CasJam Design Blog

by Brian Casel · 8.16.2010 · Business

This summer has been a time of reflection for my business, and it has led me to a decision I’ve been contemplating for some time now. You may have caught my tweets and dribbbles about it already…

I will be relocating, rebranding, and revamping this blog.

This site will soon go by the name of the CasJam Design Blog (location TBA). It will be less of a personal blog, and more of a professional industry blog about the business of design (and other related topics). Here are a few thoughts on why I’m making this switch:

The CasJam Design Blog will a centralized point of investment in my business.

I’ve come to realize that building an audience and community is the most valuable long-term asset for any online business. The CasJam Design Blog is where I plan to focus the majority of my efforts and resources moving forward.

by Brian Casel · 5.3.2010 · Business

Freelancers, especially web workers, are constantly reminded about the importance of developing your personal brand. I believe personal blogging plays an integral, and sometime undervalued role in establishing your personal brand.

First, let me explain exactly what I mean by “Personal blogging”. I’m talking about your personal (yet public) site where you share your ideas, experiences, lessons learned, opinions, etc. Most likely this site is branded with your own name (as I do here on briancasel.com) or perhaps you’ve created a brand name to represent you. It serves as your behind the scenes version of what you do.

Think of your portfolio, your business storefront, your guest articles, interviews, lectures, books and other exposure as your “center stage” content. The stuff you put out in front of the world. Think of your personal blog as your “back stage” content, available to those who actively seek more from you. I blogged about digging into the personal blogs of others. Today’s post is about is the importance of keeping a personal blog for yourself.

140 Characters is Not Enough

Many folks rely solely on Twitter as their only channel for personal output. Some, including myself, even keep two twitter accounts. One to represent their business and another as their personal account. While Twitter is great for sharing bits and links throughout the day and making connections, I think it’s best used in conjunction with a full-length blog.

Take the 10% of your tweets that you feel most passionately about and expand those ideas into full blog posts. Flesh out those ideas – even if you don’t have a large audience. The few who do read your blog are probably the most valuable followers you can ask for, ones who are truly interested in what you have to say and likely willing to share and spread your ideas.

A Solid Foundation For Your Personal Brand

Your personal blog should be your most authentic representation of who you are. After visitors have passed through your storefront (your business website), seen your tweets, or read your guest posts, they arrive at your personal blog seeking a more complete picture of who you and your company are. If you’ve been blogging regularly for the past few months or years with authentic, insightful, and relevant content, then you can bet that person will come away with a positive view of you, your company, and your future endeavors.

Again, those who do find your personal blog are likely the most engaged members of your audience. You want to give them what they want, and that’s more information to consume, draw opinions from, share and re-blog.

Where? When? How?

Where should you publish and promote your personal blog? It’s really up to you. The approach I’ve chosen is to fully separate my business sites (casjam.com, themejam.com) from my personal blog (briancasel.com). I gear my content here towards other freelancers and web workers, sharing un-edited ideas, and providing a behind-the-scenes look at how I do business. I’ve taken a similar (but on a much smaller scale) approach as Gary Vaynerchuck (business: winelibrary.tv / personal: garyvaynerchuk.com) and Adii Pienaar (business: woothemes.com / personal: adiirockstar.com).

Others take the fully integrated approach, where their personal blog doubles as their business or portfolio site. This can work, especially if you’re business is primarily in serving other freelancers in your industry.

How often to blog? The SEO experts will preach that you must set a consistent schedule, at least once or twice weekly. While I do think it’s important not to leave your blog idle for too long, I think your schedule should largely depend on when you feel passionate enough about a particular topic to whip up a solid post with substance. A quick way to get me to unsubscribe or un-follow you is to post fluff.

How to do it? Tumblr is probably the easiest way to get started with your own blog. Of course WordPress would be the next easiest way to go. Both of these platforms give you loads of awesome themes to choose from and endless ways to customize it to your liking.

Over to you

What is your approach to personal blogging and how does that differ from your other avenues of exposure? Do share…

by Brian Casel · 4.21.2010 · Business, Education

This is the third and final part of my mini-series detailing my WordPress theme development process, which includes:

WordPress Theme Design Process
WordPress Theme Development Process
Releasing the WordPress theme on ThemeJam.com (read on…)

So the theme has been fully tested (and tested, and tested again) and is now deemed ready for release into the wild. Here is my process for prepping, releasing, and promoting a commercial WordPress theme on ThemeJam.

Prepare the Theme Demo

The functional demo should already be up and running at this point, because I created it during development. Of course, there weren’t any links pointing to it yet, so it hasn’t actually been set “live” yet.

But I haven’t set up the iframed demo for this theme yet. What I’m referring to is setting up the theme switcher navigation bar across the top of all the demos on ThemeJam. This allows easy switching between themes, switching between stylesheets for each theme, and links to purchase.

Setting up the iframe is pretty simple. It’s just a matter of duplicating a folder, changing some values and path names, and we’re all set. Though we’re still not live at this point…

Write Theme Documentation

This is a super-important step. As I mentioned in my reflections on ThemeJam two months in, I believe that thorough documentation is the best method of pre-emptive customer support (if you will). I try and go above and beyond and provide as much detail as possible in my instructions and explanations.

Currently, the theme documentation is created as a PDF document. I plan to overhaul and create a web-based version of theme docs, hopefully in the coming months.

I should also mention that I include quite detailed instructions and notes throughout the theme options panel built into the theme. Every option has it’s own sentence or two describing what it does.

Prepare the Download Package, Upload to E-Junkie

As you may know, all ThemeJam themes come packaged with the layered Photoshop design files (PSDs). We don’t have separate “developer” packages as most theme companies do. Every package would be considered the “developer” package. Before zipping the theme, I go through all the PSDs and tidy up the layers and groups.

Once the zip package is all set, I create the product in E-Junkie, which is the service I use for issuing downloads and handling the checkout process. I set it up so that affiliates can easily link directly to the product and earn money promoting ThemeJam products.

Push live on ThemeJam.com

This step involves several things:

Cutting screenshots and thumbnail images for the home page, gallery page, and detail page.
Writing copy to describe the theme on the detail page.
Input the various pieces of info (copy, price, demo link, purchase link, callouts, etc.) in WordPress (I set this up using quite a few custom write panels).
Add the theme image and link on the ThemeJam home page carousel.

Notes on Promotion

Here are a few things I do to build awareness of the new theme, both before and after pushing it live:

Release teaser images showing screenshots of an upcoming design. I do this while I’m in the design phase to build awareness of what’s coming up next, and ask for feedback. If I were a dribbble member, I’d do this much more often. Anyone have an invite for me?
Blog about it. I always post about it on the themejam blog, and I plan to blog in a lot more detail here on briancasel.com for upcoming themes.
Videos. I’ve been using screenr to create quick screencast videos showing how the back-end functionality works.

And that concludes my series on how I go about creating and releasing a commercial WordPress theme. Please share any feedback and/or questions in the comments below and if you haven’t already, check out the current selection of WordPress themes at ThemeJam.com.

by Brian Casel · 4.15.2010 · Business

Maybe stalking isn’t the right word.

I’m talking about keeping tabs, but digging deep, on other freelancers, entrepreneurs, designers, developers… your peers in your industry. And not only the “rockstars”, but your true peers. The ones who seem to be on the same level as you in terms of career goals, reputation, etc.

This is an integral part of what I do

Every few weeks, I try and take the time to seek out a freelance web designer I haven’t heard about before. Sometimes I come across their name by accident via twitter or elsewhere. Sometimes I find them while browsing for design inspiration (the majority of sites featured in gallery sites are designer’s blogs). Sometimes I actively seek them out. The FreelanceSwitch freelancer directory is an awesome resource for this. Sortfolio aint bad either.

Once I find someone interesting, with a similar background as me, I start reading their recent blog posts. Then I follow them on Twitter and scroll down through their tweets a bit. Then I come back to their blog and dig through the archives, scanning and reading articles like if I keep doing it I’m going to win something (when in reality, I’m just burning away what little time I have left in my work day!). I’m trying to learn their story, what they’ve done to get to this point, and where they’re going.

Sound creepy yet?

I think one of the key factors that drives me forward as a business owner and entrepreneur is my obsessive hunger for information. I listen to podcasts while I work and watch video interviews on a daily basis. I read Inc magazine cover to cover. I bought a kindle so that I can read everywhere I go – that is when I’m done reading my RSS feeds on my iPhone.

Just as it’s important to stay on top of trends and happenings in the industry as a whole, it’s also important to see what others in the trenches are up to. This is where I get my real inspiration and cultivate ideas for how I can move my business forward. Seeing what others are doing and have done up to this point is one of the best ways to stay on your toes, keep the inspiration alive, and keep going.

Learn to love archives pages

Archives pages are one of the most important, yet undervalued pages in a blog. They tend to be one of the last things we think about when designing a WordPress theme or reading a blog. But there is so much to learn just by browsing through an archive page of a blog that’s been around for some time.

You can compare and contrast how their stories differ from the past to the present. You can see how their writing style has developed. You get an idea of the major events that happened in their career up to this point. You can find the lessons they learned and shared based on those events. And most importantly you can relate their past and present to your own path and draw inspiration for how you’re going to move forward.

Love your work. Love your business. Obsess over it. But don’t forget to remain equally passionate about watching and learning from others.

by Brian Casel · 3.8.2010 · Business

Guest blogging on larger blogs than your own is a great way to build credibility and attract an audience. I’ve been guest writing occasionally on various blogs for the past 2 years and for the most part it’s been a great experience- that is after my posts have been published.

The frustrating thing about guest blogging is that there is always a period of being left in the dark. The editor might take a long time to respond to your submission. Even after you’re told that your article has been accepted, you’re still left wondering if and when it will actually be published.

Needless to say, this can be very frustrating. You took valuable time away from your work, your business, and your own blog, to produce top quality content for someone else’s blog. Since guest articles are to be published on an exclusive basis, you can’t simply submit and publish your article elsewhere or on your own blog. You just need to sit tight, wait and keep your eye on your RSS feeds to see when your article hits the web.

This is not right.

Large blogs need to get their act together in regards to managing guest authors. Guest authors are giving up their time and expertise to contribute to large blogs. They deserve to be treated with respect. At the very least, guest authors should be kept informed.

I don’t accept the excuse “Oh we’re so big and so popular that we can’t handle the hundreds of requests we receive each day”. These big blogs are big businesses. There is no excuse for a lack of organization. Can’t handle the workload? Hire additional editors.

A few rules.

Wouldn’t it be great if there were some kind of code of conduct that every blog should abide by when it comes to managing guest authors? Something to take the mystery out of the whole process. Here’s what I propose:

State your guest blogging terms clearly on your website. That means, specify an approximate response time for new submissions. If you pay for content, state how much. If you don’t, then state that. Tell writers how long of an author bio they’re allowed to attach and how many links can be included.
If you do accept a guest article, give the author advanced notice as to when it will be published. A simple, “we expect to publish it later next week” is fine (if it’s accurate). Are you currently on a 3 month backlog? Fine, but just let the author know.
If you’re running a blog network (several sites), be clear about which blog you’re accepting the article for. It’s unfair to lead a guest writer on. In the past, I’ve been led to believe that my article would go up on a network’s main blog (200,000+ subscribers), only to find out later it would publish on a smaller sister blog (45,000 subscribers).

What do you think?

Do you share in the same frustrations?

Posts Tagged ‘blogging’

Upcoming Relocation, Rebrand, and Revamp