F. Bickerton doesn’t mind being alone, and neither should you.

Finding an audience online can be an arduous task, but one of my favourite suggestions is to write like nobody is reading. I often talk with people who are either new to social media or own a budding business and the conversation invariably ends up at something along the lines of “why would I say something if nobody is listening?”. While I can totally understand the position, in my opinion it’s one of the biggest obstacles keeping people from attracting a quality audience online.

Sharing is caring

We will start off and use Twitter as an example because it seems particularly easy to abandon early on. One of the first big oversights that new Twitter users make is that many grossly underestimate the power of the retweet. While at times it may feel like the things you say are just a single snowflake in a blizzard, the retweet can snowball your tweet into a rolling ball of ice and greatness.

For example, Calgary recently held the Calgary Comic Expo. Kevin and I decided to take our boys downtown to watch the kickoff parade. The event was, as you might expect, full of the typical nerd accoutrements. People dressed as Darth Vader, superheroes, fantasy characters, and everything in between marched themselves through the centre of the city.

One special side-note about Calgary is how much better our Mayor is than yours. When the 2010 mayoral race kicked off, Naheed Nenshi was shaking very few hands and kissing very few babies in 3rd place. However, his mix of intelligence and ability to communicate as an engaging person and not a boring politician (as well as many other strong skills) helped take him over the top and win the mayoral race. One particular skill that endears him to the online community especially is that he often has no issue responding in an unfiltered and witty manner to people on Twitter. Pro tip:  if you lose your dog and alert him of it, there’s more than a decent chance he’ll mention it to his followers.

He’s an awesome guy, so on the day of the parade it wasn’t exactly shocking to see Mayor Nenshi hanging out the side of a replica ‘Back to the Future’ Delorean with a hover board like Marty McFly. I took a picture and decided to fire out a quick tweet to let my followers know that while mayors from other cities were trying to keep their jobs together amidst scandal and head-butting members of the press, ours was holding down the fort and refusing to stop kicking ass.

Is your mayor in a Delorian? Didn’t think so. #yyc #FOREVER. twitter.com/russfee/status…

— Russ Fee (@russfee) April 26, 2013

This is perhaps a good time to talk about the importance of spell-checking your tweets, but that’s another post altogether. What’s important is how many people I got my message to. I have a modest number of followers (469), but that’s really beside the point. At the time of this post it was retweeted 62 times, which I believe is a personal best so you should definitely congratulate me or something. Those 45 people who were nice enough to share my picture combined for a total of 29,196 followers (an average of 470 followers per person). In the spirit of fairness, we should note that the majority of people’s followers are often fake, so you can probably cut that number in half. That being said, I also didn’t count the number of people who retweeted me using methods other than the standard retweet, or count people who just flat out copied the photo and shared it without attributing it to me (I know, the world is FULL of monsters).

Prepare for the Creeping

I know what you’re thinking: “but Russ, my mayor is lame and I have nothing of particular value to say.” First off, you have a horrible attitude. You have plenty of interesting things to say, you just need to loosen the seatbelt on your life and live a little. Very few want to talk to a dark void of nothingness, but the sooner you get over that hump the sooner you can start succeeding.

So why talk to nobody? Much like the regrettable tattoo you received when you turned 18, Twitter is forever. One day you’re going to say something and gather some attention. Maybe it’ll be a witty retort on the local sports team or perhaps a hilarious jab at the weather. When people see it, they’re going to wonder if you are “follow material”. They’ll click your profile and check out the last few tweets you made to see if you’re going to be someone of value to their twitter stream. If they see 6 tweets spread out over 2 years and one of them consists of “just trying to figure this twitter thing out! #yolo”, you might want to prepare yourself for a bumpy road. If on the other hand they see some tweets that link to things you enjoy, they may find that you are smashing and somebody they’d like to hang out with (in a totally non-social digital sort of way).

But I Hate Twitter

These points are no different for Facebook or blogs. Blogs are a different sort of beast in that benefits can be even greater. They let you speak your mind a little more and give you an opportunity to flex your expertise to your users. Perhaps you will spend your first 3 months, 6 months, or year writing to absolutely nobody. Some of my favourite blogs were discovered when I was searching out a solution to a problem and happened upon something written years ago.

We recently began work with a local Wheel company, and in the process of moving over their old blog entries to the new site, I realized the goldmine of knowledge they had. The process took the better part of an afternoon to accomplish because I read most of the posts. By the time I moved every post over, not only did I realize these folks were true professionals in their industry, but it is also feeling we want all our users to have when they reach our sites.

This can extend beyond blogs into the realm of Facebook of course, but I usually recommend people don’t solely rely on Facebook. Using it as a satellite to your blog is a fantastic idea, but existing solely on Facebook is a recipe for keeping your information from getting into the hands of those who need it most. A good practice would be to make sure your message is getting out to everybody. Existing on just one platform will make everything a little bit harder.

Let’s Review

While writing to nobody may feel like a fools errand, it is actually an essential step to getting yourself into the game. Always remember, even with very few active followers, your content can still find its way in front of tons of people, and when those people check you out further, you’re going to want them to see a solid representation of what you’re all about.

The post Write Like Nobody is Reading (Especially if they Aren’t) appeared first on Build Studio Inc..

I’ve used Twitter to meet great designers in Calgary or used Dribbble to be introduced, to the great design work being done around in Calgarians.

Jay Dorn (@jaydorn), an interactive designer at Flipp Advertising Inc. created a fun site featuring designers in Calgary modifying our airport hashtag.

Here are some of my favourite shots from IHeartYYC.com.

Cam Hoff
http://dribbble.com/camhoff

Connor Tuner
http://dribbble.com/ctoverdrive

Ian Regier
http://dribbble.com/iregier

Stefan Vant
http://dribbble.com/vant

This is part of our Spread Love Month series of blog posts. Each day, for the month of February, we’re going to showcase something we love on the net. It’s our nerdy way of participating in the fun being had by our clients at espy.

The post I Heart YYC appeared first on Build Studio Inc..

At its core, Rdio is a monthly subscription service that costs $10/month and essentially gives you full access to a music library similar to what you’d find in  iTunes. On it’s own, that sounds acceptable, but what puts Rdio over the top is how it behaves across devices and how it behaves in the social realm.

While iTunes does have iTunes Match now that utilizes iCloud to keep music available at all times, we’ve found that Rdio simply provides a more stable, easy experience for the user. Coming across a song that grabs your attention is no longer something to make a mental note of to buy later, you merely tap a few buttons and you have the entire discography of the band loaded and ready to go on your phone. Travelling to an area with no cell service or don’t want to use your data? You can sync all the songs you want to your mobile device for offline listening.

The social aspect was the one that grabbed us the most. By finding others that share our music interests, we were able to easily share music amongst them. What’s more, as they listen to things on their own, it populates a “heavy rotation” section for you to dig through and find things that might be unexplored. Playlists you create can be shared and explored by your friends, and you can even enable collaborations to let others add music with you. Even going beyond friends, you can search the playlists of any Rdio user, so finding a playlist for your workout or dinner party is nothing more than a single search away.

While the selection doesn’t quite match up with that of iTunes, the convenience factor is too much to ignore. Subscriptions can be had for $5/month on computer, or $10/month to include mobile. If you’re somehow unsure of whether this is up your alley, give the free trial a shot. I still haven’t introduced a single person to Rdio that hasn’t become just as weird and crazy about it as I am.

This is part of our Spread Love Month series of blog posts. Each day, for the month of February, we’re going to showcase something we love on the net. It’s our nerdy way of participating in the fun being had by our clients at espy.

The post We Love Rdio appeared first on Build Studio Inc..

Drobo is an enclosure that you can shove hard drives into to create a singular, giant drive. These are nothing new, but what Drobo brings to the table is a level of simplicity. It creates what is known as “redundant data protection”, meaning that it designates a certain chunk of space to protection. Should something go horribly awry and one of the drives inside a Drobo dies, the data is safely moved around so the drive can be replaced without losing anything.

What I love about my Drobo is it not only removes the worry associated with potentially losing data, but it allows for the barriers of hard drive size to be removed. Should I reach a problem of capacity on one of the drives, I just need to go buy another one and swap it out. With hard drive prices always dropping and hard drive sizes always growing, it gets cheaper and cheaper to provide the Drobo more space. An important note about safe backup: this isn’t foolproof, but merely safer. The Drobo could fail, so be sure for your extra important stuff you have offsite backup solutions in place (for example, something like SmugMug for photos).

The only downside of the Drobo is that all this awesome comes at a price. Currently the range for these is about $600-$900 in the consumer line. These are serious solutions for people with high demands for space. If you find yourself with such a demand, the Drobo will rock your world.

This is part of our Spread Love Month series of blog posts. Each day, for the month of February, we’re going to showcase something we love on the net. It’s our nerdy way of participating in the fun being had by our clients at espy.

The post Drobo Wants to Solve Your Space Problems appeared first on Build Studio Inc..

For my cloud solution, I turn to SmugMug. At $40/year I have yet to encounter a better deal for people with massive digital libraries of photos and personal videos. Once I had kids my volume of photos and videos increased exponentially, right along with my paranoia of losing them. Videos of first steps or first words became more valuable than anything I’d captured prior. What I love about SmugMug is that it provides an affordable way to back up every photo and video I’ve ever taken, it makes it easy to upload and it makes it easy to share.

With very little effort I can make an entire photo gallery, style it, password protect it and send off a link to anybody who might be interested. If there’s a downside to SmugMug, it’s that there can be an overwhelming number options at times. The control over the galleries can be a little maniacal, but if your a photo nerd like I am it’ll be welcomed with open arms.

For people that want to get a little nuts, you can upgrade the membership cost and get into the world of creating an actual website built around your photography and even selling prints. Thankfully my photos aren’t nearly nice enough, so I don’t have the burden of such complexity.

SmugMug offers a free 14 day trial, so if you’re at all curious give them a shot. Feel free to poke around their features page to see all the services they offer.

This is part of our Spread Love Month series of blog posts. Each day, for the month of February, we’re going to showcase something we love on the net. It’s our nerdy way of participating in the fun being had by our clients at espy.

The post Some Love for SmugMug appeared first on Build Studio Inc..

Geekologie.com is a site that keeps me up-to-date on all the geeky things people are doing around the world. Whether it’s someone spending 1 year to build a 400,000 piece Harry Potter castle or a video featuring an adorable squeaking frog, you’ll get daily posts of the geeky, weird and awesome stuff going on all over the world.

This is part of our Spread Love Month series of blog posts. Each day, for the month of February, we’re going to showcase something we love on the net. It’s our nerdy way of participating in the fun being had by our clients at espy.

The post Geekologie.com appeared first on Build Studio Inc..

The unlimited possibilities of a huge box of Lego continues to keep me creatively excited. Having two young children has only accentuated my love for the greatest toy ever created. A visit to the Lego store makes me feel like a kid again. It takes all my willpower not to spend our grocery money on an X-Wing or a building from their Architecture series.

The talent and ingenuity of Lego Master Builders leaves me both inspired and jealous. You get to build stuff out of Lego all day. I love what we do at Build Studio but I’d leave it all behind for a trip to Denmark and a job at Lego HQ.

If you’re ever struggling with your creativity, a box of Lego might be the cure.

This is part of our Spread Love Month series of blog posts. Each day, for the month of February, we’re going to showcase something we love on the net. It’s our nerdy way of participating in the fun being had by our clients at espy.

The post For the Love of Lego appeared first on Build Studio Inc..

Even if bullying is something you’ve never experienced, it’s an issue we all deal with in some way or another. Please find 7 extra minutes to today and fit this into it.

This is part of our Spread Love Month series of blog posts. Each day, for the month of February, we’re going to showcase something we love on the net. It’s our nerdy way of participating in the fun being had by our clients at espy.

The post To This Day appeared first on Build Studio Inc..

We just can’t get enough You Had One Job.

Today’s post is a short one. We have a job to do and we’re going to get back to it.

The post You Had One Job appeared first on Build Studio Inc..

Everett decided to take on a fun personal project that involved creating a unique super-hero or super-villain every single day for a year. That may be a little overly ambitious for most of us to emulate, but don’t forget this man birthed Wall-E, so he’s on a bit of a different playing field that we are.

While I personally wouldn’t set a goal like that, it can be easily modified to fit your workflow. One critical aspect of the project is that he set a time limit of 1 hour for each character. This kept him from being swallowed by the project and eating into work or family time.

Getting stuck creatively is a terrible feeling and when you are the solution seems non-existant. I’ve tried staring into mirrors and telling myself that I suck for years now, which is an odd  practice considering my success rate is 0. Perhaps the next time you find you’re being too hard on yourself, take a moment and make a reasonable, fun project to work on. Oftentimes working through an issue is the only way to get over the hill.

You can read more about the project in this Wired article. Here are some of our favourites:

The Mountie

Baby Boomer

Psyche-Ops

Spydra

The Hairier

This is part of our Spread Love Month series of blog posts. Each day, for the month of February, we’re going to showcase something we love on the net. It’s our nerdy way of participating in the fun being had by our clients at espy.

The post The Pixar Artist Who Draws a New Superhero Every Day appeared first on Build Studio Inc..