The best things for the client from this call were:

• They can see the order emerging from the chaos
• I was able to give them some great insights that will make them money

For a long time, this client has been working on the information marketing project and has got so lost in the everyday stuff, that they have lost sight of their goal and feel overwhelmed with everything there is to be done.  Sadly, they had also lost the excitement for why they wanted to do this in the first place.  Well, they were certainly excited just now!

Get excited again

So how did this transformation happen?  Simply by going back to the basics.  I don’t know what they are trying to achieve, so they are explaining to me what it means to them, why they want to do it and where they are right now.  And guess what, they got so fired up it was great!   Just by revisiting the reasons for the project, their energy and enthusiasm soared sky-high.  Plus, in documenting where they currently are with their ebooks, audio books and workbooks, I am building simple checklists that show graphically how they are progressing and what needs doing next.  They can take these away to use as live planning tools to drive their project to the finish line.

It is so easy to get lost in the woods.  Strategic planning with an outside expert forces you to get out from amongst the branches and see the whole forest.  It reminds you why you were there in the first place and gets back that all important overview.

Obvious?  Only when someone else points it out!

They have a published book.  I asked "do you have web site for that book?" and the silence on the phone said it all.  They hadn’t thought of it.  “Oh come on!” you cry, surely not!  Believe it – it’s not the first time I have seen something like this.  When you are so close to the coal face, you are in danger of missing the obvious, but someone outside the situation can point it out to you.  So not only are we building a strategic plan that will carry them towards success, but as a side effect a whole new revenue-generating idea has fallen out as well.  This will make enough money to cover the investment in planning.

So what about you?

When was the last time you walked out of the forest and reminded yourself of why you are there?  Where are your tools for seeing what you have to do to reach your own dream and for staying on track?  What are you missing in your own business?

Rosebank offer cost-effective strategic planning support to get under the skin of your business, while getting back to the reason you started doing it in the first place.  Whilst it is great to actually meet, everything can be done remotely – like with this client – so it doesn’t matter where in the world you are.

Get in touch and find out what you are missing.

The author (I’ll tell you more and point to the sites when they are ready!) has been working so close to the project, they can’t get that overview that is vital to a successful project in any sphere of life.

Strategic Planning

Rosebank Solutions Group will research their current position and work closely with them over the next few weeks to build a strategic plan that will take them from where they currently are to their goal – their vision and dream.

With contracts only just signed, this is what they said:

I am excited about the future and trust it will be the beginning of very fruitful working relationship. Thank you for being a vision helper, helping me to actualize my dreams

We hope to be able to help them implement the project too.  At Rosebank we have expertise in many areas that they will need – to name just a few:

• WordPress site development
• Custom Theme development
• Email marketing and listbuilding
• Video creation and editing – teasers for traffic on video sites
• Marketing strategy – for the online and online product launches
• Social Media strategy and tools – create the buzz and get visitors

We will deliver detailed tasklists that we would use to manage the project succesfully, but we will also support then to manage the project themselves, or to outsource to others if they wish.

We don’t try to keep clients for ourselves; we find out what the client needs and make sure they get it, even if that will benefit others.  We believe this is the right way to do business.

How Can We Help You?

Do you have a project that you are struggling to get to grips with?  Are there so many things that you can’t see the wood for the trees?  Are you dissatisfied because you feel like you are not making good progress?

Our latest client felt the same, which is why they asked for our help.

Do you need good-looking sites built?  Sites that are as easy to maintain as sending an email?  Do you need help with social media strategy, creating or marketing products?

Or would you just love a fresh pair of eyes on your situation?  Someone to bounce ideas off and point out the obvious to you (it’s so obvious when someone else says it, believe me!).

Get in touch and let’s see how we can help: enquiries @ RosebankSolutionsGroup.com

What is a Website?

A website is simply a collection of ‘pages’ that are linked together to hold information on a particular subject or company or interest.  A ‘page’ is a file on a computer – much like an Excel or Word file might be.  All files have what is called an ‘extension’ – which is the piece after the dot – so a Microsoft Office file might have an extension such as ‘xls’ for Excel or ‘doc’ for a Word document.  The extension for a file that is a web page is ‘html’ or ‘htm’ (which are really the same).  HMTL stands for ‘Hyper Text Markup Language’ which is nice to know but doesn’t really tell you anything, which is fine.

A web site consists of a number of .html files, maybe some images or pictures, perhaps some documents such as PDF (Acrobat Reader documents) etc. all linked together so that you can navigate between them.

And the Domain Name?

You need a name for the web site.  On the internet, the ‘name’ of the site is called the ‘Domain’ or ‘url’ – Uniform Resource Locator (again, nice to know but not very helpful!) and it’s the thing that ends ‘.com’, ‘.co.uk’, ‘org’ etc.  This is what you have to type in at the  top of the browser to access the site – so my site has a Domain or url of www.RosebankSolutionsGroup.com.  The extension ‘.com’ etc. tells you a little about the type of site.  To get a domain name you need to find one that has not been used already and register it as yours.  There is a charge for this (surprise, surprise!) and you use a ‘Domain Registrar’ to do this for you.  You tell them the domain name and extension you want, they check that it is available and, if it is, they reserve it for you.  You pay some money, enter your details and after a short time, it is yours.

In reality, you need to purchase the domain name first – it would be a shame to build the whole web site and then discover that the phrase that you desperately need for the domain name has already been taken!

Web Hosting

When you build a site, the files probably sit on your PC or Mac on your desk and you know where they are.  You can access your site, but no one else can unless they can actually walk into your room and use that PC.  So you need somewhere to put those files where the public can see them.  What you need is ‘Web Hosting ‘.

Web Hosting is simply an area on a computer that is attached to the internet where you store the files that make up your web site.  You usually rent this space from a hosting company by setting up a ‘Hosting Account’ – they will charge an amount to give you space on their big computers (servers) to store your web site files.

OK, so you now have a web site, a domain name and a hosting account, but your web site files are still sitting on your PC  – which no one else can see.  So you need to copy them to the space allocated by your Hosting supplier on their servers.  You need to do something called ‘ftp’ which stands for ‘File Transfer Protocol’.  All this means is ‘copy across the internet’.  To do this you will need some sort of ftp utility programme.  I use an Open Source tool (all Open Source tools are free) called FileZilla which it is very good.  You use the ftp tool to send the web site files from your PC (or Mac) to the server at the Hosting company.

So, you now have everything you need – web site, domain name, a hosting account and you have copied your website to the server on the internet.

Almost, but not quite, because there is a vital part missing and it seems to be the part that confuses people  the most.  This is called the ‘DNS’.

‘DNS’ or Domain Name System

This really confuses people, so I am going to be very non-technical explain very simply what happens.  If you are interested in lots (and lots) more, just type ‘DNS’ into Google!

The registrar has reserved you a domain name or url for your use.  The hosting company has allocated you a space on their server and you have copied your website files to that folder.  What DNS’ing does is to make sure that the domain name points to the space on the server where you put your web site files.  There’s lots to this technically, but that is really all there is to it.

The domain name is like a telephone number in the directory – it is just a meaningless number until it is actually routed to your house.  DNS’ing is the means by which you route the domain name to the folder on the server at your hosting company, so that when someone types the domain name into Google, the system knows where to go to load the web site files.  The way in which this is done is using something called a ‘name server’ (sometimes they are shown without the space, so nameserver, but it is the same thing).

Name Servers

When you create your hosting  account, the hosting company will send you details of their ‘name servers’.  This is the reference codes for the big servers on which they have reserved you some space for your web site files.  You need to tell the registrar where you registered your domain name what these codes are so they know where the domain name is supposed to point.  The way you do this will depend on the registrar, but for example, I use HostGator for my hosting and they have allocated me name servers of ‘ns1409.hostgator.com’ and ‘ns1410.hostgator.com’.  I went online to the registrar’s site, logged in to the account which holds my domain  names and amended the DNS settings for each domain name to use the name servers HostGator sent me.

If you have hosting with the same company as you have used to register your domains, you do not need to do this step, as they will do this for you.

Finally

And finally, you need to wait a while – usually 24 hours at least – before the changes you have made get passed around the internet.  How will you know when it is done?  Quite simply, when you type your domain name into a browser and your page appears on the screen!

I have tried to make this simple, but if you are unsure of anything, please comment on this so that I can improve the article for others.  Thanks!

First off, let’s be clear on what a “project” actually is.  Simply put it is just something that needs doing.  A project could be small – say an article – or big, say launching a Seminar Marketing business, or Social Media strategy, or it could be anything in between.  Obviously when you launch a new business the project is rather more complex that writing an article, but both are projects.

How is it Done?

There are 3 things that are really important when it comes to planning any project.

1. You need to be really clear on what you want to achieve.  Write this down and use bullet points to identify the key points that you need covered.
2. What is the timescale and budget for the project?  Without a clear end date, there is a real danger that it will drag on and not get finished.  If there is no date imposed from outside, set a date yourself!
3. How will you know when you have achieved it?  What does the end state actually look like?  Asking this question really helps you frame things properly.  For example, a project to create an ebook on wealth building is straightforward.  But if you frame the end goal as “an ebook of 45 pages with colour diagrams that will deliver excellent content and contain 10 links to money-making websites”, now you are being precise.  And suddenly, you have unearthed an extra task – 10 links to create or find.

Why Does it Work?

So why does planning your project make a difference?  It imposes a discipline that immediately makes the whole venture more business-like and more likely to succeed.  It forces you to think through the stages and reduces the chances of something getting overlooked, and it is usually the things that crop up unexpectedly that increase the cost and cause delay.  Over time it gives you a proven method for doing things, making it simpler and safer each time.  And when you plan projects for your clients, it builds your reputation as being a serious business person who goes about things in a professional manner.

Project management can make a big difference to the success of your Information Marketing business.  Careful thought and a logical approach will always improve the success of what you do, so why not identify a project in your own business and try it out?

When we first started speaking, I spend a lot of time listening and asking questions.  At first he was pleased and keen to answer me fully.  Then he was frustrated and a little annoyed that I didn’t ‘get it’.  Then, finally, he was pleased and keen to answer me fully again because he understood why I was asking so many questions – it was because I didn’t understand.

Here he was, the owner of this product, explaining face to face about his membership and having difficulty getting his points across.  Initially he took this badly, but eventually, I helped him to realise that this was exactly what the project needed!

If he was having difficulty explaining to me in person, how was he going to expect his potential customers to get it?  I got him to write down what his product was, how it would benefit his clients and how it would work.  We built a library of information that he just has to copy and paste into his sites – and it is all tested on someone who doesn’t know what the product is – ME!

So, what makes a successful project?  There are many things, but right up there is CLEAR & COMPLETE COMMUNICATION.
What does that mean?  Well, simply put it means this:

• Always write things down
• Write for someone who doesn’t know what you are trying to do
• Try to be as clear as possible when you write – use bullet points if you find that you are writing a paragraph or more
• If things get complex, give an example or a picture
• It is sometimes useful to say what you DON’T mean, for example, “the duplication of DVDs and the printing of labels is excluded from this project”
• Don’t assume that because you know, everyone else knows!
• Always read what someone else has written!

This last one is a classic – people don’t write things for fun.  I have lost count of the number of times I have seen projects go wrong because something was not read that later proved to be vital.

Communication is critical to success, so from the outset make sure that everyone is aware of the ground rules.

Write things down, make sure everyone reads it and specifically ask if there are any issues with what has been written.

There is no such thing as the Perfect Project – but this simple tip goes a long way to making things easier.

This site is going to grow into a really useful resource for everyone who is working to develop their own Information Marketing business or who is trying to get things done in their business.

We have been running business and technology projects for almost 2 decades now, working in a whole variety of businesses; financial services, publishing, not-for-profit, manufacturing, Christian, retail and distribution to name a few.  I have worked in teams of 1 and teams of a dozen.  I have worked for small companies and global ones too, in the UK, Europe, the Middle East and the USA.

Over that time I have seen project management methods come and go and I have learnt how projects are really done – the horrors, tips, tricks, pitfalls and pleasures of making change work in business.

I’m going to share this experience with you as we go along and I want to make sure that it is relevant to where you are working and what you are trying to do, so please don’t hesitate to comment on my posts.

If you agree – say so, but if you disagree, say so too, so that we can all learn.  If you have a suggestion for something that you would like to see covered, just let me know, or if you have a question, just ask.

Running projects and handling change can be challenging, rewarding and great fun, so let’s get started!