Live help on your website is a very good way to build your customer relationships. It gives you great feedback and increased conversions.
When you aren’t logged in live help still works for you by giving your visiters a contact form option. Live help also gives a sense of security to your visiter by letting them know that you care enough to have the feature available.
So which live help should you choose and how to get it onto your site easily?
I have tested all the options on the cpanel fatastico board. If your hosting dosn’t give you fantastico as an option I recommend getting a new host! Visit here to see who we use and why.
Out of all of them, Crafty Syntax Live Help is my favourite.
Here is why
Very easy to install
Free
I could actually find video tutorials on how to use it!!!!!
Easy to understand dashboard
Site metrics included
Visiter recognition, very cool
The dashboard isn’t pretty but so far that is the only thing that has a drawback.
Crafty Syntax Live Help is now a standard addition to all our sites and the sites we develope for others.
Disclaimer: I get nothing from this recommendation except knowing I am giving you good, tested, guidance!
This first video covers from the beginning of installation to how to set up your Crafty Syntax Live Help account. Many of you have already got this live help feature added to your site.
If you want get straight to how to set up your details in the back area go to the 1.55 minute mark of the video for this part of the instruction.
I recommend having your crafty syntax live chat back area open in one window or tab and the videos running in another. That way you can be in the crafty live help tutorial and pause it to go into the crafty live chat back area to action what you learn. Then back to the live chat tutorial easily when you need more info or to refresh.
This video is about how to use the live chat feature to enhance conversation and customer relationships. It also goes into a bit more detail of how to use the back end of the live chat system.
Here is a direct link to the howto area of crafty live chat. Just a warning youtube has many videos on this topic but most are in a different language. http://www.craftysyntax.com/howto.php
You all know by now how much I like to automate everything I can.
So it will be no suprise that I love this free site called socialoomph.com.
Firstly it is free, well the basic version is and it is well worth the effort to
get a free acount and automate 70% of the work.
They have a paid membership as well and being a twitter head I really
like that also, but it is not neccessary.
So what will socialoomph do for you? Here is a list straight from the site itself:
Base Features
Schedule tweets — Plan, set & forget
Schedule tweets and keep your Twitter and StatusNet streams ticking
over with new tweets even when you’re not in front of your computer.
Publish tweets when you know your international followers are online
and you’re asleep.
Track keywords — Empower yourself
Set up alerts and track keywords in the public Twitter stream. We
will monitor the Twitter tweet stream and periodically email you a
digest of the tweets that contain those keywords. You can also use this
to track your @replies.
Extended Twitter profiles — Promote yourself
The profile area on Twitter is very limited. We enable you to write
your own long and detailed social profile (including pictures and
hyperlinks), and link this extended profile to your Twitter account.
When folks click on your “Web” link in Twitter, they come to your
extended social profile that is hosted on our site.
Save and reuse drafts — Save hours of typing
Save draft tweets, frequently used text snippets and URLs and reuse
them in your scheduled tweets. Save tons of time by avoiding
repetitive typing. Save a draft once and use it as a template for updates
on Twitter and StatusNet accounts, plus other types of accounts for
Professional users.
Send DMs to new followers — Automate
Send a nice non-promotional DM to new followers that focus on them
and your future interaction with them, or simply to thank them for
choosing to follow you.
Bit.ly URL shortening — Track those clicks
Add your bit.ly URL shortening account details to your SocialOomph
profile, and we will shorten your links with it so that you can track the
clicks on all your links.
Follow those who follow you — Automate
Automatically follow people who follow you and save a ton of time while
your Friends list builds itself.
Unfollow those who unfollow you — Automate
Automatically unfollow someone when they unfollow you if that is how you
prefer to manage your Friends list.
Vet new followers — Semi-automation
Even though you’ve selected to auto follow new followers, we will interrupt the
process for 72 hours and give you an opportunity to manually review new followers
and decide if you want to follow, ignore, or block each new follower. What’s more,
you vet both your Twitter and StatusNet followers on one integrated console. On
Twitter accounts, you can add new followers into any of your Twitter lists, straight
from the vetting page.
View @Mentions & Retweets — Efficiency
With more than one Twitter or StatusNet account it can become a real chore to
keep track of your @mentions and everyone who has retweeted your tweets. We
make it a breeze for you by showing your @mentions and/or retweets for all your
accounts on one page, in one integrated timeline. Yes, that’s correct, you see your
StatusNet tweets integrated with your Twitter tweets.
Purge your DM Inbox — Keep it tidy
You will probably agree that it’s a bit of a pain to manually delete DMs from your
Inbox, especially since they accumulate so quickly. You can run a purge on your
Inbox to delete everything, or DMs older than 7 days, or DMs older than 30 days.
This feature is not available on StatusNet accounts because their API cannot delete DMs.
Personal status feed — Your own tweet engine
Grab your own personal 140-character tweet scheduling engine and RSS feed. You
can schedule and publish tweets that don’t go to Twitter, they go to your personal
tweet stream, which is available in RSS, XML and Javascript formats.
Respect StatusNet site limits — Be nice
Some StatusNet site owners set update limits, such as a maximum of 20 updates
every 10 minutes, per user account. Our system fully respects those limits and will
not allow you to schedule tweets more frequently than what the site owner will
allow. In addition, our system also prevents excessive duplicate updates from being
sent to a StatusNet site. Nobody likes a StatusNet account that stutters the same text
over and over again. The same update text cannot be sent to your StatusNet account
more frequently than once every four hours.
Unlimited accounts — No charge
Add and manage as many Twitter and StatusNet accounts as you want. We don’t charge you a dime.
The Pro version goes on for pages! I continually grow my twitter list everyday without me doing a thing.
If you use twitter you would be tweeten nuts to not use this software. Unless of course you know of
something better, if you do, leave a comment or email me and let me know.
If you want to have a look click here now or click on the ad in the left side bar.
If you do end up buying the pro version and have used my link then I will receive a commission. Remember I only recommend quality time saving products.
The Federal Trade Commission has changed the rules for the first time in 20 years. They are now applying new stricter guidelines for online business and social media.
Basically we are now expected to disclose our relationship with any product we endorse. That means if we are making money on a recommendation then we need to be clear on that to the consumer. If we have recieved the product for free or are paid to so that we will endorse it.
“The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement.” This applies to not only bloggers but to any word of mouth marketers.
“The revised Guides reflect Commission case law and clearly state that both advertisers and endorsers may be liable for false or unsubstantiated claims made in an endorsement – or for failure to disclose material connections between the advertiser and endorsers. The revised Guides also make it clear that celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media.”
Secondly the FTC has also changed the guides involving testimonials and endorsements of our products. Advertisements that feature consumer testimonials need to be what customers can generally expect to gain from the product. If we have unusual results in a testimonial or endorsement we must have a disclaimer “results not typical” or something similar.
The Guidelines are just that, administrative interpretations of the law intended to help us comply with the ftc. They are not a law themselves. In any action against an advertiser stating that they misrepresented themselves through an endorsement, the commision has the burden of proof, not the advertiser.
Here is a link to the FTC article on the changes so you can read for yourself. If you have a question about your conduct make sure you contact a legal representitive, as I am not advising you on how to conduct yourself. I just want to let you know about the changes and hopefully make them a bit more clear.
