providing graphic design, branding, photography and marketing expertise to denver and the world

Quote of the Week:

Nearly one in 5 of you Denverites are on Facebook

...scary numbers, but I suppose not unreasonable.

There are 2,357,404 people in the Denver Metro Area, according to the all-knowing oracle at Wikipedia. And there are 468,902 people in the Denver, CO network on Facebook. Granted that some in the network aren't living in Denver, it's still a big number (19.8906 percent).

As a marketing person, however, I want to stress that this means there are at least four out of every five people in the Denver area that don't use Facebook. And don't see social media campaigns being played out there.

So stick to traditional media, in addition to social. It's still sorta important.

Labels: advice, marketing, social networking

posted at 10:40 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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6.19.2009

Why it's Awesome to be a freelancer

While I agree with many of the points Andy makes in 10 Reasons It Sucks to Be a Freelancer, I think (if you are a good fit for the job) it's a great thing to be. With Notchcode going into its tenth (!) year, and with me going at it full-time since 2002, here's my perspective on why being a freelancer rocks:

1. You are your own boss.

This is the excellent part everyone who strikes out on their own sees when they pull the trigger and start working for themselves. Now, by "boss", I mean "someone who sets the agenda, schedule, and priorities in your life". Your REAL boss is your clientele, but that's true whether you're working for yourself or for someone else, so we'll set that part of things aside. What I'm talking about here is the day-to-day aspects of having a job. Don't like working in the morning? Fine: No eight AM meetings, ever again. Like to go for a bike ride before work (as I do)? Go for it. Need to pick up the kids and mind them from three PM till dinnertime? No prob. You set the schedule.
(CAVEAT): This also means you need to be responsible enough to work time into your schedule to actually get the work done, meet with your clients, do your bookkeeping, and so on, at other times during the day. Being your own boss doesn't mean being a slacker--it just means being the master of your schedule.

2. You get more work in a recession.

A cartographer I know is insanely busy this summer. I am busier now than this time last year. Why? A lot of in-house creative staff has been let go. And while I definitely shed a tear for my peeps (I was once one of them, too), it's also an opportunity to get more work. Just because there's a recession doesn't mean businesses and organizations need less creative work. Often, they need more: ad rates are cheaper in a recession, and you can build your brand on less budget--but only if you have the creative content and marketing work in place to take advantage of it. While small shops and freelancers have to pay more FICA, deal with their own health insurance, etc., our overhead in the short term is probably lower than an in-house asset (although losing the in-house body of experience and knowledge is a mighty hurdle to overcome with outside talent). I won't say that a lot of my larger clients are giving me huge projects (because they aren't), I will say that small entrepreneurs are taking advantage of the marketing vacuum right now to launch new projects (which need marketing and development) and larger organizations are doing a lot of smaller, strategic projects with the budgets they have on-hand. And small shops/freelancers are perfect for that.

3. Pick your clients.

Granted: When you're starting out, it's really hard to pick and choose whom you're working for. Nevertheless, one thing I've learned is it pays to be picky. If you sense a prospective client is going to be too high-maintenance, isn't a good fit for your capabilities or style, or doesn't have the budget for what you think the project needs, sack them before you get going (nicely. No need to be impolite). You'll find that as you build your clientele with groups you enjoy working with, they refer other good groups your way (mostly). It's a positive feedback loop that makes both you and your clients happy. If you like to do work for hot air balloonists, you'll probably find a lot of other hot air balloonists calling you after you do a great job for your first one.

4. You can work from anywhere, with anyone, in any location.

I work out of my home, my favorite independent coffee shop, my car, a park--anywhere I want. It allows me to put myself in the best place to get work done and to be creative. If I find things too distracting in one location, I pick up the laptop and the client folder and head somewhere else. Some companies enable this with a more open attitude, but not many. You can also find yourself working with a wide variety of organizations in lots of different locations. From my home base in Denver, I've done work for clients in Oregon, California, Washington, D.C., Iowa, and across Colorado. I've worked with vendors from all over the place, as well, which is another cool thing, if you like to see how people in other places do the same thing your usual vendors do. There is the time zone difference to consider, but it's never been a deal-breaker for me.

5. Set your price, your standards, and your scope.

We all know that the market has a say in how much you get paid (on average, anyhow); but there's a lot of latitude. If you are an expert with years of experience in a specific area of graphic design, or web development, for example, you can command a higher rate. You can also be more flexible than a larger firm can (less overhead for you to consider) when it comes to striking a deal with a client you really want to work with. And you have the satisfaction of being the person who sets a monetary value on your worth. You also don't have to do something you don't want to do. You don't have to settle for less, which your boss may want you to do if you're running over on time, for example. And you can define your practice to fit the specific scope of work you enjoy doing--and are awesome at. If you only like doing user experience work, just do user experience work. Refer your clients to someone else for the rest of the project (or better yet, bid on the job together and get a package deal).

Those are just five reasons why it's great to be a freelancer. There's lots more. I started being my own boss, exclusively, in the last recession, and haven't looked back, and am loving it. If you find yourself spending your coffee breaks, day after day, considering going solo: do the research, make a plan, and go for it!

Labels: advice, b2b, freedom, process, work

posted at 6:00 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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6.10.2009

Tag-clouding to visualize your follower's typical profile

Twittersheep automatically generates a tag cloud based on the bios of your Twitter followers. It's an interesting way of looking at who your audience is. In mine (below), there aren't many surprises: designers, social business people, marketers, coloradans, Denverites, and others.

For a visual thinker like myself, it's a lot more helpful to see info this way than merely as a set of rows and columns of stats.

Labels: analytics

posted at 7:07 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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6.09.2009

The need for social relevance on your front page

How necessary is it to show off your Twitter feed, Last.fm music updates, or other social media on your front page? I imagine it's helpful to garner more followers who are finding you via your site, as opposed to visitors to your site who find you through Twitter... but I don't have the analytics for this. If anyone does, tell me your story; I'd be very interested in what the prevailing opinion is (and more importantly, what the hard numbers recommend).

Labels: advice, social networking, twitter

posted at 3:33 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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6.01.2009

CoTrip.org has a new interface

For travelers in Colorado, the state's Department of Transportation has given you a little gift for your summer journeys: an updated user interface at their site, CoTrip.org. They've smoothed out user interactions for finding traffic cameras (something I look at when planning a ride in metro denver, or heading up to the mountains to go skiing), and the programming seems to have speeded up load times as well. At first glance, it's a great improvement over the functional but hard-to-navigate version I was looking at just a couple of weeks ago.

A few other items worth noting: all the most-accessed info is now right there on the front page, including latest road conditions/weather, traffic speeds, and alerts.

Labels: usability, visual information, web design

posted at 6:23 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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5.29.2009

The Principles of Open Space

John McCrea, of Plaxo, is posting notes and images from the Internet Identity Workshop. This is my favorite image so far:



Very Zen.

Follow his musings on his blog.

Labels: social networking, strategery

posted at 10:45 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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Papyrus

Ah, XKCD, you know us typographers all too well:

Labels: humor, typography

posted at 8:43 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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5.27.2009

The Hit List: Still in Beta, but a good list-maker all the same

I downloaded The Hit List, a list-making tool in the Getting Things Done style, today. And even though I've only been using it for about five hours, it's about ten times better than the stock iCal To-Do offering, and at least as good as the Kinkless GTD system for OmniOutliner I was using a few years back (this was before OmniFocus). I expect to work up a more comprehensive review of it after I've had some time to really test drive the thing, but for now I'll leave you with these reviews.

Labels: productivity

posted at 8:08 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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