3 Question Interview, Blog, Marketing
I met Vel at a networking event years ago here in Orlando. We instantly befriended and shared similar business and entrepreneurial stories to almost no end. Her history in working within Florida State government in the capital and working closely with elected officials to local community leaders was inspiring. I’ve always said that it’s not always about what you know, but who you know, and Vel is well-connected! In this brief 3 Question Interview you’ll get an idea of who she is and what Vasaj Communications has to offer in the way of small business marketing and public relations.
1: How do you define public relations different from what the initial naïve perception people may have of this type of service?
On this amazing journey as a public relations professional, I enjoy specializing in the art of transformation and helping businesses grow! The ever-expanding world of public relations largely impacts public opinion, financial performance, and business success. My personal definition of public relations serves at the critical core of my life’s work. I believe it’s the experience, leadership and collaborative approach that is required to be a catalyst for business growth, visibility, and longevity. The public relations approach may be unique to every business and individual, but its intrinsic value is unwavering in being an integral component of influence on industry.
2: With a $500 monthly budget for marketing, what would you suggest a small business owner do with that to increase their brand awareness?
A consultation with the potential client would be required to expertly recommend the most effective manner for building brand awareness. However, there are a couple of measures the business owner should consider before being able to establish a practical and effective approach to setting a marketing budget. First, the business owner needs to identify short and long-term objectives, consider the target market, and know and understand the needs of this audience, as much as possible. Having insight into the demographics (the statistical data of a population, especially those showing average age, income, education, etc.) and psychographics (the measure of the customers’ attitudes and interests) will help guide the campaign’s marketing vehicle and contribute to being able to adequately establish a budget. Secondly, the business owner must realize that as the depth and extent of business goals will vary from business to business, so will the range of professional experience, industry knowledge, and retainer fees vary for branding experts. Just as you would visit more than one car dealer if in the market for a new car, I suggest speaking to more than one marketing professional to find one that is a comfortable fit.
3: What’s the most challenging aspect of your job that most of your clients wouldn’t know from the outside looking in?
That’s a thoughtful question, Jean. I thoroughly enjoy supporting clients of different backgrounds and needs with media and government relations, press communications, author campaigns, messaging, social media management, event coordination, webinar creation, and a host of other branding mechanisms. However, what may not be glaringly obvious is that there is no cookie cutter approach to optimizing one’s brand, and even within the same industry, branding objectives differ. As a public relations professional, I believe it’s important to spend time getting to know the unique personality, business acumen, and mindset of each client, particularly if I’m going to write their talking points, digital messaging, or serve as a company spokesperson. I completely customize services to best fit the client’s overall need. To learn more about Vasaj Communications and our scope of services, visit www.vasajcommunications.com. I can be emailed directly at info@vasajcommunications.com.
All Posts, Events, WordPress
This weekend was the WordCamp that almost wasn’t. Due to a recent storm Hurricane Matthew that brushed all along the east coast of Florida that not only caused moderate damage to coastal property but cancelled many events and conferences that only happen once a year here. So a special shout-out goes to Lisa Melegari and the rest of WordPress Orlando Team for being nimble and dedicated to get this conference rescheduled with a pretty quick turnaround and still keep the same venue, sponsors, and amenities.
Some quick highlights of the weekend for us first that our own resident Social Media Marketing Strategist Nicole Perpillant did a talk on Facebook Integrations. This was a great talk for small businesses and entrepreneurs looking to use social media ads in spaces like Facebook and Instagram and ways to hone in on your target market and audience.
This year’s theme was on Lego’s and it was awesome. Probably brought out the kid in all of us. Thankfully there weren’t too many toys out for give-a-ways because I know most of us would have been building and playing instead of networking and learning. Both days were filled with speakers, talks, and panels anywhere from How to install WordPress, to Security best practices, Child Themes, and PHP Functionality. You can see the full schedule along with the speaker talks and information at this link.
While I will be posting the photos we took while on site for the weekend soon, know that it was a pleasure to talk and meet with so many new people. One of the things that is the same with each different WordCamp that we attend is the chance of meeting people who actually aren’t from your local area.
One of the biggest take-aways for me will actually be better explained in a coming blog post about your website being “Software”. There was a Panel Discussion and this was mentioned by one of the speakers Karena Kreger when she referenced WordPress as a software and it really resonated with me because while I know that it is, I don’t treat it like that. Let me explain; to me WordPress is a CMS (Content Management System) and kind of ecosystem. Being that it’s a hub that has extensions of functionality driven by other pieces to make a website work in a way intended by a developer for the end-user experience. Ok before I lose you, let me explain. See in the tech-bubble that most of us designers and developers live in, we understand how to WordPress lives in the sense of what makes it work, the vulnerabilities that it can be susceptible to, and how fragile it can be to core editing. But our clients and customers and users don’t know or understand all of that. In my mind I created a metaphor to best explain this; if you were to explain to a client of whom you are developing or created a WordPress website for, you’d have to tell them it is like having Windows 10 and that in order to keep it working well – there will need to be periodic updates. And along with those updates there will also need to be safety and security measures (and additional software) in place to keep “your software” working well. If ignored you can start to notice decreased performance among many other things.
Some of the best speakers like Josh Pollack, Scott Mann, Jeff Noel, and Elizabeth Pampalone (to name just a few) did great with metaphors. They were able to take what they’ve experienced and word it in a way that we could consume and reflect on. Like any good conference you should never walk away without your head filled with ideas, have some solutions to problems you’ve been dealing with, or a sense of empowerment that you too can be a hero like these presenters.
I look forward to reading other blog posts of other people’s experience with WordCamp Orlando in the coming days and weeks. And I’ll also see about accepting the challenge to attend WordCamp US in Philadelphia PA on December 2nd.
3 Question Interview
Over the years of networking and working in Orlando’s design community, I’ve met and befriended a lot of people. One of those is Carol Gann. She’s one of the sweetest people you’ll meet with a wealth of information for people in small businesses looking to create a web presence.
Question 1: In your option, what’s the biggest value a small business would appreciate with managed hosting?
Managed website security and updates enable the small business owner to manage their online marketing. The Internet is not a stable environment. A WordPress website needs maintenance just like a home or car. Any number of things can go wrong in a hosting environment. The benefit of managed care is the small business owner doesn’t need to be concerned with their website getting hacked or becoming data corrupted. This saves them time and money.
Question 2: What do you do to educate your customers about their WordPress websites?
We teach clients how to use their WordPress websites to get customers attention through inbound marketing by blogging and list management. We empower clients by teaching them to create their own lead and funnel pages. We’re in the process of developing MasteryWP an online education system with these goals. We turn WordPress into a CRM and teach them how to effectively use it. We create custom Google and Bing analytics to track marketing campaigns. We also give consultation to develop an online marketing plan.
Question 3: Whats the most challenging aspect of a firm that most of your clients wouldn’t know from the outside looking in?
As an older woman in a predominately male industry and of small stature, with a soft voice, I think it is harder for me to gain trust and respect; until I talk with people to develop a relationship. I think most people are surprised by my level of expertise and I work hard as a lifetime learner. I embrace the WordPress Community with open source principles and the code of conduct. This community has equal opportunity for everyone. Open Source Citizenship is friendly, safe, welcoming, and truly open for everyone. I wish the whole would value and follow Open Source Citizenship principles.
For more from Carol, be sure to visit her website Orlando Web Wizard and see all the services offered. Stay tuned for more quick interviews with other business professionals.
All Posts, Marketing, Social Media
Contrary to what most think, email is actually still very much relevant and effective. I say that because I received an email from Nick at Delmondo (they’re a video analytics company) and one of the articles was about Generation Z and Millennials and their feelings on Instagram and SnapChat. You can read the full article here on Adweek’s website.
I use both platforms, yet I personally enjoy Instagram over Snapchat. That may be because I’m a photographer and enjoy pictorial art over video, or maybe it is an age thing? Still the infographic the created by Adweek was actually pretty informative and well worth the few minutes of your time to review if you’ve been considering paid ads on Instagram and SnapChat. We at Design Theory have paid for boosted posts and ads on IG and have found some moderate results in the way of increased traffic to our website landing page, likes, and engagement. However the statistics that most in this infographic either don’t pay attention to the ads they see or don’t remember them is alarming.
Infographic: Carlos Monteiro
If these two demographics are your target audience you’ll certainly want to check your analytics and impression stats to see just how effective your posts are, and also the social media platform and determine if it’s working for you. Obviously you want your brand awareness to improve and grow, that’s the main reason (or should be) for paid advertising. However you should be vigilant about how and where you spend your marketing dollars. Just because you’re paying for it doesn’t mean it’s worth it – or is enough!
Have you been thinking about marketing your brand, products, or services on Instagram and SnapChat? If you have questions feel free to contact us, and if you have some testimonies about your experience we’d love to hear about them too.
All Posts, Blog, Free Stuff, Photography, Web Design
Your readers are more visual now then ever. Captivating them with great headlines is key, and so is capturing their attention with an interesting photo or graphic that goes along with the headline. Full disclosure, we actually use these websites along with paid RF websites like iStock and 123RF for our projects as well as client projects. Reason being is that there are a good amount of free resources for images online with creative commons licensing, but there are times when you’ll need to purchase a specific image that just isn’t found anywhere on the free market.
“Free images and videos you can use anywhere
All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. You may download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty free for anything you like, even in commercial applications. Attribution is not required.”
What I really like about this site is the free videos. Don’t get me wrong, they have a great library of photos to choose from with a broad range, but lets face it video is where it’s at these days and getting to use some HD quality ones for your project will make a great impression for your viewers.
“Hundreds of high resolution images added weekly. Free from copyright restrictions.“
This is a very clean and easy to navigate and search user generated stock photography website. It’s easy and quick to create an account, and I encourage that you do so that as you download photos you take the time to “like” the photographs that you come across. As a photographer this means a lot to us!
“Search millions of Creative Commons photos and add them to your blog posts easily.”
Their headline pretty much says it all. Catering to web creatives and bloggers alike, you’ll find plenty of great images and photos to use on your websites here.
“NEED FREE STOCK PHOTOS FOR YOUR NEXT PROJECT?
We are a stock photo community where photographers & designers can share their own photos and artwork with people from all over the world.”
If you’re looking for really great high quality photography from photographers around the world, you’ll enjoy this website. I’ve seen a bunch of highly edited and HDR photographs posted here for free use.
“Startup Stock Photos was started as an outlet for photos we were already taking on a regular basis. It’s grown to be much more than that. People and organization all over the world have used these photos to make some really awesome things. We’re happy to have helped.”
If you’re looking for photos and images with that “startup” or agency look, you’re going to enjoy this website. From wooden desk tables to white board and monitor screens, you’ll no doubt find an image or two to fit your project. While there isn’t a search feature or a huge library of photos, the ones that this photographer uploaded for your free use are fantastic.
What did you think of the list? Hopefully this helps you if you were looking for some great sources for photography and images. Remember to give credit back to the website/author of the photos you choose to use. While what you find may be free, what it does cost time, expertise, and skill to do photography. Having credit and recognition goes a long way!
