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Content Marketers Need Web Designers And Developers

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My head is swirling from reviewing free- to-premium WordPress website templates and reading blog posts from designers and developers sharing tutorial about how they love Genesis, Thesis and think Headway is good but has some catching up to do.

Then there’s Elegant themes that look amazing, but Scott Quillin over at New England Multimedia won’t work in any of the above. Instead, he has one of his own secret premium themes he insists is #RockHot (which I won’t share with you).

I’ve been blogging on two blogs for almost three years (that’s nothing in the scheme of things). But, in that time, I’ve played with free themes, Headway, and Thesis enough to know that I suck at designing a website or blog. Heck, I’ve even launched a few websites in Go Daddy’s Website Tonight software (and they looked half-way shabby).

What I’m trying to say is this, Peeps:

Content marketers, like me, cannot design a website; nor can they develop its back end.

Get my drift? We can’t do it.  All we can do is change the font and the color of a leaf, but we can’t design a website all by ourselves.

It frustrates me extraordinarily that I can’t do this…even though I told Craig McBreen in comments at his house that I ban “I can’t” from my household. If there’s an obstacle in front of me, I climb it.

This time, though, to climb over the designing and developing of a website, I would need to go back to school somehow. I would also need to become a detail person and enjoy the tedious nature of graphic design.

I hate designing PowerPoint decks for that reason; I don’t make things look pretty very well. I’m a slap-the-paint-on-canvas kinda gal and call it abstract art; in fact, I have one of those on my mantel that I’m pretty in love with (‘cuz I slapped some acrylics on canvas and stroked the brush back and forth in a rainbow-esque fashion, and I really liked it).

I digress.

There’s so much more that goes on behind the scenes of a website or a blog that we can’t see and don’t know about. That’s why you have to hire someone to join your team and make it happen. But, you have to direct them to design and develop what you want; you need a vision for what you want to appear on that blank canvas.

About every six months, you have to go through this exercise with your website and stir the pot.

That time for all of us is about now, and here’s why:

Responsive design is the current trend, today; right now.

Making your website responsive means it will work on a smartphone or tablet or e-reader. When you visit a website and all you do is scroll from side to side to find the nav menu, then you know that site is not responsive.

Did you know that big data is telling us more people will visit your website from a smart device than from a PC? The data are showing that uptick; are you ready?

 

Thank You, New England Multimedia

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This is a shout out to my business partner, New England Multimedia owned by Scott Quillin and Michelle Quillin.

To prove the power of social media to enhance your business, here’s a story about how business can be done and gets done via Twitter. I met Michelle on Twitter several years ago. She began blogging with me at The SMB Collective in a group blogging experience that is just shy of getting relaunched. I spoke with her husband, Scott, perhaps once.

Because I’ve known Michelle more than two years via social media channels (or the interwebz as they now say), I know more about her business, their combined values, and most of all their integrity. Each of us comments on the other’s blogs, Facebook pages, tweets, LinkedIn, and we’re now following one another on Pinterest, too.

With all that interaction and earned knowledge of one another’s habits, they required no further vetting when I wanted to integrate my blog into my website (finally).  And, so, with an email saying I needed to launch a project, we made it happen.

Together Scott and I worked to identify my needs, and within two weeks (as he promised) I now have a fully integrated website and blog. I’m thrilled with the process, with Scott’s knowledge, the fact he made me a priority, and the fact he kept to deadline. He listened to me, and adjusted design elements to make me happier, and we plodded through blog plug ins with both of us learning more about plug ins than we expected.

If you’re a small business or a large one, I absolutely, positively recommend New England Multimedia to be part of your team. If you’re not sure, ask me to tell you more. There’s nothing better than a client testimonial turned into a blog post.

I’m excited for the potential this new site offers my business.  Thanks to New England Multimedia, I’ve found a fabulous new trusted business partner to grow with.

(Image from their Facebook page.)

Expertise Comes in Shades of Gray

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Yesterday there was a blog post suggesting WordPress sucks along with its top-notch themes Thesis (which I run here) and Headway (which I started my blog with and switched).

After commenting on the post, I saw a tweet about the same post suggesting the author was absent his morning java to have written something so ridiculously futile (that’s with a long “I” as the Borg say).

This got me thinking about expertise and how it’s defined. I am an expert in public relations; are you? Perhaps to some degree you are, and mayhap not to the same extent as I.

I am not an expert blogger, however, nor do I relish the steep learning curve the IT and back end present. This is the gist of what the aforementioned blog post said – the back end of any blog is a daunting adventure. To blog expertly, one needs mastery of the back end.

As my friend Gregg so aptly puts it, “Jayme, this should be like falling off a log to you.” So I cringe, nod my head, bow it in shame, and continue to attempt to do it all myself and make silly non-expert mistakes which eat my time and efficiency.  And, I insist I’m doing this for the sake of learning and becoming an expert…one day, sigh.

Next to those guys leap years ahead of me designing their blogs in cool themes and developing new WordPress apps, widgets, and plug-ins, I’d like to think my content rocks.

I know for a fact that expertise is a gift; the more you earn it, the more you need to give it away. That’s exactly what I’m doing here; helping the next peep merely stumble on the path rather than take a hard fall.

Expertise comes in all shades of gray; I’ve just begun to color. What tint are you?

Good Plans Don’t Break

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Yesterday, my contractor tore through old dry wall in the family room and removed plumbing in a closet to cap off a wet bar. The plan was to make this room, built on a slab adjacent to a garage and two outside walls, livable during cold weather. With insulation to code and new dry wall, we’d be able to do our thing and not freeze (the heat never reached that room from the lower-level furnace about 800 feet away).

Good plan, eh?

Yes, until the first signs of termites showed up, and then the infestation of live ones, along with the fresh mouse droppings just under the bar countertop being removed IN the family room.

Good plan broken? Nope, “just” a derailment.

 A need for squeamish flexibility on my part to alter this and that, add some steps that require my immediate education about termites, a call to several experts, including the current service provider who apparently has not been delivering great service, and stop-gap measures (literally) to plug some holes. And, perhaps some solid wishful thinking that this, too, shall pass.

Segue to the blog and the trials and tribulations to launch. Those who read my tweets of pain during those horrid IT nights attempting to do what I didn’t know I didn’t know but eventually got a feel for appreciate what I’m talking about.

A good plan starts with the end result. It’s accented with steps required to reach and attain that goal and outcome. To blog:

  1. Get a Web host of your own and publish your blog on your own server. (That requires a lot of ancillary steps to make happen.)
  2. Select a foundational blogging platform. In my case WordPress (a fabulous content management system one can even use for a Web site).
  3. Choose a theme of the 1,194 available (I went with Headway and crashed; now am running Thesis). That was another obstacle with tech issues galore, and I had no idea without help to solve that issue.
  4. Design the blog with colors that match (easy, you think?), branding that flows, and a bunch of widgets that ensure a reputable image at first blush.
  5. Find a voice. Write daily. Fuel controversy. Feed commentary. Market the blog. Do SEO.

Within each of these steps are little land mines that cause derailment for any number of days, weeks, and even months. Currently, I’m on step four trying to solve branding issues.

The moral to these true and happening-now stories is about planning. No one attains a goal without a good plan and steps from A to B to get there. Success is about flexibility and permission (from self) to explore other options and avenues which may take you down a rickety path until you get righted and back on track.

No matter how established you are, know that good plans don’t break, they just take longer to make happen. Exploration is education.

That Blogging Quest

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Today’s post ought to be short and sweet. When it comes to the blogging quest (read nightmare), that’s not a guarantee.

Thought of titling this as “Along came a spider…” but then would SEO put my blog in touch with arachnophobics (I coin words)? The spider in this case is Gregg Morris. My dear Tweep @greggvm yesterday took my blog effort and turned it upside down.

I no longer am using Headway on WordPress, I’m now on Thesis, and what a relief. I see light at the end of the tunnel, thanks to Gregg (I must remember to use 3 Gs). He took his valuable time and spent it with me yesterday to re-launch the blog theme into something without the kinked-up sutures in which Headway had captured me.

I trusted him although we had never spoken prior to yesterday. How? We tweet. Why? We tweet. (More on that later.)

Another blogger I respect, too, is Nicky Jameson. She is also a Thesis user, and she has a boatload of WordPress tutorials on her Web site which I purchased for a more-than-reasonable fee and downloaded (took an hour). Watched the first one on Feedburner and tinkered as I watched…it worked!

So, thanks, thanks to my extraordinary new/old friend Gregg, who without concern for his valued time, inserted himself into mine to come to the aid of a damsel in distress (who didn’t, is that “wouldn’t?” ask for help).

Koodles!