clint-productions-blog

FREE Music!

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:32:03 +0100

What's up everybody! Hopefully you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and spent quality time with your friends and loved ones. During this Holiday season we are going to give you a special recording of a popular Christmas song, CP style, for FREE! It will be available for download just in time for Christmas, so you and your family can enjoy A New Sound in Christmas music. Keep checking back for updates and the availability of the Christmas download. Enjoy!

Anthony Clint Jr.

CEO

Designing An Effective Website: Part 2

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:40:12 +0100

Last time, we left off with making sure you update your website and creating returning visitors. If you are reading this, thank you for returning! Let's continue where we left off.

IS YOUR SITE INFORMATIVE?
Visitors should be able to find all the information they need about your business on your website. Include your name, address, email, phone numbers, and any other information visitors may need. Be sure to mention what product or services you offer. You can also include sections or pages on your site for FAQs, bulletins, and email subscriptions.

ARE YOU USING IMAGES AND ICONS EFFECTIVELY?
Be sure images are proportional and conservative. Don't use too many images and if you do use images, use images relevant to you site or business. Effective use of white space is essential when using images. Have a little space between images, icons, and paragraphs.

ARE YOUR VISITORS GIVING YOU FEEDBACK?
A good way to receive feedback on your site or business is to simply ask your visitors/customers. Have an area on your site with a form or survey where visitors can give you feedback on what they like and dislike. This is a great way to make adjustments and satisfy your visitors. You could even include a little incentive for their feedback. Who doesn't like free stuff?

IS YOUR WEBSITE ETHICAL?
Avoid racial, biased, sexist and stereotypical language. Do not use insulting terms or names. Be nice! You also want to be honest and accurate with the information on your site.

Well, that is all I have on designing effective websites. As always, feel free to do some research of your own. You may find something I missed! I wish you all the best in your website and business endeavors.

Designing An Effective Website

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:39:57 +0100

Hey everybody! A lot of people in today's society are using websites for personal and business purposes, to share and gather information. Therefore, if you are looking to create a website, whether it is for personal or business use, you should design the site in a way that it will be effective for you and your visitors. I would like to take some time and talk about a few techniques and tips you can use when designing your site.

For the past week I've been browsing the web and clicking on external links from other sites such as Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, etc. In doing this, I've noticed a lot of sites that could be designed a little bit better to create a more user friendly, hassle-free experience. Some sites were harder on the eyes, while others took way to long to load. I have even seen a couple sites where I had no idea what was going on or what the purpose for the site was. These are issues that can be corrected by taking a little more time to work on the site before publishing and doing some research to see how you can design a website that visitors will enjoy and hopefully return to. This is especially important for businesses. Take this for example: Have you ever been to a website that took a really long time loading pictures, flash, videos, music, etc.? How long did it take before you said "Forget it! I'm leaving this page"? My point exactly. It gets pretty annoying and that's why you should be careful not to jam your website with a lot of objects that will slow your website down. That's just one way to keep your visitors satisfied. Let's go further into effective website design. I recently wrote a blog on successful business writing and stated that the message in your writing is very important. The same applies to websites.

You should be able to identify your audience
Establish your purpose
Formulate your message
Select your style and tone.

IS YOUR SITE EASY TO FIND?
Make sure visitors can easily find and remember your site. Create and register your domain name. For example, the domain name for Clint Productions, LLC is clintproductions.com. It is simple, easy to remember, and it gives you sort of an idea about what we do. Be sure to check domain names with the same name as your company, because their may be instances where you may need to come up with a new name. Make your web presence known by submitting your site to search engines and directories like Google, Yahoo!, dmoz.org, etc.

IS YOUR SITE EASY TO NAVIGATE?
Navigation tools such as indexes and menus help tremendously when navigating a site. Your menu should be visible so visitors can see and quickly access the information that they want. Navigation bars and hyperlinks are also effective. Be sure you don't have any broken links. Don't you hate it when you click a link and an error pops up? Expect your visitors to hate the same thing. Broken links could drive your potential customers away.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU UPDATED YOUR SITE?
Be sure to update you site. This is especially important for returning visitors. If they visit your site every few days and see that nothing ever changes, they have no reason to check back because they think it will be exactly the same as last time. Implement things like news updates, articles, product reviews, and design revision. Give your visitors something new to look forward to and create some anticipation.

Before we cover a few more techniques in designing effective websites, I am going to create some anticipation for you by telling you to stay tuned for part 2 of this blog! There is more information to add to this that you do not want to miss out on.

Successful Business Writing

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:29:50 +0100

The purpose of this blog is to discuss the importance of business writing and how business writing can be used effectively in business. As a small business owner, I have come across many situations where business writing skills come into play. These include designing an effective website, client surveys, and writing letters and emails to my clients. If you are considering starting a business, or even if you are just an employee, I would highly recommend either taking a course on business writing, or buying a book on business writing. I have found Philip Kolin's book Successful Writing at Work very useful.

Every business in some way, shape, or form, has used a genre of business writing to communicate with its employees and/or customers (clients). Whether it is to break bad news, a proposal, a follow-up letter, a report, etc., these documents should all be well written and formatted correctly for more effectiveness. You may have heard plenty of times that "communication is the key in any relationship", well, this same concept goes with writing business letters. WHAT you are saying, HOW you are saying it, and WHERE you say it is very important in these letters. Let's take a bad news letter, a good news letter, and a complaint letter for example.

BAD NEWS LETTER:
In a bad news letter you want to use the indirect method of breaking the news, which means you don't want to give the recipient the bad news first in the letter. Instead you should slowly work your way up to the bad news by giving the reader something positive like benefits or solutions to the bad news. Be positive but don't be too passive.

Sample

GOOD NEWS LETTER:
Good news letters are usually a little easier to write. Who wouldn't want to hear good news?! Use the direct method of breaking the good news in these letters by stating the news in the beginning of the letter.

Sample

COMPLAINT LETTER:
A complaint letter is usually a letter to a company or business from a customer (client) about how the customer did not like a product or service. Personally, if I am really upset about a product or service my first thought is to call the company and give the person in charge a piece of my mind, and a few "not so cool" comments. However, this is not necessarily the best way to handle the situation. Take some time to calm down and collect your thoughts so you can be rational about the situation. Letters are a form of formal communication that can be used to convey your message in a professional tone. Tone plays a huge role in an effective complaint letter. Avoid name-calling, insults, threats, INTIMIDATING FONT SIZES, etc. Here are the key elements to an effective complaint letter:

Start with a detailed description of the product
State exactly what is wrong with the product
Describe any inconvenience you have experienced
State the solution or what you want done as a result of the problem
Ask the company or business to handle your claim promptly

Sample

Hopefully, this blog has helped you and has provided you some insight on how to write effective business letters to companies, co-workers, employees, etc. Feel free to do some of your own research on other letter formats and business writing forms. I will also cover a few tips on designing effective websites in a future blog. So stay tuned!

Anthony Clint Jr.
CEO

What's With The Attitude!?!

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:24:04 +0100

What's up guys! This is targeted mostly towards musicians, artists, producers, and just people in general. WHAT IS WITH THE ATTITUDE?! lol Now I'm a young dude, but in the few years that I've been a musician/ producer I've come across other musicians with thee worst attitudes. I feel that this is definitely a problem that musicians, artist, heck EVERYBODY should take into consideration when dealing and working with others, especially in the music industry. A person's attitude can have a HUGE impact on their future and how far they can go. I could go on and on with this particular subject just with my experiences alone, but I came across a pretty detailed blog that, for the most part, mentioned most of the things I had on my mind and then some. Please, check it out. It is very informative and I think it could help a lot of people, especially those that want to "make it" in the music industry (or in life lol jk....no seriously). Here's the link: http://ericdanielandfriends.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/can-we-talk-its-about-your-attitude/

Enjoy!

Anthony Clint Jr.
CEO

Radio Ad

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:37:57 +0100

What's up! Well, it's been about two weeks since the launch of ClintProductions.com and everything has been running smoothly since. We've been receiving a lot of positive feedback from the site which is great. The main reason for this blog is to share our radio ad with you guys. Advertisement and promotion are key components to running a successful business. So we are investing into several advertising and promotion methods including radio. Since radio is a more local advertising method, and only those located in Columbus, Ohio can hear our radio ads, we decided to post the ad on our site to share with people all over the world! Isn't that thoughtful of Clint Productions? lol Well, we hope you enjoy the ad posted below. Just click the play button to listen, and let us know what you think. Yes, the music in the ad was produced by Clint Productions.

Musically,

Anthony Clint Jr.
CEO