Picture this:

Germany and Portugal play in the semi-finals of the World Cup 2006. Germany wins 3rd place, collects their bronze medal. Italy and France play in the final. Italy wins, France is 2nd, but neither receives the FIFA World Cup Trophy or a winner’s medal. Huh?

In June we were thrilled to receive the bronze award from Portfolios.com for our BrandMurder.com site. I’ve been checking the Portfolios site regularly because they said they would link to all of the winners in July. Well, the links are up. And, frankly, I don’t get it.

In the subcategory that our site is in, “Web Design: Experimental Web Site”, there are no gold or silver winners. How can there be a bronze winner, but no gold or silver? I don’t want to appear ungrateful, and maybe there are criteria we didn’t meet to get the gold or silver (I searched the site for the rules of how each entry is judged, without success) but doesn’t that seem kind of against the natural laws of competition?

We weren’t the only subcategory in which this happened; just as an example there are 8 subcategories in the “Web Design” category - so 8 “medals” are available at each level - but only 2 golds, 5 silvers, and 4 bronzes were given out.

(The other weird thing is that only the categories that have winners at each level are displayed on their homepage.)

There are many award sites out there, and I’ve yet to see a blank space for any of the winners. But anyway, check out who did win; award lists are always a good resource of new and/or interesting web sites.

In Zen Buddhism, there is a concept known as the sudden school: that it is possible to become enlightened in a single moment, without years of training, based on even a single interaction with the right teacher. Bam! One well-pitched Zen Koan — “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” — and you are shaken to your core, and the world never seems the same again.

I think the same thunderstrike of insight can happen — in a much more modest way — when someone “gets” what blogs are, and sees what they can do for a solo practitioner or small business. I don’t mean to suggest that in a single moment all of the labor and love involved in blogging gets compressed to zero, but that it is possible to grasp the dynamics of social media and its benefits in just one exposure to the right description. Which I am setting about to do, here, after blogging for six years or so.

A Journey Of Discovery

What is it that is common across all users of the Web? Obviously, it is not demographics, or geography, or even the proximal motivation for being on line: some are old, some young; some are here, some there; some are looking at car reviews, others are reading about Indonesian tsunamis. But everyone online is looking for something. An answer to a problem, a local tapas bar, or a date. Everyone online is involved in a journey of discovery.

Don’t get me wrong. That journey may last only a few minutes and lead be just around the corner to a neighborhood taqueria, but in some cases it could be a trip of a lifetime, reaching into all aspects of the traveler’s life.

So the core insight I want to offer to the novice business blogger is that people are online to find guidance for decisions they need to make. What kind of cell phone should I get? Where are the best tulips in Minneapolis? What does Web 2.0 mean for my company? And in every niche in every industry or interest, there are people who are looking for advice on the entire spectrum of human experience. And if you have an interest in claiming a place in some industry as a knowledgeable expert, a blog can be the single best way to help others and, as a consequence, be in a position to sought out as an expert guide.

Whether you are a caterer, an accountant, a lawyer, interior decorator, or a landscape architect, you can validate your knowledge and insights on a blog. But, you might say, I’m not a great writer, and I am pressed for time — how can I do that?

Not all good bloggers have to be Shakespeare, although good writing — clear, concise, and grammatical — does help. And you don’t have to write seven hours a day to provide help. Consider these examples:

• A landscape architect that takes before and after picture of her projects, and others, and describes — in perhaps only a few paragraphs — the design trade-offs involved in the decisions made. She might also include an ongoing series of book reviews, critiqueing gardening and lanscaping books.
• A caterer could collate links from various online sources to help people have better parties and events, simply annotating other writers’ work and providing a great starting point for others. Especially helpful when localized.
• A technology oriented law firm could comment on legal and policy issues that confront excutives of technology firms, and provide best practices that lead to decreasing risks and costs for prospective clients.
• A headhunter could develop an ongoing series about hiring the best people, and how to retain great talent, interspersed with news about executive promotions and new positions.

The Koan

Note that all of these examples hinge on a seeming paradox: The experts are passing along their expertise for free, apparently helping their target market to make decisions on their own, without their involvement. However, this disinterested attitude is… well, not a ploy, but something like Mrs Field’s staff handing out free samples in front of their store. You are giving a taste, and letting the market make a decision about whether they want to buy a bag to take home.

The Five Principles

So, I offer the five principles that form the pillars of good business blogging, and that will lead to success, although like in all things, it may take time:

1. Focus: Pick a well-defined area of focus, an area in which you have an abiding interest and an area where you at least have the desire to become an expert, if you are not already. Don’t stray into politics on your caterer’s blog, or talk about your kids on your legal blog. Focus.
2. Consistency: Writing frequently is better than infrequently, but whatever frequency seems doable after some experimentation, stick with it. If you have a restaurant review every Thursday, people will start to look for that. If you post a legal case study near the first of every month, it will become an institution for readers. People like and admire consistent behavior, and it seems the side effect of a well-ordered and professional mind.
3. Look Outward: There’s a lot of stuff out there on nearly every topic. As you are on your own personal journey of discovery, collect the signposts and recommendations you discover, and share them. If you are designer and you discover great designs, post them. If you are a chef and discover great writing about food, link to it. Don’t thiink that everything has to come from within, and that you are the only creative force in the world.
4. Look Within: What you think and feel matters. We should all recall the scene in the movie Sideways when Maya (played so well by Virginia Madsen) tells Miles (Paul Giamatti) why she loves wine so much:
   

   Miles Raymond: What about you?
   Maya: What about me?
   Miles Raymond: I don’t know. Why are you into wine?
   Maya: Oh I… I think I… I originally got in to wine through my ex-husband.
   Miles Raymond: Ah.
   Maya: You know, he had this big, sort of show-off cellar, you know.
   Miles Raymond: Right.
   Maya: But then I discovered that I had a really sharp palate.
   Miles Raymond: Uh-huh.
   Maya: And the more I drank, the more I liked what it made me think about.
   Miles Raymond: Like what?
   Maya: Like what a fraud he was.
   [Miles laughs softly]
   Maya: No, I- I like to think about the life of wine.
   Miles Raymond: Yeah.
   Maya: How it’s a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it’s an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I’d opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive. And it’s constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks, like your ‘61. And then it begins its steady, inevitable decline.
   Miles Raymond: Hmm.
   Maya: And it tastes so fucking good.

   Getting across why you, personally, care deeply about some topic — wine, patent law, deck gardens, or DJing — is the single most important way to connect with people on a personal level. We are, in some important way, what we care about.

5. Conversation: And once you connect with people, they will want to connect with you. They will want to comment on your posts, so make that possible. They will ask you questions, or challange your assumptions and conclusions. Get into the mix and respond. It’s a conversation. Sure, you start by having the conversation with yourself, or with your partners that may be blogging with you, but over time it will open up, and hundreds or thousands of people may be interacting with you through your blog. That’s the definition of success, in this world.

Final Word

I was recently interviewed by Sean Wise, who asked me at one point what was the single most important recommendation I had received. I answered “Start a blog,” although at the time I started the term blog wasn’t in general use. Someone suggested I start an “e-zine” — and the rest is history.

Aside from the utilitarian goal of driving more consulting business to me — which has played out handsomely, by the way — blogging has become the centerpoint of my professional and personal life. It’s not so much that I am defined as a blogger but the fact that the great majority of my professional and personal relationships have grown out of the connections that blogging has created for me. I am not saying that will become the norm for anyone that starts blogging for business, but some part of that rich social context that now defines my life is available to anyone.

It’s not easy, but it isn’t rocket science either. Sometimes it feels like drudgery, but, a the Nobel laureate Paderewski said, “Before I was a genius I was a drudge.” Keep to the Five Principles, and you’ll do fine.

Currently I have a research project on the go. I am looking for useful resources (books, websites, podcasts, experts) that help small businesses become more “GREEN” in their operations.

You see, I cut my entrepreneurial teeth organizing a sports event.  The event is/was  an ultimate Frisbee tournament.  I was responsible for providing food, shelter and entertainment for roughly 600 people and I looked at the design of the event as a way to express and promote some things I believed in. 

As someone who has spent well over 200 days of his life on enjoying and guiding canoe trips in places like Quetico Park, Temagami and Algonquin Park, it turns out the environment is something I believe in and want to see preserved. 

So I gave the overage of my sports tournament to the Sierra Legal Defence fund - they do legal work and take on big companies and governments on behalf of the environment…it’s a GREAT organization.  I also told all the players (all 600) that to cut down on waste they were to bring their own plates and cutlery.

All the players went with it.  In over eight years we prepared dinner for about 5000  people… in about 16 bags of garbage.   Think about your home and how much garbage  5000 meals (about 5 years of eating) generates…scary no?

I’m sharing this with you because I want to do more to help small businesses understand how they can cut down on waste in their business processes and generally operate in a more “GREEN” way.  FreshBooks cuts down on the paper used to do business by facilitating paperless invoicing.  We have been proud of this fact for years.

Over the coming weeks, months and years I want to share with you hundreds of useful tips that will help you and other small businesses operate with less impact on the environment.  So again, if you can help me with my research, I’d appreciate it.  Please comment below.  Thanks.

Joe and Levi kicked the new release out the door a few minutes ago.  I was just playing around with it and everything looks great.

We’re going to be monitoring it closely today and making a few small design changes.  Please let us know what you think or tell us if you come across anything that seems a little “off”.  Enjoy.

On Monday morning we will be releasing a new version of FreshBooks to all our users.  We’re excited about this release - there are some nuggets of gold in it…features and usability. You should have received an email Thursday letting you know about some scheduled downtime for the application between 6:00 AM and 8:00 AM EDT on Monday.  [Note:  if you did not the email and you are a FreshBooks user, please let us know.]

In terms of our application usability, I got a kick out of Richard Erikssons comments [at top]:

“Jack Bellis reviews FreshBooks’ usability: Before reading this, I considered asking [FreshBooks] why the service’s UI didn’t match their pretty website. I’m glad I held back.”

Basically Jack (a usability expert) has 28 good things to say about our usability despite the fact that our look and feel is more spartan than some users might lack.  Function before form we say…looks like we’re executing on that.  That said. we are prettying things up with the Monday release…not reinventing the wheel, but prettying things up.

With regards to NEW FEATURES, Version 3.3 will allow you to:

CHOOSE YOUR TABS
Your experience when logged in as an administrator can now be customized by adding or removing tabs that you don’t use.

CREATE INDIVIDUALS AS CLIENTS
The organization name field will no longer be required which means those of you that have individual consumers as clients can easily set them up as FreshBooks clients.

SEE RECENT ACTIVITIES
Now you can see details of all activity on your FreshBooks account directly from your Home tab. Activities such as a client login, or invoice payment are logged and shown in detail with dates and exact times from a user friendly report on the Home tab.

SEND OUT PAYMENT NOTIFICATIONS
With Version 3.3 you can setup automatic notifications for your clients to receive after they have made a payment on an invoice.

PAY WITH VELOCITY PAY AND PSIGATE
Our first UK based payment gateway has been added: Velocity Pay. The Canadian gateway PSiGate has been updated to handle their new XML transactions. Both of these gateways have auto-charging capabilities.

There are even more features added with this release, too many to list here. More details will be provided
in an email after the release.

What are Silver Bullets?  Basically it goes like this…when you run a small business there will be times when you think, “If we only did this we’d become a HUGE success”…We tried this with PR.  We hired a PR company at significant cost for any small company.  While Levi and I did earn what I call our “Masters Degrees in Communications” (which is very useful by the way), the PR firm did not really deliver on any of the campaigns stated goals (i.e. increase trials of our product, build awareness about our service in the small business market). 

At the time we engaged the firm, we said things like, “if only we could get an article in a national newspapers.  We’d be home free”, or something to that effect.  Basically we were hoping that media exposure would be the “Silver Bullet” that turned our success into extraordinary success.  Which brings me to the one thing you need to know about Silver Bullets: there are NO Silver Bullets.

We have since been in all three of Canada’s National Newspapers one way or another.  We did not notice any increase in trials around any of those dates.  The point is, there is NO ONE THING that is going to bring your business overnight success…instead your success will come by continuing to do a handful of things very well…so put your nose down, keep delivering great service, and the results will come.

I love Rackspace.  We have been with them since day one.  I have a good relationship with their founder Pat Condon and have to credit Pat with convincing us to rename our service to FreshBooks.

Earlier this year, Rackspace redesigned their web site. Cautiously I wrote Pat and hinted that I thought the redesign was a step backwards.  Apparently, Dimitry agrees.

Why is it a step backwards?

The focus of the site has become RACKSPACE, not Rackspace’s customers.
How do I know?  The language is all about THEM.  It is navel gazing.
I’m willing to bet their internal marketing department prepared the content.  It’s a classic mistake.

Prospective customers care about themselves - not about YOU or your company.  Your web copy should use the word YOU to connect with the visitor, and you should avoid the words WE/ME/US/I.  Here is a tool you can use to measure how customer centric your copy is.  To learn more I recommend this book.

At Rackspace they have a concept they call “paper cuts”.  It’s not one mistake that causes a client to leave them, it is a series of paper cuts.  Their goal is not to die by papercuts.

I sincerely hope that this redesign at RackSpace is not a sign of things to come…because death by paper cuts sounds like a pretty awful way to go.

First things first: next Monday we are releasing a significant update.  You should receive an email later this morning with the details.  If you don’t, please let us know.

Now as many of you know, you will soon be able to send your invoices by traditional ground mail post (i.e. not just by email) to anywhere in the world from the comfort of your FreshBooks account.  We are really excited to release this new service and we have received tremendous feedback from our testers already. 

I’m writing this post to update you as to the timing of this release.  Originally we had made plans to release this service roughly three weeks ago.  We finished our development on schedule and had hundreds of people test the new service and received very positive feedback.  The service easy to use and it makes you look professional - just like we planned it.

What we did not plan for was some very good news from our partner who prints and posts the documents.  They send over one billion pieces of mail each year.  In a nutshell the print industry is very old world in much of its technology.  Fortunately our partner is not an old world company, and just four weeks ago they invested in the most cutting edge printing platform available.  We were given the option to stay on the old platform, or wait a few more weeks and move to the new one.

We chose to wait and transition to the new platform, and now, once again, we are almost set to release ground mail to you.

This new platform is going to be vastly more flexible than our original platform, and in the years to come we will be able use it to do extraordinary things like help you send promotional materials, holiday greetings and payment reminders to your clients…so we have this to look forward to.

So….next Monday we are releasing a tremendous NEW VERSION with significant enhancements to your accounts - this release will NOT include ground mail.  However, coming very soon (i.e. the next few weeks) we will be releasing ground mail on the new platform - we just need a few weeks to properly test the new platform.

Again, we are excited.  We want to thank you for your patience.  You will be rewarded.

Google Checkout looks pretty cool (even though it was banned by Ebay) and has great potential for many very small businesses out there looking for a good online payment solution.  Unfortunately, like many other services including PayPal Website Payments Pro, it is not yet available to Canadian merchants. 

Now I can fully appreciate why the people at Google and PayPal would focus primarily on their US customers (it is the largest market and their home base), but for goodness sake, can they not communicate that a little better so poor saps like me don’t spend half an hour getting it all ready to go only to find out at the last step that it won’t work unless you have a US tax id and address. Of course if I had taken the time to read the fine print (below), I would have known straight off that it doesn’t work in Canada.

But no, I had to walk through everything and get all excited about trying out the service before getting to the final step that asked for my tax id.  Funny enough, the exact same thing happened to me about six months ago when attempting to sign-up for PayPal Website Payments Pro.  I think they have improved communications since then, but initially it stated nowhere that you had to be US based.  It was worse than Google because I actually finished the setup and then attempted to try it before I was thwarted.

Since I didn’t get to try Google checkout, here’s what some others are saying about it: Mark Evans isn’t too impressed, Mathew Ingram thinks they are in for a fight with PayPal, and Ian Lurie does a complete review here (thanks to Seth Godin for that post).

The frustrating thing is that this happens not just with payment services, it happens all over the web.  Just ask Mike when he spent a half an hour getting an awesome deal with Expedia.com only to find out he had to have a US address to receive the plane tickets.  Or talk to my fiancee who tried to order a gift for a friend at Williams Sonoma and the service is only available for US customers.  Baaahh.

I think Tara Hunt would agree with her Pinko marketing philosophy that it would be very worthwhile for these companies to get things setup for us hungry Canadians, or at the very least have a big banner that says US ONLY!

So, alas, this post was going to be about the great new Google checkout service, but now its a rant about expanding new online services to Canadians.  I really have to get one of those US addresses and tax id’s sooner rather than later.

As our new forum celebrates its first month, I would just like to remind everyone about our custom login page contest.  The first three people to reach 100 posts will get a free customized login page (valued at $279 USD each).

Here are the current rankings as of July 7th:
1. Cemper with 6 posts.
2. Ilya with 5 posts.
3. NorthIowaWebsites, Bpny, Slruff, Wisecounselor, and Basquen tied with 3 posts.

Join the contest today and register on our forum.  It’s easy.  I have even started a post where you can introduce yourself and network with others.

Don’t forget the prize. Your very own custom login page.  See the normal login page on the left and the custom login page on the right.
    

Benefits:
- They look great and make you look professional.
- Maintain a consistent web presence as your clients will not be alerted that they have left your website.
- Your clients can continue to browse your services after they have logged out.  They might even find other products and services they are interested in.
- They are made to order, and are customized to your exact specifications.