http://www.thedesigncubicle.com/2009/04/50-creative-business-cards-of-50-graphic-designers/

Thanks to Brian Hoff at Design Cubicle for the compliment!

Business cards on Josh Can Help

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Facebook vs Blog: Internal Risk and Fear

Just seems like joining a Facebook group would potentially be a little less risky/scary. I think there is still mystery/confusion for many people around the blog idea, so this could be a way to walk them into the deep end nice and easy.

Personally, I think you have it backwards. Most people who see a blog think it’s just a website or an updates page. Also, a blog isn’t something you have to commit to or admit affiliation with. When people join a group or become a fan, they’re tied to that group/fan page. Also, blogs are “liked” more by Google than FB pages.

I’ve been blogging for over two years now and I still get an interesting reaction from people who don’t blog or don’t read them regularly. One time, I was pulled aside and jokingly accosted by someone who thought it was ridiculous that anyone who blogs could be so vain. True story!

The word “blog” is a hot button word. Most people know what they are but they don’t quite know why people create them, use them, and work so hard on them. In this case, here is an example of someone who sees blogs as “risky” or “scary.” For someone who blogs, this is a strange reaction but if it represents a larger group of people then there is certainly still work to be done.

In the “Facebook vs Blog Debate,” the winner is clear to me. Blogs pull traffic directly to your site, blogs can disseminate information and be a little bit biased while being helpful, and blogs can have 1,000 people per day that visit anonymously. The visibility is higher, the traffic is stronger, and the format can be completely customized. While I think a Facebook group works for a lot of things, personally, I don’t see a benefit in aligning myself so strongly with any particular product.

Company Buy-In: The Eternal Struggle for ROI

I really think we can’t go wrong either way, and would prefer to do both, but am wondering about internal buy in. I personally think it would be great for you to explore blog options/ideas, not sure how others would feel about it.

The main point of a blog is information dissemination which works to attract links and search engine attention. The secondary purpose is online conversations. In fact, many blogs don’t have a comment system in place so, really, it’s just a series of articles and stories. In the end, it’s the conversation you generate and DON’T hear about that is the most important. “Did you read that thing about insert product here?” Internal buy in is automatic when people understand the great ROI that a blog can have.

Great corporate blogs contribute to corporate transparency, brand building, and trust. Plus, there are not a lot of great info sources for our topic these days.

What is missing from every blog without an audience and every Facebook group without a lot of fans is  quality content. The buy-in she is talking about (I believe) pertains to the amount of time it might take to maintain a blog on our topic of choice. But what if we created a Facebook page without a constant flow of information people care about? Who would attach themselves to a brand that didn’t really mean anything? Probably just the people working for that company.

In the end, whether it’s Facebook versus a blog, a blog versus Twitter, or Twitter versus Flickr, it all comes down to what you can offer. I’ve found that I can offer a lot over a blog and a lot through Twitter but not a lot through Flickr. I’m on Facebook a lot but that’s more personal. For a brand to be built using the social technology of the web, the brand has to have something to offer people beyond it’s logo and marketing spiel. Once it is determined what kind of unique perspective or information they can disseminate, then it’s time to figure out where to go. With so many options out there, the tool can’t dictate the content, the content MUST dictate the tool.

Sometimes All It Takes Is a Good Example

I enjoyed the corporate blogs you sent along – it’s a totally different animal than recreational blogs, obviously, and I had not seen a “good” example of a corporate blog.

It’s only been recently that I’ve been distinctly aware of how segregated marketing channels are now. Have you ever seen Mad Men? If not, it’s about an ad agency in the 50′s. What’s so interesting is that they design campaigns that every potential customer would see. It’s radio, TV, and print. Nowadays, there could be three different channels of marketing, each of which reach a different group of people. You could advertise on XM, television, and through SEM and reach three completely different groups of people.

My colleague had never seen the blogs I sent her (GM Fast Lane, MailChimp, and Freshbooks). She has been in advertising and had not yet seen an example of a good corporate blog. I think this says a lot about the internet landscape and how it all comes together. She probably never needed an HTML email sending application (MailChimp), is probably not interested in the auto industry (GM), and has never needed an online invoicing system (Freshbooks). I think this also means that the brands she reads about and the companies that she is interested in don’t maintain a blog (or don’t maintain a quality one or don’t have a good enough reach).

In the end, it’s not a matter of Facebook vs a blog, it’s a matter of participation. The blog you create might not reach the majority of your customers or potential customers but that’s not the point. For the ones it DOES reach, your believability and the trust for you in the marketplace goes up (if, of course, you’re spreading quality, truthful information). If you can become just one more trusted voice for your audience, people will notice. It’s not the 10,000 (or 500 or 100,000) people who read you every month, it’s how many people THOSE people reach. It’s not the individual visits to your page, it’s what those visits translate into. If you can position yourself or your company to be a part of the online society that talks about what you care about, you can direct that conversation or, at the very least, appear to know what you’re doing.

Go ahead, get out there, get writing and sharing! Your friends, customers, and employers have been waiting for you.

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Search engines are complicated, proprietary, heartless machines that chew up poor, unsuspecting websites and spit out a category based on what it tastes like. These categories are used to literally rank a site’s individual pages based on their relevancy for particular word or phrase. The rank, as it is referred to, is the key to getting more people coming to your website (called traffic) which can lead to more sales/appointments/contacts (called conversions).

Unless you don’t actually care if anyone goes to your website, you should be concerned with how findable you are on-line. Studies show that unless you’re on the first or second page (mostly just the first), you won’t get clicked on very often, your page will get minimal exposure, and your time and effort creating the site in the first place will be for naught.

Your rank in a particular search engine for a particular word or phrase is, simply, a combination of the following (more or less in this order):

1. How many other sites point to you as a reference, particularly for that word (known as incoming links)
2. How regularly that word is used on your page and where it appears (page titles, meta information, content)
3. How “good” your site is (lots of focused content, continual updates, age of site)

If you want people to see the information you have, if you want to turn web browsers into customers, and if you want to take advantage of the biggest marketplace of potential customers, you’ll give more than a second thought to how you are seen by a search engine.

Why is SEO important?

Consider what it would be like if no one could easily find your place of business, or even your telephone number. Most businesses could not continue for long in such a situation. The same thing can happen with your web site if people cannot easily locate it. Traffic volume, if it existed at all, slows to a crawl. Potentially valuable customers never even know you are there.

Key word strategy & generation

I’ll start off by saying that this is the single most important thing that needs to be done for a site… and, of course, it’s the hardest thing to do, the easiest to get wrong, and the most lengthy process. There is a lot of information available online about keyword strategy so this description will be brief.

Keywords are the words for which people are searching. Keywords for your own website are the words that people are searching to reach your website. Picking the right keywords is partially an exercise in putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and partially in avoiding words that are too common. Putting yourself in your customers’ shoes means that you’re thinking about words that your customers would use to find you. Avoiding common words means that you’re not competing directly in search results with sites that have a very strong presence and might be in a totally different industry.

Here are three simple steps towards picking keywords that can work for you.

1. Choose words that you think people might be using to find your site. Come up with about 20. These are probably not the words you’re going to use.
2. Go to google.com/keywords, type in your words, allow synonyms, and search. You should have a list of potentially hundreds of different words.
3. Pick about 5-8 words that have low-ish advertiser competition (under half), a good amount of searches but not too many (different for every situation but I usually pick words that are under 10K monthly searches), and a flat or upward trend (current month is higher or the same as the average).

These keywords should be used as-is throughout the site, it’s structure, image descriptions, and the text content.

Each step comes with it’s own set of complexities but, if you’ve walked through these steps, even if you’re confused by the end of it, you’re a step ahead of many, many people on the web.

Building a functional keyword strategy is not something you just do once. Seach engine optimization is something you need to do on a regular basis. I see it as a scientific process. You start with an idea, a hypothesis (“my clients will find me by searching ‘eye care’ and ‘cataract correction’”). Then you design an experiment to test your original hypothesis (“We’re going to write a few pages of content, each one concentrating on a different part of the keywords we chose”). Data is gathered and analyzed and a new path is chosen (“Our traffic went up 30% with these keywords… are we getting all the benefit that we can?”). Time and culture will change search patterns so what used to be a golden word for you, may become stale and unpopular. Keep checking those analytics reports!

Need help?

If you’re looking to increase traffic on your business website and need some help with all of this, give me a call (contact info on the top left of this site), I’d be glad to help. SEO techniques are important and confusing and it helps to have someone there to guide your efforts.

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Why I read this blog

I started reading YEB because I am young (ish?) and an entrepreneur, for the  most part. I figured, hey, this thing must be written for me.

From what I’m read, I’m guessing that the staff don’t have a long history of starting and raising successful companies. I don’t say this because the advice is bad, I say it because it had more of a “hey, let’s get together and figure this out” feeling rather than a “I’ve done this and this is what works for me” feeling. Nothing wrong with that at all, it’s a great way to build community.

After a while, I really wanted to read about people who had really made it and how it all came together for them. Coincidentally enough, YEB started interviewing experts more and posting words from famous business starters from all different industries. Perfect!

I read the blog for the interviews and the Entrepreneur University section, for the most part. They include write-ups about other things but the unique content they provide me are the sound bytes.

Thanks YEB! Keep it going!

Tools and resources for entrepreneurs and business minded individuals who are growing their business at the Young Entrepreneur’s Blog!

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Are YOU prepared? The greatest opportunities are spawned from the most formidable obstacles and deep wisdom is born from painful circumstances. Good always triumphs and there IS something good that will come from these hard economic times. Be prepared for the coming opportunities by:

• Getting out of debt.
• Setting up an emergency fund.
• Establishing a common sense budget.
• Living within below your means.
• Updating your skills and resume.
• Having a prosperous mindset at all times.
• Educating yourself on financial matters.

Be careful, stack loot, and stay financially safe. It’ll all be over soon but don’t lose more than you have to.

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I was listening to a BBC program the other day that was talking about whether grandparents raising their grandkids was a good thing or a bad thing. Some people called in to say, yes, it was good but also bad. Other people called in to say it was bad, but also good. In the end, it seemed like the show’s host, whether on directive or personally motivated, was looking for “the truth,” in the sense that she wanted an answer – the answer. This is the format of most discourse in modern-day media, it seems, because it simplifies the issue down to the proverbial black and white. Instead of looking for some perspective on things, the conversation, apparently, always needs to come to a conclusion.

Self Help by hagner_james on flickr

I see this mentality a lot when I read the prolific “self-help” & “personal-growth” genre of blogs. There are “keys to success,” “paths to financial freedom” and, my favorite, “rock-solid ways to improve productivity.” If you’re familiar with blogs, then you’ll know the format of a catchy title, a hooky intro, and subsequent headers that are action-packed and full of information (cough). Knowing this, it’s hard to be TOO critical of the content because, hey, people are reading it and subscribing to it and linking to it and people are getting paid and everything is great. Still, there is something a bit funny about someone who discovered their path to productivity on their own but then shares it as the gospel of getting things done.

So, I’m going to share with you how I work. This method would/will drive certain people nuts. This method is not foolproof but none of them are. It also doesn’t work for absolutely everything, but none of the other ones do either. I read a lot of the productivity posts out there, internalize the message, and typically end up rejecting a lot of it. My system is probably a hybrid of all the things I’ve read about “making work happen.” Still, I modified it to be my own and, while I’m always changing and improving, it’s working well for me (ask the friends and family I don’t talk to enough).

I’m new to all of this… how can this help?

It’s so easy to get caught up on the “self-help” cycle of reading other people’s insights constantly and going nowhere in your own life. It’s also easy to get down on yourself if you just CAN’T meditate for an hour in the morning with a warm cup of white tea and visualize your day coming together. Some people work one way, some work another, and many don’t work at all. I want to tell you what I do to manage the chaos, live in the chaos, and use the chaos to my advantage. Maybe you’ll learn something, maybe you won’t but hopefully, by the end of this, you’ll at least feel OK about having your OWN system (or no system).

1. I work on what I want to work on

I’m simply incapable of being motivated and productive when I work on projects that don’t have my full interest. I’m still trying to figure out if this is just a human thing or a particular limitation of mine. Regardless if the origin is DNA- or species-related, it is something that affects my professional life profoundly.

Part of having a job of any kind is taking the good with the bad. This is, thankfully, true for rockstars, artists, programmers, teachers, and everyone else. We all have those moments, some more than others. So what to do when you get tired of something?

Move right along. Do the next thing. Stop what you’re doing before you ruin it.

If I can’t write, I don’t write and I try something different like web coding or maybe a bit of design or just run-of-the-mill organization. If I’m not feeling mentally capable, I do something repetitive. If I’m feeling competent and smart, I try to tackle something high level. Unless it’s due, people are waiting, or something’s on fire, if I don’t want to contribute, I don’t.

2. I jump from project to project, sometimes mid-sentence

This might be the most destructive of my tendencies but so far so good.

Unfinished and forgotten by Zach_ManchesterUK on flickr

I’ve been writing an email to someone, lost the motivation to type and switched to something else immediately. I wasn’t interrupted, the connection wasn’t broken, I didn’t change my mind, I just decided not to continue emailing. I often save drafts with unfinished sentences, let alone paragraphs.

Sometimes your inspiration to complete a certain task only lasts so long. Maybe the first couple paragraphs are gold and the rest are, say, crap. Instead of just pushing through for the sake of doing so, I stop and move on to come back when the motivation re-arises.

Now, there are times when it pays to sit down, drill in, and concentrate on what you’re doing. There are many things that require a strong train of thought and benefit from moving from idea to idea within a framework. There are more things, however, that simply don’t need that kind of attention. Emails in any form, documents, web pages… many things just need you to complete mental modules and then you can move on.

Never underestimate solid concentration with no interruptions for long periods of time. Don’t be afraid, however, to take microbreaks and split your project into chunks. The drip drip drip can, in many cases, lead to a better output.

3. I keep close track of (almost) everything

I’m on top of my shit, that’s all there is to it.

I stay in close contact with people and I do what I say I’m going to do. I’m frequently used by other people as their system of organization because I keep things moving and can remember where things left off. I’m not great with uber-minutia and I can’t possibly admit to always being on time, remembering anything, and making no mistakes. What I don’t do, however, is drop the ball.

I keep my inbox empty or as close as possible. I don’t move anything to a long-term to do list unless it’s a personal project. Anything client-related is up-front and center because I put it there. Things shift in priority, no doubt, but I don’t stop doing things because I forgot about them/. They either lost everyone’s interest or died off.

This helps me keep very current with everything I’m doing and helps me to consciously lose track of things that don’t matter.

4. I stay very organized

I wouldn’t say that I’m anal about everything but everything definitely has it’s place.

Emails get saved if they’re important and should stay as emails. Otherwise, their content gets stripped quickly and moved into an appropriate secondary system (like my contacts or my calendar). My USB drive is full and it’s easy to find everything that I need. My pictures are listed and sorted in a way that makes sense to my brain.

I don’t spend all day scheming up systems and sorting things around; that would defeat the purpose of having a system like mine. I take care of things immediately lest they fall off my radar. Documents are saved and sorted, bookmarks are sorted and printed to PDF if they’re THAT good, and personal information gets saved into Outlook (on my phone, synced at work, and exported into Excel to make sure I don’t lose track.

Again, I’m not the picture of organizational perfection but it’s hard for things to slip through the cracks. I make it that way so I can work the way I want to.

5. I’m quick to abandon a system that isn’t working

If my organization is the glue then this is the engineer to check to make sure my glue is holding.

I don’t “swear by” my system and I certainly would not go out of my way to recommend it (I would recommend SOME kind of system, though). I’m always on the lookout for better ways to do what I do because I always  like to save time and change is a good thing.

I try out new systems, software, methods, tools, etc but, more often than not, my day-to-day functioning doesn’t change much. This is because I re-iterate, check, and evaluate what I’m doing on a constant basis. This isn’t quite a conscious process, it’s more like something that’s in the back of my head. If a certain piece of software is pissing me off or I keep forgetting to do something or something is irritating me, a red flag appears and I’m ready to replace it.

Case in point, my email situation. I have too many damn email accounts to keep track of for no good. I have a business one that I access with my phone and Gmail. I also have a separate Gmail, separate Hotmail, separate Yahoo, and an office account. In the end, I feel no more connected because I have a million email accounts. I’m in the process of overhauling this system to make it work for me (expect a post about it).

That’s all

Yeah, just that.

Though the way I work is a bit unorthodox, I’ve shown many people how to make their lives easier using free/cheap software and a system to use it. I absolutely would not be as successful as I am without the technology that I use every day. If you’re interested in learning about getting your professional life together in a way that makes sense and isn’t a burden, get a hold of me.

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So, now he’s got this blog… how does he build this blog up. The actual question:

ok so my blog is hooked up how do i send it and link it to other peoples sites… get it out there?

This is a key question, especially for someone who wants to use the internet to gani a bit of exposure. His current web presence is very static and not easy to manuever at all. The blog was my idea and, by the time I had explained it to him, he loved it.

So, here’s what I told him, appended after the fact with a bit more information.

Spread the word, my friend.

First things first, send an email to every email address you’ve got. Tell them about it, what it’s there for, and they they should expect to see. Even better, announce your intentions ON the blog itself as well.

Activate that friend and family network, that is step one. The people close to you and your existing fans want to hear more than anyone else how and what you are doing. The great part about running a blog that is tied into your personal life is that the news of your life can be slightly re-purposed and presented publicly. I like to use this site as somewhere I can announce what I’ve got going on and really analyze them completely. For me, writing about something either gels it in my head or it removes it completely. Sometimes I’ve got too much to say about something and can’t stop typing – these topics are ones I explore further and continually write about. Then, sometimes I think I’ve got something to say and I can’t write anything – these topics are ones I can forget about.

I’m digressing a bit (surprise, surprise) but the first thing to do is to send an email to every email address you have in your mail programs (that you can match up with a name). Here are a few resources to export your contacts:

• Export contacts from GMail
• Export contacts from Hotmail
• Export contacts from Yahoo

When you write, make sure to use the words you expect people to use when they search for what you do. Think of what words people might be using to find people who do what you do, feel me? For example, you teach graffiti techniques so think of the phrases people might be using to find that (“graffiti class” “graffiti classes San Diego” “can control” “how to write graffiti”). Be descriptive in your title and in heading text. Let me know if I lost you on that.

This is speaking to keyword research. I’m planning a few articles on how I do keyword research in the near future so I’m not going to go into depth but the KEY is this: you want to use words that people will use to search for what you have. This is confusing at first but pay attention and you’ll get it.

You probably use a specific set of words to describe what you do for people (in terms of your product, your service, your art, your instruction, etc). You use words that make sense to you and that paint an accurate picture of what you do. Now, imagine someone with whom you had coffee and to whom you explained your whole shebang needed to explain your shebang to someone else. Now, what if that next person needed to do the same. If you got two or three (maybe even the first one too) away from the original conversation, the words being used to describe what you do are not the words that YOU used originally. This is the first step towards understanding how to pick keywords.

So, for example, I might describe myself as a technology generalist, a tamer of technology, or a tech strategist, there are very few (read: no) people searching for this on the internet (yet). For my keywords, I need to pick things that people will search for to find me. These might be “build a web presence” or “design a personal web page” or “company email marketing.” I need to find words that people use to find the services that I’m offering.

Next, you’re going to want to try and find people who are doing similar or related things on the web and participate in what they’ve got going on. Go here http://blogsearch.google.com and start plugging in words that pertain to what you do. Do the same in regular Google. Start commenting on blogs, posting in forums, and connecting online. Also, sign up for Facebook if you haven’t already.

I’m talking about blatant and targeted self-promotion. Ready to virtually network?

I’ll say this: there are a million ways to go about this but, from personal experience, there is nothing more boring, unsatisfying, and time-wasting then spending several hours a day promoting yourself to people you don’t know. It’s boring because it’s repetitive, it’s unsatisfying because there’s a million other schmucks doing the same thing, and it’s time-wasting because it takes your attention away from the important things in life: relationship and creation.

I use Twitter (now) because I find a lot of great links, get some helpful information, and really enjoy the format and portability (I can add widgets to several other websites). I use Facebook because I have a lot of friends on there, it keeps me in touch with school people, and it makes me feel closer to home. I use LinkedIn because I see a lot of potential and meet some interesting people on there. I also use these tools to gently promote what I’m doing but that’s NOT the major reason I’m on any of those sites.

Read and comment on blogs because you like what someone had to say or this is a person you’d like to meet locally. I tried the “blatant self-promotion” half-heartedly for a month and found myself feeling like a blithering douche. This is why I don’t do “networking events” or anything like that. I like to talk to people that I respect, are interested in, or just like for no good reason. It’s very difficult for me (thought possible) to socialize with people simply to build the number of connections I have. I know this might be a great way to make sales or climb the ladder but it’s not interesting.

To be seen and heard online, you don’t need to trick people, you need to offer information and content that is unique, interesting, and useful. If you feel like it, just start writing about art, making art, what the experience means to you, what you learned the other day. You don’t need to write a diary but put words down that you would be likely to say to aspiring artists. Your blog will start doing its job if you’re making it important to you and start thinking “hmmm, that should go on my blog.” What starts out as somewhat of a chore eventually becomes an important piece of your day-to-day.

This is the kind of self-promotion that I do.

I’m not looking to trick someone into clicking on a link and reading my blog just so my Google stats look better. I’m also not interested in writing for a bigger audience about shit I don’t care about. I didn’t feel exactly like this a year ago but it’s what I’ve settled into. I’ll play the SEO game a bit, I’ll optimise my blog as much as possible, and I’ll spend time picking out keywords but, in terms of actual content, I’m going to write what I want to write… it’s the only way it gets done.

I used to write a blog about sustainable transportation. I followed the news religiously, went to events, and revelled in my own green lifestyle. It was fun, I got a few clicks, and made a few e-friends. But, after some time, it wasn’t much fun for me to stay on top of things. I enjoyed reading about it more than I did writing about it. Also, there were other much bigger, much more powerful blogs doing what I did only better. I became a aggregator for some of their content with a bit of commentary on top.

Now, I write about my career, what I’m learning, what I’m doing, and how this can help other people. I’m building this up slowly and still struggling to find my voice. However, like when I started the other blog, the words are just pouring out of me. I don’t have to sit in front of a monitor and STRUGGLE to find the words to say. I write about the web and science and tech and what I’m doing and it just feels natural.

Blogging, now, is a release for me rather than a chore. This is the only way to keep a blog going. It might even be a good thing not to monitor your audience (if you’re not interested in making money from advertisements). It’s like dieting without a scale: the depression of not losing weight can easily outweigh (har har) the elation of losing a couple pounds.

So, that’s my honest take on starting a blog from scratch. Do it because you like it and don’t assume you don’t like it because you have no idea what you’re doing. Really put yourself into it, find your voice, and screw what others are doing. Then, make sure the most amount of people know about what you’re doing in ways that are sustainable for your life.

Good luck! Come find me on Facebook or Twitter if you want to chat some more

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The reason to ask yourself this question (repeatedly) is to make sure that the time you invest in learning new things goes to good use. If you like learning how to use things and do it quickly then maybe more time should be spent picking things up, playing with them, and deciding whether or not to use them. If, like most of us, you have limited time and want to simplify your daily life, it’s time to make a Technology Taming Plan.

How does one go about making one of these plans? The process goes like this: figure out what your goal is (gain more eyeballs on your website, sell more products, better connect with people), choose your methods for getting that done (re-design the site, start a blog, start networking on-line), and then pick the best tools for getting it all done. The key is to take each step by itself and not move to the next until you’ve completed the preceding one. This is the best way (that I know of) to make sure you don’t get bogged down in logins to site you don’t use, applications that take up hard drive space, and electronics that sit unused.

I’m new to all of this… how will this post help me?

We all have problems with getting done what needs to be done. Sometimes the problem is a lack of motivation but that’s not always the whole story. It’s hard to dig right in without a plan of action or a place to start. It’s hard to clean your house when everything is a mess and you’re not sure what to tackle first. The same goes for moving your business, career, or personal life forward. If you know you want to make a change but you’re not sure of the first step to make, it’s very important to be clear about what you want to do and be aware of the tools out there that can help you do this. The implements can appear to outweigh the opportunities but this is not the case. Having a plan and taking specific action will always move you in the right direction (as long as you know what that direction is).

I’ll show you how to figure out your goal, think about ways to achieve it, then find the tools to get it all done. Of course, this is just a brief overview; if you need more in-depth help, talk to me!

Step 1 – What do you want to do?

Just like any endeavor in life, having an outcome in mind is the very important first step in progression. Whether you reach that outcome or not is not important but having one in the beginning is. Having a goal to point your effort towards gives important direction to everything you do. It also serves to keep you focused on the reason WHY you’re working so damn hard. Going to college is very difficult if you’re not sure what you want to do with what you’ll have at the end. Putting 100% into your work is very difficult if you don’t care where you’re going. Having a successful business, practice, or freelance operation is impossible if you’re not clear on what you want to accomplish.

The same goes for properly using the technology around you. If you buy a Blackberry but you don’t know what you’re going to do with it or why you need it, you’ll probably just end up making calls on it. This is fine but you chose the wrong tool for the job. If all you were going to do was make calls, you probably don’t need more than about 16 buttons and a 2×2″ screen. If, on the other hand, getting email, having access to the web, and keeping a detailed calendar is essential for what you do then the investment was a good idea and so is the time you will take to learn the functionality.

But even that is jumping a bit ahead of ourselves. The first thing to do is to evaluate where you are and where you want to go. Because it’s going to be difficult for me to generalize this, let me give a few examples using clients that I have.

You’re an artist

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that being an artist these days is a lot harder than it was not too long ago. Though, ostensibly, this country is the land of the free, it’s still not all that easy to blaze your own path and do your own thing. The expectation out there is “get money” and if you’re not chasing that then what, exactly, are you doing?

The artists that I help don’t seem to be affected so much by this sociological construct but they still want more work than they are getting right now. So, we talk about expanding into new markets. The first thing that needs to get nailed down is literally what they want to accomplish in the end.

One thing everyone on the internet wants to do is to be more visible on search engines; this includes artists. Putting your art on a website is tough, partially because it’s hard to search for particular images (if they are not tagged properly) and partially because art doesn’t have to always lend itself to a long description (making it even harder to find). This, however, is a great first step. The goal is “get better search ratings in the major search engines.” Congrats, that’s a goal! You’re not seeing enough people from the internet, you’re not getting as many hits as you think you should, and you’d like to improve that.

Another thing I hear from artists is that they want to teach more people and lead more classes. More students means more tuition and more tuition means the bills are getting paid. This is another perfectly legitimate goal, “enroll more paying students in my classes.” You’re teaching 10, you have space for 15 so you want to boost enrollment by 50%. Or you teach one-on-one three times a week, you’d like to do it 5 times a week to fill up your time. Every time you talk to someone, hand out a card, send out an email, or take any step forward, think about asses in seats and you’ll stay on target.

You’re a freelance financial consultant

I know a very successful freelance financial consultant who does not have a web presence of any kind. He’s neck-deep in phones, computers, printers, spreadsheets, and digitized income statements but he doesn’t have anything out there that grabs people on the internet. There’s nothing wrong with what he’s doing because he has more business than he can handle. But let’s say he started to train people to do some of what he does. Now, he has employees who are doing the less-sensitive work and he’s freed up to work with the more important clients. Since the number of people he can hire is basically infinite, his income potential is not being realized by being strictly word-of-mouth.

So, this consultant decides he wants to “find qualified people that I can train to handle certain parts of my business.” This is an ambitious, well-directed goal that, at worst, will make you meet a few new people and really figure out if this is the direction you want to go. You’re starting out working 16 hours a day and you’d like to maintain your income but only work 10. Or, you can hardly keep up with what you’ve got and need help keeping it all straight. You want to expand but you need the right people. This is a great place to start.

"People" by PieterMusterd on Flickr

Now that you’ve found a few junior accountants to take some of the math off of your hands, you want to find businesses that need your help. You want to “discover specific potential clients who need your expertise.” You work with 100 businesses and you want 300 in your Rolodex. You helped sell 5 businesses last year, this year you want to triple that. You know exactly where you’re at now and you have a clear idea of where you want to be soon.

In addition to building your business, you’re going to need to know what other people are doing as well. You want a unique and useful offering for people to come to you and start buying what you have. You want to price competitively (or contrastingly) and make sure that you’re not missing the boat on something else. You need to “collect good competitive intelligence to shape your offerings.”

Get it?

Don’t bite off too much at this stage because you’re just going to end up frustrated. At the same time, don’t limit yourself because you’re not exactly sure how to get to where you’re going.

You need to walk a fine line between vagueness and specificity to get this step right. Be vague enough so that you’re not naming actual things you’re going to be doing (yet) but be specific enough so the goal doesn’t end up “make more money.” You want the direction in place so the next step, choosing a path, is easier.

Oh and WRITE THESE DOWN, write them all down regardless of what came out of your brainstorming. If you don’t have these on paper, you’re not going anywhere. It sounds a bit silly but this reminder will help you keep your eyes on the prize and your nose to the grindstone. It’s also very important for focusing on what you need to do.

By the way, try to keep the list short. I’d recommend two or three items but, to be honest, that’s a bit hypocritical because I have four of them:

• More online connections (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter)
• Bump up my monthly freelance income to a certain amount
• Add more people to which I can subcontract work
• Add more/better sites to my portfolio

Remember, the more of these you have, the worse your focus will be on each one. It might be better to take one or two on at a time and, when they get to a good level, move on to the next. But, again, that’s me giving advice without taking it! :)

Step 2 – How are you going to do it?

You have the toughest step out of the way, choosing the outcome. Now let’s start thinking about how this outcome will come about. I’ll use the examples from the previous section.

“Get better search ratings in the major search engines”

Everyone wants better search ratings but how do we go about getting them? Spend 5 minutes reading on the subject and you’ll realize that getting better ratings comes down to three things:

1. Keywords (choosing them and using them)
2. Incoming links (sites that have a direct link to you…more popular sites and more reputable sites are always better)
3. Content following Seth’s 3U’s: useful, unique, and updated.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It is simple but it isn’t easy.

So, our goal is in mind, we (hopefully) are aware what our situation is right now, what’s next? Now, we pick apart the paths we can take to determine the way forward. I’ll start with the first one, keywords. If you don’t know what I mean when I say “targeted keywords” then it’s time to spend some time on Google (or call me). What you will figure out is that you need to choose some keywords that describe your offering and always use those in your writing. There’s your first how from this goal, “choose the best keywords for what I do and use them in my content.” We’re not sure exactly how to pick them or the best way to write about them but we’ve got an action to take and we’ve got the reason why.

Let’s also say that you decide to boost your incoming links. The only real way to do this is by creating good content and then getting people to read it and link to it. You’re going to need your keyword skills from above and you’ll need Useful, Unique, and Updated content. You’re also going to need people online with websites that want to link to you. You need to “make yourself known in the online world and create something that people want and/or need.” Again, you’re not certain how but you know what and why now.

“Collect good competitive intelligence to shape your offerings”

Competitive intelligence is a funny thing. Not enough of it and you risk being in the dark, overcharging, and being generally uninformed. Too much of it and you might start cloning your competitors and end up a mushy, gray mix of all of them. You want to know what they’re doing but be careful what you wish for!

OK, so you want to know about your competitors and you promise to heed my warning. Now it’s time to think about what you want to know and how you’re going to get it. Let’s say you want to know who your direct competitors are and what kind of press they are getting. To do this, you’re going to need to understand the industry (if you don’t already) and keep a pulse on it. You want to “keep an eye on the industry at large, specifically who is playing and what they are announcing.”

Watching the industry change and progress while keeping your eye on the key players is an important for step, to be sure, but you want more than that. Maybe you’ve identified 1 or 2 or 3 specific companies, locally or otherwise, who are all competing with you for the same customer pool. It would be great to know what some of their clients (or former clients) have to say about what they offer. You want to network a bit and “find people with specific knowledge about your competitors.” You sneaky devil, you.

Get it?

We’re knocking out the critical parts of the Technology Taming plan and getting down to brass tacks with the first two. These two are conceptual and work together to make sure that when you start to look for solutions to your problems that you’re not choosing things that don’t get you to where you want to go.

What we did in Step 1 and Step 2 was take care of the “why” and the “what.” The why will keep you focused on what you’re doing, even if the road is a bit bumpy. The what keeps you on-point in finding your solution instead of trying everything out there. Maybe one of these “whats” aren’t going to get you what you want but, if you’re honest about your intentions and your objectives, the only thing left is to try out your predictions.

Step 3 – What tools are you going to use?

Now we get to the fun part!

This might be the step where you call someone like me to help you find and learn the tools you need to use to do the actions you planned out to accomplish the goals you’ve set. But, if you want to go it alone and discover the tools yourself, here are a few resources (besides plain-ole Google):

• Lifehacker.com: I was resistant to this site at first if only because they cover SO much ground and I was jealous. Eventually I realized that they were a great resource but left a lot of legwork to be done, which I like.
• Google Blog Search: This little tool is getting used more and more by me. Blogs can have great, timely, very palatable information and, more often than not, you’ll find one with the author’s opinion mixed in which can help to make decisions.
• Forums (like the Computer Community at VWVortex): Forums on the internet can be frustrating and time-sucking but, take it from me, they can be unbelievably useful. Ask the right question and you can start a firestorm but it’s the debates that can give you some of the best information. My advice is to join a general-purpose one and build your reputation there then milk it whenever possible!
• Yahoo Answers: I’ll be honest: there are some INANE conversation topics on this site (stay away from the Relationships section) but there are also some smart, talented people who patrol these boards and answer questions. Sign up and start to answer a few questions and watch your addiction grow as you get points for answering. Interesting idea for sure and a great place to learn what other people are doing.

So, let’s go through the actions that we chose for the goals we want to accomplish. Keep in mind, these are just suggestions. If you’ve tried these before or simply want more information, I invite you to research them a bit and post back here with what you find. Finding the right tool for the job is rarely as easy as it seems. Don’t stop at the first answer; keep researching until you find a few things you can work with.

“Choose the best keywords for what I do and use them in my content”

Keywords are a funny thing… so funny that I’m not going to go into really deep detail about them. The key (no pun intended), however, is choosing words that don’t have tons of competition but do have a lot of people searching for them.

The only place, in my mind, to start is the Google Keyword Tool. This handy page will help you figure out the best words to use in your articles, blog posts, and general content. Just type in a(several) word(s) or phrase(s), fill in the captcha, and, behold, your list of terms. What this tool does is collect synonyms of the word you typed and then tells you what the competition is, how often it was search for, and what the search volume looks like on average. What this tells you (succinctly) is how hard it is to rank for the keyword (competition), how many people search for that term (value), and the growth rate (value versus average). Look for low competition, high value, and growth or stability instead of decrease.

Once you pick a few of the right keywords, start including them in your content (organically) and keep track of your website analytics or incoming calls/sales to see if the change made a difference.

“Make yourself known in the online world and create something that people want and/or need“

Wow, that’s a big one isn’t it?

Plain and simple, the only way to do this properly is to start at the bottom and build your on-line reputation. This is a tough thing to do and, trust me, if you don’t enjoy it AND see a palpable benefit, you will never continue the effort needed.

Making yourself known is one half of the equation. There are seemingly infinite ways to gain some ground on this but here is what I’ve been doing:

• Started a blog. Read other blogs, commented on them, linked to my blog.
• Signed up for Facebook (I know a lot of people on there anyways). Signed up for Twitter (took a while to build any kind of following on there… try following others). Linked the two together.
• Signed up for LinkedIn. built a great profile, recommended many former co-workers. Now, their counter-recommendations act as testimonials on this site.
• Signed up and spend some time on a few different forums. I try to give at least as much as I ask for.
• Stay in touch with many people

Everything on that list is an action I would be doing anyway but, because I have a whole online persona/profile to maintain, I do it with even more gusto.

Building an online network is mostly a slow process unless you’re already established somewhere and just missed the internet boat for a while. I’ve found it very frustrating for a while but, as time goes on, it’s very enjoyable, allows me to meet a lot of new people, and expose myself to many more projects and collaborators. In the end, it’s essential.

Creating something that people want and/or need is a whole other thing. To be honest, sometimes this is like starting a business with every step forward. I’ll be honest: I certainly haven’t figured out the silver bullet here though it seems like others have. Here are my thoughts on the matter:

• Use the keyword tool above and a blog
• Use google.com/trends and google.com/news to see what’s growing out there. If you’re game, try to jump onto a pop culture or fashion trend (especially if you’re in the industry). If you’ve been gathering your network and can move fast, it shouldn’t be too hard.
• Two words: viral video (a video that garners a lot of attention quickly). Get yourself on Youtube with something off the wall.

Weak list for sure but I can’t help you TOO much…  I need to keep some stuff for myself, right?

Honestly, this is just a matter of putting yourself and your talent out there any way you can. Do what you love and do what you’re good at then do it how only you can do it and you’ll hit the moon in no time.

“Keep an eye on the industry at large, specifically who is playing and what they are announcing“

You need to sign up for Google Reader and get your RSS on, for sure. Use Google Blog Search and look for words that describe your industry, look for blogs that get at least a few comments a day, make sure you like what the author puts out, then subscribe. Now, go to Google News and search a relevant phrase. Is this information that you’d like to see on a regular basis? On the left, there is a tiny “RSS” link you can click. Do that and add this subscription to your Reader as well. Repeat until you have a few solid streams.

Find at least ten blogs to sign up for and read them in Google Reader at least a couple times a week. Feeling good? Now take it a step farther:

• Sign up at Technorati and look for blogs in your segment with good authority.
• Sign up at Digg and keep an eye on stories in an appropriate category.
• Learn how to use Yahoo Pipes (look for an intro post soon). This is advanced-level.

Get it?

It’s all about finding the right tools for the job. Search them out, try a few, and switch it up if they don’t work for you. There are millions of ways to get information, thousands of pages that can help you do what you want, and just as many applications that can help you out. Keep your eyes open and your fingers moving!

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There’s usually five hard ways to do something without any kind of guarantee of an available easy way. Sometimes there is an easy way, sometimes there’s just an easIER way, and sometimes there’s just hard ways. Realizing that some things just take hard work is an important step towards growing up (regardless of your numerical age) but it’s also the kind of thinking that can get you stuck. I’m a fan of hard work and, as such, sometimes I work a lot harder at something than I should. Case in point, the story I’m going to share with you.

I’m new to all of this… how can this article help me?

Approaching your technology problems can be daunting – especially if you know only one way to do things and that way is a P.I.T.A. When it comes to computers and the internet, it’s important to always keep in mind that there are probably 5 pieces of software that you never knew existed that do exactly what you need, 5 pieces of hardware that could solve one nagging problem, and a 100 people out there who are better trained than you are and are chomping at the bit to help you out (that’s me). All you have to do is keep your eyes open, your mind working, and your homepage on Google and you’re a step ahead of the rest.

Sometimes, there’s no need to swim uphill

So I know a guy with a blog. I built the blog for this guy. Blood, sweat, tears, and love went into putting together this blog. Then, even more bodily fluids went into typing and editing his blog posts to post on his blog on a regular basis. In the meantime, exponentially more effort went into editing, designing, copyrighting, and publishing his book. I was paid for most of it but, because the project was close to me, many hours flew by sans compensation (willingly of course).

He wrote a lot of material all at once and sent it over to keep me busy and have a “buffer.” This buffer was the only thing he would write for months despite my gentle insistence and cajoling. He said he liked to write but, in the end, if we actually like to do things, don’t we just do them? I like to write and, coincidentally enough, I end up writing a lot (here, at work, emails, etc). It occurred to me that maybe he wasn’t into this writing thing after all.

Still, I was working for him and if he wanted to write, well, dammit, I would do everything I could to make him write. So I bought him books about writing, wrote him blog posts about writing blog posts, and came up with a massive list of every possible industry topic he could write about. I kept (and keep) editing his buffer posts, every week posting less and getting closer to the finale of all of his earlier efforts.  I made him buy cards to promote his blog and his book, despite having very little left to post. I even added my own posts as the “administrator” of the blog talking about what I’ve learned and what to expect. In the end, I was working several hours a week on a blog that wasn’t mine for a purpose that I wasn’t clear on. I had stopped taking payments but kept trying to edit and post what was left. The idea started out so exciting and I was watching it peter out like a match in the rain.

New approach

This client had done radio work back in the day and, every now and then, reminisced about his days behind the mic. His voice is very calming. You can always hear his smile because he’s always smiling. On the phone or in person, he’s always wearing that big, friendly grin and telling you something to which you ought to be listening.

The idea of a podcast floated into my consciousness a few months ago but, in my head, it sounded like an expansion plan and I was not interested in expanding something that wasn’t going anywhere. The podcast idea wouldn’t leave my head, however, and today, after a rousing conversation about the matter, I just blurted it out.

“This blog thing just isn’t working. He should just do a podcast.”

And, with that, this blog thing was solved.

Despite what he says, at least for the time being, this client just doesn’t want to write. There’s no point in forcing something that isn’t happening. He has, however, had his ears open for a broadcasting gig hosting his own show on the radio without much luck.

A book and a blog, if it takes off and starts gaining attention, is just going to get more audience members for the blog and, at best, a great offer for a new book. For someone that finds it difficult to make the time and energy to write, this is a punishment in disguise.

If, however, he took this great wisdom he has, spoke it into a digital recorder, and emailed the final product to me, he’d never have to write another word in his life. The audio can be posted and hosted on the blog, submitted to iTunes, compiled and sold on a CD, or even be a spring-board to videos if he wanted. Not only that, if the audio broadcasts take off, there is the possibility of a book, sure, but it’s more likely that someone who knows what they are doing will want to keep him in the same format, the one that he’s succeeding at.

Exciting stuff

In the end, the solution to the problem was actually the expansion plan for the original idea. The middle point actually should have been the starting point. I kept trying to make something work that just simply wasn’t going to happen.

The way forward could be the one in your head, it could be the one in your friend’s head, or it could be the one that has not materialized yet. There’s no point pushing against a brick wall if, at the other side of that wall, there’s nothing you want. My mistake was not thinking down the road with the blog idea. I thought that, with a blog, he could go anywhere. But the blog was not only the barrier to entry, it wasn’t going to lead to anything better.

In the end, if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing and there’s not a big risk in taking your time, maybe it’s better to explore as many options as possible and see which one fits the best. If it sucks and sucks and sucks and you’re not getting anything out of it, chances are that you’re not going to continue doing it indefinitely (and that’s a good thing). Save your tenacity for the IDEA itself, not the execution. If you know what you’ve got is gold and it’s not going anywhere then you’re probably barking up the wrong tree. If I decided it was my calling to make hip hop beats, a blog about it probably isn’t the best way to go (though it might be). If I wanted to make money off graffiti art, it’s not likely that handing out fliers at the hot club downtown would get me anywhere (though it might).

There’s nothing wrong with trying something out… in fact, if you’re NOT trying out new things and exploring new markets, you’re definitely doing something wrong and probably selling yourself short. But you have to know when to bag it, when to try something else, when to stay true to your idea and just bark up a new tree. Staying true to yourself and staying true to your ideas means doing whatever is necessary. Plugging away over and over at something that isn’t going anywhere is doing a disservice to your talent and your product.

If you need some help trying to find a new tree, let me know.

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I’ve decided to use WordPress as my page for a few reasons:

• Constantly revolving, current information gets the attention of search engines MUCH better
• Homepage is getting zero hits monthly, this blog gets several hundred.
• I need to spend more time helping people and less time futzing with my own site
• Content management is much easier and I don’t need to think about where new stuff will go
• WordPress aesthetic is attractive

To get through this long process without driving myself crazy, I’m going to use an excellent web site design guide I found a while back. It’s called, appropriately, 12 Steps to Creating a Professional Web Design and it’s by Matt Jurmann. Though I’m new to the web design discipline, I’ve always had an organized mind and like walking through a process step-by-step rather than smashing my way through it. Matt’s article puts all the important steps in a logical order and presents it very accessibly.

So, what does Matt recommend as step 1? A three-stage design process to wring out all of those great ideas out and onto the table. And, with that, we begin…

Step 1: Design (stage 1: The Flow)

I’ve worked almost exclusively with non-designers on the web, email, and print projects I’ve been involved with and this step is always conspicuously missing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely part of the problem, but two people on a mission without a concrete plan or idea of what they’re trying to communicate is a recipe for disaster.

The Pieces of the Puzzle

Let’s nail down what I’m trying to do with this project (keep in mind that I’m writing this as my brainstorming process). It’s of the utmost importance that I vocalize what needs to be accomplished and then stick to these throughout the process:

• I need, first and foremost, a digital business card. The most important reason this website exists is to get me new clients and make new connections on-line. For this reason, the fact that I’m for hire and my contact information needs to be present and somewhat prominent everywhere.
• The clients that I want/expect are not going to be greatly technologically savvy. As such, everything needs to be easy to use and easy to find. Form MUST take a back seat to function; this is not so much a creative outlet as it is a funnel for the technologically challenged.
• Because I like to write and my writing brings clicks and new people, the blog feed needs to be prominent on the site and be an integral part of the process. I want to post news, happenings, hirings, new projects, completed projects, design inspiration, and how-to guides. Anything new added to the site will likely end up being posted on my blog at the same time.
• I need a portfolio to put my completed work and anything extra that I do for myself. There are a few different types of work that I do and each one needs a bit different type of “gallery”
• I need a place for my resume (I have a page for now). This includes experience, qualifications, mad skills, recommendations from LinkedIn, and completed projects.
• The site needs to generally match the style of my business card. Either white or off-white background with a concentration on typography and simplicity. My target audience is not designers or tech-savvy people so I want a layout that’s very easy to use and visually appealing.

Skeleton Styles

I made a quick sketch in the car during a recent trip.

Everything with an underline is it’s own page. You can see that this is going to be a nice, simple website. I don’t want a lot of pages to manage and if I need to add content, I’ll add it as a blog post and link to it. I want my concentration to be on adding posts and blogging about the work I’ve completed. I also want potential clients to be able to scroll through my work quickly and only read more about the ones that interest them (links to posts).

Thoughts on Design

The next step is mocking up the pages and figure out how everything is going to come together. I’m not completely sure but I have a few ideas. Here’s my first draft for the layout. Comments on style and usability are always welcome.

I see a few things to change already but so far so good!

What’s Next?

• Start moving content into the blog before any design begins. I want to get the copy finished and formatted before I move forward with the theme creation.
• This is just the home page; work still needs to be completed on all the other pages, particularly the portfolio pages.
• Start looking through a few inspiration sites to add a bit more personality (light pattern in the background maybe)
• Find a blank or simple theme that I can start working with.

Next post: finished home page and portfolio designs!

Edit: I future-posted this and have completed a few of these items and taken the deign in a different direction (the one above it too “Josh” [if you know me then you know what that means]).

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This guide is for anyone and everyone who knows little about fonts, typefaces, and document design. This small primer serves as either an introduction to typography or all the information you’ll ever need to know as a non-designer. Whether you’re a teacher trying to deliver curriculum the best way you can or a CEO writing a formal letter, you should understand what fonts and styles say about your document and how to use them to your advantage.

I’m going to start this guide off with a warning: don’t dig too deep. Take what I say in this guide at face value and proceed no further. The art of typography is a complete mystery until you take that first step, read that first blog post, and fall deep into an obsessive-compulsive well. Before long, you’ll be second-guessing everything you thought was true and wondering if maybe, just maybe, you could try your hand at designing a typeface. Trust me on this one; take the relatively minute but very useful information that I’m giving you and leave it at that. You’ve been warned.

Who cares about typography?

The only people, ultimately, who care about the typography you present are the readers that are subjected to your work. I realized this after receiving a TERRIBLY designed assignment in class and wondered what that woman was thinking. I have seen the gamut of documents over the years and it’s more often than not that someone goes outside of the “safe zone” of Arial and Times and pulls it off well.

Am I implying that there is no hope for the design challenged? Not in the slightest! That’s what I’m here for… Josh can, after all, help.

We’ll walk through the (very) basic vocabulary of type and show you a few ways to add some personality to your documents without going overboard. I’ll show you some simple ways to make that PowerPoint presentation shine without losing control. I’ll also show you a few places where I get my fonts and a great link for taking that next step.

Step 1 – Write your document

There are people who write, there are people who design and then there are people who do both. If you are on one side of the fence or the other, you have somewhat of an advantage. By focusing on just one aspect of document creation and functionally ignoring the other, you can put all of your energy into that one task and really make it shine. If you do both, however, you might feel pulled in two directions at once and end up stuck and frustrated. It’s an ancient battle: content versus design.

In order to counter the tendency to multi-task, restrict yourself to one task or the other. Instead of writing your content in the design program (whether it be Word, PowerPoint, or your HTML editor), write your content in the simplest form possible. In Windows, try Notepad, the stripped-down text editor typically found under Start Menu > Programs > Accessories.

As you write, keep an outline format in your mind. If the project is a simple paper or letter, there is not too much to be concerned with (header, footer, salutation, sign-off). If, however, you’re constructing a how-to document or a multi-section presentation, you want to make sure you indicate headings, sub-headings, and/or sections. You’re not allowed to determine the look (yet) but you can make notes (say, labeling the headings with “h1,” subheadings with “h2,” etc) that will help you construct the document in the next step.

** Of course, make sure you save your document in this format. Not only do you want to keep all of your hard work thus far but this will also make it easy to move the text into several different programs and/or formats in the future**

You might wonder why I called Word a design program. Word is there to make your text look good and format it to the nth degree. I’ve been using Word for many years and I’m STILL figuring out how to use half of its functions. When I write in Word, I’m always futzing with the settings and the look of the document as I’m writing the document. When I write in Notepad, I’m not allowed to do any visual modifications during the creation so I stay in one train of thought.

Write first, design later. Your final product will reflect your focus segregation.

Step 2 – Add to your design program and choose an outline format

Once all of your text is written down and edited as best you can in whatever program you’re using, now it’s time to place it in the program you will use to modify the design of the document. Notepad or any other text program that does not format your content is great for this step because you won’t be adding text embellishments to baseline formatting. When you copy from Word back into another Word document, there are two sets of formatting that the program can use. When you copy from notepad, there is only one.

The easiest way to do this step is just to copy the original text from your text-editing program and paste it into the design program. This is actually an interesting step for those who are unfamiliar with the difference between formatted and unformatted text. Take note of what changes were made after you have added your text into the new program; you might be surprised.

The first thing to do now that your text has been added is to take the notes regarding sections and divisions and start thinking about what you want to do with them. Don’t make any alterations quite yet; you want to make sure you keep a holistic mindset as you go about this task. You want to preserve the flow of your document and use divisions to move it along. Each section is not a separate document with different formatting; they will each be a different idea building towards your main point. We’re not talking about fonts and bolds and italics just yet, only the structure.

If you’re writing a document for a website or a blog, the end product will not be a “Word document” or a “PowerPoint presentation.” Whether you write your websites directly in text or you use a different program like Dreamweaver or Nvu, I still recommend formatting your document in a word processing program. You want your final product to look polished and it is much easier to quickly edit the style in a word processor than it is in HTML. Write your doc, format and style it in a different program, then add the unformatted text to your web design program and make the appropriate changes there. It is a few extra steps but your document will look better and, in the end, you will save time. Oh, and the spell check is pretty handy too.

Step 3 – Choose and add section styles and list elements.

For this step, you’re just going to concentrate only on the headers of the document (the titles for your PowerPoint slides or the names of the different sections for your how-to guide, for example). Change the whole document to a basic font (I recommend Arial) and make sure your headings are separated from the rest of your text (meaning a line/break in between them so you can differentiate it visually). Also, make sure that the page dimensions you are working with match the final product. Set the margins of your document to give you the correct width of your final product (this is more important for web documents where there may be width constraints on the page).

Now, start playing with sizes and weights starting with the main headline. For this document, my main heading is the title, “6 steps to effective typography in any document” so I changed this to 18 point first to see what it looked like. Once that size looks about right for the rest of the document (meaning that it stands out but doesn’t dwarf the rest of the text), I’ll start working on the next headline, in this case “Who cares about fonts?” I changed it to 16 point but it looked too similar to the main headline so I changed the main to 20 point. Now, the differentiation between the heading, subheading and main text looks right. Another option would be to drop both sizes down one step and add bold to both.

If you’re working with sub headers, sub-sub headers, and sub-sub-sub headers, you may find that your main heading has to be enormous to differentiate itself from the rest. This might be a case of over-organization on your part and it might be time to look at how your document was built. Ask yourself: are all these headers necessary? Can some groups come together? Are the triple-sub-headings coming before 2 or 3 sentences? Sometimes visual styling a document can call attention to possible shortcomings.

It’s important to note something here… especially before we get into picking fonts. Aesthetics is a study of relativity. For example, I find myself perpetually confounded by the direction that fashion trends take. I also find it hard to believe some of the ways people decorate their homes. This does not, necessarily, make them aesthetically challenged; it speaks more to how relative taste is. Good typography, in its most basic state, is making something readable and inoffensive. In its most complicated, exciting state, typography is making words come alive and making them say something beyond their tacit definition.

If you are working on a classroom presentation, a business proposal for executives, or any other document that might reach a broad audience, concentrate on readability and organization. A document that no one wants to read (or can’t read) is not a great trade-off for expressing your creativity. I’m sorry to break it to you, but that’s the truth. I’ll let you take a minute.

After headings, play around with numbered or bulleted lists if you have any. My rule is this: if you’re going to call attention to the amount of items on the list or they are in some kind of order (importance, chronological), make them numbers. If it is just a list, go with bullets. As for lettered lists, I don’t use them too often but, when I do, the list usually falls between numbers and bullets – the items are in some kind of order but their rank is not important.

(Can you tell which one of these I would recommend NOT using?)

At this point, your document should look almost completely presentable, if potentially boring (remember: boring looks for a document is not always a bad thing). Next, we’re going to chose a font and line spacing. Yay!

Step 4 – Pick a font and line spacing

Ok, here’s the tricky part, picking a font that works. Here are the basic rules:

-> No more than 2 fonts on a page for your main content. Using 3 or 4 different fonts can quickly lead to a cluttered, ugly feeling to your document or web page. Please, however, experiment to your hearts delight; rules are made to be broken. The more you play around, the better you will understand the K.I.S.S. mentality.

-> Serif fonts (fonts like Times and Georgia that have the lines at the ends of the arms and stems of the letters) are generally easier to read for long periods than sans serif (fonts like Arial and Verdana that do not have these marks). Pick up a novel and you’ll see why. Be careful when mixing serif fonts with sans serif font; it can be VERY dangerous. It can also, however, set them both off. Again, mess around to find the balance.

-> If you’re not sure a particular feature you added looks right and there’s no one else to check with, try something different. Typography just feels/looks right when it’s right. Trust your gut.

-> Keep your final product in mind. If you’re designing for the web, you have a very limited number of choices. I check this list at Codestyle.org out before I start picking fonts to make sure that what I’m using is common. Remember, web documents can have a whole list of fonts to pick from so pick two or three that you can live with.

If you will be sending the document to other people electronically for them to edit, they will need to have the same font you are using or else their computer will pick something else completely. If you are printing the document out or intend to distribute a final copy electronically, you probably want to convert your document to a PDF to retain the styling you worked so hard to achieve. My favorite PDF convertor is CutePDF and can be found here at Cutepdf.com for free. Very simple to use and consistently makes great documents.

In your document designing program, start with the fonts you have installed on your computer and see if any of them tickle your fancy. Look through that whole list and try a few of them out. Make sure you are applying to all of your text at once, including the headers. For all possible choices, look at the document a few different ways: try zooming in and out or changing the line spacing. Also, some fonts can be a bit bigger or smaller so you may need to change the size by a point or two.

what you want to look for is a font that not only stays legible but also one that communicates a particular message. Technical documents and how-to guides look great in Arial and Verdana but also try Arial Narrow or Trebuchet MS. Letters or stories look good in basic Times New Roman but experiment with Palatino Linotype or Bookman. If you’re not finding exactly what you want and the final version of your document will be set (meaning a PDF or printed out), check out some of the fonts on the following websites:

Biggest and best of the font sites. Try out their font search!

Lots of great, free fonts for you to choose from

John at ilovetypography.com chooses his favorite fonts and posts them in the black bar on the right. This is a great place to start if you’re interested to see what great type can do.

Just recently found this great font resource. More free fonts than you can handle! Be careful about installing too many fonts – it could slow down some of your applications (especially paint.net).

I encourage you to experiment, try new and different things, and find out for yourself what works and what does not. Picking a “symbolic” font for yourself or for your business can be a great way to lend a unique solidarity to all of your documents – something for all of your marketing, stationary, letters, and other communications.

If you can’t find the perfect font to fit the tone you’re trying for and you’re unsure what to use, better safe than sorry. Stick with Arial or Verdana for sans serif fonts or Times or Georgia for sans serif. It’s much better to pick an uninspired font that communicates your message than to go out on a limb and end up looking unprofessional.

Once you settle on a particular font for your document, work with your line spacing. Documents are much easier to read and look more appealing when they are spaced somewhere between 1.2 and 1.8 times the size of the font. This can be done with your word processing program (typically you’ll find the option by itself as “line spacing” or under the “Paragraph” formatting option). Try 1.2 and 1.5 and see what you think. Your document will span an extra page or two but the presentation will be much better.

Added: Step 5 – Watch your alignment

Here is something I picked up from reading a great, very simple book about design, Robin William’s (no, not that one) The Non-Designer’s Design & Type Books.This is a great start for anyone without design experience that either want to get their feet wet in what design means or want nothing to do with design but want their documents/webpages/anything printed to look better.

She talks about a very important piece of the design puzzle: alignment. Watching your alignment means that everything on the page is lined up with something else. Why do properly-formatted outlines look so good? Each level is aligned with all the other elements at that level. Why does a well-built spreadsheet look so good? Because Excel forces your information into a grid so it is easy to read. Robin’s Principle of Alignment goes like this:

Nothing on the place should be placed on the page arbitrarily. Every item should have a visual connection with something else on the page.

This is easy in Word because it formats the text and, for the most part (ahem) keeps it pretty. If you’re putting text together in a visual program, like Photoshop, it gets a bit harder. Use guides and rulers to make sure that left text edges line up with each other and try to make sure you can draw a clear mental line from the edge of everything to something else.

Step 6 – Try something new

So your document is basically finished! It sounds great, it looks great, it’s the whole enchilada. Now save it. Save it again. OK, now let’s try something fun.

Let’s play around a little bit with your headers and body text. Change your headings to a different font, maybe a serif one if your body is sans serif. Add a horizontal line after your subheadings. Try adding italics to key points for emphasis or bold weight to key sentences (go easy). Try placing relevant icons to headings or specific paragraphs (free, high-quality icons can be found here, at IconArchive.com). Use indentation to move the main text inwards or try moving your subheadings more towards the center. Play around with centering and right-aligning different page elements.

Most often, the times when I found something that worked really well in a document were when I was just messing around. It would usually look terrible after the first 5 changes and then I would do something different and come up with an idea. After a while of messing around with the text formatting and changing some of the existing styles, I would end up with a unique look that I really liked.

Another technique is to just leave it alone for a day. Try something new, save it as a different file name, then come back to it the next day. You may like it more, less or not at all. You also might come up with another little tweak to go along with your first one that really ties things together. Give it time, let it marinate, and you may just end up with something you can be really excited about.

Step 7 – Follow the rules

For the detail-orientated, I’ll direct you to a great list of typography rules to follow. There are quite a few of them but if you want that professional look, you would be wise to glance through and make sure you’re not including some glaring errors. The list was be found here, at About.com.

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If you’re considering whether or not you want to start a blog, ponder this:

By posting a great piece of advice or a guide for someone or your professional insight, you contribute to the incredible equalizing power of the internet. By making once-obscure and restricted information public, you engender a sense of community, a virtual, digital community that pulls people together across geographic and cultural barriers.

Want to be a part of something great? Put yourself out there! But how?

There are many different guides out there offering the best way to write or the easiest way to start or the quickest way to 10K subscribers. You might find some excellent information out there (I have, no doubt) but none of them really tell you how to find and connect with your readers in the most organic, benevolent way possible.

In this post, I offer 6 steps to write a great blog entry for any type of blog you could imagine. These will help you appear more often when real people search, garner more attention from those that matter, and, generally, be more successful as an RSS author. I’m writing these not from the position of a famous blogger (I’m not one of those) but from a chair in front of a monitor that has seen countless posts pass by.

I’m your audience. You better listen up!

1. Understand the format and write to it

While it’s really your blog’s content that determines whether or not I will return, the reach of your blog (meaning the amount of people that see it) makes a big difference in whether I find you in the first place or not. Want me to find you in the seemingly endless ocean of information out there? Then understand and practice the format that makes you findable. Keep these concepts in the forefront of your mind as you write so they start to become second nature. Thinking in terms of a blog post will cut down on the editing time and make it easier in the future to efficiently put out quality material for me to read. The following are a few things to keep in mind.

Your Title Speaks Volumes

The title of your blog post is a very crucial piece of the blog puzzle. With so many aggregators, search engines, and browsers, it’s the only thing that I’ll see and the big decider as to whether I’m going to click it or not. Keep it short, state your purpose, and tell me why I should go there. Great titles reel me in, just don’t disappoint me with a lame post!

It’s All About the First Impression

A great blog post starts with a great introduction. You want me to finish the article and spend as much time on the page as possible, right. Hook me with a great anecdote or a reason why this post will benefit me right now. Help me along to each section and you’ll make a real audience member out of me.

You’re Nothing without your Head

You’ll notice in this article that there is a title at the top, 6 sub-headings, and sub-sub-headings beneath those; this was not an accident. All three of these headers are critical to being seen by the search engines out there (what you want to happen if you want me to find you). Before you write, plan out your main title, your introduction, and all of your sub-headers. This will help you keep on task and make your article as useful as possible. At the end, make sure all of your headers match the information underneath and incorporate the key words you want to be associated with.

2. Consistency: Keep Me Coming Back for More

Think of your blog as your own personal publication, like a magazine or a newspaper. When I subscribe to Time or Newsweek or The Economist I’m not giving them money to send me an issue when they feel like it or when they get around to it. I receive one issue every month/week of a certain size and on a certain set of subjects.

Just like the New York Times can’t skip a few days here or there, your blog must be consistent in how often the posts are being made. This doesn’t mean you need to post twice a day but if you want to post twice a day, make sure you can keep that pace up ad infinitum. I’m more likely to return if you find a schedule that works for you and keep to it; it’s nice knowing that I have something to read on specific days, regardless of what those days are.

Before you start, come to an agreement with yourself and your co-authors (if there are any) on a frequency and stick to it. If you can write six days a week then go for it. If, however, you think you will only have the time or where-with-all or content for twice a week, then pick two days of the week and make sure those days get a post. You will be more successful by posting every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday than you will by writing 7 times one week and once the next.

3. Make Your Content Unique

The internet is a very descriptive name that gives you a good idea of what is going on behind the scenes. It’s a giant network of interconnected information and benefits greatly from layered information on many different topics. For every topic there exists countless different descriptions, opinions, definitions, and alternatives. How can anything be unique when everything already has a website?

It’s certainly daunting to face a blank page and wonder if your thoughts are already out there so don’t. Unless you wrote them, your thoughts haven’t been published so write away.

Unique content comes from the heart and it comes from experience. Maybe one or two (or ten) people already wrote an article about marriage or family relations or earning trust. Maybe there is a whole network of people who write about it all the time but that doesn’t make me more likely to read theirs and less likely to read yours. You might only write a page or two about your topic but it came from YOUR mind and YOUR experience and, as such, is far more important to your audience.

Where people fall into a trap is when they look to other bodies of work to create their own. Referencing other blogs, articles, and web pages is fine but don’t make other people’s work your own (even if you give credit). With so many ways of receiving and filtering information, I certainly don’t need another middle man feeding me other people’s information. Bloggers who fall into the habit of parroting others fall quickly into irrelevancy.

If you write about a book, news article, or blog post that you read, tell me what you think about it. If you agree, tell me why and vice versa. Quote a small piece of the work and tell me what was right or wrong about that passage. Also: always give credit where credit is due.

4. What’s the Point? Ask Often

Most of us like to keep up with family and friends and colleagues to make sure everything is going well. If my mom wrote a blog about her day-to-day activities, I would probably check it out every now and then in between phone calls. But would my friends? Would my co-workers? Would anyone else?

Ask yourself over and over: why am I writing this? If you can’t come up with one or two reasons why, maybe you should re-think the topic. Every post doesn’t have to be a home run and change my life but each post should speak to me and what I want. You are writing for me, not for yourself.

In that vein, it’s important to understand what is important to you and what is important to me. Your experience and your knowledge is why you have the subscribers you do but unless that knowledge is consistently helping me in my life, chances are that I won’t be around for the long haul.

Problogger.com speaks to this point::

Stop writing about yourself. Start solving problems – Surfers become readers when a blog provides something that is wanted. A casual visitor may read your blog because they find training, answers to problems, entertainment, or something else they want. This more than likely will mean that they won’t want to read about you, your girlfriend, your cats, your kids, or your catastrophes (unless you have a personal blog that your friends read). Discontinuing the off-topic posts will help you to develop more repeat traffic and takes exactly 0 minutes to implement.

5. Simple and To-The-Point Language

Ok, here’s the tricky part, picking a font that works. Here are the basic rules:

This particular point is important for those with an extensive vocabulary or those who write about a particular topic with which they are very knowledgeable. It is important to keep jargon and unnecessarily arcane or obscure words from damaging the accessibility of your blog. If you want to appeal to me and all the other me’s out there, it is important that you don’t make me feel uneducated or uninformed. I’m not an idiot but when I fire up Google Reader on my phone and catch a few blog posts on the trolley, I don’t want to have to hunt for a dictionary (that’s what Infinite Jest is for).

Additionally, by using commonplace words (even if you sound a bit repetitive) you are increasing the likelihood that I’ll will find your post through a search engine. Once you’ve had just a bit of experience using a search engine, you realize that being specific is key to finding what you want efficiently.

When you are writing, don’t change what you want to say to fit into a set of words but keep your post direct and avoid unnecessary words. Use short, direct sentences and clear and concise language (this should start to resemble a Strunk & White flashback from your school days). Avoid long tangents that can lose me and make the difference between a returning customer and a bounce.

With a blog post, shorter is better. I have many different blogs I subscribe to and tying up my time with a long-winded post is inconsiderate to say the least. If a particular topic requires more analysis or additional information on your part, consider a multi-part post; you can be sure I’ll come back if I liked the first one. Make sure to plan the series out and tell me what I’m in for.

6. Back It Up

At their best, blogs are charged with providing clear, concise, and CORRECT information. Getting your news from CNN.com is a viable option but I would rather read it from people who were there and saw it happen. Similarly, I would rather read about counseling from a 30 year veteran than just a simple definition on Wikipedia.

The problem with blogs, however, is that each blog has its own reputation to build and maintain. The blog community (called the blogosphere) has done a great job of raising the overall opinion of blogs as information disseminators over the last few years. Your blog will benefit from this but you also have your own work to do.

Make sure that your facts can be backed up and include links wherever possible. Your information is doubly powerful if it is corroborated by a quote from someone or even another blog post. Link out to other site when you can and include short quotes when appropriate.

There is one thing that you won’t be able to source: your own experience. Anecdotes are important in building trust and respect but they must be accurate. A simple exaggeration of a particular experience might seem minor when you write it but if you are ever called out it could be disastrous. Building my trust is paramount to being the most interesting blog writer ever. If the story needs modification to fit the post, you don’t need the story (or the post).

Bonus: Ask yourself these questions as you write

• What am I trying to say? What should the reader be getting out of this?
• Why should the reader care about what I’m writing?
• Am I validating what I’m saying? Are my facts straight?
• Am I including too much personal information?
• Could this be split into several different parts? Am I going on too long?
• Is my title strong enough? Does it accurately explain what I’ve written?
• Do my sub-headings make sense? Do they correctly label what follows?
• Am I considering Seth’s 3 U’s: unique, useful, up-to-date?

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This blog is the story of Josh Can Help (dot com)… how it came about, how it came together, and how it’s going. Besides being a tale of inevitable success (have to keep that positive visualization flowing, trust me), this blog will also serve to help people who want to try the same path, bootstrapping a business that they feel very passionate about. What I do, what works, what doesn’t, and how it all comes together will hopefully help other people who face the same decisions that I have. Choose the same or choose differently but at least you’ll have one more piece of information to help you choose.

So, let me tell you a little bit about myself and how it will contribute to an undeniably inspiring blog experience for you.

I like to teach people

Like I said before, I’m not a business development expert, a marketing maven, or a dot com millionaire. I am, however, someone who can explain stuff that doesn’t make sense in a way that might.

When I worked as a corporate trainer, I was told by a man whom I respected very much that I was a “natural teacher.” I was 24 at the time and really didn’t know what to do with that information besides say thank you. I still don’t know exactly what to do with it but I know it is going to have something to do with teaching people what I know and what they want to know.

I am not here to challenge someone to a coding battle or try to out-design someone else or to build an office network from scratch. I am here to bridge the gap between the gals and guys who know this stuff and teach me and the people who have no clue but want to. I’m here to show you what’s out there and get you started.

This blog is here for the newbies, the have-nots, the beginners. There’s so much information out there and it is hard to know where to start if you just want to get something easy done. Not everyone is a budding software developer or a Photoshop guru or a tech addict. Some people get lost and frustrated easily and end up losing out on great content, great tools, and great people.

This blog is here for the people who don’t know where to start. I’d be thrilled to be your first addition to your first feed reader.

This is my first business

I’m starting from scratch with no funding of any kind and lots of other things on my calendar. I started this business to get good at what I like to do, to have complete creative license over what I produce, and to satisfy my “help others” urge. I have nothing to lose but large chunks of my life and everything to gain. In short, there’s no reason not to do what I’m doing right now.

Also, I don’t, in the classical sense, even know what I’m doing. I’m not an MBA, I’ve never ran a business, and have never even taken a class in anything business related beyond a macro-econ class many years ago. My dad is a freelance financial consultant and went from unhappily employed to happily self-employed in a short period of time (there’s more to the story, of course, but that’s the Clif Notes). Business skill is certainly not genetic, but I’ve assimilated a sizable amount of his work ethic, business values, and desire for progress. In addition, I’ve worked for big companies for most of my employed life. Now, working on contract for a small software company, I find myself producing much better results and learning exponentially more than before. I like that I have lunch with the CEO every now and then and I like that I really feel like I own a part of their success/failure. On top of that (hold on to your hats, folks) I also have been reading about marketing and business for over a year and have picked up way too much not to give it a go.

So I’m green but I’m driven and I want this more than anything. I feel like there are a lot of people out there who feel the same way. This blog is a place I can express what I want out of the business and find others who might be doing the same thing or even just thinking about it. I want to connect with like-minded folks and build community. That’s one more piece.

I read a lot

I like to read about “life hacks” and tips and tricks and fun stuff like that. There are some talented people out there who come up with some great advice. In fact, there is so much great advice out there, sometimes I feel like I’m falling behind in taking it. Some of the best advice and greatest posts come from people who mash-up the idea of typical businesses and make me feel very passionately about owning a piece of that pie.

I read all this good advice and then have nothing to do with it (depending on what the advice is). I get these great ideas about social media and web presence and interaction and online communities and have nowhere to go.

Now, I’m going to take that great advice and my great ideas and I’m going to tell you how they turned out. I’m going to try all those free software downloads out there and all those great morning tips and all that neat marketing advice and use everything that makes sense to me. I’m going to try out those services and talk to those people and sign up for that website. Then, I’m going to cone back to this blog, tell you about what I did, tell you about how I found it, and tell you what happened.

I can’t do this for everything, of course. I’m not going to come on here and tell you how much better my life is now that I quit drinking coffee (because that’s ridiculous) or my new exercise routine I found on-line. What I will tell you about is free software that made my life easier, cheap gadgets I splurged on that work for me, and trick I’ve used to make my computer run better/different. I’ll also be sure to tell you what sucks out there because, let’s be really honest, a lot of it does.

I’m an information junky and information is useless unless you use it or share it. I intend to do both.

There will be news

Don’t you doubt it, there will be news for sure. Anything and everything worthy of telling many people about will end up right here for everyone to read. New client? New employee? New project? Big win? All right here.

. . .

The tale of JoshCanHelp (dot com) starts from the very beginning… the very, very beginning. You’ve read my intentions and you’ve now heard about my blog. Next up… how did it all begin?

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