Yes, there are.

However, there will always be someone better than you, smarter, wittier. The percentage is so low, it’s safe to say no one is ever the top dog. Yet, you can still help your customers and clients grow with the information you do know, crafted and molded just for them.

And there are reasons people will continue to come back to your blog to read what you have to say. Maybe it’s the way your write, or how you write it. Your funny or direct point of view. Or simply, you might just break it down for them in a way they can understand… in a way no other person has been able to do for them.

But you can’t discover what that is until you start writing.

Brainstorm and jot down your ideas for blog posts. Write those things you know a bit about. Once you start putting them on paper, you will have a better idea for blog posts. There’s plenty of content fodder in our minds. Our ideas are fleeting and sometimes we just need a reminder of what that good idea was.

Need a place to keep your blog post ideas? Pick up a notebook or open up a free Evernote account.

Just. Start. Writing!

Recently, a client asked me if they should have just one blog or split up their blog into two different blogs.

The answer? It depends.

First, it is always best to start with one blog. It’s easier and more accepted by your target audience if you ramp up your blog activity, instead of starting off strong and then tapering off. After you have established a schedule, you can choose to add a second targeted blog to the lineup.

Second, you may simply want to consider keeping all your content integrated. Generating content is an involved process and splitting your energy across two or more blogs can add to the amount of work and time you invest in your business blogging. Remember, the goal is to blog efficiently, not constantly, for results. You might best be served by blogging from one blog and separating your content by tagging it with proper keywords, allowing you to present the content in separate channels within one blog.

Either way, it is important you define the mission statement for your blog. Writing out the mission and creating a short elevator pitch helps you focus your blog posts. It also helps define goals for what you want to do with blogging. Knowing where you want to go with the blog helps you be successful at your goal.

Have you decided to maintain one blog or more than one? Let me know in the comments. I’d love to see how you have handled your content!

Ask 100 people why they blog, you’ll get 100 different answers.

“I blog to showcase my talents.”

“I blog to produce sales.”

“I blog to gain traffic.”

“I blog for fame.”

“I blog to share a piece of me.”

…and so on, and so on.

It’s important to know why you blog. It gives your writing direction and purpose. It also the wonderful side benefit of fashioning you as an expert in your niche.

Tell me, why do you blog?

I purchased my personal copy last week and have already made a few recipes from it. It’s small, but full of many great recipes and good information for detoxing your body and eating healthy.

And check it out – I even got a photo credit!

To find out more about the book, visit the Amazon store.

To find out more about my client, visit MyHealthKick. (Redesign in the works…)

Remember the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams, where as Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella, he hears a voice in his corn field tell him, “If you build it, he will come.” While that works for movies, it doesn’t work online. Sadly, it’s the line many web design and development companies feed clients. “Build it and your clients will come!”

I don’t say that here.

As a matter of fact, one of the things I tell my clients is just that – “If you build it, there is no guarantee they will come!” If you’re a small business and you build the website and do nothing else, I can just about guarantee you they WILL NOT come. Why? It’s the same as in the brick and mortar world. If you don’t announce your location, it’s highly likely no one will ever find you.

That is why it’s important you do community management for your site. What is community management? It comes down to this – getting your name out there online. Here are a few ways you can do just that:

Twitter

Let’s be honest. Twitter is a massive distraction. If managed correctly; however, it can bring you a ton of business. Most of this involves doing your research, following the right people, and tweeting regularly. While all of this a bit of work, once you get the combination and schedule down, it is a great way to funnel people to your website.

Forums/Message Boards/Blogs

Visit forums, message boards or blogs of your market niche.  Establish yourself by commenting on other posts. Then slowly start introducing what you are doing and how you can help out others.

In addition, I find the best customers are those already interested in what you sell or what you are about. If you visit a blog or website often for your niche, make sure you comment. Well thought out, insightful comments always draw others and start the process of establishing you as an expert in your niche.

Two things to note so you don’t seem a spammer:

1. Forums and message boards have specific rules – make sure you follow them otherwise you could be banned. Also, use your signature line to link to your website or blog. It’s a more accepted practice than spamming people with a link to your blog in your forum response. The more active you are, the more people will see your signature.
2. Blogs are the essence of ”community”. So no spamming your blog link in the comments. Most blogs have Gravatar or CommentLuv installed, but if not, make sure you fill out your profile for whatever blogging platform the blog is on. Also, you can simply control the linkback to your blog by entering your name, email and website address information manually, as many blogs have a means for you to do just that.

Write a guest post

This last one builds on the previous idea for building your community. Once you’ve commented on a blog regularly and the owner “knows” you, think about approaching them to do a guest post on their blog. Guests posts are great, because not only do you get the exposure of the existing base on the blog you are writing for, but you also get a great solid backlink to your site which ups your SEO value.

Finding all of this overwhelming? I know it is! However, these are just a few of the things I can help you get started with community management. Contact me if you’re interested in learning more!

So this past week, we sat down to take a few shots of one of her recipes for the cover of her new cookbook. Here are a few photos from the shoot:

Makes me hungry just writing this…

Lunch, anyone?

So please know when I write the below, it comes from a place of “I’ve been there.” Truly, I have empathy for your situation.

And you should know that I’ve worked very hard to be the best developer I can be. I strive to create excellent solutions for my clients as well as for other collegues for which I subcontract.

Which is why it pains me to be on the receiving end of bad customer service.

It makes me want to scream at you.

After having worked several jobs where I needed to subcontract portions of the work, I have a serious bad taste in my mouth when it comes with hiring new talent. With that, I’ve developed my list of the top 5 things you should do to make sure you don’t get hired again for additional work:

1. Don’t respond to a job email.

   If you’re looking for work, you have to answer the emails. ‘Nuff said.
   
   

2. Drop off the face of the earth.

   Talk to your client/colleague , get their hopes up. Then after a week when they inquire on how the job is going, resort to method #1 and don’t respond.
   
   

3. Don’t follow directions.

   After your client/colleague takes the time to carefully explain to you exactly what they need, make sure you take the project into the total opposite direction of what they asked you. When they ask you why you didn’t complete the work as requested, insist your way is much better (instead of owning up to the fact you really didn’t know how to do the job you were hired for.) I’m sure they will *really* love the initiative you took. *insert sarcastic laugh here*
   
   

4. Don’t solve your client’s problems.

   When your client asks one question, make sure you answer with the response to a question he did not ask.
   
   

5. Finally, make sure to insult your client when they insist on holding you to what you said you would provide.

   Responding to them with “You’re a feisty one” should do the trick.

What are some of your top reasons for not re-hiring a contractor?

YazminMedia Website

Finally! YazminMedia has been redesigned! I’ve been wanting (for a long time now) to redesign the business website, but ongoing maintenance work and new clients have stopped me from redesigning for a while now.

It’s still not quite complete. I do have additional items I’d like to update (a new logo, translation of the site, maybe moving it to a framework), but for now this is definitely a start. This website will always be a work in progress. Such is the life of a developer… working on other’s projects before their own.

What do you think of the new design?

Planning to Develop Yourself

One of the things I’m working on around here this year is professional development. Working from my home office provides me a calm and solitude I need to get many of my client’s projects completed. However, it also leaves me feeling a bit lonely and sometimes out-of-touch with what’s going on in the world, personally and professionally.

I tend to try and stay away from a lot of social media (Twitter, Facebook and don’t even get me started on Pinterest) as it has a way of sucking my time. Before I know it, I’ll have whiled away 3 hours doing nothing but surfing the web. You can imagine as a sole contractor, my time is better spent producing billable work than allowing my mind to wander aimlessly.

No one is saying it’s not important to allow your mind to dwell on other things aside from work, but rather that a focused wandering might be better suited to the person, like me, who only gets a paycheck if they do actual billable work. Who doesn’t want a paycheck?

To that end, I’ve decided I’ll signup for a monthly course for each month of this year. January has already come and gone. Not much I can do about that. So, I’ll start with February.

This month, I’ll be taking a free “30 Days to Learn jQuery” course from TutsPlus.com. I already use jQuery quite frequently, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a formal introduction. For the coming months, not quite sure what the monthly class will be. Guess I’ll have to keep an eye out for new things.

So what about you? Do you have plans to develop yourself this year?

I found myself bouncing around the tracks. A lot of my time was spent in “developer” sessions covering topics like best practices for designing and creating plugins, implementing the plugin signup experience and mastering custom post types (a session given by Atlanta local Mike Schinkel). Although I have to give major props to the “HTML5 – Hell Yea!” session conducted by another local, J. Cornelius. All in all it was just fantastic.

The camp left me inspired and re-energized.

With my head full of WordCamp and WordPress related thoughts, it’s pretty clear my website, in its current state, is not living up to its potential. It’s failing as an example of what a good WordPress website can look like. It’s failing in its job of showcasing my work portfolio. It’s failing as a tool that should be encouraging me to blog more often. It’s just failing all around.

Unfortunately, there’s only so much time in the day, only so much time to do everything I want to and *need* to do. WordPress themeing, WordPress plugin coding, language optimization with WordPress, social media integration, speaking instead of creating and most excitingly, moving forward with HTML5 in all my projects. So many thoughts, so many directions, oh so much to do.

So it’s time for a change, a new direction. I’m excited and I can’t wait to see where I end up. You should stick around for the ride.