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If you can improve your customer service, you’ll increase client retention and create a more positive image for your brand. Simply put, excellent customer service is necessary for growing a successful business. And it’s not just enough to say “We care about our customers”…you need to actually show it.

Here are several simple things you can do to transform your customer service from average to extraordinary.

• Train your staff to be the best—Michael Jordan didn’t become the greatest basketball player of all time just by showing up for the games. He trained constantly so that he could improve his skills and be better than everyone else. The same concept applies to your customer service team. You can’t rely on them to be great just by throwing them on the phones every day. You need to spend time training them, helping them learn specific strategies they can use to better help customers and to keep clients happy.
• Reward great employees—If your employees aren’t happy with their jobs, how can you expect them to have that bright, friendly attitude they need to help keep customers happy? Your employees are your most valuable asset, so you need to make sure they’re happy. You can do this by rewarding employees who do great jobs. This shows them you appreciate their work, and it gives them an incentive to provide excellent customer service.
• Get to know your customers on a deeper level—Don’t just treat your customers like a number. You need to build relationships with your customers. Get to know who they are, what their likes and dislikes are, what their expectations are, and other important things about them. The more information you have, the more able you’ll be to satisfy them and target them in your marketing efforts.
• Show your customers how much you appreciate their business—I don’t know about you, but I’m much likelier to do business at a company that actually shows me how much they appreciate my business. From extending a simple thank you when a customer makes a purchase to offering exclusive discounts and freebies to loyal customers, there are several things you can do to show your appreciation to customers.
• Be willing to deviate from company policy—You can never forget the emotional and personal side of customer service. Don’t treat your company policy like it’s the law of the land. Sure, it’s an important guideline, but you need to be willing to bend the rules to keep customers happy. This will help you understand the customer’s pain better, and it will allow you to create a response that keeps them satisfied.

What are some other things companies can do to improve their customer service? Share your best tips by leaving a comment.

2010 is poised to be the year that email marketing and social networking become inextricably linked to each other. Savvy marketers know that leveraging social media can help spread their messages further than ever before, creating a viral effect that results in increased brand awareness and more sales.

Don’t believe that social email marketing is important or useful? Here are a few stats from Email Stat Center to consider:

• 20% of Facebook, MySpace and/or Twitter users have posted or shared something from permission email to their social account(s) via a “share” option. – Merkle , “View from the Social Inbox” (2010)
• 32% say they’d share promotional email offers with members inside a social network and open emails from others. – PMN and Pace University’s Lubin School of Business’(IDM) Lab (2009)
• 51% of respondents report having clicked “forward to a friend” links in marketing email, but 38% have never seen these links. – Epsilon (2007)

I could go on, but you get the point. So, if you’re creating a social email campaign, what do you need to do to guarantee success?

1. Make email content easy to share—Include one-click share buttons for all the major social networks right there in your email. This allows readers to quickly share your message with their entire community.  
2. Let the community know about your newsletters—Any time you send out a new email, post about it on your social networks. Include a tease about what’s in the email, and offer opt-in links so followers can sign up.
3. Know who’s on your list—Your email list is more than a bunch of random email addresses. Each address represents a person with a certain amount of influence and the potential to spread your message. Get to know your subscribers.

Is your email campaign socialized?

In addition to making your website more appealing to the eye, videos can help engage visitors on a personal level and drive traffic to your website when optimized properly.

But figuring out when and how to use video on your website can be a bit tricky. If you miss the mark, you can actually cause your website to perform worse, decreasing your conversion rate. That’s why I’ve come up with 5 times I think it’s a good idea to use video on your website.

1. Show your product in action—Don’t just tell customers about your product, show them. Why do you think infomercials are so effective? Billy Mays used to show his Zorbeez towel soaking up a spilled bottle of soda. He would show someone pulling an 18 wheeler with a chain boned with Mighty Putty. Seeing is believing. Showing your product being used can add credibility to your claims.
2. Give new life to your testimonials—In the past, I’ve talked about ways to give your testimonials more credibility. Sure, written testimonials are good, but video testimonials are even more believable. They don’t feel forged, and they give potential customers a 3^rd party endorsement from someone like them.
3. Add clarity to your message—Sometimes, it can be difficult to clearly express a message in just text. Using video in conjunction with your copy can help clarify the message and drill it into the customer’s head.
4. Highlight your expertise—Customers trust those they perceive to be experts. That’s one of the reasons blogging is such a powerful tool. Videos let you take that a step further to educate your customers and to position yourself as an expert. Just make sure you don’t talk down to the viewers as that will make you look like a jerk, not an expert.
5. Promote sales—Have a special sale coming up? Promote it with a video. Think of it like a commercial. You can even include a special coupon code in the video to entice customers to watch it.

Do you use video on your website? Has it helped you get more conversions? Share your experiences by leaving a comment.

It seems like any time we talk about Twitter, we focus on the reasons to use it. Conversations are always about the benefits, never about potential drawbacks or reasons not to use Twitter. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m definitely a firm believer that Twitter can be a powerful tool for increasing brand awareness, driving web traffic, generating leads, building trust with consumers and more, but I don’t think Twitter is right for every business.
Here are 3 reasons NOT to use Twitter for your business.

1. Your target audience doesn’t Tweet—While Twitter attracts a diverse crowd, the average user is somewhere in his early to mid 30s. Older users have been slow to adopt Twitter, instead preferring LinkedIn and even Facebook. What does this mean for you? It means there’s a chance your target audience doesn’t really use Twitter.

It’s time to dig up that business plan you stuffed away in some filing cabinet to look at the info about your target demographic. How old are they? How often do they use the internet and social networking? Are they using smart phones to stay mobile?

And if for some reason you don’t know who your target audience is (shame on you), check out this post for tips on identifying your target market.

2. You don’t have time to Tweet—You might already have quite a bit on your plate as it is. Tweeting takes time. It’s not just dropping an update here or there. Being successful with Twitter requires finding the time to interact with your followers and to respond to @replies and direct messages. Engagement is the key.

So, before you sign up on Twitter, you need to ask yourself:

• Do I really have time to Tweet?
• How much time can I realistically devote to Tweeting each day?
• Should someone else handle the company Twitter account?

On that note, check out these tips for increasing your social media productivity.

3. You don’t have a plan or goals—If you’re using Twitter for marketing purposes, you need to have a plan and clearly defined goals. This means figuring out:
• What do I want to accomplish with Twitter?
• How will I measure my results?
• How long will I give myself to reach certain benchmarks and goals?

If you don’t have any goals, then there might not be any point into creating a Twitter account for your business. You’ll just be blindly Tweeting away without a purpose.

There’s a great post on Mashable about creating a social media plan that I highly recommend checking out.

What are some other reasons businesses shouldn’t use Twitter?

You already know about the major blogging mistakes, like not posting regularly and not promoting your content. However, there are several overlooked mistakes that even good bloggers continue to make. Are you making these 5 blogging mistakes?

1. Taking too long to approve comments—While blogging isn’t quite a real-time conversation like Twitter, it still moves pretty quickly. Readers comment on a post, interact with other commenters for a little bit, and then move on to something else.

If you’re taking several days to approve comments, you kill the momentum of your post. This removes the conversational element of blogging, turning your blog into a one-way channel of communication, thus defeating the purpose of having a blog. You need to stay on top of moderating your comments. Get them approved as quickly as possible to keep readers engaged and talking.

2. Allowing low quality guest posts—Allowing guest posts on your blog offers many benefits for you and the blogger. However, you do need to remember that your blog is a brand, and a low-quality guest post can cause you to lose readers and create a poor image for your blog.

So, while I encourage allowing people to guest post on your blog, you need to make sure you review the blogger’s work before giving him (or her) the nod of approval. Check out his blog and other guest posts so you can decide if his posts are up to your standards.

3. Not starting a conversation—Like I said earlier, the conversational element is what makes blogging so popular. As a blogger, it’s your job to get the conversation started. You can’t just expect readers to start commenting in droves. You need to give them something to talk about.

One easy thing you can do is simply ask your readers to leave a comment. Think of it as a call to action. Another thing I like to do is to leave some information out of my posts so that readers have something to add to it. After all, if you’ve covered everything there is to say about a topic, your readers won’t have anything to say.

4. Rushing a post—Everybody has different opinions on how long you should spend blogging. However, I think we can all agree that being productive, no matter how much time you spend, is extremely important.

That being said, you need to be careful that in your quest to be a productive blogger, you don’t rush your posts. When you quickly crank out content, you’re much likelier to make mistakes and to write low-quality content.

5. Not having drafts saved for creative lulls—Every blogger suffers from writer’s block at one time or another. Rather than writing a sucky post or no post at all, the ideal solution is to have a backlog of drafts saved so you can publish one of those. Whenever you’re feeling creative, write some drafts and save them in WordPress. Trust me, they’ll come in handy.

What are some of the biggest blogging mistakes you’ve made? Share your experiences by leaving a comment.