I think I’ve found my calling: exchanging ideas and talking them through. What’s that pay nowadays?
I always like sharing my interactions with people here on my blog. Partly because it adds a really human side to my business and shows prospective clients that I’m more than just an email address. The main reason, though, is it creates a much deeper understanding for me when I write it all out and re-experience the conversation. Like many, I need to iterate to understand and it’s easy for me to forget an important insight I came across while interacting with someone else if I don’t work it through after the fact.
"network cables" by pascal.charest on Flickr
So, this is a “conversation” I had with someone about networking. By conversation I mean it was a transcript of a monologue on his side and an email reply on mine. Quotes are, for the most part, complete and without editing.
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In attempt to solve one problem, I figured out a way to easily publish and manage data on the web by using a simple Google Documents spreadsheet. What I was trying to do was come up with the simplest way possible to manage my Josh Can Help network page. What I realized is that, with a little extra work, you could manage a whole website.
The Google Docs CMS
See the GDocs CMS in action!
For those not in the know, a CMS is a Content Management System, a web application that lets you add and edit live web content. WordPress, the system I use over-and-over (for good reason), is a CMS and a great one at that. But, in some cases, it is a bit over the top. What if you just needed to publish information without a lot of regard to the intricacies of presentation? That’s where this system comes in.
The Google Docs CMS lets you publish and manage information on the web using just a Google Docs spreadsheet published as RSS (easy to do, I’ll show you how). The script takes each row and turns it into its own page then creates a list of pages on the left. A site example (which serves as documentation) can be seen here: Google Docs CMS.
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Many people tell me that their website costs more than it brings in. For many, this is just a fact of life and their site becomes a bill to pay like a cell phone. If your site is commercial in nature, however, this is no way to go about your technological life. I want to talk about how to fundamentally change how your business works and how the website assists that.
Your website should be doing two very important things:
- Provide an easy way for people to find more information out about you. This supports email marketing, in person networking, and any kind of word of mouth that you provoke. At the very least, your website should do a great job at doing this. It should be easy to find the right information, the site should showcase your strengths, and there needs to be a path forward for people wanting to take action. Just getting this right is hard enough without help.
- The other thing a successful site should be doing is concentrating on the actions that bring in revenue. Helping people find out about what you have to offer is great and, at this point, basically due diligence for all businesses. Identifying what it is that you want to do and where your revenue needs to come from is a critical step to having a site that pays for itself and more.
OK, here’s the straight dope, ready? I think the fundamental issue with many, many websites out there is that few people have identified what activities contribute the most to their bottom line. Who buys what you have to sell? Who emails you about your product? Who perks up when you talk about what you do? Who do you really want to work with?
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This is a LAME way to do this, for the record.
I used to work for a big, huge wireless company. I was the nameless, faceless guy who received email requests all day and made minor change to wireless accounts. Each email was formatted exactly the same way and I used the same system for each change. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week I was a machine.
While I haven’t eliminated repetition from my professional life entirely, I’m aware of something very different at work. Creating websites from scratch can be tedious but it has taught me something critical about…
Iteration
This word has two pertinent dictionary.com definitions:
the act of repeating
Iteration can mean doing the same thing over and over again. When I use this word, however, I’m thinking more about the second definition:
a problem-solving or computational method in which a succession of approximations, each building on the one preceding, is used to achieve a desired degree of accuracy
In layman’s terms, when you iterate or use an iterative process, you’re doing the best you can with the information you have, checking how successful you were, and using that information to take another, more educated stab at it. Since I’m a self-taught designer and developer, iteration has been a critical part of my professional growth. I’ve developed a very iterative mindset.
An iterative mindset is based on three things: observation, analysis, and persistence. In other words, iteration comes more from desire and hard work than any kind of innate ability.
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For the record, this is one of the reasons I find immense value in Twitter: exposure to a broad range of opinions on an equally broad range of topics. Since this particular option pertained to what I do, I figured I’d chime in.
Tweet in question:
Holy crap, I hope not! There goes an income source…
You can gauge (if you couldn’t predict) my first reaction: um, no.
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