Q. I'm getting a lot of phone calls from Yelp, telling me that I'm missing out on business. What should I do?

A. My number one rule in sales is: if the company requires a team of cold callers, their product deserves skepticism and hesitation. It might be the best product in the world, it might be so good that everyone who finds out about it just wants to hog the filthy little secret to themselves.

Or -- it's just not worth talking about.

Either way, when you get a call from Yelp or any other cold caller, take a step back and get some expert input from someone who has dealt with the caller before.

Expert Input about Yelp Ads:

1) Do you have a Yelp page? Have you claimed it? Let's start there. That's free and takes about 15 minutes of your time. Go to Yelp.com, find your business, and hit UNCLAIMED. Follow the steps to set up your business Yelp account (different from your personal Yelp account).

2) Have you ever gotten a Yelp review before? Hrmm. Depending on your industry, Yelp may not be an integral part of your business. If you haven't gotten a review before, it may not even be integral to your own success. But of course, it might be crucial for your business' next phase of development!

3) Before advertising on Yelp, it's a good idea to drum up some 5-star reviews. But how!? We recommend and sell a software that helps you better communicate with your existing customers so they know how to leave a review, and so they won't forget! If you can't track down any 5-star reviews, you may want to rethink advertising on Yelp. Why? People who shop on Yelp also leave reviews. If the Yelp-iverse isn't jiving with your services--be cautious! Might need to change how things are operating before bringing on the critical masses!

4) Once you have a handful of positive reviews, and you've gotten comfortable with Yelpers, now you can consider advertising with Yelp. Ask the Yelp representative a lot of questions about cost per lead and overall traffic, and what is the competition doing. If you sell $5 drinks, and the lead cost is $10--this is not a good idea. If you sell $200 services, and the lead cost is $14--this could make sense!!

- Start with the smallest plan available to test the waters. Ask for a discount, and ask them to start the ads before the billing cycle begins.
- Make sure your Yelp page is set up properly with nice photos.
- Download the Yelp app to your phone so you can respond to questions right away.
- Set up an enticing offer so you get noticed!
- Evaluate each month to make sure you're getting your money's worth!

Contact us if you need help talking to Yelp. We can generally get a more honest answer because we represent hundreds of customers. Yelp would rather tell an agency the truth, in the hopes of getting 50 new customers, than stretch the truth in the hopes of just getting your business! Let us know if we can help

By now you've all heard about the incident at HUG High School. There was a student with a knife. Campus police disarmed the student by shooting him in the shoulder.

Lawsuits and drama ensue.

But wait! The date on this post is December 5, and the actual event happened on December 7.

And Linda from Facebook claims the event was planned for the 6th, and the media prepared for a big conspiratorial showdown.

Web designers modify dates on the web all the time. We backdate social media posts, blog posts, and any assignments that were supposed to be completed by a certain deadline. We can even modify the dates of an email (it's tricky and not sustainable, but yes, it can be done). Web developers have the power to time travel.

Here, I just traveled to the future:

Or did I?

The media has certainly given us enough evidence to think that everything they pump out is a massive lie, but in this case, we're just seeing journalists take advantage of Google's indexing rules.

Most likely the news websites prepare the framework for "Today's Hottest" article in advance (just like they do with the paper version). They don't know what's going into that slot when they prepare the framework, they just know that the hottest story is going there.

The date can be manipulated so that Google recognizes that story as "the story that broke first" and other journalists will refer to that story as the "seed" article and draw from it.

That's just media strategy. Not conspiracy.

When in doubt, ask your neighborhood web designer! She'll be the first to join you in the bunker if something is truly amiss.

Many business owners run into some confusion when it comes to setting up and managing their Business Fan page. Let's break it down into easier to understand concepts!

Your Facebook account is like YOU. It's unique to you, and no one is supposed to use your identity except you.

Just like your face and signature give you power over many things in the real world (your bank account, your kid's school, the DMV)--your Facebook account acts like your personal, verified signature and can give you access to many different online accounts.

Your Business Fan Page is something completely different. It might belong to you, you might have the ultimate say over it, but--teachers, nannies and other individuals can manage it. Yes, it's just like your child. 

But this is a child you can hand off to a nanny without any guilt. Because let's face it--this stubborn child DID come with a manual, and Waking Girl has read it! :)

​

When giving access to your Fan page, we don't need your personal account information. That's like giving away your social security number--and should only be done in dire circumstances!!

Waking Girl handles Business Fan Pages for many of its clients. Just like with a baby-sitter, there is a protocol for assigning responsibilities to care for your kid. Give us the keys to your house, NOT the rights to your identity. We are not looking to adopt your baby.

Often times we learn that a client has two Personal Facebook accounts. That is the Facebook equivalent of masquerading with a stolen identity and fake ID. This can get BOTH of your accounts shut down, and can even alert child protective services to remove the rights to your metaphorical kid!!!!!!

Who knew?

Should I be panicking right now?!

You might be asking ^.

Nah, it's just Facebook. It's not THAT serious! 

Steps for Facebook Success:

1. Delete any extra Personal accounts you might have. The Personal account is what you use your email address and password to access. Delete the one with fewer friends, or the one you use least.
2. Give Admin access to Waking Girl to handle your Business Fan Page (these protocols are constantly changing; ask for the latest instructions).
3. Stand back and applaud! When a nanny or teacher is teaching etiquette or French to your kid--you want to let them do it without interference. The best way to be supportive is to Share the great things that are happening with your kid to your Personal wall (like posting pictures on your refrigerator!). There are other ways to be supportive; ask for specific instructions, unique to your industry!
4. Once your kid or Fan page are behaving--you can take over the day to day operations. Observe and make a list of questions.
5. Have fun! They're only young once! :) 

​

​Question: How can I expedite my online marketing through blogging?

We received this question from a client that writes hefty proposals for multi-million dollar government contracts. When we realized that the client is an avid writer (they write proposals that dwarf most John Grisham books), we gave them the instructions on how to get writing, and GET RESULTS!

SOCIAL MEDIA BLAST
Now that you have your content ^, you can send it out to the masses. 
​
To post on Facebook or Twitter or Linkedin:
Click on the Blog Title of your post. It should look like this:
http://www.wakinggirl.com/business-proposal-writers/business-proposal-writers-in-san-francisco-ca

NOT: http://www.wakinggirl.com/business-proposal-writers/

Copy & paste the link and include your opening thoughts. NOT just the link. You can include the opening paragraph or two:

We are a content consulting company specializing in new business proposals. Our staff of writing, graphic design, and subject matter professionals work side by side with you to craft and price winning solutions.

Or say something like:

I had a lot of fun writing this article on the Top 10 Tips for Talking Trash. Somebody dared me to do it, and I did. And it was awesome. You'll never believe #7.

Or:

This is a must-read for business owners in the construction industry. Tag your construction owner friends (or just print it out and mail it to them, because they're not on Facebook).

START THERE- and let us know how we can help!

There are a billion ways to monetize your blogging brilliance. You may not be able to support yourself or family when you first get started (true in any business), but with perseverance and a little strategy, you can at least supplement your income and see what's possible.

Possibilities:
Google Ad revenue.
You can add Google ads to your website. It takes a little patience to set up, but can give you an immediate return on your blogging bliss. Google: Google Adsense to set up an account and get started.

Google Ad Strategies:
-your audience needs to be the kind of people who click on ads. I built a website once for gamers. The website was a calculator that helped gamers gauge their risk in making different moves in the game. It was awesome. And useful. And gamers would pull up that site and keep it open all day. But they never once clicked on an ad.

Meanwhile, I put ads on a site for Republicans, and oh boy--they went nuts clicking for the whole 17 hours the ads were up. The (elderly) Republican leaders were trying to figure out how ads for Democrats ended up on their site! So they clicked and clicked and clicked to try to get to the bottom of things!! Whoops! Made about $25 before they realized I had the power to remove "the liberal blasphemy" from their site.

My most successful Google ad experience brought in about $100/month for several years (with almost no attention given to the website after the initial setup). The website was for a niche product, and customers were being driven to the website from other websites and marketing methods. People clicked on ads because they were in the market for a product, and the ads were generally related to their product search.

Product Placement.
Ever wonder why someone is drinking a Diet Coke in a TV show? Product Placement! Coca Cola will make more money by  influencing people to drink their product, than by telling them directly. Use Product Placement with Trade to get started. Want to get your hair cut, but can't afford the best salon? Ask the salon if you can do a trade--a blog post featuring your hair experience with links to their salon site, in exchange for a hair cut! Tip in cash, please!

Once you have a big enough following, you can ask for real money for these sorts of blog posts!

SEO.
Offer blogs for SEO purposes to local businesses or businesses that hit your niche market (for a fee). Do a story about how awesome a company, service or website is--and include some helpful links to their website in the copy. It's really important that you link properly, or else your blog will come off as spammy, or it won't be effective for your ad client.

Effective Linking:
-When you're talking about a web design company, link the important words about their SEO services like this.
-Do not link like this: wakinggirl.com
-And don't bother to link like this: Waking Girl is cool.

Link the words that people would use to find the business in a Google search.  That will indicate to Google that "Waking Girl" is a "web design company" and offers "SEO services."

Ask for a one-time fee or a monthly fee, or a set up fee + monthly fee (businesses will benefit as long as the blog post is up and traffic is coming to your website).

Ads.
Run your own graphic ads on the sidebars, footers or headers of your website. Ask businesses or organizations to supply graphics that fit the space, and then charge a monthly, quarterly or annual fee for sharing your web space! Websites generally charge too much for graphic ads. Words are actually worth more than pictures in a blog. The only time an ad would be more worthwhile is if your EXACT readers should be the EXACT customers for the ads. So--if all of your single, mom friends in Mobile, Alabama are reading your blog, then a graphic ad for a Singles Speed Dating event for Moms in Mobile, Alabama would make sense. For ads, go for sponsorship. Who just wants to support you and identify with you to help you out and be a friend? Is there a Women's Crisis Center or a Church or a MicroLoan organization that speaks to you? See if they want to smack their logo on your website for a small monthly fee. If you really want to benefit the organization, take the time to write a proper blog post about them, too!


What to charge.
Google ads: Google will decide!

Product Placement: use this to trade whatever you can trade! Hair care, kid's activities, restaurants. Look for companies that have some extra time or product on their hands, and want to help you get started!

SEO:  If you write up a full, engaging story on a business, that's worth at least $50. If you use some SEO, and target relevant businesses for your audience, that's worth as much as you can sell it for ($75, $100, $250). I prefer low set up fees with ongoing monthly fees ($50 + $5/month, and yes, you may pay for a year at a time).

Ads: $5/month to $500/month. Seriously--the sky is the limit. Try to give people both an ad AND an SEO blog post AND a product placement experience!


Important next steps:

Keep writing.
Quantity! Go! Keep writing! The deeper you allow people into your life, the more valuable your blog will become.

Plug into your audience.
Seek out Facebook Groups that feature your target market. Who is your target market? People just like you! Find your people!

Check in with your sponsors.
Follow up regularly with anyone contributing to the cause; communication will help you find new ways to help, and that will ultimately boost your bottom line! :)

Blogs: the gateway drug to your new business.

I'm surrounded by business coaches and the industry has one magic formula called "THE SALES FUNNEL." Catchy, right?

Every once in awhile I get caught in the click-bait of a sales funnel and sign up for an email newsletter. Recently one of those emails explained what a sales funnel is. I almost gagged.

For those of you who haven't heard the concept, a sales funnel goes like this:

Billions of people are out there, and through offers and promotions, you'll catch maybe a hundred or a thousand of them.

Then, through frequent harassment (email newsletters) you'll narrow it down to 10 interested people who might want more information.

And eventually they'll want a Discovery Call (that's just a phone call where you find out if they can afford your services).

And then you sell ONE promotional package to one lucky winner who pops through your little funnel.

And then you create the package, and perform the services. And hope the customer doesn't dispute the charge on her credit card.

And rinse, repeat.

Wow. That's a lot of funneling for ONE sale.


Let's take a look at how the process can work if you just flip the funnel over:

1. Listen to the very next person you see. This could be a mom at the park, your sister, or a stranger. Start a conversation that gets them talking. And listen.
   
2. Listen until you discover you can help them with something. Maybe it's babysitting, maybe it's logo design, maybe it's making phone calls for them.
   
3. Then make them an offer they can't refuse. If you've never made phone calls for someone before, consider this FREE training and offer the services for cheap or free. If you've made lots of logos before, then offer it at a price that they'll jump on.
   
4. Provide the service at 110%. Go above and beyond. Rock their world.
   
5. Keep listening to your new client.
   
6. Offer continued services at an amazing win-win rate.
   
7. Answer your phone and check your email regularly, because your new loyal customer is going to send business your way.
   
8. Watch how that ONE customer turns into ongoing monthly revenue, and more referrals than you can handle.
   

At Waking Girl we do not use lead generation funnels, we do not send out solicitous newsletters. We do not waste our energy on trying to win you over before the sale. We save our energy for going above and beyond for our current clients.

Rather than turning thousands into one client. We've taken ONE client and turned her into thousands of clients.

Thank you, Antique Angel Wedding Chapel, for being our first VIP client!

In order to bring consistency to one of our favorite websites, we created a form for the client to fill out for inputting new information. The website features different Tours, and departure and arrival times are key to the operation. We were getting inconsistent formatting in the times (2pm, 2PM, 2:00 PM, 2:00 AM, 2ish) and a typical Date/Time field didn't give us the programming functionality needed to automate other features of the website.

Who knew it would be so hard to Google a list of times for a dropdown menu? I share this list here for anyone else who was trying to find a simple list of times to include in a form! Copy/paste at will!

You go to work every day. You punch in. You punch out. You carefully label your lunch and don't meddle with other people's office supplies. You're a good worker. You look in the rear view mirror before walking in to greet your colleagues and tell yourself hopefully, "Maybe today is the day I'll get a raise."

Sorry. Ain't gonna happen. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever--not like that.

Raises don't just happen. They don't just fall out of the sky. They're not rainbows. They're not unicorns.

Raises do not come to those who wait.

But why not? I deserve a raise, don't I?
I dunno, DO you? A business owner has a lot on the line and quite frankly, often doesn't know if *she* is going to get a cut from month to month. You were hired because a business owner needed help; and hiring you was probably long overdue, but once you were hired, the business owner realized, "Shoot. How am I gonna afford to feed all these people AND train these people AND pick up the slack when they tap the snooze icon too many times? Can I raise my rates? Can we find a more innovative way to do business? Maybe I can just stop sleeping for a few months."

Rainbows and unicorns don't just fall out of the sky for business owners either.

Every business owner dreams of the day when a new hire knocks assertively at her door, enters, sits down and says the following:
Boss Ma'am, I would like to present a plan I've been thinking about. I noticed that Teddy, Bill and Sally are awesome at organizing and generating content. I also noticed there is some down time when we're not on the phones from about 10am-11am each day. I was wondering if we could take over the social media work that Big Mega Co. has been handling for you during that time each day. I hope you don't mind, but I went ahead and looked at your contract with Big Mega and according to Section 14 we can pop right out of that contract at the end of this month. It looks like you're paying Big Mega about $800/month. Would you be willing to give me a raise of half that amount to handle the management and responsibility of this task?

Sold. Done. Immediate raise. Promotion. Partner in the company by the end of the year.

But I'll take over the social media for my company. Do I get a raise now?
No. Getting a raise isn't about taking on more tasks; it's about taking on more thinking. A small business owner's brain looks like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory--on steroids. If you can handle just one chocolate slide, that frees her brain up to make more blueberry bubble chutes.

I like chocolate slides. Do I get a raise now?
Are you handling the responsibility to the extent that the owner would? More? Better? Beyond? Then, yes! A small business owner is in a place of being able to hire others because she has exceeded her customer's expectations and her company has grown. Her products and services are in demand. But considering we're not ready to clone business owners (yet), she has the unruly task of hiring/contracting, training and praying to God that her new team will love her clients just a fraction as much as she does.

How did my boss exceed expectations?
She did what the client *would have asked for*, if the client knew such a thing existed.

How can I exceed my boss' expectations?
The same way. Stop looking at your work as a job, and start looking at your work as a service. You are in the business of helping your boss, boosting her profits, and reducing her costs, and above all--easing the Willy Wonka chaos. Thinking in this way immediately increases your value. If you're there to HELP your boss now you can offer to do tasks beyond your job description. You can even offer to help with things that are fun for you, but clearly a chore for your boss.

But my boss makes a lot of money; shouldn't I get a fair cut?
The reason a boss will love you forever if you waltz into her office with a money-saving or profit-boosting proposal is because you're paying attention. You probably know exactly how much money you cost the company and how much money you make the company. Just because the boss is invoicing lots and lots of dollars doesn't mean she's taking any of it home. Companies rarely make tons of money over night; there are debts to be paid, investors, mistakes, blood pressure medication, and it all adds up. Instead of looking at your paycheck with a "gimme gimme" mentality, go get the facts. Find out if your boss has been coming out of pocket to keep you on the team, and more importantly--if your ideas can boost the bottom line!

But what if my ideas offend the boss?
Then it's time to start your own business. You have the confidence and the know-how to be an entrepreneur! Give your two week's notice and get to it!

Ok, ok, I'm not quite ready for that--but can I work for you?
You tell me! How can you help me? What's your pitch? What's your proposal? You've visited my website, you've seen my rates. How can you add value to what I'm already doing and tame the explosion of berrylicious goodness in my brain? Can't wait to hear it! :)


Angela Refsland, owner of Waking Girl Web Design worked for a small business over a decade ago, and asked for not just one raise, but two! After just three months, she noticed an ongoing problem and found a solution. She presented the solution, offered to implement the solution for more pay, and it was an immediate YES from the boss. Know what happened? Her colleagues resented her for it, because they had been waiting for 6 years for rainbows and unicorns. The work environment became too hostile so she asked to be switched from an employee to an independent contractor (no more taxes being taken from her checks), and have the freedom to work from home. The company agreed! And from there--it was an easy step to venture out on her own.