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No Website? No Worries
Three ways Landscape Designers are building a presence online quicklyand inexpensively.
How many times have you been told, “You have to have a website for yourlandscape design business”? This just isn’t true. There are options available todaywhich allow landscape designers to build a presence online without spending bigbucks on a traditional company website. These resources allow you to beginpromoting your services and talents immediately with very little or no cost involved,and in a professional way. No need to hire your Uncle’s friend’s neighbor to build awebsite for you.
Face The World
With more than 350 million active users, Facebook is the Internet's leading socialnetworking website. Many landscape designers already have a profile on Facebookin which they connect with friends, family and professional contacts. Manybusinesses, along with numerous landscape designers, have created FacebookPages to promote their services to the Facebook masses. The short-form blogging, also called micro-blogging, is an appealing alternative, oreven complement, to traditional blogs. Facebook Pages, also known as “FanPages”, give landscape designers the opportunity to interact with potential clients,share information, promote events and run promotions. Through this interaction,your “fans” can spread the word about your business to their friends. You can easily customize your Facebook Page to include the relevant informationabout your company and landscape design services. You can create “PhotoAlbums” in which you can showcase your project photos. You can also includevideo. The “Notes” application gives Facebook users the ability to write longer,more traditional blog posts as well as import an external blog.Another benefit in having a Page versus just a personal profile is that Pages can beseen by non-Facebook users and indexed by search engines such as Google and Yahoo. This gives you an even better chance to be found online by potential clients. There is no cost in creating a Facebook Page. You do, however, need to have aFacebook profile before you can create a Page. I suggest reviewing the Pages of other landscape designers before you create your own. APLD has a page which youcan view at
http://bit.ly/ciqMkb.
Check out APLD certified designer Susan Cohan’sPage at
www.facebook.com/susancohangardens.com
. You can become a fan of mine at
www.facebook.com/cjheiler 
.
 Your Resume on Steroids
Are you familiar with the term
curriculum vitae
? It’s a Latin word meaning “courseof life”, and often synonymous with the term
resume
; though typically more
 
comprehensive than a traditional resume. I like to think of a CV as a resume onsteroids. VisualCV.com is an online resource that enables you to create a personalCV.Aside from being utilized as a resume for prospective employers, consider creatinga VisualCV as a way to market your talents and landscape design services toprospective clients. VisualCV.com is a great resource for landscape designers whoare in the early stages of their careers and do not yet have a traditional companywebsite. Students, as well as designers who work for others, may want to considercreating a VisualCV to show off their personal work. The single web page format offered by VisualCV.com is easily customized to meetyour needs—very little html knowledge is required. Though the format is verysimple, you can actually add quite a bit of information about yourself and yourcompany including photographs of your work. You also have the ability to add otherdynamic media such as video and audio. There is no cost to create your VisualCV—it’s a completely free service. You canview my personal VisualCV at
www.ChrisHeiler.com
. For more ideas, you can viewlandscape designer Jody Shilan’s VisualCV at
www.visualcv.com/jshilan
.
Show Your Skills
I think most of us recognize the importance of having a portfolio of our landscapedesign work online. Prospects want to see photographs of our work
before
theymeet with us. Having photographs online makes it easy to share our work withthese prospects. A company website is an effective way to display your portfolio,but what If you don’t have a website? Fortunately, there is another solutionavailable.Carbonmade.com is a web based application that gives you the ability to easilydisplay, organize and update your portfolio in a very appealing and professionalformat. I personally prefer the appearance of Carbonmade portfolios compared toother online photo sharing services such as Flickr—it’s a more polished look. Youcan also add other important information to your Carbonmade portfolio such as adescription of your company and services as well as your contact information.As with VisualCV.com, Carbonmade is ideal for students and landscape designers inthe early stages of their career. With the free account you are allowed five projects,or albums, with a total of 35 images. Adding additional albums and images willrequire the premium paid service. I encourage you to view the Carbonmadeportfolios of two landscape architects for inspiration. You can view Kyle Burgamy’sportfolio at
www.kyleburgamy.carbonmade.com
and Ted Cleary’s portfolio at
www.scla.carbonmade.com
.As you can see, there are numerous ways to get started online—there are nobarriers. With the resources available to us today, there is no excuse for ourlandscape design businesses not to have a presence on the World Wide Web.
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uploaded a new revision for this document (#3)

02 / 17 / 2010

uploaded a new revision for this document (#2)

02 / 17 / 2010

uploaded a new revision for this document (#1)

02 / 17 / 2010
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