Web designhas become a profitable niche for freelancers in the last few years, especially with the popularity of the WordPress platform. Tech blogs, e-commerce sites and general information sites all prefer to have a custom-designed blog to help sell their offerings worldwide.

To capitalize on the earning potential of web design industry there has been surge in the number of custom service web design providers. However, only a handful of freelancers are able to sense the change in the industry dynamics and add value to their creative ideas during implementation.

In order for you to stay competitive, effective, and yet innovative with your web designs I propose the following ten guidelines:

1. Design Based on the Customer’s Requirements

More often than not, the web designer concentrates on delivering a low quality site skeleton due to budget constraints.

However, this tactic often backfires since the designer leaves out vital aspects of the customer requirements. The best way to understand the customer is to discover their needs and address them during the design process.

Design fiascos are an aftermath of a poor interpretation of business requirements and sometimes a lack of technical competence on the part of the designer. Therefore, it is imperative that you to brush up on both technical skills and soft skills.

2. Factor Google Panda into Your Design

Design components do not stand alone. In the future, freelancers should align their work to Google Panda standards.

Google has recently included page load speed as one of the factors that determines the page rank of a website. Using heavy design components can slow Http request-response times considerably. This, in turn, may negatively impact the rankings of the site.

So, whether you like Google’s big brother attitude or not–as a designer you should comply with the latest policies of the search engine giant.

3. Work in Sprints–Use the Agile Scrum Approach

Rather than adopting the big bang approach using the conventional SDLC waterfall implementation model, try out agile development.

Why not deliver creative design in a sprint of two to four weeks with dedicated and skilled resources? Agile development is the latest method used by freelancers and customers who want faster results.

4. Manage Review Schedules

The majority of freelance professionals fail to employ an active review mechanism during the course of the project. In order to achieve 100% customer satisfaction and achieve cutting edge design, designers should include a review mechanism and encourage their valued customers to keep up with the review cycle.

5. Benchmark Your Designs

Do you benchmark your creations with the best in the industry?

If not, then you are probably delivering designs that don’t meet the mark. More often than not, without benchmarking, you’ll find that your customers complain about lack of features. As a best practice you should benchmark against innovative design standards to boost business productivity.

6. Do Not Reinvent Everything

Are you the “Apple Computer” of your field?

If you answered “yes,” note that even Apple does not reinvent everything. Standard design templates should be used and scaled up (or down) to meet the customers’ specific requirements. Not all projects require that you start from scratch.

7. Keep Your Pricing Competitive and Attractive

One of the major factors that will drive the demand for web design services in 2012 is the pricing component. The best league designers have already started offering repeat business discounts and freebie deals. Is your freelance business proposal to prospective customers competitive?

8. Maintain a Web Presence

Have you done work for customers, but don’t yet have a website for your own design business?

Not having a website can be the biggest blunder that you can commit as a freelancer. Having a web presence adds credibility to your business and provides you with an opportunity to showcase your portfolio.

9. Learn More with Social Media

If you want to keep up with the latest trends for web design, there is no better avenue than Facebook or dedicated design forums. Ideally, you should follow the best designers in the industry to understand where the industry is moving.

Additionally, it helps to create a dedicated Fan Page to develop hot leads.

10. Don’t Start from Scratch

The design arena has changed radically in the last few years.

Taking an idea from concept to creation can take less time too. There are ready-to-use design frameworks, vector designs and templates available for free (or at competitive rates). These should be leveraged by designers.

Before creating something new from scratch, check to see if there is a tool or template that you could use to save time.

Your Turn

What web design guidelines would you add for 2012?

The International Visitor Leadership Program, an off-shoot of something run by the U.S. State Department, brought a group of journalists and bloggers from China to the U.S. recently. I met with them in Louisville on Friday to discuss new media journalism in the U.S. The hour-and-a-half long meeting gave them an opportunity to ask me questions about how bloggers and journalists in the U.S. deal with a variety of issues, including ethics in journalism, credibility in new and online media outlets, how Americans can be critical of their government but do so within the confines of our laws and the like.

Because several of the guests on the trip were also bloggers, more than traditionally trained journalists, as well as social media enthusiasts, they also asked many questions about social media marketing and advising companies on how to use the social web to connect with consumers.

Surprisingly, at least to me, they asked many of the same questions I’m asked regularly — how do you measure social media success, what is the ROI of social media, what areas are companies typically resistant to and how do you overcome that. It was refreshing to see that their questions were on par with similar individuals in the U.S.

Image by Dan4th via Flickr

The first question that was asked of me that day was from Xiuli Zhuang, a Ph.D. holder and master instructor at Beijing Normal University, and one of the people responsible for SocialLearnLab.org, a social media community and learning center for the Chinese people. It was focused on the obvious political differences in our countries and how bloggers and journalists in America can, within the law, be critical of our government.

While her question was generally focused there, I chose to broaden my answer to explain the biggest difference between social media in America and what I assume to be social media in China. Granted, I’ve never been to China and don’t know for certain how their government reacts to this power-to-the-people movement in how we communicate, but I can assume a few things based on China’s precedents and the few news stories I’ve read about the government banning Facebook and other social media-related items.

I told her the biggest difference between social media here and there is that our government tends to wait for someone to die or sue to react to changes in public behavior. It typically takes a lawsuit for the U.S. government to consider policy change or even regulation or law that would apply to something not already covered by existing policy.

Is anonymity online protected under free speech? No, according to legal precedent. But that precedent wasn’t established until 2010 with lawsuits like Paul v. John Doe a/k/a “Davey Crocket” in which an anonymous poster on RipOffReport.com was found to have stated provably false items about Paul Syiek, who sued. The courts ruled the person’s identity should be revealed and he should be held liable for his misstatements.

China’s government, under my assumptions and admitted meagre knowledge, is more proactive and totalitarian in its response to societal change or uncertainty. Better to ban Facebook than to allow the public to open that can of worms. In America, we’re a Democracy. We let the public open as many cans of worms it chooses until one of the worms bites someone, makes them sick or infringes on someone else’s rights. Then, and only then, will our Government step in.

This is both good and bad. While Americans have always been rather spoiled and indignant because of their “Constitutional rights,” we often fail to see that in order to have them, we have to put up with Topix.com or the comments section of our local newspapers. (An aside, the Courier-Journal in Louisville and other Gannett properties are moving to Facebook commenting systems to raise the level of discourse on their sites. Thank God!)

With the good (freedoms) come the bad (tolerating idiots we don’t agree with).

In China, the government tends to make decisions for the masses. While they might be well-intended, they aren’t democratic and thus result in disenfranchised citizens. That disenfranchisement can often become oppression as well. Or at least we think it can as freedom-loving and living Americans. My guess is that many Chinese would react to our anger their government “oppresses” them by telling us to lighten the hell up.

What this means for those of us in America, and other Western countries for that matter, is that only now are the lawsuits beginning. Our governments have not reacted to how we use the social web because, for the most part, to date no one has been hurt. But as more businesses and individuals become more knowledgeable and savvy with how social media works, who uses it and for what reason, more will find legal reasons to legislate how we use it.

Expect court cases to be in the news in the coming months and years that not only tell us how we can use social media, but how we can’t.

That’s a rude awakening coming for many of us.

What types of online behavior do you see being legislated out of permissibility in the coming years? Anonymous comments? Grey hat SEO techniques? Others? The comments are yours.

Originally published in the November 2011 issue of Fundraising Success Magazine where I have written a quarterly column throughout 2011.

In June 2007, I presented my first social media training to a small group of nonprofits in Lowell, MA. At the time, nonprofits were primarily only using Myspace and YouTube. Though Facebook had gone public nine months previous, Facebook Groups were only just beginning to be used as community-building tools by nonprofits and Facebook Pages didn’t exist yet. It was the optimal time for early adoption of social media by nonprofits, and it’s no coincidence that the nonprofits that embraced these new tools in 2006 through 2008 are today the most successful nonprofits on the Social Web. There’s definitely a math to social media synergy, and those that start early have both time and math on their side.

At this first training, it was no surprise that almost all of the attendees were battling the “my boss doesn’t get it” conundrum. The media had made Myspace, and social networking in general, out to be dangerous, life-threatening even. Executives were terrified by the legal implications of using social networking tools. Long-term professional communications and fundraising staff were having a hard time accepting the aesthetic of this new media because it went against everything they had learned in their careers about design and online messaging. And almost all executives were resisting letting go of control and embracing the new concept of empowering supporters and donors to be content creators and fundraisers for their nonprofits online.

Flash forward four and a half years. Executives have come a long way in understanding the Social Web. However, as I travel the country this year giving trainings on social and mobile media to nonprofits of all sizes, I’m somewhat flummoxed that the No. 1 complaint by nonprofit social media practitioners is still that, “My boss doesn’t get it! What can I do to make him understand?”

It is borderline tragic that it is taking this long for the “A-ha!” moment to trickle up. Social media is no longer new, and the Mobile Web is rapidly upon us… now. It’s troublesome to say the least that nonprofit social media practitioners still struggle to get the buy-in and the support they need from executive staff to launch and maintain successful social media campaigns. Social media is not a fad. It’s a fundamental shift in how our supporters communicate with each other and with us, and ultimately in how they donate and get involved with organizations.

If your nonprofit can’t get the support it needs in social and mobile media and is still forced to wing it on a zero budget, here are some tips to help you illuminate and mobilize the skeptics:

Find your voice and channel your enthusiasm 
Be insistent and firm that your nonprofit needs to embrace social and mobile media. If that is that not your personality type, then try to step out of your comfort zone. Asserting yourself at work is often the missing piece to success.

Compile stats to share with executive staff
98 percent of adults aged 18 to 24 use social media. The second most visited website in the U.S. and the world is Facebook; 71 percent of Americans watch online video; Foursquare has surpassed 1 billion check-ins; one in three Americans access the Mobile Web every day; 73 percent of Americans send and receive text messages. A quick Google search of “social media stats 2011″ pulls up a wide range of stats to share with unaware executive staff.

Find your competitors the Web
If they have well-executed social media campaigns, send executive staff links to their profiles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Foursquare, Tumblr, etc., with a note that you fear your nonprofit is falling behind. Odds are that if you have to do this, then your nonprofit probably is falling behind.

Subscribe to social media blogs
Such as Mashable, Nonprofit Tech 2.0, Socialbrite, etc. and then forward executives breaking news on social and mobile media. Get social and mobile media buzz in their e-mail inboxes regularly!

Get training
Learn how to successfully integrate your website, e-newsletter and “Donate Now” campaigns with social and mobile media. Your ROI (and thus your boss’s willingness to invest in social and mobile media) is directly related to how well-integrated these tools and communities are with one another. Trust me… as someone who has browsed more than 100,000 nonprofits on social networking sites over the last (almost) seven years, I know that most nonprofit social media practitioners need training. They don’t think they do, but they do.

Get executive staff on a webinar
I”ll be presenting a free mini-webinar on social and mobile media for executive staff on January 25. Register here!

Be proactive
Add your social and mobile media responsibilities to your job description. Then, at your next annual review, at least seed the idea that you can’t add these new responsibilities to your job description without dropping time spent on other duties. Your boss can say no, but you need to be firm. Perhaps even ask for a raise — it never hurts to ask.

Ask for an office smartphone
You are going to need it. Yes, yes… I know. Your nonprofit has no budget for it. Ask anyway because if your nonprofit is not experimenting with social media on the Mobile Web, then you are missing the early adoption phase and you’ll regret it two-to-three years from now when fundraising is mobile.

All that said, the truth is that there is no magical word or case study that you can present to skeptical executive staff to make them instantly get it. It’s up to you to be proactive, insistent and ultimately not take “no” for an answer. It’s in the best interest of your nonprofit, and ultimately your career in nonprofit communications and fundraising, that you do so.

Poor Governor Sam Brownback from Kansas. He thought he was doing the right thing. He was told to pay attention to social media, so he put together a staff to do just that (or instructed his current staff to pay attention). They were out there, watching the Twittersphere as they were told. The only bad part is that they didn’t know what to do when they found something.

ot wanting to rehash, but here’s the backstory from NPR.

Before going straight into the moral of the story, I want to highlight an error in reasoning that prevented this article from being written earlier. When I first heard about the story, I assumed that it was another case of a mishandled social media post, that the Governor’s office saw a perceived threat and made the choice to go to the organization with whom the girl was associated rather than dealing with it publicly. It’s a judgment call when dealing with social media. Sometimes going head-on via the social media outlet is the right thing to do and sometimes working behind the scenes is better.

My error was in not looking closely enough. I made the terrible assumption that the girl had a following and was sparking discussion around her Tweet. Today, I discovered that she had 65 followers at the time of the Tweet. 65. The Tweet was, for all intents and purposes, completely invisible. It wasn’t a threat. It basically didn’t exist.

Now, it does. Dozens of mainstream media publications, national television, and talk show hosts are discussing it because someone in Brownback’s office thought it was a brilliant idea to take an invisible Tweet and turn it into something. They made it tangible by addressing it at all.

This wasn’t a case of a bad call between addressing it publicly versus addressing it behind the scenes. This is a case of someone working in a politician’s office who was tasked with monitoring social media who didn’t have the slightest idea what social media really was. This isn’t the fault of the staff member or the staff in general. This is Governor Brownback’s fault for entrusting something as important as social media to someone who wasn’t qualified.

Within the first day of training, our social media interns are made aware of what’s important and what isn’t. They are taught to recognize when something “doesn’t exist” in the realm of social media. Many times, if a person has less than 5,000 Twitter followers and they don’t get retweets or responses within 24 hours of posting something negative, we choose to ignore it. It’s the “tree falling in a forest with nobody around” circumstance.

Even with local social media monitoring and management, someone needs 1,000 Twitter followers to be on our radar. This girl had 65.

Politicians are especially vulnerable to attacks even more so than businesses. If you are a politician or work in political office, be sure to hire someone on staff who has a clear understanding of social media. The results of poor decisions are amplified in social media more than any other medium.

Social Media Marketing – The Most Darwinian Business Idea
Social media marketing is undeniably here. Even with tipping point squarely in Internet marketing’s rear-view mirror there are many social media marketing misconceptions, hang-ups and strange ideas.

What is it worth to be viewed as human, caring, flawed, brave and responsive? Your presence in social media is you or your company’s first step in an important subjective and objective journey; your customers’ idea of you as COMPANY or BRAND and so impenetrably non-human is changed by mere presence in social media marketing.

Walking in the door of social media marketing means you are ready, willing and able to listen and learn. Listening, listening as our team likes to say with “intent”, may be the most prized and hardest to find COMPANY or BRAND skill in a flat, furious and quickly evolving Internet marketing time.

Few things in our current marketing ecommerce or retailing world are truly free. Having customers see your COMPANY, BRAND, PRODUCT or SERVICE as more human and so able to be loved is something you get free with your first Tweet, Facebook page, Paper.li or Scoop.it.

Can initial social media value, the one you get for free just walking in the social media marketing door, be offset by stupidity, ignorance and greed? Sure, but poor performance by some doesn’t change truth. Soon winning customer hearts and minds will require, mandate and insist upon robust social media marketing presence. No Facebook page = no COMPANY or BRAND (or no viable company or brand, no trusted company or brand, no sustainable company or brand).

Count, measure, slide rule, spreadsheet and P&L your social media marketing. The subjective truth of social media marketing’s value doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bean count the heck out of it. No, the truth of social media marketing’s main benefit, that social media makes it possible, as Faith Popcorn so famously declared, to “join” your COMPANY or BRAND doesn’t change your business need for understandable profit.

Don’t count the wrong things in the wrong ways. Profit and Return On Investment (ROI) aren’t the most important ideas or values behind social media marketing’s curtain. Backstage social media’s most important contributions come from your company’s human struggle to survive matter and contribute (change the world) in meaningful ways.

Connecting customers to your company’s inner and universal human truths is not a new idea. Customer service, company mission, values and philosophy have, as Jim Collins pointed out so convincingly in Good To Great, always been important initial ideas and predictors of eventual success. Social media marketing means what used to be private is now much more public. Social media, blogs and Google killed your company’s ability to keep secrets, so don’t.

Humans are funny. The longer I live the more clear it is – high school never really ends. We stamp our feet, exclude those not “like” us and generally act foolish and immature about half the time. Does social media marketing expose COMPANY and BRAND immaturity?

At times being social does expose cracks because, and this can be a hard idea to fully grasp, social marketing can only EVER reflect character you, your company, brands and products already have. Social media is a giant, amplifying, reflecting pool. Social marketing doesn’t create values. Adding social media marketing only confirms values already present. Does social media marketing on Facebook or Twitter make COMPANIES and BRANDS look bad? At times it does. Is having those mistakes made so large and public the most important thing any COMPANY or BRAND can do? Without a doubt.

Customers will forgive, guide and understand failure. Soon no existing or potential customer will forgive social absence.

Social media marketing absence is an arrogance no company can afford. “But we don’t know the ROI of social media,” I hear owners and CFOs saying after I share that last sentence in meetings. Companies like Argyle Social and Spring Metrics are creating tools to measure the strange, chaotic and confusing multi-touch world that is Internet marketing. Just as in the beginning of Google’s Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, I purchased my first keywords in 1999, social media’s value is in advance of tools needed to validate social’s true positive influence on COMPANY and BRAND bottom lines.

If I can convince you of one thing today let’s hope it is this – the greatest value, the greatest return on your social media marketing investment, comes from making your COMPANY and BRAND feel true, flawed, real and therefore able to be loved. We don’t love Greek Gods we read about them. We don’t love despots we depose them. We don’t love uncaring companies or brands we oppose them and, in so doing, try to help them find their, and by extension our, humanity.

Create and invest in a social media marketing plan because you must. Bean count it to within an inch of its life, but never forget your COMPANY and BRAND is social because there is, in the end, no other sustainable choice.