The great thing about my business is that it can be done from anywhere and anytime. So fear not, Intelligent By Design, LLC is still going to be on the edge of helping businesses utilize social media to grow and creating cutting edge designs.

What I could use from my network is some help finding some work up in the Fargo, ND, Moorhead, MN, Detroit Lakes, MN area. If you have any connections in that part of the state who is looking for a creative guy pass them my info and introduce me.

Thanks!

Thanks to Erik Qualman for his book Socialnomics for teaching me the first steps in managing social media.

In today’s world, millions of people are finding what they need by utilizing social media avenues. These roads to prospective clients can seem daunting because they are unfamiliar to many business owners. Additionally, it takes time to interact effectively with these social media platforms to reach prospective customers and clients. Sometimes, the time is simply not there to make sure it’s done properly.

Enter a social media manager, like me. These in-demand people have the skills to help a business owner stop wasting valuable capital on advertising methods that no longer work. These social media managers can help create online marketing strategies, interact with those prospective clients through social media and meet real tangible goals when related to ROI.

If your business is not utilizing any sort of social media, then you’re losing valuable clients to your competition who is. This isn’t a fad or some passing marketing idea. Social media is here to stay and your business needs to get on the train. There is still time to become a trendsetter when it comes to utilizing social media. It’s a highly creative avenue for digital marketing.

Are you ready?

I love being a business owner. I love the freedom it gives me to set my own schedule, be at home with my wife & children, and attend as many networking events as I can. However, the reality of things sometimes have to weigh over what I am doing now.

So with that, I have made a decision to look for full time employment. I’m still keeping Intelligent By Design, LLC open. I’m still going to work the projects I have in process and support the sites that I have done. Consistency is the key here. I took a risk and I was very happy with the results. I learned more about myself and business than I ever dreamed. But, consistent income has to win over building fantastic websites and creating amazing designs for my own customers.

I must now look for a company that I can add my years of experience in graphic design, branding, prepress and printing, project management and other skills to. I will place myself on the shelf of the market and trust that my skills and qualifications attract the attention of that one perfect employer to begin a profitable relationship.

A resume and work sample can be found on my personal site, here.

Thank you all and I’m still around, I’m NOT going anywhere, I’m still creating, and am still a business owner.

On such discussion has been dealing with a group of websites that offer a resource for creative professionals to produce work. Designers can place bids out or put some design work on these sites and clients take the lowest possible bidder while still having access to all of the losing designs. Still some other sites have listings of “designers” who put out ads that they’ll build a logo for $150 or design a website for $500.

A majority of the opinions from my colleagues have been justifiably negative. This whole idea that there are amateurs out there “whoring” out their skills makes it extremely difficult for the rest of us professionals to be taken seriously. Some might say that if a client isn’t willing to pay market value for the products and services we provide then the client isn’t worth working with, but the problem isn’t just the client’s unwillingness to pay. It’s  the message that is sent out from that experience: “That designer is so expensive and difficult to work with” or “How can that company charge so much for a website when I can get one from GoDaddy for $60?”

I’m all for negotiation or trying to work within a budget, but I’m also not willing to cheapen my abilities or services. I’m a professional. Take this for example:
Person 1: Hi. I’d like you to design a website for me. But i don’t have much to pay. Look at it as experience for your portfolio. I’ll tell people that you designed this great website for me and you’ll get lots of business and make lots of money. You can do it for cheap or free but you’ll get lots of exposure.

The Designer: What do you do for a living?

Person 1: I’m a car salesman

The Designer: Ok.. how about you give me a brand new car. I’ll drive it around and tell everyone how great the car is. You’ll get lots of business and make lots of money.

See how crazy that is? I wouldn’t ever expect to get anything for free from Target or Best Buy or Chipotle, yet people all of the time expect to get services and designs from art professionals for free.

Take a look at a rant from a respected writer, Harlan Ellison:

Or better yet:

Just something to think about the next time you’re working with a professional…

I remember the set that we had. I never once opened them to look for information. I think I used it a couple times to pull out some pizza coupons but that was about it. My wife had pulled the bigger one out to help our daughter sit up higher in her chair.

Is your company in that book? How much did you spend on the advertisement within those pages? Did you waste your money? I don’t think  that my story is so uncommon. As the younger generations get older, the books are becoming more out of date. Like the Dust Buster and CBS Special Presentations, phone directories are becoming less where people look for services and more for this.

What is the alternative?

Dynamic web sites and social media presence. My company can creatively design or re-design your website with cost effective solutions. Additionally, I can consult with you on how to effectively manage your social media. Your investment initially on a new site works out better so you’re not consistently wasting money in the long run on outdated solutions.

Social Media itself is a low cost alternative to phone books or other print advertising. Everyone knows that time is money and either you can spend your own time working on social media exposure or you can leverage the knowledge of someone like me to make social media work comprehensively to your advantage.

Either way, the time is coming when you’ll have to make the decision. Be proactive and get a head start on driving social media before you end up having to be reactive when your business suffers because of lack of exposure online.

I was admittedly more nervous than I generally am speaking in front of people, but I had a message that I did not want to mis-communicate. In today’s business atmosphere, your business MUST be on the web in some form. I cannot stress this enough. Your business isn’t growing if you’re not investing in your online image.

According to a study, if internet usage was compressed down into a 60 minute graph, Social Media would take up 13 minutes of a user’s time. If you spread that out over a day, or week, or month, well you can see what would happen. At the very least, invest time into generating an online identity over Social Media (ie: facebook, twitter, linkedin, myspace)

My abilities in designing a website you’ll be proud of should only be part of your marketing strategy. Your business should be on Facebook. You should have a business twitter account. LinkedIn should be a place where you are able to connect with colleagues, friends and prospective clients. 60% of employers admit to using LinkedIn as a tool to locate new talent.

If your business does not have an identity on the internet, your business will not grow.

My message is this, you must invest in your web presence. Why should you chose me to help you? Well, that’s another question, but search my website. Find me on social media. Talk to me and let me offer you a free, no obligation consultation to discuss how Intelligent By Design can help your business grow and prosper.

We have an exterior remodeler in my BNI chapter. Before and after major storms that hit our area, they’re tweeting and updating facebook status’ to warm people of the impending weather apocalypses. I very much appreciate the work that they do in keeping the public aware of what’s happening. If people happen to be far from a television and have access to a mobile device with social media, they can receive tweets and facebook status updates about weather.

After these storms rip through, I’m always up on Twitter and facebook, telling people in my network to contact Great River Remodeling if they happen to receive damage on their homes.

Consider this, if you have people who provide valuable services in your network, why not take the extra couple seconds to post a free advertisement their way. Tweet about their business or update your facebook status telling people to contact a certain service provider you know who does good work.

They’ll thank you and you’ll be leveraging the power of social media.

I took an empty office, printed off every piece of collateral that was in their marketing strategy and taped it ALL on a wall. I put them in different categories and drew lines on the wall (it was a whiteboard wall) to connect various ones to each other. Then I made notes around each piece. What was good and what was bad. Figuring out why a piece was used and if we could make it better.

I randomly asked fellow employees to come in that office with me and give their opinions.

Finally, myself and a couple other people pulled out the things that worked, trashed what didn’t and worked to find an identity for the company.

It wasn’t easy. There were some hard decisions that had to be made. But it taught me some valuable lessons about how to maintain a consistent brand.

That wasn’t the first time I had done something like that. At various points in my career, I worked for printing companies that were in charge of manufacturing printed product for an entire company. We were able to see some customer’s marketing a mish-mash of design elements and sloppy use of branding. I was in a position to be able to re-work some of that, re-design materials if needed. But most of all, being entrusted with the public face of a company presenting an identity to the people.

Take a look at your materials. Put them all in one place, next to each other. What works… what doesn’t?

Your brand is your identity. It’s your face. It’s the first thing that your customers and prospective customers see when they explore your company. Not only do you want it to “pop”, but you also want consistency within all of your marketing materials; website, printed material, etc etc.

If your brand needs a face-lift, let me know. Let me come in and streamline your marketing strategy so it looks consistent. The last thing you want is for your identity to be sloppy and inconsistent.

In response to my ActionCOACH, joined a LinkedIn group and been adding them to my network like crazy; with a personal message I might add, just for some flair.

Social media has become THE way that business and people connect. I have 665 friends on my Facebook profile, 118 people like my Intelligent By Design facebook page. I have 34 Twitter followers (growing every day) and I’m following 119. I’m connected directly to 370 professionals on LinkedIn which expands my LinkedIn network to 5,180,522+ people.

I have an opportunity to share my business and vision with such a wide range of people that I don’t even know and I’m not even scratching the surface of how important social media can be to making sales, creating amazing websites for people or helping companies manage their brand.

So why do I sit here and randomly follow people I don’t know on Twitter? To share my knowledge, vision, passion and desire to creatively empower my customers (and future customers) to manage their own web content on their own.

I’ve used the book Socialnomics by Eric Qualman to learn all I can about how to utilize my social media effectively. Every business must have it now and every business has to use it.

And if you need a website designed while you’re at it, I’m here for that

It sort of challenged me to audit my own site here and the sites that I’ve worked on thus far. I have to say I’m getting better. I’m a professional. I know design and know how to do it. But I don’t know everything. I don’t try to pretend that I do.

I have a goal after seeing that site today. The last thing I want is a site that I’ve designed to end up on a list of sucky web pages.

I now have a book to read. Looking at bad site design to know to design good ones. Seems simple enough, but people can miss the most obvious things about bad website design.

I’ll never use a lot of Flash to ruin SEO. I’ll always try to have clearly sectioned off menu items. I’ll try to separate content in intuitive modules not to confuse visitors. Most of all, I’ll refrain from using BAD FONTS.