This month Swift Business Solutions introduced it’s Fan Appreciation Page.
Our facebook fan page is designed to stay in touch with our friends, fans, clients and prospects. In addition to introducing our fans to some Swift Business Solutions, we share Fun Facts, Tasty Recipes and of course tips for making a difference in their business. Often, owners of the business are stuck working in their business and find it hard to work on their business. That is where some of our Swift Tips help ease the burden.
Back to the good stuff. During the month of June, we are focused on having some fun and spreading some LOVE (well we actually do this every month). If you are a fan of Swift on facebook you are now registered to have some amazing Cook Out Shakes delivered to your home or office. Cook Out shakes are growing crazy in the Carolinas and along the East Coast.
With some forty-two (42) different flavors and combinations, it is easy to become addicted, much like the team at Swift has. So we thought, since we are going there so much let’s share this with our fans on facebook, we share everything else. Not a fan of Swift on facebook yet? Why wait? Learn more about the Cook Out Shake Cool Down.
This is just the beginning! One of our newest clients is so pleased with her new website, she is sharing the love of her skills by offering an amazing offer for new silk screened shirts. This can also be found on our website, learn more here.
With over twenty years in the graphics industry working with hundreds, possibly thousands of different businesses. One thing that I can say with great confidence is, “A business with no sign, is a sign of no business.”
A building or lobby sign is something a business needs. However, today an argument can be made that a clean easy to navigate website is just as important. Many businesses small and large still consider their web presence more like a virtual business card and fail to take advantage of all of the amazing opportunities there are.
Your web presence is most likely to be the first place a new client is introduced to you or your business.
- What does your first impression look like?
- Is your contact information easy to find?
- Is your content up-to-date, fresh and relevant?
- Do you describe your business products and services well?
- Would you do business with your company after a first look?
If any of your answers are not positive, then it might be time to spend some time updating your website. Web Development is certainly something that Swift Business Solutions does. However, we are more focused on assisting our clients on updating and keeping their website up-to-date.
Showcasing projects that you have recently completed in your gallery/portfolio is one of many great ways to keep your client and first time visitors tuned into how you are shaping your industry. It is important to show that you and your company are an authority in your field.
There are no “silver bullets” for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). However, fresh content is something that every professional web development company will tell you is a must to rank well on Google, MSN, Yahoo and all of the other search engines. Although, any professional web marketing company will confirm that your content being updated frequently, several times a month if possible, is very beneficial.
Swift Business Solutions is actively seeking companies that would like assistance in maintaining their web presence. Does your website need to be updated or content refreshed? Take advantage of our offer for a Free Consultation to review, discuss and develop a Swift plan of attack to bring your website to a position that you, Google, MSN and Yahoo can smile about and cause people to talk about.
Ingredients
Serves 8
- 1 box of your favorite brownie mix (mix and bake in a 9″ springfoam pan lined with parchment paper)
- Pour caramel sauce over brownie after it has cooled in pan
- 12 ounces white chocolate
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 1/2 pound cream cheese, at room temperature
- 1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Directions
- In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, combine the white chocolate and heavy cream, stirring constantly until melted and smooth.
- Remove from the heat and refrigerate, stirring occasionally until cool, approx. 30 minutes.
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In a large bowl, combine the cream cheese, confectioners sugar and vanilla extract. Using an electric mixer set on medium speed, beat until well blended.
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Add the cooled white chocolate mixture and beat until light and fluffy, approx. 2 minutes.
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Pour the filling over the brownie, smooth with a rubber spatula. Cover with aluminum foil and refrigerate overnight.
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Plate and drizzle with more homemade caramel sauce and chocolate syrup.
Compliments of TickledRed.com
Ingredients – Homemade Caramel Sauce
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 tablespoon corn syrup
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/2 cup heavy cream, heated until warm
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
- 1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Directions
- In a heavy saucepan, stir together the sugar, syrup, and water until the sugar is completely moistened. Place your thermometer into the pot taking care that its tip is immersed into the sugar mixture.
- Heat, stirring constantly, until the sugar dissolves and the syrup is bubbling. Stop stirring completely and allow it to boil undisturbed until it turns a deep amber (380 F). Immediately remove it from the heat and slowly and carefully pour the hot cream into the caramel. It will bubble up furiously.
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Use a high-temperature heat-resistant rubber spatula or wooden spoon to stir the mixture until smooth, scraping up the thicker part that settles on the bottom. If any lumps develop, return the pan to the heat and stir until they dissolve. Stir in the butter and salt. The mixture will be streaky but become uniform after cooling slightly and stirring.
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Allow the sauce to cool for 3 minutes. Gently stir in the vanilla extract.
Compliments of MyBakingAddiction.com
Get The Local Advantage
Ever wonder what the Check In feature is? Location-based web services allow users to post “check in” from their mobile phones, telling friends where they are at any given moment. Facebook Places, Foursquare and Gowalla are the hot tickets for 2011, and they bring new opportunities to connect to customers on a local level.
Foursquare, for instance, enables venues to provide special offers to users who “check in” to your business often. Whether it’s a bar, restaurant or retail store, you can incentivize these highly-connected consumers to return more frequently.
Facebook Places – Allows the possibility for personal connections alerting you to friends that are nearby and like Foursquare offering special offers with participating retailers, again only available to users that “Check In”.
Just this month Starbucks celebrated their 40th Anniversary by randomly rewarding Foursquare Check ins with $40 Gift Cards. Did you check in? Check your app store and check in to find friends and unexpected deals.
 
We live in times when those who not only think outside the box, but live and market outside the box will not only survive, but thrive in all kinds of market conditions.
The code technology known as QR, or Quick Response is quickly becoming one of the easiest and fastest ways to connect and communicate with consumers and prospects in the marketplace. These QR Scan Codes are printed on almost anything from business cards, t- shirts, billboards and then deliver the scanner to a specific web page, delivering product information, special offers, price quotes or even movie times.
The beauty about these codes are the multiple benefits and tracking information which give you and your marketing team real time data and become more viral with your marketing efforts.
Let’s consider a real estate agent that markets one of his/her top listings in a magazine, that listing is sold before or just after the magazine hits the stands. Great for the listing, but now the agent can take advantage of the traffic and redirect to another listing or share compelling information to help them come in contact. Used by the same agent, as a home buyer drives through a development, a sellers agent can direct traffic to a specific web page or virtual tour giving them more information about the house that any flier could.
How many times have you misplaced a business card? With the QR code printed on the back of the card, you could easily download a V-Card into your address book on your phone to be synced with your computer later. See our sample shown here.
 Swift QR - Greg's Contact Info The uses are endless and will cause additional traffic to your website, increased brand awareness and can improve SEO rankings.
Ready to learn more and see how making this move could be a Swift Business Solution? Send us an email by clicking here.
Looking for a QR Reader? Download a scan reader or scanner app for your smart phone by visiting our QR Code page.
Contact the Swift Team today! We are serious about making an impact in your business. You have nothing to lose! Call by March 15th and set an appointment to meet by the end of March and we will buy lunch for our meeting.
Our team is looking forward to meeting you and developing a Swift Business Solution.
In this episode of the Swift Blog, we will begin to look at the ever important content within the pages of your website and cause you to determine how easy it is for someone to find your contact information.
Let’s start with the content…
We all know content is King! At the end of the day, if those that make it to your website are unable to find the information they are looking for, you will be out of luck. You might have a pretty sharp website, but if the content is just copied and pasted from the website your son or daughter did back in 1994, chances are you are going to lose them.
Content should be fresh and updated on a frequent basis, even if nothing has changed. If time is tight, consider using Swift for your content updates. All of the search engines use web crawlers to discover many things, including but not limited to keywords and phrases for your specific industry, date of page and pages being updated, who is traveling to your website and how they are getting there. Do not get caught with a blog post that is 6 months old. It is bad for business.
Often, you will hear the Swift Team refer to content updates and page content needing to satisfy everyone coming to dinner. What the heck does that mean? lol
With over fifty search engines, let’s imagine Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask, not to mention your clients and prospects, are coming to dinner. Everyone wants steak! Everyone wants their steak cooked differently. Google wants their steak pan-seared and oven roasted, Yahoo wants their steak grilled. Your content should be prepared for all to read and enjoy for both the search engine crawlers and the client you are looking to meet.
We have the knowledge of what the search engines are looking for, while you have the knowledge of what your clients are looking for, which makes us a perfect Chef and Sous Chef team. Contact Us today to set up a meeting or even a lunch appointment. We will bring lunch so we can break bread.
Make your website personal…
Your About Us or Our Team Page is a perfect place to begin to develop a personal relationship. Take time to share about your professional journey. Both you and a prospective client is looking to do business with a ‘real person’ that you can both develop an ongoing relationship with. Take the first step.
Contact Information
Nothing can turn off a prospective client more than not being able to find a way to contact you. Quick access to contact information is one of the largest and most common challenges in a company or individuals website. Yet time and time again, the most important piece of information in making contact is missing or not as visible as it should be.
- Look at yours now. How long does it take to find your phone number?
- Is it on every page? Why wouldn’t it be there?
- Is there a call to action or an opportunity to email you or join your newsletter?
- Do you have a newsletter? We can help….
- Go to our home page now and sign up for our Newsletter, so you can keep up with all we have to share.
Newsletters are a topic we will cover in the next few weeks. Are they time consuming? Sure they are. Anything worth anything will have some sort of cost associated with it. Time or money, it will be your choice. But note this, most anything electronic lives longer than anything printed. You choose.
Each year in early spring, in advance of fall enrollment drives, leadership of private schools around the country are focused on showcasing their schools in hopes of growing. This year the opportunities seem even greater as public schools are caused to cut costs and programs.
This year Messiah Lutheran School in Fairview Park, Ohio is ahead of the curve. New board members quickly identified the need to present a new fresh image. This new image was from the ground up. Logo, website and training for staff that will begin to manage some of the ongoing content updates.
With the newly designed website parents, students and prospective families can quickly access many new features including a Online Calendar, Enrollment Forms, Messiah Community News, Administration Contact Information, Teacher-Web Links and many other features that are in development.
The Swift Team will be working closely with the school board developing other methods of communication that will help Messiah Lutheran School facilitate the desired growth.
We are excited about our new partnership and look forward to an ongoing collaboration.
Several signs of recovery are coming into view in many local economies. This is certainly the case in the Upstate of South Carolina.
One of the leading indicators is the purchase of land, houses and commercial property. Metcalf Land Company has been serving buyers and sellers alike for over 35 years. It was important to find a web firm, that could compliment their team.
“Needing to surround ourselves with a team that can bring our web presence to the next level and having interviewed a couple of companies, it was easy to select The Swift Team after their presentation. Since then our expectations have been exceeded in our first stage …I couldn’t be happier. I can’t wait to get started on the SEO work.”
The Metcalf Land website is loaded with information for buyers, sellers and even brokers looking for specialty property types including: Riverfront Properties , Waterfront lots, Recreational and Timberland to name a few.
Real Estate buyers can access information that is extremely helpful, like understanding the different types of Agency Representation and even financing rural property.
It is amazing to find that in this day and age, some companies have still not realized how important their email communications are. Many companies or their employees send email replies late or not at all, or send replies that do not actually answer the questions you asked. If your company is able to deal professionally with email, this will provide your company with that all important competitive edge. Moreover by educating employees as to what can and cannot be said in an email, you can protect your company from awkward liability issues.
In this Swift Blog post we look at simple but important email etiquette rules and provide advice on how employers can ensure that they are implemented.
Why do you need email etiquette?
A company should consider implementing or having a class to discuss etiquette rules for three main reasons:
- Professionalism: by using proper email language your company will convey a professional image.
- Efficiency: emails that get to the point are much more effective than poorly worded emails.
- Protection from liability: employee awareness of email risks will protect your company from costly law suits.
What are the etiquette rules?
There are many etiquette guides and many different etiquette rules. Some rules will differ according to the nature of your business and the corporate culture. Below we list what we consider as the 32 most important email etiquette rules that apply to nearly all companies.
- Be concise and to the point. Do not make an e-mail longer than it needs to be. Remember that reading an e-mail is harder than reading printed communications and a long e-mail can be very discouraging to read.
- Answer all questions, and preempt further questions. An email reply must answer all questions, and preempt further questions – If you do not answer all the questions in the original email, you will receive further e-mails regarding the unanswered questions, which will not only waste your time and your customer’s time but also cause considerable frustration. Moreover, if you are able to preempt relevant questions, your customer will be grateful and impressed with your efficient and thoughtful customer service. Imagine for instance that a customer sends you an email asking which credit cards you accept. Instead of just listing the credit card types, you can guess that their next question will be about how they can order, so you also include some order information and a URL to your order page. Customers will definitely appreciate this.
- Read the email before you send it. A lot of people don’t bother to read an email before they send it out, as can be seen from the many spelling and grammar mistakes contained in emails. Apart from this, reading your email through the eyes of the recipient will help you send a more effective message and avoid misunderstandings and inappropriate comments.
- Use proper spelling, grammar and punctuation. – This is not only important because improper spelling, grammar and punctuation give a bad impression of your company, it is also important for conveying the message properly. E-mails with no full stops or commas are difficult to read and can sometimes even change the meaning of the text. And, if your program has a spell checking option, why not use it?
- Make it personal. Not only should the e-mail be personally addressed, it should also include personal i.e. customized content. For this reason auto replies are usually not very effective. However, templates can be used effectively in this way, see next tip.
- Use templates for frequently used responses. Some questions you get over and over again, such as directions to your office or how to subscribe to your newsletter. Save these texts as response templates and paste these into your message when you need them. You can save your templates in a Word document, or use pre-formatted emails. Even better is a tool such as ReplyMate for Outlook (allows you to use 10 templates for free).
- Answer swiftly. Customers send an e-mail because they wish to receive a quick response. If they did not want a quick response they would send a letter or a fax. Therefore, each e-mail should be replied to within at least 24 hours, and preferably within the same working day. If the email is complicated, just send an email back saying that you have received it and that you will get back to them. This will put the customer’s mind at rest and usually customers will then be very patient!
- Do not attach unnecessary files. By sending large attachments you can annoy customers and even bring down their e-mail system. Wherever possible try to compress attachments and only send attachments when they are productive. Moreover, you need to have a good virus scanner in place since your customers will not be very happy if you send them documents full of viruses!
- Use proper structure and layout. Since reading from a screen is more difficult than reading from paper, the structure and layout is very important for e-mail messages. Use short paragraphs and blank lines between each paragraph. When making points, number them or mark each point as separate to keep the overview.
- Do not overuse the high priority option. We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf. If you overuse the high priority option, it will lose its function when you really need it. Moreover, even if a mail has high priority, your message will come across as slightly aggressive if you flag it as ‘high priority’.
- Do not write in CAPITALS. IF YOU WRITE IN CAPITALS IT SEEMS AS IF YOU ARE SHOUTING. This can be highly annoying and might trigger an unwanted response in the form of a flame mail. Therefore, try not to send any email text in capitals.
Rhino Blinds is well known in the hunting world for selling top quality hunting blinds used to hunt deer, turkey and other wild game. Rhino Outdoor and the products that they sell are focused on keeping the hunter concealed.
Their web presence is something they did not want concealed. Especially with the introduction of the Lid Cam Action Video Camera being seen for the first time by over 9,000 hunters this week in Indianapolis at ATA, the Archery industries largest and most inclusive show.
Swift Business Solutions completely redesigned the look and feel to be engaging and soon to be interactive with the ability to upload photos and videos of Rhino Outdoor hunters in action.
The Swift Team will also be working to communicate with press and hundreds of outfitters nationwide. Visit Rhino Outdoor today to get a line on your new hunting gear for the upcoming season.
 Rhino Outdoor Web and Product Launch
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