You may have had a real world presence for years now, but when you’re beginning your online services, you have to consider your site as the company’s personal business card. It’s all about online Reputation Management, and it is the most efficient ways to set your company apart from the crowd.

The first step in conducting online reputation management is with the purchase of a personal web domain. When you’re looking into hosting services, you’ll have the option to buy a domain name from the service provider. Using hosting services can be very attractive, especially when looking at the bottom line figures, but you should also think how professional it would come across to your clients, and if they’d even care.

Various social media approaches have served businesses well by expanding their exposure and increasing their relevancy to a largely social media driven world. Many companies, businesses, and organizations alike have found that starting their own blog is an excellent way to get their message across to a group of interested parties that otherwise wouldn’t have been interested. Just as important as getting online, when starting a blog you also have to consider what kind of message you’re sending. If you’re just filling your blog with tons of links that direct users back to your business’ site, you’re not likely to be seen as an authority on any subject and subsequently will have a failed blog. Instead, if you’re starting a blog, put some extra time into preparing relevant and quality content that works both as a service to the public and offers your product to them in equal measure.

Using sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn will, most definitely boost your professional standing. People want businesses that they offer their patronage to to have a positive image. This gets to the whole crux of the online world. You have to first understand that people want to see you everywhere. Online presence is the key to success and not employing all of the Reputation Management Tools will translate into lackluster results.

You don’t want to simply be good enough and have a site. Having a fresh and relevant online approach has now become an integral part of a company’s brand, which has over time become just as important as the product itself. Soon companies will no longer be able to get by with only a real world approach. Our society is shifting gears and it’s the equivalent of still trying to stay connected with your clients using the telegraph when everyone else is using the phone. Approach your online brand building techniques with the highest regard.

With growing technology and standards, I take pride in meeting new standards according to W3C, in order to achieve a highly functional site and good user experience for everyone. These standards include but aren’t limited to W3C standards, semantic markup, meeting WCAG usability standards, and Section 508 Compliance. This guide provides a medium level of understanding of accessibility standards. If anything in this article is confusing you, then I recommend you refer to Nathan’s post on Accessible Web Design for a more broad prospective.

Semantic Markup

Working with HTML and XML markup languages, it’s important for the code to be standards compliant by using tags, structure, and information that can be read and translated by all browsers. Semantic Markup is just a way of structuring code so that a browser/machine can do more work and take less off the user. For example, search engines, like Google, are heavily driven on specific tags such as Meta information, Alt tags for images, recognizable XML and HTML formatting, etc. Using meta tags for keywords, content definition, and descriptions all improve functionality for search engines and browsers.

Section 508 overview

• Software Applications and Operating Systems: includes usability for people that are visually impaired, such as alternative keyboard navigation.
• Web-based Intranet, Internet Information, and Applications: assures accessibility to web page graphics by the visually impaired using assistant technology such as screen readers and refreshable Braille displays. This is accomplished by using text labels and descriptors for graphics.
• Telecommunications Products: addresses accessibility for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. This includes technology compatibility with hearing aids, assistant listening devices, and TTYs.
• Videos or Multimedia Products: includes requirements for captioning of multimedia products such as training or informational multimedia productions. Captioning or video descriptors must be able to be turned on or off.
• Self Contained, Closed Products: products with embedded software, such as information kiosks, copiers, and fax machines, often cannot be used with assistant technology. This standard requires that access features be built into these systems.
• Desktop and Portable Computers: discusses accessibility related to mechanically operated controls such as keyboards and touch screens.

WCAG summary

The Web Content Accessiblity Guidelines (WCAG) is the only international draft for following web standards. It describes standards that may be used, should be used and must be used. The WCAG is considered the stable version of standards, but for more current standards for accessible websites you can refer to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). They define standards more relevent and specific to newer Web Browsers, Operating Systems, and so forth.

There is a lot of best practices and examples defined in the WCAG and WAI, and though these standards are important, not every web developer needs to know them by heart or implement them into every site. They are mainly important for sites that provide a service, such as e-commerce, educational resource, government sites, etc. That’s why many times you’ll notice that government sites and educational sites have poor creativity, because they need to focus on delivering content to all audiences more than aesthetics. However, if you’re a web developer and interested in learning more about standards and implementing the, refer to the WCAG and the WAI and start creating hierarchy using headers, putting navigation into lists, and using Title and Alt tags appropriately.

W3C summary

The W3C is a working draft defining all aspects of markup languages and some Object Oriented Programming (OOP) languages used on the web. They define standards that are compatible across multiple browser, operating systems and languages. As web developers, we live by these standards and must know them to properly breakdown a website. These standards are a guideline that we follow in order to have our sites be dynamic and compliant for future technologies and software.

Where does your site fall according to these standards?

Below are some highlights that you should become familiar with as you populate a site with content. It’s important that if your site is developed by a professional that applies these standards, to ask for documentation on how to use functionality that may have been put into place for you, such as Meta tags, Header Tags, and Listed Links.

• Compliance across all major Operating Systems: Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X
• Access to the visually impaired: JAWS, Window-Eyes, and Hal
• W3C & WCAG standards
• Organic Search Engine Optimization
• Meta information for pages, scrips, and images
• Alt tags for alternative text on images
• Color contrast and color schemes legible for those with color blindness or vision problems
• Em based layout and font: allowing sizes to be relevant to the browser-defined size for compatibility with mobile devices, increasing the font size in the browser, and different screen resolutions.
• Listed links for navigation hierarchy
• Header tags to establish Hierarchy and SEO

How I try and meet those standards in Web Development

As a web developer, I know the standards well. Like an electrician must know state codes and regulations, I follow standards laid out by federal law (Section 508), good practice guidelines (W3C) and usability requirements (WCAG). I also make sure to read up on other articles and refer to other professionals to practice what is most commonly needed and used, for more in depth on how to tackle accessibility as a web developer, check out Nathan’s post at redswish.

Forward thinking and positive attitude

Often times when facing grim circumstances, its easy to get caught up in the problems at hand. Instead look beyond the current situation to the solution that lies on the other side. You have the ability to overcome.

Use technology to get ahead

Regardless of your state in this economy, its important to recognize the simple fact that paper and pencil are less popular. You should have some form of digital presence or website if you’re going to compete.

Set goals and plan for the future

It’s naive to think that the economy is going to improve over night or that it won’t effect you. Take the steps necessary to ensure the quality of living you’d like to retain even if you lose your job or business.

Avoid the easy way out

Right now is the opportune time for someone to take advantage of you. Don’t buy into a service that is sounds easy and promising. Make a point to investigate and consult with someone that has your best interest in mind.

Surround yourself with positive people

We all know that times are tough, but if you focus on the problem, it just seems to get bigger. Avoid getting caught up in the poverty mentality by surrounding yourself with successful and optimistic people.

Starting a business without Capital Investment

It’s easy to say that it can be done, but it’s a whole different story to actually execute. Like I mentioned before, take notes from the Getting Real plan. Start your business by moonlight.. don’t quit your day job and jump right in (of course we’re hypocrites saying this because we jumped in, but I wish we had moonlighted first). Either negotiate with your employer to work part-time for a while or start your business at nights.. that way you have the income still to support your bills, but you can start planning and developing your business. Begin networking with other businesses in your field and going to seminars on weekends, because one of the greatest tools in starting a business is connections.

Along with the moonlighting, establish a budget. You may not know all of the costs to operate your business, and you may not be able to prepare for every road block or pitfall. What you can do, however, is give yourself a cushion. Depending on your liabilities (bills), you may want anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000 saved up before you quit you job and go full-time as a business.

[podcast format="video"]http://thinkclay.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/business-sense-with-a-few-cents-desktop.m4v[/podcast]

About our Web Company

This post is based on our opinions and testimonials with starting our Web Company. Thinkclay is a blog by Clayton McIlrath based out of Lansing, MI. You can find more us by searching: Lansing Web, Powered by WordPress and Graphic Design Portfolio

The Four-P’s

If you’ve taken an advertising or marketing class, you’ll know what the Four P’s are already: Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion. These are the four keys to selling a product or service, and will help you change how you market them:

Product

The product (or service) should be the first thing you analyze and possibly get some non-bias feedback on. Answer some simple questions by both your expertise and a few external opinions:

• What is the total cost to make/produce/ship the product?
• What is the quality of the product, and what guarantees/maintenance do you offer?
• How well does your product compete against competition?

Price

Math is one of the most important factors in determining long term success of a product. Start by breaking down the data that you have: price – cost = profit. How well does your product compete on a price level? What is the percentage of profit made, and do the long-term profits exceed the costs of marketing, advertising, promotion, etc?

Placement

Location, location, location! We’ve all heard that phrase, and for good reason. Location really matters. You can sell a pile of junk if it’s in the right location. Analyze location/placement in a hierarchy:

• What city are you located in (analyze demographic and potential number of customers in that city)
• Once you have a rough estimate on that number, consider your store location and how many of those customers see it
• How well do you position you product (physically or mentally) when customers enter your doors (or website even)?

Promotion

Once you’ve figured out all that data, you have the tools necessary to start promoting yourself. If it’s a new product/service/business then jump right into the Promotional Mix. Otherwise start by analyzing how information is distributed and advertised currently and give some thought to the strengths and weaknesses of your current tactics before reading the next bit.

A-Three-PS (The Promotional Mix)

The A-Three-PS model is the biggest key to promoting your product or service. Within each of these points there are other branches and such that are important also, but for the most part, every type of promotion falls within the A 3P S: Advertising, Publicity, Packaging, Personal selling, Sales promotion.

Advertising

Advertising comes in many names and shapes, but put simply, advertising is a form of promotion that explicitly details the product and markets it towards a specific demographic. I’ll go deeper into advertising with another post, but here’s a quick look at the most popular methods of advertising:

• Web Media (pay-per-click advertising, social media, viral marketing)
• Outdoor (vehicles with large ads, billboards, building ads, posters)
• Print Media (business cards, brochures, newspaper)
• Broadcast Media (television, radio, live web feeds)

Publicity

This is one of the most impressive ways to promote your product and usually causes a huge spike, but is not necessarily a steady flow or good model to base your business. Publicity can come in many ways, whether it’s word-of-mouth, a promotional event, news story, or some crazy stunt. Usually it comes at little to no cost (because it pays off whatever costs their may have been), and generally has a greater impact for immediate business, but as I mentioned.. is not a steady source of income. This is a great place to start for a new and emerging business, and is also highly effective when combined with other promotional resources (such as Sales Promotion).

Packaging

It’s so amazing how packaging effects a consumer’s decision to purchase. Packaging is huge, whether it’s a physical product, how you package/sell your product online, etc. This is where you can be creative and stand out from your competitors. Rather than going into too much detail about how creative packaging works, check out some of these links for yourself:

• Highly Creative Product Packaging
• More Creative Product Packaging
• Food and Beverage Product Packaging

Personal Selling

Out of all the forms of promotion, most businesses either nail the others and miss this or nail this and miss the others. Personal Selling is a face-to-face interaction that takes the product from beginning of sale to closing of sale. This is crucial in selling a large product like a car, boat, or expensive service. Generally anything that is selling for over $3000 is going to require personal selling. I have seen many businesses flop because they didn’t promote themselves, meet with clients, or sell on a personal level. If you have any product or service that is near or above $3k, put this on the top of your list of skills to master!!

Sales Promotion or Incentives

You’ll see this form of advertising at almost any retail store. Sales cause hype which becomes a free promotion by word-of-mouth. Sales can be really effective on an older, polished product to draw the user to look at a new product that you are promoting.

Take a wireless store for example. You’ll often see sales incentives offering you a deal with a new phone. They will often promote a free bluetooth headset, or a discounted price with a 2 year contract. These are sales promotions that seem like a good deal (and often can be), but for the store have large turnover. Either the bluetooth headset is really cheap for the store to give away, and the smart phone that you’re paying $500 for easily covers the cost.. or a free phone with a 2 year contract.. you just buahg the phone for your monthly payment * 24 months!

Sales can be combined in so many ways, that it would be impossible to give all the different examples. The biggest thing to note when promoting a sale or incentive is what your costs are, how much the price outweighs the cost, and how that is presented to the consumer. If you take those three point into consideration, and combine this form of promotion with some form of advertising, it should be a large success.

Defining Success

Before you learn HOW to be successful, you need to define WHAT success really means to you. Many define success based upon income, net worth, popularity, global effect, lasting impressions, etc. When defining success, you should sit down and really think hard as to what success is to you and why. You’ll find that your own views of success are simply a combination of the views that other people have shared with you. The problem with defining success is that you must first define yourself and what makes you truly happy. I won’t dive deep into what happiness is or how to find it. You need to build yourself internally and do some Self Discovery before you can effectively use those principles externally.

Discovering the Process

Randomly, when I was young, I used to sit and ponder and dream about the strangest principles and fundamentals to life. One principle that I developed was to change my thinking of how the pyramid of life worked. I realized that many people live their lives according to an upside-down pyramid: reacting to the effect of situations rather than reacting to the cause. I figured that my foundation and success in life would stem from my subconscious, self-image and thoughts before I could even use the tools (education, capital, social, etc) that I may posses. I immediately wrote down (on my bedroom wall at the time) a principle that I wanted to follow for my life.. this is what I wrote:

Thoughts become Dreams
Dreams become Premonitions
Premonitions become Reality

This life (and perhaps the next) are structured upon the building blocks of what we think, not what we know

The crazy part is, I came across this EXACT same principle in this book, with very little differences in wording:

Thoughts lead to Feelings
Feelings lead to Actions
Actions lead to Results

Motivation

After you’ve done some self-discovery, you’ll need to do more. Find out what you’re passionate about and what motivates you and then brainstorm some ideas to use your passions towards your own business or investment. This is one of the most important tools to being successful. Make sure that you separate your motivation from anger, fear or the need to prove yourself, as these are motivations that will die out because you’ll never succeed by your own standards. Instead find motivation in purpose, contribution and joy! These are the motivators that will make you successful.

My motivation for success:

• The freedom to help others in need by donating my time and money
• The flexibility and freedom to spend quality time with my family
• The knowledge and wisdom to share with others and help them succeed

Identify your Audience

The absolute first step in the marketing process is to Survey and Explore your target audience to establish your marketing tactics. In this phase you’ll identify your Target Market by asking yourself.. Who specifically am I trying to speak to? and then compare that answer with your geographic, demographic, and psychographic analysis results. Then you will discover your Market Segmentation by defining how you niche the market to speak directly to the consumer you want to target. This is usually figured by looking at the geographic, demographic, and psychographic results, and then simply asking yourself.. What makes you stand out from your competitors in the target’s mind?

Geographic

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “Location, Location, Location!”, so identify that first. Often times defining your Geographic location of the consumer will affect your marketing the most, especially if your business is mostly offline or without a web presence (check out my web development business and our services if this is the case).

Demographic

Demographics are simply the basics that make your consumer such as age, sex, martial status, education, income, race, religion, etc. There are many websites that will easily allow you to research by city, zip and radius to help you identify the ideal demographic in each location.

Psychographic

After you’ve established Geographic and Demographic, you should then analyze psychographics, which are the he underlying things that make your customer who they are (sexual preference, specific religious beliefs, Lifestyle, how they view/carry themselves, etc).

Self Discovery

I think the most important aspect to starting a business is knowing yourself. This phase should have the most time spent on it, and should never be considered “complete.” Self discovery is an ever changing process and is needed in nearly every situation when it comes to business. Here are some keys to consider when doing some self discovery that are specific enough to business:

Passion

It’s such a short and simple word, yet can mean everything. Passion is the heartbeat of a business, and if it’s not beating strong, the business has little to work with. When you’re considering starting a business, ask yourself why. If you’re answer doesn’t fall along the lines of, “it’s what I love to do,” than reconsider. Passion can come in many shapes and forms, and people don’t often get to choose what they’re passionate about. Look at me for example.. I simply stumbled onto web development by chance while in college for graphic design, and my passion overtook me and drove me to succeed and grow in unmeasurable ways. Once you have passion, you have the main ingredient and should move on to goals and motivation… because passion can fade without them.

Self Discipline

Passion by itself is a strong tool, and provides ambition, but without direction and discipline its hard to focus and accomplish what you NEED to do. At times passion doesn’t cover every nook and cranny of a dream, and it takes self-motivation through discipline to accomplish those petty tasks. For example, with Chosen, I had the dream of starting my own Web Development company. My passion for web design and development are enough to motivate me in both, but starting a business is more than just design and development. I’ve had to learn more about taxes, been the consultant, salesman, project manager, etc. I’m not passionate about all of these tasks, so I must discipline myself to accomplish the tasks that need to be done just as much as that tasks that I want to do.

Goals

Many studies have shown that roughly 97% of the people in the world do NOT have goals, and that the other 3% that do almost always succeed in meeting them… this statistic is so true and I can testify to it. People often ask me how it is that I was able to start a family (wife and kid at the age of 20) and still purchase a new home, renovate it, buy new computers/toys/frig/etc all in the same year, while only having been a year out of college. No, I didn’t have any help from any family. I did this on my own by setting goals. I started Chosen by setting goals. They’re very real and they work wonders. I could go on and on about goals, but I think it would be best for you to simply read my post about goal setting.

1. What’s the rush? A lot of times impatience is set in because you’re in a hurry. Force yourself to slow down and try to figure out why. Are you trying to multitask too much or have a pressing deadline? If you’re overwhelmed, try cutting something out or re-arranging your task list before reacting how you normally would. Try to spread out your tasks so that you’re focused on one thing at a time, this is easiest with task manager.
2. What’s your trigger? Find out what really sets you off, impatience is often masked by other emotions such as anxiousness, anger, bitterness, etc and needs to be identified in order to be fixed. Find out the events, people, or circumstances that cause you to snap and then try and trace it to impatience.
3. Do you have attitude? At times, we just have bad attitude that causes us to be impatient. Sometimes, you have to simply force yourself to cool down. I recommend learning some anger management techniques as these generally apply to being patient and understanding as well. Learning to calm yourself in a frustrating situation is one of the most valuable and important assets you can have, especially when it comes to customer or client relations
4. Are your thoughts organized? Getting organized can greatly reduce impatience almost as soon as you start. When you sit down and spend time to refine, collect and re-arrange your thoughts you begin to let go of the other emotions caught up in your impatience and can logically analyze and resolve conflicts.
5. Are you making the same mistakes? One of the keys to solving your impatience is to identify and correct patterns in behavior. Look for patterns. Being aware of your impatience also gives you a chance to learn from it and perhaps uncover a relationship or circumstance that is simply not healthy or constructive, and that you may have the power to change. Figure that out, and you can then think logically about the problem issue and decide whether or not your impatience is warranted or helpful. It usually isn’t, but when it is you can then figure out ways to fix the root problem rather than simply feeling stressed about it.

Timing is everything

We all know that time is money, but I found that it’s also important to make sure that you’re designating time appropriately. For example, my website was at the old domain of new-age-design.com and my color scheme was quite nasty. I knew that I needed to change both qualities if I wanted more traffic and visitor loyalty on my blog, but I prolonged making the changes because I wouldn’t directly make money from them. Recently it struck me that my logic was flawed, however. My website is a direct representation of me, and if I don’t allocate time to take care of myself, then I’m not going to be appealing to new clients (this relates to hygiene as well). Therefore I realized I needed to spend some time and take care of my site.

This is where timing is everything. The best way to find time is to treat time like a budget. Figure out what you have, what you need and what you want. Start a calendar and populate it with the needs first, and then pencil in and allocate time where you can for wants, to-do, and other tasks. I did this on a white board and now everyone in Chosen is following this practice.

Task Management

When we first started Chosen, we didn’t realize the importance or need for a task manager. We got by sharing information and collaborating via Google Docs, instant messaging and email. Over time we began to lose information and our attempts to stay organized by using folder and file naming conventions failed miserably.

We decided to make the switch and installed Active Collab on our server. Once we did we immediately saw amazing results and improvement in organization. I highly recommend getting a well developed task manager, whether you’re a freelancer or large business. Some of the better ones that we have worked with are Active Collab and Basecamp.

Peer Accountability

It’s easy to lose track or managing yourself. Even if you’re self-motivated and have a lot of drive, everyone may lose site of the goal at hand and get off track, or disorganized. An easy way to fix this is having someone or something remind you of your plans or tasks. Ideally its best to have a business partner, friend, family, or any other sentient being play this role in holding you accountable. However, if you’re like I was at one point in my life, reliable friends or business partners can be hard to come by, so do some searching and see if you can find a good application or tool to achieve the same result. Maybe having a task manger or automated to-do list that send you alerts and reminders? I’ll leave that up to you, feel free to comment and let me know if you know of something useful.

Note-taking, wherever, whenever

This is a must. We can all relate to having a great idea, or hearing something useful, or remembering something we need to do later.. if you don’t jot it down, then and there, you’re likely to forget it. Plain and simple, get something that fits in your pocket to take notes on. I use my iPhone, and there are many other phones that work great for writing notes or voice recorded notes. If you prefer pen and paper, grab a little wallet-sized notepad from the dollar store or elsewhere and take it with you all the time. Heck, even a little folded piece of paper that you keep in your wallet works better than your memory sometimes.

Think it, write it, say it

I started blogging to stay more organized. There was a time when I would try and store and categorize bookmarks of web pages and refer to those bookmarks whenever I needed to recall something I read. Then I read a book on the human brain and memory, and discovered that if you follow a process of learning, writing, and doing you will remember it at least 10 times easier than you would have just forming the thought or reading an article. I try to make a habit now of using bookmarks as a sort of “short-term” memory, in which I bookmark things of interest, and then when I schedule some free time, I collect those thoughts and bookmarks and write them down and share them in a blog post, and then delete the bookmark. This has helped me learn SO MUCH in such a short amount of time, as well as helped others find and reference information. As an added bonus, if you forget it, you just search your own blog, and it’s there, like having a second memory!

So that’s a quick look at 5 Ways to Stay Organized. Let me know if you have any other ideas or suggestions for better organization.