Clients that I had had for years were lost due to their sudden lack of need for freelancers. New clients were harder to source because they were hibernating. Plenty of shifts were happening in the marketplace with the increase of available skilled senior web people who had been displaced. Competition that didn’t previously exist for available web work was now a real obstacle to get work that was once easy to get. Chargeable rates went down. A complete mess.

However, I am very optimistic for 2010.

I am using this whole experience to improve the way I do things. Here are some of the things I am doing for 2010:

• I am going to rely much less on word-of-mouth to get my work. This year, I will be activity pursuing leads and developing new relationships with clients.
• I will be utilizing LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter as legitimate channels to build business leads.
• I will be using search engine marketing techniques to build leads.
• I will be blogging more often to build some more recognition.
• I will be pursuing affiliate marketing to supplement my production business.

If you are in the web design business, please share your experiences of 2009. How are you faring now that the powers that be are claiming that we are seeing the end of the recession?

So I have been trolling around the web lately, and I keep seeing the term ’social media expert’ popping up everywhere. Potential employers asking for these so-called ‘experts’, so they must actually exist, right? But the term itself confuses me. How can someone be an expert in something that is still trying to figure itself out? I don’t think we have even begun to tap the potential of social media, so to claim yourself an expert in it seems ridiculous. According to Malcolm Gladwell from his book Outliers, you have to have around 10,000 hours of practice stowed away in something to call yourself an expert. I know I haven’t spent that long using Twitter, have you?

Now, I probably do actually spend more time than I should at various popular online social spots. However, if I was spending that much time seeing what others were doing, I don’t think I would have much of a life beyond the computer screen. I assume most people use them like I do: A drop-in drop-out scenario. I’ll just log into twitter, read a few tweets, then log off. Same with Facebook; I get on there, read my feeed updates, then get out.

So, if you were an expert at this sort of thing, I would assume that you would be commissioned to leverage social traffic towards some sort of marketing goal, whether it was to sell a product or service for a company. But here is the thing – most of the members who participate on these sites are just using it to socialize, not actively looking to purchase that new widget. Facebook has an ad serving platform that is not really intrusive and that can sell to targeted demographics, but in my opinion running a Facebook ad campaign wouldn’t fall under the responsibility of a Social Media expert.

I get the marketing side of it. The marketers job is to get there products or services in front of the right eyeballs. That’s fine, but that is any good marketer’s job. Where does the social marketing expertise play a role in this?

As far as I can tell, their main role would be to merge the social experience with the marketing experience. This could be done a few ways – blogging, twitter following, creating YouTube videos, etc. But where is the expertise required for that? Creating a YouTube channel isn’t difficult. Clicking follow to a bunch of anonymous prospects seems straight forward enough…

I think I’ll end this by saying that social media is an important part of a marketing strategy, I think it is premature to designate oneself as an expert. After all, if you asked me if I was one, I could easily say yes because I felt that posting a YouTube video or following someone on Twitter gave me the confidence to do so.

Linkfire 2009

So I finally did it. After having a Flash site for my online presence, I have now switched to Wordpress. There are a few reasons for the switch. Here are just a few advantages over the old site:

1. Wanted to gain some experience using WordPress, such as customizing a theme, and assessing its usefulness as a client solution.
2. Have wanted a blog for a while now and have always put it off.
3. Wanted something more SEO friendly. This site will be way more friendly in the search engines than my Flash site.
4. Much more edit-ability. Things change fairly quickly online, and it was a pain to edit my Flash site. With this site, edits will be a snap.
5. This site will contain much more content.
6. Wanted to reach out not only to potential clients for production work, but also to affiliate networks, as I want to start doing online marketing using affiliate programs this year.
7. My site will now appear on mobile devices. The iPhone still has zero support for Flash. It is just a platform that I can no longer ignore.

So there you have it. I think these are enough reasons for the switch going forward. Flash will always have a spot in mu heart, and I do still plan on doing Flash production this year. However, as the days go by, I am getting much more serious about WordPress as a framework of choice.

Oh, and Happy New Year!