The “Headache-Free” Yearbook – Step Six

I’m a huge fan of DropBox. I love how it doesn’t matter if you’re on a Mac, PC or mobile device. I love how it’s in the cloud and accessible from anywhere with just a click. And I love its capacity for sharing.

But I made the mistake of relying on it too much for a yearbook I created last year. And well over a dozen pages had to be manually resent due to errors in the sharing process. Due to circumstances outside of my control, I was at publishing deadline – and the tool I had selected for the transfer process to the publisher wasn’t cutting it. NOT the best situation to find yourself in! Which is why Step Six in creating a “Headache-Free Yearbook” is –

Don’t rely on the tools. Manage your risks wisely!

No, don’t rely on the tools. Not exclusively, and not when there are other options. And I’m NOT just talking about DropBox here! You should plan ahead for any tool you use, from emailing tools to scheduling tools, to cameras and access to computers, software, online programs, and the Internet. Decide what you’re going to do if, or when, each breaks down or doesn’t perform as expected. Be wise!

In hindsight, my risk management was nowhere near where it should have been. I had no mitigation strategies in place, and so I just had to wear the consequences when things didn’t work as I had expected them to.

That’s one of the reasons I strongly recommend the timeline approach that I outlined in Step Four. Managing your risks wisely is going to help so much in the long run, even though it might be a bit of a pain to think about, in the beginning. Trust me – it’s worth it!

Now, I leave myself time to snail mail a USB – just in case the digital version gets corrupted again. Short of a mail strike, my publishing deadlines are still met. And I’m not left feeling embarrassed.

What experiences have you had with tools that broke when you least needed them too? What advice can you share from what you learned?

CC Image Courtesy zzpza at http://www.flickr.com/photos/zzpza/3269784239/

The “Headache-Free” Yearbook – Step Five

If you’ve been following this series on the “Headache-Free” Yearbook, hopefully by now you’re going along swimmingly. Those stories and images are rolling in, the pages are being created, the deadline’s still some way off, but you’re not particularly stressed about it because you’re “dating” your yearbook regularly, modifying plans where needed, and communicating these new arrangements to team. Brilliant work!

This step should be pretty easy for you then. In fact, it’s really just a reminder of something that I’m sure you already know:

Don’t rely on your staff, when the buck stops with you.

If you’re the one in charge, be there. Be in charge. Be seen to be in charge. You’ve probably been in a team before where the leadership shown was less-than-desirable. Think about that person – and don’t emulate their mistakes!

You know, from your extensive planning, that creating this yearbook is a huge job. And that this job will be made a whole lot easier if it’s shared amongst a team of people. These are my three recommendations for sharing the load:

1. Get their consent. You know yourself that you don’t like being coerced – and neither does anyone else. So ask politely for help – and convince them, if need be, of the value of their contribution. You’ll get a better result every time.

2. Share your vision, and celebrate the successes. Ensure that your ideas are clearly communicated at each stage of the process. And if the people helping you to create this yearbook only ever see you when you’re allocating them work, then they’ll not be particularly motivated. Be proactive in showing them the value of their contribution, and the chances are higher that they’ll be part of the process again next year.

3. Remember that you’re the one responsible. You need to be the person who is actively checking that each member of your team is meeting the deadlines on that timeline you created in Step Three. Don’t go overboard with checking their progress – but DO make sure that you’re doing it! Otherwise you’ll probably end up the one with the embarrassed look on your face.

Working with others can be hard. If your interactions with your team members are more positive than they are negative, then you’re probably on the right track to retaining your assistance for future yearbooks.

These are the recommendations I follow when working with others. I’d love to hear yours!

CC Image Courtesy Philip McMaster at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonpreneur/3880883712/

The “Headache-free” Yearbook – Step Four

You started your Yearbook process this year with extensive planning and effective communicating, writing articles to deadlines, and taking brilliant images. That’s it, right? That’s all that’s required? If only! As Robert Burns noted in 1786, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley [often go awry]”.The most carefully prepared plans may go wrong. We none of us can predict the future. And often life throws us a curve ball, which means that we change our plans accordingly. Hence Step Four is:

Check, modify and recheck as you go.

Are you ready? Because here are my four tips for keeping on top of it all:

1. Create a timeline

A timeline is a document that details exactly what will be done, and by when. It will include events that need to be covered, and when you expect the story to be written, edited, etc. It will also include when images will be taken, edited, etc. And, (most importantly, I find!) it will detail when each page is to be formatted and completed. Try to balance out your timeline so that the work is spread out evenly, if it’s possible. For times where this is not possible, schedule staff as needed to cover the work.

2. Set timeline ‘dates’

You and your Yearbook are probably pretty close. If you’re the one organizing it all, you’ve probably spent many, many hours with it since its inception. Well, now you need to keep that relationship going with regular dates. And yes, by ‘dates’, I’m meaning ‘appointments’, not ‘days’, and not the fruit of a date palm.

How regularly you ‘date’ your Yearbook will depend on how large it will be, and how close to your deadline you are. A larger yearbook will need to be seen more regularly, and if your deadline is in just a few short weeks, you’d be foolish to not meet on an almost-daily basis.

Treat each ‘date’ like a mechanic treats a car. Check everything is in its right place, and is running exactly as it should be. Then smile, give yourself a pat on the back as you recognize the progress that’s been made, and ensure you’re able to make it to the next date.

3. Modify AS SOON AS you recognize the need

Something’s changed, and your previous plan can no longer apply. Act immediately! Create a new solution to the problem that’s arisen. Don’t just put it off – it’ll still be there when your deadline is looming. And unfortunately, the more time-constraints you have, the harder it will be to ‘fix’ the problem to the same high quality that you’ve set yourself for the rest of the yearbook. So modify those plans, and be prepared to modify them again if you need to.

4. Communicate your new plans

It’s all well and good that you now know where you’re heading, now that you’ve modified your plans to account for that curve ball. But if you’re fortunate, you’ll have a team of others around you, and they’d probably appreciate being on the same page as you. So you’ll need to effectively communicate those plans – especially if you’re relying on them to get you what it is you need.

A word of warning here – your team don’t need to be inundated with emails, texts, phone calls or messages about every little change that’s made. Just the ones that pertain to them will suffice. And you might want to schedule a regular meeting time with your team too – just so that you can plan as a team, get and give regular feedback, and so on. Again – don’t make these meetings so regular that they become meaningless. The last thing you want is a low morale amongst your team. You may need them again next year!

So, my recommendation is, that if you want your Yearbook to be as headache-free as possible, you MUST keep on top of your timeline. Refer regularly to it – set yourself deadlines for ‘timeline checking’ and modify and communicate your plans as soon as they occur. After all, who wants to be in situation where, a week or so out from publishing deadline, you suddenly discover that a large number of your pages aren’t completed due to changed events, and that these could have been fixed weeks – or even months! – earlier!

Well, these were my four hints for dealing with those inevitable curve balls. I’d love to hear yours!

CC Image courtesy ZacVTA at http://www.flickr.com/photos/isaachsieh/2522262234/

The “Headache-Free” Yearbook – Step One

Well, the year’s begun, and you’ve been delegated the task of coordinating the Yearbook. (Or perhaps you volunteered, because you’ve never done this before, and you’d like the experience?! Or maybe you do one each year, and would like to offer some advice to me and my readers?) So. What do you do first? Where do you start?

Step One – Plan. A lot. And communicate this effectively.

For me, I start with planning. There are five different questions that need answers, and it’s these that will inform the parameters of my completed product. Get the answers to these five questions, and you’ll be well on your way to getting the process right.

 

Question 1. What is the purpose of this Yearbook?

This may seem a silly question, but it’s really not. Unless you know what the Yearbook is going to be used for, you’re going to be working in the dark regarding what content to include, and how to word / angle that content. So, have a clear direction regarding what the intention is behind the Yearbook. What is its point? For some businesses, their Yearbook might be just a marketing tool. You want to use it to promote the best possible aspects of your business to attract new customers. For other businesses, the purpose of a yearbook might be to reflect on the year. In such cases, the contents of this Yearbook will include the highlights of the year, displayed in such a way as to confirm the positive opinions of your current clients. It may also be used to attract potential customers. So find out why you’re creating it – it will make things easier when it comes to content decisions!

 

Question 2. What is your budget?

This is a very important question to determine, as your budget will determine its size and its overall look. At St Paul’s, we moved from a 30 page black-and-white Yearbook to a 70 page full-colour Yearbook in the space of two years. Obviously, the budget for the Yearbook increased, in line with clarifying the Yearbook’s purpose.

 

Question 3. What do you want your content to include?

In this one, you need to plan out approximate pages for your important items. In a school you may want to have specific pages dedicated to sports or the arts. Obviously you’ll also want pages that are specifically for your class photos or your formal photos of musical  / cultural / sporting groups. I start with a Table of Contents, and ensure that I’ve covered all aspects of the business. I then get this checked with the boss, as there’s no point covering items that don’t need it – and equally as time-consuming is forgetting something that needs to be included, and only remembering at the last minute!

 

Question 4. Who is responsible?

By that, I don’t mean you  - the Yearbook coordinator – but I mean the people who will be putting the individual pages together. Unless that person is you, and you’re going to be creating each and every page, you have a team of people who you’ll be relying on to get the work done. If this is the case, then you need to communicate, communicate, communicate!

Something that may work, if you had the time, is to organise a meeting with these people, “get them on board” so to speak, in that as a group, THEY make decisions regarding timelines and content. That will always work better than just telling your team of people what they have to do and in what specific time frame.

 

Question 5. What are your own deadlines?

Schedule your own deadlines. You need to be responsible for your team. You are the person with whom the buck stops, so it is up to you to create interim deadlines for yourself. At each deadline you need to ensure that you’re touching base with each team member, collecting their work, and generally monitoring that they will meet their deadlines. This point is probably the most crucial, if you want to avoid the end of year Yearbook headache.

 

These are the questions I ask myself when planning. I’d love to hear yours!

CC Image Courtesy premasagar at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dharmasphere/1351111010/

Avoiding the annual “Yearbook headache”

Does your business produce a Yearbook each year? Ever have problems with creating it? If you answered ‘Yes’ to these two questions, then you’re not alone. Creating a Yearbook can be a huge hassle, and when not supported by your staff, it can also be a huge sap to everybody’s morale. So – how can you avoid that this year?

Below is a six step plan I follow; experience has taught me to stick with it if I want a headache-free Yearbook. And as each step is far too large to explain in this one post, this marks the beginning of a series on ‘The Headache-free Yearbook”. My six steps are:

1. Plan. A lot. And communicate this effectively.
2. Start writing, Day 1 of Week 1.
3. Get those photos happening!
4. Check, modify and recheck as you go.
5. Remember, the buck stops with you.
6. Don’t rely on the tools!

A quality Yearbook takes time to create. Teamwork helps. So does helpful advice, and a plan to follow. I love producing quality work, and I also enjoy challenging myself to improve each and every time. Each post in this series details my ‘Yearbook process’, but I’d love to also hear your thoughts, comments, and suggestions on how I can do this better!

CC Image courtesy jugbo at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jugbo/416097099/

A little lonely…

It’s been a little chilly here on the Bloxham Marketing blog. A little forlorn. Due in a major part to a little oversight on my part. Unfortunately, I’d been forgetting to change the post settings from ‘Private’ to ‘Public’ prior to scheduling them!

Source: oneoffmag.blogspot.com via JoJo on Pinterest

So, those of you who are subscribed readers, may have discovered quite a few emails in your inbox over the past day or so, mentioning my sudden number of posts. Sorry!

I guess that’ll teach me to check, check, and check again!!!

Planning for successful blog writing – Step two of two

In Step One, I wrote about the importance of planning ahead. Not just working out ‘what you want to say’ but also ‘when you want to say it’. Using tools to help you schedule your life – and when it comes to writing blog posts, using scheduling tools to ensure that posts (previously written ones, and that’s where the ‘being ahead’ but comes it!) are published on time.

Step Two covers the ‘what you want to say’ section of the plan. The actual writing process. And for this, I find it helpful to think about three main tasks.

The writing process

A good blog post isn’t just about the words. If your readers just wanted words, they’d read a book (as in, an off-line one, with no links to follow). Look at the posts that you yourself enjoy reading, and you’ll see that they’re more interactive than just text. And why shouldn’t they be? Just look at the functionality of the medium that can be exploited!

1. Words

Firstly, before we look at bells and whistles, let’s get the basics right. And by basics, I mean the words. Make sure your writing makes sense. Are you using accurate sentences? Are they varied in style? Do you have spelling errors? Are your posts too long or too short? Is your information too superficial, or have you tried including too much? Finally, how have you formatted it? One big paragraph which is hard to read? Too many little paragraphs? Have you made use of headlines or bulletpoints well? Or is it, like this paragraph, far too full of questions? (Yes, this was intentionally an example of a bad paragraph, by the way!)

2. An image

Then, once your words are the way you want them to be, start thinking about an image. Again, thanks to @katiedatwork for explaining the ‘image credit’ process, and pointing me in the direction of Creative Commons! For those of you who aren’t sure what I’m referring to, it’s basically all to do with copyright. If you simply pull up an image in a google search, and copy and paste it somewhere you want it, you’re breaking copyright. Instead you should, go to search.creativecommons.org and run a search for an image that you can use. Here, you’ll find that you have access to the same range of images (through flickr, google images, etc) but you can see what licenses the photo owners have attached to their images. Generally, most will just want attribution. As in, you state who took the photo, and link back to it. Pretty simple. You don’t break copyright, and the photographer gets the credit that he / she is due. Everyone wins! Oh, and by the way, this post’s CC Image is courtesy jjpacres at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jjpacres/3293117576/sizes/m/in/photostream/

3. Links

And finally, the last main task to a blog post is the links you embed. DON’T go linking every single concept! Nor should you only link to Wikipedia! But think about your audience (who you should be thinking of, anyway!) and work out what links you will need to make your writing more understandable. Think of it as another way of giving the credit where the credit is due, in a way. If you’re writing about a cool idea you’ve discovered, provide the link back to that original source where you discovered it, and that way your readers can go check it out for themselves. Again, pretty simple! And once they’re all in, PLEASE go and check that they all work. Imagine how frustrating it would be for your reader, who invests time reading your post and tries clicking on a link, only to find that it doesn’t work. Plus, it doesn’t reflect too well on you…

Now, these three tasks are obviously not all you could include in your blog posts. But they are the basics. Start here, and then get adventurous once these are second-nature. Well, that’s my recommendation, anyway. But I’d love to hear your thoughts. What is it YOU do with your blogs? What hints or tips would you give with regard to successful blog writing?