I recently had the pleasure of working with client and friend, Karen McLaren of Harmony Within aromatherapy.She wanted a new logo that expressed more of the vibrance and organic nature of her products and creative process. After some great conversations and some fine tuning, here is the final logo design, with which Karen is very, very happy!
After many phone meetings, lots of hard work from all involved and a good number of belly laughs (one of the many reasons Bennett is a great client is his sense of humor), I am pleased to announce the launch of the “International Association of Women Runners” brand new WordPress website!! www.IAWR-connect.com
Congratulations and best wishes to Bennett and Gail!
I’ve had my nose to the grindstone and been busting at the seams a bit. Enough so that I finally said, *enough* and took some time to finish up a pair of twin art pieces that had been hanging around, waiting patiently. So, here they are, long suffering but lovely (if I do say so myself)!
More specifically, they can see the appeal and are feeling pulled towards it, but are also quite nervous about the prospect of getting sucked into the social networking time-suck wormhole. Which is a really reasonable concern. I won’t deny having fallen into that wormhole a time or two before finding my bearings. Also, quite frankly, they are concerned about doing it “wrong” or looking like newbies or even worse, being perceived as inept in their initial fumblings. Again, not an unreasonable concern. Who wants to put their professional reputation on the line and end up looking like a wonk? No, me either.
Here’s what has worked well for me and what I have been telling my clients: ease into it.
One of the ways I get comfortable in a new scenario in life is to ease myself into it. I look around a bit, observe…see what folks are doing. This helps allay my fear that I am going to be way off base and gives me some clues as to things like etiquette and social cues. The same is true with social networking online.
Social Media Plan of Action!
Just because you sign up for a Twitter account doesn’t mean you have to start Tweeting right away. Sign up for an account, mark it private, and find some folks you think are interesting and follow them. Then just sit back and pay attention. How often do they post? Too often? At what point do you find yourself dismissing them? At what point do you find you’ve become engaged? What mix of personal vs. business posts do you respond to? All of these cues can inform how you want to form your own online presence.
Start Slowly
Once you’ve spent some time observing and figuring out the do’s and don’ts, dip your toe in. Spend 10 minutes a day on it. Send your first Tweet or Facebook status update and see how it goes. If the world doesn’t stop spinning, if you didn’t break the internet, if you get no discernible reaction, try it again. Start to get into a comfortable (and time limited) rhythm. I find myself realizing a few times a day that I’ve just had a conversation or a thought that would be helpful or fun to share.
Share the Love
Also, I find it really helpful when people retweet (yes, it’s a word) resources and posts. Doing so is a great way to get in the habit of posting without having to generate 100% original content. And people will certainly be happy (and, for the most part, thankful in a demonstrative way) that you’ve passed on what they had to share.
We’re working on some projects together and it’s one of the pitch points that clients are looking for in a custom WordPress website package. I’ve been doing some research and found that a few people are using WP as an intranet, but it seems like they’re just cobbling together a bunch of existing plugins for calendaring, inter-office communications, etc. If anybody has wisdom or experience to share re: specifics on setting up a WP site as both CMS and an efficient intranet? I’d love to hear from you!!!
I get a lot of questions from clients about blog posts and how categories and keywords relate when I am designing their WordPress website / blog. What are categories? Which should I use?? Do I have to use them at all??? Here is a handy-dandy article from Michael Martine @ Remarkablogger that nicely spells it out:
http://remarkablogger.com/2008/10/27/blog-pages-posts-categories-and-tags-help/