I was just getting started on this blog, but I am actually going to be a little quiet over here for a while. I am developing a new community called the Trust Marketing Community. I am really excited about the adventure. This will be a great test of my social media, marketing and general web development skills and knowledge. It will also be full of experiments. I will be trying things out that I have not done before. It will be a great learning experience. I really hope the community develops into an active, collaborative group of users. I call it a community, not a blog, or just a website. I want this to be very community driven, “blog posts” will really just be topics, the real meat of the site will be on the comments or discussion. I hope to setup online discussions through twitter and record those on the site as well. I want a lot of elements to be interactive so that the community develops, and its not just readers and bloggers. Speaking of bloggers, I will be looking to get others involved in creating topics and leading discussions as well.

I learned about the Hubspot/Inbound Marketing University (IMU) game early on, and immediately felt it could not be true. After some research I was confident there was no way it was true. Different people reacted different ways when they realized it was fake. Some people realized sooner than others, and fair number of people felt misled. There was a breach of trust in the way such a serious situation was presented, and help was asked for from their community, when the whole thing was a lie. I understand the premise of the game, but a lot of people felt that the implementation left a bad taste in their mouth. As I saw more people having concern I decided it would be an interesting experiment to start a new twitter account directly related to it and start getting involved with the discussion. I wanted to see how I could grow the account, and how people would respond to it. The name was an easy knock-off choice from the recently massively popular spoof account regarding the BP oil spill, @BPGlobalPR. So I created the account @IMUGlobalPR.

In less than 24 hours I had around 50 followers who were actively talking to me on Twitter about the IMU situation. 50 might not sound like a lot, but I wasn’t just going and friending hundreds of people. It was organic. I looked for people who were talking about the subject, joined the conversation, and then got followed in response. I had direct conversations with almost every follower. These discussions and the heart of the problem with the IMU situation lead to a lot of thought regarding trust and relationships.

Business are becoming much more personal. People expect to interact with a business, and they will not do business with a company they do not trust. Building relationships is how we build trust. See my previous post on Converting Social Media Interactions into Leads. Social media has been the major outlet for building relationships and trust with customers. This new community will be about discussing and learning about how we can build that trust. It can range from B2B, B2C, as well as developing your own personal brand and network.

So with all that said, I really hope you will come over to the new site and join in the discussions! I will update this post with a link to the site as soon as it is up and running!

Thank you to all,
Erik Florida

Social media ROI (return on investment) is something that is talked about a lot these days. As social media tools are making the switch from personal use to business use, these business want to know that they serve a purpose, that they add value. The big picture idea for any new project in a business ultimately boils down to ROI. Generally, this term refers to monetary gains based off a given investment of time and resources. With social media, I think it is important to view ROI from the perspective of lead generation and customer relations, not sales dollars.

Social media is a long term investment centered around relationship building. Companies are increasingly being expected by consumers to be more human. This is a fundamental change in the way consumers interact with businesses online. Technology has been shrinking the world since boats began allowing people to travel the seas to far away lands. Now the Internet has moved us into a whole new level. In this smaller world, consumers are no longer satisfied with an undefined corporate entity that makes their own decisions about the products we buy.

Consumers want involvement. We want products our way, and we wont settle for less. Brands that are making strides to satisfy the customer, introducing new products, and getting direct feedback are showing consumers that they deserve this. Human interaction is also something consumers are growing to appreciate more and more. Not necessarily a face-to-face interaction, but a human interaction. The Internet put a separation between the consumer and the people behind the business. The only interaction was with a shopping cart graphic.

Companies like Best Buy are showing consumers that they are not just big box electronics stores that spin new technology out of a factory, but they are a company of people. They are passionate about their products, and they want consumers to be able to easily and enjoyably learn about them, and purchase the right item. The human experience at Best Buy starts when a consumer goes on twitter and asks what is the best laptop to buy their kid for art school in the Fall. The positive human interaction carries over to the in-store experience, and then beyond, when one of thousands of Best Buy employee’s who volunteer to help on Twitter, respond to a complaint about the laptop by teaching the user about a setting they could change.

Best Buy suddenly becomes a large group of caring people who know a lot about electronics. Not an electronics warehouse. This is the kind of human interaction consumers are looking for. When businesses begin to understand this and start using social media to create human interactions – trust, relationships, authority, authenticity – they will begin to see the ROI that comes from social media. In the end, it will always come down to dollars and cents. But a successful business must be able to see the benefit in long term goals that may not have an immediate impact on the bottom line. First you must build relationships.

“Knowledge is power” is a very common sentiment that many people support. I have always been a strong supporter of this statement, and have therefore spent the last few years in particular studying, learning, reading, and expanding the breadth of my knowledge.

However, I have been thinking about productivity,  accomplishments, and considering the difference in people who really make it in life, and those who don’t. One might begin to conclude that a pursuit of knowledge is at the source of those who reach success. I have concluded recently that knowledge is not even that high on the list of reasons behind success. The top reason: Action!

Knowledge is like a loaded gun. It’s an opportunity for powerful action. A gun in and of itself, does not kill people. Now I don’t want to start a heated sociological debate here, but in broad concept, here me out. If you took the entire US military arsenal and put it on a deserted island in the Pacific, you would be amassing the largest concentrated arsenal in the world. All those weapons, all that power, all in one place. Yet, if no one ever visits the island, if no one ever picks up those weapons and fires them, they accomplish nothing. They are meaningless and irrelivent. Hitler didn’t nearly conquer the world by building the largest arsenal, he did it by attacking. He took swift and decisive actions. The actions are what create results. The tools and the knowledge are only a basis for the action.

Amassing large quantities of knowledge is worthless. No power is attained by learning every piece of knowledge in Steven Hawking’s head. Putting that knowledge into action is where the magic happens. That is how power is attained, that is where success is born.

The point here is this: while spending time, learning, reading, amassing knowledge – as we all should be doing – do not forget to take action!

Entrepreneurs often learn this the hard way. It’s principles like being first to market, and releasing software in beta. The point is to take action. In order to succeed in a business, you must take action, you must sell your product. If Microsoft spent 10 years developing Windows 3.1 so that it would be the best operating system anyone could imagine, they would have gone out of business before release. Stop worrying about the blue screen of death and take action – sell the product.

Taking action leads to success. Knowledge creates a basis for better decision-making surrounding that action. It allows us to think on our feet quicker, make better decisions, and ultimately, achieve even greater success.

In many ways this blog is my start at taking action. I have been studying design, marketing, and digital communications for years. I have been practicing, and thinking and reading. Now it is time to apply these principles. To take action on what I have learned, and to learn more, through doing. This blog provides an outlet for my thoughts, and forces me to organize ideas into valuable chunks of information. My web designs are the fruit of my labor. They are the action I am taking to advance my skills, my career, and ultimately, my success in life.

So take that hobby or career move, or business you’ve wanted to start, and stop learning, stop thinking, and take some action.

Do at least one thing, everyday, that is an action towards your longterm goals.

Action leads to success. Action is power.

I have been reading the 52 weeks of UX blog. I highly recommend it to anyone involved in web design in any capacity. I was inspired to write a little about the same concept from a recent post on that blog.

A successful user interface (UI) design enables a satisfactory user experience (UX). The end goal is creating the best UX possible, but the problem is when a designer’s sites are so focused on the finish line that they miss the important steps to get there. There are a number of objective UI principles, and Microsoft and Apple have done more to define these than anyone. However, there are also a lot more subjective UI elements. One of the biggest battles that UI designers face is breaking conformity. There is a lot to be said for familiarity when it comes to UX. If the user recognizes the interface and immediately feel comfortable that they will be able to navigate the system, marginal success is immediately achieved. For example, if you are designing a software application to run on Windows, using Microsoft’s own .Net interface and Microsoft’s design principles clearly makes sense. If the user already has a good experience using Windows, creating an application that works just like Windows should be an easy sell to the end-user.

The Web, however, opens many new doors. It also closes others. It is a clean slate in many ways, from a UI design aspect. Design is about creativity in a confined space. Design is not about taking a blank canvas and opening your creative muse to make boundless results. Design is about meeting constraints, conforming to rules and variables and principles. An artist could create a website that would be a visual masterpiece, a true piece of art. But if a user cannot navigate the site to find the information they need, then the site design is a failure.

Simplicity is an important design element to help designers focus on the important elements and constraints of UI design. There is a quote from Leonardo Da Vinci that state “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” This follows the a common sentiment (probably from a quote, but I don’t know the author) when I was in college for electrical engineering. Engineering is about removing everything until you are left with nothing but the solution. Planning your information architecture to determine the most important content, and how different pieces of information should be connected is the first step. Then creating wireframes. At this point there is no art. There is no designs, or logos, or colors, or images. You must make the most simple elements work before you can determine what artistic elements will enhance the UX. Creating an experience for the user starts with creating a comfortable, functional, organized system. No amount of artistic design can compensate for a frustrated user. The end goal is creating the best user experience, but in order to get there, the elements must be broken down into their most simple components and planned and organized.

No, sorry to disappoint, but this post is not about drinking. Well unless you are buying, then I’ll have a nice hoppy IPA. But anyways, what I really wanted to discuss is the idea of a bottom up design. I think this method of creating a Web site is a really great learning tool. It is a great way to always design Web sites, and especially great practice for a beginner. In my last post about Kitchen sinks (and HTML/CSS) I mentioned the idea of organizing your code in layers. If you think of layers, many people think about layers of cake. Well whatever you think of, it is most likely that it makes sense that you can only create/peel/stack/organize layers in one direction. You can only combine the layers of a cake from the bottom up, and that is how Web design should be done as well!

The Idea is simple, you start with the most basic element of your site, and design piece-by-piece, until you have a complete site. You create the basic elements, then you add more advanced elements, and you keep stacking until you have a complete product. There are a number of benefits to designing this way; accessibility and fall back are especially pertinent. For this process we will assume the content and wire frames/layouts are already created. On paper, we have sketches of the page layouts, and content for each section has been written. Now we just need to figure out the best place to start coding.

The first step in the process is coding out the basic HTML. This means ignoring layout, colors, fonts, etc. and simply code your HTML with a focus on the actual content. An emphasis should be put on tagging everything semantically. When you design your HTML with your layout in mind, you tend to start making HTML tags work for your design, and not necessarily the most semantic. In this step we want nothing but plain text, listing out headers, paragraphs, lists, anchors, labels, forms, etc. There are enough HTML tags to generally keep all your information nicely organized in relevant, semantic tags. Tag attributes are also really important. In addition to tagging an element as an unordered list, you may also need to further detail that this list is for the sidebar of a site. Giving this element an ID of “sidebar” would add more complete semantic markup to the content within. This is a good point to also point out the basic difference between an ID and a class. Both attributes can be added to HTML tags, but they should be used correctly. An ID defines a specific element, such as the content of the sidebar. A class, however, may apply to any number of tags. For example, you might use class=”aligncenter” to center align an element. You could add this tag to any number of elements. Once the HTML is complete, you will have all your content. This is the first step in accessibility, and the first part to validate.

At this point you should validate your HTML using an HTML validation tool. I recommend using the W3C HTML validator since they are the ones who establish Web standards in the first place. Make sure all your HTML is valid and semantic. Now its time to move up a level. In my next post I will talk a little more about CSS, and how to organize the content in a manor that is easy to create and maintain.

What’s the big deal with using tables in HTML? Sometimes it is just easier to make a word bold right in the HTML, isn’t it?. Why does it matter if you use a separate CSS file, versus inline CSS? Why shouldn’t I use tables in HTML? If you, or anyone you know has asked such questions, I hope reading this article will change their minds about the usage of HTML and CSS.

If you haven’t read my previous post about the origins of HTML, I suggest reading that first. It will give you a simple background into what HTML actually is, where it came from, and what it’s purpose it.

So we understand that HTML is used purely to tag groups of text, identifying the content and providing context. But as more and more people began to use the Internet, the browser experience needed better ways to display information in an attractive and organized way. HTML tables and style elements were introduced to allow the creator of a page to give the information a consistent look to each viewer. So as the usage of the Internet expanded, so to, did the capabilities of HTML.

Here is where the kitchen sink analogy comes in. The issue is organization. Imagine you have a kitchen drawer. This draw is 2 feet wide, and holds silverware. You put deviders in so you know that when you have a knife, it goes on the right, a fork in the middle, and a spoon goes on the left. Overtime you start buying more kitchen utensils. You are handy with a saw and a hammer, so you just expand the draw. Now it is three feet wide. Now you can fit all kinds of new utensils in the draw! Now you have a better drawer, with more purposes, right? Well what happens when you have to expand it to 4 feet, and now you have so many things all piled in this one draw, you cannot find what you are looking for.

Now take the alternate case. After you fill your 2 feet draw with knives, forks, and spoons, what if instead of widening your drawer, you installed  a new, separate drawer. This drawer is 2 feet wide also, and it has compartments for separate types of utensils. Now you know, if you are looking for a utensil to eat with, it’s the draw on the left, if you are looking for a utensil to cook with, it is the drawer on the right. See how this makes things much easier to find, organize, and expand in the future? Every kitchen I’ve ever been in had more than one drawer, probably for this very reason. Compartmentalization is very important to longterm organization of important and expanding information.

Now imagine a small business, starting their Web site. It starts out with just a handful of pages, and some content describing what they do, and how to contact them. Over time that business grows. Now they want to add a blog, and they have different divisions. They want each departments to have their own pages. They want to add an intranet for employees. Suddenly the site has thousands of pages. Now what if the company needs to update the logo? Or change a color? And has anyone noticed that they don’t use the same font throughout the departmental pages?

These are common problems that can be solved much easier with well organized code. This means separate files for each part of the design. The HTML should be the base, with proper, semantic tagging, as well as good use of ID’s and classes. Well formatted HTML should never need to be updated unless new content is added. Then the CSS can be properly divided into files for typography, layout, etc. The CSS is where each element of the style and layout of the site is formed. It creates a central location to edit style-related information. When the HTML is formatted well, it should be easy to identify the specific content you want to manipulate with CSS.

If you organize data in a table, or use the bold tag, or italics, then those layout/design features cannot be changed without manipulating each HTML document where the problem exists. If you have a CSS file called typography, and you set all paragraphs to use Arial, italics, you can change this across the entire site, from one location. This structure of organized, compartmentalized information allows the content to be controlled, reproduced, and maintained much more efficiently.

Another way to look at the structure is in layers. The bottom layer is the actual content, the plain text. Then you have the HTML markup. The tags first, to identify each section of text. Then the tag attributes, such as classes and ID’s. These further define each group of tags, such as defining the difference between a paragraph on the accounting departments page, versus a paragraph on the sales departments page. Then you have the layer of CSS, which can be compartmentalized into files such as typography and layout. Then interactive content sits above that layer. Adding Flash or JavaScript elements are common examples.

Creating the site in this format, from the bottom layer up, helps to create a more accessible and degradable site. This concept will be discussed further in my next post!

In order to discuss the purpose and importance of XHTML and CSS, we must first look at the original purpose and use of the Internet, and how those uses have evolved. During the Cold War, the US Department of Defense wanted to develop a means for sharing information for intelligence purposes. The Advanced Research Projects Agency established the first packet switching network (ARPANet) on October 29, 1969. From here, the Internet slowly developed over the next 20 years using the TCP/IP, Internet protocol suite for data transmission. The Internet at the time mainly consisted of Universities sharing information. In 1993 the first recognized Internet browser was developed, known as Mosaic (you can still download Mosaic from the NCSA Web site).  Mosaic opened the Internet up to the everyday user. It was now accessible, as well as more functional, with its use of HTML. HTML is a markup language that was developed to give context for graphical interpretation of data by the browser.

Hyper text markup language was developed by Tim Burns-Lee, along with a browser for interpretation in the latter part of 1990. HTML’s design was based on the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). SGML is not a markup language in itself, however it is a guideline for creating a markup language. Tags are the core component to any markup language. The purpose behind a markup language is to put data into context. Take a typical essay paper layout for example. Say you write the paper in MS Word. You use a large, bold, centered title, then put your name in a smaller, italicized font below that. Then you start writing. You have an introduction, three main paragraphs for each point, and then a conclusion. Word uses a proprietary system to store and interpret the layout and style of the text on the page.

A basic Web browser can only interpret simple text. This may seem like an obvious point, but it is an important one. So let’s imagine we take this nicely formatted Word document, copy all the text, and paste it into Notepad. Now you have lost all of your formatting. It is all just letters and spaces. This is the first step to creating an HTML document. You now have all your content, but no markup, no tags, no way to identify how the information should be displayed. You can actually save a plain text file as an HTML file and the browser will output the text, just like Notepad will. However, the point of the Web was to share information, and it is hard to interpret data that is displayed in plain text.

Enter the markup language. In order to contextualize the information provided in a file, HTML was developed for browsers to use as a means to interpret context. Now you can use HTML tags to identify the header (or title) of a document. You can identify a paragraph as such, and give it an ID, like ‘<p id=”first argument” >Content Here</p>’ Now you don’t just know that this is a block of text, you know that it is a paragraph, and you can identify this paragraph as the first argument. When you hear Web designers talk about semantic markup, this is what they are talking about. Using tags and ID’s and classes that make the HTML markup specifically relevant and purposeful to the context of the information.

A common misconception about HTML is that it is supposed to be used to establish format, colors, layout, etc. to a document. This is not really inline with the concept of the markup language. The purpose is to mark up the text with tags that identify each element of the text document, in order to create context. The additional feature of being able to then control layout with HTML should never have been available, in my opinon. From the very beginning, using the HTML itself to control the layout gave the HTML dual purposes. You use it first to identify the content, then you use it to manipulate the content. Structure creates order, and order creates consistency and reliability. Giving HTML a dual purpose was a mistake from the beginning. Tables are evil!

This is where CSS comes in. There are many benefits and uses for CSS, but the concept is simple. HTML is used to identify the different elements in a text document. CSS is used to layout and stylize the information, based on the markup.

While this phrase is, by default, the first post title in WordPress, I thought it would only be appropriate for my first blog post for my own reasons. Since my first programming class in Quick Basic, I have started learning programming languages, API’s, and markup languages by getting them to output the phrase “Hello World!” It is a great and simple phrase, and a great way to start out. In the age of the Internet, the all-encompassing introduction seems even more fitting. So here I am, here is my blog, and hello world!

I want this blog to be a place for me to share my thoughts, knowledge and inspirations related to the things I am most interested in. The themes will be largely based in Web design, but will include related items such as working as a freelancer, code tips and tricks, design theory, client interactions, marketing, social media, branding, advertising, and even real estate.

I hope that this blog serves as a resource for networking, as well as client building. I would love for it to develop into a conversation agent between myself and readers, but at the very least, I expect to gain a lot from recording my thoughts and knowledge, in whatever capacity that arrives to me. So thank you for lending me your ears (or eyes) and thank you for stopping by!