So as a freelance website designer that doesn’t have a lot of projects, how do you brand yourself online?

In this article, we’ll be sharing with you 5 Branding Tips For Freelance Website Designers.

1. Focus on Quality and not Quantity.

It’s not really about how many projects you’ve worked on, but how good those projects are. So always ensure that you do quality work.

2. Get Yourself A Very Good Website.

As a website designer, you will be judged by the quality of your own website.

3. Showcase Your Projects Very Well.

Instead of just putting a picture and a link to the website, create a case study. Explain the process. Let people understand how you arrived at that solution.

4. Put Testimonials.

Get feedback from satisfied clients and put them on your website as well. This is called social proof, and it gets more people to trust you.

5. Post Practice Projects on Social Media.

As more people see your projects from time to time, they will get to trust you, and associate you with website design, and even refer customers to you.

Conclusion

For many website designers, the common dream is to be a freelancer, although it requires effort, time, and talent. Just like major companies, freelancers must rely on branding to secure a steady flow of work.

In this video below, @charlesdairo shares 5 tips to help you brand yourself online to attract more customers, even as a relatively new freelancer.

Click here to watch the full video.

The post 5 Branding Tips For Freelance Website Designers appeared first on CKDIGITAL.

Sooner or later, we all need to make presentations, be it formal or informal.

This may be a business presentation, sales pitch, a speech, project defense, teaching, or just giving a talk on an interesting topic.

An effective presentation is as important as the information you are trying to pass across. That is why this blog post covers ways you can improve your presentation skills.

Why Give a Presentation?

The purpose of giving a presentation may include informing, persuading, educating, training, selling etc.

Presenting your information clearly and effectively is a key factor in passing your message across to your audience.

In this blog post, we will be discussing 4 techniques to help you become a better communicator.

Great speakers aren’t born, they are trained.

1. Planning Your Presentation

Anyone can give a presentation, but to give an effective one, you need to plan and prepare for it. Presentation planning would involve the following:

• Purpose: Before anything else, knowing the purpose of your presentation is very important. Your purpose will guide your tone, approach, length etc., while presenting.

• Know your audience: Before going in for your presentation, do your research, know who your audience are, know if they are students, parents or marketers. This will help you set up the content and structure of the presentation properly. Your audience will determine what you present, how you present it, and how long you present for.

• Organize your main points: If you need to research on the topic, do so. Read as much as you can and then arrange your points. Ensure that your points are well ordered and understandable.

Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you’ve just told them.

• Rehearse ahead: Take your time to rehearse. If you need to, stand in front of your mirror and present your speech to yourself. You could even use your phone video/sound recorder to get an accurate result of how well you perform. You could also rehearse in front of friends/family so they can point out your errors.

2. The Presentation Sequence

Your audience will listen more if they are enjoying themselves. Do not be too rigid while passing across your information.

Know that you are in control of your audience’s perception of your presentation, so start on time and make the presentation sequence as smooth as you can.

• Build rapport: Walk in with confidence and immediately build rapport with your audience. Remember to smile and wave your hands at them. Building rapport will let your audience relax and warm up to you.

• Give a good opening: Introduce yourself, tell a short (funny) joke or story relating to your topic while using your natural humor.

• Get audience response: Stimulate responses or reactions from your audience. You can use content or activities to stir their reaction, emotions or even physical involvement. Getting your audience to respond will help them concentrate more and remain focused on you.

• Clearly, define your topic: Think about your aim, identify the objective of the presentation and define your topic clearly. Your audience should understand what you are talking about and what they should expect to learn.

• Give an overview and summarize the main points: List out the objectives, topics, and main action points. This will give them an insight to what they should focus on.

3. Creating Effective Visual Aids

If you are using visual aids for your presentations, you need to make sure they are effective and not just for decoration.

• Design good slides: If you are not good with designs, just use the simpler slides, make your slides clear and concise. Do not present too many slides, you only need to write the key points on the slides.

• Be mindful of your content: Consider your audience while creating your content. Do not be too playful or too serious with your content. Avoid the use of colloquial languages, dirty slang, abbreviations, etc. Ensure you use the correct font and font size.

• Avoid the use of distracting visual aids: Too many images might distract your audience or stir up negative reactions. Select your visual aids carefully.

• Consistency: Be consistent with your visual aids during the presentation. Don’t use too many colourful slides. Use consistent slide templates, fonts, font sizes and placement throughout your slides.

4. Effective Presentation Techniques

Even the best content will not suffice if you lack presentation techniques. Here are some techniques you should use for an effective presentation.

• Control of information: Make your audience perceive you as the thought leader. Research your subject and know what you’re talking about. Also allow your passion for the subject flow.

• The voice used: Be audible while presenting, do not shout, do not stress your voice, maintain the right tone.

• The right words: Say the right words at the right time, do not confuse or mix up words.

• Use of body language: Your body is the best visual aid. Gesticulate as much as you can, smile when you should and use your body as an expression of your presentation. Make eye contact with your audience.

• Prompts: It is normal for your audience to lose interest or take off their attention, but you are in control and you can call their attention back with prompts. Walk around the podium and use prompts like snapping your fingers.

• The right location: Before your presentation day, make sure you have been to the room you’ll be using, move around the space to see how comfortable it is for your audience. Do check the facilities as well.

• Confidence: Be confident on stage; try not to fret. Take deep breaths before you start and get your nerves together. With more practice, you’ll be able to start well.

In conclusion

I wish I could tell you that your first presentation will be perfect, but in reality, it might not be.

Presenting for the first time might be a challenge, but with practice and being mindful of the guidelines listed above, you will become better at giving excellent presentations.

Your turn: Do you have other ideas and tips for great presentations?  Please leave a reply below.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Effective Presentations appeared first on CKDIGITAL.

Email is a widely used tool for business communication but is not as straightforward as it seems.

Although it can be a helpful and effective way to communicate with colleagues and clients, it can also be unhelpful, confusing and annoying if used wrongly.

Whether professional or personal, the ability to compose and send effective email is super-important.

Below are 10 tips for effective email communication:

1. Be clear and concise.

Know that an average person has lots of emails he has to go through and wouldn’t want to spend a huge chunk of time trying to decode your own message.

Use minimum amount of sentences and state what you want right away. Keep it as short as possible. If you have a large amount of text to send, consider attaching a document.

2. Be prompt to respond to important email.

Email correspondence needs to be as fast as possible. By responding immediately to an email, it shows you care about the message and the sender.

Even if you are not able to attend to it right away, telling the person you received it and when you will attend to it shows professionalism and attentiveness. E.g. “Email Acknowledged.”

Don’t just leave an important email lying around without replying or at least acknowledging receipt.

3. Use appropriate subject lines.

A good subject line catches the attention of the reader and also summarizes the email content.

Make good use of the subject line. Before opening an email, the reader should know what it contains.

When an email requires special attention, including words like “response needed” or “urgent” are helpful in knowing what is expected.

4. Your font matters.

Don’t make bold, underline or capitalize entire words or phrases. Not only does it make a message more difficult to read, it can also come across as unprofessional and disturbing.

Be careful when you write emails so that the reader doesn’t perceive you as rude. Reduce your use of bold (sometimes perceived as anger!) and CAPITALIZED fonts (sometimes perceived as being LOUD).

Where you need to lay emphasis, you might consider using italics, quotes, asterisks or even noting them as bullet points. It is generally safer to use moderately sized fonts.

5. Keep emails official.

When dealing with official/professional receivers, be very careful about forwarding jokes and other non-work-related materials. Most people don’t appreciate this type of email and may get too much already.

6. Include one topic per email.

This is very important, even when you have numerous things to pass across. Avoid discussing so many topics in one mail unless they are directly related.

Create separate emails for each topic. This makes your message clearer, concise and actionable.

Including one topic per email also helps your subject line reflect your message.

7. Decide carefully who should be CCed in an email.

When you CC (Carbon Copy) people on an email, the CC list is visible to all other recipients. Therefore, it should not be abused or overused.

CC should only be used when the recipients are directly involved in the email subject and need to be aware of the current conversation.

8. Avoid using emails for conflict resolution.

In the course of interacting with email, there might be issues that need to be resolved off the email.

Although an automatic reaction, especially if someone has misunderstood something in your email,  may be to send a quick email back. This is however not advisable. If there’s ever a conflict while using email, avoid using email to settle it.

Email isn’t the best way of resolving conflicts because it doesn’t convey the tone or emotions one would naturally want to pass across. Simply pick up the phone to resolve a conflict.

9. Include an email signature

The importance of a consistent email signature cannot be overemphasized. Make it easy for your recipients to contact you whenever the need arises.

A corporate email signature should typically include your:

• Company address
• Website address
• Full name
• Phone number
• Job title

It is helpful to have all your contact information clearly and easily accessible, as it is the equivalent of your business card. Take your email signature seriously.

10. Proofread, proofread, and proofread.

Finally, before you hit send, sit back, relax and read through the content of your email again. Check through carefully to ensure that there are no grammatical/typographical errors or inappropriate sentences.

Also, avoid shortcuts and abbr. in biz. emails. You see, it makes one come off as unprofessional and unserious. Stick to formal language.

Your turn:

What types of email annoy you as a receiver? Do you have additional tips for effective email communication? Please leave a reply below.

The post 10 Tips for Effective Email Communication appeared first on CKDIGITAL.

The customer rules. Customers are gold in every business and no business succeeds without customers patronizing it.

A lot of us get very excited when we receive testimonials and praise from clients, but when it is a complaint, we tend to play the blame game.

Whether justifiable or not, a customer has the right to be angry when he/she is not pleased with a service.

Customers are the key players in every field, and they help to promote your business, especially when they are treated like the gold they are. Therefore, avoid a customer leaving dissatisfied or angry.

No matter how complicated their needs are, they must be met directly or indirectly. Just like the saying goes,

Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they’ll come back. We have to be great every time or we’ll lose them. ~ Kevin Stirtz.

There are several ways to pacify an angry or dissatisfied customer, here are a few:

1. Listen, listen and listen

Never argue with a customer no matter who is at fault. Dissatisfied customers tend to take out their frustration on you. Do not take it personally.

Take your time to listen and understand what the customer is dissatisfied with, and then find a way to help.

2. Let them know you are truly sorry

If dissatisfied customers refuse to calm down, show empathy.

Be sincere, respectful, tell them you understand, smile at them, tell them you are truly sorry for whatever the issue is, and let them know you are there to help them.

Respect and understanding will help reduce the tension and ease the angry customer.

3. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes

Imagine being in the dissatisfied customer’s shoes. What would you want to hear?

You’ll be able to turn the situation around if you can think of what you’d want if you were the angry customer.

The customer needs to know you are on his/her side and that you’re sincerely trying to solve the problem.

4. Remain cool, calm and collected

At some point in the discussion, you might get on the verge of exploding with anger, but you have to keep your emotions in check and remain calm.

You should be gentle with your customers and pass your point across without offending your customer’s feelings.

5. Never justify your wrongs

Do not give flimsy excuses for mistakes or wrong doings. Customer doesn’t want to hear excuses but solutions.

Whether the complaint is justifiable or not, do not give excuses. It is only by suggesting a reasonable solution that you’d be able to calm the customer and make them go away happily.

6. Solve the problem in a way that is fair to both parties

While trying to solve the problem, do not make the mistake of promising unrealistic solutions.

Do not bite off more than you can chew. Promise what you can deliver so that you don’t go back to where you started.

7. Always end on a good note

Your last few moments of interaction is what your customer will remember. Make sure you give your meeting a happy ending.  When you end with a positive conclusion, the customer starts to forget the problem they had earlier.

What do you think of the tips above? What method works best for you? As a customer, have you had a bad experience recently?

Feel free to leave a reply below.

The post 7 Ways to Pacify an Angry or Dissatisfied Customer appeared first on CKDIGITAL.