IaaS, PaaS and SaaS Explained
How to Bring Your Site Online? A Guide for the Small Businesses
- The website is dokimos.org. Although an exaggeration in itself, it shows you what you should not do.
You’re Finally Online. Now What? Marketing, Social Media And Mobile Marketing
When I speak to students about business, I always make sure to point out that they just can’t sit by the phone and wait for the calls from prospective clients to pour in. This is when their eyes glaze over.
The worst argument I ever heard from a student in response to my talk on steps to market oneself was, “I thought I’d just get an agent.” It seems the teacher of the class gave the students that sage advice. I wonder how many took my advice and how long it took the others to realize that advice was sound. How many careers, I wonder, never took off at all.
It doesn’t matter what business you’re in – marketing is as important, if not more important, as what you know and how well you do it. There are horrid incompetents who do extremely well and talented people who go nowhere due to their marketing efforts, or lack thereof.
Some people believe that search engines will help people find them on the web and that’s true to a certain point but at its best, it won’t replace marketing. In any business, you need to encourage growth and new customers. Don’t wait for prospects to find you – go out and find them!
The question is – what kind of marketing tools do you need? The answer is not what tools are out there but what tools fit your business. Social media is free or costs less… well, can be cost effective in most cases. As with fresh, young students setting their first step into the business world, the challenge is knowing what to use, how to use it and what NOT to use.
Is Your Site Really Ready To Promote?
No matter what business you are in, you need to show your services, product(s) and in some cases, the price(s). What’s more, you need to do it quickly as people will spend less then a minute on your site if they are surfing several different competitors. Make sure your site has the most important information in the space that will come up when your site loads. If people have to scroll excessively or your navigation is difficult, then your site is weak and marketing will be a waste of time. Your site is the foundation of your marketing and it has to be strong and reliable.
Let’s say you have a great site and you’ve allowed a seasoned and talented designer or design team to create something great for you without mucking up the design by asking your 12 year-old niece, who won a fourth grade art contest at her school, for her opinion on the design and then forcing the designer to put in prancing glitter unicorn gifs all over your site. In other words, don’t tell your doctor how to remove a malignant growth by telling him/her that your seven year-old son plays the game, “Operation” and will be assisting during the operation. You will die! Have your niece help with design and the site and your business will die!
Aside from that, design blogs LOVE to spotlight the best and worst of web design. Under which label do you want your site appearing? It won’t help when people search out your site. Let a professional design and code your site. They want to do their best so you’re happy and keeping coming back for more as technology changes web applications and technology.
Do You Sell, Process Or Manufacture?
What is it your business does for customers? Do you sell hard goods through a store and an ecommerce site? Even if only through an ecommerce site, be sure, once again, to listen to your web designer so the proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will allow people surfing for your type of products will show up and best if they show up within the first page of a search and even better if they show up within the top five.
What else can you use for selling hard goods? By having a tight and focused Twitter following, you can announce new products, sales and specials. Twitter is your billboard and even though it’s free, you have to know the optimal times to post your tweets to catch peoples’ attention without multiple tweets to the point of aggravation to your followers.
When are the best times to tweet? According to an article in
An article on
I disagree only on the basis of what they point to as “peak times.” I deal with a global clientele and followers, so I have to plan tweets for the same working hours in different time zones. I have noticed that even tweets at 2:00 a.m. (EST), have drawn responses from people in (PST) as well as those just starting their work day in western Europe as well as eastern Asia.
The key is to know your targeted audience, tweet at times they are most likely to see your tweet in their feed, which can fill up with 500 tweets within a minute, pushing yours far off the page. Tweet at optimal times, but not so much that your own tweets sent page looks like an endless list of the same tweet. Bit.ly, to its credit does note, “by understanding the simple characteristics of each social network, you can publish your content at exactly the right time for it to reach the maximum number of people.”
This also brings up the practice of mobile marketing. Have you made your site mobile friendly? If not, you are sorely behind the times and being left behind quickly. Think of it as jumping off a speedboat at night. Within 60 seconds you will be lost and either drown or be eaten by sharks… the sharks being your competition.
With a mobile site and mobile marketing to smart phones, an opt-in list will give you a willing audience who will read your messages sent directly to them. Better then a tweet, more ROI then email marketing and simple to maintain an active database.
SMS (Text) Marketing is the popular way of using mobile marketing as almost every single person is an active text user. Many of these people prefer texting to most other forms of communication and most people carry their mobile device with them at all times. With text marketing, you have the opportunity to contact multiple customers at the same time and they receive the message in real time. SMS message delivery can be guaranteed which makes it a preferred method to email in many instances and there is a greater open rate for texts as opposed to emails.
SMS marketing can also be “location-aware,” so that if a potential consumer is nearby, you can send them a coupon or make them aware of time-sensitive specials. Foursquare is a site/application that you should check out if you want to offer pop up specials and sales.
Developing an application that promotes your business to a mobile user is another great way to harness the growing power of mobile marketing. Mobile apps are one of the hottest items available and you could apply the same concept to mobile games as well. Any application that builds your brand into a potential buyer’s mobile experience is a great way to increase your business.
If you manufacture products, the same techniques apply. The main difference is you are marketing business to business. Mobile marketing will not fit your efforts as well as email marketing and print catalogs. If you specialize in small runs in, say a firm that manufactures promotional items, having a fan page on Facebook with Google ads (which are also good for retail sales) is quite effective.
If you sell services based on intellectual properties, such as web design, consulting or copywriting, there are different choices that must be made. Your site, naturally, must show samples of your work and contact information. Unlike ecommerce sites that show a product and the price, most freelance designers and photographers would rather field requests from prospective clients and price projects accordingly. There has been some discussion if it’s a good idea to actually offer a price list so people surfing for design services can see costs upfront. By the same token, although it commoditizes design work, it also offers upfront payments of 50% or higher before the work begins and terms of sale the customer must accept before the project proceeds.
A design firm in England has found a unique middle ground to this question.
But how do you bring prospects to your site in the first place? Creatives tend to be drawn together in life and on social media. We follow other creatives, connect with them and spend an inordinate amount of time-sharing our work, dreams and disappointments. Misery does love company but how much time is spent on this commiseration as opposed to searching for solid business contacts?
When it comes to business, other designers aren’t the number one source of work for us as freelancers or referrals. The dark side of relying too much on connections with other designers is that they can sabotage others. People can be petty and the current financial and competitive environment is fierce. Learn to trust your own efforts!
While your trusted friends, whether designers or “normal” people, are great connections and should be treasured and nurtured, you need to seek out those who BUY your services.
LinkedIn is a purely business site for networking. It allows you to connect with some legitimate heavy hitters who buy creative services.
Build a list of a hundred dream clients. Search companies, identify the right people (not the CEO; try people who are in a position to book design projects) and build a list. Make sure you respond to every accepted connection with a personal note (via LinkedIn) to thank people for connecting with you and include your site URL for “more on me.”
Groups allow you to create closer connections with prospective clients. Are you going to join the “Lovers of Joomla” site or the “Small Business Marketing Ideas” group? The latter is filled with people who need your services. The idea of marketing yourself is to reach out to prospective clients, not to be friends with other creatives. Leave that for local design group bitch sessions. The biggest mistake a creative makes is failing to network which, in its most simple state, is sales or selling yourself and your service. If you attended a college or university for the art program, you will have an alumni group that will contain members that were not art students and they have businesses that need design services. So, why not urge them to use a fellow graduate? Surely you talked to other people at that school… right?
Were you a member of a fraternity or sorority? Your brothers and sisters are no doubt members of a LinkedIn group. If not, then start a group. Starting a group puts you in charge and number one in the spotlight.
Both LinkedIn and Twitter have intuitive feedback that help you connect, join groups,
Blogging is a great way to reach prospects but very labor intensive. This is why many firms start to ignore their blogs – they don’t want to have an employee using their time to update the content or pay for someone to dedicate the time and effort. I have several clients that pay me to write blog posts for them. The big danger with a blog is having it show that it hasn’t been updated for months or over a year. It reflects badly on you and your company. Update it at least once a week, even if it’s just one little blurb. Ignore it and it is a blot on your company’s ability to keep up with marketing, which is not a good sign in our business.
We are in a Googled world of information flying left and right. With sites like Stumbleupon and Digg, just to name two, and aggregators by the hundreds, your blog will cross someone’s path at some point, either via a shared link, Facebook “like,” or just showing up in a search for some odd term. The key is to bring that person BACK to your blog again and again.
While the internet offers many ways to connect with other people, don’t forget another effective marketing tool – face-to-face networking. You are more likely to do business with people who have met you in person then any other way. The old tried and true firm handshake and confident smile still works.
What Fits Your Needs?
All of the avenues mentioned in this article are dovetailed to work together. One is not better than the others and some just may not be necessary for what you want to accomplish. Any small business needs to advertise, market, brand and reach out to prospective clients. Target your clients and go after them. The idea is to use what works best for your needs, keep at it and make everything count towards gaining clients and business. When using social media or any active marketing solution, be sure you can dedicate the proper time and effort to keep at it. It’s better to have one active and effective marketing outreach then to have six that go nowhere.
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Fax My Jeans Up, Scotty
Additive manufacturing (AM) known as 3-D printing or Direct Digital Manufacturing (DDM) makes teleporting a reality. Not people yet, but soon– though at best it would only be a copy.
BAM (Biomedical Additive Manufacturing) however, is a reality, and according to a recent
The manufacturing of the humanoid is inescapable since the same printing machine could make lunar landing gear components and hip acetabula indiscriminately. Materials including titanium and multiple varieties of polymers are applied in micron thin layers and forged using Selective Laser Sintering (SLS). The original technology grew out of Stereo Lithography (SL) that used polymers for quick prototypes. Now AM is the rapid manufacturing of single fully customized objects, both humanoid and otherwise.
This is the most disruptive gig going: No more shipping. And the AM printers are becoming cheaper. Currently some can be homemade for under a few thousand dollars, whereas those under development to assemble complete airplane wings are of course vastly more expensive. AM is the ultimate fax, fax on crack, and Computer Assisted Design (CAD) is the engine of it all. What’s digitally designed can be stored in the cloud and rained down– or up– to any one with the appropriate printing machine. Think Guttenberg’s printing press changed things? This is bigger. Printing DNA (yes, the stuff of genes!) is on the horizon. Digitized objects or progeny in the clouds delivered to outer space or inner space. We’ve arrived: virtual reality to real reality. Beam me up my perfect fitting jeans or a kneecap or even designer human ova. “In the future,” says the
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Seriously, What is the Cloud?
- Ubiquitous, convenient access,
- On-demand access,
- Shared pool of computing resources,
- Rapid provisioning,
- Measurable
- We have a pool of computing resources: the processor, memory, network, storage etc.,
- Users of these resources can conveniently access them,
- Users of these resources can access them whenever they want, and deploy them on their own,
- The IT personnel can quickly deploy these resources, whether automatically as in item no. 3 or with minimal effort,
- Both the IT personnel and the users can meter their usage.
- Things getting slow? Need one more server? Up and running in a couple of minutes!
- How does the IT guy do it so fast? Basically, he just approves your request, the system provisions the server in the background and returns you the IP address and the hostname.
- How will your department be charged? The usage metering and reporting is transparent and already there: no surprise expenses in your department budget!
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing,
- Featured Image, Wikimedia, Creative Commons,
Related posts:
You’re Finally Online. Now What? Marketing, Social Media And Mobile Marketing
When I speak to students about business, I always make sure to point out that they just can’t sit by the phone and wait for the calls from prospective clients to pour in. This is when their eyes glaze over.
The worst argument I ever heard from a student in response to my talk on steps to market oneself was, “I thought I’d just get an agent.” It seems the teacher of the class gave the students that sage advice. I wonder how many took my advice and how long it took the others to realize that advice was sound. How many careers, I wonder, never took off at all.
It doesn’t matter what business you’re in – marketing is as important, if not more important, as what you know and how well you do it. There are horrid incompetents who do extremely well and talented people who go nowhere due to their marketing efforts, or lack thereof.
Some people believe that search engines will help people find them on the web and that’s true to a certain point but at its best, it won’t replace marketing. In any business, you need to encourage growth and new customers. Don’t wait for prospects to find you – go out and find them!
The question is – what kind of marketing tools do you need? The answer is not what tools are out there but what tools fit your business. Social media is free or costs less… well, can be cost effective in most cases. As with fresh, young students setting their first step into the business world, the challenge is knowing what to use, how to use it and what NOT to use.
Is Your Site Really Ready To Promote?
No matter what business you are in, you need to show your services, product(s) and in some cases, the price(s). What’s more, you need to do it quickly as people will spend less then a minute on your site if they are surfing several different competitors. Make sure your site has the most important information in the space that will come up when your site loads. If people have to scroll excessively or your navigation is difficult, then your site is weak and marketing will be a waste of time. Your site is the foundation of your marketing and it has to be strong and reliable.
Let’s say you have a great site and you’ve allowed a seasoned and talented designer or design team to create something great for you without mucking up the design by asking your 12 year-old niece, who won a fourth grade art contest at her school, for her opinion on the design and then forcing the designer to put in prancing glitter unicorn gifs all over your site. In other words, don’t tell your doctor how to remove a malignant growth by telling him/her that your seven year-old son plays the game, “Operation” and will be assisting during the operation. You will die! Have your niece help with design and the site and your business will die!
Aside from that, design blogs LOVE to spotlight the best and worst of web design. Under which label do you want your site appearing? It won’t help when people search out your site. Let a professional design and code your site. They want to do their best so you’re happy and keeping coming back for more as technology changes web applications and technology.
Do You Sell, Process Or Manufacture?
What is it your business does for customers? Do you sell hard goods through a store and an ecommerce site? Even if only through an ecommerce site, be sure, once again, to listen to your web designer so the proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will allow people surfing for your type of products will show up and best if they show up within the first page of a search and even better if they show up within the top five.
What else can you use for selling hard goods? By having a tight and focused Twitter following, you can announce new products, sales and specials. Twitter is your billboard and even though it’s free, you have to know the optimal times to post your tweets to catch peoples’ attention without multiple tweets to the point of aggravation to your followers.
When are the best times to tweet? According to an article in
An article on
I disagree only on the basis of what they point to as “peak times.” I deal with a global clientele and followers, so I have to plan tweets for the same working hours in different time zones. I have noticed that even tweets at 2:00 a.m. (EST), have drawn responses from people in (PST) as well as those just starting their work day in western Europe as well as eastern Asia.
The key is to know your targeted audience, tweet at times they are most likely to see your tweet in their feed, which can fill up with 500 tweets within a minute, pushing yours far off the page. Tweet at optimal times, but not so much that your own tweets sent page looks like an endless list of the same tweet. Bit.ly, to its credit does note, “by understanding the simple characteristics of each social network, you can publish your content at exactly the right time for it to reach the maximum number of people.”
This also brings up the practice of mobile marketing. Have you made your site mobile friendly? If not, you are sorely behind the times and being left behind quickly. Think of it as jumping off a speedboat at night. Within 60 seconds you will be lost and either drown or be eaten by sharks… the sharks being your competition.
With a mobile site and mobile marketing to smart phones, an opt-in list will give you a willing audience who will read your messages sent directly to them. Better then a tweet, more ROI then email marketing and simple to maintain an active database.
SMS (Text) Marketing is the popular way of using mobile marketing as almost every single person is an active text user. Many of these people prefer texting to most other forms of communication and most people carry their mobile device with them at all times. With text marketing, you have the opportunity to contact multiple customers at the same time and they receive the message in real time. SMS message delivery can be guaranteed which makes it a preferred method to email in many instances and there is a greater open rate for texts as opposed to emails.
SMS marketing can also be “location-aware,” so that if a potential consumer is nearby, you can send them a coupon or make them aware of time-sensitive specials. Foursquare is a site/application that you should check out if you want to offer pop up specials and sales.
Developing an application that promotes your business to a mobile user is another great way to harness the growing power of mobile marketing. Mobile apps are one of the hottest items available and you could apply the same concept to mobile games as well. Any application that builds your brand into a potential buyer’s mobile experience is a great way to increase your business.
If you manufacture products, the same techniques apply. The main difference is you are marketing business to business. Mobile marketing will not fit your efforts as well as email marketing and print catalogs. If you specialize in small runs in, say a firm that manufactures promotional items, having a fan page on Facebook with Google ads (which are also good for retail sales) is quite effective.
If you sell services based on intellectual properties, such as web design, consulting or copywriting, there are different choices that must be made. Your site, naturally, must show samples of your work and contact information. Unlike ecommerce sites that show a product and the price, most freelance designers and photographers would rather field requests from prospective clients and price projects accordingly. There has been some discussion if it’s a good idea to actually offer a price list so people surfing for design services can see costs upfront. By the same token, although it commoditizes design work, it also offers upfront payments of 50% or higher before the work begins and terms of sale the customer must accept before the project proceeds.
A design firm in England has found a unique middle ground to this question.
But how do you bring prospects to your site in the first place? Creatives tend to be drawn together in life and on social media. We follow other creatives, connect with them and spend an inordinate amount of time-sharing our work, dreams and disappointments. Misery does love company but how much time is spent on this commiseration as opposed to searching for solid business contacts?
When it comes to business, other designers aren’t the number one source of work for us as freelancers or referrals. The dark side of relying too much on connections with other designers is that they can sabotage others. People can be petty and the current financial and competitive environment is fierce. Learn to trust your own efforts!
While your trusted friends, whether designers or “normal” people, are great connections and should be treasured and nurtured, you need to seek out those who BUY your services.
LinkedIn is a purely business site for networking. It allows you to connect with some legitimate heavy hitters who buy creative services.
Build a list of a hundred dream clients. Search companies, identify the right people (not the CEO; try people who are in a position to book design projects) and build a list. Make sure you respond to every accepted connection with a personal note (via LinkedIn) to thank people for connecting with you and include your site URL for “more on me.”
Groups allow you to create closer connections with prospective clients. Are you going to join the “Lovers of Joomla” site or the “Small Business Marketing Ideas” group? The latter is filled with people who need your services. The idea of marketing yourself is to reach out to prospective clients, not to be friends with other creatives. Leave that for local design group bitch sessions. The biggest mistake a creative makes is failing to network which, in its most simple state, is sales or selling yourself and your service. If you attended a college or university for the art program, you will have an alumni group that will contain members that were not art students and they have businesses that need design services. So, why not urge them to use a fellow graduate? Surely you talked to other people at that school… right?
Were you a member of a fraternity or sorority? Your brothers and sisters are no doubt members of a LinkedIn group. If not, then start a group. Starting a group puts you in charge and number one in the spotlight.
Both LinkedIn and Twitter have intuitive feedback that help you connect, join groups,
Blogging is a great way to reach prospects but very labor intensive. This is why many firms start to ignore their blogs – they don’t want to have an employee using their time to update the content or pay for someone to dedicate the time and effort. I have several clients that pay me to write blog posts for them. The big danger with a blog is having it show that it hasn’t been updated for months or over a year. It reflects badly on you and your company. Update it at least once a week, even if it’s just one little blurb. Ignore it and it is a blot on your company’s ability to keep up with marketing, which is not a good sign in our business.
We are in a Googled world of information flying left and right. With sites like Stumbleupon and Digg, just to name two, and aggregators by the hundreds, your blog will cross someone’s path at some point, either via a shared link, Facebook “like,” or just showing up in a search for some odd term. The key is to bring that person BACK to your blog again and again.
While the internet offers many ways to connect with other people, don’t forget another effective marketing tool – face-to-face networking. You are more likely to do business with people who have met you in person then any other way. The old tried and true firm handshake and confident smile still works.
What Fits Your Needs?
All of the avenues mentioned in this article are dovetailed to work together. One is not better than the others and some just may not be necessary for what you want to accomplish. Any small business needs to advertise, market, brand and reach out to prospective clients. Target your clients and go after them. The idea is to use what works best for your needs, keep at it and make everything count towards gaining clients and business. When using social media or any active marketing solution, be sure you can dedicate the proper time and effort to keep at it. It’s better to have one active and effective marketing outreach then to have six that go nowhere.
Related posts:
How to Bring Your Site Online? A Guide for the Small Businesses
First, you need a simple and sensible web address. It should be something like www.mycompany.com (or yourcompany.com.tr, yourcompany.ru depending on your preference) and not something like www.PleaseBuyFromMyCompany.com. People call you with your name in real life and with your Internet address in the online life, which means a web site is your name, your brand on the Internet. Once you decide on the name, decide on the domain: will you choose com, net or org domain? If your company is a commercial entity, go with the com domain. If you are an organization, then org domain will be a better choice. A friendly note: avoid dashes and numbers unless they are part of your company name.
Next, define the content of your website. Ask yourself some basic questions and make sure that you find the answers on your site:
Then comes the technical part. Unless you are an enthusiast or you are a high-tech company, you might be hearing the following for the first time:
All these boil down to your website design: how your identity, your company’s products/services, contact information is presented to the visitor. Since your website visitors have an attention span of less than 5 seconds, the following items are especially important to deliver them the information about your company:
Now comes the deployment. Make sure you have a secure host to deploy your website; the top 10 companies that we mention on our
After all these steps, you have successfully brought your site online but you are not finished quite yet. You need to follow your web analytics. If you are an existing Google user, you can check
I agree that all these is hard, sometimes non-ending, oftentimes tedious but it is your business, your website, your online identity and it is you (and your employees’) duty to keep it in top shape in today’s online world.
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AT&T Puts The Business Back Into Content Delivery
When looking for a quality way to decrease the lag on your web content, you may quickly find yourself inundated with, shall we say, less than satisfactory options. Providers are a dime a dozen out in the wild, so how is the discerning business manager to choose the best option for their company’s needs? What content delivery network offers the best mix of professionalism, features, and overall quality? One could easily spend days researching the issue, but considering what AT&T’s network is offering, we feel there’s no reason to look any further than the global telecommunications giant. If you’re in need of a reputable, prestigious, and above all reliable provider to deliver your web content, AT&T is guaranteed to have a plan and pricing scheme that will satisfy you and your board.
Quality Brand with a Plethora of Features
This excellence in features begins with the company’s industry-leading cable network. As a global provider of telecommunications services, AT&T has a unique repository of fibre-optic technology to draw from. The provider has capitalized on this opportunity by laying a network of over 932,000 miles across 163 different countries. Every inch of which, of course, is composed of the highest quality material, guaranteeing the fastest speeds of any content delivery provider where basic hardware is concerned.
These benefits are also compounded by more traditional statistics, such as AT&T’s 3,800 service nodes across the globe. Each of these nodes comes tied to one of 38 Internet data processing centers located strategically for maximum edge capacity. All in all, at the end of the day AT&T supports one of the most technically advanced and widespread content delivery platforms of any provider.
Because of their quality in hardware, AT&T also offers simply one of the best HD video streaming services of any content delivery provider we can name. Their fibre-optic cables ensure the fastest downloads speeds, the highest streaming quality, and the fewest pixelations per minute. Their excellence in streaming is also compounded across all spectrums of digital media, thanks to the company’s Intelligent Content Distribution Service. This service routes DNS requests quickly and efficiently to the data processing center or node closest to the user, maximizing end-user satisfaction while decreasing load times dramatically.
Software Further Bolsters Convenience and Productivity
However, we recommend AT&T as a content delivery network provider for more than just its size or quality. If you’re a business professional looking to establish a corporate presence in an existing location, AT&T is by and far the best solution. This is because of the company’s unique dedication to businesses both large and small.
In comparison to every other CDN service of note, AT&T is the only provider to offer SSL caching based around a single corporate network. The company’s extensive Internet grid can be utilized behind a dedicated corporate space designed to bring you your content quickly and securely. This network can also be kept behind a certified Firewall for maximum encryption. All of this is umbrellaed under AT&T’s Private Content Distribution Service, and provides a unique opportunity for corporations to create and manage a worldwide network dedicated to their content and their content alone.
And, of course, AT&T also offers unparalleled options in both scalability and network load. All in all, if you’re looking for a secure, reliable, and comprehensive way to host your content with a corporate focus, AT&T is the ideal solution.
Download
Visit AT&T CDN on the web at
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Viral: Does Your Brand Want It Or Not?
Viral is such a buzz term now. Every where I turn, I’m getting questions from people asking, “How do I make my content go viral” and “How do I take my business and brand viral?”
It always leads me to ask the question in return, what is viral and is it a good or bad thing. The first essential step in becoming viral is simply understanding your medium. Whether you have a blog you want to become more “sticky,” a Facebook business page you want people to “like” or a Twitter account you covet thousands of followers for, you have to understand where you are in the continuum of understanding.
The first level is awareness. Five years ago or so, you asked someone what Twitter was, not everyone knew. They perhaps had heard of it but really had no clue what it did and how it worked. Now, the argument is easily won that everyone is aware of social media and blogs.
The second level is acquisition. Many were deciding three years ago if they truly wanted to step into the technology/social media pool. Now, many have been forced to acquire the technology due to the consumer demand and common use.
Aptitude comes next. This means you have a good understanding of your preferred medium and know the basic principles. If it’s Facebook, you know how to post a status and upload a picture. If you’re on Twitter, you’re comfortable with tweeting and using hashtags.
Ability takes it to the closest, best level. You understand the technical aspect of your medium. You can create Facebook groups and lists and manage who to send out your information to the correct, targeted groups. You can dig on Twitter and find the information you need and tweet without worrying about the content at the basic level.
Actualization is where we all need to be and soon. It’s that moment that we forget about technology and just live as if we are in real life. It’s a harmony that few in the on-line space will find in their lifetime but today’s digital natives will as they grow older.
Today’s tech savvy or tech savvy aspiring businessperson must find actualization before anything can truly go viral in the online space. When we look at viral, however, is that something you truly want to be? Viral is typically quick spreading and short-lived, almost a microwave dinner instead of a strategic long-term garden and meal plan.
As you are looking to go viral, a few important aspects should remain at the forefront. What messages are you placing out there in your social media world? I suspect just as in every part of life, there are social media personality styles. I happen to be an “entertainer.” I’m always saying something to make people laugh or engage in a unique way with me virtually. I tend to attract Gen Y and Gen X females in my on-line behavior. News consumers and Baby Boomer men are usually turned-off by my content.
Other personality types vary from the “motivator” to the “ebb and flow.” Each type attracts and repels friends and consumers. The key is to understand who you want to touch and work to refine that technique.
WordPress Themes vs. Designing From Scratch vs. Portfolio Sites
In art school and certainly in my professional career, I have been constantly reminded that it is the client as the end user. Please the client, make it easy for them to see the message and get it right away. When I worked in magazine publishing, the desire to use grunge fonts was compelling but, as driven by the choices of editors and marketing people, grunge was unreadable and although pleasing to designers, it was quite true that the average person would not like something hard to read and skip over that article or advertisement. It’s not easy to separate one’s creative desires with what is needed for marketing reality. Often creatives fight the advice or direction of marketing people’s suggestions – and yes, they can be power-plays and ego trips at times but often there is a vision that is more that of the average consumer/reader/user then it is of the creative vision of beautiful design.
Jim Carrey’s
It is of the utmost importance to learn, “what will sell my work to the client?” All the kudos in the world from your peers will not help your career or increase sales. Having your web site spotlighted on a design blog or magazine will not reach clients. The saying, “living well is the best revenge” is akin to what you must do with your site – please those who are NOT creative – the clients.
If you’ve ever posted a creative piece and asked fellow creatives what they thought, you’ll get as many different opinions as there are voices giving them. Ignore it all. What makes other creatives right? When a prospect contacts you and says, I saw the work on your web site and want to hire you, that is the mark of a successful web site.
Why WordPress Themes Have Become Popular
People find the familiar comfortable. Why are the best selling electronics similar in how their controls are engineered and laid out? Because the consumer wants something they already know how to use. Electronic and car manufacturers found this out a long time ago and that is why you know, almost by second nature, how to turn on your TV and start your car. You can do it with your eyes closed.
WordPress has a rich plugin architecture, which allows users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install. WordPress has a database of over 17,000
Hundreds of WordPress themes are available and fairly easy to build with a little coding know-how. Many sites, being blog-centric opt for these themes.
Generally, WordPress themes are clean and well designed but it has, as mentioned, familiarity of use and is easy for designers, photographers, illustrators and web developers to use for personal sites. The ease of use as well as the ability to update information, new samples, link to Twitter and
Once you’ve plugged a WordPress theme into your hosting site, it’s easy and intuitive to change the preset widgets, headers and other elements.
All of this, of course, is why WordPress is also attractive to small businesses as it negates the need to hire a web designer (although professional design is still needed to arrange columns, widgets and to keep prancing glitter unicorn gifs off the web).
The Downside Of Themes and Templates?
There are only so many themes in the WordPress library, so you will share the same theme as a million other people. Most are simple enough that it won’t matter but some of the more unusual themes stand out and people will recognize that you have a pre-designed template. Only you can decide if it truly matters to you. The content on your site will differentiate your site from others; so don’t fret too much about using one of the more popular themes.
Despite the user-friendly nature of templates, some people just can’t manage the simple HTML to fill out fields and make them look good. As a creative, this will not inspire prospects to trust your abilities.
The Delicate Balance
The challenge in creating your own site from scratch is that you must have many strengths. You can be the greatest programmer but not very good at designing type. Like the best team environments at any art studio, the best teams play to the strengths of each team member. Put together a team of a designer, programmer, type designer, someone with a great color sense and you can have a web site that will grab attention. There are too many examples out there of really bad web sites created by people who have one or more strength but not all needed for an impressive site. Starting with a theme or template can inspire you and, most of all, give your prospects an easy to use avenue to view your design samples with links, your own words on the project (many prospects and art directors also want to hear/see the stages in developing a design and the thought process behind it) and sections to divide different types of work you can accomplish.
Another great thing about WordPress themes is that if one isn’t working for you, you can replace it with another and most of your content will automatically fall into place. Sometimes you just need to test a theme or two until you strike a cord with clients.
Only you, with some honest soul searching, can decide what is best for you. Think about how you feel about your own site. Do you have doubts? Are you REALLY proud of it and feel it’s your best work? Sometimes, you just need to use another avenue to show the work that you have created – the work of which you are really proud. As mentioned before, other creatives might turn up their noses at the use of a template – as they might do for a site you created from scratch, but in the long run, they don’t pay your bills and they don’t lie awake at night, worrying how you’ll be able to sell your work to the clients who help you pay those bills!
Some sites that have free themes for you to download.
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