12 more expert sources

Here are a few more resources that SF IABC's independent communicators consult when they need expert guidance:

Harvard University Libraries
...recently consulted for info on behavioral finance (!)

The New York Times Archives
...use it as your homepage

.gov Image Search
...for public domain images

Google define: word
...for a selection of definitions from authoritative sources

The Visual Thesaurus
...see word associations in a Thinkmap

1-800-GOOG-411
...free directory assistance to find business locations and phone numbers

U.S. Patent & Trademark Office TESS
...use the Trademark Electronic Search System to find trademarks in use

Google Alerts
...for a free daily/weekly news clipping service

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
...for the latest web standards, guidelines and tutorials

Society of Professional Journalists Freelance Directory
...find a journalist with niche expertise

Grammar Girl
...quick and dirty tips in on-demand podcasts

ProofreadNOW
...proofreaders and copyeditors on call 24/7 for your emergency project

Thanks to the group for their excellent shares!

Resource sharing roundtable

The SF IABC Independent Communicators' Roundtable convenes Thursday May 8 to share favorite websites, blogs, books, groups and gurus. Here are mine:

Top 12 Best-kept Secrets*

Desk References

Whatis.com
Part of the TechTarget.com Network, Whatis.com features definitions for thousands of the most current IT-related words.

WHOIS
Provides website domain name registration information, including name and contact information for the site administrator.

Search Engines

Alexa
Get traffic rankings, user reviews and contact information for any URL. Owned by Amazon.com, Alexa ranks Web sites based on a sampling of the number of users and page views.

BlogPulse
Intelliseek's BlogPulse tracks the day's most referenced phrases, people and links. Search for blog posts on hot topics, or see what bloggers are saying about your organization or brand.

Good Books

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
By Steve Krug
A quick read for before your next Web site project, this book covers Krug's three Laws of Usability, and much more.

Simplified Strategic Planning: A No-Nonsense Guide for Busy People Who Want Results Fast
By Robert W. Bradford and J. Peter Duncan
"Strategy is about seeing the options and making choices," says Robert W. Bradford, President of the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Ann Arbor, Mich. This step-by-step book guides you through the process. It's highly readable, with worksheets and checklists.

Internet Know-how

MarketingExperiments.com
An online laboratory with a simple (but not easy) mission: To discover what really works. They test e-marketing tactics and publish the results in the Marketing Experiments Journal.

News and Information

Techmeme
Technology coverage is driven by a software agent that searches the blogs and news sites of industry insiders, passionate independents and established journalists.

Technology and Tools

Google Analytics
This free tool has been upgraded to help you learn more about your website visitors and track progress toward campaign goals. Watch the video about how it works.

SiteReportCard
Check your website for broken links, spelling errors, long load times, HTML and meta tag mistakes, search engine inclusion and link popularity -- all at once -- for free.

Wordtracker
Find out what keywords people use to search for the products or services you offer with Worktracker.

Weblogs and Wikis

BlogFlux
BlogFlux (formerly The Eatonweb Portal) catalogs blogs alphabetically and by tag, topic, language and country. The improved site now offers a subscription service for email alerts on blog updates.

12 Tools Even You Can Use**

Using social media in everyday work life can be a huge time sink. But these tools can also help you expand your professional network, share information and resources, and solicit feedback from customers and colleagues.

Even the out-there sites like Second Life, a 3-D digital world built by online residents, present an opportunity to learn about creative ways buyers and sellers connect in a Web 2.0 world.

Check these out, then take one for a test drive:

1. Blogging: Typepad
2. Bookmarking sharing: del.icio.us
3. Collaborating: PBwiki
4. Content sharing: Digg
5. Following: Twitter
6. Livecasting: Justin.tv 
7. Meeting: GoToMeeting
8. Networking: LinkedIn 
9. News feeds: Bloglines
10. Photo sharing: Flickr
11. Video sharing: Revver
12. Virtual reality: Second Life

Top 10 Social Media**

Tech Geek Blogger Robert Scoble defines social media as Internet media that allow people to interact in some way. By that criteria, these are the most trafficked English-language social media sites, ranked by Alexa.com. Each site offers one or more service that enable user interaction, including personalized content, media sharing, blogging, networking, instant messaging, chat rooms and e-groups.

1. Yahoo!
2. Microsoft Network
3. Google
4. YouTube
5. MySpace
6. Orkut
7. Facebook
8. Hi5
9. Blogger.com
10. Friendster

Favorite Gurus

See CC-T’s Blogroll, the list in the right-hand column of this blog.

* From CC-T Unlimited Resources
** From "The Wizardry of Web 2.0," by Cathy Chatfield-Taylor, EXPO Magazine, October 2007

Some days are just like that

You don't know if you're the predator or the prey.

Bodice ripping black-footed ferrets?

Not quite. But read the Newsweek.com story to learn how freelance nature writer Paul Tolme discovered his description of endangered weasels in the middle of a steamy romance novel.

Apparently, the hunky hero of Shadow Bear, a Lakota chief, waxes poetic about ferret ecology while in post-coital bliss with his forbidden love, pioneer hottie Shiona Bramlett. Tolme recaps part of the scene:

"'They are so named because of their dark legs,' Shadow Bear says, to which Shiona responds: 'They are so small, surely weighing only about two pounds and measuring two feet from tip to tail.'"

Not only is the ensuring dialog awful, the characters use Tolme's words, verbatim. Tolme laments,"Had I known that my text would one day appear in a romance novel, I might have sexed up my story."

In the age of "cut-and-paste plagiarism," you never know where your words will end up.

Problems Solved! Take 2

Back by popular demand, SF IABC convened another problem-solving roundtable for independent communicators. Today's session illustrated how we can learn from colleagues who've experienced many of the same challenges.

Our small group included visual designers, marketing communicators, and book authors and publishers. These are their scenarios, and the solutions we proposed:

Challenge: One client picks my brains for ideas about how to help his clients, then gets all the credit and compensation when they're successful. How do I get paid for my behind-the-scenes project direction?

Solution: Charge a project fee for your consulting services, rather than an hourly rate for the phone time. Or, charge this client a higher hourly rate that reflects the value of your expertise. Write a report on your recommendations, then re-purpose that content to market your own services.

Challenge: I have a pipeline full of projects pending. How do I close the deals so I can budget my time and maximize cash flow?

Solution: Break the projects into smaller pieces that clients can comfortably sign off on. Stay in touch with monthly calls or emails that remind the client why the project is of value to them. In the future, put an expiration date on your proposals so you can renegotiate the fee based on your current workload.

Challenge: When project schedules slip, it impacts my cash flow, productivity and scheduling. How can I keep clients on track?

Solution: Bill clients at for work completed to date at specified intervals. If the scope creeps, bill for the added work at your hourly rate, above and beyond the project fee. Specify required turnaround times in your contract, with cost penalties for missed deadlines.

Challenge: When I call prospective clients, I find it difficult to talk about myself and market my services. How do develop new business?

Solution: Write a phone script and practice your pitch with a tape recorder until you are comfortable. Prepare prospects for your call with an advance email. Even better, get to know prospects by joining their professional organizations and volunteering on their committees.

Challenge: The projects I enjoy most are long-term, so I can develop a real rapport with my client. But I tend to work on a lot of small, short-term projects instead. How do I get more long-term work?

Solution: Set a project minimum and stick to it. When you're working on the small jobs, learn about other ways you can help those clients, take them to coffee and talk about the value of a long-term relationship.

If you've had these challenges and tried these or other solutions, I'd love to hear about your results. Share your success stories!

On getting paid

Writerfind.com reports that some companies are posting freelance writing "jobs" that pay less than 10 cents per word -- far from a professional rate.

This prompted a discussion in our independent comunicators' group about the low rates in industries such as  travel and tourism, where some writers write for free in exchange for comped rooms and meals. 

For those of you who want (or a willing to give) something for nothing, I submit this rant by prolific science fiction and screen writer Harlan Ellison. Hear hear! (Thanks for this, Molly!)

So proud

My son the nature photographer has been running a Google AdWords campaign to drive traffic to his photo blog, where he hopes to sell his images to publishers and nature lovers.

The campaign has generated at least two sales, but he's been disappointed with the results. So we decided to give his blog a makeover, creating a spiffy landing page and simpler navigation.

For help, I went to Susan Barnes at iArchitects. She did a terrific job with my website/blog integration, and I knew she wouldn't disappoint.

Wow! doesn't nearly describe the job she did. Check out the new-and-improved photo blog for Living World Photography. Will gave his creative input, and Susan's team executed to perfection.

BTW, the banner image is a mating pair of Green Darners, which Will photographed at Prairie Center in Olathe, KS.

Lifestyle design

We read Timothy Ferriss' The 4-Hour Workweek for the November SF IABC Independent Communicators' Roundtable and talked about how to break out of the 9-5 mold and still finance our fantasies.

That doesn't mean ditching the clients and traveling the world. For some, it's as simple as having time for tennis every day, or reading novels at noon.

You'd think, as independents, we'd already be halfway there, since we have the freedom to set our own hours and choose our own projects. But as one person put it, those hours are 7 am to 10 pm more often than not. And who are we kidding? The client is the boss.

Ferriss calls "lifestyle design" having the time plus mobility to live like a millionaire (without the $1 million). Here are our takeaways on how to figure out what you'd rather be doing than work, and how to make the time to do it:

• Set higher goals for what to achieve in smaller time periods.
• Do what you do best and outsource the rest. (Love to write but hate to edit your work? Hire a copyeditor.)
• Fire clients who suck time and don't pay (the 80/20 rule).
• Start a "dream book" with photos and notes about what you want. (Picture your dreams and they will manifest themselves.)
• Choose voluntary simplicity and shed possessions that you have to work to pay for.
• Go on an "information fast" to break the habit of time-wasting media surfing.
• Turn off email notification and check the inbox once a day (once a week, if you're brave).

Ferriss says, "The thing you fear most is the thing you most need to do." What are you afraid of?

Photo stories

Big Picture Guy Keith Philpott took up my challenge to tell the back-story on some of his fabulous images. Of course, the photos speak for themselves, but getting a glimpse of the photographer's process is like hearing an author talk about the genesis of a novel. Thank you, Keith!

Corporate social responsibililty

This week, Business for Social Responsibility is holding its 15th annual conference in San Francisco. I attended as a marketing consultant for Hokura, which introduced a new compliance management system there on Tuesday.

It was amazing and gratifying to see 1,200 people from around the world convene to talk about their corporate social responsibility programs to develop socially and environmentally aware practices and policies.

At the Responsible Supply Chain Management training session, I learned that the No. 1 takeaway for several senior-level executives was this:

"We need to put processes in place to make our code of conduct transparent across the company. A code of conduct message will be the most critical thing for us."

This is an awesome opportunities for communicators to vision and execute a messaging strategy that not only raises awareness but also inspires action toward creating a more just and sustainable world.