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Today, I started taking a course in Human-Computer Interaction. This is an area of great interest to me, and something I wish I had spent more time on in college, particularly given what I ended up doing after college. Hindsight is of course 20/20! I’m just now working through the introductory section of the course, so I’m sure I will have a lot more to say about the material in the future, but for now the most interesting thing about this course is that it is entirely online, in video format. It’s part of a new online course format developed…

Business news time! Tomorrow, I’ll be at a networking meetup in Manchester. Thanks to Schall Creative for the invite. Looking forward to meeting other small businesses in central NH, and hopefully some new potential clients! I’d love to work with more NH business. At long last, I have some proper business cards! After much procrastinating and waffling about design and styling, I just did it. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to have them reprinted due to a printing error, but the information on them is accurate and that’s the most important thing (phone number removed in this image). One of…

I had the opportunity today to fix what appeared to be a big, ugly, wasteful problem in a very simple way, and I have to say: There are few better feelings in my line of work. In brief, I had a client whose Adwords data was not coming through into Analyics, leaving me and the PPC lead with no real information as to which ads were most effective. Never having encountered the issue before, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do. Most of the time, this data passthrough happens fairly automatically. I’m still not…

My favorite projects to work on are small business clients from my hometown area. Why? Well, I’m from a small town (Canterbury, NH) and live in a small city (Concord, NH), and when you grow up in small communities you understand the value of local communication. I’ve also lived in the big city (Los Angeles, CA) and the contrast between small business marketing there and small business marketing here in Concord is stark. Small business in Concord, NH is interdependent. There is less competition, and more incentive to cooperate with your fellow small business next door or down the street….

AKA: Self Induced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Sorry, is my psych degree showing? I noticed today that I haven’t updated my blog in well over a week, which I try to avoid doing. I like the exercise of writing, if nothing else. Anyways, I haven’t updated recently because, as usual, I’ve been insanely busy. However, I have been doing something unusual: I’ve been making a distinct effort not to complain about my level of busyness. I will fully admit to being the person who uses Facebook as a personal venting space (and there’s a good reason why my personal Facebook is…

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be appearing on Courage Cocktail today, on WCOM FM 103.5 today at noon (in about….15 minutes!) and later on their podcast (I’ll try to link that up when it’s available). I’ll be following up the lovely Jackie Houston, a style and image consultant, talking about how her wardrobe consulting can help young professionals. I’m super excited about this opportunity! Update: here’s the podcast! I come in at about 39 minutes, but if you’re interested in image consulting, I highly recommend listening to Jackie too. I’m just there to support her.

I have an idea for a piece of content and I want to maximize the likelyhood that people using Google will find it. I don’t plan to create an ongoing blog, and I don’t currently have an outlet that this content is appropriate for–I just want to write about this topic! I considered setting up a WordPress, but it looks complicated for my purposes. How about tumblr? Other ideas?-Wants Right Internet Tool Sometimes you have a piece of content just banging around in your head and you want to have people read it, but you lack a good place to…

I recently launched my business and I’m working on building social media profiles. I don’t have a lot of time and I’m worried that having many profiles will spread me too thin. I sell mostly to business professionals. Does my brand need to be on Facebook? –Facebook Is Necessary? Let me preface this with the following: I’m a product of the Facebook generation. I got a profile back when you had to have a college email to join. Social media helped shape my college experience, and therefore has had no small influence on my career. I love Facebook. That said,…

“[Good] bosses consider coaching to be top priority and trust that investing in people will cause the numbers to improve.” I have seen several variations on this advice in recent business-management articles (the quote is from an Inc.com slideshow on the habits of ineffective managers). The sum takeaway is “People, not numbers, make your business; focus on relationships for long term success.” Which I agree with whole-heartedly.

In a company of any size, it is your employees who make or break your business–they are the ones who speak to your clients and potential clients, the ones whose motivation and rewards will determine the efficiency of your business. Clients are important, of course, but it can be easy to forget that word of mouth marketing comes not ONLY from clients, but ALSO from employees, and in many cases a good or bad word from “the inside” can count a whole lot more than the word of one customer. What are your employees saying about you?