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The Switch: CC's Blog

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The Time To Go Live!

5/19/2020

 
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In our most recent blog posts, we've talked about the importance of why you should be using stories and live streaming in your company's workflow. This blog is going to be dedicated to actual tips on how to make these videos and what you need to be thinking about while you do! 

We've made it to May, Summerville! Our quiet little town turned into a ghost town as the pandemic set it, but it is turning back into a vibrant and beautiful city as we all slowly open our doors again. We are so thankful to see so many of our fellow small businesses open their doors again and return to full operation. We know this has been a difficult time for our amazing town, but getting back to a sense of normal proves just how tough Summerville is! While we work to get back up to speed, we do encourage you to continue to stay safe and smart. We are still in this together! 

Have you been playing with adding Facebook and Instagram videos into your workflow since we shared so much information on why you should be doing so in our last few blogs? Have you been even more daring and tried live streaming on either platform? Remember, now is the perfect time to use these tools to your advantage. You can stay in touch with your followers, keep them up to date with when you might be reopening, what safety precautions are going to be taken, what might be changing, and check-in them in real-time! This gives them a true sense of connection when they get to see the real you in a very real, not directed or perfectly edited, live video. Let them fall in love with all the reasons why they love your company and brand all over again! So, throw away your fears and worries that your videos or live streams won't look right, that they won't look good enough, or you'll look funny. That will never be the case. You are a professional who is passionate about your company and brand. The rest just takes a little planning, practice, and care. Follow these tips and suggestions to make seamless and effortless Livestream videos that you will be proud of and will no longer dread doing them! 

  • Let's Get Started
Some of the biggest things that can affect your Livestream videos on Facebook and Instagram are things you might not even think about until one pops up and ruins a video. These little details can pop up and destroy the quality of the video or could abruptly stop the video in the middle of the broadcast, wasting all of the effort and connection you've made. If you don't think about these very important little details before you even press record, then it'll be too late. When setting up and preparing, remember to: 
  • Turn your phone on silent.
  • Put your phone on do not disturb. 
  • Make sure it's charged with plenty of battery. 
  • Make sure that you have a good wifi connection. 
  • Be aware of the sights and sounds around you that could disrupt the video or distract your audience. 
  • Choose a good location that provides a professional and comfortable setting for you and those watching. 
  • Decide ahead of time if it will look better and be more appropriate for the subject of your Livestream for you to hold your phone while recording or for someone else/a stand to hold it while you are recording. A hands-free approach will give you more options, less to worry about, and a more relaxed feel throughout the recording of your Livestream. 

  • Attention to Detail 
Like we've said time and again, going live is a great opportunity to show your audience who you are in real life. The lighting and the backdrop don't have to be expertly executed. But, that doesn't mean you shouldn't have a plan for the Livestream. You need to know what you will be talking about, why you're talking about it, and have a goal of what you want from your audience during this Livestream. Also, it never hurts to practice. Even though you will be recording and streaming in real-time, being well rehearsed in what you're saying and being comfortable on camera is very important. Looking uncomfortable, constantly stumbling over your words, and rambling until you finally reach your point turns your audience off very quickly. Remember to promote the fact that you will be going live. Post about it a few days in advance on all of your social media platforms. Remind your audience multiple times about when you'll be going live and what you'll be talking about. This builds your audience for the Livestream. Just showing up on their feeds as a live video without any warning could run the risk of not being seen at all. 

  • Action! 
It can be very strange and awkward to talk on camera, even more so if it's live. But try as best as you can to treat your time on camera like a comfortable conversation. The more relaxed and relatable you are, the more you'll draw in your viewers. Don't plant yourself in front of the camera and blast through facts and information like a news broadcast. One of the greatest things about Livestreaming is the fact that your viewers can interact with you. You, in turn, need to respond to them just like anyone would in a real-life conversation. Laugh, joke with them, and answer and acknowledge the questions they're asking during your stream. The less painful you can make it for yourself, the better! Also, always give context throughout the entirety of the stream. Don't dump the topic and the purpose of the going live right at the beginning and then push past it, never touching it again. It's a good refresher to people who turn in late to the Livestream, and it helps those who have been with you the whole time to reconnect and stay focused. Don't forget, it never hurts to get creative! Have a theme to your videos (like Hawaiian day!), have a happy hour with your viewers, have live music, or have a pet join you in your Livestream. The more you invest in the topic and the video, the more your audience will enjoy the stream, and the more likely they will follow your requests to buy something on sale, follow them online, join them for an event, and so on. 

Livestreaming is accessible for everyone and is an incredible tool to connect you with your audience in seconds. You want to inform them, connect with them, and converse with them on a real human level. You need to put in a little work and practice before you press record, making sure that your phone is charged and that your mom's call won't disrupt the video. But if you follow these simple steps, your Livestream videos will be outstanding. Don't hesitate! We are starting to make moves towards some sort of normalcy, so get back to what you're good at - running your business! Use this tool to show off what you do best, and why you enjoy doing it. We are here for when you need us, Summerville! We are so impressed with your resiliency and are proud to be apart of the Summerville family. Stay safe and be well everyone! 
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Facebook Stories; Adding Them to Your Workflow (Part Two!)

5/1/2020

 
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We promised more information on the importance and joys of adding Facebook Stories to your workflow, and so we are going to deliver!

Hello again, sweet Summerville! Welcome back. We hope you and yours are staying safe and healthy. Keep washing those hands and practicing social distancing! If you have the chance, we also encourage you to support local businesses as much as you can right now. So many of the staples we love that are Summerville through and through need your love and support. Get carry out, pick up some coffee, and visit your favorite local artist's websites or Etsy pages! Every little bit helps right now, and we encourage you to pay it forward. If you'd like some recommendations about some of our favorite local businesses, please don't hesitate to reach out to us! We have been enjoying our fair share of our favorite Summerville things thanks to delivery and pickup!

Now, let's jump back into some work. Our last blog kicked off our blog series discussing the importance of Facebook Stories. We just had so much to share - we couldn't limit it to just one post!  Even though we are all smartly practicing social distancing, one of the many ways we can all stay connected is social media. We can stay close and remain in contact with as many people as our hearts desire thanks to social media. This is why it is so important. You can remind your audience that you're still here, you still care about how they're doing and that you and your company will still be here when all of this is finally over

YOUR CUSTOMERS; THEIR NEEDS
We've touched on the topic of customer experience and service multiple times throughout our blogs in the last few months. The importance placed upon it needs to become one of your top priorities. Good customer service is one of the top digital trends for 2020. How to listen and connect with your clients needs to evolve and grow over time. We love being heard, and we all love when our opinion is valued and listened to. Stories, videos, and going live on Facebook gives your client an in-person opportunity to give and voice their opinions. It opens up the floor to more of your followers to join in on the conversation and to agree and disagree with their peer's needs or opinions in a safe and productive environment. Take what your followers say to heart. If they aren't opinions or needs that you feel are in your companies best interest, that's ok. But acknowledging them means a lot to your customers. You can create images and stories to hype up announcements, new products, sales, and exciting events they can all attend - either online or hopefully soon, in person. When you go live on Facebook, you can see the comments your follows are making in real-time and you can physically respond to them. What an instant connection! You can answer questions, solve issues, express gratitude, and connect with your audience in real-time. This frees up time that you would be spending answering these questions and concerns via email or phone call, allowing you to get back to work.

ANOTHER CHANNEL
Being consistent is an excellent tool in branding and leading a successful company. Being consistent creates a subconscious connection between you and your clients and a sense of safety and trust that they can depend on. But, that doesn't mean that everything you post has to be the same. This can draw more of your follows to check out other platforms that you run your social media on, and is another tool you can use to get your customers excited. For example, you might only make announcements about new products, deals, and giveaways on your Facebook stories. But, you hint on all of your social media platforms that to view and learn about these announcements you have to view it on Facebook stories. This can then bring your Instagram or other platform's audience to your Facebook page and vice versa. This is a great way to cross-promote your social media platforms and to keep up traffic to all of your pages. Also, different audiences prefer different types of social media platforms. When creating any story, tailor them to the platform and the audience that prefers it. Not only are you speaking to your audience through your Facebook videos, but you are also speaking to a very specific group and demographic.

IT'S ALL IN THE TIMING
Just like Instagram, Facebook Stories live right at the top of your followers' Facebook feeds. They are the first thing that pops up once the app is loaded on their phone or computers. Staying at the top of their page and in their minds' eyes is very important and effective for your business. This is very similar to putting in the much needed time for SEO and getting your company in the top few results in Google searches. This is why you need real and in the moment, not perfect, videos. The more honest they are and the more you draw in your audience, your stories will remain in a consistent spot in their feeds.

Are you getting excited about the potential Facebook stories can bring to you and your company? We hope so. Even if you're still a bit skeptical, now is a great time to try out the many features Facebook stories can give you. Have fun, be bold, and be honest. Your audience, customers, and fans love and support you for a reason. Let that reason shine through your posts! Don't let your audience forget about you, and don't forget about them. We hope you're doing well, Summerville. We miss seeing you and look forward to enjoying our town together very soon. Stay safe, stay smart, and stay home!

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Facebook Stories; Adding Them To Your Work Flow (Part One)

4/17/2020

 
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In our last blog series, we discussed how important and exciting Instagram Stories can be for your company and your ad campaigns. In this blog series, we are going to be discussing the pros of adding Facebook Stories to your workflow!  

Hello Summerville! It's been another strange few weeks. We are still open and operating, and very thankful to our clients during this time. We are also very thankful to do our business online and in the safety of our own homes. While we are still very busy, the safety of our clients and employees is at the top of our priority list. How much are you appreciating Google Hangouts, Google Duo, Zoom, Skype, and all platforms of video chats right now? We certainly are! Seeing the faces of our clients and employees right now in this digital fashion is so needed and so important. In turn, making the most of your digital fingerprints and social media platforms for your company is more important than ever before. We are all on our phones and computers more than we have been in the past, for work, to fill up our free time, and to keep some sort of normalcy in our lives. This is the best time to stay in touch with your customers and your audience, while they are sitting there waiting on their phones and computers just like you are. A reminder of your appreciation of them, that you miss them, and that you're thinking of them will be very appreciated and will help your company during this difficult time. It will also help amp you up to business speed once everything returns to normal again. We have just wrapped up our blog series on the importance of using Instagram Stories. We thought the next set of blogs should focus on the importance of using stories on Facebook and its many benefits. And believe us, there are quite a few! 

Think of how important and fun videos have become on all of our Facebook feeds, both on our professional personal Facebook pages. For the first time in history, social media is finally being used for what it is created for, thanks to the current situation. It is bringing us all together and keeping us in contact. We need one another more than ever, and having a personal connection via your social media platforms is the perfect way to do so. Why not stay connected to your clients, followers, and audience in a personal way to help everyone stay focused and positive? For the first time in our known history, you get to have face to face personal interactions without asking anyone to leave their couches or homes. As a matter of fact, you wouldn't want it any other way. 

Similar to Instagram, Facebook stories are one of the newest ways to connect and show off your brand and company in a very fun and creative way. The videos you post on Facebook stories last the same 24 hours and provide a very user-friendly platform for anyone who wants to create a live video, post a video onto your stories, or upload a video or picture to your stories. Think about it in terms of numbers. Facebook has over 2.23 billion active users every month. That is over three times the amount of users that its story rival Snapchat has. That is a HUGE group of people that could become potential customers and followers, and they are just waiting to meet you! 

  • The Numbers Game
If you haven't guessed or know by now, we treasure our analytics. We swear by them! The more you can physically see the success in your posts and what does and doesn't work when you do post, the better you'll be at reaching your followers and demographics. You will be reaching them exactly how they want to be reached and with posts that they want and will enjoy seeing over and over again. One of the many great features of Facebook stories is that you can see who is looking at them and how many people are seeing them on a daily basis. It does take a little longer to track these findings, but it is worth your time to see who is tuning in. Experiment with more ways to pull in your audience and fine-tune your posts to grow your viewing audience and keep track when your viewers are tuning in. Keep track of any comments and use those to your advantage too! The more people that comment, the more you can see if there is a shared need or opinion that needs to be taken care of, addressed, or even changed. Listen to your customers, it will help you continue to do what you do best. They are giving you some excellent FREE advice! Take it! If you are going live in your stories, replying back to their comments or acknowledging them is a must. This makes them feel seen and appreciated and can help the live videos take on a very natural conversational direction and tone. 

  • Natural Lighting 
A lot of companies and brands are nervous about using videos on Facebook for many of the same reasons they hesitate to use their Instagram stories. Many people believe that their stories and videos all need to look as perfect and professional as their websites, Instagram feeds, and Facebook pages. But, just like we discussed in our last two blogs, perfection isn't the key here. There is so much people can relate to when you look natural and normal, and not picture-perfect! This is such a draw to your clients because they get to see the humanity and real-life side of who you are as a company. They like seeing the normal over the picture-perfect. Seeing a company grow and live in a day to day fashion is a journey that your audience will love to join you on. This tool allows natural and organic interaction and connection in an everyday sort of way. This natural and real connection is so often looked over in most other ways to post and connect online, so it will boost your audience over your competitors. It also helps keep your company and the conversation you want to have with your audience right in front of their eyes. Stories are always right at the top of a Facebook feed. The more consistent you are about posting, the more your stories will be seen. 

  • Sharing a Connection
Social media is so important right now, keeping in contact is so needed, and cultivating a relationship is key in staying connected with your clients. Remember that although it is important to talk about business and use these free forms of fun and creative advertisement to your advantage, don't just use them to sell your product. You need to show the heart and soul of your company and some fun! Using your stories to blast sales and products will turn your audience off and they will scroll right past you if that's all you talk about. Your audience whats to get to know and get behind the people who make up the company and product they so much, and why not let them? There are so many fun ways to share who you and your employees are.
  • Share selfies and videos of you, your team members, employees celebrating birthdays or other big life events, your employee achieving a big milestone in the company, etc. 
  • Share videos, articles, and news that relates to your company and why you do what you do. It's thought-provoking and a great way to start a conversation. 
  • Use videos to show sneak peeks of new products, upcoming exciting announcements, and when big milestones happen. Celebrate and share with your audience! 

This is a great place to start! Don't worry, we still have a little bit more to share. That is the glory of a two-part blog! We get to see you again (virtually, of course) and you get to keep on learning! Stay safe, stay healthy, stay smart. We are here for you Summerville. We are in this together and we will get through this together! 
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Don't Hate on the Chat Boxes

9/19/2019

 
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Those annoying popups of the early 2000s are back and better than any of us ever imagined. The next time you're using a website for your job or you're doing some online shopping, take advantage of those online chat boxes. You might be surprised that more often than not, you'll be talking to an actual person! 

Happy September friends! We are happy to see it inching closer to what might be cool fall weather here in the Lowcountry. But we're  also excited for the future fall decorations and any excuse to drink more coffee. With all these new exciting flavors, who doesn't love a cup of hot goodness with a splash of pumpkin? As we are ushered into a new month, it means a new blog! For this blog, we will be talking about the benefit of online chat boxes and how they could help businesses and its users.  

Now, we do remember those annoying chat boxes from our early days of the internet. They were able to maybe answer two questions before directing you to a FAQ site that led to more confusion and frustration than when you started interacting with the chatbox to begin with. But today, the chat box is back and better than ever before. And this time, there are actual people behind the keyboard to help with your questions and concerns faster and more efficiently than ever before. 

In this age of social media, people expect answers and information right away. If it's not received in this timely manner, you could likely lose a customer. On average it takes almost ten hours for businesses to respond to social media comments and 12 hours to emails. For today's standards, that's just too long. Live chat boxes let you have in the moment conversations with your customers while they're visiting your website. The rate of 10-12 hours is cut down to an astounding 1-2 minute response! How amazing is that? But live chat boxes go above than just response time, there are so many incredible assets these little boxes can do for you. 
  • It will help you get sales. Since there is someone right there ready to answer questions, it eliminates doubt and allows you to answer questions right away. 
  • You can handle more customers at one time with these chat boxes instead of being weighed down by answering a ton of emails over a long period.
  • You have the advantage of keeping customers who aren't comfortable with calling on the phone. We get it, sometimes you just want a simple question answered and don't want to call with the chance of reaching a recording.  
  • These chat boxes give you a human connection, forming a line of trust between you and your customer. 
  • It can lead to getting the reputation of having wonderful customer service and providing your customers a great experience while they're online. 
  • You can gain their information faster and avoid having customers fill out forms to gain all of this information. Even if they don't buy something or don't need your services at this time, this provides you with the information you need to stay in touch with them and offer an opportunity to them in the future. 
  • Not a lot of companies out there are using this tool to their advantage. Using it now will put you ahead of your competition, and help draw a following. 
  • These chat boxes allow you to get to know your customer's wants and needs by gathering a lot of information at one time. Make note of repeated questions, worries, frustrations, and other trends. This information can help you interact with your future customers better, and build a website designed better for their use. You can also use this knowledge to focus and drive your Ad and Social Media campaigns.
  • Chat boxes allow you to be proactive in fixing issues for or with your clients. 
  • It can provide better analytics. You can know how many people are visiting your website, what times they're visiting your website, how many chats are received, how long the wait times are, and the performance of your employees on these chats, etc. 

You have the choice of hiring a company to operate these chat boxes for you, or you can do it within your company. It just depends on how much you'd like to invest in this service. 

The great news is that even if you don't have an actual person behind the chatbox, there are now intelligent bots that can be installed into the systems when you're away. You can program them to help with basic questions in such a way that will keep your customers interested and informed, and lure them back to talk with a human once you're back to answer their questions. These bots aren't the annoying and unhelpful bots that were originally created, thankfully. They are now offering quick, insightful, and engaging info while your customers wait.

There is a ton of chatbox software out there, you just need to decide what version is right for your company. Some are free and almost all of them offer a quick and easy setup and they are easy to customize. Some examples to look into are Intercom, Drift, Influx, Autopilot, Olark, LivePerson, and SnapEngage. 

It's been interesting watching this technology make its comeback, and we are very intrigued to see where it will go. With smarter AI growing and the opportunity to connect faster with one another than ever before, this could transform the way businesses are run and how efficiently money is made. Follow this trend with us and let us know how you feel. If you've experienced a chatbox recently with these attributes, share your experience below! 

Have a great week, friends! We will see you next time! 
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