contact you about a service or product. To build a superstar employee style website, you have to understand the company you are making the site for , their customers, and a whole slew of other disciplines ranging from accounting to psychology; not to mention graphic design and web development.
Connect the Dots
At Workshed, we’ve individually and collectively spent a lifetime exploring the different elements of successful businesses. We know what it takes to create not only a superstar website, but how to leverage the information we gather into improving other areas of your business as well. One of the most interesting aspects of what we do is learning about a new business for the first time. To hear your successes, challenges, and goals with objectivity allows us to gain an understanding of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (yes I just worked a SWOT analysis into a post). From their the challenge is to translate that raw information into words, images, and code that accurately represents the personality of your company.
Fire the Slacker
If your website and marketing isn’t routinely bringing in new business and making your life easier it’s time to cut your losses and hire a new one.
HIRE A NEW WEBSITE
by Joseph Graves | Jan 24, 2014 | 30 Day Blog Challenge, Articles
We believe in using inbound marketing to attract clients rather than ‘interruption marketing’ where you pester customers to buy from you. Think of inbound marketing as Connection Marketing. You connect with your ideal customers by helping them.
How does inbound work?
It starts with knowing your goals.
- Who are you hoping to attract? (Ideal customer)
- Where do they live on the internet/social media? (Demographics, gender, lifestyle, etc)
- How do you deliver meaningful content to them? (Content strategy)
- How is that content created and distributed? (Who does the work)
The Plan
Next we create a plan for meeting the defined goals. We determine when and how the content will be delivered then create the infrastructure to deliver it to our target audience. The keys to effective infrastructure are:
- A robust, mobile-responsive WordPress website typically built on a supported framework that complies with web standards (search engine friendly)
- Social Media platforms used by your ideal customer/clients with links to and from your website
- Email marketing campaigns with great analytics like MailChimp
- Website analytics and reporting
Content is King
With the right infrastructure in place, it’s time to create content. Our agency makes awesome content that connects with your ideal customer. We determine the best medium to communicate your message; video, photography, articles, e-books, white papers, newsletters and more. Then we distribute it via our infrastructure and continually measure the results.
That which is measured improves
Next, we measure and report the results. Since the data is gathered in real-time, we can quickly see what is working well and what isn’t and make adjustments fast. Being nimble ensures that our client’s marketing budget is being maximized and that we’re generating a real ROI (return on investment).
Nothing in life is a sure thing (except death and taxes perhaps), but inbound marketing is pretty darn close to a sure thing when it comes to bringing in more business from the customers you want. We’re ready to help you grow with inbound marketing. Let’s talk.
by Joseph Graves | Jan 23, 2014 | 30 Day Blog Challenge, Articles
A Little History
For those of you unfamiliar with my (Joe’s) other life, I’ve spent the last 12 years (until Tuesday that is) as an investment adviser helping clients prepare for and maintain their retirement. While researching investments, I had the opportunity to acquire knowledge about a wide range of topics from a diverse mix of sources. Initially the focus was specific companies, then it expanded and I began to look at entire industries, and ultimately the economy as a whole. Along the way, I started sense that something was missing; an important piece to the puzzle that was being ignored.
That missing piece was and is local investing.
The Key
Most of the reasons for local investing are beyond the scope of this post, but one important factor is the re-circulation (or local multiplier) rate. The re-circulation rate is one measurement used to determine how long money stays in a community (and gets reused over and over); since the turn of the century it’s fallen from 25-30, to less than 10. A declining rate is like ajr slowly leaking from a tire, if not fixed it goes flat. With a city or town, it’s how they lose their vibrancy. Reversing that trend is why I decided to leave my primary profession and why I bought Workshed with Brian.
How Will That Help?
You might be wondering how a website/ marketing company can help fix the economy. By working with local businesses and entrepreneurs directly (at Workshed) we are able to see first hand what is working, what is missing, and what’s needed to operate a sustainable (as in earning enough money to stay in business) business. Access to capital is part of that equation, but so is access to the knowledge, wisdom, and experience of others. With every project, we learn a little more about how to make that happen and can share it with past and future clients. So far, we’ve achieved modest success with the client’s we’ve worked with, and our work is positively contributing to their sales!
If you need help with something business related give us a call, we don’t have all the answers, but so far we haven’t been stumped.
But Wait There is More!
And another thing, don’t let cost be an issue. We won’t do a project if we don’t think it will generate a positive return for our clients and we are willing to offer payment arrangement to accommodate most budgets.
GIVE US A CALL
by Joseph Graves | Jan 22, 2014 | 30 Day Blog Challenge, Articles
Computer code touches nearly every aspect of our modern lives. Even if you don’t plan on making a living by writing it, it’s probably a good idea to at least have a basic understanding of what’s going on. Heck, you might even enjoy it.
One [free] resource I’ve used is Code Academy. They do a great job of breaking the lessons down into easily digestible chunks with exercises to help you understand what’s going on.
Give it a try and let us know what you think. You never know, maybe you have a talent for the binary?
by Joseph Graves | Jan 21, 2014 | 30 Day Blog Challenge, Articles
A Small Investment in Time
There are many ways to improve how you operate a business. One of the easiest ways is to learn from others, it’s also the cheapest…especially if you use the library. Fortunately, most great business books don’t come from Harvard and many of them could be read in a weekend.
Obviously this list is only a start, but if you read just these three and applied just some of what they say, your business would be better for it. Heck, I’d even have your employees read them…but maybe that’s another post?
What books have changed the way you work?
by Joseph Graves | Jan 20, 2014 | 30 Day Blog Challenge, Workshed News
Ways to be Average
Todays post is a continuation of yesterday’s theme of being realistic. Really this is a 2-for-1 repost of a pair of posts by Zen Pencils, where he creates comics from inspirational quotes.
The first is a quote from Chris Guillebeau about 11 ways to be average. In it, he reveals the formula for living a boring and unremarkable life. For those unfamiliar with Chris, he is a Portland resident, author of “The Art of Non Conformity” and “The $100 Startup,” host of the annual World Domination Summit, and has nearly accomplished his goal of visiting every country on the planet.
Click the images to see the entire comic.
The Timing Always Sucks
It’s almost stating the obvious, but it’s true that for the most important things in life the timing can always be better. To put it another way, there will always be a reason not to do something; especially stuff that really matters. The second quote is by Tim Ferriss from his first book, “The Four Hour Work Week.” Tim is know for his “lifestyle hacking” (among other things), and like him or not, it’s hard to ignore his ability to distill things down to their essence. Be it a skill or life philosophy.
It’d be easy to dismiss what both of these guys are saying, if what they were saying wasn’t so important to living a life worth living. We are not automatons whose only function is to perform some mundane task with ever increasing efficiency.
Do something Interesting…then tell us about it. You never know who or what you might inspire.
