the sephone blog

Have you ever “Googl-ed” yourself?
Sounds kinda dirty doesn’t it?

Do you know what an employer or a potential employer may see about you before you may meet them? Or is there someone within your daughter’s Youth Group that could be a real resource for you professionally?

Even if you aren’t looking for a job, it is a great New Year’s Resolution to get your online profiles together and make sure they say what you want them to say about you. Sure you may be on the web site for your son’s Little League Team, or perhaps you have contributed to your favorite recipe blog. These are good, but more and more potential employers and other folks are looking YOU up on the internet GOOGL-ING “your name.”

The FIRST STEP is, sign-up for a LinkedIn account. You may be surprised at how many people you can network with this way. You can find old college buddies, old bosses or that fancy neighbor down the street that is in your Neighborhood Watch program. You can send them an unobtrusive message and learn more about them as they can about you. You also may be very surprised at the resources you have at your finger tips that you just aren’t using!

I started following this person on Twitter, named Guy Kawasaki. He wrote this blog entry called 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn. And it is terrific. Like all his posts, it is very direct and very easy to understand. So rather than to regurgitate his all ready well written article, I urge you to check it out and try some of his ideas.

Remember…YOU have control over the information of your online professional profile.

Don’t say you don’t have time to do this. Make the time, start today, one step at a time.

So if and when you are asked to “clean out your desk” you can feel some power of being YOU! Or along the way, you may connect or reconnect with someone that can really help in your dream job! Try LinkedIn as your way to build YOU as a brand and as a valuable asset to ANY company!

Okay being honest, I am the least technical person of our partner group – I don’t mind saying so, in fact if you ever look at my own blog, “Techno-Trapped in my 40’s” it covers all kinds of things from cell phones, iPods, blogging, myspace and btw I am always looking for content. Certainly email ideas to this address and I will try to get it posted! Or, if you know someone that may find it useful please pass it on!

So that being said, I believe I may be in the minority in my company, but in the majority among random business folks. I often say around the office, “I need to know what time it is, please don’t tell me how to build a watch!”

The next time you want to know anything – especially when it comes to technology – go to (drum roll, please)….YOU TUBE! Stop laughing, it is true. Have you ever tried to call Google and ask a question about something? I am sure the Google folks are wonderful people, but the technical support from many of these think tank geek companies generally is comprised of a help website where you have navigate through your topic and pray you have picked the right keyword, then after a few curse words you are served up several hundred options of brilliance that you need to wade through. You may find it easier to true You Tube first.

For example: If you go to You Tube search for “How to set up email in Outlook Express” you get a 4:50 second (not great quality, but it works and it is easy to use) video that someone made with screen shots and you got right there! It takes me 10 minutes searching through most “techie” software websites just to get frustrated and not finding the answer.

I am shocked there have been only 1700 views and generally speaking most of these “HOW TO’s” dont have a lot of views. This is what led me to do this post in the first place. I really don’t think many people know how to use You Tube in this way, but it is terrific.

IN FACT, when you call our office, we can help our customers, but have started using these You Tube tools and they really like them. They can see as they go and these tools are accessible 24 hours a day!

Ok-  Politics and Religion arent necessarily the the highest on anyones list to bring up in a public gathering because of the wide variety of opinions that exists-  Someone will always get offended.  So to be PC, these topics are usually reserved for the dining room table, or the living room conversations between close friends and family.

In this case, I will make an exception.

If there is one thing that makes the highlight reel from this last election, and believe me I know there are many, but if I was asked to pick one, I dont think I would hesitate in stating that the use of technology by the Democratic Party is one of the top 5.  Hillary used it to announce her candidacy and some others too, but most specifically I am referencing how technology was deployed by the Obama campaign.  They were ‘the bomb’.

One of the first was the use of YouTube! and then the iPhone App.

This extremely well built, functional, feature rich little app was relevant.

“the word relevant is key here”

The target audience is 18-45* year olds.  And you didnt need to be a gadget monster either.  The iPhone being relatively NEW and the App Store being only weeks old, and lastly the actual app allowing individuals who drank the cool-aid to share the news, see local events, learn about the issues and see all the media generated…  This was great!!

The biggest problem I saw was that the other side didnt get it (yes I was a Republican, maybe), and if they did- it was too late to respond!

Anyway- why is this important to a Tech company, welll if we applied what we learned here in the real world of business, specifically e-business and the Internet, use the following guidelines:

“Identify your target audience and then identify with your target audience”

How?

By giving them what they need….  (what ever that is, is specific to you and your business, and it should be relevant, and nifty or easy to use or something that differentiates you and your business from the rest to make you stand out from the rest)

What can that be?

a simple refridgerator magnet for a Pizza delivery service …. an iphone app that with one touch tells the pizza delivery service what and where!

Sometimes it dont need to be tech-based, just something that meets a need and places you in the top-of-mind awareness so they remember you for the next time.  Being a neat little gizmo doesnt hurt

see http://iphone.mainetourism.com

Here at Sephone, we know that your relationship with us doesn’t end the minute your site launches. In fact, support and maintenance may be the most crucial part of your online presence.

At the same time, though, we realize how difficult a support experience can be; we hate automated telephone trees and companies that hide their contact information just as much as you do. That’s why we’ve recently created support.sephone.com, our new support request system.

Entering a support request is easy; just head to support.sephone.com and fill out the simple form with as much information as you can provide. You’ll receive updates to your request via email, and you’ll know the minute your request has been addressed. You’ll even be given a link so that you can track the history of your request and enter additional information about it if necessary.

And don’t worry – we’ll still continue to offer our friendly phone support at 207-262-5040. If you’d like to talk to a real life person, give us a call; Dara or Wendy would be happy to help you with whatever you need. Whether you choose to contact us via support.sephone.com or over the phone, we’ll always be here to help!

Getting the most bang for your buck is the goal of almost every expenditure that a person or company makes. Web development is no different. One of the keys in working with a development firm is communications. Properly relaying ideas back and forth is very important. Nearly all of the tips below involve some form of communication.

Have a clear idea with distinguishable goals

This means, more or less, knowing what you what. You don’t have to have everything spelled right out, but you should be able to, in a few sentences, say exactly what your project goals are. When thinking about project goals, always think about the end result.

Think about what you want your site/application to do when it’s done. Try to relay the idea of how this helps your business to your developer as well; this may help them have a better understanding of what you want.

Example goals:

1. ‘Our website should list all of our dealers and be searchable by state,’
2. ‘We need to be able to schedule appointments with our clients and collect this information from them,’ or
3. ‘Our web application should track all of our customer inquiries.’

Feedback goes both ways…

Throughout the course of the project, the development team may have questions for you. Be as responsive, informative, and decisive as you can be. This will help the developers know what you want and will allow them to work as effectively as possible. Continually starting and stopping on a project makes it more difficult for developers to stay focused. Be prepared for their feedback as well. Most projects have several check-ups or milestones along the way with decisions to be made before you can move on to the next step.

Ask questions

Don’t be afraid to ask plenty of questions. You should understand what your developer is doing and why. That way, when a development company has a question, you will better understand why they are asking and the context of what they are asking. If you don’t understand what your development company is asking you, then ask them for more detail, so you can make an informed decision. Asking questions and discussing them also helps ensure that everybody is on the same page.

Let developers develop

A lot of times your web development company might have some ideas you hadn’t thought of.  Just like you have experience doing what your business does, web developers work on a lot of sites and might suggest some things they think will make your project better. Clearly communicate the end goals and anything that is crucial for your site to do, and let your development team work out the nuts and bolts of your site/application.  When you see a development version of the site, again, give feedback and ask any questions you have.

Keep it simple

When in doubt, always err on the side of simple. New ideas or features can always be acted upon later. It’s harder to fix a project that is hard to use, out of scope, over time, and over budget, then it is break up a project into several phases. Almost always, it’s better to have half the features fully implemented, than all of the features half-implemented.