What is the best way to communicate with your clients? Is it through email, or a text? Or Instagram messaging? If you ever felt like there is a inconvenient latency in responses between you and your future payer, maybe it is time to rethink your communication model. In this episode from Adorama TV with Vanessa Joy (and her awesome show “Breathe Your Passion”)
we explore 5 (well, actually 4) tips for better communication with clients.
Long gone are ways to communicate through email. Nowadays, if you want to make sure your clients receive and read your message, you’d have to chat via messaging systems like iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, FB messager, etc. The generation of millennials is the iPhone generation. They do not read lengthy, boring texts in the email.
They chat in short sentences on WhatsApp instead.
So as a rule of thumb, Vanessa Joy usually sends the information about proposal/shoot in the email and RIGHT AWAY follows up with the text, like “hey I just sent you an email, have you checked it by any chance already?” That way she makes sure, the client is on the same page with her.
If your clients are reaching out to you through Instagram, double your messages there as well to make sure recipient “seen” it.
In 2018 videos are still the most effective form of online communication, instruction and advertisement. So why not take advantage of it and create a video for your clients?
You can use it as an F.A.Q. information about your services and terms, or provide visual explanation about next steps you and client will take to reach the goal, or for sheer promotion on your social media.
Include it in your email, chat box, or share it through Instagram – a video is the easiest digest of information for your client.
24 hours – that used to be a number that showed your due diligence in response time to the client. NOT ANYMORE! Now, the best time to respond within upon receiving the message is ONE HOUR. One bloody hour.
While it might seem impossible to catch up with such swift pace, online services like “17hats” might help with organization of your workflow and make things easier for ya.
Never leave your client hanging in the unknown. If you finished shooting, tell your client how you are going to edit it and what your deadlines are. If you have already sent photos, leave your client in the “till the next time” mood so she would want to work with you again. Your client is wagon, and you are the locomotive, so lead the way.
Watch the full episode with Vanessa Joy and Adorama TV: