In a busy small business, it’s difficult to find time to spend on your own stuff. At Lift, we really enjoy working on internal creative projects, but it’s not always easy to find the time.Read the rest of the story and take the poll.

Rounding out a month full of IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) activity, I was privileged to speak to Edmonton’s local IABC chapter today as part of their final professional development session of the year.

We spent a few days in Toronto last week at the IABC World Conference talking with communications professionals from around the world about their websites. Over the course of the few days we were in Toronto, we had many interesting conversations about all the challenges that communicators face in their organizations.

Taken from Strunk and White’s book, the Elements of Style. The book delivers a clear outline to make your communication clear, concise, and direct and here are a few things to consider when creating your message:

• Use active tense. An active tense creates a message that is compelling. The person receiving your message feels it is relevant to them at that moment.
• Be direct. Get to the point. Often ...

I was having coffee the other day with a friend who has a lot of I.T. experience. He’s seen it all. We were discussing the fact that a university student is redesigning his organization’s website and he’s a bit skeptical that it’s going to go well.

The student may have a lot of talent and may even have some experience but he’s not a ...

I used to teach a few classes on various aspects of web development at the University of Alberta and one of the things I would say to boost the students’ confidence was, “every mistake you make, I’ve made a dozen times.” And it’s mostly true. The number might be exaggerated in some cases but every typo, every logic flaw, every design decision that I make is based on ...

If you provide a service for clients, do you have a way to deal with clients that give you headaches or frustrate you? You should.

I was given a piece of business advice from a friend with quite a bit of experience in the area. He said, “never say no to work, just say how much.” I find so much value in such a short statement. The meaning here is ...

Often when I meet with clients to discuss a technology project, either ongoing or new work, we have to discuss a problem (or rather the opportunity to do better) and then we try to come up with an answer or solutions. We brain-storm, discuss, collaborate and sometimes argue to get to something we can both imagine would be the solution.

While this process works well, it really depends on a ...

First, focus on your customers or your website’s visitors, rather than the technology.

It’s important to be found by search engines—no question, but it’s more important that your customers or potential customer find what they’re looking for first and foremost. Make sure the content of your website is accurate, up to date and easy to understand. Make sure the words and pictures that they are ...

“creativity shouldn’t be compart- mentalized with certain types of people or fields of work”

Creativity shouldn’t be compartmentalized with certain types of people or fields of work. It’s needed in every job, at every level, for every function and it can be the key to success in today’s rapidly changing world…perhaps now more than ever. Process improvement, problem solving, recruiting, retaining and motivating employees, decision ...