My favorite strategy when it comes to combating email headaches is simple: respond late. Many people tell you that once business hours are over you should close down your email and not look at it. I think the smart way is to do the opposite.

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.

More and more, I’m realizing that the power in Facebook for companies is not in finding new clients, but keeping existing ones. Often, I’m presented with the dilemma of how to use Facebook to get new clients. There just aren’t many avenues in Facebook to do it.

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.

The Internet has led to many enhancements in the way we communicate, consume information and do business. This has been a great advancement in technology. In no other period could someone build and launch a product or service, and capture a target market in such speed.

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.

Recently, I was talking with a client about social media strategy. The gist of the conversation was how to generate more traffic through channels such as Facebook and Twitter. Surely these must be viable channels since everyone is talking about them?

Wrong.

Too many people view social media as an end-all solution for pushing their web presence to the next level. They think if they establish a Facebook account or sign up for Twitter then they’re good to go. People will find my organization, become a fan and follow everything I say — right?

The disconnect with social media is that it’s very audience-driven. Specific people use specific channels for specific reasons. That isn’t hard to figure out. What is hard to figure out is what your audience uses. Is your target market comprised of the old or young, tech savvy or computer illiterate, decision-makers or underlings, and so forth.

Knowing who your audience is and what they read is essential to crafting a social media strategy. When talking with my client, she suddenly realized that their audience probably doesn’t use Facebook. Ok. Then what kind of content do they consume?

We came to the conclusion that her audience was resource-driven. They want to read, research and learn about the industry. What are some of the best vehicles to get this content out? We talked about blogs, press releases and video.

Social media isn’t all about the tools. And Facebook, Twitter and blogs are just that: tools. The real challenge is picking the right tool for the job and using it correctly.

Far too often I’ve sat down to work only to be distracted by an endless onslaught of menial tasks. This is the killer of creative focus and what prevents me from spending my energies on what matters.

Unfortunately, there’s no cure for distractions. I’m a firm believer of the 80/20 rule and I would venture to guess that 80% of our time is spent on distractions while the other 20% is spent on doing what we really set out to do.

There’s no way to get rid of distractions, so accept that. But there is a way to increase your creative focus.

Blogs have become the anchor of social media, presenting information in a quick, scannable fashion for several years now. Just about everyone has read a blog and many subscribe to them.

The problem with blogs, however, is that they’ve trained people to look for magic answers.

A magic answer is a quick solution to a goal you’re trying to achieve. It could be to generate new marketing leads, solve a software problem, make a purchasing decision, and so forth. We rummage through blogs to find the magic answer and then we move on.

Blogs make the search for the magic answer easy. Since blogs are just about everywhere and written about every topic you could think of, their quick summary format makes it easy to seek out answers.

Web design and design work in general is an interesting industry when it comes to client interaction. We need the client to help us lay the foundation for our design work, but at the same time, we need to be careful not let the client have too much say.

Many designers in all fields, myself included, have let clients walk all over them. We’ve let clients dictate exact design direction, tell us what to do, and advise us on what resources to use. This needs to change.

First of all, web designers need to rethink their title. We’re more than designers, we must become information architects. We’re not just making things look good, we’re also making critical decisions on how to organize information, create conversion paths, and ultimately design a presence that will support an entire organization in a huge communication channel.

Some of the hardest working people I’ve seen are employees at an organization. They work long hours, make tough decisions, and really work their best to butter the bread of their employer. What’s strange to me is the devotion these employees have to the organization.

Hard work is a great philosophy, yes — but why devote so much energy to something you don’t have ownership in? I’m not talking about some stock options or performance-based compensation, I mean real ownership in what you’re working at. Who bears a majority of the fruit from your hard work? The people you work for or you?

Not everyone is cut out to be an owner in this sense, but those who work hard and can take the heat surely must be. I suppose in the long run, what really matters is what satifies you. If burning the midnight oil for a pittance of a pay is satisfaction, then that’s fine. But if it’s not, take ownership in something — it doesn’t have to be work per say, but something that matters in life or something that fuels your passion.

Meetings are a great method for sharing information, developing task items, getting feedback, and so forth. However, I think meetings outlive their effectiveness once they reach a certain length threshold.

Passion is a critical component of any successful activity or venture. It gives you the energy, motivation and desire to achieve an end result that goes above and beyond even your own expectations. The question, though, is whether or not passion is a renewable resource.

When you’ve been doing something for so long — whether it’s web design, a job, school, and so forth — the passion you had when you started will no doubt wear thin. You begin to question if you’re achieving what you ultimately set out to do. You wonder if there’s something better to commit yourself to. The passion slowly drains from you and you find whatever you were engaged in more and more difficult to continue.

I’m a firm believer in staying the course. If you had the desire and passion to begin with, then you owe it to yourself to try to salvage it. We all hit bumps in the road, and many times they’re just temporary setbacks.

Some of the ways I try (or will try) to renew my passion include…