Xgineer Solutions, Inc

This weekend I was reading through some tech articles online trying to keep myself abreast of the latest and greatest in the tech world. I started to read about Dr. Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha – An invention that could change the internet forever. It’s touted as the program that will be more significant than Google. What a bold statement.

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Too many times I come across clients and potential clients that don’t know what they don’t know regarding how to approach building a web site or application. Not that it is completely their fault, this technology stuff can be pretty confusing, costly, and complicated. I wanted to simplify 3 basic things that you should know and consider when approaching a design or development firm for the first time.

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During these tough financial times I have found myself and others looking for new ways to make money. My friends and I have put together these bi-weekly think tanks of ideas that we would be able to do on the side and start making some of that extra money. Though, none of the money I receive now is extra.

Here are a few steps to get your idea group off the ground.

• Do what you’re passionate about: what are you collectively passionate about? Are your motivations philanthropic or profit driven? There are a lot of people to help out there now and some amazing opportunities.
• Have a central meeting place and set time that you adhere to every time. We meet every other week at a central location that provides a computer and a projector to do immediate research on idea’s that might come up.
• Set ground rules This is something that should be taken very seriously. There could be financial penalties or maybe the person that isn’t able to show up brings beers to the next meeting. No such thing as a bad idea, so on and so forth. (continue reading…)

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I saw that an old friend from High School (haven’t seen him since then, wow) was promoting his new corporate blog. The blog looked great but I thought I would share my thoughts as someone that has maybe a 6 month head start. Below is the email I sent to him giving some of my basic thoughts and a couple great links I keep in mind. Figured it may help out some others.

Hi Jason,

Glad you responded. I am actually working on my company’s blog as well and making sure that it s fresh and applicable. A couple of my own few tips:

• Know your audience or potential audience and cater to them specifically. Don’t be afraid to polarize
• Make sure that the content you write about is conversational. It should not read like another corporate site. It is an opportunity for you to be candid with your customers. (this was the biggest thing that I took away from my first look at your blog, basically corp content in a new medium.)
• Keep it clean – by clean I mean not too much stuff going on around the content. (I use wordpress as well and there is a lot of temptation to keep adding plug-ins because they’re so damn cool. I have gone overboard a couple times, I can’t help it. Then I try to scale back with the essentials)
• Write about your thoughts and take towards the item or industry. Blog is short for web log, like a journal. Interested parties can get the facts on your corporate site.
• The blog should spark dialogue. Write pieces that leave the readers wanting to answer another question and that’s when you get the really warm leads.
• Be patient, it won’t happen overnight. I am still waiting to find the right people I should be talking to
• Find 3 to 5 great blogs that you follow and emulate them. (I use google reader to consolidate my articles that I read, my favorites include dumblittleman, zen habits, seth godin, Guy Kawasaki) . there is a blog for everything out there these days
• That’s all I got off the top of my head

The following resources are just good articles on writing and producing blogs.

http://danblank.com/blog/2009/01/16/how-to-create-a-high-quality-blog/

http://writetodone.com/2008/11/06/branding-101-how-to-promote-your-blog-like-the-big-guys-do/

also look into twitter:

http://www.twitterbusinessbook.com/2009/01/17-reasons-your-business-should-be-on-twitter/

Hope this stuff helps. All the best.

Greg

If anyone else can offer some help feel free to contact me and I’d be happy to pass you along to Jason.

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