If you’re trying to grow your practice in this day and age, you need to get online. The web opened new horizons for business and, fortunately for your accounting practice, loads of your competitors are not yet fully exploiting advanced CPA website marketing strategies. Opportunities are still abundant in almost every market for early adopters who are able to employ a few simple online marketing strategies to lure prospects into their firms. However, now that you’ve put yourself out there on an outstanding CPA Website, are you letting potential customers fall through the cracks by failing to respond in a timely manner?
In this piece, we examine five potential pitfalls in the new technology, with the brave new world of social media, and with the extra interest in your practice. Crafting a solid online presence requires a number of different tactics: social networking (like Twitter and Facebook), drawing attention to your site via article marketing and other tactics.
But what if you haven’t planned ahead for the increase in communication? What if you aren’t sure how to find the blog comments and respond to them?
Take the following paragraphs into account as you craft a plan to meet the needs of your customers and deliver outstanding results as you expand into cyberspace.
Be Sure to Respond to Comments on Your Blog
Making a blog is an excellent way to attract a customer base and keep the world informed about where your business is heading. But don’t just “set it and forget it.” If someone gives you feedback in the form of a blog comment, you have to comment on that comment. It’s just plain polite to respond to people who have made the effort to read your work. When you do, you show your professionalism, and you also keep any negative situation from getting out of control.
Assigning someone from your organization to respond to blog comments (even if that person is you) is good web etiquette – remember, communication flows both ways.
Make Answering Emails a Priority
This one’s a big one: if you’re leaving email unanswered for weeks at a time – or even worse, not answering them at all – your customers are not going to be your customers for very long. The best course of action is to set up your email client with an auto-response so that your clients know the email has reached you. After that, it’s best to reply as quickly as you can in person, even if it is just an “I will look into that” response in the interim.
Don’t Forget Forum Posts
An online forum is a website devoted to a particular topic that folks post questions buy cialis and answers to. It doesn’t need as much attention as a blog – but it’s still critically important.
Forums are notoriously difficult to get to a popular state, so why would you leave questions unanswered and comments ignored? If you decide to start a forum, it’s absolutely critical that you monitor it regularly (check in every hour or so) and respond to all worthy posts – especially if they’re negative. And it goes without saying that all spam and otherwise inappropriate posts should be promptly removed.
Hate Twitter? Get Over It!
The age of Twitter is here. Even if you can’t stand this social networking microblogging phenomenon, your clients might be deeply involved in it. It’s prudent, even if you don’t use the social platform yourselves, to assign somebody the task of searching for “tweets” about your service or product. Respond to negative and positive tweets buy Albendazole online alike: ask the user to contact your company for a resolution, or thank them for their positive comment. Remember, ignoring your clients online is a surefire way to lose business.
One note: Twitter is less important for the service professional than for the retail outfit or big brand. That said, it IS the wave of the future. Be careful not to ignore this new tool, even if you have evidence that your target market isn’t using it – because they very likely will be soon.
It May Only Exist on Your Screen – But It’s Still Important
In the days before email, companies received letters – and chances are they answered each one carefully and promptly. There’s something about a paper version of communication that makes it seem more important. But let’s face it: nobody sends letters today. Email has taken the place of them – and whereas email is used casually in our private lives, in business, it must be treated with as much care as one treats a letter.
Make time for you and your staff to pay attention to all types of communication now reaching you on the web. The more you manage your online reputation, the more your practice will grow.
Technorati Tags: cpa website marketing, Internet Marketing
Posted under Internet Marketing