In our initial meeting we discussed some of the things she was hoping to do. Obviously the focus here was to be on her photography and she was excited at the prospect of creating simple flash galleries or ‘portfolios’ based on categorized selections of her work. Most the necessary information she hoped to convey was to be kept short and sweet, but she did want the ability to edit her content as she deemed necessary. Kelly had been using a combination of Typepad and Flickr to share her work up to this point so I had a feeling that not only did she enjoy sharing her photography but she was also appreciated the ability to share her artistic thoughts through writing. So I suggested to her that we might think about incorporating a weblog with her site. Not only would this allow her to share her thoughts and take a closer look as some of her “shoots”, it would also provide her the ability to add some searchable content to a website that was otherwise lite on the content side. Although Kelly’s work speaks for itself we did want to add some focus to search engine optimization in order to harness the power of her new website as a marketing tool.

The final diagnosis of her project led me to suggest a Portfolio site using my old friend WordPress. WordPress would not only give Kelly the ability to incorporate a weblog but it would also allow all the necessary editing capability that she desired. By creating a series of custom ’static’ pages and incorporating a customized weblog, Kelly now has the ability to edit information, share her thoughts and create flash galleries of her work. The end result is a website design that truly captures the personality of Kelly as a photographer and as an artist.

I was having so much fun creating the website and designing a new logo for Kelly that I couldn’t help but take it one step further and offer a business card design to boot. Thanks to Kelly Steinberg, this project has been a truly great way to kick off my career as freelancer!

I will be adding this site and the business card to my portfolio soon, but for now go check out Kelly’s site at www.kellysteinbergphotography.com.

Thanks I will be in touch soon!

First let me say that you as the business owner know your industry and customer better than anyone, you will know if a company blog will benefit them or create an unwanted hassle for you and your employees. Bottom line is, an effective blog requires some work beyond just good design and development. It requires work on your part as well. Articles or “posts” need to be well written, optimized and pitched as a real benefit to your customer, not just another advertisement for your product. If you approach your blog as creating a learning resource for your customer, it will be well received and ultimately benefit your business.

The benefits of a company blog are both up front and obvious as well as behind the scenes. Here are some of the up front reasons. The ability to share news and updates about your company on a regular basis going beyond the monthly or quarterly newsletter you may already have in place. Let’s be realistic, economically it does not make sense to send out a newsletter every time there is a new development and by the time your quarterly or monthly newsletter makes it’s way into the hands of the customer, some of your news may be outdated. With a blog your customer is able to check back at their own free will to keep updated on your company.

Reason #2: Reinforcing your brand and positioning yourself as an expert. Ok I could be a great sales person. I know just enough about my product, Widget A, in order to close the deal and make a comfortable living. However if I was viewed as someone that knows more than “just enough”, a real expert that could provide answers to your questions now and into the future, would I not be more likely to get your business? Constantly putting your brand in front of the customer, letting them know that not only do you create Widget A, but your know everything there is to know about Widget A, positions your company as an expert in the field. Translated: It makes your customer feel comfortable when purchasing your product.

Reason #3: Answering your customers question before they even walk through the door. Chances are your customer has some questions and they are more than likely to do some research of their own. If you are the one providing those much needed answers, who are they likely to come to first when making the final decision. Answering questions and providing value, reinforces your overall brand in the eyes of the customer.

Reason #4: Encouraging customer interaction and feedback. A blog is not just a place to share information, it is also a place to encourage interaction and feedback. Wouldn’t it be valuable to hear what your customers are saying.

Reason #5: Providing a more personal look at your company and the people within. Lets create an example here. You have two local hardware stores. Store 1 has everything you need and some pretty decent prices, problem is that when help is needed the employees seem to disappear, your questions seem more of an annoyance and when it comes time to check out the clerk might as well be a robot scanning your items. No smile and no friendly hello. Now Store 2 takes a different approach. They are always there to assist you with a smile on their face. They take the time to get to know you as a customer and in return you get to know them. They make you feel welcome. Let your customer get to know you before they walk in the door.

Reason #6: Identify with the community. You don’t need to set out to create a blog that is nationally known, instead focus on your community, your target market.

Reason #7: Working behind the scenes. A well written and functional blog creates fresh, useful content. Fresh useful content is considered valuable to search engines and can ultimately improve your ranking.

So that’s it, I have covered some of the key points to take into consideration when asking yourself the question. Would a blog be useful to my company? As I said the final decision is in your hands, as you know and understand your product and market best.

If you feel that I have left something out, I encourage you to add it below.

As a business owner having read this article, you may start to see how blogging might be beneficial to your business, but why a custom blogging solution if many of the blogging platforms are provided free of charge along with a multitude of free “themes”. Here is my simple answer to that, brand reinforcement and consistency. Your marketing materials convey your brand, colors, logo, message, etc are interwoven to convey your marketing message and reach your desired audience. Your blog should be no different and that is where a customization comes into play. A well customized blog can be fully integrated with your existing website in order to achieve a steady flow or consistency and provide you with an extremely useful marketing tool.

As a business owner who utilizes blogging on a daily basis to communicate with existing and potential clients, I encourage you to explore this topic further. Research and decide for yourself if creating a company blog could be beneficial to your marketing strategy.

Second in the line up here is a chanllenging project that I just recently took on. For this one I am actually using WordPress as a platform for a photographers portfolio and journal. She is amazingly talented and exciting to work with.

Enough about me though, I also want to share some extremely inspirational work that I have found while cruising through a few CSS galleries lately. It is interesting to me how many websites of the church are making their way into CSS galleries and appearing alongside the best of the best. Obviously the members of the church are changing and new younger more web savvy members are coming into the position to make decisions concerning their online presence, but I think it illustrates the fact that we are making some exciting progress in the quest to help people understand the importance of a strong, well constructed and beautifully designed online presence.

That’s my opinion, but either way I like to give credit where credit is due. Great job! These are truly good looking websites in my book.

As for me… it looks like I need to work on image display in my own blog posts.

When I set out to create this campaign I was very focused on one particular area or target market. Now of course I would have no issue with offering my service to businesses and individuals outside of my immediate market area, but I felt that it made sense to start close and build a foundation I could expand upon in the future. As stated in the article, part of my technique was to create articles and static pages that had a well designed structure to them a sort of trickle down effect. I started with a good focused title and worked my way down, being sure to reiterate my purpose within the first few sentences of text. For some this is very obvious, but how many of us actually pay attention to why this is important? I then continued with each article and page, remaining focused on it’s original intention, paying close attention to a small number of keywords and never straying to far off course. (A unfortunate problem of mine and one that shows in my past writing.) Once I had some decent content generated I started to focus on how my site might get found outside of normal search because I new that this was important to climbing in the ranks. Now without getting to much into linking strategy I will say that I continue to “market” myself and my services through interaction with the community both online and off. I point out here that the key to this is interaction. People are constantly bombarded with marketing pitches and catchy one liners so go beyond that and make yourself, your services and your knowledge valuable. The more valuable the information or service you provide, the more likely someone is to pass it on to others, whether it be through the form of a direct link or a complimentary nod in your direction.

I plan to continue my experimentation, slowly expanding my focus little by little to reach a broader market and in doing so I will always reveal my discovery but in the mean time I suggest reading through that article and start to think about your own strategy. I am no expert but so far I have seen very promising results.

I have designed and developed sites in the past using several different methods. For some of my own such as Viral Thinking I have gone straight from idea to development. For others I have used both Illustrator and Photoshop to mock up an idea and then cut out visual elements as needed and turned them into CSS. I will note here that although I do find the slice tool and programs such as Image Ready and Fireworks useful in some cases, it is very hard for me to slice an entire site and translate it into CSS and XHTML. Guess it is just the way I work, but what I try to do is visualize the code as I am creating the mock-up. This way I get a feel for my limitations and can figure what will translate into a valid cross browser website. It is a process that I am still learning and I do often make mistakes but that is part of developing your skills.

Going beyond what works for me, I have come to realize that the mockup, in some cases can be crucial to moving forward with the client. Often times what you might visualize or quickly sketch out in the form of a wireframe is not quite so easy for the client to visualize and giving them a rough idea of how the site will look and act is both necessary and requested. I personally have found that good communication paired with a decent mock-up saves you a lot of time and headache in the long run. If you are able to effectively communicate the look and feel, allowing the client to critique before development begins, you may be able to avoid a lot of unnecessary backtracking and changes. It is important that I mention here that the designer needs to be aware of limitations. What may look great on “paper” so to speak will not necessarily translate well to the web or make sense for a particular project and it’s proposed budget. Having a client say “but we like it how it is shown in the mock-up” and then having to explain why it can not be done that way is a situation you want to avoid. Remember your client may not fully understand the why behind it nor do they want to, so know your limitations going into the project and create your mockup accordingly.

Secondly and perhaps more important than understanding your own limitations, is the need to help the client to understand the limitations. Explain to the client what the mock-up entails and how it is to be used. The mock-up is not functional, it is not a working website, it is model for how things might translate to the web, it is the “look and feel”. It is not set in stone and can be changed in fact that is part of why you are creating the mock-up. Photos and text the designer might use are not exactly what the client had envisioned but they are necessary for the client to understand the layout, typography, structure and so on. Again these elements can be tweaked and replaced with those deemed more suitable. Lastly, attempt to provide an education for your client. Not all of us are in the position to be unquestioned in our work. We don’t have a handful of clients that are willing to hand us a project and say here is our budget, here is what we are looking to accomplish and here are our ideas so get to work. Often times clients may question why they should pay you this price, when the guy down the street or the advertisement on the web says they can do it for this much. Provide value through education. Help the client to understand your proposed solution and why it is being presented in such a way.

The mockup for myself and my particular client falls somewhere in between a blueprint and an artists rendering, it does not mean that the building is almost finished or that ground has been broken, but it does give us a way to agree on how things might look and function in the end. Like a blueprint, elements can be tweaked and fixed to provide a sound structure. For me the blueprint is a necessary step in the process of illustrating that structure.

A lot of the people involved in the discussion pointed out that there was no trend here at all but a variety. That is the beauty of it and shows that we are once again making progress in developing the web. A year ago you might have scoured the various “galleries” to notice an overload of glossy buttons and shiny gradients, the “original web 2.0″. Not to say that there isn’t still a place for this type of design and for some it works very well, but to see that we are branching off into a variety of directions is an idea I welcome with open arms. If you were to browse the local magazine rack only to find that it was filled with hundreds of publications all based off of the same design, would you get excited about it? Variety as they say, is “the spice of life”.

These are my thoughts on the trends, what are yours?

So let’s get back to my client, he has created a site that is very targeted, very niche. The Video content is what I would consider instructional and therefore the primary function of the blog. The written content for now seems to be secondary. He is a very smart individual and what I would consider extremely internet savvy. He may not know the ins and outs of all the code pumping through the veins of his site, but as far as marketing, content sharing and usability he is on point. So from that you should derive my function in this relationship, I am here to help him put his thoughts and ideas into action when they go beyond the scope of his coding knowledge. So while I sit back and type a few lines of code here and there, I am for the most part getting an education and together I think we are going to discover some amazing possibilities that can be achieved with video blogging.

As I learn, then so do you. I will not share his “trade secrets” of course but, I do plan to make some of my own observations and formulate a few ideas that will hopefully be worthy of adding to the currently small database of information on the topic.

Check back soon, the ideas are starting to flow…

P.S. For those of you that didn’t get a chance to read my post concerning “The Business Cards of Bloggers”, take the time to check it out, mine is up there now!

With that being said I am interested to hear suggestions you might have for how I might go about doing this redesign.