MISTAKE #1

Not listening to that inner voice that says, “The time is now!” Despite ever-sophisticated analytics, tell-tale advisors and detailed market reports, I often find the most accurate predictor of what to do, when, is intuition. Unfortunately intuition only works when you respond to its alarm bell. Case in point: we had plans to build four Eat Media tools/products this year for our newly created Lab section. Two of the ideas I sketched out almost 3 years ago. At the beginning of the year, intuition kicked me in the ass, saying, “Time to get started on those projects, Ian,” but my “urgent” list of projects (vs. my “important” list) kept me from completing them.

Here are the results of that waiting:

Project 1 #fail – Three days after buying the URL Slangr.com, the awesome Muledesign launched Unsuck-it.com.

Project 2 #fail – 3 weeks prior to launching Calcium (our vetted conference calendar), Lanyrd.com was launched.

Lesson learned: Ideas are worth very little without prompt and proper execution.

MISTAKE #2

Not bringing up pricing early enough in the conversation(s) Historically we have had 4-5 exchanges (including email and meetings) prior to discussing pricing with clients. Any time a prospective client brought a project/problem to the table I got giddy and immediately started thinking of ways to make things better and then double better. Often this entailed a boatload of research, tests, comps and even sample content. We had more than one occasion in 2010, where I rocked all-nighters and tasked staff with work that I filed under the line item of “research” which really should have been under the line item of  “after we cash the deposit.” On one hand, I think we are going to land every client and love finding the solution(s). On the other hand, a solution that doesn’t fit the client’s budget doesn’t solve the client’s problem.

For 2011 we are testing Sliderocket for proposals as well as Proposable. Addtionally, we now discuss price at 2nd, or at the latest, 3rd contact with the client.

Lesson learned: Not providing pricing as early as possible is unfair to us and the prospective client.

MISTAKE #3

Not being able to reel in the best talent For the past 4 years I have art directed most of visual design and/or comps for our clients, but we reached a point at the beginning of 2010 where in order for the agency to grow we needed (still need) to hire people with more talent so that Britta and I can focus on other parts of the business. We entirely underestimated how scarce great (available) talent is in NYC; especially in the web design and front-end development world. To make things exponentially more difficult, we were/are looking for a FT, in-house web design/developer combo which the esteemed UX/CS Karen McGrane told me was like “hunting for unicorns.” We saw this need coming a year prior and should have started putting out feelers in 2009. The days of placing an ad and getting hundreds of applicants has gone the way of the animated .gif.

We are now offering hiring bonuses, referral bonuses and developing a GEO location campaign to lure talent to our agency.

Lesson learned: Craigslist is a waste of time to capture real talent. All our talented friends were snapped up 3-4 years ago.

MISTAKE #4

We should have expanded beyond content strategy/development two years ago Very early on in our business, Britta and I realized that we would, at some point, need to become a full-fledged agency. Since that is a tough sell out of gate, we decided to start with content development/strategy, build up our portfolio and then expand. Some amazing clients kept us very busy with content development/strategy early on but the desire to provide [content-first] design, development and ideation services was driving us. Why didn’t we move faster? Things were good, our staff at the time probably wasn’t as ready for that shift as we were, and frankly I think we were afraid to rock the boat. In retrospect, we should have bellied up to the table sooner and built the business we wanted. Our clients would have been better for it and we would be closer to becoming the agency we envisioned more than 5 years ago.

Lesson learned: Be flexible but follow your original vision. Sacrifice is more than a bad Elton John tune.

MISTAKE #5

The (client/agency) love is gone Half-way through 2010, we let one of our biggest clients go. It was both a very difficult decision and an absolutely necessary one. Unfortunately it was a business decision we should have made at the end of 2009. After more than 3 years working with this client, we hit a massive change management wall and became little more than executors. Two month projects were dragged out over the course of six months. Conference calls had become bloated and unproductive and our strategy and creative services were lost in the mire of middle management approvals and proposal re-dos. We stayed on mostly due to an amazing relationship with our lead contact, but at some point it was clear that we had both lost the love. It happens, we were a small agency in a huge company that regularly burns through small agencies. We had a good ride. Problem was we had so many projects with them it was very difficult to untangle our operations, project management and culture from them. In the end we parted gracefully(ish) and the breathing room helped us finally expand our business (see Mistake #4).

Lesson learned: Once you are no longer getting paid for your ideas, strategy and creative, the clock starts ticking. Loudly.

These are my confessions of a growing agency. What were your 2010 mistakes?

—Ian

@eatmedia

Like this article? Check out the Top 5 Mistakes I made in 2009, one of which should be the orange headers.)

Since 2006, our belief has remained steadfast—content and content strategy should help shape user experience, and all experiences (digital and print) should dutifully serve business objectives.

Now, after 4+ years of providing content solutions to clients, it feels natural (almost obligatory) to put our money where our mouth is and provide a comprehensive solution that includes a broader scope of services.

We believe companies have grown tired of working with multiple practices/agencies who don’t know how communicate with one another.

Which is why we’ve spent the last 6 months expanding our services and rebranding Eat Media as a [content-first] Design | Development | Ideation agency.

In addition to our content strategy, content development and content management services, we are now providing [content-first] solutions in the following areas:

• Web Design/Development
• iPad/iPhone Development
• Print-to-Web Integration
• Application Development/Product Strategy
• Consulting/Tailored Workshops

Bring us your problems.

You’ll love our solutions.

—Ian

@eatmedia

If you are going to send a holiday card out to your customers that:

• Has no personalization whatsoever
• Is signed by a computer attempting to look like a real signature
• Is signed by your entire staff with no personal message
• Does not offer any value in terms of a gift, discount, useful information, an update about how your company is donating part of its profits to charity, or at least something to make me laugh
• (A sentimental statement about the holidays does not count as adding value)

Then please reconsider sending a corporate holiday card in the first place.

It’s generic and makes us feel bad for the trees, which doesn’t make us feel good about you.

Thanks.

P.S. My holidays are about these guys, not my State Farm insurance agent.

Not sure if you’ve noticed, but non-media sites are moving away from multiple departments of homepage content and focusing on clean pages with a simple call to action (CTA). The reason — enlightenment.

In the race to become relevant and trustworthy, many brands have taken “becoming a publisher” out of context and are now following a breadcrumb trail back to reality.

I can understand why:

- Change management is a bear

- Content is tactile

- The concept of “more” usually aligns with “better.”

The problem with “more” as a tactic is that it lacks humility and has a faulty, self-preserving feedback loop. Quite often we over-strategize, we forget that no matter how well-researched our plans are, users will interact with our projects in ways we hadn’t imagined.

Overall, the tactic of producing more content to engage users and produce more sales somewhere down the road is both true and untrue. The true—you may get more content indexed and thereby lead people back to your site. The untrue—this does little to nothing to help keep your users on your site.

Most content marketing/strategy of this type is “traffic content” rather than “trust content.” In order to produce trust-based content, you need to work in concert with other practices. In order to produce traffic-based content, you need some keywords. Big difference.

I recently spoke to a serial startup entrepreneur and he told me that his email splash pages collected between 10-20k emails prior to launch. The content: a one-page site, logo, hed, sub-hed and a well designed form.

Did his network help? For sure. Did his experience and past success help? Yep. But what was most effective? Having the CTA be the most important element on the page.

I’m not here to say we don’t need more content but rather that we don’t need MORE CONTENT! Instead, we should be focused on balancing the types of content (trust, traffic, informational, CTA) we create and being more holistic about how and why we produce content.

When you strip away all the practices you are left with:

-Identifying and understanding your audience/goals/message

-Balancing originality and usefulness

-Selecting and implementing the proper technology/design

-Getting real about what kind of ongoing content you can truly sustain

Only after you lock these items down should you firm up your content strategy and let the writers loose. Don’t buy into the myth of more.

—Ian

To us, building a magazine is like building a house. Here’s how to go from vision to finished product in 5 (not necessarily easy) steps.

Step 1. Survey the landscape
Discovery

The very first step in any redesign is discovery: collecting everything you can get your hands on about the existing magazine, the audience and your competitors.

This includes:

• Competitive review: What are other magazines in your space doing well? What about magazines who aren’t direct competitors but who serve a similar audience?
• Research: Gather all info your company has (from focus groups, surveys, interviews, reader feedback, your most tenured employees, etc.) and begin to put together the “redesign story.”
• Audience: Define the audience and what they want from your magazine. What do they love about the existing magazine? What are its biggest limitations from their pov? Hopefully you have some solid data to work with. If not, you should be signing up for SurveyMonkey pronto. Remember to question everything: is your key audience really who your marketing director says it is?  Is it statistically possible that 90% of your 20,000 readers are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies? Hmm…
• Gameplan: Define objectives, get everyone to agree on these objectives, and build a strategy to meet those objectives. Since we’re talking about corporate magazines here, be sure you’re clued in to any other big campaigns, upcoming redesigns, etc. that may be happening currently with your launch date.

Look, we know you’re in a rush, but this is one of the most important steps to launching a successful redesign. Anybody can make a pretty magazine. Doing it with strategy and intention requires research.

Step 2. Sketch out your blueprint
Create content departments + magazine architecture

Based on what you learn from Step 1, you can now begin to build content departments (i.e. recurring sections and columns…think of your favorite sections in the magazines you read regularly) and plot out the overall flow of the magazine. The goal is to be meaningful—and determining what will be meaningful to readers will come partly from your discovery, and partly from trial and error.

Tip: Plan to survey your audience after the redesign launches, and again after 2 or 3 issues depending on your frequency. Readers are notoriously resistant to change, which is why you want to survey them twice before you even think about redesigning your redesign. Remember all the backlash that happens any time Facebook launches a redesign? Most of those protesters probably can’t even remember what their beloved older Facebook site looked like.

Another tip: If you are under the gun to produce an issue before the redesign is complete, you can begin the editorial phase of your next issue once step 2 is completed. With all your new content departments in place and the space allotted for each piece of content, your editor can begin assigning stories. Hooray!

Step 3. Break out the colored pencils
Design concepting

Ideally, your designer will present three unique design directions. For a magazine, each design direction will typically include:

• A cover treatment
• Table of contents
• A department or two
• And possibly a sample feature spread

From here, the team selects one design direction (typically with some tweaks) and you are able to move to the next phase.

Tip: If you’re the kind of organization (you know who you are) who gets hung up on the microscopic details, by all means give your designer images and sample text from an earlier issue to work with. Or use all lorem ipsum. Because the last thing you need is a marketing manager or CEO getting hung up on the incorrect treatment of a product name when you are only supposed to be looking at design concepts.

Step 4. Hammers and nails—construction begins
Design fine-tuning and building interior pages

Once the selected design direction is fine-tuned to everyone and their second cousin’s happiness, you can begin building interior pages (with “dummy,” or stand-in, copy). These pages will act as a template for the production designer once you are working with “live” (real) copy and images.

Several style guide details are worked out in this important phase, such as how footers are handled, what the rules are for headline and subhed treatments, whether photo captions are italicized or bolded, how you are handling calls to action, etc. These are all the hundreds of little details that will make your magazine polished and professional. Most readers won’t notice these details—unless they are sloppy and inconsistent.

Step 5. Certificate of Occupancy: You are now ready to move in
Deliver print template and style guide

This is when the art director tidies up their design files and hands them off to a production designer (the person who will actually be producing each issue of the magazine). If your art director is a freelancer, you’ll want to make sure he/she reviews the files with your production designer and editor, and is available for questions as issues pop up during production.

You, the client, will want to expect some deviation from the templates, since story structures and lengths may change once you’re working with live, edited text. Also, you may not get the dream photography the art director envisioned on a particular column, and your production designer will need to adjust the layout according to reality.

All caveats aside, you are now ready to begin laying out a real issue. Take your team out for a beer.

Eat Media Window Quotes: Fall 2010

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing you will be successful.” — Albert Schweitzer	“Appearance is the summary of phenomena.” — Joesph Brodsky
“Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.” — John Cage	“Clarity of purpose trumps knowledge” – C. Christensen
“Brands (and stories) no longer have room for yes-men or yes-agencies.” — Ian	“In a start-up no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.” — Steven Gary Blank
“Listening is active, a form of communication to be trained rather than presumed.” — Primo Levi	“Positioning your company as ‘World’s Best’ leaves little room for improvement. No one is that good. Least of all a company that has to say it.” — Ian

—Ian

From my former MFA writing instructor, Robin Hemley, author of Do Over!: In which a 48-year-old father of three returns to kindergarten, summer camp, the prom, and other embarrassments.

Robin Hemley sent a message to the members of Friends of Do-Over!

October 1, 2010 at 10:57am

Subject: Thanks and Goodbye!

Hi All:

My kind and enthusiastic neice has made a fan page for me in advance of dissolving this Facebook Group. I’m not sure what a fan page means for me. Maybe in my dotage I’ll occasionally look at my fan page and remark, “Wow, will you look at that?! Eighteen fans!” Maybe not. More to the point, I’m not sure what “liking” me on my new fan page will mean to you. Will there be a certain glow about you that others will remark on? “Why Helen (if that’s your name), you’re looking so youthful these days!” You must have pressed the ‘Like’ button on Robin Hemley’s fan page.” Unfortunately, I don’t think that my fan page will make an appreciable difference in your everyday life, but if you’re so moved to “like” me, then yes, you will make my make my coming years in the Old Folks Home pleasant ones indeed. Regardless, I want to truly (which sounds better than “sincerely” a word that always strikes me as insincere) thank you for being a part of this group and for supporting my book, Do Over!

My best to you and YOUR fan pages. May you never be “unliked.”

Robin

P.S. You can fan him here.

Yesterday I was driving past Sarasota’s military academy just as school was letting out for the day. Swarms of teenagers in drab, unbecoming olive uniforms descended upon Orange Avenue, heading for the buses or for home as fast as they could. Amidst the chaos, a beautiful girl sat on the lawn, peacefully strumming her ukelele. There was bright sunlight and a light breeze and everything. It would have made the perfect photo.

—Wendy Joan

When you work in the world of media, and take pride in your extracurricular reading on writing for the web, not being able to access information on a web site can be embarrassing, to say the least.

But that’s what happened yesterday when I signed up for an account at ETS.org (Educational Testing Service) to dig up the score for a standardized test I took nearly two years ago.

Here’s the sign-up screen:

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Easy enough to create an account, right? Here’s what happened:

After creating my account and logging in, I searched for my test results using an appointment number issued at the time I registered (thank you, Gmail). Error message. I entered and re-entered this code, along with my email address and test date. Nothing. According to the records, I never took this test.

I called up the automated line to order my score report by telephone. Knowing that the appointment number wasn’t working correctly, I searched for my test results by my social security number. Again, there wasn’t a record in my name. And, instead of being transferred to a customer service rep, the line automatically disconnected me.

I called back, and spoke to a customer service representative. Though she couldn’t actually provide me with the information I needed, she reluctantly clued me in on why I couldn’t locate my test scores. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t exist in the system, it was that my profile information did not match the information I submitted when registering:

• I didn’t enter my full first name, which is Wendy Joan. But, because the first name field specified, “Do not include special characters or spaces,” I entered “Wendy.”
• I entered my current mailing address, not the address I lived at when I registered for the test. Two years ago.

In Letting Go of the Words, Janice (Ginny) Redish offers seven steps to understanding your audience:

1. List your major audiences
2. Gather information about your audiences
3. List major characters for each audience
4. Gather your audiences’ questions, tasks and stories
5. Use your information to create personas
6. Include the person’s goals and tasks
7. Use your information to write scenarios for your site

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Though there are quite a few things wrong with ETS’ account sign up—in part due to the “secure nature” of test results—the site’s creators could benefit from gathering more information about their audiences and creating personas.

“You can start to understand your audiences by thinking about them,” writes Redish. “But that’s not enough. To really understand who they are, why they come, what they need and how to write web content for them, you have to know them and their realities.”

ETS offers a range of academic assessment tests for high education. We can assume that the majority of ETS’ audience range from teenagers to young professionals just starting out in their career. They have no likely purchased a home. It is even more likely that their mailing address changes every one to two years. Surely I can’t be the only frustrated user out there?

—Wendy Joan