tips for web startups AND mistakes of the PR's - article reviews

There are lots and lots of web startups, and many of them(maybe even most of them) are going down - carsonifield shares Some lessons learned thru many experiences....

10 Vital Lessons for Web Start-Ups

1. #1 Choose Your Payment Provider Carefully
2. #2 Know How You’re Going to Deal with Invoicing
3. #3 Be Super-Organised with Customer Support
4. #4 Provide a Demo
5. #5 Make it Easy for Customers to Send Feedback
6. #6 Just because a Market’s busy, Doesn’t Mean it’s Saturated
7. #7 Don’t Worry About the Dinosaurs
8. #8 Release Early and Often, but Plan Ahead
9. #9 Make Full use of Existing Tools
10. #10 Hire in the Experts
    

These above are just ideas - read more about them and the experience others had in this realm - online via 10 Vital Lessons for Web Start-Ups.

On the other hand, as we all experience some of these, below is a list of common issues experienced by journalists when dealing with PR people. Most of these are quite famous -

15 savage mistakes commonly made by PR folks

• BCC fail
• Totally irrelevant content
• No understanding about audience
• Impersonal emails
• PDFs / attachments
• Weird formatting
• “Feel free”
• “Let me know if you post something!”
• Lack of a decent response channel
• Poor service
• Big Brother-style lurking
• ‘Exclusive!’
• ‘Embargoed’
  
• PRspeak overkill
• CAPS LOCK SUBJECT LINES!

this article is quite interesting, and I guess that the guys at econsultancy are just like us - sometimes not so happy about the way people at some PR companies deal with us! Continue to read this article online - 15 savage mistakes commonly made by PR folks.

freelance designer with small budget? some tips - article reviews

This article is for me - I'm that kind of a Freelance Designer On A Shoestring Budget - All these tools and services are either free or pretty cheap considering what can be done with them and can be great replacements to the more expensive ones we’re used to!

20 Tools For The Freelance Designer On A Shoestring Budget

1. Image Editors: PixelMator; Gimp; SplashUp
2. Feedback And Usability Testing: Concept Feedback; Five Second Test; Feedback Army
3. Color Tools: Colour Lovers; Adobe Kuler;
4. Billing, Invoicing And Time-Tracking: Freshbooks Invoicing; Invoice Machine; Billings 3
5. Cross-Browser Compatibility: Litmus App; BrowserShots; Parallels;
6. Local Testing: Mamp;
7. Coding & Programming: Text Wrangler; NotePad+; Text Mate;
8. Images and Photos: Flickr; DeviantArt;
   

Well, to really understand what these cryptic names are above, you have to read the full article - 20 Tools For The Freelance Designer On A Shoestring Budget - which will help you to have an idea about the solutions out there for people that wanna do somethings nice yet with not so much money!

Don't kill a community online AND collaboration tools

Instead of "do's and don't's", the people at socialmediatoday thought of How to Kill A Community in 10 Easy Steps - by reading this, you'll realize some principles about the online communities - how to keep your community alive and thriving OR the top 10 ways to (inadvertently) to kill an online community.

How to Kill A Community in 10 Easy Steps

• 1) Launch your community without a beta group.
• 2) Throw feature-spaghetti at the wall and hope something sticks
• 3) Don't "feed" your community once it is open.
• 4) Don't use off-line outreach and engagement techniques.
• 5) Assume size is THE critical differentiator.
• 6) Try to monetize the community at every opportunity.
• 7) Hire any staff who are on-the-bench to moderate the community.
• 8) Don't have a newsletter or steady, predictable communication to members.
• 9) Don't evolve the community based on member feedback and suggestions.
• 10) Measure meaningless metrics that make you look good.
  

Maybe these principles sound cryptical.... - to find out more - to actually find out what the author meant by it - visit the How to Kill A Community in 10 Easy Steps article online.

On the other hand, there are many collaboration tools online, so here are some highlights - some great free tools for connecting and sharing with others(via missiontolearn).

15 Free Online Collaboration Tools and Apps

• Keep and Share
• Wridea
• Writeboard
• Twiddla
• Spicebird
• Stixy
• ReviewBasics
• EditGrid
• ooVoo
• Palbee
• GroupTweet
• Edmodo
• SimplyBox
• Mikogo
• Vyew
  

All these online tools are introduced in this nice article about 15 Free Online Collaboration Tools and Apps - read it online.