Best Practices

I recently started a new blog, Make Your Web Site Count, that targets small business owners with web sites. The focus of the posts are helping non-technical people get the most out of their web sites. Sometimes I do that by discussing features they could add to their site. Sometimes I talk about strategies to get more traffic to their web site. In some instances I just post a case study of a project that I’ve recently worked on to help give business owners an idea of what is possible for their sites.

Now the writing style is definitely targeted towards an audience that doesn’t have a lot of experience with the web, but the material covered includes lots of little gems you could share with your own clients.

I didn’t even know there were 100 blogs about freelancing to compile, but Bootstrapper has come out with a Top 100. They aren’t ranked in any meaningful way. (I’m #45, and A List Apart is #46.) They are grouped by industry, though, so you can focus on the selected blogs in writing, design, web, or several other categories.

Not too long ago I took a training course for business owners. The focus was on intelligently developing relationships with other business owners with whom you can refer business back and forth. The key to making this work is to appropriately feed and water these relationships. If you take the right actions, you can have very profitable relationships.

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I previously posted about Bloomington Startup Weekend. Before I get too far into this I should disclose that I did not stay for the entire weekend. The event started at about 6pm Friday night and was scheduled to end Sunday at 11pm. I left at about 4:30pm on Saturday. Why did I leave? The top reason is stamina. The process of building a business in just over 48 hours is pretty intense. It definitely took a toll on me.

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Today I registered for Startup Weekend. The premise is a bunch of adventurous people get together for a weekend. Provided only with facilities and internet connectivity, we’re given 52 hours to come up with an idea for a web site-based business and get it up and running. All the participants have an ownership share in the final product.

This type of event has occurred in various cities. (I’m signed up for the one in Bloomington, Indiana on February 8th.) From what I can tell, the events have had varying degrees of success. While my intent is to end the weekend with a functioning web site, that is not the only outcome that I would consider a success. I’m excited about the experience of being in a room full of people with a common objective and a sense of urgency.

I’ll post again after the weekend about how things went. If you are interested in this type of opportunity, the founders of Startup Weekend will host an event pretty much anywhere. All you need is enough people who are interested.

This coming Monday is Blog Action Day, an event designed to get bloggers to make posts about environmental responsibility. I am jumping the gun a little bit, but since I usually only post once a week this seems like the best way to make sure I have an appropriate post up on the 15th.

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I received an email not too long ago from another Indianapolis web developer who is working on building an online community for local freelancers. It’s only been up for a handful of days, so the traffic is still pretty light. For those of you interested, the URL is http://www.indylance.com.

The site got me thinking about how I’ve always viewed online networking and local networking as two separate animals. To meet people locally, I go to events and mixers. It takes up a lot of time, but it’s worth it. To meet people online, I blog and leave comments and participate in social networks. It’s comparatively easy, but I tend to have only fleeting interaction with other people.

So far my interaction on IndyLance has all been online. Everyone there could be on the other side of the earth for all it matters. But for some reason knowing that we could meet at a nearby coffee shop to discuss a particularly complex and interesting idea that gets brought up makes me more willing to participate in online discussions. I don’t know that such a meeting will ever really happen, but it’s invigorating to think that it could.

These online local contacts might lead to referred business, although that isn’t the primary reason I’m participating. Unlike some of my other networking activities, I see this as an opportunity to share ideas. I can ask questions of people who come up against the same challenges that I do and find out how they resolve them. For freelancers who often don’t have a room full of coworkers to bounce ideas off of, that is invaluable.

Online publication for web professionals, A List Apart, is administering the first of an annual survey of web professionals. Respondents are eligible for a few prize drawings, but the real value is going to be when they publish the collected data. The survey goes pretty quickly.