Janna Hagan

On Tips for Design Students

June 6 / No Comments / Posted in: For Students

You know those lists. The ones created just for design students like yourself. They might look like this “Welcome, Recent Graduates” or “Seven Essential Tips for Design Graduates.”

They’re great. I often promote them through Student’s Guide or on Twitter - but I’ve come to notice a problem with these types of posts. I’ve realized that many of these articles, might actually have the opposite effect of what they’re trying to accomplish. I just graduated, and when I read these types of posts, it makes me scared, nervous and worried. It makes me feel like I don’t have my shit together (which is bad because I never feel like I have my shit together). It makes me want to play it safe and not take risks, in avoidance of making mistakes. It makes me feel like I wouldn’t have any idea of where to begin.

No matter how hard you try, you’re going to make mistakes. You’re new to the industry, it’s a new environment, it’s unavoidable. Setting expectations really high for yourself when you’re just starting out is rough. One article with “7 essential tips” is not going to determine your career. Take it easy on yourself, do the best you can and read Mike’s book. Seriously, it’s so good it should be standard reading in all design courses.

My tip for today, is to do what’s best for you and only listen to the advice you want to.

A Complete Guide to Twitter for Designers: Free eBook

June 3 / 1 Comment / Posted in: Marketing

Ever wondered why some designers seem to get more work, even though they aren’t necessarily more skilled?

Social media has become a major aspect in searching for work, especially for designers. If you’re not harnessing the power of Twitter, you could be missing out on major opportunities to advance your career. I’ve compiled some tips and advice on how I have personally maintained a steady stream of clients from Twitter into this easy-to-read guide.

In this guide, I cover how to:

Build credibility and authority within the industry through your personal brand
Connect with other designers to establish relationships
Develop a loyal and growing following
Add reliability to your name, even as a beginner
Introduce others to your work that may be interested in hiring you
Develop and maintain a steady stream of new work and opportunities

All you have to do is subscribe to the Student Guide’s newsletter and you’ll be able to download a free copy. Trust me, the newsletter is very valuable and full of great information that isn’t included on the site. I also never send out more than 3 e-mails a month (I hate spam too). Thanks and let me know what you think @_jannalynn!

Where Have All The Curious People Gone?

May 30 / 3 Comments / Posted in: Life

“My dad gave me the greatest gift of all… curiosity.”

My dad told me this as he placed a book in my hand. Many were to follow after that. He got me into the habit of reading for one hour every night before bed.

“My brother and I would have contests to see who could read the most books in a given time. We’d sit in the library for hours, just reading. A lot of the things I’ve learnt, I’ve learnt through books, not through my parents. I want to give you that same gift.”

To me, there is something about the power and magic of opening a physical book that will never disappear. The curiosity you evoke when scanning the first few lines of printed text, is just not the same as reading online. To me, it never will be the same.

People my age have the shortest attention spans. Never reading anything over 140 characters at a time, mesmerized by their cell phones and the endless stream of short, often pointless, text messages. We have everything we could ever fathom at our fingertips, and we don’t just want it, we want it fast.

Maybe it’s the fact that my generation grew up with social networks and cell phones, that physical books gradually disappeared from the picture… along with people’s curiosity. Once we graduate from college, we assume we don’t need to read a book ever again. We expect information to gravitate to us, knowledge to find a way into our brain without having to think or work, and the secrets to happiness and success to magically appear out of thin air.

Invest in your curiosity, and read a book.

How to Present Yourself on Twitter

May 30 / No Comments / Posted in: Marketing

Being connected to what is happening online can be one of the most beneficial actions you can take for your future. Having a well-rounded web presence through your personal brand gain help you gain more followers, connect with others and build you some credibility within the industry. In this section, we’ll go through how to appropriately present yourself on Twitter as a design student, and why people do or don’t follow you.

If you spend the time determining how you want to present yourself as a design student on Twitter, you can provide followers with massive value and create a pool of knowledge, experience and help that you can tap into at any point.

Your Personal Brand

If you’re still in college, this is an opportune time to better prepare yourself for your future. Although juggling coursework, class and work schedules can be difficult, the more you do now, the farther ahead you will be when you graduate.

Twitter is a great way to show that you’re more than just a person behind a computer. Having some sort of personality is important to crafting your personal brand on Twitter. Figuring out the tone you want to approach Twitter with is important, so your followers aren’t taken off guard. Do you want to be funny or professional? Serious or laid back? Whatever you decide, your tweets will look fairly different.

You have to realize that you are what you tweet. Keeping up a healthy Twitter image will help you get found, discover and shared. Use your personal brand to differentiate yourself from other young designers. Employers and clients are generally impressed by a student that takes the time to grow their personal branding. Your voice on Twitter is possessive, it’s something you own and have control over. Most followers need some type of credibility to hold onto before they follow you. Avoid being chaotic with your tweets. Being consistent doesn’t mean you have to be boring. Providing a mix of professionalism and personality is great – after all, most businesses like working with people who bring a great mix to the table. Consistency is important so that your followers know what to expect from your tweets.

Why People Follow You

When you are following others users on Twitter, most of you probably looked for a key qualities in people you followed. This could of been quality of posts, how often they post, how credible their branding looks, etc. You probably didn’t just follow anyone that claimed to be a web designer. When others are searching for people to follow, they follow the same judgmental process on your background, biography and recent tweets, and decide in a couple seconds whether you are worth following or not.

Each tweet you send out into the world represents a small faucet of your personal brand. If you tweet about what your cat is doing every 5 minutes, you’re going to be know as “that guy who tweets about his cat too much.” You’re going to want to be consistent in what you tweet about because it reflects greatly on your brand.

There are a few things that your followers want to see:

You provide them with some form of value
You interact with others through discussions and provide help when needed (you seem friendly)
You are a perceived expert and like to teach others about what you know

Why People Don’t Follow You

Not Everything’s About You: Obviously you want to use Twitter to help promote yourself and your services as a designer, but it’s not always about you. People don’t like others that just talk about themselves (well, I don’t anyways). What’s worse is you might come off as a spammer.

Frequency of Tweeting: There is a striking balance between posting too much, and annoying followers, or posting too little and becoming inactive. The secret to success is to keep your feed fresh by maintaining a balance. You also have to be careful of alternating between promotional tweets (you’ll look selfish) and links to outside sources (you’ll lack originality).

Provide Value

In Jack Humphrey’s blog post on the 90-10 rule for Twitter networking, he suggests that 90% of the time you use Twitter should be for personal insights, thoughts and a heavy dose of helpful links. The other 10% should be used for directly benefiting you. When someone follows you on Twitter, it is implied that they followed you because you provide them some sort of value or benefit:

Answer Questions: Take the time to help others. Give detailed responses to questions you feel qualified to answer. If you provide a solution, they will likely come back to you again later on.

Replying: Reply to others! If you don’t, your followers might take it personally and think you are unfriendly or uninterested. Start, follow and contribute to conversations in your niche.

Retweet: Retweeting is beneficial for both parties – you’re sharing interesting content with your readers and helping out fellow Twitterers at the same time.

Links: Provide links that are entertaining, informative and relevant to your reader’s interests. The more interesting your links are, the more likely your followers will share it with their followers, further spreading your message. Remember that these links will contribute to your level of consistency and credibility online.

This was originally posted on Student Guide to Web Design. Please subscribe to the newsletter to get free resources and updates!

Determining Your Ideal Client as a Designer

May 27 / No Comments / Posted in: Marketing

As online marketing becomes more complex and intricate, discovering and analyzing your ideal client doesn’t only become important, it becomes a necessity. The benefit of preparing a marketing proposal as designers is that it allows you to build your entire business around targeting and narrowing in on your market through product, services and messaging.

What is the definition of an ideal client?

The trick to finding good clients is knowing what you want. Businesses and freelancers who struggle to define customers, or have too large a target market, often struggle in getting any clients at all. By narrowing in on a customer group, it allows you to better serve the needs and wants of that specific group which will save you time and money in the long run.

So, what do ideal clients look like? Think of a client project that had a positive outcome. These clients appreciated your talents, gave feedback and listened to your advice, paid on time, gave deliverables before deadlines and possibly even gave you further business. These are the kinds of clients you want more of. Let’s define a few key elements that are consistent with these clients:

- They respect your expertise and understand the value you will provide them
- They make you money
- They would be willing to refer you for future projects/business

As designers, our services certainly apply to all businesses, but not everyone wants our services.

Segmenting

Segmenting your clientele means placing them in “groups” based on many different factors that can affect how your clients behave when purchasing or investing in something such as your services. As you begin to segment your potential client base, you will begin to notice behavioural patterns. You’re also going to notice that your target market is smaller than you originally imagined. As designers, our services certainly apply to all businesses, but not everyone wants our services. This is where segmentation becomes very important in your marketing plan.

Demographics

Demographics are the most basic characteristics of consumer groups. This includes age, gender, income, education, family size, etc. Since you’re not going to be able to target each individual consumer, demographics give you a better method of understanding and marketing to groups with similar characteristics. If you understand demographics as a designer, it will be easier for you to expand your network and discover new markets.

Psychographics

Psychographics include personal preferences, lifestyle choices, personality traits, habits and opinions. For example, an older man with 4 children is likely to have different preferences and lifestyle choices than a young, single man. Measuring psychographics amongst your potential clients reveals what influences them to make decisions on your products or services.

Geographics

Geographics is the physical location of your clients, population density, culture, etc. As designers – with the freedom of the Internet – we are luckily not constrained by the boundaries of working with businesses only in our area. Businesses who have physical locations will be more concerned with this segment, as it plays an important role in maintaing local customer traffic, expansion and promotion.

Behavioural

Understanding the behavioural patterns in your ideal clients is one of the most important marketing analysis you can do. Knowing their emotional and rational triggers for making buying decisions will help you build loyalty and trust with your brand. You’re also going to want to ask yourself these questions about your ideal client:

What do they buy?
This one will help determine if you should offer a wider range of services, or focus on one or two main disciplines. If you’re a design agency, you are a “one-stop-shop” for clients that need more than one service, whereas a freelancer is more likely to specialize in one area such as design or development.

Where do they like to buy from?
Do most potential clients e-mail you or call you directly? Facilitating the main channels of communication will provide a more effective way for people to contact you.

Do they want what you have?
If you’re selling a solution for a service no one wants, you’re SOL. Don’t waste your time convincing people they need your services when they don’t have a want for it.

Are they willing to pay (well) for your services?
Unfortunately, individuals who have “price shopping” tactics will always continue to have a fixation with price, rather than focusing on our services as an investment. You want to drive your attention to clients who are willing to pay a premium for your talents. Raising your prices will not put you in competition with other designers, either.

As a designer, if you try to be “all things” to “all people,” you’ll continue to land mediocre clients with mediocre projects. Identifying your ideal client will help with your overall business strategy, which ultimately, leads to more sales and greater profits. This process will continue to grow as your business evolves. Maybe your skills have grown to include design and development – your ideal clientele and target market will naturally shift to accommodate for the change.

Your ideal customer helps your bottom line in business – knowing and understanding their demands will improve your business as a designer. It’s a marketing technique you can’t ignore if you want to be successful.

My example:

My ideal customers are business owners or individuals that understand the value of design. I enjoy working with people who are just as passionate about what they do, as I am. Since I generally specialize in design work, I like to work with clients who have a good sense of what looks good and what doesn’t, and can give me appropriate feedback on design directions. Working with clients who respect my skills, talents and experience as a designer makes for an easier project progression, which in turn, allows me to do my job properly and efficiently.