Goodbye Self Employement, Goodbye Info Overload

For the past 6 years I've been a self employed designer. I've been contracting for tech start-ups and small businesses. Afraid to turn down any work in a recession, I even turned to social media marketing. But then a funny thing happend over the holidays. The clouds parted, the sun shone down, and a sea of bullshit parted. A good friend referred me to a good recruiter for a good job at a good company with smart, friendly people. All the stars were in alignment. I took the offer. 

It dawned on me as soon as I took the offer how much easier my life will get. All of a sudden I don't have to "eat the dogfood" and be on Facebook all of the time anymore. All of a sudden I can cancel about 50 email newsletters I was subscribed to just so I could be "on top of things" from home. I no longer have to care what the tech pundits say (because I'm not selling web design services to anybody anymore). I don't have to use foursquare, I don't need to care about "location based services".  I don't have to play Farmville to learn "game design" tricks. No more chasing technology trends just so I could "talk the talk". I could actually revert back to a dumb phone,  save some money, get rid of all the annoying, distracting, notifications!!! I can get my privacy back. I don't have to "live my life online" I can actually just ... live. I won't have to care about "reputation management" and I can metaphorically pee all over my stupid, invasive, abusive LinkedIn profile. (Does LinkedIn Actually do anything for job seekers?) No more small clients to get on my case because I didn't reply to an email over my weekend. I can literally, just, login to Gmail once a week. Actually, I think I'll drop Gmail and become an Apple girl because I don't want to socialize with 13 year olds on Google +.

I am sooooo looking forward to the stress reduction AND a long commute to Washington, DC. The commute will be relaxing after being self employed.

Happy Christmas - Greater Gifts (& Hot Artochoke Dip)

I'm not getting any presents this year for Christmas. Well... that's not true, I already got my presents really early. I sit here in the midst of a recession self employed, a new home owner, capable of taking care of myself during a crappy economy.   I owe all this to my Greater Gifts. Nothing tangible or valuable in a monetary sense but gifts of friendship, of family.  Gifts of using my intelligence and showing leadership and openness. Gifts of being able to relate to other human beings. Being able to smile and talk to strangers, or help those in need. Being able to learn something every day is a Great Gift. Being able to apply all these lessons to my world every day is a wonderful life.  I hope other people are realizing that the Greater Gifts matter more than money, or ego, or self.

I make this Hot Artichoke Dip every Christmas Eve... This year I promise I'll add a photo.

Ingredients
- 2 (13 3/4-ounce) cans artichoke hearts (drained & broken into smaller chunks)
- 1 14 ounce can of tomato with jalapenos. 
- 1 cup mayonnaise
- 1 cup packed grated Parmesan Cheese
- 2-3 tablespoons tobasco sauce (more or less to taste. You can try other hot sauces too.)
- 1 large garlic clove, mashed
- A few cranks of fresh black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, stir well. Scrape into an oven proof dish, cover and bake for 40 minutes. Serve this savory dip HOT, with bagel chips, corn chips, crackers, bread... anything! Enjoy!

Steph's Top 10 Internet Marketing Rules FREE

Many people don't know that I dabble in a little online marketing as well as doing Interface and User Experience Design. This internet marketing helps me observe a much greater view of the people's online landscape. It's making me a better UX designer since I can see all the complex connections that data and people make together. Nowadays many small business people are asking me for help with social networks and social media marketing. They say things like, "I just don't know where to begin," really lost sounding remarks. Groupon scares the crap out of people, it's perceived as a business killer. And Foursquare is confusing, lots of people don't "get it". It seems like regular people are just now getting comfortable with Facebook. Anyway... here are my top 10 web marketing rules designed to help you use social media like a pro. 

Marketing Rule #1 - Reciprocate! 

The social web is … social. People don’t want to talk, they want to converse, exchange photos, share links, read stories, participate! If a client or vendor keeps liking everything you post in Facebook, reciprocate! It makes a big difference. If a customer is blogging about their awesome service from you, that’s FREE marketing so thank them, give them credit and reuse it on your blog. It’s good to thank people on Facebook, LinkedIn and yelp. It’s good to publicly write thoughtful comments on relevant news articles, go ahead and link to your business in this case. Always be polite, like you would to anybody in the real world. But it’s the reciprocity that really pleases people and an actual connection that feels authentic so try not to hog all of the attention, give back.

Marketing Rule #2 - Be Relevant!

Just sending out email blasts alone is not a great idea anymore because people's inboxes are getting crazier by the minute. The best thing about social media is that it allows almost anybody to reach their “target” audience in a way which is very relevant to consumers. It’s not art, it’s science, easy science! So, pick the websites that will give you the most bang for you buck, and forget those that don’t. Almost everyone has a Facebook account and there are millions more using twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media services like yelp. Plus there are more online social networks which are industry and location specific that could be extra relevant for you and your customers. Add in the magic of highly refined advertising tools which let you target people down to gender, location, education level, and more. Plus internet reporting tools that literally show you exactly how well your marketing efforts are going. If you want to advertise online, do research first to determine whether Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, or a combination of these (or others) are best for you. Are you a craft person? Then Etsy.com is your thing. If your a musician, you have a lot to look at. Skip the research and you’re just gonna waste money which will make you sad. If you hire a pro, listen to them, they do the research so you don't have to.

Marketing Rule #3 - You gotta deliver the goods. 

You don’t need a User Experience Designer like me to tell you that you shouldn’t disappoint your visitors by letting them down after building up their expectations. All the online marketing in the world won’t make up for a bad website. Imagine this scenario > Somebody sees your nifty ad and they go and click on it. > They come to your website and find something ugly, or stupid, something wrong, or too provocative. > This is bad design. Ask yourself, “Will anybody Like this on Facebook? Will people feel good about sharing this with their friends?” The web is fickle place, one single disappointment is all it takes for a visitor to go away forever.

Marketing Rule #4 - A picture actually is worth a thousand words. 

OK serious moment number 1... I have sat in usability testing labs and I have read many a white paper and report about this... Nothing, I mean nothing sells something like an image. People literally click on photos or images without even thinking about it. If you really want to bump up your business, take lots of photos of your products, of your business, of your team, of your partners, of your clients, and of your events. Hire a professional photographer to follow your business around! Photo - photo - photograph all-of-the-time! And keep all of it in a repository somewhere like Flickr. From there you can blog, post, share, tweet, and email the crud out of it to your fans or target audience anywhere, anytime or share it with your designers, contractors, and vendors. I will be adding images to this post, seriously.

Marketing Rule #5 - Plan ahead! 

Serious moment number 2. This is what the pros do and there are numerous benefits to planning ahead. If you want to promote your business for Christmas for example, you should start planning no later than September. You need to start promoting wedding season no later than January. Why? You may need to do research, hire a freelancer, devise an advertising campaign, source or produce photos, or other creative, budget, or simply get your stuff together. You should create a schedule of what you will post in sequence, over time so as to maximize all of your work. All of this takes time so plan for it. If you have to send out anything printed, like postcards or fliers for a trade show, you need time to get this together and coordinate your online marketing with it so make the calendar your friend and get your colleagues addicted to planning.

Marketing Rule #6 - More content = more love. 

The more you post to your blog, or Facebook, or twitter - the more content you’re publishing to the world. Period. Content is gold on the Internet. The more conversations you have with customers on Facebook, twitter or in a forum on LinkedIn, the more content you're actually putting online, and  more people will connect to your business. This does two things - 1) It engages and entertains people. 2) It pleases the algorithms behind all of these networks. Google promotes fresher websites over stale ones in it’s search results. This is part of the reason blogs make great websites. So please your fans, your clients, and the gods of the internet - at the same time - and post some fresh content appropriately for your business. Listen to your clients to determine which delivery methods work best for them. And remember, sharing too much can be annoying. There is such a thing as twitter and Facebook spam as well as email spam. I try to post no more than once a day on average to Facebook.

Marketing Rule #7 - Assume your customers are really smart! 

You know exactly what I mean. You’ve seen those dumb ads on TV that simply insult your intelligence. Perhaps you’ve seen the gross “belly fat” ads online (which by the way has been proven to be a nefarious “phishing” ad). YOUR CUSTOMERS AREN’T THAT DUMB! So be authentic and don’t take a dumb approach with your online marketing.

Marketing Rule #8 - Use the analysis tools. 

Serious moment number 3. There are FREE or inexpensive yet powerful analytical tools provided to you by Google, Facebook, and many other websites. USE THEM.  The great thing about the web is that you can observe so much of what goes on. Which means, you can see when people visit your website, what people click on, what they like & don't like, how often people visit your blog and for how long. You know how quickly they leave. You can see what tweets, emails, or ad campaigns are sending people to you. You can literally gauge the effectiveness of everything you do. All these analytical tools will help you greatly IF you use them. You don’t need to spend a lot of time just use them.

Marketing Rule #9 - Communicate well. 

Basic English and politeness rules apply here. I use these strategies to help me stay organized and on top of online correspondence. Get good at writing concise but thoughtful comments & emails. Always put a subject in email. Always be relevant and avoid any confusing or misleading text in anything you write online. Just because it’s the Internet, and you might be using a smartphone to update your blog does not excuse typos and bad grammar. Make the time to appear professional. Don’t forget how smart your customers are.

Marketing Rule #10 - The web is plastic. 

Number 10 is the anti-rule. It’s simply erroneous to assume that you can throw up a website, or a lone Facebook page and be done. Sorry. You should expect to update content on your website, blog and other pages pretty regularly. You could "just set something up" and let your site sit there getting stale, but that’s how your visitors will perceive it, "stale". And they won’t come back, and your search engine rank will suffer. The worst thing I think stale sites suffer from is the perception by visitors that they could be “untrustworthy”. Remember your smart, social followers want to hear from you so plan on making at least quarterly updates to your website. If you use the web to be in contact with your customers, and show some of that “social proof” on your site, you will do very well.

Does this seem like a lot of work?
Feel free to get some help, contact us at: design @ studioroom.com

Being Thankful

1. I am very very thankful that I have a very short commute to work.
2. I am thankful that I'm not paying for some stupid stranger's property investment.
3. I'm so grateful everyday that the food I make tastes good.
4. I am thankful for Baltimore, home of real - and real awesome - people.
5. I am grateful that I work for myself.
6. I am thankful that people want to work with me, even though the economy is in the tank.
7. I am thankful that I can connect with, and stay in touch with so may people, all of the time, on the internet.
8. I am grateful that I know how to communicate like a rational adult. Despite my Bachelors of Fine Art.
9. I'm thankful for my incredible family - without all of their help in this recession I would be homeless, broke, and likely insane right now.
10. I am grateful that my big mouth hasn't messed up too many things.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

FACETS Annual Art & Jewelry Sale - This Weekend in Baltimore

Please join FACETS for their annual sale 

this Saturday and Sunday November 19 and 20 10am - 5pm. 

This year in addition to fabulous unique jewelry, there are ceramics, glassware and paintings.  Get a gift or shop for yourself.  Tell a friend and bring them too!

Location:
The Radisson at Cross Keys
5100 Falls Road
Baltimore, MD
21210

*In the Woodland Room

Why is it OK for Men to be Critical, but not Women?

Let it be known that this blog here is just a social media sandbox. This blog is NOT to be taken seriously, I am not to be taken that seriously... seriously.  Well not until I redesign my whole website and stuff which will happen eventually, hopefully pretty soon.

I just got a call from my brother, the cop. He was complaining about this site saying how I'm too negative and I complain too much. How many times have I told him my blog is just a kind of test? He was saying how they were going to hire some guy and then they looked him up online and he was tweeting all this negative, derogatory stuff and they didn't hire him. Am I derogatory? Probably only to the Republican and Tea "parties", maybe also to technology recruiters who we all know I don't think highly of.  I had to remind my brother that I am a User Experience Designer, and a Creative Director, and that it's kinda my job to criticize the world. But why do I need to remind people of this? I mean seriously, I've been doing this, successfully, for 18 years. I mean, does being all sunshine & light and falsely positive actually make me a better designer? Or get me more respect from people? At least keeping a blog is a form of creative therapy for my goth alter-ego. And I am learning a bit about Social Media and online marketing while I'm at it.

I think it's sexism. How come if I criticize something I'm called, "unreasonable" or "way off"? Yet I read other people's blogs all the time and they blow a lot harder than I do, and nobody is telling these people they ought to lighten up? The only thing I notice is that guys complaining is interpreted as a manly debate, but women complaining is interpreted as bitchiness. Guys like, no they expect other guys to be blowhards. They encourage it amongst their ranks. Women, I think value more thoughtful and critical open discussions.

My previous post, about Trying Communications, is a bit of a rant. I think it's funny and so do my girlfriends. I am trying to communicate some of my frustration with technology. A frustration that most other people feel but put up with because they don't really know how to talk about or address it. I guess it's just not funny enough for my brother. But my blog IS interactive and anybody can leave a comment and discuss.