Another great session I attended at the DC Week conference was “Search & Social Media Integrated” by Janet D Miller of Search Mojo & Katherine Watier of Ketchum PR.

Kathy and Janet started off the workshop by sharing their 4 Steps to Improve SEO (search engine optimization):
1. Choose keywords your audience uses
2. Label your site copy to reflect those keywords
If you choose keywords that you want search engines to associate with your site but your content doesn’t reflect that site, your keywords won’t perform as well. Make sure keywords appear in page titles and meta descriptions (see below for more on that).
4. Get links
Outside links to your website are really important for SEO. “However, it is not simply the sheer quantity of inbound links that matters — the anchor text of inbound links is just as important.”
3. Socialize
When you share your site’s content on sites like twitter, facebook, and other social media platforms, you’re gaining inbound links!

image from SEO Moz 10 chapter Beginners Guide to SEO

Since I don’t know that much about SEO (and things change by the minute), I thought it would be most helpful for me to include my session notes, along with some good links:

• Sign up for google analytics and google webmaster tools! They’re free and enormously helpful.

• Get social profiles like google+ and scribd

• Set up a google profile for your company (new as of last week!)

• Start a blog! You’ll be adding regular, new content, will show your credibility for your subject, and will be creating great content that people want to link back to. Right?

• Add a facebook like button, a tweet button, and a google+ button to all your site pages/posts to see an immediate jump in traffic. The google+ button doesn’t currently affect search engine rankings, but Watier and Miller believe it will down the road.

• Expand your social reach and network. Keep in mind that tweets are probably not showing up in your follower’s feeds after about 3 hours. Use hootsuite to maintain social media pages without losing a ton of productivity.

• Follow journalists and important people within your field. Follower Wonk lets you search twitter for people who will be relevant to you, and track/analyze your followers.

• Make sure you can edit your meta descriptions (WordPress users: see this SEO plugin). Your meta description is what shows up in search engines under your page link, and each page of your site should have a unique description and use keywords in that description.

• If your site publicizes events for your company, use sites like Craigslist and other free event listing sites.

• Have videos and images associated with your site. Images and videos now appear on the first page of a Google search, and get good click-through rates.

• If you want to “ride the trends” to increase site visits, check out Google Trends. They allow you to search for trends by keyword, so you can see what topics are trending in your industry and write posts around those trends.

• Having an XML site map is really important. WordPress has a plugin for an XML sitemap, which tells Google every time you update your content.

• rel=”author” tag connects authors to their content (WordPress users, see this post about rel=”author” and rel=”me”). Search engines now give people weight, rather than just sites or pages or content.

• Work on your mobile site this year. Not in the next two years, this year! By 2013 Google predicts that mobile traffic will surpass PC traffic, and there’s been a huge increase in ad spending and clicks (especially on tablets like the iPad). check out GoMo from Google for help in thinking about your mobile site, or templates to create a temporary free mobile site (and see what works for your biz).

• If you have a brick and mortar, register with Google Places today! It only takes a second.

• SEO Moz is a helpful tool. It’s $99/month so you might not want to spring for it, but there’s a 30 day free trial and it’s a great starting place for you to analyze your site’s performance in search engines and figure out what to do to make it better. SEO Moz will take Google personalization off of your results, so if you’re in New York you can see how your company does in California searches, for example.

• read “digital marketing evangelist” Avinash

Thanks Janet and Kathy!

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Howdy Do It came from “how do you do It,” the question Ellie & Margot found themselves asking about their freelance lifestyles, and so Howdy Do It was born, a column about the things we do to keep ourselves organized, inspired and on track.

Last week I attended the DC Week conference (and recommend it to you for next year!). While many of the sessions were geared toward developers and non-profits and didn’t apply to my business exactly, topics like social media, search engine optimization, tax and legal tips, and managing companies drew me in. So this week I thought I’d share a little bit about what I learned, starting with one by Clarity Law Group titled “Top Ten Tips for Staring a New Business.”

The Washington Post interviewed presenters Sue Wang and Leah Goodman for this article, which is a great summary of the session. I thought I’d also share my own notes… a combination of things I learned last week and things I learned while incorporating my business this summer. This is by no means an extensive list, and y’all know I’m not a lawyer. So get one and talk to him/her to get the facts. Lawyers are expensive but necessary, and can help prevent big problems.

INCORPORATE
You might not own a business where people are likely to trip and fall, and in my case a paper cut is probably the worst that could happen to my clients. But as designers, it’s important to protect ourselves against the complicated world of intellectual property law (see this recent Design*Sponge post), and for that reason (and other really important reasons, like protecting your property and assets), incorporating might be a really good idea. I mentioned you should talk to your lawyer, right?

GET A CORPORATE BANK ACCOUNT
It’s important to respect the difference between the company’s money and your money, especially in the event that you have to prove that in court to uphold your “corporate veil” (basically, to protect your assets regardless of your corporate status). This will also prevent total meltdowns come tax time. Trust me.

KEEP RECORDS
Another way to respect the difference between the company and yourself, and respect your role in the company, is to hold annual meetings where you elect officers, have official annual reports, and document big changes like shareholders or a change in your business location (not an extensive list, I’m sure). All of this should be held in a notebook, preferably the fancy leather embossed ones your lawyer can order that make you feel legit. This applies even if the company simply consists of you.

INVESTORS/SHAREHOLDERS
I’ll be the first to admit I know nothing about this one, but I learned a few helpful tips at last week’s conference. If you’re accepting investors, including family and friends, remember that you don’t want to be stuck with bad business partners for life. Shares in your company should be closely held… if you think a 1% share is a nice and small thing to give a dedicated employee, for example, think twice! You’ll have responsibilities to your shareholders regardless of what percentage of the company they own, and getting rid of them is easier said than done. If you do want to give someone equity in your company, talk to your lawyer about investment schedules.

GET IT IN WRITING
Always! Whether you just hired a friend to do a few hours of work, your first full time employee, or started a project with a client… make sure you’ve got it all in writing. You’ll want to sign contracts with the company name, not your name, and your official title.

CONTRACTS & GETTING PAID
One thing I’ve learned from experience: don’t sign a contract without having a lawyer look it over. I’ve made this mistake once, and won’t be making it again! You know what they say about assumptions.
As far as payments, be sure to split them into deposits or advancements, so if things go south you won’t be out the full contracted amount. Have an invoice policy in your contracts, listing due dates and what happens if they are missed. Explain late fees and interest policies, and if a collection agency is required, your client should have to pay the collection costs.

ASK FOR HELP
Think lawyers, accountants, business people, and mentors. Help is good! And not everything you read online is true.

A big thanks to Sue and Leah, not to mention my own lawyer, who allowed me to feel super proud last week when I realized I already knew the “top ten business tips,” and more.

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Howdy Do It came from “how do you do It,” the question Ellie & Margot found themselves asking about their freelance lifestyles, and so Howdy Do It was born, a column about the things we do to keep ourselves organized, inspired and on track.

How do you do wholesale? Well. I wouldn’t know. But Katelyn (who helps me out with Hello Tenfold and Mint) and I have been digging for resources so we can find out.

Books:
The Crafting an MBA Guide to Wholesale and Trade Shows (e-book)
Craft, Inc.
The Handmade Marketplace

Online:
Modish Biz Tips: Wholesaling Insider Interview with Jess LC
Modish Biz Tips: Wholesale & Consignment Basics, Part 1
Modish Biz Tips: Wholesale & Consignment Basics, Part 2
Make Under My Life: Getting Into Stores
All Things Littleput: Tips for Selling Your Work Wholesale
Design*Sponge Biz Ladies: How to Price Your Work
Design*Sponge Biz Ladies: 7 Steps to Wholesaling Your Craft

Looks like we have some reading to do!

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Howdy Do It came from “how do you do It,” the question Ellie & Margot found themselves asking about their freelance lifestyles, and so Howdy Do It was born, a column about the things we do to keep ourselves organized, inspired and on track.

Photo: Candi Mandi for A Beautiful Mess

Making the decision to move my studio out of the house has been a big one!  I move in a week, and I’m really excited about Hello Tenfold’s new digs. My current home studio is sort of hobbled together hand-me-downs, along with a few Ikea purchases for storage. But the new place! Well that’s an open book. Here are a few things I’ve been eyeing for inspiration.

above, Katsuya Kamo’s studio, photographed by The Selby

vintage camera display photographed by shawn hoke

stylist susanna vento, and photographer kristiina kurronen, found on emma’s designblogg

string of lights by pigeon toe ceramics

stylist susanna vento, and photographer kristiina kurronen, found on emma’s designblogg

1. west elm rug // 2. air plant supply co. // 3. lloop lamp via wit + delight  // 4. west elm desk // 5. air plant supply co. // 6. stoneware farmer’s market basket // 7. anthropologie chair // 8. city hall clock

Within a few months of the new studio will be a new everyday note card collection, photos of some summer projects, holiday invites, and a brand new Hello Tenfold logo and website! I can’t wait.

In a time when many graphic designers are heading toward freelance (either because they want to, or because design jobs are just scarce), handbooks like this one become invaluable. Especially, I think, for recent grads hoping to take on projects while they look for full time employment. A Print Handbook was written by The Media Collective, and covers topics like Pantone versus CMYK, paper sizes, overprinting, trapping, different kinds of folds, and more, to take you from an on-screen project to printed piece. Says The Media Collective: “We really wanted something that was compact and included a lot of the questions we had about printing. There’s a lot of advice around about different areas of printing, but we wanted to see it in the flesh. For example, we had questions like ‘we know using a rich black with 40% cyan is often recommended by printers, but does this give you a black that is too cool in colour?’. So in the handbook we’ve got some examples for comparison.”

You can read more about it or pick up a copy right here.

Thanks TMC!

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Howdy Do It came from “how do you do It,” the question Ellie & Margot found themselves asking about their freelance lifestyles, and so Howdy Do It was born, a column about the things we do to keep ourselves organized, inspired and on track.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

— Ira Glass (via nefffy, by way of Fresh Air, by way of Yarn Yumminess)

Ira Glass press photo by Stuart Mullenberg via UAB

When people ask me about freelancing, one of the first things I mention is how great it is to have clients choosing me for me, for my work, and not a firm’s eclectic portfolio. Before freelancing, I used to hate getting matched up with a client who just wasn’t a good fit for my style/skills, but may have been a great fit for the designer sitting next to me. I could blame that on a lack of good project management, or communication skills between the firm and our clients, but at the end of the day, things get hectic and designers get thrown on projects. I wondered if a better designer could be more accommodating.

Today, I love that my portfolio is filled with the work I’m proudest of, and those pieces are what bring my clients to me. In the past couple years I’ve designed for wedding photographers, an event planning company, a gardening boutique, an Italian restaurant, design bloggers, a letterpress company, and many brides. A few years ago I would have never had the chance to work with clients like that.

Pietari Posti, via Design Work Life

But there is a down-side to working with highly visual clients. Although I encourage my clients to send me gobs of inspiration photos (usually gathered from various design blogs—love those design savvy clients!), there’s a fine line between having a good starting point or knowing your client’s taste, and having them art direct the whole project. A few times, I’ve had clients complain that after grueling rounds of revision and “move this 1/4″ to the left” and “I found a font that I’d like you to use instead” type art direction, that the project I was working on just didn’t look like other pieces in my portfolio. It’s all I can do to hold my tongue… if you don’t want to let the designer do their job, what did you hire them for?

In the worst of these cases, I have to have copyright discussions with clients to explain that although they sent me an example of THE perfect design solution, we have to use it as a source of inspiration and not a starting point. Not something that can be tweaked with their color scheme and copy. Again I find myself holding my tongue… because if a client has found a designer whose work is perfect, why didn’t they contact them instead of me?

Product Superior, via Oh So Beautiful Paper

Don’t get me wrong, communication is important, feedback is important, and I owe much of my better work to clients who asked for smart revisions, or had a killer project idea from the get-go. I think it often comes down to how I handle the client relationship, and whether or not that client believes I have a talent worth hiring, a professional opinion worth trusting.

I’ve gotten much better at pinpointing these tough clients earlier, and much more comfortable telling someone that I’m just not a good fit for their project. I have enough A+ clients to know that more of their kind will come along. But when one of those micro-managing clients* comes out of the woodwork, I don’t always know how to handle the situation. I asked a few designers I admire to weigh in, and found their responses to be really helpful.

Kristy Martino, HAM:
Obviously it’s a balancing act; keep the client happy and involved but service their audience and create work that you believe in. Ultimately, I think it’s a question of leadership. We are professionals with training, expertise and talent. In a way, it’s up to us to lead our clients in the right direction, help them make informed decisions along the way and at a very base level, develop a relationship that is trustworthy on both ends. That may seem like a lot of variables, but every interaction with your client builds upon them and makes those tenets stronger. If not, we may as well work in a factory, right? Not that that’s the worst thing in the world. They probably get dental insurance!

Courtney Dolloff Eliseo, Seamless Creative:
What I’ve really tried to focus on is preventative measures, in order to avoid getting into a situation where this happens. Because generally it just makes all parties involved miserable and results in subpar work.
Usually it seems that the clients who do this type of thing don’t have a ton of respect for or understanding of the design process—there’s a lack of trust there. So I think that it’s really important to try to gauge this at the first point of contact, whether it’s a phone call or a meeting, or over email. At that time I always do my best to clearly explain how I work, which is especially important if the client has never worked with a designer before. Their business is, of course, really important to them; and how can they trust you if they don’t understand what it is exactly that you’re doing? Then if at that point they don’t seem to get it or agree with your point of view, you know it’s not a good fit. And it’s probably not a good idea to work with them in the first place, unless you want to drive yourself crazy.
Sometimes though, it’s impossible to predict and you run into a situation where a client really wants something a certain way and won’t budge on it. In that case, I like to show them exactly what they asked for, and then show an additional option that is what I believe to be the better solution, and try to give really solid rationale to back it up. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t; but it’s pretty much always worth a shot.

*I struggled to hit publish on this post, because I love every last one of my clients and know many of them read Mint. I’m writing this as a way to start a discussion among other designers, not to pinpoint particular situations… I think this kind of thing often arises from a lack of trust and communication, which is most certainly a two-way street.

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Howdy Do It came from “how do you do It,” the question Ellie & Margot found themselves asking about their freelance lifestyles, and so Howdy Do It was born, a column about the things we do to keep ourselves organized, inspired and on track.

With my own clients, I often need to explain the printing processes I offer through Hello Tenfold so that we can choose a method that fits their project and budget. Below are some videos that will give a good insight into the processes, and are interesting to watch even if you’ve seen it before!

LETTERPRESS:

This Gestalten TV video on letterpress company Studio on Fire gives you a great look at a letterpress printing job from start to finish, and you also get to see a bunch of beautifully printed and designed work (they kill me).

SCREENPRINTING:

This (OK, slightly over-the-top) video is by screen printer Jonathan Capuano. I like this one because it gives you a good step-by-step of the basic process. But if you want a much faster run-down of how a professional print shop does it (more brief but confusing if you didn’t watch the first one) check out the video below by Threadless.

For another awesome screen printing video, check out Oil and Water Do Not Mix on OK Great. Designers Anthony Burrill and Happiness Brussels screen printed a poster using the oil that washed ashore in Louisiana after the BP spill, and used the money raised to benefit a non-profit who is helping with the cleanup.

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Howdy Do It came from “how do you do It,” the question Ellie & Margot found themselves asking about their freelance lifestyles, and so Howdy Do It was born, a column about the things we do to keep ourselves organized, inspired and on track.

“…you find is that, especially with creative people… people really need long stretches of uninterrupted time to get something done. You cannot ask somebody to be creative in 15 minutes and really think about a problem. You might have a quick idea, but to be in deep thought about a problem and really consider a problem carefully, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time.”

Jason Fried believes the real problem is the “M&Ms,” managers and meetings, and he has a few solutions. Check it out.

via CNN, A Photo Editor, and Mary Rose Aviary

You guys, I am so out of the loop this week. With over 1,000 unread blog posts in my Google Reader, I’m in trouble. But I do have one super great post for you to check out. It’s by my friend Kristy Martino, who has just found herself out of work (for the second time in one year… jeez, Universe) and is over on OK Great blogging about the Pros and Cons of Positive Thinking. Super funny, and true.

Secondly is that pretty Secret Pocket scarf up there, by the talented lady behind a blog I love (a favorite three, you’ll recall!). The second photo of the Secret Pocket booth at Little Winter is by Anabela of fieldguided.

And then there’s LOCAL stuff… but I know nothing about local stuff today. All I know is that the Handmade Market is on Saturday in downtown Raleigh, and you know you don’t want to miss that.