Why, How and When to Hire Your First Hire from FreshBooks on Vimeo.

Even though it shouldn’t have been a surprise, really, what with his sudden resignation just a few weeks before, I was still struck with a sense of profound loss and sadness. It reminded me of how I felt right when I heard that Douglas Adams had died years earlier. Here again was someone with such an unimaginable breadth of talent and vision, someone who was still contributing in a such an enormous way, gone, long before they should have been. There is an element of disbelief. Why do we so often lose the best people?

I bought my first MacBook Pro a few days ago. It arrives today.

I had been towing the line on Apple for years: I’ve owned a few generations of iPods and Nanos, love my iPhone and iPad, but I have stoically remained committed to my PC. Most places I’ve worked have used them, and macs have always have seemed so insanely expensive when I’m prepared to upgrade. But when you get right down to it, I’m really a Mac type of person: I love design and usability and products that look and work beautifully.

I didn’t buy the MacBook because Steve Jobs died. There was a handful of other reasons, like: we’re about to delve into some app development, and you really need a mac to get into things like that. And I’m tired of toting around a 9lb notebook when I travel overseas. But I still think that for a little while, every time I’ll use it, I’ll think of the man behind it.

There’s a video of Steve Jobs that’s been making the rounds lately. It’s his Stanford Commencement Address from 2005 and for some reason, it’s just now that I’ve sat down and watched it in full. If you haven’t yet, I’ve included it below, and you should stop reading this and go watch that. Then come back.

There’s a lot of good advice packed into those 15 minutes. But the part I love the most comes near the end:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

There were a lot of reasons why I started NoSleepForSheep – some selfish, some more altruistic. But mostly, it was about finally doing the things I am most passionate about, and using my skills to arm others – creatives, small business owners, crazy startups and dreamers – with the tools they need to be able to follow their passion.

When your job is your passion, it stops being work. And that’s when you can change the world.

So long Steve Jobs, you will be missed.

In many ways, the update has turned the SEO industry on it’s head, but it has also leveled the playing field: creating opportunities for small businesses, companies and brands who build quality websites and generate loyal and vocal fan followings to rank higher.

Google Panda

Why Panda?

At the core, the goal of the new upgrade was two-fold:

1. Devalue the rankings of low-quality sites and kill off content farms who have managed to build relevance by taking advantage of how the system works.

2. Increase the rankings of high-quality and local web sites by judging relevance based on factors that are less easily manipulated, like the “likability” of a site by influencers and metrics like time on site.

So… What’s that Mean, Exactly?

Google’s mission is simple: provide relevant search results for people.

With millions of web pages spread across the globe and millions of people searching daily for billions of things, this is a TALL order. To deliver relevant results, Google’s programming must be able to tell which online content relates best to the search terms entered.

Previously, it did this in a couple of different ways:

1. By looking at on-page content like meta titles, meta description, page titles.
   The more relevant these were to a particular keyword, the higher you would rank for it.
2. By judging the quantity of and quality of inbound links
   If your website was all about selling t-shirts and someone else linked to you with the anchor text ‘Nashville t-shirts,’ then it was easy for Google to get that your website was a Nashville t-shirt website. Often referred to as “backlinks”, this one was a core deliverable of the SEO industry and the single best way to build “authority” for a site.
3. By relying on Page Rank
   Each backlink counted as vote for a page (with backlinks from more relevant sites counting for more) and these votes helped make up the Page Rank of a site. This metric helped Google assign a numeric value to sites and then layer them by relatively.

For years, this formula worked amazingly well, but eventually people learned enough about how the system worked that they were able to tweak websites to jump ahead in the rankings.

As a result, the top results weren’t necessarily the sites with the best content anymore; they were just the ones that had done the best job exploiting the system.

Introduce Panda

With the rise of social media as curator of engaging, valuable content, and the increasing difficulty of accurately determining high quality sites, Google realized that it needed to make some big changes.

Enter Panda.

Utilizing machine learning, Panda looks at pages on a site and mimics how people would react to them to gage the quality of the entire site. It’s a human filter, designed to place higher value on what actual users think of a site than other incoming signals which can be easily faked.

It gets technical, but all you really need to remember is that while all the old factors still count, new ones now play a much more important role:

Social Mentions (especially Google’s own new Plus service) count more than they have in the past. The more times real people retweet, +1, like or share your online content the higher it ranks.

Overall design and UI matters; sites that feel overally “spammy” (with high ad to content ratio, or with lack of real content above the fold, or with empty pages) are now penalized across the board.

Preference is given to websites that publish high quality, original content on an ongoing basis. Google may also be integrating additional metrics like time on site and bounce rate, so building engaging, quality pages is even more important.

What Panda Means for You and Your Site

The bottom line is that winning the search engine optimization game isn’t just about backlinks and buying traffic anymore, it’s about taking a holistic approach to crafting your entire online presence.

If you’re designing or redesigning your site; you should be thinking about building it on an platform like WordPress that makes generating new content easy and has tools that play well with Google.

You should also be prepared to create an ongoing strategy for generating new content on a regular basis and growing and engaging your social media networks. If you don’t have a wordpress website with an integrated blog, now is the time to launch one.

Need help? Talk to us about building your new site and how we can help with ongoing digital marketing. You might be surprised at how easy it can be to take advantage of these changes and drive results for your business!

Learn More:

- Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
- More Information on Building High Quality Sites (from Google)

Nashville is on the map as Music City, USA, but folks are often surprised to learn we also have a large and vibrant digital/entrepreneurial community. Nowhere is that more apparent than during Nashville’s version of the very un-corporate, un-conference, event: BarCamp Nashville.

For the uninformed, BarCamp Nashville is a FREE one day event which features some of the best planned and unplanned sessions about marketing, design, development, business and creativity. It’s a learning event, but it’s also a networking event with many of the best and the brightest in Nashville’s tech and business communities in attendance.

And it’s all held at Cadillac Ranch in downtown Nashville.

This will be our second year attending, which makes us seasoned veterans, right? So as such, we wanted to share some tips for getting the most out of YOUR BCN11 experience (whether it’s your first time attending or not).

Plan your day, but be prepared to throw the plan out

The official Sessions List has been whittled down from 80+ to just over 30, covering a wide spectrum of topics. Now is the time to sign up for the ones you’re interested in so you have an idea of what you don’t want to miss the day of the event (and so the Barcamp planners can organize the logistics of everything).

Chances are, you’ll still have to choose favorites (because some of your picks will have overlapping times), so here’s a few tips to dealing with the schedule:

• Don’t be afraid to walk out of a session if you aren’t getting value out of it. Really. There is no benefit to hanging around if you aren’t learning something new or aren’t enjoying the presentation. Do it politely and ninja-quiet-like, but duck out if you need to and spend the time checking out a different session instead (so maybe have a couple of second choices).
• Don’t book your whole day solid, because the learning doesn’t happen just in the sessions. There’s plenty of seating in the bar area and it’s a great chance to sit down, catch you breath, and mingle with other folks who are taking a time out.
• Remember, there’s impromptu sessions throughout the day. You never know what might pop up, so check the boards (and listen the announcements) to see what’s happening during the day.

Have conversations with people

Not a naturally outgoing person, just the word “networking” makes me cringe a little bit inside. At 2010′s BarCamp I spent most of my time chatting with people I already knew, but I did make the effort to hand out cards and have conversations with a few complete strangers. The nice thing about Barcamp is that you’re dealing with a large population of tech people who, in large part, have the same aversion to networking that you do.

Hey, instant conversation starter.

See, the thing is, Barcamp really is about meeting new people in the Nashville community who are just as passionate about design, marketing, development and new business as you are.

It’s about developing new relationships and having the types of conversations that might just spark your next great idea.

Don’t forget the logistics

Last year, I came armed with a laptop, ipad, iphone, notepad, an assortment of writing instruments, and business cards. Yes, the backpack I toted around was REALLY heavy because, no, I don’t have a 1lb Macbook Air and yes, it was overkill.

This time, I’ll be keeping it simple with just my iphone and a notepad to jot down the things that really resonate. Unless you’re planning on live blogging the whole event, you’ll probably be OK with less rather than more, and you’ll have an easier time moving through the crowds.

Arrive early, take business cards, take your passion, and remember, parking isn’t free.

Ready, Set, Go…

Follow @barcampnash for the latest information leading up to the event and follow The Sheep @nosleepforsheep. If you see us at the event, stop and say hi, we’d love to meet you!

It’s proof that a good web site design is just like good building or furniture design; if it’s built well, it will last through whatever fads may come and go.

But over the past year NoSleepForSheep has been through a ton of changes: we went from being a part-time venture to being a full-time business. We hired contractors. We moved to offices in downtown Nashville and expanded the services we offered.

Most important, we took a hard look at who we were and what we what type of company we wanted to be going forward.

Looking in the mirror, we knew right away that we wanted to be known for building beautiful, functional websites at a reasonable cost. But we also wanted to be partners with our clients; offering stellar customer support and ongoing marketing and social media strategy services that ensured their sites would actually be successful; generating more business and more fans. Culture was important too, we wanted to be a company that our clients loved working with and employees loved working for.

In other words, we grew up, and it was time our web site did too.

For the redesign, we took everything in the opposite direction: what was dark became light, what was textured became slick and smooth, and illustration was replaced with photography. The new site is white, light and easy to use. There’s also a stronger focus on our work and on our blog, where we’ve been posting more and more about design, content, and running a business in the heart of Music City.

While we’ll miss our quirky design, ultimately the new site better represents who were are now, and the direction we’re moving as a company.

Mention the word blog to most people and they cringe, because anyone who has experimented with blogging before knows that being successful requires an enormous investment of time, effort and creativity.

But like other things in life, if it’s hard, it’s usually worth doing. Why? Well…

Blogs Improve Search Results

Every day, millions of people search for billions of things on the web and the majority of those searches go through Google.

And the secret about Google for companies wanting to rank higher for particular search terms? Sites that frequently post new content (pages and articles) are ranked higher than sites who don’t.

Blogs Tell Your Story and Build Trust

Blogs are a great way to publish current news about your company, which helps shape public perception of your brand. This is very important in today’s trust driven world – if someone researches using you and they see recent, visible signs of momentum and activity on your blog, you appear to be a more stable and successful company.

Don’t forget that the website is a customer’s first impression of your brand. Company websites without blogs appear static and potential customers may decide that your company is not thriving in the economy simply because there is not evidence to the contrary.

It’s human nature: in the absence of positive content, we make up the worst case scenario.

Blogs Encourage Engagement

“Engagement” is a magic word for businesses and brands today. Companies that successfully engage with the marketplace turn passive customers or would be customers into active fans and brand advocates. The social media influence of these advocates can help generate more sales and positive organic buzz for your company.

Blogging on relevant topics allows you to open lines of communication with your customers through comments and social mentions.

Insightful, useful posts that address common issues, answer questions or share your story in a funny/interesting way give your company a more human face.

And using your blog to run contests, offer discounts, and share user generated content all can help build lasting relationships that go beyond the sale.

You Don’t Have to Go It Alone

If the idea of writing new content every week is daunting, help is out there: there are great companies that specialize in producing content for small business blogs.

As a bonus, content writing providers often include organic SEO services that can boost your traffic even more.

Finally…

In today’s busy and noisy social media world, smart companies understand that the more content they publish, the more visible they are to a larger group of customers.

Think of each page on your site & blog as a billboard. Would you rather have 2 billboards or 200? The more visible you are, the more traffic you will generate and the more traffic you generate, the more business you’ll earn.

Want to talk to us about getting your small business blog up and running? Thinking about an overhaul to your current website?

Talk to us about the options. It might be easier and less expensive than you realize.

This meant complicated and busy home pages with navigation options spread all over the place – the top, the bottom, the middle, the side.

Websites had to be all things to all people and the result was a mess.

Skip forward to today. The way people use the web has changed and companies have even more avenues to promote their online presence through business directories, social media, and blogging. As the result, the way we design websites has evolved.

Today, the single most important goal of a business home pages is to convert visitors into customers. Today, less is more.

So what does that mean in terms of design? It means that we’ve gone from letting customers go where ever they want to making sure they follow a specific path. These paths are designed to tell a story and achieve a specific goal like getting a sale, or encouraging a contact. We call

Want a great example of smart thinking for business home pages? Take a look at Big Cartel:

We’ve done a lot of website work with artists, both signed and independent, so we’ve gotten a chance to see what successful online marketing strategies can do for an album release,  a single drop, or a special promotion. When everything is set up right, the momentum drives sales and exposure.

But we’ve also seen what happens when you’re doing it wrong. And it looks a lot like nobody cares about you or your music.

Many of the independent artists we’ve worked with have initially struggled with this, and mostly because they’re just not aware of how to do it right.

So here’s our top 5 list of most common mistakes we see, in David Letterman countdown style:

5. Giving away music without asking for anything in return.

Giving away free downloads of your music is a great way to gain exposure for your work and get people hooked enough to pick up your EP or album. But your music should never be without cost.

Free is a fantastic motivator, and you should take advantage of that: ask your fans to sign up for your mailing list before getting access to their download or require them to like your facebook page to download. It’s a win-win: fans get their free download, and you get the ability to market to them in the future.

4. Not having the same look and feel for all your properties.

In music, consistent brand is everything. You would never show up to 5 shows dressed in a suit and tie, only to spend the next 10 appearances in jeans and cowboy boots. Your audience would have no clue who you were.

The same rules apply online. By keeping the same logo, fonts, colors and overall look & feel across all your properties, you help hammer home the message “This is who I am” and creates a unified online presence even across totally separate properties.

3. Not communicating enough with your fans.

The reason people follow you on Twitter or Facebook and signup for your newsletter is because they want to know what you are up to. They’re not just looking to be passive fans of your music, they want to share in your experience.

Take advantage of this.

Send out regular newsletters that talks about upcoming tour dates, new releases, and anything else that might be of interest to fans. Use twitter and facebook to share behind the scenes pics and short videos (30 or seconds or less) of touring and recording sessions.

Nothing has to be perfect quality; real is often more engaging than highly polished. This content is what will keep fans invested in your work and your music in the lulls between album releases.

2. Not cross marketing your social networks.

While many people who participate in social media are active on several networking sites, most of them have a particular one that they prefer and use most often. The others are neglected unless there’s a compelling reason to do otherwise.

For this reason, it’s vital that you cross promote your social networks in order to encourage interaction and involvement on all of them. A great way to do this is to post exclusive content on one and link to it from others.

If you do a good job, your follower counts will be spread more evenly across each of your social networks.

1. Not making your website the center of your digital presence.

With so many great sites out there (myspace, reverbnation, ilike, facebook … ) to help artists market their music, it’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you need to be everywhere so you don’t lose potential fans.

But the thing to keep in mind is that you never have 100% control over any of these sites. There’s only ONE place where have complete control over the branding, user experience and messaging. You guessed it: your own website.

And that’s why it’s important that your website is the center of your digital presence.

To work your most valuable asset, make sure that all your social media sites are always pointing back to your website. Keep blogs, news, and tour dates centralized on your site and keep your freshest, best, content for exclusive use on your site.

Social media profiles are still valuable and you should still use them, but they should be used as avenues to push fans to your website rather as a destination.

Your website should always be the central location where fans can come back to again and again to engage and get fresh content.

Final Thoughts

Curious about setting up an awesome website? If you are a performer, you’ll need one that is both stylish and functional. Talk to us about what we can do – you might be surprised at how easy and reasonably priced your new website can be!

Think again.

WordPress is an opensource content management system (CMS) that more and more businesses are using to power their websites. Did you know that today over 45% of all websites are powered by the WordPress content management system?

There are some really compelling reasons why so many businesses are switching to WordPress to power their websites:

1. It’s Affordable.

Unless you are building the next google, most websites have pretty much the same basic features: informational pages, contact forms, photo/video galleries, and news.

Which means you probably don’t need to spend $5000+ reinventing the wheel and building a custom CMS for your site.

Because WordPress is open source, it’s free to use. This means that robust sites cost less to build and you can dedicate your budget towards more important things, like a killer design and ongoing marketing to help your business grow.

2. It outperforms other options for SEO. 

Successful SEO relies on a lot of different overlapping parts and pieces including well written meta tags, ongoing and relevant content, and correctly structured pages.

Ranking well locally and/or for particular search terms can sometimes take months of ongoing work. But thanks to built in features that give your SEO an immediate jumpstart, WordPress sites are often the fastest to rank. Period.

3.  There’s a Plugin for that.

Want to convert visitors to Facebook fans? Or display a slideshow of your recent work? There’s a plugin for that. Sort of like an app on a iPhone or Android smartphone, plugins are tiny little programs that do one specific thing. WordPress developers share widgets, which means that there’s a huge library of existing modules that solve common problems.

This modular nature of WordPress means that it’s easy and cost-effective to add new functionality to sites.

4. Content is separate from design.

One of the real challenges for businesses has always been that every time you redesign your website, you lose all your old content. All of those pages Google had categorized suddenly disappear from the search engine and you have to start from scratch.

WordPress uses a database to store pages, posts and all content which means you can easily change out your design. Plus, because the site is database driven, all your old content is kept online. This makes updating your look and feel much easier and really impacts your online visibility.

5. Easy to use.

Although these days WordPress is known as the most popular website management system, it actually started out as a blogging platform. Which means it had to be really simple to use for people with almost no technical knowledge. Over the years, it’s only gotten better.

Want to change text on a page, create a new one or post a blog article? Add new images to a gallery or update deals and discounts?

Anyone in your company can learn to do it in less than twenty minutes (and we offer training for all of our clients). This means you save money on ongoing maintenance because you don’t need to hire someone every time you need a minor tweak to your site.

At NoSleepForSheep, 90% of the websites we build for businesses are built on WordPress. The sites we build are not only beautiful, but functional too. And best of all, they allow our clients to focus on building their business instead struggling with a website that’s hard to manage.

Ready to convert your site to WordPress? Start a conversation with us today. You’ll be happy you did.

In the wee hours of the morning, around hour 15 or 16 of 24, everyone gathered together for a status meeting and to watch a piece that the Nashville Design-A-Thon video crew had put together for use on Safe Haven‘s new website.

It was a short video. Just a minute or so where Charles, a single father, told his story. He explained how he was afraid he would lose custody of his infant son when he lost his job and his home. At the end of his rope and out of friends to stay with, Safe Haven gave him and his son a chance to get back on their feet. Together.

It was a stark piece of filmography. And while we already knew we were doing work for a great cause, watching the video made everything a little more real and gave everyone some extra fuel to push through til the morning.

You see, Charles’ story isn’t unique.

Families with children make up a 32% percentage of the homeless population, and in most cases, those families are broken up when they become homeless and need to seek sanctuary in a shelter. It’s a staggering statistic when you think about it, especially because it’s easy to equate homelessness with a single guy standing on the street corner and a lot harder to see it as one of the kids in your child’s classro0m.

Safe Haven’s unique mission is to keep those families together and provide a safe and supportive environment that allows to them to find their way back to prosperity. Beyond providing for basic needs, Safe Haven takes a holistic approach to helping families: classes for teaching relevant job skills, life/financial coaching and counseling for both parents and children.

It’s this commitment to families that makes Safe Haven an amazing asset to Nashville and the perfect Design-A-Thon project.

#designathonBNA2011

Organized by the folks at CivicActions/geekforgood.net, the idea behind Nashville Design-A-Thon is simple:

Cram as much creativity as you can into one location (designers, developers, writers, marketers, and audio/video people) and spend 24 hours straight re-imagining and delivering a whole new marketing strategy, website and digital/print promotional assets for one deserving organization.

Yeah, you heard that right: 24 hours. And at the end of the entire process the team delivered:

• A brand spankin’ new website that will provide better engagement, make information more accessible, and be easier to update.
• Three print ads to help raise awareness.
• A brochure for the Guardian Angel donor program.
• A brochure about all of programs Safe Haven provides.
• Two video pieces for promo use.
• A digital marketing plan and promo assets for social media.

The Sheep were on hand as part of the Development team which was responsible for integrating design and copy into a WordPress backed website that would be easy to update for the Safe Haven team. Our first year participating, we had no idea what to expect, but knew it would be a unique experience.

We weren’t disappointed.

And even though it’s Monday morning and we’re still recovering, we wanted to share some thoughts on the event while they were still fresh.

What Was Awesome:

Putting Faces to the Twitter Accounts
The Nashville design and development community isn’t as large as some cities, but it’s still a pretty wide circle. Being able to meet and work with folks who we’re huge fans of has been a honor. Nashville may be known as Music City, but it’s got some serious digital chops as well.

Collaboration
We collaborate every day, but rarely with teams so large or with talent so good. There’s also a special kind of energy that comes with being locked in a building with just 24 hours to accomplish a mountain of work.

Organization
There’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes just to put together an event like this. Huge props @JessicaMurray and @ianrhett for not only making it happen, but making it go so very well. Also grateful to a bunch of great sponsors who provided the crack coffee, snacks, and meals to keep a bunch of creatives going for 24 hours.

Safe Haven
Whenever you work with a new client, you always hope that they’ll be receptive to your ideas and an active participant in the creative process. The staff of Safe Haven (many of whom remained on-hand for the entire process to provide input and feedback), were amazing. The sheer amount of prep work they did in advance made everyone’s job 1000% easier. They were the best clients you could hope for.

What Could Have Been Better:

Milestone Management
Design and development are a relay race; which means wire-framing, visual direction and mockups for the website have to happen before the developers can even begin the heavy lifting work of putting together a site. While there was obviously a milestone set in stone for final deliverables, the process could have benefited from identifying and setting hard deadlines for internal milestones as well.

Task Tracking
We relied on Basecamp and Dropbox heavily to help manage a mammoth amount of information and tasks. There was also outstanding communication between all the teams on an ongoing basis.

But even so, it sometimes became difficult to know exactly when elements were finalized and available for use. Especially with so much flying around so fast. We wanted a huge white board somewhere with big check boxes next to the items each team was working on.

Final Thoughts

The estimate isn’t in yet, but if it’s anything like last year, over $100,000 worth of time and services were donated to Safe Haven. They’ll be debuting their new website, associated assets and marketing materials at an event later this month.

Our company name indicates otherwise, but The Sheep will actually be spending the next day or two catching up on sleep. We’ll also be following a bunch of new people on Twitter and hopefully staying in touch with some new friends and colleagues.

The Design-A-Thon concept is migrating to other cities. As creative individuals, we can always choose to donate our time and talents to worthy causes, but there’s something powerful about the opportunity to do so as a community.

Photos from the Event: on Flickr | News and Reactions: on Twitter