Terry Starbucker Speaks at SOBCon

Terry Starbucker is an SOB, a title he wears with pride after Liz Strauss awarded him with that title. He started Glass Half Full as a lark and took it from there.

Well, this turned out to be a lot shorter than I thought it would be…he’s the MC. /grin

Time for the conference to begin!

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End of conference session, brought to you by Starbucker!

Yes, he actually did sing for us. Poor Elton John! Actually, it wasn’t bad, but it sure was funny. 🙂

Today’s topic is critiquing one of our blogs. They chose Dawud Miracle’s site, HealthyWebDesign. David Armano and Liz Strauss stepped up to help it out.

Dawud said he is trying to transition away from being stuck in the design of being a web designer because he does so much more now. He is going to change his branding. His goal moving forward is to utilize conversation with this clients to help everyone out.

David says he can see the web designer in Dawud coming out in this design and can be taken to the next level by aligning with his personal brand…make it warmer and more personable. (good advice for my blog, too)

Liz noted that there are no visuals above the fold and that his business statement takes up so much real estate that it pushes his content out of the picture. It feels like content that doesn’t change. It seems like part blog, part website.

David says he needs to transition to blog-likeconventions, such as the most recent post coming up to the top. People are getting used to seeing blogrolls and categories and usuallt assume that the first field they see is the search field.

Liz says that Seth Godin always asks where the monkey is supposed to go? If your blog sends people away from your site, then you need to rethink your design. David retorted that with the repeat visitor in mind. You need to meet the needs of both. Keep branding and the RSS feed above the fold. Read the book, “Don’t Make Me Think.”

Oh, crap, time to catch my plane.