The goal is to attract “fans” to your page so that you can amass a virtual following of sorts. This enables you to keep a close level of connection with people interested in your cause, and to see what those people are like. It’s great for connecting with clients, prospects, partners, users and other parties who might interact with your brand.

As a regular Facebook user, I’ve noticed four primary reasons why people become fans. I’ve highlighted some ways you might be able to take advantage of those reasons if you’re thinking about building a fan page.

Reason One: They’re obligated

Ok, no one is obligated to do anything when it comes to Facebook, but your “real” friends and family will look pretty bad if they don’t become a fan of your cause. This is the easiest group to attract to your page because they know you personally. In fact, you should start calling out to this group first as it will allow you to build a base of fans. Once you have the base built, you’ll experience a bit of a snowball effect as people you don’t know as well might start jumping on the bandwagon. The cool thing with Facebook is that users can see what other users are doing including what they’re becoming fans of.

How you can use this

Once you setup your fan page, send out a quick invite to all the people you know. I guarantee within a few hours, you’ll have a core following of your closest friends and family. Next, get people you know from local groups such as the Chamber of Commerce to become friends. This will have a rippling effect that’ll help build a strong base of fans.

Reason Two: They connect with everything

There are people who become fans of anything and everything they have encountered or think they want to encounter. They’ll become a fan of the restaurant they’re thinking about going to, their hometown, other towns they think are cool, things that they think reflect their personality and so forth. Some people do this because they are really connected while others just want to show off. Some of these people are also experimenters and connectors, and can help you spread your message.

How you can use this

Be there. Make your presence known on Facebook. But most importantly, provide superb service. The combination of those two factors will guarantee fandom from this group of users. The next step is to identify the connectors within your Facebook network. These are the people with hundreds of friends on their account. By giving them the channel along with good service, they’ll tune in. It’s also a great idea to connect your offline and online presences. For instance, if you deal with many people face to face or via email, let them know that you’re on Facebook. If they’re a connector or experimenter, they might just become a fan of your page.

Reason Three: They believe in the cause

Many people have genuine beliefs in a cause and are interested in staying informed. Facebook pages provide one outlet for staying up-to-date. Users will become a fan to receive new postings, videos, photos and other updates. This is also a great opening for interacting directly with users as they are the most engaged group.

How you can use this

Maintain an active fan page. Post enough updates to keep people coming but not so much that you look like a can of spam. Post interesting things, too. Videos and photos are among the most engaging pieces of content. You can also link over to your blog or podcast. The key is to provide a rich content stream that your most avid followers will want to consume and recommend.

Reason Four: There’s an incentive

Many of the big companies like Papa John’s provide users with an incentive for becoming a fan. Whether it’s a free pizza or some sort of prize, people always flock toward the chance of winning something. This is a great way to build up your Facebook fandom, especially if you can do it in a way that’s viral (e.g. posting a funny video that starts off your contest). The unfortunate downside is that you’ll gain a lot of “cheap” fans. They’re disposable and only come to you for the prize. The upside is that you do have a small amount of time to win that user over via rich content and updates.

How you can use this

Launch a promotion for people to become fans of your page. Everyone should get an incentive and it should be something pretty good (I’d say at least $5 to $10 in value but that’s completely arbitrary). That’s the easy part. The hard part is to then engage these users. Once you get them as a fan, give them more than their carrot; feed them rich and interesting content about your organization and industry. The incentive is just the hook.

This is by no means a conclusive list, but it should provide you with some of the basic reasoning I’ve discovered in why people fan things. Maybe you’ve noticed other reasons. Feel free to share in the comments section!

If you’re a web designer and reading this then you’ve probably put down your coffee and asked yourself what the hell I’m talking about. I’m a designer, too, so let me shed some light on the grim death of web design.

Web design started pretty much around 1995 or whenever companies decided it was a good idea to get online. It was the birth of a new level of communication. It was pretty freaking exciting, too (though, at the time, I was 11 and had more pressing concerns such as the release of Independence Day).

As companies scrambled to get online, web design became a new, uncharted avenue for making money. To know HTML, DHTML and JavaScript in those days was like having a PhD, but you didn’t have to pay gazillions of dollars to acquire those skills! So some smart fool started selling these skills.

When you have one guy raking in boatloads of money for something that’s actually pretty easy to do, it catches on. The next guy opens shop and says, “I can do what that guy’s doing and I can do it better.” Now you have new people with new skills and ideas permeating the new found web design industry. It’s pretty cool, especially during the dot com bubble. Imagine gobs of money. Don’t I wish I had started web design back then? That’s a different story.

I’m not sure what era to call the dot com bubble. Was it the golden age? New ideas and ways of using the internet were spreading like hot syrup over pancakes just off the griddle. But many of those ideas failed. Perhaps it was more like the bronze age where man is just learning how to use the tools he developed. I think that’s a better approximation of those times.

Nevertheless, the internet was on fire. Web design was the kingpin industry, too. If you were a premium web design company, you were guaranteed business and you were guaranteed to make money. That must have felt great.

Obviously all bubbles must pop at some point, and this one burst with a miraculous explosion. That sucked for web design. But web design was having other problems. Complementary industries like web hosting were starting to get into the game. And, anyone involved with web hosting knows that it was and still is rife with the most childish and unprofessional businesspeople.

The web design industry was effectively being infiltrated by idiots, teenagers, people with atrocious skills and child-like businesspeople. When you put all these magnificent elements in one room, you can see the industry start to deteriorate.

First, barriers to entry? What the hell is that? There are almost no more barriers. Anyone with a computer and Microsoft FrontPage can open shop. I’ll admit I used FrontPage back in 1999 to design my first sites. Thankfully, I realized I sucked at it and didn’t try to sell it. Next, price? What the hell is price? I spent no money opening shop, so I’ll set my price ridiculously low so I can win the deal. Quality? You get what you pay for. Customer support? Go cry about it. Business planning, strategy and goals? Aren’t those for real businesses?

Now, anyone reading this clearly thinks that I’m whining and complaining like a baby that my feet are being held to the fire. Not at all. In fact, I didn’t even really get into web design until those effects were already in play. And I still succeeded.

So there is hope? Not really.

During about 2005 is when I really started to get into web design. Considering that’s 10 years after the birth of the industry, that’s pretty late to be getting in. The market is completely saturated. Everywhere  you turn someone and their kid, dog and cat are offering web design services. No problem.

While the barriers to entry for web design have been lowered significantly, differentiation has been easy. When a vast majority of web designers and web design companies suck, I can take a stand and show people why I don’t suck. When I say show, I mean real, hard evidence. Not just marketing lingo or pretty portfolio pages.

The key was getting out into the local market and talking to people. Ah ha! Talking to people. That’s the key. Very few web design companies can build the nerve to do that. Of course, you can’t just walk out into a street and start talking to people. We (my company) had to the networking routine. Here’s where the next key was discovered. We had to establish a local presence. Continual face-to-face recognition is golden. Once our presence was established we were doing quite well and we continue to do well.

All while this was happening, the big guys such as GoDaddy and Network Solutions began stepping up their game. With stupid names like “Website Tonight” or whatever, these guys started marketing instant web site type packages for pennies on the dollar. Ok, so these web sites are really cheesy and embarrassing. But people still use them because they’re cheap, and for the ones who just want to be online, they get the job done.

The big guys are easy to compete with. They’re so slow moving and just plain lame that it only takes a few hits against them to convince someone not to use them. On other other hand, a bunch of other little guys starting popping up. They offer services much like GoDaddy and Network Solutions except their templating software is much more sophisticated and easier to use.

It didn’t stop there. Don’t want to use one of those ugly, out-of-the-box templates? In steps new guys like ThemeForest. ThemeForest offers “professionally” (they look all right) designed themes for a few bucks. Just pay, download and setup the theme. You’re good to go. What’s alarming is that people who need the web site aren’t exactly going to places like ThemeForest. Rather, it’s designers themselves. That’s right. The crappy, no-talent designers who operate out of their bedroom use ThemeForest to download good-looking (that’s a matter of opinion) themes and rub it off on their clients. Granted, it’s easy to call them out on it, but their client won’t know any better. You now effectively don’t even need to know how to design in order to sell a web site.

Maybe that’s a little harsh on ThemeForest. They actually provide a lot of good stuff as long as you know how to use it correctly.

Outsourcing. Yes, good old outsourcing. Outsourcing has always been around, and man, has it really diluted the web design industry. Most of it comes from India. I get weekly calls from India asking if I want to outsource projects to them. Uhm, no thanks. These guys are all over project bidding sites like Elance where you can get work that should cost $10,000 done for $100. And you know what, that’s fine. That’s called competition. I’ve never used outsourcing myself (to India that is), so I can’t attest to the quality of output (I bet most of it sucks). What I do know is that there’s no way they can compete on communication, and thankfully, most people are smart enough to know how important communication is when it comes to a web project done right.

Here’s the thing, though. All of this stuff going on — the GoDaddys, ThemeForests, outsourcing, templates and crappy designers — doesn’t matter. I’m not complaining because they make my job harder. They really don’t since my company has managed to differentiate and localize itself. No, the problem is that all of these forces are undermining web design in general.

The words web design should invoke, at least to me, a complex mix of art and science. A carefully crafted web site can propel an organization to new heights. But, honestly, when I hear the words web design I can’t help but think cheap, template, copy and lame. Perhaps that’s just me and my seemingly negative mentality, but there’s just that feeling of bleh..web design..that sucks that surrounds my head like weeds on a flower. Web design should mean something but now it’s been gutted and all that remains is hollowness.

Ok, maybe you’re not exactly sure what the hell I’m talking about. Maybe you still think web design is the holy grail of the internet. That’s perfectly fine. Anyone who thinks that probably stopped reading long ago anyway. I’m not out to destroy this industry. Uh, I still work in this industry. But let me lend a few solutions that I’ve actively engaged in to distance myself from the mess that the words web design invoke.

The most important thing for me has been focusing on strategy. This has nothing directly to do with the look and feel of the web site. It’s all about what the web site is going to do for the client, how it’s going to contribute to bottom-line results and how it’s going to get there. Many of these high-level discussions is where the most value in what I provide is generated. It’s also the hardest part of my job, and the most rewarding.

Content has also taken on a more significant role in my decision-making. No, I’m not a copywriter. But content strategizing, placement and distribution are all playing huge roles in my projects. A new and interesting trend that has been emerging is the desire to get content out there. Whether it’s through social networks or private networks, people want easier ways to get their content consumed by their target audiences. This all ties back into strategy.

Custom application development is quickly taking on a shape of its own as well. When web sites are strategized properly, it’s usually fairly easy to see a need for some level of interactivity. With interactivity comes custom applications. Users get a much more valuable experience from a web site visit if they can do more than read content. Furthermore, custom applications act as a natural bridge to content, which I just talked about, since many of the social networks provide APIs to connect with.

In essence, my concentration has been re-branding myself and my company not as a web designer and web design company respectively, but as web architects, web thinkers and web strategizers. I try think beyond the skin of an online presence — the web design — and concentrate on making the web site truly effective.

Hell, this sounds like a marketing pitch. That really wasn’t my intent.

If you’re still wondering what exactly this post has been about then let me sum it up.

If a twelve-year-old can do what you do, you’re in trouble. If you can be outsourced for $5, better start worrying. If what you do can be templated, themed or otherwise cook-cuttered, look behind you. You are about to be squeezed out of business. Instead, focus on offering something that can’t be duplicated (at least not easily) and establish a real identity and presence for yourself.

Then watch web design die.

Think about it. We’re forced to multitask on multiple issues everyday. Emails are a big contributor to this. Each message represents a new challenge, question, complaint, problem or idea that we have to confront, investigate and address. By removing email from the equation, the day can be made less hectic.

So, push email responding to late at night. My favorite time is from 10pm to 12am. It may sound odd, but here’s my reasoning:

• Value Your Day Time: Responding to emails throughout the day forces us to diminish the quality of our time. It becomes diluted in multiple issues and we really can’t give our full attention to any one thing when it really matters.
• Perception: By responding late at night, people perceive you to be a hard worker. And take it from Benjamin Franklin, this is a good perception. Franklin was known, while working as a young printer, to keep his shop running into the late hours — people noticed.
• Focus: Nighttime has fewer distractions and really gives you the opportunity to dedicate a good hour or two to getting through emails.
• Positive State of Mind: Nighttime is usually less chaotic and puts you into a more relaxed state. This can be beneficial because you’re less likely to respond negatively to emails.
• Avoid Email Chain Reactions: Since no one else is working this late, you can rest assured that you won’t get an immediate response which can tend to set off a chain reaction of emails going back and forth. That can be a real time drain.
• Problem Solved: The brain has a tendency to mull over problems throughout the day. If you’re confronted with a tough email, let it sit in your mind during the day. By night, you’ll have subconsciously organized your thoughts.
• Rest Easy: Nobody likes stress. And stress can cause you to have a bad night’s sleep. What better way to cap off the day than to systematically take care of all the issues sitting in your inbox before hitting the pillow?

This solution has worked for me, but it depends on your mentality. And if you’re not a night person, try doing it early in the morning — it has the same effect.

The reason is because Facebook is a closed social network. Both you and the other party must agree to be "friends" in order to exist in the same social network.

From a company’s standpoint, you just can’t gain access to a prospect’s social network. They don’t know you and they don’t have any reason to allow your interaction into their network.

So, for prospecting, Facebook is tough. You can advertise, of course, but I expect that to produce dismal results. No — the real power in Facebook is building brand loyalty. It’s seeking out your clients and inviting them to become a fan of your company or organization.

This is powerful for a number of reasons:

• If your clients love your company, they’ll become a fan. That’s a good measure of success.
• You can reach out to more than just clients — build your brand in front of partners, vendors and other people within your own personal network. Extend your relationships.
• As fans, clients get a view of your company from a less corporate spotlight. This is huge in strengthening relationships.
• People like buying from people they can trust.
• You have an instant audience for anything you want to share.
• You have the ability to gather instant feedback on what you share.

In the end, companies on Facebook should strive to become friends with their clients. If you treat Facebook as another means to get meaningless offers or junk in front of people, you’re finished. That’s not the point of Facebook.

Don’t sell. Build relationships.

The web has also led to a saturation of knowledge. With so many open channels, knowledge has become easy to access and consume. The chances that you have the same knowledge has someone else is now greater.

What does this mean?

It means that general knowledge is less valuable. The barriers to information access are thinning out. Is this a bad thing? You can arguably go either way.

On one hand, the old hat "information brokers" are going to die out. People will no longer seek general knowledge experts because they can access the information themselves. This could be bad for some businesses.

On the other hand, it actually enhances business. Businesses must adapt to the ease of knowledge accessibility by focusing on a specific segment of knowledge. It’s called a niche and anyone familiar with marketing knows what that is. But this goes beyond the traditional niche. Businesses need to become true experts in a very narrowly defined field. There are no experts in web design, for example. There are experts in landing page effectiveness, conversion strategy, social media measurement and so forth.

Another benefit of knowledge saturation is that talent is cheaper. Instead of learning a general set of knowledge, you can hire it out at a cost that is less than your time value. And you can easily scale on the concept to build a strong business.

My stance is to be at least superficially knowledgeable in as many things as possible without sacrificing the ability to be super knowledgeable in one or more very specific fields.

Obviously, the premise of the chart above is that the longer a meeting is, the least effective it is. The same goes for meetings that are too short. The reason I did not specify actual time lengths in the chart is that every team operates uniquely. Different teams with different goals produce a need for a unique collaborative environment.

Discovering the ideal meeting length that you and your team can work best with is a continual process of optimizing. You may have to experiment with new ways of managing meetings or measuring meeting outcomes. The truth is, you may never determine what your ideal meeting length is. But striving to optimize is what you should aim to achieve.

For my own personal preference, and as a general guideline, I find meetings are only too short depending on the purpose of the meeting. However, for just about any meeting, time lengths beyond an hour begin to seriously hamper its effectiveness.

As humans, we have a memory buffer that can only hold and process so much information. Once that buffer has been filled, we begin to lose information. I’ve found one hour to be my buffer overload zone.

How does one devalue their time? There are many examples. Excessive social outings, trying to tackle tasks that you can pay someone else to do, too much entertainment, driving, email, doing things inefficiently, and so on.

When valuing time, there are three primary things I try to weigh:

1. Time Commitment
2. Opportunity Cost
3. Level of Satisfaction

Measuring time commitment is simple. How much time will I need to dedicate toward this task or outing? Opportunity cost is also pretty basic stuff. What am I giving up by spending my time on this certain task or outing? For example, I could spend two hours working out or I could spend those two hours reading a technical book to increase my knowledge. Measuring what is more valuable is difficult, though, which is why I include the third item. Level of satisfaction helps me determine how fulfilled the task or outing will make me feel relatively speaking. Will I be happier if I worked out or if I read the book?

The idea of valuing your time extends beyond personal life and should play an important role in business as well. In business, there are real costs and real opportunity costs that may be more measurable as opposed to personal life.

The insane thing is that all of this is straightforward and doable, but a majority of people can’t manage it. That’s why it’s an advantage to you to value your time.