Christopher Butler

January 19th 2012

I’ve got a short piece over at the HOW Interactive Design community on “why you should consider being a generalist.” Here’s a snippet:

“But while specialization is necessary for businesses, it’s not always necessary for individuals (or even individuals who work for specialized firms). In fact, I believe employing individuals who are generalists can bring immense value to a creative firm. A serious, disciplined generalist will savvily navigate many fields to understand the big picture. They’ll see influencing factors that may come down the road and may otherwise be hidden in the blind spots of your firm’s narrow focus. They are human synthesizers. They see the unseen connections between things and act as the trimtab of your ship—sensing even the subtlest shifts in the current and adjusting your trajectory accordingly. They may not be comfortable with commanding the big, heroic reactions necessary to survive the rogue waves that come up every now and then—but they’ll probably have had a sense that something was up.”

Read the whole thing here >

Posted at 12:37pm and tagged with: design, Business,.

I’ve got a short piece over at the HOW Interactive Design community on “why you should consider being a generalist.” Here’s a snippet:
“But while specialization is necessary for businesses, it’s not always necessary for individuals (or even individuals who work for specialized firms). In fact, I believe employing individuals who are generalists can bring immense value to a creative firm. A serious, disciplined generalist will savvily navigate many fields to understand the big picture. They’ll see influencing factors that may come down the road and may otherwise be hidden in the blind spots of your firm’s narrow focus. They are human synthesizers. They see the unseen connections between things and act as the trimtab of your ship—sensing even the subtlest shifts in the current and adjusting your trajectory accordingly. They may not be comfortable with commanding the big, heroic reactions necessary to survive the rogue waves that come up every now and then—but they’ll probably have had a sense that something was up.”
Read the whole thing here >

October 15th 2010

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Money First.

Talking about money can be awkward, which is why it’s often brought up too late. But no other diagnostic question you ask matters unless your client can afford to pay you for the work they’re hoping you’ll do. And oh boy does that mean that you had better be charging enough. But that’s another article …

I’ve learned that the best way to begin talking about a project is to discuss money. Too often, we wait until after the client has assumed control of the negotiations, after you’ve already spent a ton of time trying to close on the job, or worse yet, after work has already been done. By then, you’ve set a precedent that is almost impossible to reverse. And if you’re operating this way, you likely aren’t even certain what you need to earn for the work you’re doing. You’re winging it, and the client can see that. The only way you’re going to get the budget you need is to have the money conversation right away.

Read the rest of my article for Print Magazine’s ImPrint Blog here >

Posted at 2:31pm and tagged with: web-development, Business, design,.

Money First.
Talking about money can be awkward, which is why it’s often brought up too late. But no other diagnostic question you ask matters unless your client can afford to pay you for the work they’re hoping you’ll do. And oh boy does that mean that you had better be charging enough. But that’s another article …
I’ve learned that the best way to begin talking about a project is to discuss money. Too often, we wait until after the client has assumed control of the negotiations, after you’ve already spent a ton of time trying to close on the job, or worse yet, after work has already been done. By then, you’ve set a precedent that is almost impossible to reverse. And if you’re operating this way, you likely aren’t even certain what you need to earn for the work you’re doing. You’re winging it, and the client can see that. The only way you’re going to get the budget you need is to have the money conversation right away.
Read the rest of my article for Print Magazine’s ImPrint Blog here >

November 10th 2009

Should You Work for Free to Get Your Foot in the Door?

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My Opinion: No, You Shouldn’t
Back in early April, I read a post by Peter Madden on the Advertising Age “Small Agency Diary” blog about the benefits of doing pro-bono work during the idle time brought on by an economic recession (pictured in the screenshot to the left). What I think Peter was really trying to hone in on was the idea that though doing pro-bono work may have its good, altruistic purposes, it can also be a practical means to keeping minds and faculties productive and busy when they’d be otherwise unused. I completely agree with that sentiment; for a designer, staying in practice is well worth the investment. However, I did comment on his post in order to note one reservation I would have- I’ve copied my comment below:

“Peter, I think this is a great idea. We’ve done lots of pro bono work in the past, both for organizations we care about and for friends and family connections. The only place it can get sticky is if your business model includes long-term support. For us (we’re a web development firm), we host and maintain every site we build, which means that if a client got that initial site for free, we either have to consider everything we do for them moving forward as free, or deal with the tricky step of transitioning them from pro-bono to paying client. Even if that client is willing to become a paying one, the leap can be tough- when you’re used to getting something for free for a long time, suddenly paying what it’s actually worth is not that easy. To that point, we’ve negotiated that transition with varying degrees of success, such that we have to think carefully about how our business model will realistically impact our desire to do pro bono work every now and then.”

Journalists Love a Good Debate
I was a bit nervous about potentially being seen as a naysayer. After all, the predominant tone of the marketing industry in the current social media era is one of sharing and generosity. Amidst that, who would want to be perceived as a Scrooge? As you’ll see if you read through the comment string, there were opinions on all sides.

Then, in September, I received a call from Kasey Wehrum, writer for Inc. Magazine. He’d seen my comment on the AdAge blog while doing research for a piece he was writing on the benefits of pro-bono work for November’s issue and wanted to ask me some questions about our experience and pull some quotes for his article. We spoke for about thirty minutes or so, during which I stressed that though we’ve done much pro-bono work due to existing relationships with various causes that employees have had, the notion of using pro-bono work as a strategy to build business was never one we adopted for two reasons: (1) Doing so would be contrary to any consultant’s positioning. If consultants choose to give away advice, it should be because they truly care about the cause. Doing so with the expectation that it could be turned profitable would be disingenuous. (2) When your primary deliverable is incorporeal (advice, strategy, direction, etc.), getting a client to start paying for that kind of service after they’ve already been receiving it for free is very, very difficult- even if they say they are willing.

Requisite Benefits-of-Social-Media Interlude
I should point out that this scenario is a great example of the unplanned serendipity of social media. It’s become a habit of mine to actively engage with other blogs in my industry, so it wasn’t unusual for me to share my opinion on the AdAge blog. What was unusual, to me at least, is that the post that I had commented on, and indeed my comment itself, became research material for a journalist at a major publication. I was glad to share my opinion and experience with Kasey Wehrum, who was a pleasure to speak with, but was surprised that I might be of any help to him. There must be others more qualified than I. However, having commented immediately on Peter Madden’s post put me in the right place at the right time.

Still a Naysayer
As it turns out, the article took a different direction from what I thought it was going to be about. It’s titled Using Charitable Donations to Motivate Employees. Wehrum uses an example of a software company which built an offering for a pro-bono client and was then able to demo it to another company which became a paying customer. Pro-pro-bono, but no problem there- I think my point still stands when it comes to consultative work. In any case, the remaining reference to our conversation was disappointing:

“Keep in mind that beggars can be surprisingly choosy. Sometimes companies have to draw the line about what nonprofits can get for free. Newfangled Web Factory, a Carrboro, North Carolina, Web design firm, lets its employees work on pro bono projects of their choosing during slow times at work. Most of the projects consist of designing and building websites, which are then hosted on Newfangled’s servers.

These ongoing relationships, in which the charity becomes reliant on Newfangled’s continuing service, have led to some problems. Occasionally, one of the nonprofits the company helps will undergo a reorganization, and the new staff will want to revamp its website. “They’ll get in touch with us and want to make a whole lot of changes,” says Chris Butler, Newfangled’s vice president. When the requests are too great, Newfangled politely but firmly says no.”

Oh well. We’re really not Scrooges here at Newfangled! I did leave a clarifying comment, which I hope won’t be seen as overly defensive:

“One point I’d want to clarify is this: In the past when we’ve chosen to do pro-bono work, it has been because we’ve believed in the cause, not in order to gain a potential paying client at some later point.

When it comes to service-oriented firms and consultants, transitioning a pro-bono client to a paying client is very difficult as you’ve already been giving them your best advice for free. For any agency, this should be a serious consideration when entertaining the strategy of getting a foot in the door by offering free service. However, if the scope of the offering has been limited to implementation only (i.e. a website), there could definitely be potential to expand the scope of your service when the client is able to pay.

Also, we do politely say no once the client’s need exceeds our ability to subsidize it, but we also almost always connect them to someone else who can help them.”

Here’s a scan of the article. Click to open it in full size:

Posted at 10:30am and tagged with: business, marketing, design,.

November 3rd 2009

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Most often when we fail to achieve the results we are after, it is due not to inadequate effort, but to doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. We tend to set goals far more easily than we determine how to actually achieve them. And yet, when we don’t reach our objectives, we are confounded as to why. This truth is at the core of why many companies (including Newfangled) struggle with maintaining a web content strategy: We know the results we’re after, but we don’t go about achieving them in the right way. We know that our goal is to build our businesses, so we must shift our focus to online engagement. But we are often reticent to let the chaos of constant and ubiquitous content remain the status quo and search engine optimization the only means to that goal. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So we do, creating plenty of meaningless content and burning out in the process.

This month, I want to share with you the conclusions we’ve come to about the right way to conceive and execute a web content strategy. Put simply, it comes down to the answer to one question: Who are you speaking to? Only by clearly identifying your prospects can you go about creating content that is truly valuable. Oh, and despite the obvious importance of search engine optimization, please don’t misidentify search engines as your prospects. Robots don’t read, people do.

What is valuable is entirely subjective, so for the purposes of this article, I’d like to define what I mean by valuable content in this way: Valuable content is material created for your prospects that engages their need and brings them into relationship with you. This definition may require you to completely rethink your content strategy. Or it may simply merit a subtle tweak in factors like the type of content you’re creating, messaging, or frequency. Either way, if you do calibrate your strategy for value, your content will be more in tune with the needs of the people you are positioned to speak to by your expertise, and therefore much more likely to convert them from passive readers to real prospects. But before we get into our conclusions about how to create valuable content, I’d like to demonstrate how the evaluation of our own website data brought us to them.