Up Market |
- Get Clear on These Three Things to Hire the Right Designer
- Communication Technology and the Information Value of Your Business
- You are / whatever you say / you are.
| Get Clear on These Three Things to Hire the Right Designer Posted: 27 May 2012 08:00 AM PDT
Design for business is meant to result in a clear and well-aligned piece of marketing, enabling you to bring in more customers and more money. In order for your designer to make something relevant and eminently useful for you to use in your marketing campaigns, you first need to give them enough to work with; because "I don't know, use your imagination," is not the path to effective visual design that is relevant for your business. 1. Purpose: what is the purpose of this piece of design? What function is it meant to perform? If you're having a logo designed, can you effectively communicate your brand's message? Consider what you have done up until now in your business and marketing, and what you plan to do in the future months and years. Think carefully about how you want your customers and future customers to perceive your business. If you're having product packaging designed, can you clearly describe the benefits and features of the product? Bring all the relevant marketing copy and vision for this product to your designer, giving them as much context as possible. If you're having a website designed or redesigned, can you bring a realistic vision of it to your designer? Create an outline of content, and think about the specific actions you want your customers to take when they visit your website. How much time do you want them to spend on it? How do you want them to interact with your business and your content? The clearer you can be here, the better chance your designer has of creating something both pertinent and amazing. 2. Context: where does this design piece fit into your marketing plan for this year and this quarter? Bringing your timeline, and the reasons you need a design piece in that time frame, is the best possible way to hire the right designer for your project. Without a concrete marketing plan that you can share with your designer, you cannot effectively use the piece you are hiring them to create. When I coach entrepreneurs and business owners, I advise them to plan their marketing at least a quarter in advance, so that they can see how the moving pieces will fit together, and see where and when to delegate tasks or hire a subcontractor to create some of what they need to accomplish that quarter's goals. 3. Budget: what is your expected ROI for this design project? Many times, a business owner will get so excited and passionate about the new product or service they want to offer that they fail to forecast the income they can expect when it's launched and ready for customers. As part of your planning and the design of your marketing around the new product or service, don't neglect the financial piece. How much can you expect to bring in, based on your previous experience and your actual customer behavior? How much should your budget for the design piece be, based on these numbers? When you know what your real budget is for a project, as well as your timeline and the purpose of the piece itself, you can easily communicate these three important things to any designer you are interested in hiring. What about you? What do you wish you had been clearer about, the last time you hired a designer? Please share in the comments! Photo Credit: Victor1558  |
| Communication Technology and the Information Value of Your Business Posted: 27 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT
However, as language skills evolve, the informational value of individual words goes down. The child goes on to recite words from memory, meaningless phrases, repeating herself (or repeating someone else) until it gets to a point where it can become more bothersome than special. Information theory and entropyAccording to information theory, surprising events with high entropy, like a tsunami, have high information value — whereas common events like "the sun will rise" have low informational value. We hear things in the news. Various events have different informational value or significance depending on who you are, where you are and what you are doing. Can we become good listeners and tune in to the relevant signals from under the noise? You-me entropyEntropy is thought to be coupled with the value of information. When there is high order of information (business like usual) the entropy is low. Also, when there is full chaos (static, spam, social noise) the entropy is also low. In business, entropy and the value of communication become high when we create valuable connections that amplify and create better opportunities. The communication challenge of a business owner is to search for the middle way, and create valuable communication for the business and its clients. Valuable communication has high entropy as its informational value is high. B to b or not to b?During the previous century, the telephone and transport (helicopters and jets) became valuable tools as they allowed for faster communication and decision making. Electronic communication (email and video calls) augmented the daily stride of business owners. Today, these simple but effective tools are available for use by almost anyone. Do we use them to create effective ties and communication? Social network communication has low entropy as it's mostly only about presence. Social network presence is highly automated, becomes easily predictable, and starts to repeat itself. Therefore, the value of that communication can become lower than the benefit you would expect to gain from it. In comparison, blogs and article marketing techniques seem to have a higher entropy value. Converting entropy to revenueIn the end, we are not so much different from the child who learned to talk and recite phrases. When entering a classroom that tends to be noisy we are left to our listening skills to create meaningful conversation and meaningful connection. Even the guys in the back row create ties as they might become friends for life. The goal of any business communication strategy is to create strong meaningful ties and help the other business owner or client realize their goals. All this is regardless of communication medium. Photo Credit: Viajar24h.com  |
| You are / whatever you say / you are. Posted: 27 May 2012 02:00 AM PDT
(Or maybe he's completely wrong, because he's suggesting that his identity is whatever other people say he is – so why argue with others, and just accept your identity as defined by others?) For the purposes of this post, I can't get this idea out of my head: that I am whatever I say I am. And what we say about ourselves matters. Sometimes our cognitive frameworks (put simply: our minds), get in the way of who we really are. I'll use running as a short example. For a long time, I said to myself “I want to be a runner” – I jogged and I huffed and I puffed, and I iced my knees and went back to swimming and looked longingly at the smooth runners pounding the pavement throughout San Francisco and gliding easily up and down the hills through the Presidio. I dabbled in running, I took long breaks, and I never got past the "jogging" phase. For a while. Then, somehow, I started running more and I would find myself making time for 6- and 8-mile runs and actually liking them. By all standards, I was a "runner." And yet when people would ask me if I was a runner, I would brush the thought aside, quickly dismissing it by saying: "I'm not a runner … I'm training to be, but I'm not a runner." In some regards, adopting new personal identities takes as much effort and training in the mind as it does physical training. It takes a lot of time before we acknowledge within ourselves that we are what we do. "How long do we have to train before we become ourselves?" Then, I finished my first half marathon – and yet I still I didn't picture myself as a runner. Despite having run 13.1 miles through the hills of San Francisco, I still declined to acknowledge my status as a "runner." Somehow in my brain, I couldn't put "me" and "runner" together in the same schema. My Dad, once a great runner, finally had to correct me: He said, You know Sarah, you ran a half marathon. I think you can call yourself a runner now. Our minds can be slow to accept the changes that happen so readily at our fingertips. Sometimes I still feel like the nervous, awkward girl from my teens and I wonder if I'm really capable of the vast amounts of responsibility and increasing autonomy in front of me. I won't lie: sometimes I'm scared sh*tless by what there is ahead of me. I feel like my dreams are still "out there," — and it takes time to switch my brain over to the idea that somehow already I've attained some of my dreams, and that life – and my goals – are expanding out in front of me. And that, through careful, repeated, steady progress, I can – and will – become better than I am today. To what extent do we limit what we're capable of simply by not believing in our own abilities? On several occasions, I've surprised myself in doing better than I thought I was capable of. I didn't believe I could finish six miles at the end of a triathlon – and then I did it. I didn't think I could run 13 miles – and then I did it. The question, then, is: what are we capable of? More importantly, what are we capable of beyond what we imagine we can do? What sorts of things can we do, if we actually allow ourselves the possibilities to dream? It wasn't that I couldn't do it – it was that I thought I couldn't do it. There's a distinct difference – and to sell yourself short of your abilities by not believing in yourself is a terrible waste. What are you not doing simply because you think you can't do it? Excellence rarely exceeds expectations, my coach always taught me. By the time you've attained a goal, your mind will be seeking new ventures and tasks to tackle. You won't realize how quickly you're growing until you've already surpassed some of your earlier expectations. Despite proving to myself that I was now capable of running further and further distances, I kept pushing the boundaries of a"runner identity" further from my reach, not reconciling this state of being with who I was becoming. I was limiting myself by dreaming too small. *** Three months later, I have another confession to make: Much like I never considered myself a runner, I've also never considered myself a writer. I didn't realize that I wanted to be a writer even after I left school and (somewhat sheepishly, I must admit) – I found that I missed writing papers. I wrote inordinantly long emails to friends and drafted papers about topics that had no audiences. I wrote aimlessly in notebooks and spiral bounds and in the margins of books. I taped Post-It notes on pages in magazines with ideas about how I would respond to the authors. I had anonymous conversations with myself, in my head, and imagined ideas for possible stories and fiction books. On long drives, runs, swims, and bus rides, I found myself crafting stories and books in my head. I dreamed about writing books and short stories, but was too busy with my "work" and "career" to actually focus on writing. Somehow, I started a blog in order to let myself keep writing. My friends in the design world (and I love design, by the way) think I'm crazy for wanting to write so much. It was a bit aimless, I'll admit, but the pull and tug to keep writing was there. Somehow, I was marching along a path that I knew I had to travel. A year or two after graduate school, I found myself in a long conversation with a good friend and mentor, and I said: You know, I think I finally know what I want to be when I grow up: I want to be a writer. She looked at me with a funny look on her face: You ARE a writer, she said. And again, I found myself subject to the same "closed-mind" problem as before. How much of who we are is limited by the way we think about ourselves? Are we much more capable than we admit, or even dare to dream? How long does it take – and how many examples does it take – to become convinced that we are, in fact, what we do? Who are you? Who do you want to be? And who is it that you say you are? This is important. Are you what others say you are? Or are you what you say you are? More importantly – do you dream big and admit your capabilities to yourself? Today, it is with pride that I stand up and admit – to me (and to you): I don't want to be a writer someday. I AM a writer. And I freaking love it. ___ What's your biggest, scariest dream? How would you describe yourself, if no one were really paying attention? Leave your answer in the comments below. I'd love to hear your dreams – and maybe even cheer you on along the way!  |
When hiring a designer to create graphics for you – whether it's a new or updated website, an ebook cover, an ad banner, or a logo – the most important thing for you, as the business owner, to bring to the table is a clear business direction.
When a child recites her first words — "Mom," "Dad," "Woof woof," "Potato" — the informational value of these words is high. They are the child's first words! She continues on to recite phrases. For a parent, these are special moments.
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