Act Naturally.

Back to the good news: You can access your natural ability to communicate by verbally replying to the Tweet or post, and then tap what you just said into the computer. Now if your verbal reaction is, "What an asshat!" then you may want to turn on your brain for a little editing, but keep it honest. The trick to remember is that you, in real life, reply with heartfelt conversation all day.

Example 1: Be You

There's no difference between this verbal dialogue:

Person in real life: "I love cheese!"

You in real life: "I love cheese too!"

And this Twitter back and forth:

Twitter Follower: "I love cheese!"

You: "I love cheese too!"

You'll note they are completely identical. You might think that proclaiming your love for cheese is trivial and unnecessary, and it is, but what you're doing when you reply is...relating. And if social media has given us anything, it's the ability to interact and relate with people we would have otherwise never known existed. If you have a business and want customers, do yourself a favor and talk to them.

Side Note: If you don't like cheese, then take a stand. When you take a stand and either have fun with it or defend it well, then you're going to gain many more people than you lose. Plus, you're developing quirks. We'll discuss more about quirks and their importance later.

Side note 2: This is a good opportunity to ask, "Who doesn't love cheese? Do you not like cheese?" Or give your hard working office something fun to do by asking them and reporting, "Here at Big Bill's Insurance twelve of us like cheese. Two don't. We're calling an emergency meeting."

Example 2: Cocktail Party  

Think about the best jokes. When they're quick and left to the imagination, they are much funnier than the guy who explains in detail what happened with the nun and the monkey and the cowboy (for example). Here's the rule: Think about yourself at a cocktail party. When the conversation is rolling and everybody is hip to the dialogue, the best one-liners are casually slipped in with no explanation at all. In this Socially Connected world, we are all already hip to what's going on in this big cocktail party called the Internet, so let 'er fly. Side Note: Type out a reply. If it doesn't suit your company or reputation, then "Favorite" and "Like" are your friends.

We're very good at cocktail parties.

If you're using your Twitter and/or Facebook (and sure, Google+) do your customers a favor and HAVE FAITH IN THEM. You can write long posts on Facebook and hit the maximum 140 on Twitter, but make sure it doesn't lumber along unsure of itself and anyone who reads it.  It's good for you and your business if you're not condescending (often unwittingly) to the people who want to know more about you. So if you're scrolling through your feed, and think of something to say, get it down. Even if it's just a 'Thank you'. If you don't get that initial (positive) impulse down then, like a dream, the chance to meet a new customer will float away with the day.

UX design, as I aptly described (with metaphors and all) is about creating products that people want to use and can use easily. Realistically speaking, there are a lot of fluffy books and schools of thought out there about UX design that completely ignore real world constraints. I could give you a number of recommendations about user testing in labs and surveys and disregarding existing processes and systems, but then I’d be misleading you. My goal is to provide you with an overview of how a real-world UX design process works. I’m not going to say it’s 100% perfect, but it’s a great place to start. Today I’m going to discuss project objectives.

Planning a project with user-centered design in mind is no picnic. UX design requires a lot of insight into who will use your product and what they’ll use it for. Understanding your users is fundamentally important in web development. User personas are a clean and concise way to keep track of the user base that you are targeting.

You can use your personas to create use cases. A use case is a list of intentions and interactions that a user will have with a page based on their characteristics. For instance, a business owner will land on the Name.com homepage to get a web presence. They might or might not understand the difference between a domain, a hosting package, or a website builder that includes hosting so we need to focus on providing them with the information that they need and the calls to action that they expect.

Beyond understanding what a user wants to do with a product it is important to understand what your organization hopes to get out of the finished product, whether it’s increased revenue, more account creations, brand awareness, or a smaller bounce rate. It might seem like the company objectives are obvious, but you’d be surprised how often different team members have different objectives for the same project.

It is quite easy to make sure that everyone involved with a project has the same objectives for it; all you have to do is organize a meeting with the stakeholders of the project and discuss the objectives. However, it is important to maintain organization and efficiency in these meetings because there are often a lot of people involved and it’s easy to fall into the “too many cooks in the kitchen” dilemma. Before walking into the meeting prepare distribute an exhaustive agenda so that everyone has a chance to think about the items on it before discussing it. Checklists to ensure that you cover everything you need in one sitting are helpful as well.

Too many cooks in the kitchen.

Defining user and company objectives is known as defining the strategy of a project. As soon as the strategy is defined the project-planning ball can really get rolling. Once you have a strategy you can begin to scope out the user flow and wireframes of new pages, features, etc. From there the documentation process begins, but that is going to be its own post because it is so important.

The main objective behind this blog post is to ensure that you understand that UX design requires planning up front and defining what you want your users and the company to get out of a project. Without these requirements it is very difficult for the project planning process to go anywhere.

Coolest dude in Egypt?

Thank you to everyone who entered and tweeted and retweeted and commented and shared. With the success of this contest you can be sure there will be more!

Working to build successful inbound links to your site, is one of the keys to success in SEO. The more inbound links you have, the higher quality links they are, the more popular and successful your site will be. When you have a successful marketing strategies and build a quality SEO-optimized site, you are sure to have many quality backlinks to your site.

You're the green ball.

The more quality backlinks you build, the better your PageRank (PR) will be. However, the links have to be high quality. Otherwise, the traffic for the site will not increase. Only the most relevant, top quality links will serve the purpose of being seen by the latest page rank algorithm.

There are a variety of different ways to improve site traffic with quality backlinks. Some of these include; fresh press releases, directory submissions, linking to other blogs, posting in online discussion groups or forums, and many others. Traffic increases with backlink building can be built organically. Here are some of the ways:

Posting niche articles - Posting well-written and informative articles to the right niche directories is a surefire method for improving PR. Not only will it improve the PR of the ranked directory itself, but it can also help to generate relevant backlinks to your own site.

Quality content - Giving your readers added value and solid information is sure to be relevant. The better the information, the more viewers your site will attract.

Comments - By providing ample text space for comments by the users who link to the site, you are inviting backlinks from the right niche' audience members.

Stimulating visuals - When a site has good color design and uses still or video images, that is a great way to encourage backlink building and invite more traffic.

Bloggety, blog blog - Writing excellent content for your own site and for other sites is always helpful for SEO. Keep the blogs fresh, informative, and original. Be sure to submit any of your blogs to the top-ranked blog directories.

Survey says. . .Online surveys with meaningful prizes are very enticing. Just be sure to keep them short and easy to fill out. It is a fab way of increasing site traffic by encouraged interested parties to stay on your websites longer.

You'll be this happy you learned SEO.

These are just a few ideas about how to build things on your site that invite the top PR ranking backlinks. Remember, that quality counts! So, work towards establishing your site as a credible, high traffic source. Once you get started, you will soon keep building and building and building until your PR reaches the top!

Jared, I thought we were going to do an outlookexpress.mp4?  Can we get it uploaded too please?

Now Ashley is 400 percent heart and all covered in hotness, so I hate to use her as an example. Especially since she's responsible for what I call the "Forker Effect," by which she is so rabidly positive she turns any Debbie or Danny Downer into an upper. Yet it is in this vein of empowering people that I propose we keep our coworkers happy by doing the following: Whack the WE.

The Royal Pain in the Ash.

I think it's referred to as the Royal We, and you most likely know the scenario. Someone has something they want YOU to do but they approach it with WE. "Jared, I think WE need to get something on the blog." So...uh...you're helping?" No. They are just trying to be gentle in the most annoying way possible.

I asked Ashley why she went with the WE, and she said the YOU sounded too harsh, but if the world needs anything right now it's some directness. If you need to soften things up, then simply put it in the form of a question: "Didn't you say you were going to do a blog entry?" Actually, no, you said WE were going to.

Touché.

I hear it all the time in parenting, too. The sweet, doting mother will say to her bundle of noise, "WE need to be quiet."  No. YOUR toddling squawker needs to be be quiet. WE don't need to do anything but enjoy the silence.

In a pinch, however, it can work in your favor, "Jared, I think WE should save some beer for the others." In that case you can remind them that THEY are welcome to.