If you’re running projects at a marketing agency, you probably swear by doing daily check-ins with the practitioners (designers, developers, and strategists) on your team.

If you aren’t doing it already, here’s why and how I do daily check-ins as a project manager at hesketh.com. As a seven-person (and growing!) web design agency, we use FogBugz as our task-tracking system, but you can customize this to whatever project management system you use.

Why to Do Brief Daily Check-ins with Your Team

I find practitioners prefer to be doing their work (designing, programming, or strategizing) instead of meeting about or talking about their work — yet if they aren’t synchronized with the team, they aren’t helping the agency meet our clients’ goals.

Brief daily check-ins are a powerful tool to keep everyone moving ahead in the right direction, while juggling the inherent “doing” vs. “reporting” tension.

Questions to Ask Your Design, Development, and Strategy Team

Via email, I ask everyone five questions (with answers due by 10:45am):

1. What didn’t you complete yesterday?
2. For any tasks you didn’t complete, have you added notes to the task in FogBugz?
3. For any tasks you didn’t complete, have you updated elapsed time, so the Time Remaining is accurate in FogBugz?
4. What do you expect to complete by COB today?
5. What’s iffy/tricky on today’s to-do list?

If you’re running a larger team (15+ people), you may need to adjust how you collect answers. Even with four (soon to be seven — we’re hiring!) practitioners, asking the 2nd and 3rd questions makes my job easier, since people are increasingly keeping their tasks up to date in the web-based project management system.

If someone’s at risk of getting stuck (#5), I can help them get the obstacles out of the way. And if someone’s plan doesn’t match what I need them to do, I’ll send an update with the new priorities. That way, we’re never more than a couple hours off track.

Changes I’ve Made as PM

I used to check in with each person via instant message, but I realized the IM approach was too much of an interruption — people didn’t have time to organize their thoughts. It wasn’t giving me answers in an easy-to-compare format, and IMs aren’t thorough, either — instant messaging is good for simple-answer questions, but my asking “Where do things stand?” was too open-ended.

After forgetting to send the check-in email one morning, I’ve started sending the email each night, so people have it in their inbox in the morning and so I don’t have to worry about it. Instead, I just check everyone’s task list in FogBugz, and then see if their emailed replies match my expectations.

How’s It Working?

So far, this has been working pretty well. I’ve considered sending customized emails to each consultant (instead of the same message to everyone) but I find it’s easier to just follow up with each person as-needed.

Since most of the team isn’t in the office when I get there before 9:00am, I don’t have to wait for people to come in — the asynchronous approach means the answers come to me. I know what’s going on, and people can respond at their own pace — they don’t have to drop everything because I’m waiting for an IM’d response.

Future Changes — Including Your Input

I want to be sure I’m asking enough, but I also don’t want to overwhelm people with questions — for instance, I’ll combine the second and third questions as FogBugz-update compliance goes up.

What questions should I add or drop from my check-in list? Please share below!

After the latest Raleigh New Media Leaders networking event at the Hive, we recently held the door-prize lunch at the Busy Bee Cafe in Raleigh. Three lucky winners got to spend 90 minutes with three smart C-level marketing leaders — Gregory Ng, Heather Hesketh, and Jim Tobin.

Thanks again to Woody Lockwood for graciously donating event space at the Hive and donating “Lunch with the Leaders” at the Busy Bee.

Wondering what we discussed over crispy tater tots — or how to snag your own seat at the table next time? Read on!

Who Was There?

The all-volunteer organizing committee created “Lunch with the Leaders” as a unique door prize for the first Media Leaders event in January 2010. After all, what’s more valuable than getting 90 minutes of one-on-one time with busy marketing execs like Greg, Heather, and Jim?

Past leaders for Media Leaders events in Raleigh have included Brooks Bell, Karen Albritton, Michael Hubbard, and Patty Brigulio, among others.

Featured Media Leaders for January 2012:

• Gregory Ng (Chief Experience Officer, Brooks Bell)
• Heather Hesketh (CEO, hesketh.com)
• Jim Tobin (President, Ignite Social Media)

Prize-Winners at “Lunch with the Leaders” for January 2012:

• Antoinette Russell (PR Director, Wrightway International)
• Mark Fulton (Founder & Editor, DotSauce Magazine)
• Regina Twine (Former Director of Customer Engagement & Social Media, Live Work Play)

And Rachel Healy and I were there from the organizing committee to document everything.

Want to follow everyone on Twitter? Here you go: @AntoinetteR, @DotSauce, @GregoryNg, @Hesketh, @JTobin, @KarlSakas, @Rachealy, and @ReginaTwine.

Three Key Themes from “Lunch with the Leaders” at the Busy Bee

We started talking about marketing conferences — Heather is a member of the South by Southwest (SxSW) advisory board, and Regina shared her experiences attending SxSW last year.

1) How to Get the Most Out of Conferences

What can you do to get the most of conferences? Remember this:

• Everyone agreed: Never turn down an invitation — be open! You never know what’ll come out of a meeting or new connection.
• Greg noted that his connections at things like SxSW Interactive were non-traditional in ROI, but always valuable nonetheless.
• Heather: Any knowledge you gain is not from the conference — it’s in the bar. It’s about those informal connections.
• Regina: It’s about going and being open, not about having an agenda.
• Greg: If you’re looking for a data-specific conference, go to eMetrics in New York and San Francisco.

As we were discussing conferences’ mobile apps, Greg shared Phil Buckley‘s comment about boosting QR code adoption — If only they changed smartphone cameras to automatically read QR codes.

Greg recently tested a new type of QR code, to see what encouraged people to download his Freezer Burns app (among his 200,000 subscribers). People didn’t want bonus footage — but they definitely wanted free giveaways.

2) Five Years from Now — Predictions for 2017

I asked what people saw happening in the industry five years from now. A big theme was the tension between working virtually and the continuing need for valuable face-to-face time:

• Heather: Mobile workforce. You can work anywhere.
• Jim: Look at the new Microsoft Office 365 as a preview of how we’ll work in the future. Seamless, incredible. Built-in conversation, right there in the program, and it just works.
• San Jose has co-working space for people in San Francisco — 100 people in the same space, but working for different companies.
• Regina: Co-working will grow, because management will be less about keeping tabs and more about outcomes.
• Greg shared that Brooks Bell has a policy — see coworkers face-to-face every 48 hours.
• Heather: To test integrating a remote employee, we tried having a computer with video, live-streaming to a desk in the office (and occasionally tempted the remote employee with donuts in the office). The goal was to eliminate that hurdle, where people don’t want to disturb an employee working remotely. But remember, they’re at work – of course you can “disturb” them.
• As an employee at hesketh.com, I mentioned that holding daily huddles (about 15 minutes long) helps keep people moving in the same direction on the same team.
• Greg shared a theme from TIMA‘s recent futurist event: Privacy will be very different in five years. Big Brother won’t feel so scary any more — in part, because advertisers will be providing relevant messaging.
• Jim: There’s already this idea of “frictionless sharing.” Bad wording, but a good idea.
• Mark: We’ll see growth in domains. New extensions, and people investing in new extensions.
• At least one lunch attendee has pre-emptively bought domain names in their kids’ (or future kids’) names.

It seems clear that we still need to find a solution for still needing face-to-face interaction in an increasingly virtual work world.

To illustrate a potential solution, Greg shared a challenge common to the homeschooling movement — kids learn quickly, but they don’t develop the same social connections as in high school, and they struggle their first year in college. One solution includes forming learning co-ops, where homeschooled kids meet up to go on field trips, play sports, and otherwise spend “IRL” time face-to-face with other students.

3) Content Marketing: Ups and Downs

As we talked about privacy, the conversation took a turn toward content marketing — the good, the bad, and the ugly:

• Jim: Ignite Social Media’s growth has been through blogging, not advertising. For instance, they’ll release a video on their social media strategy — they’re producing them to appeal to the ideal “I’ve got money; I need some help” crowd, not the “I want to do it myself” category. Ignite also created valuable free social media tools, which led to perhaps 7.5 million of their 8.0 million inbound links.
• Heather: Content farms and bad SEO are “ruining my internet”; it’s like people are “peeing in the pool.” The focus on Optimization over Quality isn’t good.
• Greg: Brooks Bell will publish super-technical articles. They pre-qualify people, since the articles won’t appeal to less-technical people who aren’t BBI’s target market.

How To Get a Seat at the Next “Lunch with the Leaders”

Thanks again to Greg, Heather, and Jim for donating their time! And thanks to the Raleigh New Media Leaders organizing committee — Brian McDonald, Meg Crawford, Karl Sakas, Phil Buckley, and Rachel Healy — for making the latest events possible.

Want your own chance to win “Lunch with the Leaders”? You’ll need to come to the next Raleigh New Media Leaders networking event — keep an eye on our New Media Leaders website for dates and times.

What’s been your favorite networking connection or lesson-learned from New Media Leaders in Raleigh?

Last week, I shared my favorite blog posts I wrote in 2011. But what about favorites that didn’t get much attention earlier this year? Here are five articles you might have missed the first time:

1. The business of design and marketing: Valuable advice from 5 agency owners at AIGA Raleigh
2. Buying jewelry instead of gambling? Unexpected marketing substitutes
3. Old-school insults to inspire your copywriting
4. Cause marketing: McKinney’s tips for TIMA on creating your own winning nonprofit campaign
5. Usability testing: 5 tips from Abe Crystal for digital marketing agencies and their clients

What do you want to see more of in 2012?

Nice -- Wells Fargo put up a new sign in Raleigh to prepare for paying me $1 million a month.

In time for Christmas, Wells Fargo sent me a unilateral notice that they’re requiring binding arbitration starting February 15.

As you know, mandatory binding arbitration means you can’t sue them. I’ve never sued anyone but hey, fair’s fair!

Consumer Reports and others have long criticized such provisions as unfair to consumers, primarily because they’re one-sided — if you want to use or keep using the company’s service, you have no choice but to agree to the terms.

But now two can play that game!

Wells Fargo, starting January 1, 2012, you’re going to pay me $1 million every month. You’ll deposit it into my checking account by 12:01 AM on the first of each month — don’t worry, you already know the account number.

I am thrilled to report that this new policy is directly aligned with your corporate vision statement: “We want to satisfy all our customers’ financial needs and help them succeed financially.” I mean, yeah, at $12 million a year, you sure will be!

This’ll continue in perpetuity, by the way, with annual increases for inflation based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Also, you agree to give me a ride to and from work every day via one of your reproduction Wells Fargo stagecoaches. I’ll ride shotgun!

If you fail to comply with these new policies, I get to garnish Chairman & CEO John G. Stumpf‘s paycheck. Sorry, John! But I know you’d agree with this, because you’re a man of your unilateral word! After all, you wrote, “Integrity is not a commodity. It’s the most rare and precious of personal attributes. It is the core of a person’s — and a company’s — reputation.” Yup!

If you fail to decline this change in terms via certified mail by December 31, 2011, I assume you’ve accepted my amended consumer agreement. Thanks — I’m looking forward to that extra million dollars a month.

Anyone want to join me? Post your demands in the comments below!

Image credit: Karl Sakas

Last week, I shared my 10 most-read articles in 2011. But it’s not all a popularity contest. Setting aside pageviews, here’s a roundup of my eight favorite blog posts I wrote this year:

1. How to get more interviews: 14 resume tips from a marketing agency hiring manager
2. Nice rejection letters: A job-search unicorn?
3. What if Hunter S. Thompson applied to work for Don Draper of Mad Men?
4. Hiring an SEO agency for your business? Ask these 8 questions before signing a contract.
5. Why treating marketing agency clients like great tenants will improve your client service
6. Give your clients the ‘experience of a lifetime,’ and other marketing tips from the Rocky Mountaineer tourist train in Canada
7. Bait and switch at Crown Honda at Southpoint
8. What not to say when you apply for a job at an interactive marketing agency

What do you want to see more of in 2012?

It’s roundup time! These were my 10 most-visited blog posts during 2011:

1. 8 marketing lessons from Norman Rockwell‘s art and advertising
2. Roller derby marketing tips from marketer Lillian Axe of the Carolina Rollergirls
3. Get a job in marketing: 12 new tips
4. Why you need to keep up with Justin Bieber, and other important marketing lessons from creative director Gregory Ng
5. How to get more interviews: 14 resume tips from a marketing agency hiring manager
6. Marketing when your customers hate each other, and more CMO Panel lessons at TriAMA
7. PR crisis: What do you do after you fire the guy whose wife got cancer?
8. New job: Joining hesketh.com in Raleigh
9. Viral video interview: Sonja Jacob shares how her popular Grasshopper campaign required more than just clever creative
10. 7 marketing tips from mixing martinis at 79 miles an hour

What do you want to see more of here in 2012?

If you do online marketing, you should know Facebook just agreed to a 20-year Federal Trade Commission privacy settlement. The FTC found that Facebook made marketing promises the social network didn’t keep.

Working at a marketing agency that specializes in website usability, my favorite tidbit was in Mark Zuckerberg’s rebuttal blog post on November 29, 2011:

In the last 18 months alone, we’ve announced more than 20 new tools and resources designed to give you more control over your Facebook experience.

The Facebook CEO goes on to list some of the changes, like adding inline privacy controls to existing posts. Great, but if Facebook’s averages one new privacy-protection tool each month… how are users supposed to keep up the latest changes? That’s not good user experience.

I’m sure more than a few of Facebook’s 800 million users miss things along the way. Even if each new feature had a 90% adoption rate, only 12% of Facebook users would be using all 20 of those features. I’m sure the adoption rates are much lower — I can’t be the only person who hasn’t re-tagged all my friends to the Lists feature.

It’s disingenuous marketing for Facebook to tout that they’ve got a bunch of privacy features, when most people won’t actually use them. If I were to paraphrase Top Gun, “Mark Zuckerberg’s ego is writing checks his servers can’t cash.”

Marketers beware. I’m fascinated to see the FTC is requiring Facebook to get third-party audits for the next 20 years. Imagine that — Facebook will be guaranteeing its privacy practices to the government until 2031. Twenty years!

What do you think?

Results of user testing, c. 1874

Before they started mass production, two early typewriter developers asked the era’s leading court reporter to test their new business machine. In 1869, James Clephane’s rigorous tests destroyed one expensive prototype after another.

Adding insult to injury, the stenographer attacked each iteration with his “caustic” feedback about their continued shortcomings — and the inventor took it personally:

Said [Christopher Sholes] to [business partner James] Densmore: “I am through with Clephane!”

Densmore’s comment was: “This candid fault-finding is just what we need. We had better have it now than after we begin manufacturing. Where Clephane points out a weak lever or rod, let us make it strong. Where a spacer or an inker works stiffly, let us make it work smoothly. Then, depend upon Clephane for all the praise we deserve.”

We still do that 140+ years later, except that web developers and pharmaceutical researchers now call it “fast-failure” — and user testing services from hesketh.com rarely involve typewriters.

What do you do to determine fast-failure on your projects?

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons public domain via Wikipedia

I’m starting a new job on November 14, running interactive marketing projects at hesketh.com/inc. in Raleigh, NC. My last day at Coalmarch will be November 11.

Hesketh.com is one of the country’s oldest web design firms, founded in 1995. The user experience agency focuses on non-profits and social entrepreneurs, including clients like the Girl Scouts and Duke University. Happily, my new desk overlooks the CSX railyard next to the company’s office in the restored Pilot Mill complex.

Screenshot of VisionAirlines.com (click for full-size)

When I speak with new clients at my web design and marketing agency, I’ll often provide feedback on how to improve their website. But most sites aren’t as eye-popping as VisionAirlines.com.

Background on Vision Airlines

Starting in November 2011, you can fly directly from Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) to Freeport, Bahamas for under $200, including taxes. But you’ll have to start by using the eye-popping, poorly-designed VisionAirlines.com website.

Vision Airlines is a long-time charter operator that’s now offering regularly-scheduled flights. Since shifting from targeting just travel agents and trip organizers, I think they could use some help on their direct-to-consumer strategy.

VisionAirlines.com Review — The Good:

To be fair, the website has some positive qualities, based on my review in late October 2011:

• Real People. The phone number (877-FLY-A-JET) is listed right at the top of the website. Not even customer-friendly Southwest or JetBlue publish their phone number on their home page.
• Extensive FAQs. Although it’s buried at the bottom of the navigation, Vision Airlines has an in-depth Frequently Asked Questions page.
• Route Map. It’s easy to find the route map (via Destinations), to see where I can fly non-stop (answer: one place). Unfortunately, I’m not sure why the flight search engine shows my airport code in question marks — as “???RDU???”

VisionAirlines.com Review — The Bad:

Unfortunately, the positives are counterbalanced by some distracting negatives:

• Clutter. The homepage is very cluttered — there’s no obvious call to action. If you apply the “squint test,” you might head toward the massive red reservations box in the middle of the screen if you aren’t distracted by the animated banner ads first.
• Irrelevant Promos. Because I don’t live in their focus cities (Louisville and Freeport), almost none of the call-to-action destinations are relevant to me. No matter how tempting the promo, I can’t fly Vision Air to Louisville, Atlanta, or Destin.
• Transparency Problems. They bury the About page. That’s OK for Delta or Continental, but I hadn’t heard of Vision Airlines until today. And they have nothing to be hide — they’ve been operating flights since 1994, flying to 38 destinations using Boeing 767′s, Boeing 737′s, and some smaller turboprops.
• Inactive Functionality. The home page has tabs for “Book Travel,” “My Reservation,” “Flight Check In,” and “Flight Status.” Unfortunately, the Check-in and Status options don’t work — you get a disclaimer saying they’re coming soon. All that’s missing is an old-school “Under Construction” icon.
• Poor SEO. The landing pages for the $1 Bahamas promo and Grand Bahamas info are made up of images, instead of real text. Easy to upload, but not good for search engine optimization (SEO), since Google can’t index the text on the images. But the pricing disclaimer is text — I assume that means they change fees more often than the promos.
• Social Media Disconnects. They link to their Facebook page and their YouTube channel. The Facebook page has nearly 6,000 fans and frequent Wall updates (nice work!)… but the landing page defaults to a bare “More deals coming soon!” tab.
• Uninspired Logo. The Vision Airlines logo doesn’t say much — it doesn’t evoke being a low-fare operator, or having direct flights to the Bahamas, or being a large-jet operator to small markets. And it certainly doesn’t echo the tagline on its abandoned Twitter profile, of “We fly people and make them happy.”

My Recommendations: Top Priorities

If I were advising the Vision Airlines marketing manager, I’d recommend three priorities:

1. De-clutter the home page. I know you know white space is a good thing — please try to convince the sales department to pick just 1-2 promos.
2. Activate (or remove) “Online Check-In” and “Flight Status.” If they won’t be ready for months, take them off the home page.
3. Rearrange the main nav. The top should probably have Book Travel, Destinations, Flight Information, FAQ, and About Vision. Those would likely be a prospective passenger’s top priorities.

What Do You Think?

To be fair, I’m sure Vision Airlines has a very small marketing department. And they’re relatively new to communicating directly with consumers — apart from its Grand Canyon sightseeing business, Vision Air didn’t have to do direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising until their 17th year of operations. And I’m sure several different departments are jockeying for space on the home page.

I’ll cut Vision Airlines some slack for their lack of resources. But prospective customers need to trust the people behind the website — the real risk is tiny, but any airline is ultimately selling a life-or-death service.

How would you improve the Vision Airlines website? Please share below.