The award evening dates are yet to be confirmed, but as soon as they have been I’ll be sure to let you know just how we get on!

Thanks for all your support.

We judged one of the awards for the national event (Celebrate Success) held earlier this year (which we’ll be qualifying for if we win the regional award) and are looking forward to hopefully being in the finals ourselves next year!

Will keep you updated on our progress throughout the competition, thanks for all your support.

Malaria No More UK – We’ve been working with Malaria No More UK in making updates and page additions to their current website, helping to promote the latest news and pages by designing “stage” images on the homepage. We’ve also created a number of bespoke pages within their site for partnerships such as that with Jazz FM. We’ve developed a strong relationship with Malaria No More UK, which we hope will be continuing for a long time.

Annie Rowe Casting – We designed Annie Rowe, a freelance casting director, a website showcasing her CV as a way of promoting herself and the work she has done. Annie was delighted with the results, stating that ‘…the team at Red Balloon have designed a marketing tool that has surpassed all my expectations.’ Read the rest of her review here.

Finesse Airport Services – We’ve been working with Finesse ever since we first created their company branding, and last month we designed a full page A4 advert for inclusion in a popular trade magazine.

Fix IT Remotely – Website design and branding for an IT services company offering remote IT support to businesses.

Lincoln Partners – Lincoln Partners are a new legal headhunting company based in London. They asked us to design a website that gave them the professional look they need to compete in such an environment.

In addition to this we’ve been making updates and regular maintenance for many of our other clients, ensuring their websites and marketing materials are kept fresh.

We’ve also started some interesting projects in April, many of which should be completed this month. We’re working on the rebrand of a dental surgery and an electrical company. The website for a music management company, a music production studio, a personal stylist and a recruitment company.

We’re also currently working with The Portnalls Group, expanding upon their current website that we designed by introducing e-commerce capabilities.

Rather than clog our work page up with micro-projects and maintenance work for current clients we’re going to be doing a monthly roundup post, detailing all the different things we’ve been upto during the month.

Should prove intersting, and hopefully inspiring, reading!

This got me thinking though, how many people call a company based on it’s name alone? Obviously they assume we sell balloons because of our name, but if they had a look around the website they’d see that we clearly don’t. Maybe we’re missing a golden opportunity here to sell balloons, given that people are calling us and requesting them without us ever saying this ourselves!

The event was full of celebrities, including Vernon Kay and Tess Daley who hosted the event and subsequently stole the limelight in most tabloid newspapers and glamour magazines. However, the real stars of the night were the finalists themselves.

The stories heard on the night were of the greatest courage, and in most cases overcoming the most extreme backgrounds to rise to where they are now.

As a company that’s benefited from the Prince’s Trust (I am in fact a Young Ambassador for the Trust now) I was truly honored to be asked to judge one of the categories. Everyone involved in the awards should be incredibly proud of their achievements and we wish them all the best for the future.

So, when I arrived at the shop I asked the man at the front, who I assume was meant to be filling a customer service / sales role, whethere or not I could buy just the handset on its own as I already had a contract with them. His reply:

“No”.

And that was all he said. He didn’t bother to recommend any other similar phones they sell, and I assume they do sell plenty of things similar to the G1 that I could buy. It’s as if he just couldn’t be bothered… he just didn’t care.

I was pretty annoyed that I couldn’t just buy the phone on its own, but what really annoyed me was the response I got when I asked the question. I just can’t understand why somebody would not try and promote other phones on sale, and do their best to provide a good service to the customer.

So, not only did I not buy anything from the store (instead I bought a Blackberry on eBay), but the chances are I won’t bother to renew my contract with them when it expires in a few months time.

I’m sure T-Mobile aren’t the only company with staff like this, but why is it happening? Lack of training, lack of company motivation or do staff simply not care enough anymore?

You see, here at Red Balloon Creative we love Twitter. We love interacting with other people and we love other people interacting with us. It was fairly clear from when we first started using it that Twitter wasn’t going to directly result in a huge increase in sales, but that doesn’t put us off using it. The thing is, if that’s the only reason you’re using it then you’re going to get very bored, very quickly.

We love reading peoples blog posts through links on Twitter and we enjoy learning about other people’s industries and the things they do. We follow people who post interesting, funny and informative tweets that actually benefit our business. You see, you can benefit greatly from Twitter without making a single sale from it.

We’ve learnt things from other people via Twitter that, without it, we probably never would’ve known. These have been things that have not only helped us run our business but have actually improved it. These people weren’t selling to us, they were helping us out, and you can bet if we ever do need the kind of service they provide it’s them we look to first.

We don’t follow people who are constantly posting spam tweets advertising their services over and over again, because it doesn’t interest us. In fact, we don’t follow very many people at all and the majority of those we have followed have been as a result of somebody retweeting an interesting article they’ve written. To be honest, not many people follow us right now either, and in a way we’re quite happy about that. We’d much rather be followed by 50 people interested in what we’ve got to say who actually interact with us rather than 1000 people who ignore every message we post.

Twitter is all about relationship building, much the same way sales is. Perhaps sooner or later somebody will choose to use us as a result of having built up a relationship with us over Twitter, it wouldn’t surprise me. Then again, would we care if they didn’t? No!

We love Twitter. We learn new things, we interact with interesting people and we get to tell them a bit about what we do. So, if you stop trying to force a sale out of it, I think you’ll find there’s a lot more value in Twitter than you first thought.

Of course, there could be many factors why business has been slow. The recession, for example, is an obvious one. But, on the other hand, there could simply be reasons why business has been good! For example, if you run a company that offer flood prevention services and there has been warnings of heavy rains, sales will presumably be up. Then, during a drought they’d slow down. The question is, do you sit and wait for the forecasts of heavy rains so sales go up accordingly, or do you change your approach in order to attract buyers during the summer?

It seems obvious, but most companies would sit and wait for sales to improve rather than do something to improve them. Of course, what you decide to do depends greatly on the type of business you have and the services you offer, but no doubt there is something you could do.

Perhaps having a sale during a slow period could be the answer, short term this could dramatically increase sales which could see you out until things begin to improve. Actively marketing your business is another example, if sales are slow and you haven’t sent out any flyers in a while why not do so and remind people in the area what you do?

It doesn’t have to cost much, and lets face it if sales are down the chances are you’re going to have time on your hands. Simply sending an email out to people/businesses you’ve sold to in the past reminding people of who you are and what you do is a quick and effective way to regenerate interest.

It’s easy to sit and hope for things to turn around on their own, and often they eventually do. But we think it makes a lot more sense to work out why things are slow and do something about it. If you need some advice or ideas on how to go about it, just drop us an email or leave us a comment explaining your business and the situation and we’ll get back to you with a couple of simple ideas that might make a big difference!

These should come as pretty handy findings if you’re using Twitter as a tool to promote your business, which you should be.

Source.