Getting Paid to Hand-Pick Your Co-Workers: A LinkedIn Ads Experiment

What if you could hand-pick your co-workers, and make money in the process? The idea isn't original. Many great companies offer referral bonuses because they know that talent attracts more talent. And yet referrals only account for about a third of new hires at many companies. Recently I tried an experiment to see whether I could use LinkedIn Ads to turn myself into a de facto paid recruiter for my company.

How to Set Up a LinkedIn Ad for Recruiting Referrals

When I heard about some new openings in my department recently, I had an idea to use LinkedIn Ads to help me recruit for the new gigs. The goal was to scale my efforts in finding qualified candidates so that I could invite them to apply for these new jobs. If I could get someone hired through this process, I'd be eligible for a referral bonus. The setup consisted of three steps:

Step 1: Create a LinkedIn Ad Campaign

First I signed up for LinkedIn Ads and created ads targeting candidates based on the positions available. I created two cost-per-click ads with the goal of learning what I could from the differences in the ads.

Ad 1 "Broad" - This ad cast a wide net across all marketers in the Twin Cities with a few years of experience. I used geography, experience (via age as a proxy), and industry in my ad targeting.

Ad 2 "Narrow" - This ad honed in on just marketers with experience in higher education. It contained all the parameters of the first ad, as well as some specific company-level targeting to restrict the ads to showing only within the higher education market.

After creating my ads, I created a budget, pointed them at a special landing page I created on my blog, and launched my campaign.

Step 2: Sending LinkedIn Ads to a Landing Page

The ads began receiving impressions and even sending a few folks to the landing page I created to promote the openings via clicks. This landing page wasn't anything special. It contained some basic information about working for Rasmussen College, a list of links to all the open jobs, and a contact form where I instructed interested parties to direct their queries.

Step 3: Screen and Submit Referral Candidates

Once candidates contacted me, we'd exchanged a few emails to see which positions appealed to them the most, and where their experience might fit in best with the company. I gathered a resume and cover letter from candidates who were a good fit and submitted them through our company's referral submission process. If there wasn't a good fit, I reached out to my LinkedIn network to see if anyone was looking for someone like my candidate.

The Results of the LinkedIn Ad Experiment

At this point, I have some very encouraging results, but I haven't hit a home run. The ad with a narrow focus has received 1700+ impressions, but hasn't yet earned any clicks despite several changes to the image, headline and ad copy. On the bright side, this ad hasn't cost my any money, so it's been a free learning exercise.

On the other hand, the more broadly targeted ad has received over 19,000 impressions, 18 clicks, and 2 contacts. One candidate was qualified, while one wasn't suited for the positions we had available. What did we learn?

• With 18 visits and $56.38 spent, I averaged $3.13 per click
• Of the 18 visits, 2 contacted me, for a visit-to-lead conversion rate of 11%
• With 2 contacts, I averaged $28.19 per candidate
• With 1 qualified candidate, I'm averaging $56.38 per qualified candidate
• Hypothetical: I may have to recruit five qualified candidates before someone lands a job. In that case, I'd average a cost-per-hire of $281.90

If the qualified candidate lands the job, I have found a rock star for my team and have earned $1,000 (referral bonus) on an investment of $53.16 (at a humble ROI of 1,781%). Even if I have to recruit a total of 5 candidates before someone gets hired, I'll still be looking at an ROI of 255%. In fact, at this point I would only need one candidate out of 19 to land a job in order to break even on the investment. 

Taking LinkedIn Ads to the Next Level

Given the preliminary results from my campaign, the outlook is promising. Yes, there are multiple areas for improvement as I look ahead. I'm going to continually tweak my ad campaigns for both targeting and ad creative. I also want to refine my landing page to increase my visit-to-lead conversion rates. But overall, I may have just stumbled upon a great way to hand-pick my new co-workers and get paid a like a professional recruiter in the process.

What do you think of the LinkedIn Ads approach to recruiting through referral bonus programs?

28 Marketing and Business Books to Read in 2012

At the beginning of 2011, my friend and digital PR expert Arik Hanson posed a challenge on his blog: read a book every other week all year long. I took Arik up on his challenge, and discovered nearly thirty amazing marketing and business books this year in the process.

And now that I've gotten into the habit of regular reading, 2012 will be no different. Will you join me next year? Here's a few tips and 28 marketing and business books to encourage you to join me in the 2012 26 Book Challenge.

How to Read a Book Every Other Week

Getting through 26 books in a year doesn't just happen. It's the type of thing you have to plan for, both in terms of the time it will take and medium that will work best for you.

First, where do you find yourself having chunks of time where your brain isn't engaged? Nearly everyone has that half an hour or more per day where they're stuck in traffic, on the bus/train, walking on a treadmill, etc. 

Next, what's the best medium for you to consume books during this free time? Between good old-fashioned paper books, electronic books (e.g., Kindle) and audio books (e.g., Audible), there's a way for nearly everyone to find time in your existing schedule where you could be reading and learning new things. Personally, I listen to books via Audible to and from work during my half-hour commute. That alone is responsible for most of the books I read this year.

28 Marketing and Business Books to Read in 2012

Some folks read for pleasure or simply to escape. I use my reading time to get through books on marketing and business. If you're looking to take the 26 Book Challenge in 2012, consider some of the gems* I read this year (you can also read my ever-growing list of Internet marketing book reviews):

General Online Marketing and Marketing Books:

• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind - by Al Ries and Jack Trout - Rating: 4/5
• The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, 2nd Edition - by David Meerman Scott - Rating: 5/5
• Engage, Revised and Updated: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web - by Brian Solis - Rating: 5/5
• Attention! This Book Will Make You Money: How to Use Attention-Getting Online Marketing to Increase Your Revenue - by Jim Kukral  - Rating 3/5

 Content Marketing, SEO, and Social Media Books:

• Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business - by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman - Rating: 4/5
• Content Strategy for the Web - by Kristina Halvorson - Rating: 5/5
• Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions - by Guy Kawasaki - Rating: 4/5
• The Facebook Effect - by David Kirkpatrick - Rating: 4/5
• I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - by Douglas Edwards - Rating: 4/5
• In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives - by Steven Levy - Rating: 5/5

Marketing and Business Psychology Books:

• Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy - by Martin Lindstrom - Rating: 4/5
• Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long - by David Rock - Rating: 5/5
• The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work - by Shawn Achor - Rating: 5/5
• The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic - by Dan Ariely - Rating: 4/5
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard - by Chip and Dan Heath - Rating: 5/5
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die - by Chip and Dan Heath - Rating: 5/5
• Unthinking: The Surprising Forces Behind What We Buy - by Harry Beckwith - Rating 3/5
• Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions - by Dan Ariely - Rating: 5/5

Personal Branding and Business Philosophy Books:

• The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life) - by Chris Hardwick - Rating: 4/5
• How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age - by Dale Carnegie & Associates - Rating: 3/5
• Anything You Want - by Derek Sivers - Rating: 4/5
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't - by Jim Collins - Rating: 4/5
• The Thank You Economy - by Gary Vaynerchuk - Rating: 5/5
• The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a New Generation - by Jay Elliot and William L. Simon - Rating: 4/5
• StrengthsFinder 2.0 - by Tom Rath - Rating: 5/5
• Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time - by Keith Ferazzi and Tahl Raz - Rating: 4/5
• Atlas Shrugged: (Centennial Edition) - by Ayn Rand - Rating: 5/5
• Poke the Box - by Seth Godin - Rating 4/5

*Note: there are Amazon Affiliate links contained in this list. Please buy something to subsidize my own reading habit. :)

A Complete List of 2012 Marketing and Business Books

What do you think of the books on this list?  I need your help to figure out what's missing, what deserves to be there, and what people should avoid. What great marketing and business books can you recommend? Leave a suggestion (or a few) in the comments to help my readers and me as we set our sites on the 2012 26 Book Challenge. Be sure to also leave a comment if you plan on being a part of the challenge in 2012.

Image credit: Flickr 

Is Squarespace V6 the Future of Landing Page Testing?

The next chapter in Internet marketing will be about coversion rate optimization (CRO) and landing page testing, the process of getting more people to take action on your website by testing out different versions of the same page. And although it's still in beta, Squarespace version six (v6) might soon emerge as the most powerful tool available to landing page optimization (LPO) professionals. Let's take a look at why Squarespace v6 might help boost your conversion rate.

What's so Big About Squarespace Version Six?

Squarespace recently launched beta testing on the long-awaited next version of acclaimed hosted website and blog building solution, which comes after a huge round of funding worth nearly $40M back in 2010. Squarespace has always been known for their intuitive web building tools, and now they've gone a step further. 

Squarespace v6 will feature, among other things, a new grid design interface, allowing web designers (and marketers!) to quickly build pages with custom layouts without using custom CSS stylesheets. Watch this video to see how building any page layout for a landing page in Squarespace will soon be a matter of drag-and-drop (about 28 seconds in).

Squarespace 6 from Squarespace on Vimeo.

Building Landing Pages Quickly in Squarespace V6

The key to landing page testing is the ability to quickly build two or more versions of the same page and see which one leads to the best outcomes on your site. You can use software such as Google Website Optimizer to test pages against each other and determine which one produces more sales, leads, whatever it is that's important to you with scientific evidence and facts to know for sure. For example, which of these pages do you think would lead to the most amount of new Squarespace sign-ups?

(This is a common layout for landing pages.)(Squarespace v6 will provide easy options to make major layout changes.)(Squarespace v6 can help test whether videos or images are more effective on your site.)

Conversion Rate Optimization Made Easy With Squarespace V6

The tough thing about landing page optimization has traditionally been that very few tools allow you to 1) build the pages, 2) split up the traffic a page receives and divvy it up to the various landing pages and 3) keep track of all the math in order to tell you which page won. Tools like LiveBall and Unbounce support these tasks, but they can require an additional investment that many don't have.

Squarepace v6 and free landing pages like Google Website Optimizer (GWO) could be used together to build and launch tests quickly and with minimal effort. All Squarespace has to do at this point is to pair their new grid-based page design tools with the ability to embed some simple page-level GWO JavaScript into the HTML page head.

If the Squarespace team is wise, they'll see the power of this untapped market and act accordingly. A simple tweak to what can be embedded on each landing page (i.e., the GWO JavaScript) and Squarespace v6 becomes a powerful option and one of the cheapest tools for conversion rate optimization and landing page testing on the web.

Have you looked at Squarespace in the past for landing page testing? What was your experience? 

Will Squarespace V6 Surpass Current Limitations?

Fans of Squarespace have been looking to the long-awaited next version of the web publishing platform to address current Squarespace limitations and a growing number of requests for new features. Will Squarespace deliver on customer requests or have the expectations been set too high after a few years of pent up demand?

What Changes Should Squarespace Make?

Squarespace has a pretty broad user community ranging widely in interests, abilities and areas of knowledge. Customers vary from small business owners, to marketers, to designers and developers due to its overall strength as a web platform. These differences were incredibly visible when looking at the responses to my recent survey of the Squarespace community.

Over the summer I asked over a hundred Squarespacers their opinion of the content management system, and what they'd change about the platform if they could. Opinions of Squarespace were generally quite postive, but there were requests for advances in a few major categories:

The responses for Squarespace improvements were varied. An equal thirty percent are looking for advancements in customization and extensibility of the Squarespace platform. Sixteen percent are looking for more intuitive and informative tools to help them use Squarespace, and close to ten percent didn't want any changes at all. How will Squarespace Six deliver in these areas? 

Customization - Squarespace six will introduce new and amazing ways to customize our websites. Squarespace has revealed some details about the new template development kit system that will allow designers to create fully customizable and portable templates that can be applied to many different sites. 

Extensibility - Extensibility is another major area of expansion for v6. While you can plug and play nearly any type of widget or JavaScript-enabled third-party code already on Squarespace, there isn't a direct integration with these third parties. Squarespace v6 will directly integrete with Google Docs for data collection and MailChimp for email delivery. This new technology will also enable Squarespace to tackle more robust functionality in the future, such as ecommerce.

Help & How-To - While the designer and developer community are antsy for customization and extensibility, a large number of casual Squarespace users are looking to make the current tool more polished and easier to use overall. Making tools like the WYSIWYG editor more reliable, along with hiding sophisticated options when you don't need them are examples of the changes non-developer types are looking for in version six. They also want more and better tutorials on how to use the platform.

Other - The "Other" bucket of responses consisted of a hodgepodge of issues that illustrate how important a handful of other issues are to some people, ranging from specific Squarespace product improvements such as multi-language support and more mobile support, to issues with the company itself, like customer communication planning and pricing of certain features.

Will Squarespace Version Six Deliver?

The challenge for Squarespace becomes clear after a simple glance at the pie chart summarizing the community's requests. Squarespace must advance the tool to meet the needs of sixty percent of its users while not confusing or upsetting those that want Squarsepace to be simpler and/or not to change at all.

Having built a new site on Squarespace six for their Friends & Family beta, I continue to be impressed by how thorough Squarespace has been in their approach to rethink the needs of their customers. I think they're in the process of nailing the changes we've all been asking for, however great and varied they may be.

What is on your wishlist for Squarespace v6? Is a specific change you'd like to see, or do you just have problems with a current feature or process in Squarespace? Share your Squarespace limitations, aspirations and expectations for version six with our community here in the comments.

A Mega Squarespace Review: Insights from a Dozen Customers

Are you happy with your web publishing platform? Have you considered Squarespace to publish your blog or website? If you don't have a Squarespace website, you might want to check out their free trial after exploring this resource.

A dozen satisfied customers contributed their thoughts to form this Mega Squarespace Review. (And if you think they're happy with Squarespace now, just wait until the upcoming Squarespace v6 is released.) If you're considering the move to Squarespace, you won't want to miss the insights below.

Overall Squarespace Review

Overall, people had a very positive opinion of  

Squarespace.

  It was rated about

4.75

/5   based on

12

customer reviews  

    Price currently begins at

$8/Month

  Product description:  

Squarespace is a fully hosted, completely managed environment for creating and maintaining a beautiful website, blog, or portfolio. Squarespace is for anyone who wants to create an extraordinary website. Bloggers. Businesses. Photographers. The flexible platform powers sites of all sizes.

1. Josh Braaten

Josh Braaten a marketer, blogger and the founder of BigPictureWeb.com.

BigPictureWeb.com is a Squarespace website

      I give Squarespace

5

/      

5

stars.    

"I've been using Squarespace for two years now. In fact, this site is built on Squarespace. I've been happy with their services overall since writing my 2010 review of Squarespace. Despite the need for a few tweaks here and there, Squarespace has allowed me to grow my blog on a hassle-free, intuitive website platform. And from what I've seen of Squarespace v6, the next version of the platform  currently under development, the future couldn't be brighter."

2. Alan Houser

Alan Houser is a long-time Squarespace user and developer. Check out his site, SquareFlair.com, then read his Squarespace review:

Squareflair.com Squarespace review

"I love Squarespace because I look good in hats.

Having spent over a decade in the I.T. industry, I have a great deal of respect for Web Developers. To run smoothly, traditional web development projects have involved about three people. There's the Project Manager, the Designer and the Developer.

With Squarespace, I honestly don't need a Developer in my process. There was a bit of a learning-curve to figure-out how to best-use the tools that Squarespace has built for me, and I've had to bone-up on my CSS skills. But now, I'm quite confident that if it can be designed, I can build it."

I've successfully learned to wear the hats of the Business Development Manager, The Project Manager, The UI Designer and the Front-End Developer.

3. Tony Ham

Tony Ham is a Squarespace designer, Chicago-area foodie, and all-around nice guy. Check out Tony's website at TonyHamCreative.com. His Squarespace review goes into Squarespace as a developer platform:

TonyHamCreative is a Squarespace website

"Squarespace is an amazing resource for anyone who wants to build a website. For the novice, it is easy enough set up and be up and running in no time. For someone with more web development skills, html and CSS knowledge, it provides the ability to customize your design and functionality to your desires. If you are adept at Javascript or JQuery, then you have even more ability to customize to create the exact website you desire.

I am a web designer who has transitioned from the print design world and Squarespace has made that transition very accommodating. The more I learn, the more I can apply to the websites I am creating.

I love the ease of getting a website up and running in a matter of hours in optimal conditions. It allows more time and thought to be spent on the design and functionality of the site, as opposed to technical elements of the set-up. I love being able to log in and work on the site from anywhere with an internet connection.

I do wish sometimes that there were more available functions and features to "plug in" instead of finding custom work-arounds or implementing JQuery. However, I find those to be fairly minimal. But the developer community and forums continue to grow and solutions require a bit more work and research but can be had."

4. Jason Barone

Jason Barone is a designer, developer and web technology consultant, providing end-to-end web solutions for small businesses and entrepreneurs. At his company, Launchfront.com, he builds "frustration-free" websites powered by Squarespace and other industry-leading applications. His personal website is available at JasonBarone.com.

JasonBarone.com Squarespace review

"Overall Recommendation/Summary:

As a business owner, designer, and developer with years of experience working with website and CMS platforms, I feel Squarespace is the best and most advanced web platform available. The unique combination of top-of-the-line hosting, scalable and reliable software, and 24/7 support provides a rock solid platform to build on. Squarespace's beautifully designed interface also provides an excellent way to build and configure sites 100% in the browser, which cuts down development time.

Best Features:

• 24/7 Support from real people with less than 10 minute response time
• "Design in the browser" CSS interface
• Sections can be manipulated to do almost anything

Worst Features:

• Lack of features that other platforms may have
• Built-in Customizable Forms should be available in mid-tier monthly plan"

5. Nathan Miller

Nathan Miller, aka "the Square Coach" of SquareCoach.com, is a graphic artist and web developer from Indiana. Nathan is a fan of Squarespace, but his review reveals how some Squarespace customers are growing eager for version 6 of the platform to launch.

Squarecoach.com is built on Squarespace.

"I absolutely love Squarespace. Version 5 has almost all of the features I could possibly need in a website. In areas that it doesn't support I have found work-arounds. That said, I will admit V5 is starting to feel long in the tooth. Sometimes it seems like there are too many steps to do a simple thing, and one really needs to know some hacks to make a stand out design, plus side-bars are a mess if you want to control which "widgets" go where.

However, once the site is laid out adding/maintaining content is slick and easy."

6. Jamie Brittain

Jamie Brittain is a tech geek, designer/illustrator, and aspiring coder from across the pond. Jamie has found Squarespace to be useful for multiple projects, including his own website, JamieBrittain.com. 

JamieBrittain.com is built on Squarespace

"Squarespace, is by far, the best and my favourite web design host of all time. I've used Squarespace for various projects for just over a year no and I've enjoyed every minute of working with Squarespace! Nothing else compares!

I think that Squarespace is the new, easiest, and best way to design websites. Also, with V6 coming soon, I believe that designers, developers and even everyday bloggers will be able to make an amazing, unique website."

7. Dave Schlottman

Dave Schlottman of Quawkle.com likes Squarespace because of its security. If you've ever been hacked on another platform, then Dave's review of Squarespace will be of particular interest to you. Also, Dave is a fan of the Android and iOS apps available for Squarespace.

Quawkle's Squarespace review

"I love using Squarespace for many reasons, but one of the top reasons is its security. When I was on Wordpress, I continually had to update due to sercurity vulnerabilities. After my site was hacked, I decided that there had to be a better option.

Squarespace setup is dead simple. You pick out a template and then modify it to look like you want. It doesn't take long to get your site up and running.

In addition, the Squarespace apps for iOS are fantastic for posting and managing your blog.

The Squarespace site tools are great and getting better. I would recommend Squarespace to anyone starting a new blog or looking for a better solution for their current blog."

8. Kevin Cummins

Kevin Cummins is an education blogger and consultant from Australia. Kevin tried more complicated platforms before finally finding Squarespace, where he was quickly able to construct the site he needed.

Squarespace website edgalaxy.com

"I started out 3 years ago on square space after Drupal and joomla left me confused and frustrated about starting a decent website. To cut a long story short I achieved on ss in a week what had taken me months on any other platform because it just made sense and above all else if I got stuck I could get excellent support within 10 minutes or so.

I now run over 10 ss sites myself as a developer and have numerous others for schools and small business under www.techzoo.com.au and I constantly check out alternatives to ss and try a couple as I really don't think they are as affordable as they could be to developers and still use ss as my platform of choice.

Can't wait to try v6 and see what I can do with it."

9. Joel Gray

Joel Gray is a website and visual designer from g3D.net. Joel appreciates the ability to apply his custom CSS code to multiple websites. His Squarespace review also highlights the gallery feature of the platform.

Squarespace website g3d

"The service that Squarespace provides has been an integral part of the way I communicate with my clients and prospective clients.  From day one I was able to assemble a respectable web presence that not only looked good, but had plenty of robust options to customize.  I used a pre-built template and easily modified it to my liking.  Yes I've gone the ultra-minimalist route, one which makes the Google search page look downright cluttered!  But that's what I was after, an interface that was minimal and allowed the content to be the focus.  Squarespace really does well at this, giving you templates and tools to develop a web interface that is consistent and clean, yet you still have the ability to add your own code for more advanced customization.

My favorite Squarespace feature is the Picture Gallery, it's simple to set up and scales perfectly to any size monitor as you flip through images - it just works they way you expect it to.  The recent introduction of social widgets has been a great addition, but I'm hoping that the next update to Squarespace offers the ability to add these and other 'widgets' to the center page and not restricted to just the side navigation panels.

I recommend Squarespace often...  These guys are doing it right!"

10. Shirley Woods

Shirley Woods is a designer. She uses her knowledge of CSS to modify existing Squarespace templates. Some designers start with a blank template and use their own CSS entirely, while designers like Shirley find efficiencies by modifying existing Squarespace templates.

Update (12/6/11): Since writing this review, Shirley has moved away from Squarespace and now uses Wordpress.

"For too long, I used open source platforms to develop business blogs and websites for myself and small local enterprises. That is - until I found Squarespace. No longer am I worrying about or spending time on plugin conflicts and security update issues. Squarespace lets me focus on what's important. I can at last 'enjoy' developing and blogging thanks to Squarespace.

Squarespace is an absolute joy to work with. I have layout style freedom, aided as necessary by a variety of great templates. Beginners can build a blog or website straight from a choice of templates. Developers can start with a blank canvas. I'm an in-betweener. I start with a template and prefer to customise it with a little CSS, HTML and some Javascript here and there. All basic stuff taken from code and resources provided by Squarespace or other faithful developers who are kind enough to share.

I'm big on keeping sites simple yet effective, as at the end of the day it's content that is king. Squarespace lets me showcase that content, be it text, photo galleries or video - on a beautiful and powerful platform.

Price-wise, my costs are very reasonable and easily predictable every month. I'm no longer a sucker, wooed by the latest open source single licence theme because of 'how it looks'. Been there got too many t-shirts. With four years experience under my belt, I now know that what defines a great theme or template goes much deeper than simple cosmetics.

I'm building my blogs on Squarespace version 5 presently. Squarespace version 6 is in Beta as I speak and I cannot wait to see what that's capable of. Squarespace saves me time, money and heartache. Squarespace gives me peace of mind and a phenominal platform to build websites and blogs for myself and others!

A key aspect to define a great blog or website platform - is support. Squarespace support rocks! I defy you to find better! 'Nuff said."

11.Lawrence van Niekerk

Lawrence van Niekerk is a blogger and painter from South Africa. The Quiet Front is his Squarespace website, a place where he shares things he deems to beautiful and inspiring. Lawrence's Squarespace review explains why he picked Squarespace instead of Tumblr.

The Quiet Front Squarespace website review

"I run a small personal blog related to art, photography, film and music (I lie it's mainly smut).

I could have started a tumblr a couple of years ago but I'm currently employed as a construction worker in Swaziland and that would mean updating my blog once a month when I go into South Africa for supplies and then it lying dormant for the rest of the time, so out of necessity I looked for something that would allow me to schedule all my posts so that the site stays active even when I'm offline.

I found Squarespace when the advertised on Daringfireball (my favorite tech blog).

I have never built a site before but their system is very intuitive. I had to learn a bit and when I got stuck, I just asked questions from their help desk or on the developers forum - I always got the answers I needed. My blog went live this month.

My site is really stripped down to the bone but that is how I roll. The fact that I can add components as and when I want  is real plus - especially because I can do it myself.

I'm a very visual person and the fact that the back-end of Squarespace doesn't look like ass means a lot to me and tells you a lot about their priorities.

The fact that I don't need to use additional services like Amazon S3 is huge and makes uploading and linking so much less complicated.

I'm never going to be a poster boy for Squarespace (the "Content, Structure & Style" podcast always seems to be talking about designing sites for schools and churches) but it is a perfect service for me because I can do what I want without relying on anyone else. It's great because I can bend it to my will as opposed trying to jam my vision into a limited template."

12. Ed Lucas

Ed Lucas (aka "the artist presently known as Ed") is an artist from San Diego. Ed is mostly a fan of Squarespace, but his review goes into a few rough edges of the platform that he hopes will be ironed out with the release of Squarespace version six.

Tapkae's Ed Lucas reviews Squarespace

"In general I am happy I got two sites on Squarespace. Mainly, I appreciated the freedom to get on with the work of creating and presenting content, rather than sweating the headaches of my own Wordpress installation, where I had periodically gone mad with the feeling of being hopelessly over my head in the backend and often fearing the upgrade process. I did lose data there and never felt like I had any control over the tools. As a person who wrote web entries since 2002, by the time I was drawn to Squarespace, I had done the old fashioned HTML pages, been hosted with a couple companies, used B2 and Wordpress for blogs, and then finally entrusted my site to an all-Wordpress package. And lost data some times. I couldn't decide to ditch it all and walk away or suck it up and rebuild things. Agonizing at times.

So Squarespace appeared and made the case that the backend was taken care of, and things like the drag and drop menu arrangements were quite a nice thing since I have several pages and sometimes need to rebuild things some. The ability to work the essential CSS components by the style editor was a charmer and freed me up to do things I rarely tried before.

For the first site I got running, Jubilee Economics, I was happy to find it would be pretty easy for multiple authors to contribute a range of content without any of them risking the integrity of the site. We were starting a podcast, which was new for me. Worked pretty well for a while till I got messages saying audio wasn't playing back right. Long story short, Squarespace said to me that they were not equipped with the right server equipment to handle the kind of load that podcasts can place (they don't have byte-range request ability, ala YouTube). Well, I wish I knew that a year and a half ago! What has driven me rather nuts is that there were a couple times when discussing my account and goals that Customer Service could have notified me that my request for more podcast-ability was not such a good idea, and that I might be better off with Libsyn (where I did go, after way much scrambling).

For my personal site, TAPKAE.com, I took advantage of many options to feature nearly a decade's worth of posts, galleries, endless capacity to put my old out of print albums up, etc. One thing I did was to manually and visually edit my old posts for some style and form, link checking, and general cleanup. That's 550 posts, people. It took me two weeks of pretty solid, nearly round-the-clock work! Since I just moved to Squarespace at that time, I was ready to commit to a massive process such as that in the spirit of the newness of it all.

This is where I think Squarespace falls on its face, and I hope V6 can do better... Mostly I have to complain about the limits of the so-called "content management system" part of it. Some of this stuff should be the standard issue features, not things I'm complaining about as V6 emerges... I hope they did something about this...

You know, I have not found any site-wide "find and replace" functionality for links. What a pain in the fuggin' hindquarter to have to visually skim for links and open entries to manually replace links. With sites filled with content like I have, this is a MAJOR bummer. I never swooned over Dreamweaver, but not having such a function DOES NOT speak of "content management."

One thing I still respect about Wordpress is the way posts can be managed with a bulk function, and such things as the quick edit option for tags and so on. In a similar way, I'd like for each image to have a master window to edit all its data (alt tags, not even a part of things but in HTML?) at once, including the alt tags, and a list of where that item can be found in the site, entry by entry. Audio files should be treated the same way.

Maybe I'm nuts but I am a captioning fool on images. But this business of opening each image's own caption editor is rather clumsy. They need to take a look at Facebook's model where one can just go down the page and enter text and click a few vital options as the whole gallery is visible at once. Again, this is sort of like Wordpress and the post or page management area.

And what's up with making it so hard to get a URL address to a given gallery picture with caption? Sure, I can look at the image on its own but I want to send the info along to friends. No page URL? If I have 100 pix and it's #78, all I can do is point people to the gallery and say " 'look for the one with the guy who's wearing the funny hat...' about 3/4 down"?

I've slowly learned CSS better than I used to because Squarespace made some things possible and something rather odd to work with. I still wish there was one clear view of the whole style sheet where all things could be seen together, even if the template parts are locked. Maybe V6? The template override thing has so far been an unwelcome challenge at times. I don't know why they don't provide a few presets that are sub-templates of a given template design (again, like Wordpress with full page, standard, or another option.)

Just a word to podcasters who are looking for a platform to host from... this aint the place for hosting the AUDIO files. Get Libsyn for that. You can keep your RSS feed here (do it properly from the start and use a dedicated feed from a second journal) but not the audio. Sure, you get "unlimited" storage and bandwidth, but they came out in support letters and said they aren't equipped for the load. Sure, you don't pay more for the space and bandwidth, but they can't serve your files right for that application. It's the same as they said about hosting video on YouTube, Vimeo, etc. But it wasn't so clear that podcasting would be hampered this way. If Squarespace can say they don't offer email, then they should be as clear that podcast work has to be limited to generating the iTunes friendly RSS feed, which it does well enough (that was one of the selling points for me originally).

The sorting out of the podcast disappointment caused me to have to get new hosting at Libsyn (cheap as 5/mo for 50mb), lose my iTunes feed address since Squarespace was unable or unwilling to offer the addition of one more iTunes tag that would do it automatically for any subscribers. I tried moving my podcast blog posts one-by-one over to a new journal, lost categories and tags, and then found that after I had moved things to that journal that it was not ideal given the structure of the rest of our web efforts, I had to move them back, and Squarespace was helpless to do so in any automated way. So BACK to manually reassigning posts, retagging them all, and because the upset was so big, I had decided to change the titles too, now I had to change them back and Squarespace said they had no way to recall the titles of old posts so that the links would work again! No CMS value in any of this! (I got lucky though and found that in the editor window within the browser, the names all came back perfectly in the title form field. That at least saved my bacon. I was prepared to scour old emails and Facebook posts for titles that I had sent out so I could reconstruct things so the links would not be broken. I might as well been working my way through a folder of local files like in 2002. Good thing I have the time and patience for this. What does one expect of a CMS except for content to be managed?

Okay, so maybe V6 is gonna fix this stuff. I've registered enough complaints about these that I hope they make the cut, but I'm a pretty late comer to the Squarespace world."

What's your opinion of Squarespace? Leave your own Squarespace review in the comments. If you're not on Squarespace yet, feel free to ask your questions or concerns about the platform in the comments.