It’s time we start updating our clichés for the digital age.

• Never send a PC to do a Mac’s job.
• What doesn’t kill you makes you go viral on YouTube.
• That’s a hard act to unfollow.
• If at first you don’t succeed, refresh, refresh again.
• When God closes a window, He opens a tab.
• A journey of a thousand websites begins with a single click.
• He who ROFL’s last, ROFL’s longest.
• Rickroll me once, shame on you. Rickroll me twice, shame on me!
• Different keystrokes for different folks.

What would you add to the list??

“Design should never say, ‘Look at me.’ It should always say, ‘Look at this.’”

That is a solid (and difficult!) challenge for someone in my line of work. As a designer, it’s easy to get caught up in creating something that WOWs people and lose sight of the fact that it should always be pointing to something greater.

The power of design isn’t in the design itself, but in what it points to.

I want to always design in a way that it points to something — and Someone — greater than myself.

In just five years, Charity: Water has developed a powerhouse of an online presence, fully utilizing every possible medium and outlet to raise awareness and funds for their work.

With 1.3 million Twitter followers and 210,000 Facebook likes, they are clearly doing something right!

Charity: Water leverages their blog, Facebook, and Twitter feeds to share compelling stories of the communities and individuals their donors help to support. And they do so with one of the highest standards of quality and excellence out there today, in any industry.

Their use of beautiful imagery and stunning video plays an enormous role in their success.

A quick glance at their website shows you their unbelievably high standard of excellence and the extreme lengths they go to represent well both their work and those they serve around the world.

Charity: Water makes their pictures, videos, and other materials easily accessible for people to grab and share through their own personal social media outlets. They have everything from blog banners to Twitter backgrounds — making it as easy as possible for others to help spread the word about the cause they believe in.

Non-profits and businesses can learn a lot from Charity: Water’s approach.

Make your partners or clients want to engage and spread the word by providing them with beautiful and excellent material, and by making it as easily accessible as possible. Offer something people feel proud to talk about, share with others, and represent.

Tell your story well — with passion and excellence. It draws people around you who want to use their own voice and influence to continue telling the story.

What would you like to see non-profits do or change
in their social media strategy?

[HT: MajorMultimedia.com]

What is Evernote?

Evernote is an amazing tool that synchronizes in real-time across all your digital devices. Add a note on your iPhone and it’s automatically synced with your desktop computer, online website, and iPad. Amazing! Your information is available anytime, anywhere.

You can use Evernote to save your ideas, take notes, keep track of projects, generate shopping lists, store recipes, or brainstorm with a colleague.

Notebook System

Create notebooks in any system that makes sense to you. I name mine by clients or projects, but you could go a completely different route. Maybe you like action words. Your notebooks could be:

• Listen (music you want to explore)
• Read (books, quotes, authors)
• See (films and photography)
• Taste (recipes and restaurants)
• Create (projects)
• Go (future travel)

It’s entirely up to you. Simply name your notebooks in the way that makes the most sense for you and how you want to utilize Evernote. Your notebooks can be shared with those you invite, or kept completely private (only accessible by you).

Create Notes

Start creating notes within your notebooks. For each note you can:

• Include a URL of the website you got the idea or information from
• Record a GPS location (to search by location or remember where you wrote it)
• Enter tags to maximize searchability
• Format as much or as little as you want

How important is your profile picture? Very.

If a picture really is worth a thousand words, than our profile pictures speak volumes. They serve as visual representations of ourselves and our companies/brands in the online world. You want to make sure you are representing yourself well.

Regardless of what people say, we all judge books by their covers. In social media, your avatar is your book cover. It can make the difference between someone reading what you have to say or scrolling right past it.

Some tips for having great avatars and profile pictures…

Consider the medium.

Your avatar on Twitter should be different than your profile picture on LinkedIn, and rightly so. They are social media outlets that serve very different functions. It isn’t crucial that your photo be the same across all your online outlets, but that your photo matches the platform it’s on. Twitter and Facebook are considered more conversational and personal. They lend themselves to profile pics that are fun and casual expressions of yourself. LinkedIn is professional and corporate. Your profile picture for those types of networking sites, or any platform where you specifically represent a company or brand, should be engaging but professional.

Size matters.

There is nothing more frustrating then clicking on someone’s avatar to get a closer look, only to discover the owner uploaded a tiny image. Use large pictures to avoid small, blurry, pixelated images.

Don’t change your photo too often.

On Twitter and Facebook where we quickly scan through the timeline to read only the bits we’re interested in, profile picture recognition is key. When you change your avatar often, it makes it more difficult for people to readily identify you and follow along with your conversations online. That doesn’t mean you should never change it — just avoid changing it every other week!

What would you add?
What tips do you have for profile pics?

The premise behind it is simple. Choose just one word to focus on all year long.

Forget New Year’s resolutions or a long list of goals you aren’t likely to remember anyway. Instead, focus on just one word that defines who you want to be, how you want to live, or what you want to accomplish this year.

Simple, but profound.

Since the site went live on New Year’s Eve, an entire global community has erupted through the One Word 365 challenge.

Seriously!

You should check out the community page to see all the people who have already written blog posts about their own personal One Word. It’s amazing.

It’s really been incredible to see hundreds of people join arms to tackle this year with intentionality and purpose. We are excited to have been involved in this project!

What about you?
Do you have a word for 2012?

Thank you for partnering with us this year. We are grateful and honored to have such great clients and friends around the world.

We encourage you to take some time to slow down and unplug this weekend. Let’s pause and lift our eyes Heavenward, choosing to remain mindful of what this season is really all about.

Grace, second chances, and redemption… All wrapped up in the Holy Child born this day thousands of years ago. Jesus was God’s indescribable love for us made tangible. What an amazing, life-changing, undeserved gift we’ve been given.

May we live like we know the value of the treasure we have.

Merry Christmas, friends…

If you’re completely new to Twitter or even if you’ve been around a while, I think you might find this list helpful.

I give you…

My Twitter Glossary:

Avatar
Your Twitter bio photo. (Avatar is sometimes shortened to avi.)

Block
You can block a Twitter user, which prevents them from seeing your tweets and you from seeing their tweets to you.

DM
Short for Direct Message. When two people follow each other, they can send direct messages to each other. These are private tweets that are not visible on the main timeline.

Fail Whale
When Twitter is so overloaded that it can’t function, their error page comes up with its iconic image of a whale.

Follow
When you follow other people on Twitter, their updates will appear in your timeline (or twitter stream).

Handle
Your Twitter name (or username).

Hashtag
The # symbol before any word or phrase (with no spaces or punctuation), which makes it searchable on Twitter. These are used to track tweets for specific events or topics; clicking on the hashtag will search for all tweets that include it. Hashtags are also frequently used as a funny add-on at the end of a tweet.

Mention
When someone mentions you on Twitter, either tweeting to you or about you. Also called an “at reply” (@reply). All of these are visible in your mention stream on Twitter.

OH
Overheard. Often this will come at the start of a tweet, followed by a quote of what was overheard.

Private
Some Twitter users have their accounts set to private. This means they must grant permission for you to see their tweets.

Reply
When a user answers back to another on Twitter. Also called an “at reply” or “@ reply.” When someone clicks the reply button to respond, the entire Twitter conversation remains linked and can be easily followed.

RT
Retweet. This is the biggest way to show love on Twitter—passing along what other people say. Twitter’s original/old way of retweeting forwards it on exactly as is. The new/modified way generates a new tweet with RT at the beginning of it and gives you the opportunity to add your own thoughts to the tweet. When tweeting something you’d specifically like to get passed along, be sure you leave enough remaining characters for others to RT it.

Search
Use the search function to see what people are tweeting about. You can search topics, names, @handles, hashtags, etc.

Spam
When someone tweets a link to you, but is not following you. Typically the link is for something they are selling. You can select the “report as spam” button which will block that user from tweeting you again and automatically reports them to Twitter.

Star / Favorite
Check the star symbol next to a tweet to mark it as a favorite. This can be used to save an interesting tweet or to remind you of something you want to look more into at a later time. You can view all your starred or favorited tweets from your profile.

Trending Topics
The most popular subjects on Twitter at that moment.

Tweet
A single update on Twitter.

Twitter stream / Timeline
Main feed of tweets from people you are following.

Tweet-up
An in-real-life gathering of Twitter friends.

Twitter Party
A virtual party, typically arranged by a blog or brand, where Twitterers gather at a certain time to discuss a specific topic. Typically a hashtag is used, making it easy to follow along with the tweets.

URL Shortener
Tool to make URLs (website addresses) shorter — easier to fit in a 140-character tweet.

Via / HT
Used when a link or thought comes from someone else and the Twitterer is giving credit. Typically it is added at the end of the tweet, as “Via @handle” or “HT: @handle”. The HT stands for “hat tip”, as though you’re tipping your hat in the direction of the person you got the idea from.

#FB
This hashtag is used by people who have installed an application on Facebook called Selective Tweets. Tweets ending in #fb are automatically imported to Facebook, but all others are ignored.

#FF
Follow Friday. People use this hashtag when they are making suggestions of people for you to follow.

Can you think of any others?
What else should be on this list?

If you missed my post on Twitter pet peeves, click over to read it >

Happy 10th Anniversary, IceFest!

IceFest is one of the largest outdoor festivals in Pennsylvania. There are four days of festivities: live ice carvings, ballroom dancing, chili cook-off, polar bear plunge, fireworks, and a scavenger hunt.

It’s one of the highlights of our year! Not only does our company get involved, but our employees come out to enjoy and participate in the fun.

Take a few minutes to explore the new IceFest website. We are proud to launch this special 10th anniversary site!

Does your city do anything fun around the holidays?

We’ve worked with Life Promotions since 2007, providing them with branding, website design, print ads, apparel, and email blasts.

Life Promotions reaches more than 400,000 young people every year through faith-based outreaches, festivals, and conferences. Their largest annual event is Lifest, a summer music festival held in Wisconsin that attracts close to 20,000 people each summer.

We are currently redesigning Life Promotions’ etire website, which is set to go live in early January, and we just completed a massive website redesign for Lifest. We are really excited about this launch!  

“We are so impressed with Cross & Crown in developing our website for Lifest. We approached them with the seemingly impossible challenge of creating a website from scratch on a very tight timetable. Within a week they provided a fully functioning and professional website, along with many additional design tools that have further enhanced our marketing campaign. Their flexibility, efficiency and attention to detail made it easy to work with them, and their dedication to representing the Christian values of our organization through their work has only added to the value of our relationship. We highly recommend Cross & Crown.”

Bob Lenz, National Speaker
Founder, Lifest

We absolutely love working with the entire Life Promotions team. Such a solid group of passionate and creative people, committed to making a difference in others’ lives. We feel very honored to partner with them.

Check out Lifest’s brand new website >

Follow them on Twitter >

Like them on Facebook >