In Internet marketing, it’s not about how cool your site is, it’s about what your site has to offer and if people can find that offer. If you are in a niche services or products industry you must go to where the people are:

Classifieds Listings - Like Craigslist.com, where people are actively searching for a variety of products, services and trades every moment of everyday.

Party Ideas - BestParyEver.com’s business listings directory and premium sponsorship opportunities allow anyone who performs, manages or supports a party to get in front of their audience.

Small Business Networking - Biznik.com is a community for people who are building their own businesses. It’s more about sharing ideas than posting resumes and it’s where the conversations about business and entrepreneurship are taking place.

Music Recommendations - Last.fm is a community to share what you listen to with others. By viewing tastes of people that listen to what we do, we find new music all the time…by browsing randomly through Last.fm profile pages we find even broader music to explore. Advertisers could take note, that if music or related products need to build awareness, here’s your worldwide captive audience.

Being where the action takes place is not new. This principle is not limited to the online space either. Have you ever seen an intersection with four hamburger joints or 3 gas stations? You need to be where people are looking for what you have to offer. The same idea holds true for growth and learning. You can learn on your own, but combining forces with like minded people accelerates that growth.

Environment for Innovation - The Drawbackwards office is now at Gangplank, we are working on collaborative projects and advising others as an anchor tennant at this new Tech Incubator that also serves as the premier Metro Phoenix Co-working campus for web development.

A collection of links from strategy and internet marketing to Star Wars and push pins…

How To Seek Feedback - Personalize the Request

Google Friend Center - Google makes your site into a social network easy

They Don’t Use Social Media in My Industry - They’re using “it”, the question is really about it’s effectiveness and proper deployment.

Never to Early to Talk about SXSW 2009 - You can e-mail housing and they’ll send you a happy reminder when they’re getting ready to set up registration so you can get in on the best price.

Haste Is A Form of Violence - When Speed Increases, What Decreases?

Fail Harder - Video of people making relief impression of Fail Harder out of clear push pins

I’ve Heard of Star Wars Fanatics - but this is nuts…

Talk of a recession and the financial factors that lead to the real thing, are quicksand for business.

Stop to look, worry or slow down and you’ll likely get stuck. Success and failure are determined by action, or the lack thereof. Feeling paralyzed because sales channels change only leads to real slowdowns. Quick action to improve a product, service or relationship can keep you from sinking. Building new relationships while others stagnate or change can also bring success.

Just changing your mindset about slow times can keep you fast.

If a piece of work is not present or your business is awaiting a decision or deliverable, what can you be doing with that time to improve your business? Build new channels of revenue? Train and grow your team? What brilliant ideas have you been sitting on? Where have you been wanting to take your organization? Seize this opportunity.

What end results do you seek? How can a pause in business give you the window you need to move forward at your desired outcome? Maybe you will find that pauses allow you to accomplish what matters most.

Stay action-packed, with an eye on your end goals and business will stay strong or get stronger even in slower times. Bodies in motion, stay in motion. Innovate and strengthen your offering when things seem quiet.

Ever played a first-person shooter? You know who dies? The guy who isn’t moving. If you stay in one place everyone will know where to find you. You know who else dies? They guy who isn’t reloading when he’s not being shot at. Make sure you keep moving, keep your weapon loaded and seek an opportunity to fire.

What makes designing for the iPhone, or the mobile platform, any different than designing for the traditional web browser? We took two key factors into account when designing the iPhone version of the Drawbackwards website:

1. Context - It’s a smartphone. Let them email and call. Make that prominent.
2. Space - The screen size is limited. What is most valuable to a mobile user?

When a visitor uses their iPhone to visit us, we have 3 desired actions:

1. Contact us via an email or a call immediately.
2. Read our blog and learn about what we do and how we think.
3. Provide a high-level snapshot of some of our design work.

If the visitor wants to know about our services or how we can help with a specific challenge (our specialty), they have the ability to call or email at any moment. When we are out at a meeting, conference or event and hand out a business card; a quick hit to the Drawbackwards site on the iPhone shows them how to stay in touch, what we do and what it looks like.

If users want to add the Drawbackwards site to their home screen, we’ve designed a custom iPhone icon that becomes available. To stand out on the homescreen, we used the red version of our logo on the site and button since no default apps currently use red.

Ugly visual design has it’s place. I like it best when it’s contrasted with good design, to accentuate it’s ugliness..or to elevate what’s good. Good visual design has purpose, it’s aesthetically pleasing and is a technical blend of type, color, image, concept and layout.

You are probably already waiting to ask: but what is good and bad design really? And isn’t it in the eye of the beholder? It certainly is. And that’s where it’s power comes from. Check out the brilliant use of ugly visual design (UVD) at Facebook. Everything at Facebook is very well considered. Every icon is small, compact, relevant and easy to recognize and use. Except one very big, very obvious, very ugly one.

The default “?” avatar.

Had to protect the identity of the default icon user!

This beauty of an icon is terribly ugly. Yet, the design of the icon is strategic. You want to get rid of it. Your friends want you to get rid of it. The peer pressure is tremendous - they want out of their profile! Why? Because when you leave your icon in it’s default “?” state, you aren’t just making your profile look ugly, you are polluting your friend’s profiles.

What better way to encourage people to get a great image for themselves online than real-world peer pressure?

Want to rent a movie? How about an interface that only shows a selection of movies and allows you to move them around, sort them and rent for immediate playback? No descriptions or buttons to get in the way until you have selected what you want..the movies themselves are the buttons. With Apple’s software upgrade to AppleTV, the ease of the transaction has been stripped down almost to the promise of “frictionless commerce”. You don’t have to leave your home, you don’t need to leave your couch and you don’t need a computer. You don’t even need mail or envelopes anymore.

Need to sort these movies? Maybe you want to browse your photos, music or podcasts in the same way. A simple frame lays on top so people can gain context. Once a category is selected the “cards” below are dealt across the full-length of a wide-screen “table”, which happens to be your flat panel TV.

If it’s easy to find what you want and it doesn’t take any time, there’s a lot of value. In a consumer society where time is as much a currency as money, this user interface is the ultimate competitive advantage. Netflix, Blockbuster, and Amazon now have a tough act to follow.