Dale Berkebile

Although a site uses some CSS– that does not mean that it is optimized or following web standards.

Boy today I was working on a website migration (moving from one platform to another). The first page I created, I just did a copy and paste. Wow what a mess. Every paragraph was styled (defining the fonts to display, defining color of fonts, defining size, etc., etc.). Web standards endorse a set of standardized best practices for building web sites, and a philosophy of web design and development that includes those methods. Usually this require CSS to focus on styling the page and HTML to focus only on content and no design elements.

This morning I read a great article by CopyBlogger. Although CopyBlogger is a wordpress company their content is excellent none-the-less. This article was entitled: A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week. If you haven’t read it yet and you blog, you gotta read it right after you finish this article and make your comments below, Ha!

Being tech-savvy is great, but at the cost of losing business is not a good solution. On Friday I was at a networking event. I have been out of the face-to-face game for a while so it was fun to see how things have change since I quit networking in person. Not too much has changed in the grand scheme of things at least at this event. I thought the new digital world would have changed things, but it seemed very little.

Is networking face-to-face still a valuable or effective business development tool? When it comes to business development, networking is the number one low cost solution for small businesses. On Friday I attended my first networking event in probably three years. Mostly because the easily accessible groups I was attending were easily accessible. That being said, there were usually 10 bankers, 20 realtors, 30 insurance people, a handful of pyramid schemes and the like. Since I am only wanting to talk to CEOs, I found these networking groups to be a tough road to meet or get introductions to the to proper contacts. Anyhow, I thought I would attend a networking event a partner was sponsoring.

For me it is very helpful. Extremely valuable actually. The company website is great for getting a better idea of the prospect’s professionalism. This is a great tool for sales people. Heck it might be a good tool to help qualify if you want to connect to people. If they do not add a website or social media sites, maybe they are hiding something or not tech savvy. Is this a good fit or bad fit for you? This should be one way to measure the seriousness you take with these people. Here is an example:

Have you ever heard this from a client or a prospect? If so you failed to sell value or you were not delivering results.

Last week we started creating a resource for small businesses by putting together a list of companies, magazines and resources in our new digital newspaper. This is a new medium for Brandwise, but over time we should be able to build an ongoing resource most small business people will find helpful. This newspaper will go beyond just branding and marketing. So if you look for one place to get quick updates The Small Business Resource might be right for you.

We are looking for feedback on the Brandwise website. We are going to be making some changes to the site. If you hate the site, let us know why. If you’d prefer more samples, better or more helpful articles, case studies, video or whatever, now’s the time to step up and become part of the process in order to make this a more useful site to you.