Social publishing technology makes you available 24/7

The last time you needed information about someone, such as a phone number or an address, where did you go to find it? The phone book? A business card or note you were pretty sure you left on your desk somewhere? Even if you know you have the person's phone number in your personal directory, chances are you tried to look it up online.

It's not always convenient to call. Who wants to climb through the "phone tree" or wait on hold once you've reached the person you need to talk to? If you have a quick question, shouldn't the answer be available just as quickly? As we become more accustomed to being able to find nearly any answer online, if your business isn't providing answers that way, you're missing out on an opportunity to work smarter, and possibly even losing business to impatient customers who just won't wait anymore for you to catch up.

Take a look at your company’s web site. Does it answer – completely and honestly – the questions most visitors would likely have about your business, its products and services? Has it been updated in the past three months? Six months? Over a year? Are there easy ways for your visitors to communicate back to you, with email links, a request form, or a sign-up for an electronic newsletter? And if you were a visitor to your own site, would you want to come back to the site after that first visit?

That's what social publishing and business blogging are all about. We can get you up-to-date with the latest Web-based technologies that will put you in touch with your clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can't be available all the time in person, but with the help of Kephart & Associates, you can make yourself available around the clock, even while you're resting easy.

These exciting new technologies can help you:

• Keep your website updated, by you and your employees, with no prior knowledge of programming - if you can use a word processor, you have all the skills you need!
• Provide product information, specifications and diagrams quickly and accurately.
• Give answers to frequently asked questions online, reducing your customers' need to contact you directly for simple issues.
• Create and share online schedules, task lists, and project management tools for your employees and customers.
• Impress prospective customers with your willingness to communicate proactively with them - today's customer can tell the difference between marketing hype and honesty.

Kephart & Associates uses and supports open source software solutions. We are proud to be associated with leaders in cutting-edge interactive software applications, including Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress, which create the structure of most of our clients' websites today. We constantly evaluate new Web 2.0 applications as they become available, and can recommend other solutions based on your business's current needs.