1. How do you find a good web freelancer? *(I need to trust them with my business and I don’t want to be taken advantage of)
2. Once I find a freelancer how do I manage him or her? *(I don’t know a lot about internet marketing or development so I wouldn’t know if they are actually executing on what they promised me?)

I decided to begin writing a series of blog posts to cover all of these topics in depth. My goal is to arm the small businessperson with all of the information needed to successfully find and manage a web freelancer.

Like hiring any kind of service-provider, knowledge is power. You obviously don’t want to spend all day researching and learning the business, after all you are hiring a freelancer to save you time and to gain his expertise. But, if you know the language of the business and the basic strategies involved you have a much better chance of having a successful relationship with the freelancer. The topics in this series will include:

Part 1: Internet Marketing Basics and Terminology

Before building a site you should have a solid marketing plan. Too often small business owners simply throw up a site before they have an understanding of its purpose. I will explain

• The importance of setting goals for your site and creating a long term strategy
• Identifying your target customers and understanding their behavior
• Understanding the internet marketing options available to you to reach these customers (SEO, local marketing, PPC, display ads, affiliate marketing, social media marketing)
• Why you need analytics to gauge your success
• Converting your visitors into paying customers

Part 2: Web Development Basics and Terminology

After determining the purpose of your site and the ways to gain site visitors we will move on to outlining and then building the site. I will explain

• The basic elements of a site – header, navigation bar, body, sidebar, footer, meta tags, additional elements
• The importance of wireframing your site before building it
• Site usability, following web standards, and understanding visitor behavior and flow on a site
• Creating a “call to action” to maximize site conversions
• The functionality you can build into your site and the amount of effort and cost that can be expected to build that functionality – CMS systems, site “widgets,” custom web development, etc

Part 3: Finding a Freelancer

Now that you have a general understanding of how a website is built and marketed it is time to find a freelancer to do the work. I will cover

• Where to locate freelancers
• How to determine which is the right freelancer for you
• Creating a project plan and determining milestones
• Determining what is a fair price for the work
• How to interpret a project proposal

Part 4: Managing the Freelancer

Even with the project underway there is still some management needed on your part to ensure everything is moving forward as planned. I will teach you

• How to ensure the work is being done properly
• The kinds of deliverables you should be getting to monitor parts of the project
• How to interact with the freelancer and ask questions without being annoying or distracting
• For the additional work that inevitably comes up in the course of a project, what is covered in the original proposal and what will cost extra

Stay Tuned!

I will be writing these installments over the next several weeks so check back for the updates. Or even easier, sign up to my mailing list to get emailed the updates (see signup form on the righthand side of this page).

If you are interested in retaining my internet marketing and development services or have any questions at all please contact me.

1. Press This Bookmarklet – already conveniently built into WordPress, this allows you to make a browser bookmarklet to quickly post about any page you are currently viewing. You can locate the bookmarklet code by going to the “tools” section of your WordPress blog’s back end. Either drag the link directly into your browser’s bookmark toolbar or create a new bookmark and paste the link url as the bookmark’s link. When you are on a page you want to blog about just click the bookmarklet and a popup window appears with a basic version of the “add a post” screen already populated with the title and link of the page you are writing about. This is super-useful for creating more relevant content on your blog. I’m sure you are always coming across useful webpages, just use the bookmarklet, add a quick description, and submit. You can also create a new category like “quick posts” if you do not want these shorter posts cluttering up your main blog area.
2. New Post Bookmark – if you want to be quickly brought to the full-fledged “add a post” page just bookmark “http://www.[yourblog].com/wp-admin/post-new.php”. This is a simple but useful solution. It is also nice because you may not always want to write about a specific page as in Press This, but it also lets you start writing with one click.
3. Ping.fm Custom URL - if you don’t already use Ping.fm I highly suggest you try it. I won’t go into all the features but basically it allows you to keep all of your social profiles up to date in one shot. I currently have it set up to update about 15 of my sites every time I make a status update, way more realistic than updating each one every time I do anything. Ping added a new feature that lets you update custom (non-socialmedia) sites right from their interface. After you create your Ping profile just add “custom url” and then install this plugin on your WordPress blog. Setup is hassle-free and takes no more than 10min. So now along with updating your social media profiles you can update your blog. Also check out the Posting Groups which allows you to post to, for example, your WordPress blog, your Posterous, and your Tumblr at the same time. Ping also has a nice mobile version that lets you update on the go.

These WordPress posting solutions are not mutually exclusive. Each method has its own benefits depending on the situation you are in at the time. Try them out and comment on how you like them.

Do you have any other methods of posting quickly on WordPress?

Now when I tell people (even non-marketers) about my job they have some kind of idea of what I do. The questions I get now are mostly around the concept of Social Media. What is it? Where is it heading? I don’t see how the pictures of my dog I share with my friends could ever make companies money?

Well those are some pretty major concepts, so instead of delving into each I’m going to give you some of the most helpful links about the concepts that I’ve come across.

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What is Social Media?

Wikipedia’s definition of Social Media – primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.

A presentation: What The F**K is Social Media?

Where is it heading?

• Social networks will be like air
• Social media is the future of business and personal life (and will one day save the world)

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I don’t see how the pictures of my dog I share with my friends could ever make companies money?

Wikipedia’s definition of Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, YouTube, Dailymotion, Hi5, Gather.com, social web applications (webapps) such as reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon, Flickr, iLike, Wikipedia, Squidoo, Last.fm, Twitter, Eventful, ePinions and others as well as within 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life, ActiveWorlds, Moove and There.com.

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Further Reading

• Alltop’s Top Social Media Blogs
• Dosh Dosh’s very thorough article series on Social Media