Since the days of cavemen there has a real desire to take what you see, print it, and share with others. Here is an easy way to print what you need from any website.

PrintWhatYouLike.com is easy and free!

Print What You Like.com is a free tool that can be used with any web browser. This means there is nothing to download or install. Here are some highlights and reasons to make it a favorite resource.

Print just the text without images or ads. As many know a picture can be worth a thousand words. What if you don’t want the pictures though and just the text?

Copy and paste doesn’t do it when there are images and ads in the way. Not all websites will have a link to a printer friendly version of the content so this option isn’t something you can rely on.

The PWYL tool makes it easy to take all of that away so that you only see the text in one click of a button.

Create and print any website page as a pdf file. Quick and easy this feature allows you to take a webpage and create an instant pdf file. You could then attach that file to an existing document or in an email.

Isolate any part of a website page. You can isolate just one small part or several pieces of a website page. You can then take and change the size of the text, change the font, remove the background, or images.

Combine the isolation feature with the PDF format feature. This is a great option if you want to present content to another person without the distraction of other elements. You can then take just a small part of a website page and make that a PDF to send via email.

All of these combine together making it that much easier to present what you see to others. This can be especially helpful if there is some confusion over what you’re seeing versus what another person is viewing.

There is a reason that a picture is worth a thousand words. Now with this simple tool that works with any browser you can potentially save a lot of time explaining something by printing and highlighting instead.

Have your own story about printing items from the Internet? Send a comment along for instant feedback.

The photos you use on your website can say as much about your firm as the words on the page. Text and photos go hand in hand to create an experience for any user that emphasizes a firm’s character.

There are many times when finding the right photo can be an expensive proposition. What if it were free?

Check on Everystockphoto to find that perfect picture to use on any webpage. The website calls itself, “a search engine for free photos” and that is just what it feels like.

Search for a photo. Normally if you need an image for your firm’s website you can find it among the many freely available to any website hosted by CPA Site Solutions. Perhaps you need an image of a bridge or any other photo not commonly associated with an accounting website. Search for this on Everystockphoto and you will find 31,974 results to choose from.

What Everystockphoto does is search many different stock photo websites for you. This saves you time from having to check places like Flickr, iStockphoto, or any other popular photo sharing websites.

World's Longest Suspension Bridge Photo by Ionushi

Make collections of the photos you want to use. When you sign up as a user you can actually make collections of the photos you want to use. The process is as simple as dragging and dropping it into the collection area.

Make sure to look at the license. Even though most of these are free photos they do have a certain level of protection via various licenses. Not all licenses are the same so be sure to check over what the photos license is.

In the example of the bridge image the license is an “Attribute License.”  This is a Creative Commons license and it means that the author wants to be mentioned as the source. This can be done by providing a mention of the author along with link. The author in this image is mentioned and the image links to their Flickr page.  Although most of the photos are free there are some that will show a $ sign which means they are not.

Using some different images along with some custom text about your accounting firm can go along way in standing out from the crowd. Now you have a free resource to find the pictures you need.

Have some experience using free photos? Send along a comment so it can be included in a future blog post.

Your website can provide powerful marketing that helps your firm acquire new clients and develop new business relationships. Online video messages are currently one of the strongest ways to help convert ‘cold prospects’ into ‘warm potential clients.’

More than 14 billion videos are viewed online each month. Many businesses are increasingly turning to online video as an effective way to engage viewers and win more business.

Take advantage of this growing trend to showcase your business online with a high-quality, professionally-produced video at a price far below traditional video advertising.

Video Opens Several Doors for You:

• Build rapport with potential clients before the first call or meeting.
• Pre-sell your firm’s services.
• Establish your credibility and professionalism.
• Communicate the value of working with an accounting professional.
• Act today so that you can experience for yourself the power and intimacy of an online video message. Video allows you to build your firm while spending less time pre-selling your services in person.

Sample Video:

How it Works

It’s easy and surprisingly inexpensive to add a short professional video message to your site.

You get assistance with the creative process and a professional videographer is sent to your location at a arranged time and and date. The videographer guides you to ensure that your interview and business footage looks and sounds great.

The footage is submitted for your approval. After the shoot is complete you can view and make edits. It’s a remarkably simple, straightforward process resulting in a quality video message.

Insert your video onto your site. Once production is complete you get a copy of your video, which you can then insert it directly onto your website and submit to popular social networking websites.

For pricing information and to sign up for this exciting new service, please see our Video Page on our site.

Feedback and Local Search

Once you’re listed in Googles Local Search results you’ll need to start working on improving your position. Your position in local search will be determined in large part by your “feedback”.

Vermont Pub and Brewery Review

Feedback is a method that Google uses to “rank” local businesses. You’ve probably noticed, at some point, that many of the business listings on Google Maps have a ranking of 1-5 stars. You’ll also notice that most business are as yet unranked.

Feedback basically means user reviews. Local search is a “socially driven” tool. The more reviews and feedback users provide, the more likely Google will be to promote your listings.

In other words, the key to getting a good LOCAL listing, is to get people to provide feedback on your site.

Getting Reviews

Improving your position in Local Search is partially driven by reviews of your business. Just click on any local search result and one of the first links in the listing simply says “write a review”. Only registered users can offer feedback, so the user will need to login to a Gmail account. They then have the ability to rank your business and/or write a comment.

Start by asking your customers to review you. Of course, while asking helps – motivating and incentivizing can work better. Reward positive reviews with a coupon, savings or free promotion.

You may even want to write the review for them and email it to them so they can just copy and paste it into the form field. The easier you make it to do, and the more incentive you offer, the more people will participate. Even a slight effort will significantly accelerate the entire process.

“What’s stopping my competitors from trashing me in a review? or even a bunch of reviews?”

A poor review at an undisclosed location.

The answer is “absolutely nothing”. Welcome to the wonderful world of Social Marketing. Here is the up-side; negative feedback is still feedback and all feedback is beneficial to your position. You may lose a star or two to a competitors shenanigans, but you actually gain search position.

Have a story about your own experience with Google Local Search? Send a comment and we may use it in a future blog post.

This is the third part of a series. At this point you’ve got the mechanics down for making your video and uploading it to video sharing sites that have some “search juice”. That’s the easy part, the hard part is doing it again. And again. And again…

This requires some creativity on your part. Here are some practical suggestions that make this process much easier. If you want to succeed at this strategy you need to integrate it into your normal ongoing network marketing process.

Navigating using video on your firm's website.

Your videos can help your accounting firm three ways:

• Videos can help you establish your authority over the subject matter in question.
• Videos Can Help You Market Your Firm. Video is a great chance to connect with your customers and prospects alike on both a professional and a personal level.
• Videos can help you improve customer service and client retention.

Establish Your Authority
Video offers you a chance for you to establish yourself as an expert on tax preparation, tax planning, accounting, QuickBooks, etc.

Record all your presentations, to plebes and pros alike. You don’t have to give away the farm. A few informative snippets from a helpful seminar or college class is enough to establish you as an expert/leader in your field.

You can also establish authority with informative videos that explain some tricky tidbit of tax law or financial management. A lot of the knowledge that you have and take for granted is what people are looking to understand.

Many people may not understand the specifics of a financial statement. Providing them with information they can take home and use can help towards making you and your firm a solid resource.

Market yourself and your firm
Record all your public presentations. A few inspiring soundbites from a speech or sermon that you’ve given help to establish you as a prospect’s neighbor; a part of the same community. It’s a real opportunity to connect with like minded people.

Your hobbies and interests can pay off. Record yourself fishing or riding or even playing chess in the park (keep that last clip short, though, OK?). Some customers might even be willing to give you a video testimonial.

How about a tour of the office? Introduce me to some of your staff?

Show some videos of the annual office party, or the client trip you took to Atlantic City. Set slides to music. Have some fun with it!!!

Improve Your Customer Service
Create “How To” videos that will help clients overcome everyday problems at work. QuickBooks alone can keep you busy at this for months.

What kind of problems are your customers routinely having when integrating their accounting software into their business? Break it down step by step for them.

If a customer asks you a particularly astute question get ahead of the curve and commit the answer to video before another customer makes that mistake or calls to ask the same thing.

Tips

Lastly, here’s a few tips for publicizing and sharing your videos:

• Be Careful About Embedding Videos on your Site: Embedded videos look great, and they are a great sales tool, but don’t embed videos that are hosted on public video sharing sites. To the search engines these look like “reciprocal links” and without boring you with the tech I’ll just  say “reciprocal links are bad”. If you want to embed video on your site you’ll need to host it locally or on a remote server that isn’t a part of your SEO strategy.
• Try to make your videos topical. If you connect your topic to popularly searched subjects more people are likely to find and view/review your video.
• Reviews and comments are great! They make the page dynamic and search engines LOVE dynamic pages. Ask your friends, family, and clients to review and rate your videos.
• Keep your videos short and to the point. Avoid lengthy titles/credits.
• Swap “plugs” with other video bloggers. The search engines may be able to penalize us for swapping links with each other, but they can’t stop us from agreeing to say nice things about each other.
• Participate in the video communities you are uploading to. Leave reviews and comments on other people’s pages, and they’ll be more likely to check out yours.
• Post links to your videos from your social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Have your own experience regarding using video for your website that you would like to share? Send us a comment so we can include it in a future blog post.

Here are some simple, cost-free steps you can take to transform your approach to marketing your accounting firm.

Don't let your firm get lost in the marketplace.

Quick Background. Accounting firms operate in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Gone are the days when ‘marketing’ meant a plaque on the door and perhaps a Yellow Pages ad. Now even small sole practitioners are setting up organized marketing campaigns, and extravagant CPA website design is a virtual requirement for success.

Here’s the top ten cost free steps you can take right now to improve marketing your firm:

1. Monitor your referral sources and organize your leads.
   If you keep track of where your best business comes from you know how to invest your time in the future. Organize your referral contacts. Assign each a priority, high, medium, and low, then formulate a communications strategy for each group.
2. Never assume your clients are happy.
   Delighted clients are your most important source of referrals. Survey your client base to identify those who are merely ’satisfied,’ then look for opportunities to convert them into fans. While you are at it, review everything your client sees, hears or touches. Is your reception area nice? How about your receptionist? When a client calls, are they likely to get a real person or do you make everyone wade through your voice-mail? Are letters well-written and easy to read? Are your staff skilled communicators?
3. Get to know your clients vendors and professional service providers.
   These referral sources very likely don’t know you and your firm, but they should. By getting to know your clients vendors and service providers you establish a referral source, cement client relations, and enhance your image and reputation.
4. Focus on your client’s profits (not your own).
   The best way to win the network marketing game is to be the best at what you do and doing it. Nobody is going to refer you if they feel gouged. There is a limit to the demand for tax return preparation, services and audits. There is also, however, an unlimited demand for accountants and consultants who can help clients improve net profits! If you are still focusing on increasing your chargeable hours, charge rates, or net fees, it’s time to reorient your thinking. It’s not about increasing your billable hours, it’s about increasing your services to the clients!
5. Develop a marketing plan.
   Most partners and managers have only 100-300 hours a year to devote to marketing. Why not organize this time the same way you would a 300-hour client engagement? Focus on your desired outcomes, actions, steps, money, time, and a budget.
6. Talk about Value, not Fees!
   When meeting prospects, focus on the value you offer, and on what makes you different from (and better than) your competitors. If the client agrees to the service, and if your terms are fair, you can assume the close. Fee terms should seem like an afterthought to the client.
7. Get to know your clients’ team.
   Before the tax season starts, meet the financial teams of your ten best clients. These are valuable contacts. Build a great team for your client and you will build a great team for yourself too.
8. Don’t hibernate the tax season away.
   Clients are never more interested in help with their business than when confronted with last year’s financial results and this year’s tax liability. Plan now to cross-sell to every client you meet during the season. Capitalize on this effort. Use press releases, articles, and mailings.
9. Learn to ask better questions and listen to the answers.
   Asking the right questions is the foundation of being an effective adviser.  The client doesn’t know what he needs, he only knows what he wants. Listen between the lines. You are remiss in your duty as an accountant if you can’t sell a client on a service he really needs. Identify what your clients’ needs are and use what you know to help your them meet those needs. Ultimately this will benefit both you and your client.
10. Tomorrow is more important than yesterday.
    Your clients are more worried about today and tomorrow than they are about yesterday (which is the traditional province of the accountant). You can really help most of your clients by helping them use financial statements as a cornerstone for making better business decisions.

Clients and referrals can offer remarkable results growing and maintaining a winning business – and you can do all of it for less than the cost of a plaque and a Yellow Pages ad.

Creating Seminars within the Seminar Registration System

Offering seminars can be an invaluable marketing tool for your accounting firm. Your website from CPA Site Solutions includes a Seminar Registration System that makes creating a seminar offer page very easy and straightforward; here is a quick breakdown of the process.

Adding a seminar page to your site. First you need to add a seminar page which can be done in moments. The real key in this part of the process is picking a great title for your seminar.

You want something that says briefly what the seminar is about while also attracting a reader’s attention. If you have a title like “Quickbooks Seminar” it might not be as effective as “Efficiently Recognize and Fix Quickbooks Mistakes.”

Use a very short description about topics covered and solutions discussed in your seminar.  The specific details that solve problems serve to catch and hold a reader’s interest.

Add a PayPal email account for a Pay Now Button. Have a PayPal account? Add the email associated with that account in the seminar creation process. This will add a “Pay Now” button that users can click on to pay for the services right away.

Seminars bring in new clients. Offer tips or a hands-on class on popular software such as Quickbooks. Seminars can establish you as an expert with new clients and solidifies you as a trusted resource for those who do.

Seminars as alternative revenue stream for  your firm. Decide on an appropriate fee for the seminar being offered. Charging a fee not only compensates you for your time but establishes the value of your seminar for attendees.

Still need a bit more inspiration? Check out the Morowitz and Company’s website that is currently using the Seminar Registration System to see an example (and also a high value seminar offering):

Morowitz and Company Seminar Page

Have some experience working with the seminar feature? Send a comment and you may see it in a future blog post.

A frequently asked question here at CPA Site Solutions is “How do I improve my firm’s visibility with the major search engines?”   Here are a couple of easy to apply techniques that you can implement to make your accounting firm’s website more attractive to search engines.

Create and About Us page to gain an edge over your competitors bland websites.

A fresh profile page provides unique content for search engines. Search engines love unique content. The more you provide, the more established your accounting firm’s website becomes overall. One quick and easy way you can do this is by creating an About Us page.

Adding images to your about us page can improve SEO standing. Search engines read an images alternate text. Each image that you include can have a title that appears when you mouse over it. This text is read by search engines so including your accounting firm’s name, location, and services within this can improve your listing.

You also get additional benefits by having an About Us page.

Current and potential clients feel more comfortable with real people. When you have a picture of each member of the team it provides a closer experience to meeting your firm than does just text. Each picture shows a real person and suddenly your firm is not just a name and some text but people that live in the same community or very close by.

This can be very comforting for people coming to your accounting website as it helps bridge the gap between technology and the real world. You might snag that big client because they want to work with someone on your team with a similar interest or hobby. This provides an extra edge over other firm’s who do not take advantage of this option.

Improve your internal office culture. Team members take pride in having their virtual signature on your website. It also opens a windows up into the lives of others that work in a desk right next to you that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

Take advantage of modifying your accounting firm’s team profile page on your website. The time that you take to do so is a great investment not only for your accounting firm’s website but your team overall.

Have an interesting story about creating your accounting firm’s profile pages? Send us a comment we would love to hear from you.

Do you find yourself inundated by email and wishing for more efficient tools to manage your email contacts?  The Workteam Collaboration Suite provided with any website hosted by CPA Site Solutions has some powerful tools to help manage contacts.  Here is a quick breakdown of some of the more popular ways to enhance your email contact management along with links to online help files and some efficiency points.

Creating or Editing Existing Contacts. There are three areas by default; All Contacts, Most Contacted, and My Contacts. You can easily add or edit an existing contact within the Workteam Collaboration Suite.

• All Contacts: contains all of the people you have ever contacted.
• Most Contacted: are those most frequently emailed.
• My Contacts are those within your domain or that you have personally added.

Efficiency:

• Keep track of a contact’s website if any, their birthday if you have it, and a few brief notes.
• Remembering a birthday can go a long way in firming up a relationship.
• Having notes on your last conversation if you don’t talk much or some of their hobbies so you can reference them in an email helps add dimension to any communication.

Creating Contact Groups. Contact Groups are an effective way to communicate with a number of people who share a common goal or personal relationship. You can create or edit a contact group easily enough within the Suite.

Efficiency:

• Easily communicate with groups of people with common interests or goals.
• The more groups you have the easier it is to keep concerned individuals within the same communication loop.

Importing Contacts from a CSV File. If you have a list of contacts already made you can import them into the email Suite via an Excel CSV File. Here is the help file on how to do just that.

Efficiency:

• Having your contacts all in one place such as within an Excel file saves a lot of time in manually updating each contact.
• Gives you more flexibility as there is one less reason to be tied to any email solution.

Importing Contacts from Other Mail providers. This feature is great because again it gives you one more reason to not feel tied to an existing email solution because of a contact list. You can import contacts from many common email providers.

Efficiency:

• There are many contacts built up over time that can be lost in the process of changing email solutions. This eliminates that potential to loose touch with old and new clients alike.

Taking the time to understand and utilize all of the tools within your Contacts can save you time overall. This is just one of the many great features behind the Workteam Collaboration Suite.

Do you have a story of your own regarding the use of contacts? Send a comment and it may be printed in a future blog post.