We’re thrilled to announce some great new firepower to our Client Services team!
Introducing Megan Bookless as our newest Account Manager:
Megan Bookless – Account Manager
Megan Bookless has joined our Client Services Team as an Account Manager. She has extensive experience in marketing and customer support. Megan brings with her a great strategic mind, attention to detail and a warm personality that will make clients feel comfortable. Previously, Megan was an Account Manager for a design and branding firm. She worked closely with well-known companies to help them incorporate their offline brand with digital and social media marketing. Megan will join our team along side one of her triplet sisters, Michelle Bookless, who is a Project Manager working with our Interactive Clients.
Although Google+ is still in the beginning stages of its life, it has captured the attention of some major companies and social media lovers. When branded pages were finally launched at the beginning of November, brands such as Pepsi, Cadbury, and Jet Blue were quick to jump on board and create some really interesting content. Because the few people using it are so social-media-savvy, they have been asking for real engagement and conversations from these companies. The brands who have experimented with the features offered by Google+ have been quite successful and have caught the attention of their customers.
One brand that has been especially successful is the American Red Cross. Although they don’t have the flashiest page, they have been engaging really well with their customers. Most of their posts are about real issues going on in the world and reason why you should care. From there, they have created real conversations with their followers without just telling them to give blood. They are focusing more on developing a dialogue rather than “selling,” which has been quite successful.
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Open-source content management systems like WordPress and Drupal get a lot of attention on design blogs, but they are not the only options when it comes to choosing a CMS. There are a number of hosted CMSs available that are popular with designers and their clients.
While the features vary form one hosted CMS to another, several of the primary benefits are common to all or most of them. Things like having the hosting included, the possibility for designing and developing sites very quickly, availability of pre-designed templates, and support tend to be listed among the benefits of choosing a hosted CMS.
Some hosted CMSs allow designers the opportunity for a private label, meaning that designers can brand the CMS as their own. In this case clients will see the designer’s branding rather than that of the company behind the CMS. In many of these cases the designer can also earn a commission on monthly hosting fees, which provides a nice stream of residual income for designers who use the CMS with a number of clients.
Any Road Will Take You There
As 2011 closed and 2012 is upon us, let’s remember some of the best of last year.
This list contains some of my favorite posts from our blog writing staff and also some of the hot topics on the web, that resonated with our readership and clients.
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Making a transition from employed designer to freelance designer can be intimidating for even the most talented of designers because there is so much more involved with being successful as a freelancer. As a freelancer you’ll be responsible for every aspect of your own business, and it’s those aspects aside from the actual design work that typically create the most significant challenges. While the transition is rarely easy, if you take a look at the mistakes that are commonly made by other new freelancers you can prepare yourself and avoid those potential pitfalls.
In this article we’ll take a look at 7 mistakes that many new freelancers make. The purpose is to help those of you who are in the process of moving into the world of freelancing, or considering it. By knowing these challenges ahead of time you’ll be better prepared to avoid them in your own business.
This mistake often happens even before making the move to full-time freelance work. If you are planning to try full-time freelancing there are a lot of uncertainties about how much money you will earn, especially during the first few months while you will likely need to work harder to find clients while establishing your business. In order to avoid financial problems and more stress than needed, ideally you will have at least enough money to cover a few months of your living expenses in case things start slowly.
We’re pleased to announce that Dan Kompass has joined Union Street Media as our new Business Development Manager. Dan will be based in Massachusetts and will be an integral part of our team as we continue to expand our presence in Massachusetts. Dan has spent the last 20 years living on the Cape and working with many local real estate offices. He really knows his stuff!
Dan has worked in nearly every aspect of web development from project and account management, to search engine optimization, Internet marketing and application development. Dan started building websites in 1995, around the time that some of Union Street Media’s current interns were starting Kindergarten, and has overseen the development of real estate websites for agents and offices throughout New England. “We couldn’t be more excited for him to bring his industry expertise and customer service ethic to the Union Street Media team,” said Jon Adler, Director of Account Strategy at Union Street Media. “Being based in Massachusetts will be a great opportunity to schedule in-person consultations with current and prospective clients in that area.”
“My first few weeks at Union Street Media have been fantastic! Our team of dedicated and talented employees have taken real estate website development to a new level. I feel inspired Union Street Media’s commitment to our clients and impressed by the sites we have developed over the years. It’s great to be on board!”
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The biggest challenge that most freelance web designers face is the constant need to find new projects. Having enough work from paying clients on a consistent basis is of course necessary in order to earn a living as a freelancer, but many designers struggle in this area.
One of the most effective ways to work towards a more consistent income with less of a need for relying on new projects is to focus on providing on-going services to your clients. Instead of designing a website for a client and parting ways, if you are able to offer on-going services that will provide some value to those clients, you can continue to work with them and reduce your reliance on new projects and new clients.
If you provide services for even a small number of clients for just a few hours each week it can easily result in a small but stable income stream, more time working for those clients, and less time searching for new work. For example, having 5 on-going clients to whom you provide 2 hours of work each week would total 10 hours of work per week, or 25% of a 40 hour work week. It may not seem like much individually, but having that 10 hours of work each week in addition to new client projects can make a big difference for many freelance designers.
Image via Fooducate
A third of all searches performed on Google now generate a blend of traditional website listings along with other media. If you are a commercial business owner or have a personal blog, understanding blended search results can help you better market your business.
When someone typically thinks of what a search engine does, the first answer is most likely to serve up web pages. This is true but the landscape has been changing for a while and it’s not just web pages that matter.
In the beginning, text was the important thing. Websites didn’t contain much in the way of rich media because we were all on dial-up, and sites were generally built in HTML. Search engines were simpler, relying on html for text cues to match up sites to queries.
www.vtseniorliving.com
Bullrock originally designed their sites for Otter Creek and Shelburne Bay with Union Street Media in 2008. Three years later, with a renovation in the works for The Shores at Shelburne Bay, they recognized the need to update both sites to accommodate changes at their facilities and to stay ahead of their competition on the web. Design revisions would focus on a more modern layout with updated color schemes to match changing print marketing materials and larger, more recent photos of both facilities. Updates to navigation would combine keyword research with revised phrasing to more successfully highlight the personality of both communities: upscale and high-end but personal and welcoming.
www.joanheatonarchitects.com
Joan Heaton Architects is located in Bristol, VT and has been specializing in quality residential design for new construction, addition, renovation, and historic restoration projects since 1996. A long time client of Union Street Media, Joan recently wanted to update her site to keep the design and content fresh and engaging for prospective and returning customers alike. Through the redesign, she was also looking to increase the SEO value of her site and provide her customers with new projects in her portfolio.
http://www.vtbenefits.com/
“How often should I write a blog post for my website?” has been The Question to ask since blogging began. The answers to this question vary and should because it really depends upon your goals and the niche or audience that reads your blog. Most that ask the question just want a quick answer and there isn’t one. Ultimately the question is asked because the person wants their blog to be successful. There is a certain logic in thinking that if I produce X amount of good quality blog posts then my blog will be successful. There are many factors that make for a successful blog and, combined with the updates to search engines and online social landscape, the success of a blog becomes somewhat of a moving target. Although there is a core structure to effective blogging, some of what worked in 2006 for bloggers isn’t going to necessarily work today. The good news is there are guidelines below that will help get you on the right track with how often you blog. By using the points below as a guide and then adjusting to your specific audience, you can determine an effective answer for how often to blog.
The easiest answer to this question is if you can blog at least once a day, you should. Most don’t have that much time to dedicate to blogging and yet do want some success. To measure success, at a very basic level, a blog is effective when it brings in the right traffic. (A quick side-note: you shouldn’t expect that just because you write enough blog posts you will automatically get traffic, it will still need to be optimized and promoted). There is also a nice balance between enough content and other time commitments in your work week. To get and maintain a steady stream of readers, you will want to write at least once a week. If you write more, you will see additional benefits but if you write less, your blog won’t generally be a strong addition to your overall online efforts (whatever they may be).
Image via Wikipedia
The harder question to ask is, why are you blogging in the first place? What are your goals? To write just for the sake of writing won’t get you were you need to go. When you review those goals and the benchmarks for their success, you may find an entirely different answer than the one above. To get an idea of how much blogging some of the professional bloggers do (such as those behind Wired, ProBlogger, Gizmodo, Engadget, etc.) take a look at the book Blogging Heroes by Michael A. Banks. Banks does an interview with 30 of the world’s top bloggers and the answers are not only insightful but contain over-riding themes (such as how often they blog and how much online content they read). Consider the varying perspectives from Hubspot, SEOMoz, ProBlogger, and Gigaom that offer quick answers to the same question of how often to blog.
Search Engine Optimization
