Recently I joind the board of directors for the Berks County Association for the Blind. This is a great organization and I'm still learning about all the great services they offer the blind, visually impared and other challenged people in Berks County. More about the BCAB later.
I wanted to talk today about my experience with WordPress during my effort to help the Blind association with their web presence. I had experimented with WordPress a couple years ago and I was impressed with it's potential but never implemented anything live. For the BCAB I wanted to keep cost down (WordPress is open source and cost nothing beyond normal web hosting costs) and I wanted to be able to hand all the administration of content over to the organization.
To make a short story long we bought a Domain and web hosting from Go Daddy. I installed WordPress right through the Go Daddy's interface, choose a basic theme (WordPress lingo for template), spent some time teaching myself how to use the many plugins available (open source for free) and was able to hand them a web site that they have total control over through a GUI dashboard (no coding needed). They can add pages, change content, add pictures etc... very cool. All in about 8 hours of my time including and mostly learning curve.
To see the sight click here:
www.berksblind.org
To learn more about WordPress click here:
http://wordpress.org/about/
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Online surveys, do you know what your customers think?
Do you know how your customers feel about the products or services you provide, really? Social media is changing the way we interact with our customers, friends and family for that matter. Even so sometimes the best way to know how we are doing is simply by asking.
My April blog was about a free email marketing tool, but for an interactive survey with customizable data charts that allow you to understand what your customers like and don't like and what additional services you should be offering I have found "Kwik Surveys", this is a Free online survey tool with unlimited questions, responses and surveys as well as an unlimited number of recipients.
Of course a survey is only as good as the questions asked and they won't get returned at all if they are too long or hard to understand. Give the questions enough thought, what do you wish to learn from the survey? Try to keep it to 4 or 5 relevant questions. A good time to send is after a customer transaction or when you are contemplating adding services or equipment.
My April blog was about a free email marketing tool, but for an interactive survey with customizable data charts that allow you to understand what your customers like and don't like and what additional services you should be offering I have found "Kwik Surveys", this is a Free online survey tool with unlimited questions, responses and surveys as well as an unlimited number of recipients.
Of course a survey is only as good as the questions asked and they won't get returned at all if they are too long or hard to understand. Give the questions enough thought, what do you wish to learn from the survey? Try to keep it to 4 or 5 relevant questions. A good time to send is after a customer transaction or when you are contemplating adding services or equipment.
Gary Brown
Partner / Business Development
Berks Digital Inc.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Direct Marketing Web tools still free if you know where to look.
While as a provider of print services we know that quality printed materials are an important part of any companies marketing. I’m writing today to tell you about some web services that are not only effective ways to communicate your message but with the exception of your time investment are FREE.
First is email marketing, while there is a plethora of service companies out there, most will charge after a short trial period or limit you to a very short list of contacts and limit features so you need to upgrade to the pay version for any real useful functionality.
I have found that for full services and a subscriber list of up to 1,000 subscribers, that MailChimp.com offers a great service for FREE to businesses of all sizes. They offer simple templates to create, sent and track email communications that can easily include photos, dynamic links or video. For you skeptics, below is a link to an explanation of how their free business model works.
http://blog.mailchimp.com/going-freemium-one-year-later/
My next communication will discuss Survey tools, so stay tuned.
Gary Brown
Partner / Business Development
Berks Digital Inc.
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