 Get to know the hilarious, hard-working, and creative individuals that make up the Creative Consulting family one blog at a time.
Hello, Summerville! It's that time again where we introduce you to another incredible member of the Creative Consulting team! So grab your favorite fall beverage (have you seen Cuppa Manna's fall menu?! If not - go check it out NOW!) and get settled in for another wonderful read! I know, as the blog writer, that you hear a lot of things from my perspective - but it's all I have, right? It's been so fun getting to know my coworkers a little better every time I sit down in my favorite writing chair and get to work on these profiles. We all create our own work schedules, so often through the week, we are like ships passing in the night. We see one another on Mondays and during other weekly meetings, but sometimes we might go a whole week without seeing one another. The freedom we have to create, work, and make CC possible is something that I consider a huge gift. Life, right now, has been so strange that creating a workflow for myself (and how everyone on our team has been doing) is a blessing. So, when I sit down to write these, it's like my teammate is sitting right next to me and we are sharing a laugh over an inside office joke. Nothing like work making you smile, right? This woman was one of the very first team members that was hired after I was brought on. I came into the office during a huge transition, and for a while there our little family only had 5 members in it. It became apparent that we needed to grow and we needed some incredible talent to help Creative continue its upward climb. That is where Ms. Lizzy Smith came into the picture! Again, Meg and Stephan have an incredible way of hiring people who just fit together. Lizzy fit right in without a second hesitation. She jumped right into work and has kept creating incredible designs and websites since the day she began. Always positive, always quick to laugh, and excited about the work at hand - it has been wonderful to work with Lizzy. I constantly learn something new about the design world from her, and about social media at large. Also, another fun fact, we both got engaged a few weeks apart. There MUST have been something in the water, don't you think? I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did. It is my pleasure to officially introduce you to Lizzy Smith!
After reading all of that, aren't you inspired to do an all day marathon of the Harry Potter moves while eating a pile of popcorn and starting a new Pinterest board full of DIY and design ideas? No? Just me? Well, that sounds like a perfect day for Lizzy and me then! Again, it's always so fun to read through these. Even as the writer of the blog and the individual who came up with these questions, it's funny how often these particular questions don't come up during the workday. You spend so much time talking about work (of course) and other random topics of the day, and you might not even know your coworker's favorite food! Now that I know Lizzy and I love popcorn so much, I finally have an excuse to buy those giant popcorn tins around the holidays full of flavored popcorn! Which, I will of course, be bringing into the office. Maybe. There you have it, Summerville! You now know one more member of the Creative Consulting team! I hope you've enjoyed this blog - and I look forward to introducing you to the last four members of our team in the upcoming weeks! Until next time, make sure to look for the positives in any challenge you might be facing this week, and treat yourself to something from your favorite local shop, bakery, coffee shop, or restaurant this week!
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 We are finishing up our blog series on the best ways to handle negative social media comments. We know it's a difficult situation to deal with, but with enough preparation, you can be ready to handle anything!
Hello, Summerville! Welcome back to part two of our blog about handing negative social media comments. We hope that part one of this blog gave you a good basis for how to move forward if you are faced with this issue. As we mentioned before, this is not something we would wish on anyone. Sadly, it is very possible. Hopping on the internet and telling everyone exactly how you feel has become a trend since the dawning of Facebook, if not sooner, and has continued to grow stronger in the years following. As a business, you prepare for the inevitable with insurance, a strong plan, a good financial team, and a good workforce. Why not be prepared for everything you might face? Keep a watchful eye on all of your online networks, and be ready to handle everything and everyone you come across with an attitude of being calm, cool, and collected.
It might be incredibly hard, but take a moment to see the issue from the client's point of view. There will be people who will be angry just to be angry. If the product or service your company offers is broken, doesn't deliver as promised, or arrives extremely late, apologizing and owning up to your mistakes will help. Offering a discount, refund, voucher, or replacement can also help calm the tension at hand. Make sure you are aware of the comments you're receiving. Keep notifications on and connect them to a phone or email that will be checked and monitored frequently. Also, make sure to follow up with any complaints and follow through with what you promise to offer your client. Make sure you understand what the problem is and discuss how it can be fixed. Once these terms have been agreed on, follow through with them and check back in with your client to make sure they're happy and satisfied with the situation. This shows that you really care, and you didn't just fix the problem and forget about them. Sometimes you will run into a situation where an issue is out of your control. A system error could be beyond your knowledge to repair, your suppliers that help create your goods and services could be doing something to harm the quality of your product, and sometimes you are in a situation where you don't have the answers or a way to fix it yourself. That's okay - you're human. This doesn't mean you just toss it away and brush the problem off, you still have to fix it. What you can do is outsource someone who can help you. Recruit a good IT company, find a new supplier, and find the best of the best in what you're having issues with. This can cause a hike in price than just refunding your customer, but this can be a priceless decision to help keep your customer and continue bringing in others. It is never wrong to ask for help with something you don't know! Not only can this help relations between you and your customer, but it can be a learning opportunity for you and your team as well!
According to Forbes, 84% of people who go looking into a company online say they trust the reviews they see. Sometimes you can't help how people will respond or react, their anger could be something completely out of your hands. If you can, try to get ahead of any potential problems so negativity can be avoided. Listen to your customers before things get difficult. Have you been hearing similar small complaints? Have you been hearing the same suggestion over and over again? Have people been supporting you for a significant amount of time, but have been asking for a revamp of your goods and services? Listen to them! They are giving you excellent free advice, why not take it? If you can get ahead of the curve, this can help avoid negative situations.
Negative comments are bound to happen. It's how you deal with them that will make all the difference. Everyone is allowed to have their opinion, but make sure your voice as a company isn't quiet. Don't be afraid to connect with these unhappy people, human to human. Remember too, one bad comment does not reflect your company as a whole. Take it in stride, and keep doing what you do best! If you need help or would like to learn more, please contact us! We look forward to talking to you soon!  Creating a strong brand identity can make or break your company's success. Here is why it is so important, along with a few tips and suggestions to make yourself stand out!
Hello, Summerville! We hope you're doing well. The smell of pumpkin spice abounds, all of our favorite stores here in the square are starting to put out decorations. We also might be a tad embarrassed about the number of baked fall goods from Swank that we've already sampled. To say the least, we are pretty excited about fall! Celebrating Summerville, supporting our fellow local businesses, and creating exactly what our clients want is a part of our brand. The bright orange color we use in our logo is a part of who we are. We are quirky, hardworking, and usually a little over-caffeinated. This is who we are and what makes us unique as a company. All of these are traits that we are proud of and what we want our current and future clients to know about us. All of these elements are a part of our branding. It's the part of our company that you see online, what you see when you drive by our office, and what you hear about us when you ask about us around town. Brand identity is the unique fingerprint that people will see and look into before they meet the people behind the business. This is why having a strong branding identity is so important. More Than Just A Logo Granted, yes. Your company needs a logo, a color scheme, and fonts that you'll use consistently. There is something very special in seeing your signage, window decals, business cards, website, social media, and stationary all decked out in your logo, colors, and fonts. All of these tools are necessary because you'll use them to catch the eye of your future clients. When it comes to the whole of your brand identity, this is a very small part of the whole story. Your brand identity is so much more than your meticulously created logo. It is your reputation, how you want people to perceive you, your unique and individual voice, and what you want to be known for. It needs to stand up to the challenge, support your business, and get your message across.
What It Does For You Now that you've established what brand identity is what can it turn around and do for you?
It takes work to create your brand identity. Creating your logo didn't happen overnight, and your brand identity won't provide these amazing benefits to you overnight either. The steps to creating a strong brand identity aren't overwhelming, they're actually very straight forward. The challenge is implementing them into your workflow and your company's everyday life. How To Get Started As we said, strong brand identity doesn't happen instantly. It takes time, research, and doing all of those necessary tedious things that arent the glamorous side of owning a business.
The list goes on with the many ways you can create, strengthen, and grow your brand identity. This blog is just a peek into everything that is available to you. We did mention that this took time, right? Every company and business is different. You need to find what works for you. We just wanted to provide a little foundation for you to build on. The long and short of it is that brand identity is important and it's worth your time. If you need help or would like to learn more, please contact us! We look forward to talking to you soon!  Get to know the hilarious, hard-working, and creative individuals that make up the Creative Consulting family one blog at a time.
Welcome back to another team member spotlight, Summerville! We hope you've been doing well, and are slowly getting settled into the school year. Even though this school year does look different for many of our friends and family members, there are still a lot of things happening that make this time of year special. Pumpkin and apple-flavored goodies are showing up in all of our favorite Summerville businesses, the smell of fresh school supplies greets us where ever we go, and the chill of 80 degrees is a wonderful reminder that fall is right around the corner! This week we will be featuring our second Creative Consulting team member, Stephen Slappey. I've had the pleasure of working with Stephen for over a year now, and I am thrilled to share his interview with you. As a creative being who has lead a very different career path than many of my 9-5 friends, coming into a business like Creative Consulting was an interesting transition for me. As an independent contractor, musical theater actor and singer (spoiler for my spotlight!), and writer, I haven't had the greatest luck when it comes to a normal 9-5 schedule or experience. I have waited tables, catered, and paid my dues in retail. Working with a company that does work on a 9-5 schedule was a big change for me, and even though I still work on my own schedule, it's taught me quite a bit. A lot of this education is thanks to Stephen. I've not met someone so passionate about learning more about the people he's talking to, even if he will only have one conversation with that individual. I've not met someone so inspired to learn more about his industry and to apply it right away. I have personally watched him single handily turn a meeting from a difficult situation into an atmosphere of joy in a matter of minutes. He always puts others first and is dedicated to the growth of his company and to his friends, family, and co-workers. Also, his excitement over learning new things, the latest update in his favorite videogames, and life, in general, is refreshing. He can be a goofball and strictly professional in one sentence, and I still don't know how he does it. He was also very kind to take the time to sit down with me and answer these questions so that you can get to know the other half of the Creative Consulting founding team and owners. Meg and he make an amazing team. Working for them has been the easiest thing I've ever done. It's rewarding, it continues to teach me, and pushes me in all the right ways. I'm proud to be a part of their team, and I'm thrilled for you to learn more about Stephen! Name: Stephen Slappey How long have you been working at CC: Around six years. How did you hear about the positions: I invented it. What do you do for CC: Marketing, planning, management, customer relations, pricing, and sales. What is your favorite part about working for CC: The ability to help set people on the right path. What have you learned since you worked at CC: Too many things to count. What is your favorite part of your workday at CC: Teaching our clients. Favorite memory at CC so far: When I was able to help one of our long-standing clients avoid a $10,000 scam. Favorite Summerville Small Business (besides CC): Coastal Coffee! What is your education background: Marketing, Graphic Design, and Computer Science. What are your hobbies: Board games and games in general, reading, learning, spending time with people, deep conversations. What is your favorite book, color, song, movie: Book: Marvels Civil War Color: Orange Song: Too many to count Movie: Marvel Avengers Interesting Facts: CC is just the beginning. There is so much coming for everyone to see. Favorite Food: Anything Asian! Favorite Restaurant in Charleston/Summerville: One specific one doesn't come to mind. Anywhere I can make a memory with the people I'm with. Favorite things to do in Charleston/Summerville: Be with the people I love Make sure you are following Creative Consulting on all of our social media platforms. Stephen has recently started a new vlog series discussing everything you want to know about business, social media, and more. If there is something more you want to know, reach out and tell him! His love for learning more about the industry is equally matched with his love of teaching. So make sure to give Stephen a shout out on his new videos and to watch all of them. I guarantee that you'll learn at least three new things every time you watch! Until next time Summerville, stay safe and be well. Take a moment to enjoy the things that make fall in the Lowcountry special. Things might be tough, but you and your coffee are strong enough to take on anything!  Get to know the hilarious, hard-working, and creative individuals that make up the Creative Consulting family one blog at a time.
Summerville! I feel like we know you so well, but in the hustle and bustle of our everyday business life - you might not know us as well as we'd like. Introducing your team and acknowledging their creative and unique skills is such an important part of your day to day business. These are the people who are helping your company grow and succeed every day. As the blog writer for Creative Consulting, I see this in our company and all the companies we work with daily. We love celebrating the small businesses of Summerville and watching others celebrating their employees and what makes them unique and special. If you've had the chance to walk into the Creative Consulting office on any given day, it isn't strange to find a bunch of smiling faces, a pug named LuLu, and empty coffee cups from Coastal Coffee Roasters or a box from Swank Bakery sitting around. It's a small creative universe that each of the employees helps to fill with laughter, problem-solving, unique ideas, and hard work. I spend a lot of time in our blogs talking about business tips and strategies that can help your company and its marketing strategy grow. But, I thought it the appropriate time to throw in a new kind of blog into the mix. Over the next few weeks and months, I want to introduce you to each of my coworkers in a fun and unique way. I want to thank each of my coworkers for being such team players, as always, for participating and helping me create this series of blogs. I am so thankful to my fellow team members and the Summerville family. It's thanks to these incredible individuals, who teach me something new every day about the marketing world and life in general, that Creative gets to do what it does every day. I created a series of questions that turned into a fun and informal interview. I wanted it to sound like the whos who of the creative world of Summerville. Thankfully, there were no annoying paparazzi or embarrassing pictures that any of them will be subjected to. We are a family company, after all. To kick off this new blog series, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Meaghan Thompson, Co-Owner of Creative Consulting. But that's not the only hat Meg wears. She is also Office Operations Manager, and the Art and Media Director. She is one of the hardest working women I've ever met, and one of the kindest. I by no means am a graphic artist, and to work with someone so talented at her job and her craft is inspiring. Also, spoiler alert, she is Lu's mama! How long have you been working at CC: 6 years! I created it with Stephen before we both graduated college. It was a way for us to test the waters in our field and make a profit as well. To be honest, when we first started I told Stephen we wouldn't get very far, that at most we'd have a couple of projects and then graduate to find other positions. He convinced me to give it a try and it picked up speed fast, we've been running it ever since. How did you hear about the positions: We made them over time. When we first got started, nothing was really set in stone and a lot of things have changed over the years. We used to have our social media managers create graphics for themselves, and the SEO specialists wrote their own blogs but we've been able to fan out those responsibilities as we've grown. What do you do for CC: I am the office manager and designated Mom-Friend. I communicate directly with the clients and the team, help plan out the ads for each month, review all of the blogs and social media posts for edits and updates, schedule meetings with clients or walk-ins, keep updated on current marketing and digital media standards, attend potential client meetings, and regularly attend local networking events. What is your favorite part about working for CC: I love that our environment is built around comfortability, respect, and creativity. We created a place that's easy and fun to work at, and we're very transparent with each other in the goals and work within our business. At the end of the day, it feels less like a 'job' and more like a team project that we're all a part of in different ways. What have you learned since you worked at CC: Since creating CC, the biggest thing I've learned is to protect my time and how to respectfully delegate. I often have the issue of taking on more than I can handle for the sake of people-pleasing but as we've grown, I've learned to relax my grip and trust others to take care of certain aspects of the business. Still learning how to be a better leader for my team each and every day. What is your favorite part of your workday at CC: I love taking breaks around lunchtime and going for walks around the square, it's the perfect place to get some fresh air and maybe even eat lunch outside. Favorite memory at CC so far: My favorite memory for CC so far would probably be our Christmas party once we moved into the office in 2018. We had the entire office decorated with Christmassy things, there was great food, and we even had a local guitarist come and play some music for us. It was such a successful and busy Open House, all of our business friends and family came to support us and it was a really great time. It was a really defining moment too because we now had our 'own' place to grow into. Favorite Summerville Small Business (besides CC): You don't even have to ask me this one! My second home is Coastal Coffee Roasters! What is your education background: Graphic Design Bachelors Degree, minored in Computer Science- and a graduate of Charleston Southern University What are your hobbies: Ceramics, Painting, and Video Games What is your favorite book, color, song, movie:
Interesting Facts:
Favorite Food:
Favorite Restaurant in Charleston/Summerville: Five Loaves, NICO, and Red Pepper Favorite things to do in Charleston/Summerville: Go to the Summerville Farmers Market, Walk around Azalea Park and play Pokemon Go, Sit at Coastal Coffee Roasters and read or paint If you'd like to learn more about Meg's artwork, and to read her brand new blog "Pinky Promises" visit her website here: http://iampickledtink.com/ I have loved working for Meg in the little over a year I have been with Creative. I am not a native to Summerville or even South Carolina for that matter, but I know a true and wonderful Summerville woman when I meet one, and Meg is the definition. Thank you for helping me grow, and to help me continue to learn about what we get to do every day! Meg loves this town and she loves the company that she and Stephen built together. That love and dedication is one of the many joys in working for them.  Not all traffic is created equally. Some of it we dread at 5 PM, while others we work very hard to bring to our websites to grow our brands. Do you know the different kinds of traffic that come to your website and the ways you can help them flourish? Take a moment to sit back and enjoy the ride through this particular kind of traffic!
Valentine's day is almost around the corner, and we just love celebrating love. Love of one's brand, love of one's growth, and the love of one's ad campaigns. These three things might be difficult to love because they can take a lot of time and effort to become prosperous. But so does an important relationship. You often spend more time working at your job and helping it grow than you do with your family and friends. Understandably, you need to nurture and support these aspects of your company just like you would a budding relationship. One very popular way to grow your company is to understand the four different types of traffic your website can have to gain followers, new customers, and keep returning customers coming back for more. Remember, your website is a gateway to your business. it's the first introduction many people will have to your brand and what you're selling. If you can increase the number of people who come to your website, potentially you'll have more followers, customers, and purchases. But building a website and hitting "publish" won't automatically bring visitors to your website. Getting people, and a large amount of them to visit your website isn't an easy task. There are billions of websites out there and infinite amounts of information readily available to you at all times. If you don't have the right tools or don't use the right tools to gain proper website traffic, your website could easily be losing traction and not getting the attention it deserves. Understanding and using all forms of traffic for your website isn't a quick and easy fix. There isn't one solution to make your website the most popular website ever or to get the number of visitors you want right now. Your business and advertising strategies need to have a few different tools working at the same time to optimize your website and to get those visitors you want and need. We completely understand that online marketing is or can be overwhelming. That's one of the reasons why our company exists. We are here to take away that worry and stress and do it for you. But if you're taking this on by yourself and you're handling it all on your own, it's easy to fall into a pit of despair. But don't fall prey to it. There is a good amount you need to know to be successful in gaining the right amounts of traffic to your website, and sometimes it's hard to know where to start. There are admittedly many places to start and many great tools available to you. But start simply with one goal, getting more traffic to your website. If you start there and continue to grow, there is nowhere to go but up. In the big scheme of things, four big types of traffic visit your website. There are others, but in this two-part blog, we are just going to be discussing the four main players in bringing traffic to your website. So sit back and learn, and let's get some traffic to your website! TRAFFIC TYPE ONE: Direct Traffic! This audience is specifically looking for you the minute they look for your website. They sit down at their computer and type in your website or specific type in your business name into their browser. They have heard about you and went looking for you directly. This audience and type of traffic already know, is very familiar with, and wants your brand. For companies that have been around for some time and are established, this kind of traffic is the result of years of cultivating an audience through branding and pushing to make themselves a household common name. If a much younger business is getting this kind of traffic, it is thanks to very smartly placed ads and a well-branded marketing plan that understood and knew their demographic right at the very beginning. This type of marketing doesn't mean online marketing. Its benefits come from an offline marketing strategy. If your company is getting a large amount of this kind of traffic to your website, but you're not seeing any sense of return in purchases or new clients, then it might be time to rethink your brand. Always make sure your brand matches what you're selling and who you're selling it to. TRAFFIC TYPE TWO: Referral Traffic! This type of traffic comes from visitors visiting your website by outside links that are placed across the internet. If you place your links on popular webpages or forums where a lot of traffic already exists, the more likely you are to also lead this traffic to your website. If you publish an article, popular post, something that grabs an audience's attention with a call to action to visit your website, then you might find some big success using this type of traffic. Be very careful with this type of traffic though. Google can flag these posted and shared links as bots or scams. Which is the last few months, has become a very strict regime. Make sure your links have value and quality, and you post them on reputable sites. Avoid creating or posting on gimmicks, scams, and cheesy advertisement to get followers for the sake of followers. That will blow up in your face before any success comes your way. Think about this. These are just TWO of the four ways to optimize traffic to your website. They are in-depth, but not out of reach. How are you feeling about these two types of traffic? Do they sound familiar? Are you using them in your everyday drive to bring more traffic to your website? If you're not, try and add them to your traffic intake, and see where you are when we post the second half of this blog. You should experiment and see what you can gain by using them. Remember, you won't be losing anything by spending time cultivating these types of traffic. Try something new in your ad campaign this month. It might just completely turn around the traffic to your website, and get you on track to exactly what you want from your online business. Until next time, work hard, stay inspired, and stay caffeinated. |
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