This post was written by Marianne Amoss, Fastspot’s content strategist and resident writer.

What is the next generation of admissions marketing? And how can we integrate Web marketing and print marketing? These are questions that plague universities and colleges across the country, as they struggle with the cost and manpower required to keep materials updated and accurate—and see classes of increasingly Web-savvy students coming through their doors. When Tufts University considered these questions, they naturally turned to Neustadt Creative Marketing, which had worked with the school on undergraduate admissions for the schools of arts and sciences and engineering and on a university-wide brand strategy.

Tufts is a highly selective private university in the suburbs of Boston. NCM, a seasoned expert in providing marketing services to educational institutions, knew that Tufts would be ripe for a smart, creative approach. They launched an extensive, five-month-long market research project among prospective students and their parents to start to answer that question. Out of that research, NCM defined a series of marketing goals that altered the messaging strategy that Tufts was using, says Mark Neustadt, principal of NCM. What did they settle on? A relatively unconventional plan, says Neustadt: an “integrated program that abandoned the traditional package of print materials entirely and replaced it with a three-times-a-year magazine which coordinated with an admissions ‘microsite.’”

Once Tufts adopted the report’s recommendations, NCM brought Fastspot in on the project; the two companies collaborate frequently under the name Door No. 2. Together, the two teams worked together to design and develop the magazine, concept the stories, write the first issue, develop the Web design, architect the Website, build it, load in the content, and finally launch the joint project on 11/11/11. Fastspot also created a new virtual campus tour for Tufts, which launched at the same time.

The magazine, named Jumbo after the school mascot, is now published online and in print three times a year and mailed to students in the admissions funnel. The site and magazine are run on Fastspot’s BigTree CMS, a user-friendly content management system that allows the Tufts admissions staff to easily update admissions information and keep up with trends without assistance from their internal IT team. “Viewbooks can take over a year to develop and are very costly and difficult to update,” Neustadt says. “A three-times-a-year magazine is relatively economical to update and can be much more responsive to changes going on in admissions.”

It’s important to note that this program does not completely do away with print—or migrate everything to the Web, Neustadt says. “A lot of people think that’s what this is all about. This is not about eliminating print. But what is has done, which is incredibly exciting, is create a print program that is consistent with the pace and the energy of the Web.” Tufts now has an admissions microsite that is essentially separate from the main site; Door No. 2, which loads in the content for each issue of Jumbo (with minimal tech support), serves as “managing editor,” helping ensure that the content is consistent, professional, and on-strategy.

Since launch, the site has been enormously successful. Analytics show that the site is getting lots of traffic; the dean of admissions, Lee Coffin, often gets several dozen comments on his blog posts. “One of the successes of the design has been the integration of social media and the content,” says Neustadt. And Tufts has gotten students involved, creating a student group whose charge it is to create new content; you can see student-generated photos and content throughout the site. “Tufts has a superbly run admissions operation, and they are at a point in their evolution as an office where their staff feels energized and capable to take this on.”

There are lots of moving parts, and they all mesh together, seemingly effortlessly, from the print magazine to the Web to the social media. As Neustadt puts it, “It’s a smart approach to print.”

Tweet This

Today I was reading a post by Ryan on 37signals’ blog Signal vs. Noise called The Documentation Dilemma. Ryan proposes that the act of documentation and creation of project artifacts is a symptom of a bottleneck in the value chain. He implies the documentation process can slow down the creative process to the point where you either:

1. Produce design ideas at the pace of development or

2. Freeze ideas in the form of documents, diagrams and requirements until they are ready to go later on in the process.

I think this is an oversimplification of documentation, and when, where and why it’s important to a project. I live in the land of client services, where every project involves a new set of stakeholders, participants, audience types and overall business objectives. Ryan’s team is developing one set of products, used the same way by every customer. There is little customization or need for bureaucratic buy-in as they are their own client, and the strategy may already exist and be a given. However, I see 37signals’ thoughts and propositions on workflow often espoused by design agencies and firms working with client services, and unfortunately I don’t think they overlap well. While we can all appreciate an expedited process and it’s the very reason why we hold the annual X-Day at Fastspot, it is not a system that can support long-term complex client projects.

This tendency towards assuming documentation is a waste of time or as Ryan puts it, “I used to think design teams made so many diagrams and documents because… well, they like that sort of thing.” greatly devalues the importance of clarifying important issues and goals in writing. It is immature to say that some people just like that sort of thing, when in reality, unless you an extremely detail oriented control freak who is trained or gifted as a writer, you probably dread the notion of having to create detailed and important documentation when you’d rather be coding or designing. No, documentation is not something people just do because they like to do it, it is actually important. However, documents and their usefulness should always be held up to scrutiny and improvements should be made whenever possible. Just as the design process should seek to create something perfect and useful for the client, so should the documentation. Documentation can be the first set of deliverables within an agency process to become outdated, stale, or redundant – mainly because they are dismissed as unimportant or left to a lackluster team to plod through begrudgingly. This doesn’t need to be the case if we throw out what we think documentation means and seek to find more meaningful ways to integrate the process of documentation.

I find myself interviewing designers and developers these days and spending as much time looking at their writing skills as I do their technical and design skills. I place a tremendous amount of value on someone’s appreciation for and ability to conduct strategic thinking. We live in an age where a knee jerk reaction is to “just do it”, or find the “app for that” problem. However, you can’t replace good old fashioned brain storming, and the results of that kind of thinking must be successfully documented. Documents can be exciting, inspiring and creative forms of expression. Documents can be “living” data, intended to be evolving road maps which can empower a client team long after the vendor has left and the project deliverables have been handed over. Documents are often the foundations that survive the longest and inform the next iteration of the thinking. They are building blocks that should inform the future, not create problems or bottlenecks for the present.

Some of the most important documentation we create for clients is where we restate recommendations or strategic goals. While one may argue that this is a rehashing of a productive group conversation, what many who are not as familiar with management roles may forget is that important people who have some say in the progression of the project may not have been part of these group collaborative conversations. Often, teams must move strategic goals and recommendations up the pipeline for approval, sign-off, and budget allocations. These stakeholders often don’t have time to sit through the nitty gritty of the conversions and brain storming exercises, but they do need to see the final documentation. This paper trail will also serve as reminders to new members of the team who come on board mid-project and need to catch up. It’s a reality that teams will shift and the last thing you want to have to do is backtrack because a new VP of communications is hired. Documentation, when done successfully, can keep forward momentum in place and keep the team focused.

Additionally, documentation creates trust. We’ve all sat through great meetings only to see good ideas forgotten, see tasks fall to the wayside, and get stuck in those frustrating loops of “well…we talked about this, so I assumed it was going to happen.” Documentation sets expectations, provides clarity, and creates safety nets. It prevents outliers from coming in and playing “dumb” and derailing a project. It prevents clients from bullying vendors with the old “we talked about this” game. It prevents vendors from talking a great game but playing “dumb” when it comes to the deliverables. It provides a sense of accountability, and it gives teams something to cross check against.

One of our documents is the Creative Brief. One part of this document is a list of keywords describing the tone and style of the design. This document is formed after meetings and is based on collaborative discussions and fact finding sessions and research. The list of keywords is short and to the point. However, this list is often referenced during the course of the project by the designers, the developers and the client. If one of the keywords is “friendly”, we have documentation (approved and signed off on by the client) which empowers us to make certain decisions and have them backed up. It prevents an outlier from coming in mid-project and saying “this should be more slick looking”, or “why are all these colorful icons included?” The documentation sets things in stone. It reminds, reinforces, clarifies and limits the scope of the project. Without documentation, we often find ourselves in never-ending circles. Even the mere act of writing something down gives it more legitimacy.

We know that writing is a helpful tool for memory, we have learned that lists help keep us organized, we have even seen studies that suggest the act of writing something down ensures it has a higher likelihood of succeeding. Many of us were told by parents to write down our pros and cons lists before making big decisions. We often can’t see something clearly until it is clearly written out before us. Perhaps the problem with documentation is the tendency towards wasted words and ineffective thinking? I suspect the issue is not with documentation, but with the types of documents being created for the purposes set in place. I also just have to say I find it ironic that someone at 37signals is talking about documentation being a waste of time when their most popular product, Basecamp (which we use and very much like), is essentially an application for better organizing and sharing documentation.

Ryan from 37signals ends his post stating,”Documentation may be necessary when your throughput is low, and that’s an opportunity to see documents not as charming deliverables but as warning signs of a deeper problem in your process.” I would argue that a lack of documentation which is focused on strategic thinking and establishing foundations should be a warning sign of a deeper problem in your process. At Fastspot our “throughput” is anything but low, and our productivity is accomplished with a small team who pride themselves on efficiency. Yet no one here would argue on the pointlessness of our documentation. Sure, documentation might have gotten a bad rap from all the poorly conceived ones that exist in the world, but that doesn’t mean the process of documentation is faulty. When documentation is a recording of a strategic and creative process focused on clearly outlining issues, goals, recommendations and guidelines, and created in a way that empowers collaboration and revisions in the future, it is one of the most important phases of any project.

What do you think? Have you seen documentation derail productivity or the creative process? Do you have a unique process for generating useful documentation? How do you keep clients with bad habits from forcing you to spend time on worthless documentation and instead generate productive documentation? We’d love to hear from you.

Tweet This

Re-posting this article due to lots of discussion lately – let us know what you think!

Before clients see BigTree CMS, Fastspot’s proprietary content management system, they often ask us why we built our own when there are so many out there that we could have simply used. When they ask me, I usually picture this. I have seen these CMS offerings, and frankly, they are horrible. How could I ever expect my clients to wade through instruction manuals numbering in the thousands of pages when they should be focused on content? What is the point of purchasing a CMS if you need to hire several programmers or experts to run it? Why would I actually expect my clients to willingly log into a system that is unusable, unfriendly and doomed to frustrate and confuse as they try to update a page or change a video clip?

Clearly, there are different “types” of content management systems and there are blogs and companies that do nothing but rate them, review them, provide training for them, etc.. It is an industry of its own, and with little oversight or benchmarks being applied, it is confusing to determine what makes a good CMS. Here are the things that make a good CMS; they are built into BigTree CMS and enjoyed by our clients:

1. Easy to use. Let’s face it. Most of the time, you want someone who knows words and pictures doing the editing and updating on copy and imagery, not a computer scientist. I don’t know about you, but I only know a few very special people who can claim to be a programmer, a designer and a copywriter. If my goal is to be thinking about words and tone and audience, don’t make me worry about code.

2. Intelligent. If I need a piece of content to be placed in multiple places in the Website, it would be nice if the CMS could handle that for me. The benefit of a customized solution is that the development team can tweak the CMS to anticipate your needs and be ready to deliver when you need it to.

3. Helpful. When I need help, I want to get to it quickly and easily. Tool tips, easy-to-locate help sections, videos on how to do a certain process, FAQs—these are all extremely helpful. I like for this kind of information to be built into the system I am using so I don’t have to leave my CMS to find the information on a Website or, even worse, in a 1,000 page written manual.

4. Flexible. If I am going into my CMS to update a bullet point, I don’t want to have to jump through 30 hoops to get it done. Likewise, if I am adding an entire new section to the site—setting up new templates, adding links to the navigation, inputting SEO-relevant content, and setting up modules—then I expect some complexity, along with some checks and balances along the way.

5. Powerful. If I want something to be done, it should be possible. This is one of the reasons we developed our own CMS:  So we could do the things we wanted to be done within the system. It’s also why we developed it on open-source platforms. That way, our clients aren’t beholden to us if they want to build upon the system.

6. Intuitive. If I want to move a navigation item higher on the list of drop down items, wouldn’t it be nice to simply drag and drop it in the list? If I need to upload an image to use in a template or inline, wouldn’t it be nice if the system automatically knew the size and ratio and let me crop the image accordingly during the upload process? Oh, how we dreamt of sleep-filled nights without the worry of broken links or content that wasn’t being indexed by Google. Well, we answered our own dreams with BigTree—and any good CMS out there should be doing the same.

7. Stable. Don’t you love when you hit one button and it seems the whole internet goes down? Or, at the very least, it seems you may have fried some sort of major thing with servers and possibly satellites and you swear you smell smoke? A good CMS should keep you out of harm’s way. You shouldn’t be able to do massively bad things without being loudly prompted (several times) by your CMS:

“Are you sure you want to delete that page?”
“Are you sure you want to erase a week’s worth of work?”
“Are you sure you want to take down the whole site just because you want that animated gif in the copy?”

Additionally, if you do make a mistake and cause a problem, it should be a recoverable problem. Hitting one button somewhere should never take down your whole site. Ever.

8. Secure. You want the people who need to know, knowing. And those who only need to know a little, well, they should be in the ‘know a little’ room. A good CMS should allow for security and user account settings to be configured in such a way as to protect your sensitive information on the back end of your site, as well as on the front end. The system should only show users what they have been authorized to see. No more. That way, your disgruntled intern can’t mosey on over to the professional bios section and add a line about Mr. Smith’s prized Chia Pet collection…or something like that. You get the idea.

9. Pleasant. If you want your team to do something, willingly, proactively even, that something better be pleasant to engage with. Have you ever had your team say “no thanks” when you’ve invited them down for a pizza/brainstorming session? You make the brainstorm process more pleasurable by including the pizza. A little pleasure goes a long way, which is why we think a CMS’s administrative area should be as nice looking as the front-facing Website, if not nicer. It should be organized, friendly, use real world language—not things like “vars” or “default”—that make sense only to programmers. It should help you if you make a mistake, allow you to play without fear of crashing, and inspire you to log in and keep creating great content! A CMS is essentially tools for the creative process, same thing as Photoshop to designers, or paint and brushes to a painter. Who wants to create something in a sterile, threatening and confusing environment?

10. Simple. This is the most important element for a good CMS. Simple does not mean weak or limited. Simplicity is difficult to achieve and requires great effort and restraint to get it right. Sure, we could probably add modules to BigTree that would allow our clients to do some crazy stuff, but they don’t really need it. And, if they do, it’s one client out of a million. In that case, we do something custom just for them. Keeping the CMS simple allows you to build a solid foundation first. Then you have time in real world scenarios to determine if you really need it to reposition that satellite or not.

What do you think? Share your thoughts on what makes a good CMS, and don’t forget to tell us who you are. Perspective is everything!

Tweet This

I’m writing this post because I run into so many businesses and organizations who feel they were “burned” by a past Web vendor. They have negative feelings about the experience and often have been left with the impression that “the wool was pulled over their eyes.” I can relate to the frustration. In a technical field like Web development (which is growing increasingly more complex every year), how do you know if the groups who are after your business are legit? In the era of the Internet, it’s easy to pose as something you are not, so here are some tips to hopefully help the non-techy crowd, or simply the groups who feel inexperienced in choosing an agency. When you are oftentimes talking about a six-figure budget, you want to be sure you aren’t left holding the bag. These tips range from the obvious (but often forgotten) to the simple and easy-to-spot. I’m sure there are more, and I encourage any of you reading this post to tell me how you’ve found ways to spot the stinkers and find the flowers.

1. The browser title for their website’s landing page says “Name of Company – Homepage.” Nothing screams fraud to me more than a company selling interactive services that seems to have no clue how important the words placed in this spot in a browser are to search engines, indexing spiders, and people making bookmarks and saving or sharing links. Bad, bad, bad. They might as well leave a credit on the bottom of their site saying, “Website by AAA Website Co.”

2. There is nowhere to read bios about the team or find out about the company’s physical locations. This often is a telltale sign that you’re dealing with a one-man or one-woman shop where you pay them to consult and then they outsource the “design and coding” to freelancers or contract work. This is not an agency. The power of an agency is that the people are working as a team. You are getting good results because you have signed on with a group of people who know how to work well with each other and deliver for the client.

3. The portfolio examples are too few or feel weak, and the rest of the portfolio is propped up with print or other traditional design work. Here’s the truth of the matter: Most firms recognize that they are leaving money on the table if they don’t go after interactive work, even if they are not qualified to do it. Most clients who have come to them for print work or identity work or even PR or consulting work will inevitably ask about interactive work at some point in the relationship, and some businesses can’t resist saying they can do the work and then trying to figure out how to do it once the client is on the hook. So let the portfolio speak for itself. If you don’t see lots of great work, then they probably aren’t a valid (or good) interactive agency.

4. The portfolio is full of “banners,” “micro-sites,” or “games,” and you can’t see any full-fledged websites. The red flag here is that they are saying they can do full websites, but in actuality all they’ve done up to this point have been smaller projects with much less demanding requirements. Unless you want to try to get a bargain because you know you are the guinea pig, beware of being the first big project.

5. The agency’s website sucks. I know this seems obvious, but amazingly, people are forgiving of this sin. We’ve all heard the old, “We’ve been so busy doing work for our clients that we haven’t had time to think about our own interactive presence.” Hogwash. Any agency worth its weight knows how critical these first impressions are, and keeping the agency alive and thriving means bringing in good clients and profitable projects. A poorly conceived and crafted website is not working toward this goal. Therefore, you can conclude that the agency is understaffed, incapable, too new, or just not good.

6. You are met with resistance when asking for references. And take note, you should be getting references for Directors of Marketing or VP of Communications, not Web developers or lower-level people who may simply be friends with the group that’s after your business. At the very least, you should be given contact info for a reference that made the hiring decision on a project similar in scope or budget to yours.

7. Technology is leading the conversation. Beware of this, as it may be the sign of a bunch of highly competent programmers but not the best group to make strategic marketing decisions for your organization. Technology should be part of the solution, after you’ve identified the problems and chosen your path. If a group comes out of the gate pushing tech, you can probably assume you won’t be getting much creative guidance or leadership.

8. The mobile and tablet versions of the agency’s site aren’t taken into consideration. Consider this the “canary in the coal mine.” If an interactive agency isn’t paying close attention to the mobile and tablet user experiences, then they are living in the past and will fall behind the ever-advancing curve of what is considered contemporary in this industry. We are seeing a growing number of users accessing Internet content via their smart phones or tablets, and this number will only go up as devices become more affordable, more powerful, and more convenient for the user. These devices must be part of your strategy and approach, and if they aren’t being positioned as important aspects to consider by your interactive agency, then you might want to consider looking elsewhere. There is no easier way for an agency to show how they would address the mobile and tablet experience than with their own website, so pull up their URLs on your iPhone, Android, or iPad—and see what you get.

There are many more ways to spot red flags when considering an agency—these are just the ones that I look for. What tells you that you might be getting the bait and switch? Do share!

Tweet This

Seriously, have you seen Pizza Hut’s site lately? Or their apps? They make ordering a pizza about as easy as sitting down on the couch. They make it so easy you’d be crazy not to order a pizza from them, or get distracted halfway through and never complete your order, or decide it’s a pain and go to another pizza maker’s site. Take a clue from Pizza Hut. Make giving online donations to your school, organization, or cause as easy as possible. Make it so easy they can’t say no. And if they even think about saying no, use peer pressure to push them back into the “yes” column. Easier said than done, you say? I agree; being easy is hard work. It goes against what most of us are taught growing up. I’m going to give you a crash course, right here, right now. Then it’s up to you to put on your “easy” outfit and do your thing. And don’t say I never gave you anything useful!

1. Don’t be vague about what you are asking for. Be clear. But be realistic. Sure, you want everyone to give $1,000, but it’s easier to give $10. So take the easy route—ask for $10. Cheap isn’t bad. If you get more givers, you can still come out ahead. It’s worked for Walmart (the easy of retail); it’s worked for Zappos (the easy of shoe buying); it’s worked for Southwest (the easy of flying); and it can work for you, too. So be clear, and be realistic, and don’t be afraid to be cheap.

2. Don’t make the cheapskates feel bad. If you want $10, ask for $10. Don’t give people a range from $10 to $25 to $100 to $500, because then those that would have been happy to give $10 now feel like cheap bastards as they see all the other options on your list. If you must, leave a “set your own number” area, but just stick with a nice low easy range, and don’t make the lowest givers feel the worst. Make them feel like the winners!

3. Peer pressure works, and people love to brag about good deeds. Let your donors shout to the world that they have “GIVEN!” to the cause! Don’t make them work at it. Build into your online donation process an automatic part that prompts them to share their good deed on Facebook and Twitter, and don’t make it easy to opt out of this part (but don’t do it until after they’ve given the cash). Pre-populate the prompt with something like, “I just helped ensure another kid like me gets a great education at X University by making a donation. Have you?” People are wallflowers; they don’t like to brag if it takes too much effort, so make the message easy and to the point, so all they have to do is hit “allow” or “share” or “post.”

4. Don’t over-complicate things. Use PayPal. Use ChipIn. Use Google Donate (some of these are just for non-profits, but you can find plenty of good options). Spend your time and energy on making the “user experience” as easy and simple as possible. If you are collecting donations in “the real world,” use Square—just make it EASY! Ever wonder why Amazon introduced “One Click” to make it faster and easier for people to buy things? Of course you didn’t wonder! Why wouldn’t they make buying things on their site easier?

I’m a huge fan of the Savannah College of Art and Design, but when I see this online donation form my eyes start to bleed and I feel the urge to run. I gotta REALLY be in the mood to donate to put up with this. Seriously, shouldn’t “I,” as your potential donor, be given the nicest user experience? Instead I feel like I’m in some backroom storage area with cobwebs and an old PC terminal from 1996. After a quick scan, I can see that I’m not even CLOSE to handing over my credit card info once I do finally make it through this form. Yikes.

And Yale—I get that you want lots of information about my gift and me, but seriously, I’m BUSY! If I’m a Yale grad I’m probably super busy doing many important things, so just let me give some money already—leave all this “stuff” for later!

Hey, Greenpeace: OK,way to go on keeping it simple, but you could use a little work in the “nice looking” arena. However, as one of the longest standing do-gooder orgs out there that I can remember who’s been asking for money, you get it more right than others with your simple and to-the-point donation page. And THANK YOU for letting me just jump in through PayPal and hand over my $10! Win.

And Save the Children, I commend you for helping many needy kids, but seriously, lower your donation amounts. If I want to give you $10,000, I’ll probably come drop off a check in person, or have my personal assistant call you, or have my other personal assistant write the amount into the box you leave empty for us poor broke do-gooder wannabes to have to type in $20 and feel like cheap bastards. You’re on the right path, but you could do a bit more to make this situation better.

Testimonial Interlude: I’m a sucker for animals, and I LOVE dogs. I’ve started following a few pitbull rescue orgs on Facebook, and oftentimes a dog rescuer has a situation where they have a dog that needs medical help, and they don’t have the money. These people have started creating Facebook pages to plead their cases and have made great use of ChipIn to allow fast and easy online donations. I have given more money to help out dogs in last year than I EVER have to any other organization or cause (in number of times I’ve opted to help, not in total dollars donated—YET), and this is because they’ve made it so easy! My one complaint: ChipIn is a Flash widget, and therefore it doesn’t work on my iPhone, where I spend lots of time browsing Facebook.

Since I’m on the animal thread: Humane Society of America, I LOVE your site and what you do for animals—but let me please donate through PayPal. I am currently sitting on my wallet, which means I’d have to roll my ass to one side to pull it out, and I’m too busy writing this blog post. But I have a PayPal account (probably like many people do), and there is money in that account, and it’s tied to a credit card, so I can just hit a button, log in, and give you money. Or rather, I could have, if you’d let me. And I would have as I researched for this blog post. Maybe next time, but please don’t call me. Nice site, though.

5. Being easy doesn’t mean being outdated. Be Progressive. Realize that many of your new potential donors aren’t on your Website; they are on Facebook or Twitter—and not on their computers, but on their smartphones or their tablets. Make sure your online donation process takes advantage of these social media spaces and tools. Integrate everything so it’s all happening in one place. Optimize your giving process for these mobile environments or miss out on cash—your choice. This isn’t a small deal; it’s a big deal, and it’s going to be a HUGE deal next year—mark my words. The world is moving toward mobile, not away from it.

Want to see some more great examples of HORRIBLE donation forms? Here you go!

Got some good examples of orgs or schools asking for (and probably getting) donations? Share a link. Like this post? Share it with your network. Disagree? Let me hear about it.

Tweet This

The other day, as I was sitting in a presentation where major project findings were being shared, the subject of Website visitors came up. One of the members of the client side team stated that it would be almost impossible to implement the findings and recommendations into anything cohesive, because that would mean setting a preference for one type of Website visitor over another. He continued by stating that a Website must try to be all things to all people … because so many different people use their site (this is a higher-ed site serving students, faculty, researchers, staff, media, community, etc.). Therefore, our mission was impossible. Of course, we disagreed. As unfair as it might seem, you must prioritize your audience and cater to those priorities, or you are setting yourself up for big problems. Often, these are the very problems we are called in to correct.

As I watched his face contort as our response was gently doled out, and as he was identified as the perpetrator of exactly the thing that creates runaway, out of control, sprawling messes of Websites, I did what I often do: I tried to think of a metaphor to assist in the visualization of the situation.

Let’s say you are having a party. You are expecting a variety of guests and some family members. Each segment of your guest list will prompt you to do things you wouldn’t typically do to prepare. For example, you know Aunt Debbie only likes Grey Goose, so you make sure you pick some up for her. (Or you clear the cabinets, depending on Aunt Debbie.) You also pull out that hideous ceramic bulldog statuette your mother-in-law gave you for Christmas last year because you have a bulldog and so now that’s all she gets for you, and you place it on the coffee table so she doesn’t know it lives in the basement in a box. Now, you don’t line these things up by the front door and shout, “Look, Aunt Debbie, I got you booze!” or “Look, Mother-in-Law, I love that hideous statuette so much I keep it here by the front door all the time!” But you do place those things where you know Aunt Deb and your mom-in-law will be sure to spot them. You get the point.

You also spend a fair amount of time worrying yourself over areas of your house you normally never pay attention to, especially the entryways and areas in the house everyone is most likely to congregate. While you no longer pay attention to your foyer, you do realize your guests will, and you want it to look nice. While your pride and joy is the game room you’ve built yourself in the basement, you recognize that most people will be taking in your whole house, as they move through it – so you can’t rely on some deep dark hidden cool thing to provide the positive experience you are looking to give off. Plus, you have to recognize your game room will only appeal to some, and if these “some” aren’t the majority of your guest list, don’t count on it doing all your work for you.

Continuing with this metaphor: You make some assumptions. Let’s say this is a neighborhood party, where your guests will vary in age, and you also have some friends and co-workers stopping by. You make sure the X-Box is ready to go for your pals because, let’s face it, you’ll be stuck being the hostess and chatting up your neighbors.

As you can see, it’s actually ALL about the audience, and you can’t treat them all the same. Your friends don’t expect you to spend the whole party talking to them, because they realize it’s a neighborhood party and you have obligations to play hostess to your neighbors. It’s almost unnatural for us to treat all people with equal importance in the real world, and yet in the world of Websites, it’s a common infraction.

In fact, it would seem rather kooky and even rude if you seemed indifferent to your guests’ preferences and just put out what you liked to drink and eat. A party of Amstel Lights and cheese sticks might float my boat, but come on. I don’t think my guests would stick around, let alone come to my next party.

By catering your information architecture and your content to your expected guests’ interests, you show that you are a gracious hostess who is going out of her way to make a positive experience. I might even go so far as to say that if you DON’T go out of your way, you may come across as snobby, self-absorbed, and rude. You have to realize who your target audiences are and prioritize them. Otherwise, you are doomed to failure. So don’t take it personally, people. Just realize your Website is a party. Now go throw a good one!

Got some good party-throwing tips? How do you find ways to deal with the variety of audience types and set priorities? Do you think it is important?

Tweet This

Just as Americans have finally started caring more about what they put inside their bodies than what they cover them up with, Website teams are finally caring more about what they are saying than what things look like. Let’s face it: Healthy eating, and healthy content, takes work. It’s much easier to roll into a fast food joint and order up a few Flash effects, snazzy animations, and some hot sauce than it is to sit down and make a delicious and satisfying batch of content. You know the old saying about how you’re always hungry 15 minutes after eating Chinese food? (Personally I’m usually too full to move because I overindulge in the MSG carb wonderland, but I digress.) The similarity is obvious – crap might taste good for a few minutes, but it won’t be good for you in the long run.

Creating good content is not easy. Like most good things, it takes planning, hard work, some possible failures, and even paving some new ground. It’s not typically popular to work hard and sweat out the seemingly small things – not in today’s “super size for less” society. Unless you are selling shit in a taco shell, your audience actually does care about the quality of your content. They want to know that you are working hard to “know” yourself. They don’t want happy meals, movie posters, huge fancy animations, or more blogs than you can shake an extra large milkshake at (sorry, couldn’t resist). They want an experience, authenticity, caring, quality. They want you. And if you serve them up a double dose of grease and “we can turn you into tomorrow’s leaders” (inspired by the higher ed universe), then you will lose. They will smell the fry tray a mile away and never even nibble on the sweet edge of your bun (geez, OK, sorry, this metaphor has LEGS I tell ya!).

I think it’s almost funny how many people pass up great opportunities because they don’t want to do the hard work to get to know themselves and then do the extra hard work to tell their story to the people who are sitting in the booth asking to hear it. It’s so much easier to throw some manufactured meat onto a piece of bread, and it’s so much harder to plan out a truly nutritious meal. But nutrition is what good content is – it’s fuel for the mind, energy for the imagination, inspiration for the spirit.

Let’s work even one more food metaphor in here while we’re at it – how about the local/seasonal/organic movement? Why has this become so popular? Well, lo and behold, stuff that is in season, fresh, and not covered in chemicals actually tastes better and your body actually feels better when you eat it! Holy Whoppers! Yep, it’s true. There is no denying it. And now back to content: Yes, dear reader, the same applies. We care more about what is happening right now, right here, and not bathing it in a bunch of preservatives or unnecessary adjectives.

So, the secret to great content?

Do the work to “know thyself,” and then tell your story to the world.

Be unabashed, bold, full of personality, proud, willing to make some mistakes along the way, and always full of nutrition.

Resist the urge to use the high fructose corn syrup of the marketing world (cheap effects, generic statements, overused jargon).

Stick to the basics and let them sing. You have no idea how amazing broccoli with a little lemon juice is until you’ve cleansed your palate of the junk and feasted on real food.

Just do the same with your content, and you’ll be surprised at how wonderful the results will be – for you, and for your audience.

Tweet This

There is a fatal flaw in many of the content management systems (CMS) out on the market today. I refer to it as the 10/90 failure. The CMS has naturally evolved to provide complex functionalities that are desirable to about 10% of its eventual users, often created in response to the request of developers and more experienced computer users. In an effort to continue to offer more advanced functionalities (or often simply a case of over-engineering from the outset) you end up with an interface and set of tools which alienates and confuses the needs of the remaining 90% of the users. So you cater to 10%, in spite of the needs of the 90%.

The balance between usability and complex computing and data management is the stuff of legends. It can make or break a product, a company and to some degree the client who is making the purchasing decision. One must never underestimate a system’s inherent “like-ability”, just as hiring a wildly unpopular or disruptive staff member can upset the entire balance of a team. Let’s not forget the ongoing demise of MySpace in favor of Facebook, which is often credited to the overly complex customization options available to MySpace users (which resulted in a noisy and often disjointed virtual space). People who use systems like order, they like processes that make sense, and they like visually appealing interfaces.

When considering CMS options, it is critical to evaluate the needs of your 90%, ensuring the CMS meets those needs, before you focus on the needs of the 10%. Otherwise you end up catering to such a small set of your resources that you will never leverage your total potential. It is assumed that the 90% will get on board, go to training meetings, read the manuals, suddenly develop a love for complex interfaces and terminologies like “null”, and become nimble CMS users. This is a dream seldom realized.

Now I’m not advocating you forgo the needs of your most computer savvy and technically minded subset, simply that you ensure those tools and interfaces are not “required reading” for the 90%. A good CMS should separate the tasks of the masses and the tasks of the experts – they should not share the same user space. Your developer tools should be clearly indicated as “for geeks only”, and the things that are user friendly for the rest of us should be front and center. Trust me, your IT developers won’t care if they have to click through a few nicely designed screens to get to the parts they want, they probably won’t even notice. But if the reverse is asked, you can assume much of your 90% will be intimidated, get confused or become overwhelmed, choosing to opt out of whatever task they had tried to undertake.

I think about the things I enjoy doing everyday. The ones that have succeeded and become part of my daily routine are those things that offer the lowest barrier to success, and even provide a little encouragement and fun along the way. We’ve all seen the success of the iPhone over most other smart phones, and now the iPad over the straggling competitors in the tablet market. Apple has excelled in providing the best user experience for the majority of its users. Sure there are a small fraction who will prefer an Android device or a tablet that allows them to hack into it and do very specific things, but this is not the needs of the majority. The majority usually need to perform more generalized tasks, such as updating content, or adding a new publication to a bio, or perhaps starting a FAQ or setting up some other online resource. Many simply want an easy way to work with words, pictures, video and documents. Simple needs, which should not require tasks akin to launching missiles to achieve.

In a society dominated by personal voices and the social networks fueling constant self-publishing, it is an absolute imperative that every team member is empowered to publish, moderate, discuss, interact and share the things that are important to them, in a way that encourages frequency and consistency. If these aspiring publishers are part of your team, are you giving them the best tools possible? I recommend frequent brainstorm meetings where team members (representing the 90%) are asked to write down the top 10 things they want to be able to do online everyday. Then make sure your CMS is allowing them to do those things.

Have a good tip for determining what makes for a good CMS? Have a CMS you love and want to world to know about? Have a CMS wish list item you’d care to share? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts!

Tweet This

Let’s face it, your reputation, the work you do, the products you produce, your relationships, the PR your company gets, the awards you win – these things matter much more than the number of Facebook fans you have, or Twitter followers, or even commenters on a blog. The truth is that people don’t discover you on social media. They discover you in real life and then seek to strike up points of connection through social media vehicles.

Once they’ve decided to commit to these additional forms of connection, it’s your duty to provide good content, not annoy them, be genuine, and engage as possible and necessary. They may unfollow or unlike, or they may decide they enjoy your content – but that’s about as far as your social media persona will go in terms of really influencing your potential clients. The best you can hope for is that it will keep your company’s name (or yours) top of mind.

I can tell you that after being heavily involved in social media for several years, we have never gotten work directly from being found in these networks. We have solicited for job openings, or for feedback on blog posts, or to share good news. Yet, never has someone said, we discovered your company thanks to Twitter, and now we want to hire you. I will tell you that we’ve had many clients call and say they heard about us from the Webby awards, or read about us in Communication Arts. In a majority of cases though, they call and say they saw something we did, and liked it, or another company recommended us. To me, these are the best kinds of new business leads to get.

So don’t get confused about how important all this social media stuff is. It’s great for you to be there once someone has heard about you and wants to take the relationship to the next level, but it’s the work you do in real life that matters most.

What do you think? Can social media be the first conduit in a business relationship? And for goodness sake, if you’re a client and you initially learned of us through social media – let me know so I can rewrite this post! For now, this is my story and I’m sticking with it.

Tweet This

I think Fastspot is one of the best places to work, and I believe most of my coworkers would agree with me. Why? It’s actually not because of the great clients we have, or how creative our work is, or how many Webbys we have on our shelf. It is about how much fun we have at work. How important is having fun? Critically important.

In fact, having fun might be the single most important ingredient in the recipe for a business thriving and growing. I certainly think businesses can get by without fun, but add in fun, and watch out! Here are the things a culture of fun accomplishes:

- You look forward to going into work every morning
- You don’t mind going above and beyond to help your coworkers
- You genuinely care about what your team is creating
- Your health is improved from laughter on a daily basis
- You keep a good perspective on things
- You don’t stress out over the little things
- You don’t foster or get involved in drama
- You become closer with your coworkers and managers
- You become closer with your clients and other vendors
- You don’t take yourself too seriously
- You appreciate the people around you for who they are, not what they do

In true Fastspot fashion, we’ve honored our respect for “fun” by creating another random and whimsical Holiday video for you to enjoy. And remember, sometimes fun is about nothing more than being silly, together. Happy Holidays to all of you, and may your 2011 be filled with as much fun as possible!

Tweet This