OK, the client has signed off on redoing their website or creating one from scratch. The bliss has subsided and now you realize the mountain ahead—weeks or months of content collection, internal and external status meetings, proofing every character/every link, beta reviews, soft launch, post launch testing, to infinity. Every web project seems to start the same way and have the same basic requirements; however, how you plan can make all the difference in the outcome! Here are a few things that I've stubbed my toes on that might help:

One morning, I'm driving my six-year-old to school and for some reason he asked me what I do at work. I thought: How can I make this sound on-par cool with the police detective that lives next door, a rock star like Hannah Montana or the cashier at Target? Yes, I knew it was futile but I started really hamming it up anyway. I told him how my company creates outdoor boards like the ones we were passing, and radio, newspaper and magazine ads. He asked, "What's a newspaper?" I'll have to write about that troubling issue another day. Then it hit me…talk to him about how he is reached by messaging – TV! Nickelodeon and Disney are ambient noises in my home between the hours of 6 and 9 p.m. whether he is watching or not. I explained to him that my company creates TV ads for companies that want to sell the stuff they make. He started catching on, but then I remembered the most well advertised toy this year, Zhu Zhu Pets!!!

Sean Carlton had an insightful 10-point checklist post on ClickZ reminding marketers not to succumb to the urge to jump on the social media bandwagon without using the same strategic approach you would for the rest of your marketing efforts. One thing I heard many marketers say in 2009 was "we need to be on Facebook or LinkedIn." They would skip straight to the tactic rather than developing the strategy first.

When a client says they want to be "edgy" and to "push us creatively," you wouldn't think I'm referring to a bank client. But I am. The Palmetto Bank gave us this directive which made it a really juicy project for our Creative group.

Have you ever noticed that when one employee cleans and organizes his/her office that other people seem to catch the cleaning "bug" too? I've noticed it lately. Maybe it's a summer-end purging cycle that normally takes place.