Social media, marketing & clients

Owning a business … can be frustrating & scary at certain moments but so fulfilling, I absolutely love it.  I was sitting contemplating our business and thought about how we have changed, developed and grown.  We started off initially with weight management products and then branched out into massage, the Bowen Technique, there was one of us to start (my husband) then I joined him to look after our clients the business developed further then my husband took a back seat finally leaving the business to do his own thing …. what ever that might be.  Yes we do talk but he has a few balls in the air …

So Mummies Birth Buddy became Ripple Effect Yoga at the start of 2013 and when I think back to the way we use to market our business we have progressed so much.  Social media wasn’t the in thing back in the dark ages – early 2002 so we relied heavily on yellow pages, word of mouth, specialist advertising, flyers … even chatting to people on the busy town centre streets (which completely freaked me out – I remember I had to be rescued by said husband and taken to The Fish for a drink!)  It was just too much and harked back to my Masters days when I was doing my surveys (in London & Barcelona – so yes in Spanish) for my thesis.  I really didn’t enjoy that aspect of my research.

But with the advent of social media we have so many pathways to promote what we do, you just have to juggle these now so currently there is a “Facebook” ball, an “email” ball, a “website” ball, a “Twitter” ball (oh no don’t do that very regularly), a “magazine advertising” ball all up there somewhere gently swirling around plus the “word of mouth” ball.
What works … who knows I get reports from advertising that tell me I have had x number of impressions or hits … when I changed the website recently I was told that counters were really old fashioned but I “like to see who has visited the site” —— “well we have this tool that you can use to see that” – I was told …. okay so I have come from the dark ages into the modern era but certainly not fighting and screaming as I know that the first impression I make on a client is the information they can find on the website.

One client even told me that she had contacted & booked me because of the information I had on my site compared to others who had very little; she felt confident that I knew my stuff.  Wow what a compliment and thank you.  But it highlighted to me the importance of making a good first impression.

I love dabbling and since we started our own business I have always designed our websites primarily using dreamweaver for many years and more recently making the transition to WordPress – which I have to say is great.  I love the widgets (apps to the Apple-lies amongst us) and the fact that I can move bits and pieces around, password protect the client areas and tweak things here and there and update it so quickly & easily plus it’s fool proof.  I had an email conversation with a Widget developer and they kept telling me that I was doing something wrong as it should be installing properly.  I was shouting at the screen and in the end I was told by my husband that I should go for a walk.  It turned out I was doing it correctly but their software had a glitch!  So I was asked to upload the newest version …. sorry to say I deleted the said widget because I found an easier way to do what I wanted to plus I wasn’t comfortable with the support I had received.  So not always fool proof!

We have these wonderful lightweight portable gadgets …. back in the very dark ages I remember using big clumpy computers and printers that had to be housed in a special unit with a lid because they were so noisy – yes I know I am old … well not that old.   Technology has come on leaps and bounds and it makes me wonder how we will be marketing our business in 10 years time.  I think there are those that love the gadgets and others who use them because it’s a necessary evil.  I love my gadgets as they help me to keep in touch with my clients and future clients.  I can’t wait to see where we are going with the tools of social media and marketing.

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