"Our contract work conditions are based on a day rate. We expect you to work the full 24 hours if necessary." "Our clients are dynamic and well educated people; they don’t waste their time by watching videos or reading blogs!" — Client in response to my suggestion that we utilize social media and youtube in a marketing campaign. DESIGNER: “We will set you up with Google Analytics.” CLIENT: “No way. I don’t want that.” DESIGNER: “Why not? its great!” CLIENT: “My wife has it on her website and she only gets 50 hits a month. No thanks. Get me something else.” The above situations are real quotes/conversations from actual clients taken from the Clients from Hell website, and most of them are extremely funny. Go ahead and read some of the stories submitted from designers about clients. Trust me, I have my own ...

Nowadays, it's a best practice to connect and maintain relationships online with your target audience using social media if you really want to grow your small business. However, managing a social media presence can be a full time job in and of itself. And, honestly, what small business owners have time for yet another job?!?! Introducing SocialOomph! SocialOomph is one of the tools I use to boost my social media productivity. In this video, I tell you about 2 areas that the free version of SocialOomph allows: 1) Auto-following new followers and 2) Automating direct messages - both of which are extremely helpful in cutting down your manual interaction with Twitter. Using SocialOomph for Twitter Automation Enhance your Twitter productivity with SocialOomph. Other Benefits of SocialOomph (free version):

• Manage Multiple Twitter Accounts
• Twitter Stats
• View @mentions/retweets
• Publish new updates (you'll need

I've received emails from LinksHog.com on several occasions over the last couple of years but didn't think anything about it them. I just left them in my spam box. However, just today I get another email and knew the text sounded familiar.  I finally looked them up online to see who they are and saw that people have been complaining about them since 2008! Scam or Spam??? Just like the Nigerian millionaires and other well known chain emails circulating, I'm calling shenanigans on LinksHog and say they are a scam (rather than just unsolicited email, 'er spam) since they display the same characteristics.

• They claim to know your search phrases and tell you that you don't rank for them.
• All over the web, they have identified the wrong keywords for websites but claim to know how to get you in the #1 position in Google for those keywords.
• They evidently have a "machine" doing the work for them with

It is never a surprise when prospective clients come to me wanting to redesign their existing website or just make some minor changes to it and they can't get in touch with their previous designer or simply want to end the relationship with him/her. Even less surprising is when they tell me that they don't have any usernames or passwords to access their domain and/or hosting accounts. Here's a recent story of one of my clients with this exact problem! "Recently, I found that my website was going to a GoDaddy placeholder page so I tried contacting the web designer to make changes to my site but she was unresponsive and I didn't know what to do. I then contacted GoDaddy and they told me that the domain has ...

Have you ever wondered where your twitter followers were located? Well, wonder no more. I just found a great, free - yes, free! - online application that does exactly that. It's called Foller.me. So what does Foller.me do? Foller.me is a Twitter service that gives you detailed information about a specific Twitter user in the least amount of time! On one page, you can see the standard info that's on each Twitter user’s page like how many followers they have, how many tweets, etc… but it also shows recent topics, #hashtags, @mentions, and my favorite, where their followers are in the world! Your turn... Go ahead and see who and where your twitter followers are! And don't forget to use Twitter and Facebook icons ...