A good friend recently mentioned to me that one day he would like to start his own business…to be his own boss and do his own thing.

Having been in the business start-up/growth phase for some time now I offered him some advice on the subject. I told him that in my opinion, the hardest part of growing a business from scratch was learning to operate without a road map. Learning how to make your own decisions about what to do and how to best use your time.

After thinking about this for a few days, I’d like to amend my statement. The hardest part about building a business is not learning how to work without a road map, it’s defining and maintaining your vision.

Chimney Rock

Last summer the family and I vacationed in Colorado. The last part of the trip entailed visiting some family living in Durango. On a stretch of east/west highway between Pagosa Springs and Durango you’ll drive through the Southern Ute Indian Reservation. Driving either direction you can’t help but notice a huge rocky land formation to the south of the highway. You can see it for miles. It’s the most significant landscape in an environment full of significant landscapes.

This rocky outcrop I learned, is called Chimney Rock. The site was home to the ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians 1,000 years ago and is of great spiritual significance to these and many other native tribes. Generations of native peoples visited this place from far and wide and many took up permanent residence in its shadows.

Do you think that the native people always knew about Chimney Rock? Do you think they always knew about its presence and its exact location? No. I’d guess not.

Chimney Rock had to have been discovered by somebody. Some enterprising brave or nomadic tribe probably saw it from a distance and said, “I don’t know what that is, but I’m going there. I don’t know what lies between me and it, but I’m going there.”

What’s this Have to do with Business?

The ancient natives didn’t have a road map to Chimney Rock. But they had a vision. They saw a beacon in the distance and said, “I’m going there.”

The same is true in business. Once the vision or end goal is defined, the path to get there, the steps you need to take to accomplish your goal really become self-apparent.

Now keep in mind that self-apparent does not necessary mean easy. But when you know where you want to go, when you have a destination in mind, the tasks necessary to get there become more clear.

What am I Supposed to do Now?

I ask myself this question a lot. At least once a day.

You see the easy part about having a job is that there is always someone there to tell you what to do. Someone is there to say, “More of this. Less of that. Quit wasting time doing that activity.”

Building a business is different. No one is there to tell you what to do.

I think that when you’re uncertain about what to do, the underlying cause is usually a loss of vision. A temporary lapse in where you’re at with respect to the big picture.

Vision Comes First

The next time this happens, the next time I’m uncertain about what to do, I’ll take a minute to reflect on what it is I’m trying to accomplish. I’ll think about Chimney Rock and then hopefully, even though I won’t know exactly how I’m going to get there, I’ll be reminded that “there it is…and I’m going there.”

Talking is easy….

Promising is easy….

Doing is hard!

The World Needs More Do-ers

To borrow a phrase from raffles across the world…you must be present to win. This is the rule for winning competing in the social media sphere. The old Ron Popeil tagline of “Set it and forget it” doesn’t suffice in the new social space.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and even your corporate or personal blog are strategies not solutions I’m afraid too many people still view social media tools as one-and-done answer rather than just a piece of the entire puzzle.

But Wait…There’s More!

I had a conversation with a colleague the other day about how to best promote the current project he is working on. In keeping with my view of things I suggested a strategy that involved using a corporate blog to position himself as an expert in the field. His response was that it wasn’t possible to establish a voice amongst all the other experts in the field and all the other noise on the Internet.

My answer: Bullshit!

It Takes Work

If all you do is create a blog and never post, then yes…your voice will get lost. If all you do is create a new Twitter account, Facebook page or Google+ Business page and never participate, then yes…you’ll drown in the noise. But if you’re willing to put in some time and effort, you can succeed.

Some time ago I put together a social media strategy for a client I was working for. Below is a modified version of that strategy that can be used by any small business or person looking to establish a social media footprint. I’m happy to share this with you.

A Social Media Strategy

1. Determine Your Goal(s)
   • Create awareness about company project/services?
   • Solicit new business?
   • Attract new talent/employees?
   • Engage community?
2. Assign one person in the organization to be responsible for maintaining the social media efforts. Make adding updates and maintaining social a part of that person’s job responsibilities but be careful not to assign success metrics as a function of job performance (i.e. person should not get in trouble if Page does not have 5,000 ‘likes’ in 3 months)
3. Give person executive sponsor (a person in management that supports the cause). All questions regarding propriety and permissions should be directed to executive sponsor.
4. Create posting schedule and stick to it. For example, at least two updates a week.
5. Updates should be 90% sharing/caring and 10% self-promotion
6. Mix up content types. Content types are:
   • “How-To” articles (related to industry technologies)
   • News articles (about industry topics/trends…NOT the company)
   • Opinion articles (about industry news, regulations, new technologies…)
   • Review articles (about new technologies or products)
   • List Posts (i.e 10 ways to… or 7 tricks to…)
   • Interview Posts (video, audio or transcribed)
   • Other multimedia (related YouTube videos or relevant podcasts)
7. Create an update schedule. Using the 7 content types above, take a few hours one day to think about 4 possible articles for each content type (for example, 4 “how-to” articles, 4 people to interview, 4 products or technologies to review, etc.) Doing this will result in 28 article ideas. If posting twice a week this will be enough content for over 3 months (14 weeks)
8. Company content updates are:
   • Job postings (posted as often as necessary)
   • Company related news (only 10% of updates should be company news)
9. Original articles should be written and hosted on company website/blog. Updates should be posted on third party social media sites and linked back to article source on company site.
10. Articles should be written for different audiences (i.e. more technical for business-to-business or less technical for business-to-consumer)
11. Encourage employees, vendors and customers to ‘like’, ‘retweet’, ‘add to circles’ etc.
12. Integrate social buttons on website for sharing and data-tracking.

Now What?

Here’s the blueprint..get to work. No more excuses. The lesson here is that social media takes work but it produces results. You can’t dial it in. You can’t set it and forget it. You must be present to win.

1. Share Your Desktop – Join.Me is a great desktop sharing tool. It doesn’t require an account (who needs another login and password right?) so you can literally start sharing is just seconds. Great tool for troubleshooting the computer problems of clients and relatives.
2. Cool Photoshop Action Filters – Sometimes I suffer from Mac envy. Lately it’s been the cool pics I see from Instagram. Here are some neat Photoshop actions that will mimic the cool effects you see on Instagram photos. I’m sure the same effects can be created with other image editing software…but if you’ve got Photoshop, why not grab it?
3. Color Inspiration – This color scheme picker is great for designing new websites, PowerPoint presentations or anything else that requires a multi-color approach. My favorite part is the ‘light page’ and ‘dark page’ examples in the preview pane.
4. Pimp your Twitter Background… – and other things. A collection of great (free) downloads from ‘Fuel Your Creativity’ to get your social sites/profiles rockin’.
5. Chrome Web Store – I’m this close to ditching my long love FireFox completely for Chrome. It’s just a great browser. Don’t believe me? Check out this link for all the cool extensions and add-ons available.

What about you? See any good links this week?

Balance?………..Yin and Yang?………….Symmetry?………….Is it real?……………Is it crap?

What do you think?

1. Microsoft Releases IE9 – Microsoft released version 9 of the popular Internet Explorer browser. To be honest I try to use IE as little as possible but whenever a new version comes out I always update just for security purposes (for when I have to use it). I’m sure this release is full of cool features but don’t look here for reviews. If you are an IE user, you should update now.
2. Mozilla Releases Firefox 4 – Another browser release. I’m a little more excited about this as FF is my default browser. There seems to be a lot of cool new features in addition to more security. I’m anxious to try out the tab groups feature.
3. How to add Cufon to your Website – I talked about cufon in an earlier post. This tutorial helped me understand what it is and how it works.
4. Chunk Five Roman ‘Cufonized’ – This site is where I got the script I needed to add special characters to my Chunk Five cufon font. From this link click on ‘Cufon Kit Download’ tab, select which character sets you want and click ‘Font Download as cufon. This will save the necessary .js file to your computer that you need to add to your site. Easy, peasy.
5. Add Skills to your LinkedIn Profile – I got this link in a post on Mashable’s blog. It is a way to add skills to your LinkedIn profile. Type in a skill or certification in the search box. Once you find a skill you can click the ‘Add Skill’ to add that skill to your public profile. It also has a handy recommendations tool that shows you related skills that you might not have thought of. It will be interesting to track what SEO implications this might have.

What about you? See any good links this week?

On March 13th, UCLA political science student Alexandria Wallace uploaded a rant to YouTube about Asian students disrupting life on the UCLA campus. Her complaints were numerous and perhaps even valid, but her methodology left much to be desired. I’m sure poor Alexandria didn’t have a clue that her musings would cause such a stir, but a stir it was (see a copy/re-post of her rant here).

On March 15th, in response to the original rant, singer/songwriter Jimmy Wong posted this video:

There’s a lot going on here. First, Alexandria. I don’t know this girl, but I’m positive that if she would have known the extent of the controversy she was about to cause, she would have never posted that video. But, being a 20-something digital native in this day-and-age she had to have known the possibility that her rant would have gone viral.

It is being reported that her original video had more than 5 million views before being taken down. But the damage was done. Done to the extent that she has announced she will be leaving UCLA due to the volume and nature of threats she has received.

Now take Jimmy and his response. No violent threats. No reciprocal bigotry or ignorant taunts (although a healthy dose of sarcasm is detected in is opening speech). No screaming or yelling. Just a kid and his music (and a clever little ditty at that).

Jimmy’s video “Ching Chong (It Means I Love You),” has gotten over 1.8 million views since it posted on March 15 and has received overwhelmingly positive reviews on both YouTube and iTunes launching him into Internet stardom.

Two videos, one topic, same medium, two completely different outcomes. One kid becomes a pariah to an entire culture and the other an Internet rockstar.

The Lesson For Us

1. Think before you post – You may be upset and you may be justified in being upset, but please think before you post something on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else on the Internet. There is no ‘unpublish’ button.
2. A response can make you or break you – If a person complains about your company, product or service; how you respond will almost certainly dictate the outcome. Jimmy used humor. It may not work for you, but I’m positive that reciprocal ignorance will not win back your customer.

What do you think? How would you have responded?

Yea, that’s what I thought too. Chances are good that if you’re not into website design or development you’ll never come across cufon. And chances are also good that even if you are into web development you might never come across cufon.

But since I am into site design and development and since I did| encounter cufon, I thought it was cool enough to share with the rest of you. So what exactly is cufon?

In my most basic understanding, cufon is a text replacement tool. More specifically, cufon is a font replacement tool since the actual text is not altered. It is useful for web designers who want to use fonts that are not web safe and do not want to use a image to display text.

Font replacement tools are not new. Cufon is an newer alternative to sIFR. I have not ever used sIFR but my research tells me that between the two, advantage goes to cufon since it is easier to use. Also, since cufon is javascript based and sIFR is Flash based, cufon text should display just fine on mobile Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad.

Where can I see cufon?

Check out the title of this post. That is a ‘cufonized’ font. In fact, that’s how I learned about cufon. Last Friday I wrote a post called Five Links for Friday #1. After I published the post I looked at the title. Here is what I saw:

In the title of my post I knew I put a number sign in there. But why wasn’t is showing up on the page (see red arrow)? Searching for the answer lead me to cufon. A fix here and a fix there and we now have:

Much better.

So what does the non-cufonized title look like? Check this out:

See how the font is different? The font you see in this image is a web-safe Arial font. The font you see in the first two examples (and the active font used in the rest of my posts) is a non-web-safe font called Chunk Five. When the page loads, a short script is executed that replaces the Arial font with the same text using the Chunk Five font. The end result is that you see a nicer looking website.

So what is the point?

Simple answer: design. My first thought was that this would be useful for displaying logos as text. However, after thinking about it for a bit, logos are probably not the target solution because (1) logo text is usually short and can be added in the ‘alt’ tag property and (2) logos usually contain graphics other than text.

I don’t think it would be good for paragraph text. I say this because looking at the source code of post-cufonized text, there seems to be a lot of overhead involved. Long blocks of text could take a long time to re-image as the cufonized version and people visiting your site could get tired of waiting.

My guess is that cufonized text is probably best suited for headings (like on this site). In a heading situation we might want a little more design than regular font but don’t want to take the time to create an image every time we create another heading. Cufon is a great solution for this.

Every Friday I’m going to share five links with you that I encountered in the previous week. Some will be helpful, some will be funny, others just things that I found interesting. I hope you enjoy.

1. Encrypt your web browsing session – This comes via Gina Trapani at Lifehacker. With wireless hotspots becoming more and more ubiquitous you need to keep yourself safe when using open networks (there are a lot of baddies out there). Protect yourself when using open networks by connecting securely to a trusted network.
2. Set up SSH Server for Windows Server 2003 – SSH isn’t native to Windows so I installed the SSH package using Cygwin on my client PC (laptop running Windows 7). That install was pure vanilla but my server PC (running Windows Server 2003) required a little more configuring. This tutorial walked me through the process.
3. A Declaration of Cyber War – The Stuxnet Story – Unless you live under a rock you probably heard about the Stuxnet worm that targeted the nuclear “power plants” in Iran. This story from Vanity Fair provides an in-depth review of the event and offers some insights and theories on who might have been behind the attack. It’s a really good read.
4. Simple Shell Scripting Guide – I just installed the latest Ubuntu release on a broke-ass Windows computer in my office. I wanted to run a script at startup and forgot how to write a simple shell script. This tutorial helped jog my memory.
5. Add Microsoft fonts to Ubuntu – After the Ubuntu install I started browsing the web and noticed a lot of sites not looking quite right (including my own). Guess what? Microsoft fonts don’t come pre-packaged in Ubuntu. What are Microsoft fonts? Impact, Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman…pretty much the main fonts everyone uses and doesn’t think twice about. This tutorial walked me through installing the MS font package on Ubuntu.

These were a little tech-heavy but that’s what I’ve been up to this week. Five more links coming at you next Friday.

Not too long ago I was talking with a colleague who had just returned from an industry convention. I am not part of nor in any way related to this particular industry, but to put it politely, I would say that the majority of the members in this industry do not exactly fit into the “early adopter” category as it relates to technology and social media.

During the course of our conversation he mentioned something akin to the following, “I need to get the business on Facebook. All the vendors and all the speakers were talking about Facebook. The business will really grow once I get it on Facebook.“

“What do you expect to happen once you get the business on Facebook?” I asked.

Silence……….”What do you mean?” he said.

I replied, “How do you plan on using Facebook to grow your business?”

More silence.

Presence is not a Solution

Solutions are the result of good strategies and good strategies require the proper application of the proper tools. Facebook is not a solution. Twitter is not a solution. YouTube is not a solution. Shiny new object is not a solution.

I imagine this type of thinking (i.e. platforms as solutions) happens quite a bit to people who don’t fully understand the landscape. A while ago I wrote a post titled: Should I be using Twitter? In it I wrote:

I love this analogy because it really drives home the idea of platforms as tools NOT platforms as solutions.

So how should you proceed?

Everything Begins with Goals

First, set your goals. No, excuse me, set your specific and quantifiable goals. (Hint: “grow the business” and “make more money” are not specific and quantifiable goals.) Once you have goals then you start to draw up a plan or strategy to achieve those goals. Questions in strategy design include, ‘How are we going to accomplish this?’ and ‘What tools should we use to do that?’ If certain tools help you execute your strategy then you should use them.

Let’s go back to my friend in the earlier example. Like many, he learned of some folks enjoying varying degrees of success with social media and was eager to get in, to get noticed and to get the phone to ring with new business. The problem with this approach is that it’s not a plan. It’s not a strategy. There was no end-goal in mind. And just ‘being there’ will not make the phone ring.

I said it before but I think it bears repeating: Solutions are the result of good strategies and good strategies require the proper application of the proper tools.

What about you? Are your solutions lacking strategies? Do you see platforms as tools or platforms as solutions?