branding

What drew you to Grant Writing as a career?  I was drawn first to non-profit work while working corporately.  I felt it would provide me the opportunity to be fulfilled by giving back to organizations in which I could be passionate about their focus.  Additionally the work, at times, allows putting my business skills of for-profit together allowing for creative approaches to make an organization memorable and reach the needed bottom line. Proposal writing was an area I sought because I had always been a decent writer. Also when I forecasted my future I felt, as a military spouse and a parent, that I would need the flexibility in the case that we needed to make a few moves or address child logistics. What’s the first question most clients ask you? I think...

Through the years I’ve done a lot of work on solo writing project, but I’ve also done about as much working with teams or a co-writer. We’ve worked, most often in Microsoft Word. Sometimes the teams have tried to use programs like Central Desktop or Basecamp to help manage the workflow and the edits. While these things work, and work well, my clients can be challenged y the technology, unable to access it, or just too overwhelmed to even want to make sense of any of it. We’d even jump into an IM chat to see if we couldn’t work out a section or a scene (in the case of fiction) (For the record, we ran into this problem as well when working on books and not just proposals or technical documentation.) Whenever you have more than one...

This is completely off my normal topics and focused on site design and appeasing small children. Just so you’re warned Our son is six. He is fascinated with video games, the web and YouTube (I promise you, we were NOT the ones to introduce him to this). My husband and I refuse to allow him to post videos to YouTube for obvious safety and security concerns. Perhaps we’re a little bit….obsessed about it, but honestly, he’s six…the world does NOT need to see or know him unless he decides he really does want to go into acting as a career.   My compromise? Create a secure WordPress site to allow him to express himself online, with friends and family, but without the worry. How did I do it? I already had a URL purchased for...

Written by Stacia D. Kelly. Follow her on twitter or follow catklaw. I have to admit, I'm a gadget junkie. The new iPad came out and I want, just because. No, I haven't gotten one yet. It's only a matter of time. But, thinking about the iPad made me wonder, what are the gadgets we just can't live without? We have several in this office, so I thought I'd share mine, courtesy of Amazon. This office is an office of readers and writers. I was the first one on board with the Kindle, and I'm not adverse to having a Sony Reader too. I'd rather have several electronic readers than have to add more shelving for all the books that seem to accumulate in the office. My iPhone is with me everywhere, including the gym. I'd be lost without Nuvi,...

Written by Stacia D. Kelly. Follow her on twitter or follow catklaw. I spent a few hours last week doing some research and learning how to format a file to upload to Amazon's DTP site (Digital Text Platform). Of course, I have to say, this was after several hours of trying to figure out why my formatting icons disappeared in WordPress on this site, but that's another post. (For when I've figured it out.) It took me a while, and I found all sorts of people offering to do it for me, but I wanted to do it, AND I wanted to be able to write up a how to for others who are looking to do it as well. Why am I publishing to the Kindle? I could have gone the traditional route with Muse – Breathe. Focus. Achieve. I know how to find an agent and a...

As much as I hate working with MS Word, it is the most frequently asked for program when anyone asks for a proposal, government or commercial. Never mind that when I send you the document saved down to some archaic version that the print settings are going to change all the formatting, but the security settings are also a joke. We’ll save those issues for another post. The biggest challenge I face with MS Word? The style guide and the lack of others on a proposal using styles, or cutting and pasting from other documents and then corrupting my style guide. I hear a few of you asking, what’s a style guide? A style is a set of pre-defined formatting instructions that you can use repeatedly throughout the document. Rather than bolding each title, each...

The Anthropology of Digital Nomads by Drew Jones / Nov 5- Beacause the repost feature wouldn’t work, I’m reposting from – http://www.digitalnomads.com/blog Drew Jones, SHIFT It has been ten years since David Berreby published his seminal Strategy & Business article on digital nomads- The Hunter Gatherers of the Knowledge Economy: The Anthropology of Today’s Cyberforagers.  In the article Berreby draws on the controversial field of evolutionary psychology to point out that hominids have spent the majority of our evolutionary past adapted as nomadic hunter-gatherers, not as farmers, crafts people, factory workers, service workers, or any other mode of living and working invented since the advent of the agricultural revolution and...

As a consultant/freelancer I have the opportunity to work on many unique and interesting projects. It also allows me the chance to extend my abilities and learn new things. This is how I’ve learned to code and develop websites for people. They’re not flashy or high-end, but they are turning out better and better with each one I work on. The coding is going smoother. I’ve obviously redone this site several times as I try to get the exact look and feel I want. It’s a process. I’ve come to learn, coding is a language, just as French and Spanish are. I’ve always had an affinity for languages, so this really is no different. It’s not going to be a language I verbalize, but I am using it to communicate in a new way, the digital...

CatKlaw is all about building Brand YOU. In essence, we are focused on marketing, communications, public relations, networking and helping you build your Brand. For Businesses – You have disparate systems, the technology is daunting, hell, you can just barely manage to get to your email, much less your calendar…and then it’s off to the next meeting. You need to build a strong foundation and shine. CatKlaw can help you develop proposals into winning bids, create your image on brochures and other marketing materials. We’re even set up to handle the audio and video recording for your marketing endeavors. For Musicians/Writers/Artists – You just want to practice your art and talent, but need help managing the promotional and business...