If you’d like to inject some inspiration and momentum into your creative career, enroll in Mark McGuinness' new course: The Creative Pathfinder.

It’s a 25-week program designed to equip you with the creative and professional skills you need to succeed in your chosen career path -- whether you’re an employee, freelancer or creative entrepreneur.

Things you’ll learn include:

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This article originally appeared on PaperSpecs.com.

Let's say you're at a clothing store. You've finally found a pair of jeans to replace your favorite old pair -- not too dark and not too tight. But before you put it in your cart, you scan the tag with your iPhone, and it connects you to a virtual world in 3D.

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If you're like most web designers, you have a great site but you're having a hard time getting qualified leads to visit your site. Sortfolio is here to help drive potential clients to your site. We promote Sortfolio to thousands of businesses, they find your work on Sortfolio, and then we direct them to your site so you can finish wowing them. Sortfolio helps them find you so you can do your magic.

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Following its 30th anniversary this year, Wedding & Portrait Photographers International (WPPI) announces its second annual WPPI Road Trip. Taking the fun and excitement of its annual convention and trade show in Las Vegas, NV, and bringing it on the road to 10 major U.S. cities this coming August and September, the 2010 WPPI Road Trip features a full day of educational classes conducted by the hottest most sought-after speakers in professional photography today.

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A number of publishing solutions exist that help companies create online editions of their publications with a number of features. However, many of these solutions don’t take advantage of the many possibilities that online media facilitate. Up until now, in order to create advanced interactive publications, it has been necessary to further custom develop the publications at an extremely high cost per publication.

Cross platform Software Solution

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SitePoint's newest book release, Create Stunning HTML Email That Just Works! ($29.95 USD), is now hitting shelves across the US. HTML email design commonly has instilled fear in web designers, with its intricacies causing endless amounts of stress and frustration. We've eliminated this problem forever with our very handy resource guide.

Readers will learn:
- the basics of effective HTML email design
- tips on how to design drop-dead gorgeous HTML email templates
- the secret to using HTML and CSS to create robust emails

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Facebook pages are pretty hot right now as businesses strive to take advantage of the growing audience and influence that is Facebook. As with any gold rush, there are those that seek the gold and those that equip the miners. Today I would like to share a handful of tools, or apps, designed to make business use of Facebook easier and more profitable.

1) Storefront Social - The Storefront app makes it pretty darn simple to put a storefront of products on your Facebook pages. Storefront is not an ecommerce platform, it’s simply allows you to transfer product from a store you already have to your Facebook pages. The process is relatively painless. You can add products individually or import a CSV file or your Google Base listings. (Google Base is another place you should be listing your products by the way.)

Here’s an example of a very large General Store. As you can see other social features such as retweeting and sharing are added to each product, products can be grouped by category and, in this case, hundreds of products can be listed in the store. Since the products retain your original shopping cart links this could be a nice option for eBay and etsy sellers as well.

Storefront Social charges a monthly fee based on the number of products listed in your store. Starter programs that allow you to upload 36 items go for $4.95/mo and range up to 3000 items for $19.95. The ease of store set-up, particularly for someone with a large store and ability to export store listings, makes the potential exposure inside the Facebook walls well worth the monthly fee.

2) The second Facebook application I would like to showcase today is called Facebook Fanpage Engine. This tool allows you to easily create custom fan pages using pre-designed templates and the static FBML Facebook application.

Everything done by the template can be accomplished by someone that knows a bit of HTML or wants to use an HTML editor, like Dreamweaver, but for ease of use it’s tough to beat these templates and editor. Packages run from $37 all the way to $497 if you want customer header design help. If you’ve got your own custom graphics, or know how to create the precise sized graphics for the templates, you can get the entire package of templates for $67. Templates include various column and block layouts including templates for video and opt-in forms from services like Constant Contact and AWeber.

If you’re providing Facebook consulting or design services for clients you can use the templates over and over again for any pages you administer or are working on for clients once you purchase the license. I recommend this tool because it’s easy to use and a great time saver that allows you to create a custom branded feel for your Facebook pages.

Bonus: Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day – Mari Smith and Chris Treadaway show you step by step how to use Facebook as a Marketing tool in this just released new book.

The fact is this: direct mail directly influences purchasing more than any other channel. According to ExactTarget’s Channel Preference Study, three of four Internet users surveyed say they were directly influenced to purchase an item or a service thanks to a direct mail piece.

But not all direct mail collateral has that “it” factor. You know, the thing about your printed pieces that grabs customers’ attention, ensures the campaign runs smoothly and garners those high returns.

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Marketing, perhaps the most important function in a business, often gets pushed to the end of the to do list by whatever seemingly urgent needs that crop up during the day. To give marketing the attention it deserves you must make the practice a habit.

The New York Times Magazine published an intriguing piece by Wired contributing editor Gary Wolf titled The Data-Driven Life.

The article introduces individuals who track and measure every aspect of their life, sometimes using the data collected to break habits and achieve goals.

Take for example Robin Barooah — a 38-year-old self-employed software designer from England. A few months ago, Barooah began to wean himself from coffee. His method was precise. He made a large cup of coffee and removed 20 milliliters weekly. This went on for more than four months, until barely a sip remained in the cup. He drank it and called himself cured. Unlike his previous attempts to quit, this time there were no headaches, no extreme cravings. (You may also find Borooah’s own article, The Quantified Self, a fascinating read)

The story continues to introduce others who take the idea of logging their life activities to a freakish level, but I couldn’t help wonder if business owners should take a data-driven, although perhaps a bit more moderate than some of the folks in the Times article, approach to how they spend their time?

What if for the next two weeks you logged how you spent your time at work. You could track it on a spreadsheet or simply make up some paper forms from a calendar program that would allow you to jot what you did in 15-30 minute increments. If you take the two week challenge I think you’ll be blown away by how much time you waste doing things that are not very fruitful, including spending little or no time focused on marketing.

If fact, if you want to make this time measurement more meaningful add dollar value data. At the end of each day go back over your log and assign a value to the work you did. One of the easiest ways to do this is think about what you would need to pay someone else to do the work. So, making a sales call might be high dollar work, while getting and filling the copier toner might fall somewhere else on the scale.

Now, to make this all come together you’ve also got to peg your “Make What I Need Number.” This is essentially your goal income divided by 2080 (that’s 40/hr week for 52 weeks). This computation creates an hourly need to make number and just might help you better understand what work you should be focused on doing yourself and what work you need to find someone else to do. For example, if your goal income is $150,000, you hourly need number is around $75/hr. Double your goal income and your hourly number becomes $150/hr.

In my experience marketing work is some of the highest long-term work a business owner can do, even if that’s the work of managing others to do the tactical aspects such as design and implementation. When you get a baseline on how your actually spending your time you just might gain the insight and leverage to start focusing on and measuring time spent in the marketing department. You might begin the practice of scheduling daily marketing appointments with yourself and weekly marketing meeting with your entire team. This is how you achieve your goal income and this is how you build marketing momentum.

Image credit: Robbert van der Steeg

This article originally appeared on AMEX OPENForum

Everybody needs a little help from their friends. Businesses large and small can benefit greatly from the partnering mindset, particularly hyper local businesses.

The partnering mindset is simply a business point of view that suggests a great deal of the organization’s marketing mix will involve seeking out and activating business partners with the same ideal client target.

Understand that this thinking in full form takes in a bigger view than simply referring business to each other.

A total local partner mindset is an approach that starts with your product and service offerings and carries through to both making and give referrals as a total team effort.

There are a number of components involved in the creation of an effective program.

Recruit and introduce – the first step is to recruit your team and introduce them to your program and business. One of the best ways to identify good teammates is to ask your current customers to name other businesses they like to buy from. You don’t want just anyone as a partner, these need to be people you can also confidently refer business to.

Next, send them a letter outlining your plans and inviting them to tell you the best way to introduce their business to your customers – that usually gets their attention.

Create content opportunities – Invite your partners to contribute to your newsletter, act as a guest on your podcast or blog. Giving your partners exposure by way of content gets them exposure and you content. Consider taking this up a notch and create a group blog optimized for all of the partners.

Conduct video interviews – Set a meeting with your partners and use the opportunity to record an introduction video so you can have content to run on your website letting the world know about your partners. This will show you mean business.

Acquire special offers – Get your partners to contribute a product or service that you can use as a way to enhance your offering. Free business cards for every logo purchased or free flowers when you make a reservation for dinner, free tickets to give away in y our marketing, or free HVAC check-up when you get some plumbing work. This is a great way to promote your partners while adding real appeal to what your marketing. Make sure you create real perceived value here.

Make referrals – Make it a habit to consciously go out of your way to refer business to your partners. Don’t wait for people to ask, do it as part of your Monday routine. This is how you become someone that lots of great providers want to partner with, but you also increase your value to your customers by consistently helping get what they need in every aspect of their life.

Rate and review – If at all possible become of a customer of every one of your partners. This will make you a much more authentic referral sources (as a user) and allow you to test and filter the truly great experiences. Follow-up on this by actively writing reviews and ratings on Yelp and other online sites.

Create events – Figure out how to bring your partners together to network and create deeper engagement. Let each partner have a day where they educate everyone in the network. Create workshops and offer to conduct them for your partner’s customers. Develop a day devoted to topics that your partners can present useful information on and have everyone promote the event.

With just a little bit of creativity any organization can tap the awesome power of a partner network as a substantial lead and customer generator.

Image credit: Merelymel13