Website development and design is part art and part science. Let me explain.

A website must be built not only for human consumption but also machine consumption. It needs to read one way to humans (i.e. be aesthetically pleasing, easy to read, accessible) but also needs to read another way to computers (i.e. properly structured, easy to navigate, good technical framework). Nowadays, not only does your website need to work on a computer but it actually needs to work on different types of operating systems, browsers, mobile devices, etc., depending on your target audience’s reach.

Unfortunately, to most small business owners’ chagrin, a comprehensive marketing plan doesn’t stop at hastily posting a website on the internet and leaving the core of content up to someone up to pen together. How does a small business owner overcome some the hurdles of a new website build without breaking the bank?

• Make sure that you get to know the person who is working on your new site. Do they understand basic design principles as well as the technical build itself? Be weary of commissioning someone who is a specialist in one and farms out the other aspect elsewhere. If you can find someone to integrate the process (ideally, one person or at least a two-person team) that would be ideal.




• Is your developer pulling their WAIT or pulling their WEIGHT? Sticking to the original proposed budget (both in money as well as timeline) will save you both headaches. If your designer/developer works odd hours (most do), make sure you give them all of the information they need beforehand so that they don’t have excuses!




• Never assume that the designer/developer is working on just one project at a time. Most of them juggle at least five or six simultaneously. If you expect exclusivity you will have to pay for it.




• Try not to get too involved. I know, I know, you’re paying for it and deserve to have your say. However, you have to understand that you have commissioned the help of an expert. So, let your expert do their work! If you have a question or concern, ASK. Designers/developers generally left to do the good work they are commissioned to do will naturally gravitate towards the projects that lack “helicopter” clients. If you give them room to breathe, they will generally do amazing work!




• Don’t assume that your designer/developer can read your mind. If you already getting a sense that they are not a good fit for either your aesthetic or work style, ask what the severance terms. Some may be happy to release the work for the price of a down payment, whereas others will try to keep working with you until you’re happy with your product.




• Send the shortest emails you can. If you can send your revision requests in a short, bulleted emails there will be less room for interpretation and more time for working! If designers/developers see an incredibly long email they generally shelve it until they finish their myriad of little tasks first so that they can focus their energy. Unless you want to be LAST in their priority list, I advise against sending epic emails.




• Unless you’ve enlisted the help of a communications or marketing agency, don’t assume that your designer/developer can do it all. Although Unicorn Press specializes in the design, marketing, and branding process, not every freelancer or company does. Screen their references and scrutinize their portfolio before asking.

The website design process can be tenuous. Hopefully these tips will help it be a little less stressful!

I recently had the wonderful privilege of being able to scrape up enough funds from my business development budget to attend the annual Blog World and New Media Expo. At first I was rather skeptical that it would be one of those other social media conferences where I be sold a bunch of hogwash on very elementary basics on the importance of using Twitter, how to set up a Facebook page for your business, or what a blog actually entails. Even despite the $400+ price tag, I wasn’t sure if it would actually be an informative experience for me. I don’t hail myself an expert (who is, anyways?) but nonetheless I knew that some of my friends from the blogosphere would be there, so it wouldn’t be a complete wash if it turned out to be a dud.

Despite my low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised. The conference turned out to be absolutely amazing. It was a great blend of speakers with varied levels of experience and a multitude of backgrounds. So many different fields were represented during this weekend-long conference — Public relations, Marketing, Public Affairs, Defense, Info/Internet Tech, Business Development, SEO, as well as just plain bloggers in general — that it really did make the experience much more comprehensive and holistic. For the most part everyone I met lived terribly dynamic and exciting lives compared to me, and I only hope to one day scrape the tip of the iceberg in terms of my experience and involvement within this community.

I was prepared for the worst but lucky me, I got the best. However, not every conference is a completely mind-blowing, perspective-altering experience. Sometimes they are just okay, or a little less than exciting, especially if someone sent you there on their behalf to take notes and schmooze. Here are some tips on how to make the time go by just a little bit faster with those type of conferences:

Resolve to make just one new friend. It doesn’t have to be all business! Time flies when you’re having fun, so make some good conversation for a little bit and see where that takes you. Maybe they’ll introduce you to someone else they met and it’ll segue into something meaningful later on.

Make an effort to go talk to people for just fifteen minutes. If after fifteen minutes you are still not having a good time, remove yourself out of the environment for a couple of hours and try again. (I usually find that after ten minutes I have a great time and then the day flies by!)
Ask (open ended) questions, even if you don’t really have any. By allowing someone else to talk your ears off, you’ll get a chance at picking up a nugget or two of information you wouldn’t have otherwise known. It can also be a good way to direct the conversation into something that’s more interesting or applicable to you.

Smile and try to make eye contact. I’ve gone to too many events and functions (especially ones that revolve around tech and social media) where people are on clicking away their phones. You can be on your phone at home, at the airport, or when you’re in line at Starbucks, but when you’re at a conference, you’re (ostensibly) there to learn and to get to know people. So, get your head out of the cloud (literally) and come hither in real life. Chances are, someone is dying to make meaningful conversation…you just need to show up on their radar!

Give in…just a little bit. If you get invited to an after-hours event or a quick post-conference get-together, try not to turn it down to just go back to your hotel room to take a nap. Not everything will be a pleasant exchange, and if you feel uneasy about the party/meetup/etc you can always leave. But, try to make an entrance before you completely shut out all opportunity and make your exit.

Also, since I too own a small business, I realize that sometimes the prices of conference ticket, compounded by airfare and accomodations, can be a bit out of reach for some. Most of the major conferences have a virtual version, where you can log in for a fraction of the ticket cost. I recommend that you attend some free ones before you commit to a paid version so that you can get used to sitting at your desk for more than a few hours at a time. (Make sure to check out Fortune Magazine and the American Marketing Association. They have some great virtual conferences a few times a year!)

Hey small business owners and freelancers!

It’s 2011 already. It’s time to get your business out of the stone ages and into the 21st century.

Yeah, you’ve heard that social media is important. Community engagement in real-time is also very important. Since time is money, and you have very little spare time to execute your marketing plans, what’s the most effective use of your time?

I say ditch the super-polished videos, structured-to-the-nines podcasts, and lengthy blog entries. Go live and get VOKLE instead. VOKLE is a great live audience interaction platform by which you can host your own town hall, talk show, gripe session, product demo, service pitch, etc. Through it you can also engage with your audience by taking video and text calls, co-host the show with others, bring on guest speakers, chat, and cross-post to your other social media outlets. At the low-low cost of FREE it’s a pretty low-impact way for small businesses and freelancers to add another dimension to current outreach efforts.

My favorite feature is the ability embed the show on your own website. People can log on to yourdomain.com and participate! They can even register for the event without signing up for a separate account, which drastically cuts the barrier of entry for your audience. Hooray for open and transparent web!

“The only pressure I’m under is the pressure I’ve put on myself.”
-Mark Messier

The Harvard Business Review recently published the research and defense of a psychological study that measured the correlation between the tendency to feel guilt and performance review. It turned out that people who are prone to guilt tend to work harder and perform better than people who are not guilt-prone, and are perceived to be more capable leaders.

I’m a pretty guilty person…not necessarily because I read the article and decided that I want to be labeled as capable or hardworking. It’s because I am and it’s partially fueled my motivation and drive to produce my best work. It doesn’t matter the dollar figure of the project or if I’m working on trade. Most of the time I (personally) feel guilty for not delivering faster, better, more, etc. The guilt can get crippling but I’ve managed to turn that negative energy into something motivating. When I feel as though I’m not performing up to my own expectations, I look to myself to remedy those issues before they manifest and/or fester into larger problems with my client’s project. The end result? I end up motivating myself.

A couple of years ago (right when I first started my business) a reiki/feng shui master told me a that I needed to drop the guilt factor completely. “It’s the lowest form of energy on the planet,” she said. She’s probably right, but had I listened to her then, I probably wouldn’t have powered through half of the things that helped me get where I am today! Leadership skills can be acquired through organizational leadership training and other leadership-focused degrees.

What do you think? Are you guilty? Do guilt-ridden people make great leaders?

Let’s talk numbers for a second.

“Marketers measure the value of brands in a variety of ways, including, monetarily – the dollar value the brand is worth to the company, or the premium price a consumer is willing to pay; customer satisfaction and loyalty and brand zealots; as well as building strong, positive brand associations over time.”

Let’s take Starbucks as an example. Admittedly they are a huge brand but there are multiple ways in which they can measure the value of their brand. I would measure their brand by assigning dollar values to individual properties — tangible goods, intangible goods, valuation, and general intellectual property — and then aggregating the total value.

Measuring the worth of tangible goods is relatively easy. For current equipment I would suggest amortization of the original purchase price since all of the equipment is used. I would value food inventory at the price in which it can be sold to the current customer base. Appliances generally depreciate less since they are speciality items (i.e. cappuccino machines, french press). Signage is a hit or miss: if the Starbucks name is surviving the merger or acquisition then it would be worth valuing. However, if the Starbucks name is not surviving then it may be auctioned off at a reduced cost. For the purposes of measuring brand equity I would value it as valuable wayfinding signage that are large-scale environmental lovemarks of the brand.

Intangible goods are also an integral part of the brand that carries great value. They are also unfortunately the most overlooked! You can value the current worth of vendor relationships, distributor relationships, customer relationships (not just the day-to-day customers but also those who are registered in the Starbucks Rewards program), employee relationships, endorsements, and partnerships with the projected worth against the current worth of those contracts. Through market research you can also measure customer-based brand equity and the likeliness and willingness of a customer to spend at a price premium based on brand. Human resources (skill and training of management and staff) are also sometimes overlooked but is very important when valuing a company: having a staff that is already trained and groomed for the business is very valuable and much less expensive to run compared to acquiring HR and training costs.

Drawing valuation from current cash reserves, stock value, marketable securities, and investments in stock and bonds, are also a good way to determine a small piece of the brand’s current financial valuation.

In addition to financials, valuing intellectual property, patents, trademarks (umbrella brands, sub-brands, product lines), licensing agreements, past mergers and acquisitions, loans, lease-to-own arrangements, royalties from product placements also adds a great deal of value to a brand.

How will you measure the value of YOUR brand?

In short…kind of.

For people who are unfamiliar with the technology and processes of design — from the artistic form to the technical know-how necessary to execute ideas — going to school is one of THE best ways to learn. You have to choose your school carefully though. If you don’t, you run the risk of getting caught up in a program that doesn’t necessarily fit your goals or approaches.

I was lucky to go to a private art school for one (very short) semester. In that space of time I learned a lot about the art behind it. I spent almost ten years learning the science of it beforehand, and imitating what I saw in magazines and books. In that short period of time I was thrown in to the more artistic, ethereal challenges behind my projects. When I left that private art school and transferred in to a local state university, I was flabbergasted. Students were still learning to kern. They still tried to run RGB layouts through our four-color printer. They were designing booklets in Photoshop. They hadn’t the slightest cue about binding technologies, HTML, print production, etc…all things that I had essentially grown up with.

The traditional design school experience was very tough for me. I breezed through the coursework but quickly approached my two design professors and asked that they challenge me as hard as they could. (That they did…one drove me to tears!) In my experience it wasn’t the actual course work itself that taught me a lot, but instead my interaction with my professors and the internships with which they connected me. It was also in my dealings with my classmates, by being patient and helping them grow as designers through fair and honest feedback and critiques. It was in helping them understand that design was simply not just a pretty picture but a piece of visual communication that was to eventually be consumed by millions of people…and that it needed to be taken seriously.

What I also never expected was to deal with politics. Different professors had different teaching styles and their own philosophies about how to run their classes. When it came time to seek funding for an international project, I had to deal with the politics between departments, and getting recommendations. Some of the hardest lessons I learned in design school was knowing when to drop a design argument when it became apparent that it came down to taste; understanding that honey attracts more flies than vinegar; and that sometimes it didn’t really matter what other people thought — that if you could unequivocally defend your design, you were designing from an informed point of view. It was also really difficult for me to deal with rejection: I had applied to create my own masters degree program but was rejected on the grounds that my GPA was not high enough. (All credited to the hop-skipping of majors I did prior to switching in to design.) In retrospect that was a blessing in disguise: I would have missed out on the opportunity to work for a boutique ad agency and learn the reins of running a business from the inside out. I would have missed out on working with The Rainmaker Network. I would have missed out on starting my own company. I would have also missed out on enrolling in the degree program at Golden Gate, which has served me so well thus far.

No, it wasn’t the brand identity assignments or the poster designs or even the portfolio class that taught me a lot about the design process. It was the people. It was the patience that was required of me to finish the classes. It was learning how to follow protocol, even if I didn’t want to. It was learning that forms of expression require a process, and that there were no shortcut to success. Design school taught me that I would have to work hard, commit to goals, and set to achieving them if I were ever able to make something of myself.

Expecting instantaneous success from your sales and marketing efforts? You’re being unreasonable and it is my job to help you understand that there is no such thing as an overnight success!

There’s an old marketing adage that says a consumer needs to see an ad 3 times before they respond, or they need to see two recent exposures before answering a call to action. (There’s also a whole field devoted to studying effective frequency in marketing.) It might be old but it still rings true to this day.

Just think — when was the last time YOU saw a tweet or a Facebook ad and acted right away on impulse? What about the last time you received a call from a telemarketer? Chances are, the solicitations you responded to had a few of the following characteristics:

1. It took a few tries to get your attention
2. It had to come from a source you trusted
3. It had to be worded in such a way that piqued your interest

There’s no such thing as an overnight success. It doesn’t matter if you’re a top athlete or a big box brand. If they couldn’t reach overnight success, how will you? The simple answer is, you don’t. You reach them by being consistent, persistent, and honest.

Marketing and advertising efforts aren’t successful once they’ve been deployed. Hardly the contrary, in fact! What makes them successful is nuturing them, supporting it with other efforts, and measuring their effectiveness. Whether its a social media “blitz” (which, by definition, is a short-term fix to a long-term marketing problem) or a direct sales campaign, efforts to reach the consumer take time. With the right amount of patience and persistence, it is possible to get the results you are looking for. All it takes is time and consistency.

One marketing tip to increase your rate of success: make your call to action SIMPLE. The less hoops they have to jump through, the better. Don’t expect the consumer to do all of the work. You’ll have to hold their hand for a bit but once you build a groundswell of support, they will begin to spread the word and evangelize on your behalf.

Most consumers are very skeptical. They wait out the marketing campaign or outreach efforts to see if you stand the test of time. When you show them that you are, in fact, the real deal, and that you are passionate about whatever it is you are hawking, they will be more willing to talk to you. It doesn’t mean that you are playing the waiting game: it just means that you are so enthusiastic about whatever it is you are promoting that you’ll wait until the absolute right moment to drop the bomb on them. (And, if you don’t have the time or resources to commit to something long term, should you even be doing it in the first place?)

We’re curious to hear your thoughts.

Small businesses: What marketing campaign hangups have you had?
Marketers: Has a client ever been unreasonable with you? How have you dealt with it?

Computers getting stolen. Hard drives crashing. Google going down. I don’t want to think about it and neither do you. Well, if you’re like me and you conduct a whole LOT of your business virtually, you’re going to have to eventually manage your data responsibly and plan for that worst-case scenario.

Here are some apps, gadgets, and tutorials that will take the pain away the next time technology fails you!

Web apps

Files – Dropbox (invite link): Backup your working files (Word docs, Powerpoints, design files, local programming files, etc) at the end of every workweek. Free + premium. It’ll cost $99/yr/50GB or $199/yr/100GB.
Documents – Google Docs: It’s a bit slow for my preferences but you can always work on your docs in the cloud. It autosaves your documents every minute or so, which is really nifty if you aren’t conditioned to Ctrl+S every five seconds like me.
Contacts – Soocial: Keep your phone, computer, and web apps in sync and get daily backups of all of your contacts. Free up to 250 contacts. Premium services available.
Email – Postini by Google: Back up your emails for $45/year for up to 10 years of archive storage for you hard-core folks out there.
Facebook – They’ve made it a pretty painless process. Beware: it is up to you to safeguard this info AFTER the download!
Twitter – Tweetbackup does it for free if you spare them a follow.
WordPress – Backup Buddy will back up EVERYTHING: your MySQL database, theme, plugins, etc. Have a working directory to redeploy ASAP when your host decides to yank your chain. Tiered pricing available but it starts at $45.
Tumblr – They have an in-house app you can download if you’re working on a Mac. Otherwise, try Backup Jammy.
Flickr – Photogs rejoice! There’s a cross-platform app to save your work.

Smartphones

iPhone: FREE. Just do it!
Droid: Astro File Manager makes it easy and FREE.
Blackberry: Use the Desktop Manager to backup your crackberry.
Windows Phone: Microsoft ActiveSync does it for FREE.
Palm: This requires a bit of jimmyrigging but use Homebrew (coupled with Save Restore) for your contacts, SyncToy for ringtones/music/photos, and SyncBack for scheduling full system backups.

Music

iTunes – FREE. All it requires is some time and a spare hard drive.
Zune – FREE as well. For some reason Microsoft recommends CDs and DVDs.

When all else fails…do it manually.

PC: Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Backup.
Mac: Use Time Machine
Both: Manually back up your files (watch this tutorial).
I highly suggest you backup to a G-Technology by Hitachi hard disk. I’ve worked with a few other external HDs that have melted down but G-Tech has always been incredibly reliable. They’re a little pricier but are worth their weight in gold!
When you’re done backing up to a hard disk, I suggest you burn the most important files to a DVD and mail them to a trusted friend or relative. (Hey, you never know!)

So, what are you waiting for? Back your stuff up today and rest easy! If we left anything off mention it in the comments below and we’ll update the list.