Filed under advice, Business, Commentary & Analysis, communication, productivity by FreelanceSwitch.com
Have you heard about the trend of standing room only meetings? Instead of having a team sit around a conference table, they’re made to stand up for short meetings instead.
The trend is becoming prevalent in tech companies, and is meant to elimi…
Filed under communication, Finding Work, networking, New Leads by FreelanceSwitch.com
Valentine’s Day is probably not a holiday that brings your fellow freelancers to mind.
You may have made a point to recognize your clients during the December holiday season, so why not make February the time to applaud your fellow independents…
Filed under branding, client, Commentary & Analysis, communication, Dealing With Clients, networking by FreelanceSwitch.com
Reporters at The Washington Post are now actively engaging their readers by posting comments in streams on the paper’s news stories online, something they’ve never done in the past. The paper switched to a new website platform called Echo, wh…
Continue Reading "Grow Your Community by Asking Questions"Filed under communication, Tips, Web Design, websites by Kareen Liez
With the thousands of websites, only a few can really be considered successful. Others might even wonder what makes them reach their goals. The secret could be good communication technique. Designing a website is not just about how it will look and wha…
Continue Reading "Communication Techniques for an Effective Website"Filed under branding, Business, Commentary & Analysis, communication, Google, Social Media by FreelanceSwitch.com
Chris Brogan is the author of the new book, Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything.
As a Google+ skeptic (heck, I’m skeptical of all new social media) I was interested to learn more, so I sat down and watched thi…
Filed under communication, Design, Tips, Web Design by Kareen Liez
Every website exists not just to earn but also to communicate certain information to its target audience. Every website owner sees to it that he could give quality design and posts to the readers for these are important things to ensure that the reader…
Continue Reading "Design Tips to Create Websites for Effective Communication"Filed under Business, communication, Opinion column, Workflow by Jeremy Girard
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We often hear companies, including Web agencies, boast about how they provide exceptional client service. But how do they define exceptional? Consider this scenario. You are hired to design and develop a new website for a retail client. The client loves the design, and the pages you develop use the latest in HTML5, CSS3 and responsive design, resulting in a website that works wonderfully across browsers and devices.
The e-commerce features of the new website help the client significantly increase their online sales, and the entire project is delivered on time and on budget. Now, is this “exceptional” client service? I don’t think it is. When the client hired you, they expected that you would design and develop a great website. They also expected it would be done according to the timeline and budget set during the planning stages of the project. As successful as this project may have been for both you and the client, in the end, you did exactly what you were hired to do. You did your job.
Continue Reading "How To Deliver Exceptional Client Service"Filed under communication, Design, office, Tips, workplace by Kareen Liez
When you are working in a design company, you have to deal with your co-workers and bosses so that things would be fine and in order. But there are instances when some problems arises which causes conflict in the workplace. There are times when a commu…
Continue Reading "How to Overcome Communication Problem in the Workplace"Filed under Commentary & Analysis, communication, Internet, News, Social Media by FreelanceSwitch.com
Did you happen to see the Google logo on the search engine’s homepage yesterday? If not, here’s what it looked like:
Did you try to look something up on Wikipedia only to see a black screen? You can thank SOPA for both of those blackouts.
SOP…
Filed under Commentary & Analysis, communication, public relations by FreelanceSwitch.com
The magazine I run is holding a contest, and we’ve been working hard with our PR consultant on creating the best press releases possible to advertise our event. It’s not as easy as one might think to craft a good press release—even if you ar…
Continue Reading "Tips on Crafting The Perfect Press Release"Filed under Blog Writing, Commentary & Analysis, communication, Inspiration, Writers, writing by FreelanceSwitch.com
I’m a writer. I like words. I also hate words. What people say in daily conversation rarely makes sense on paper. Using acronyms and emoticons are infuriating—especially to an editor.
Here’s an example: I teach undergraduate journalism cour…
Filed under branding, Commentary & Analysis, communication, networking, Social Media by FreelanceSwitch.com
I’m fairly new to the whole LinkedIn thing. I’m on it, but I haven’t really been using it to my advantage. I get updates from my Alma Mater’s LinkedIn page each week, but I usually throw that email right in the trash. Is LinkedIn just…
Continue Reading "The Secrets to Connecting on LinkedIn"Filed under advice, Business, Commentary & Analysis, communication, Competition, networking by FreelanceSwitch.com
I really like the 60-Second Solutions videos on Entrepreneur.com. I thought that the recent video by communications coach Carmine Gallo on creating a 60 second strategy to tell your story was especially useful.
Sometimes it’s hard to explain…
Filed under Business, communication, Freelancing Essentials, Marketing, pitch, sales by FreelanceSwitch.com
Note: A few times a month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from throughout the history of FreelanceSwitch. This article by Martha was first published April 12th, 2009, yet is just as relevant and full of useful information today.
A…
Filed under Business, communication, Opinion column, Workflow by Brian Scordato
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As an entrepreneur who has been on the client’s side of the design and development process, I’d like to discuss the thought process of the client, as well as some effective ways to interact with them. For example, why do they ask for Shakira music on the home page? And how do you respond to that?
I was recently referred to Sam Barnes’ piece on Smashing Magazine “How to Explain to Clients That They Are Wrong.” The article was well written and made a lot of sense to me, but there are two sides to every story, and I’d like to add value to the argument by responding from the client’s point of view.
For the most part, Sam did a great job of discussing how to evaluate and act on poor decisions made by clients. What he missed, however, was the impact that the nature of the relationship between clients and creatives has on how decisions are made by both sides. By “creatives,” I mean anyone involved in the design or development of a website or application. Understanding this relationship will enable you, and your clients, to make better decisions about the product.
Continue Reading "How Do You Deal With Overstressed, Irrational Clients? An Entrepreneur’s View"Filed under Commentary & Analysis, communication, Marketing, networking, News, Social Media by FreelanceSwitch.com
Is it just me or does it seem like everyone is rolling out new technology this time of year? Facebook has its Timeline, Twitter has a new interface, YouTube has bought a company to help license music, and LinkedIn has partnered with Cvlynk to simp…
Continue Reading "Google+ Pages: What’s the Hype?"Filed under communication, content, Design, UX Design by Brad Shorr
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The first thing to understand about content strategy is that no two people understand it the same way. It’s a relatively new — and extremely broad — discipline with no single definitive definition. A highly informative Knol on content strategy defines it as follows: “Content strategy is an emerging field of practice encompassing every aspect of content, including its design, development, analysis, presentation, measurement, evaluation, production, management, and governance.”
This definition is a great place to start. Although the discipline has clearly evolved, this breakdown of its scope makes perfect sense. The aspects of content strategy that matter most to Web designers in this definition are design (obviously!), development, presentation and production. In this article, we’ll concentrate on the relationship between content strategy and design in creating, organizing and displaying Web copy.
Continue Reading "Content Strategy Within The Design Process"Filed under Business, client retention, Clients, communication, customer loyalty, freelancing by George Fekete
“Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.”The above quote is from William Edwards Deming, the man who almost single handedly shaped the business and manufacturing culture of Japan into the powerhouse that it is today. Some might argue he knows something about making profit.When starting out its straight forward that the goal is to get customers, but it’s undeniable that the lifeblood of a sustainable business is return clients.
Continue Reading "How to guarantee return clients"Filed under client relationship, communication, customer service, good customer service, Managing Clients, trust by Noelle
Miscommunication is a peril that we have to work to avoid in our daily lives not just as freelancers, but…
Continue Reading "First-Class Service: How to Spot What Clients Really Need"Filed under communication, Design, UX Design by Heydon Pickering
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In this article, I’d like to reacquaint you with the humble workhorse of communication that is the paragraph. Paragraphs are everywhere. In fact, at the high risk of stating the obvious, you are reading one now. Despite their ubiquity, we frequently neglect their presentation. This is a mistake. Here, we’ll refer to some time-honored typesetting conventions, with an emphasis on readability, and offer guidance on adapting them effectively for devices and screens. We’ll see that the ability to embed fonts with @font-face is not by itself a solution to all of our typographic challenges.
In 1992, Tim Berners-Lee circulated a document titled “HTML Tags,” which outlined just 20 tags, many of which are now obsolete or have taken other forms. The first surviving tag to be defined in the document, after the crucial anchor tag, is the paragraph tag. It wasn’t until 1993 that a discussion emerged on the proposed image tag.
Continue Reading "The Perfect Paragraph"