I’m good at my job. Many specialty providers are good at their jobs, be it Web design or programming or marketing. It’s typically why we get into the job in the first place. One thing that I notice among clients, though, is a tendency to hire an expert, and then attempt to do the job themselves. At best, this is a waste of time and money; at worse, it can actually be detrimental to your purpose.

Why people hire experts.

There are so many different things under the sun that it’s impossible for people to be experts in everything. As a professional writer, I consider myself an expert in certain types of writing. I’m also extremely savvy when it comes to SEO, and search-engine writing, because it’s a part of my niche and SEO is an increasing focus for many of my clients. I also do some Web design; I created my website and blog, and have done Web design for a few of my long-time clients. This makes me ideally positioned to handle SEO-related tasks and articles, because I understand it from a content side, a search-engine side and a Web design side.

However, I’m not an expert Web designer. When I run into problems with Web design, I ask my more-knowledgeable Web design friends (like a Web programmer I know, or a marketing graphic designer who happens to be a friend of mine) rather than trying to learn everything there is to know about the subject. Why? Because I could spend weeks reading programming books, learning Web programming languages and troubleshooting and debugging a website – or I could spend 10 minutes asking an expert.

People hire experts to save time and money.

People sometimes hire experts to do tasks that they simply don’t want to do. However, more often, people hire experts to save time and money doing something they could conceivably do on their own, with enough knowledge. It’s a good idea to learn enough about a subject to converse intelligently with your provider, and understand whether or not your provider is doing a good job. It’s inefficient to try to learn enough to do complex tasks on your own; your time is typically better spent doing more productive things.

Think of it this way: if you’ve got a plumbing problem, you’d hire a plumber to come in and fix it. In theory, you could spend time learning about how plumbing works, the specifics relative to your configuration and all the knowledge you’d need in order to fix the issue yourself. Then you’d have to buy the tools you need, and the parts you need. In all, you’d probably be looking at an investment of hours or days, and hundreds or thousands of dollars in tools and parts, in order to fix an issue that it would take a plumber 10 minutes to repair. You also wouldn’t have the practice doing it, so even if you could make the repair yourself, there’s no guarantee that you’d do it correctly or well.

How ‘doing it yourself’ can hurt your cause.

At best, handling ‘expert’ tasks on your own can cost you a lot of time and money. At worse, you can actually hurt your cause. Would you hire a plumber to come in and make a repair, and then poke holes in the pipes and try to seal them yourself afterward? Of course not. So why would you hire an expert in another field, and then make changes or add new problems after they’ve completed your task?

How to best utilize your experts.

If you’ve hired an expert to do something for you, let the expert do it. Experts become experts because they learn about their topics through the course of completing tasks. Experts know what works, and what doesn’t work. If you’re working with a genuine expert, they can provide something better-suited to the task than anything you can create, even if you ‘read up’ and learn about a topic. Yes, your solution might work; but why waste the time and money undoing the work your expert did, and implementing something that can actually hurt your end product?

Bottom line: when you hire experts, use them. Don’t say “Oh, I know you’re an expert, but I want to do this myself” or “I hired you for your expertise, but I want you to do this other thing, even though you say it won’t accomplish what I’m trying to do.”

If you want someone to complete the task your way, hire a college kid or an intern and save yourself some cash. If you want an expert who can design the best solution or product for your task, hire an expert – and use them.

I spent some time talking with one of my contacts back in August about utilizing social networking to promote your business. She was new to the social networking niche, and had no idea how to bring the power of social networking to bear on growing her business. We had a conference call about this topic last week, and I realized that many business owners or self-employed individuals are under-utilizing social networking as a valuable business tool. There aren’t enough resources to show people unfamiliar with social networking how to leverage this tool to grow their businesses.

Part One of this series is going to focus on a general overview, and give you an idea how to get started. Future additions to the series will focus more on specific aspects of utilizing social networking for your business, so keep an eye peeled for the next part in the series.

What is social networking, anyway?

For the purposes of this article, social networking is a description for applications or platforms where people can connect with one another and share their thoughts, likes and dislikes or specific, targeted data. Many types of social networking websites exist, some of the most popular of which are:

Facebook - a social networking platform designed for friends and family to connect and share updates, photos, videos, links and other personal interaction. One of the most popular social networking platforms, with more than 350 million active users. Decent business opportunities and good potential for small businesses or persons of note.

MySpace - another social networking platform similar to Facebook, but with fewer users and less functionality. As Facebook gains popularity, MySpace has been losing users; it currently has 271 million registered users, but that number doesn’t reflect active users. This social networking platform doesn’t offer as much potential for business users, but it is popular with music bands and musicians.

Twitter – a social networking service where people share updates in 140-character “Tweets.” Twitter is growing in popularity, and although Twitter does not release data on the exact number of users, a Web activity analysis in February indicated more than 6 million unique visitors. A Nielsen report in March ranked Twitter as the fastest growing “Member Community” on the Web. Many businesses leverage twitter effectively to keep users updated and offer special deals and offers.

Digg - Digg is a social news website where users can ‘rank’ news stories, articles and websites. The website counts the number of ‘Diggs’ and items with more digs get a higher rank in popularity searches. Digg also recommends items based on the items you Digg. Websites that get a lot of digs get a lot of traffic, and that typically translates to revenue. While this isn’t traditional social networking, Digg is a huge boon for traffic and can bring a lot of revenue to businesses.

Yelp - Compared to the other social networking sites that I mention here, Yelp is relatively small potatoes. Current user data is unavailable, but a news article earlier this year suggested Yelp had around 1.5 million users. However, Yelp is a review website, with focus specifically on restaurants and shopping (although you can post reviews about virtually any commercial service). I mention Yelp because user reviews can be powerful positive (or negative) statements about your business, and a savvy business owner leverages this opportunity instead of ignoring or discounting it.

How social networking benefits your business.

The benefits of social networking vary depending on how you use it and how your business is positioned. Typically, social networking opportunities can bring you page views that translate to potential clients. If your business is positioned correctly, you can take advantage of this increased traffic to capture higher conversion rates. If your business isn’t positioned correctly, or you don’t make good use of social networking opportunities, you’ll miss a lot of potential business.

So social networking serves one primary function: to get you traffic.

It’s up to you to position yourself to benefit from that traffic, and make good use of the opportunities presented by increased traffic.

Prepare your website for social networking.

First and foremost, you won’t get much benefit from social networking unless you have something to show people. Even if you have the best product or service in the world, you can’t convince people of that online unless you show them something. You need an informative, dynamic website to capture your readers’ attention. You need more than a one-page website with company contact information and a basic mission statement.

Look for an article in the next few weeks about how to create an engaging website. I have a lot of experience with this topic, and my article will feature helpful tips and common mistakes to avoid, as well as pointers on how to make sure you’re ideally positioned to capture your audience.

Begin using social networking services.

Once your website is ready and you’re confident that you’re ready to interact with your readers, begin utilizing social networking services. The next several articles in this series will talk about specific ways to utilize various social networking platforms for your business. In general, though; provide information, be transparent to your readers and don’t spam your followers.

Provide information. Use your social networking opportunities to tell readers about your products or services, or to advertise special opportunities. Sales are a great jumping-off point for launching a social networking campaign, but you can use social networking in many ways to promote your business.

Be transparent to your readers. Some companies and businesses simply use social networking to communicate with readers. A Web host, for example, might use social networking to communicate down-time, server issues or planned maintenance. While readers don’t want to hear about bad news, most appreciate hearing it from the source instead of being left in the dark to guess at what’s happening. You can also use it to talk about positive features or upcoming plans, but transparency promotes a sense of personal involvement with your readers. This is a very good thing.

Finally, don’t spam your followers. If your readers get endless promotional messages about products, services or sales, they might stop following you. You want to keep readers engaged. Give them good information, but don’t drive them away with excessive posting, or posting that has little value. This is a fine line to balance, and a seasoned social networking consultant can be extremely helpful in taking the right approach.

Next time.

In the next part in this series, I’ll begin looking at the ways you can utilize specific social networking platforms to promote your business. Look for the next part in the series on Thursday, December 17. [EDIT]Obviously, the next part in the series did not appear on Thursday, December 17. My apologies – I picked up a couple of extra projects that required my immediate attention and I got pulled away from my blog for a while. I’m currently working on drafting Part 2, and expect to have it live in January.[/EDIT]

In the meantime, if you have any questions or anything to add, I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to drop me an email or comment the post and I’d be happy to open a discussion.

Right. The “Archives” tool is correct – I have posts in January 2009 and December 2009. I’m bookending the year, apparently.

You’ll note in my November 2008 article “5 Reasons Your Business Depends on Maintaining an Active Web Presence” that I provide many legitimate and compelling reasons for small businesses and self-employed individuals to maintain an active Web presence. You’ll probably also note that I’ve only made… oh… three posts since then?

Consider my blog an object lesson of what happens when you don’t maintain an active Web presence.

My only excuse is that 2009 was a busy year, and between personal projects, new clients and life throwing me a few curveballs, I’ve neglected my own website. (Rest assured I didn’t neglect my clients, as my updated Portfolio and Client List will show soon.)

I am now remedying this issue, and will be posting regularly on the blog, as well as updating my website.

Yes. Really. I promise.

In the meantime, I’m still here, still a full-time freelance writer, and I daresay my writing skills are better honed than they were a year ago. (Through many hundreds of thousands of words written.) I’m always happy to talk to new clients, other writers or small business professionals, so feel free to contact me and I’ll be happy to respond to your inquiries, comments or requests for information.

So for now, a big THANK YOU to all of my clients, and I hope everyone else had a good 2009!

Any self-employed individual can tell you how difficult it can be to stay motivated. No matter how well you like a topic, or how much you enjoy writing articles in a certain niche, there are times when you just can’t bear to write another word about ‘foo.’ Everyone needs a way to relieve this temporary funk and get back to being productive. Stumped for ideas? Tired of procrastinating and want to get back to work? Consider these tips to relieve boredom and frustration and become productive again:

Work on Another Project

One of the best ways to maximize productivity is to simply work on another project when you’re tired of a topic or need a break from a series of articles. If you’re like me, you’ve got several projects going at once, so there’s no lack of work to switch to in order to get a break from a project that’s dragging. I’ve learned to prioritize my time so I can stay ahead of deadlines, and give myself a little wiggle room to work on whatever project most motivates me. However, you still have to force yourself back to the unmotivated project, from time to time, so you could always write a difficult article and then ‘reward’ yourself with working on a different project for a while.

Do Some Marketing

Whether you’re a freelancer or a self-employed individual or even a large company, you know the importance of marketing. Marketing is a job that’s never finished. You can always make a new connection, write a new article, send out an email or otherwise work on your networking opportunities in order to open new doors and obtain new clients for your business. Take a break from a difficult project and do some marketing. Place a bid on a new project. Peruse job listings for potential work. Evaluate potential clients or send out some emails. Kill two birds with one stone; take a break from a project where you’re just not using time efficiently, and potentially gain some new clients through your marketing efforts.

Dance with Dogs

Sometimes, no matter how good your intentions are, you simply can’t be productive. You find yourself browsing the Web, perusing personal emails or even reading a book during ‘work’ time. When this happens, it’s time for drastic measures. You must do something REALLY silly to relieve some of your frustration and get back to being productive. What’s my solution?

Yes. Really. It’s Dancing with Dogs. I’ll put on a song I love, turn it up really loud, and dance around the room singing. The dogs love it. Occasionally I’ll reach down and pet one, or tap them, or generally act silly, and they get all happy – tongue-lolling, tail-wagging happy. This makes me happy, in return, and the opportunity to just be silly for a few minutes releases a lot of the tension and the frustration of working on articles that just can’t catch my interest.  After a song or two, the dogs are ready to get back to napping, and I’m ready to get back to work with a fresh attitude and push ahead with those tough articles.

For those of you who don’t have dogs that enjoy dancing, or simply aren’t dog people (I may not understand it, but I respect your beliefs) – you can always watch a hilarious video on YouTube, call a friend and chat for a few minutes, or even go outside and scream something at the top of your lungs. (The more extreme and silly the activity, the more boredom and frustration it relieves – YouTube and phone calls are really more distractions than anything else, but they can help give you a step back from your work.)

Be Physically Active

Finally, if you don’t have any other work to do, have already marketed the heck out of your business and just aren’t a ’silly’ person, there’s always physical activity. Walking helps a lot of people process, and even the act of going outside and getting away from the office can bring you fresh perspective on your projects. You could always take the opportunity to go to the gym, and be productive in that way. (Sedentary work, especially, requires physical activity elsewhere, so seriously – get a gym membership. Not sure what to do at the gym? Try the Couch-to-5k program at Cool Running. So easy anyone can do it – even me. Twice. I’m just not all that great at sticking with it.)

Being self-employed is all about balancing priorities and lifestyle choices. No-one can be productive all the time, and it’s natural to need breaks every now and then to take a step back and get fresh perspective on a project. Sometimes you have to force yourself to work through unproductive periods, but other times you could be using your time more effectively and be productive in different ways. Consider these tips the next time you’re feeling unproductive – instead of wasting half your day procrastinating, and then getting frustrated because you haven’t done anything.