GREAT ADAPTATIONS

How could we quantify the collective experience, skills and knowledge of the baby boomer demographic? This is one massive convergence of time and place, this twinkling, decades-reaching, ever-longer-lived group of – um, shall we say, “seniors?”

The brains of Boomers must be mined. Contained therein are solutions, innovations, social histories, and the wisdom of time, to say nothing of some pretty good grammar.

With the current models coming into play where the average person can put together a website and start downloading their knowledge to a community they proscribe, there’s no excuse for losing all that accumulated savvy and smarts.

Give it up, Boomers! You know stuff, and we want to learn it! We need you! Besides, putting yourself through the brain challenge required to learn a little bit about the Internet will make you smarter too. So skip the crosswords this week and do some research about teaching online.

I’m doing my part with some of these posts. Check out this post about the Blogosphere (click on the blue word), or subscribe to my e-mail list for more articles about learning to blog, being friendly to your brain, and crossing that big fat digital divide. And if you have questions about this groovy world I’m peddling, go ahead and post ‘em in the comments section. That’s what I’m here for.

By the way, I’m updating this post as part of Problogger’s 31-Day Build a Better Blog project. Howdy to all my new friends from the comments and forum over there! I invite you to include your own links in the comments below.

See you in the funny pages,

Suzanna Stinnett

Read about how bloggers are interacting in The Collaboration Code

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For Creatives, Entrepreneurs, and the Seriously Over-Booked

If you’re a blogging entrepreneur, here are some things to think about when you’re thinking about bringing on a virtual assistant. I’ll call her a “she” for the sake of the story, but of course he could also be a he.

Practice appropriate praise
Right off the top, get yourself ready to openly praise the person who assists you. Know that when you are clear about your own goals you should be able to see how much your assistant actually does for you – and actively, genuinely, regularly show that you value those skills. Your VA anticipates your needs, and can tell you what is the most efficient use of her skills according to your goals and objectives. Isn’t she amazing?

Anticipate collaboration
I have new projects I want to launch, but I’m not about to swamp myself with new tasks without collaborators. So I look for a VA who understands collaboration. Her business plan allows for a percentage of her time to be used in the risk-investment required to collaborate for future profits. She doesn’t rely on schemes and scams, but she is enthusiastic and savvy in evaluating a potential partnership. She can help set the proper boundaries and expectations in the agreement the two of us might create.

Taking a look at her readiness

Her own tech skills are readily observable because:

*She has her own blog
*She uses Twitter
*She’s on Facebook
*And besides that, she demonstrates great research skills, she’s creative, and – joy! – she is ORGANIZED. (That’s at least half the reason you need help, after all.)

Her communication skills are evident in her blog, as she describes the following assets clearly.

She sets up her daily calendar to handle clients who need small daily tasks tended. Since she is highly skilled at managing her own time, she is able to meet the needs of a number of clients who have small or sporadic tasks to complete. While she likely has an hour or half-hour minimum, when she has a good client she likes and trusts, she becomes more flexible about the minimum time slots she is willing to bill.

Her level of understanding of How Things Work Online can be seen in the suggestions she makes. She does not wait until it’s too late to tell you she can’t get something done. She’s intuitive and proactive.

She can participate in building our network if we decide to collaborate on a project. (Meaning, she’s connected and knows how to leverage it.)

She has two or three references I can actually call on the phone, since I’m going to be turning over passwords and basically the keys to my kingdom.

Since we’re talking about a dream VA here, by the way, she is also funny, warm, bright, responsive, casual, and energetic. She probably loves dogs and boats and plans to live in France at some point. Or is involved in something fun and off-mainstream. Oh, and she knows everything about chocolate.

I wonder what her dream client would look like? Am I her nightmare or her vision of successful collaboration?

Reader, have you found a dream VA? If you’re a virtual assistant, what is your ideal client? Tell me in the comments.

If you know of a wonderful virtual assistant you’d like to recommend, tell me that too. Around the first of May, I’ll do a new post to highlight all the Dream VAs people love to work with.

Suzanna Stinnett

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Collaboration is a word you should be rolling around in your mouth. Get to know it. Think about what it means. Look for examples of it. Know what it is not. Understand it in relationship to competition. Slap your own definition onto it and wave it around.

Brian Clark and Jon Morrow of Copyblogger just released their “Outsourcing Conspiracy” report. It’s beautiful. Visuals courtesy of James Chartrand and his Men with Pens team (as I understand), this report is a refreshing new band of color in the conversation about entrepreneurship, and a pleasure to read.

Now. About the message. I don’t want to give away their nicely drawn tension, so I won’t reveal exactly what they are presenting and suggesting. But I will say that it’s well worth the short session it takes to read it. I’ll give you the link below.

Entrepreneurs like moi who are riding out the rapids of online communication to build a little empire-of-one’s-own need this kind of straight talk. While “Outsourcing Conspiracy” doesn’t talk about collaboration per se, I know the authors relate to my use of this term. (Right, guys?)

When you are engaging online communication, and you understand enough about it to see the potential for you, your expression, your business and your finances, you’re missing the code if you’re oblivious to the need for collaboration.

What’s this “Collaboration Code” thing? Well, it’s a way of drawing on one of your brain areas where the energy around other “codes” is stored. (Whether you loved or hated daVinci Code, for example, your brain still reserves an area for code-related concepts.) See, words are currency and you need to know the exchange rate. I’m spending my currency to trigger curiosity and engage you.

Naming this “The Collaboration Code” is just a conversation starter. (Like calling the report “The Outsourcing Conspiracy.”) Most of us, even when we’re deep into it, don’t quite get what collaboration means today. Here are a few little keys that unlock the big door. They’re meant to juice up the conversation, so please talk.

>>>See Collaboration as a mind-set. Turn your brain towards the full range of potential relationships involving collaboration.

>>>See Collaboration as sharing ideas. The web, the zillions of blogs, the crush of social media chatter, all of that. Collaborative. Albeit currently unused except for a tiny fraction of a percent of the players who are in it up to their elbows.

>>>See Collaboration as an arrangement with another or a few others helping achieve a common goal.

>>>See Collaboration as the engine behind many more people becoming successful entrepreneurs.

>>>See Collaboration as a playground. You come bounce around with others and see what you can discover.

Toss the code over the fence, we don’t need it. We just need to keep playing.

Now talk. Collaborate with me, with us. Go ahead, write a comment, be playful, and tell me what you’d like to work on together. Be childlike and unreserved in your vision of what we can do together.

Suzanna Stinnett

Brain-Friendly Guides to Online Content

READ The Outsourcing Conspiracy

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I’m so excited to see this article come out on Lateral Action. Mark McGuinness interviewed Roger von Oech about his “Creative Whack Pack” coming out as an iPhone app.

I have the app, of course, as a long-time (way long time) follower of von Oech’s great work. He really was the instigator of my own creativity and imagination workshops. The world needs more whack-i-ness, of this order.

But go read the article – it’s a perfect marriage, Lateral Action and Roger von Oech.

Sweeeet!

Suzanna Stinnett

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(And nine effective actions to take instead)

For all those folks out there pondering a new blog or business name, here are nine tips to keep your creative brain headed in the right direction.

1. DON’T name your business before you purchase the domain name.

The available domain name options will determine what follows.

ACTION POINT: Brainstorm your domain name first. Avoid typing your potential name into a domain-seller site until you are absolutely ready to buy. Once you’re committed to it, find it, buy it, and only then proceed with your business details.

2. DON’T get hung up on dot com.

How critical is the dot com? It is not always an option. Sure it’s very cool, but it is not the holy grail. You can have a fine website that gets plenty of search juice even if it is not a dot com.

So your “dot com” is taken. What next? “Dot info?”

No. Dot info should only be used for certain businesses, in which case it is absolutely perfect. It must be relevant.

Country domains, such as dot UK, will make it look like your business is focused on Great Britain.

To read more opinions about this issue, do a Google search along the lines of “why is a dot com important.” There’s an ongoing debate about it which can be quite informative.

ACTION POINT: If you do have something other than a dot com, you’ll want to include the suffix in every mention of your domain name. Think of dot net, for example, as part of the actual sound and memorability of your domain name.

I wanted a dot com for Great Adaptations, but it was taken. I chose the dot org, and in a very short period of time, my blog was ranking high in Google searches. This is because I post actively and appropriately on my blog. Search engines love fresh content.

3. DON’T use plural words.

People can’t remember that final “s”, even when they are typing straight from your business card.

Exception: If you can capitalize on the “SS,” using graphics or fonts to make it stick out in your reader’s mind, you could work it to your advantage.

4. DON’T be careless with double letters.

If your word string has double letters, one of them is likely to be left out when being typed. For example, “Purple People Eater” is a juicy name, but in the URL it is going to be purplepeopleeater, and that double “e” is risky for human error.

ACTION NOTE: Write your ideas out in the form they’ll take as a URL. All lower case, and no spaces. How many ways can it be misconstrued?

5. DON’T get caught off guard when you have to explain your domain name to potential customers. You may have to articulate it more than once. Learn to do that in a friendly, clear way, with a smile.

ACTION POINT: Try short sentences instead of tricky words. As short names get gobbled up, we’re seeing a lot of creativity with longer names. An actual short sentence can be extremely effective and easy for the customer to remember.

A site that sells rain gear, for example, could be called dontgetwet.net. Hear the rhythm in that? Don’t get wet dot net. In this case, even the suffix is memorable.

6. Don’t create a two-part sentence or hook concepts together. It’s too much to remember. You’ve got to keep it punchy and poetic.

ACTION POINT: Try out adjectives to go with your name. If you want to call your candy company Sweet Treat, and find every option taken, think about Neat Sweet Treat. Complete Sweet Treat. Watch for relevance, and keep testing it by writing it out, no spaces. neatsweettreats. See that? We’ve got a double letter problem here. Keep brainstorming.

7. DON’T make your domain name into a license plate.

If you want to create a site for actors to find practice partners, and you’re thinking it could be called “The Actor’s Cave,” don’t use aktorzKv. Did you know that squirrels hide nuts everywhere but without a system to find them? That’s what happens with quirky spellings. Search engines can’t make sense of them either.

ACTION POINT: Remember that you will be speaking your domain name to people. What will they think first? What’s the spelling they are most likely to visualize when you say the name? Say the name out loud. To friends. Listen to it. How perfectly clear is it to the ear? Does it make you smile – or cringe?

8. DON’T use hyphens or underlines. With rare exception, hyphens only make a name harder to type. If you have a powerful name in mind that is already taken, you are not doing yourself a service by creating it with hyphens. Searches for your name are not going to carry the hyphen, and your search juice is not going to be the better for it. Underlines look like code. That’s not what you want.

ACTION POINT: Play with a short verb before your main words. See what happens when you add “Use” or “Try” or “Get” to your collection. When you research domain names, the site that sells the domains will also make lots of suggestions for you.

9. DON’T follow all these instructions.

You might miss your most visionary moment! These are guidelines, not laws.

ACTION POINT: Use the dictionary, use Google searches, give yourself lots of food for thought. Write down your options, move them around, find different ways to say what your business really means.

Bonus Point: If you’re getting frustrated by the process of discovering a great domain name, you’re probably close to the right one. Take a creativity break: Go bowling, eat chocolate, stay up late, laugh with friends. Come back to it tomorrow.

Let your creative self loose, and gallop along beside it. Go out and romp in the fields – and for vision’s sake, take a recorder!

Happy domain searching,

Suzanna Stinnett

Brain-Friendly Guides(c) to online communication