I’ve been creating graphics for Mike Browning‘s various business ventures for over fifteen years. Mattlock isn’t a new business but Mike recently called me and said he needed to catch up with the rest of the online world. He also hopes to make up for some lost time.

Mike has been selling All Weather Steel Doors in Reno for over ten years. These are high quality steel security doors, storm doors and screen doors. They are ideal for homes in any part of our country but especially for regions that have harsher weather than we have here in Southern California.

So the plan was to get his business registered with Google Places, contact the manufacturer to get the best possible images of the products Mattlock sells and develop some talking points. Because my clients know their businesses better than anyone else, we discussed what is most important to his customers. Home security, Mattlock’s excellent regional reputation, displaying the All Weather Steel Doors product line, SEO and responsive compatibility for mobile devices were key goals.

As I worked the site, I created a couple of pathways for visitors to get to individual product pages from the home page. I tasked Mike with recording some video with his down-to-earth perspective on home security. He has made use of television commercials in the past and has a good sense of what needs to be communicated for marketing his business. I installed a testimonial feature into the site and we plan to get some of his commercial real estate clients to write a few comments until he can glean some endorsements from retail customers—of which he will have quite a few.

Last but not least, I felt it would be important for his site to be responsive to mobile devices. That way people who are out shopping at the local large box hardware stores can find ‘StormDoorsReno.com” with their phones and easliy see what’s available from a high quality specialty vendor such as Mattlock. They need to know that not only that a higher quality product is locally available before they make that purchase but that it will be installed by the man who sold them their new door.

Design wise, I scouted my locale and found some textures to photograph with my camera that I thought might lend themselves to this project. I chose this wooden house siding. I took the manufacturer’s supplied product images of doors and decided to zoom in on them for the home page slider and product teasers and product headings. My reasoning was that not all the images I had to work with where of the same quality. Closeups tended to diminish this quality issue. I also found an interesting map at iStockPhotos that shows the Reno area that hit a nice balance of style without going over the top as we want to emphasize the locale. Mike is real pleased with these results.

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Before I get started let me clarify, a Facebook Page is not to be confused with your Facebook personal profile page, your Facebook home page or your Facebook wall. A Facebook Page (formerly known as a Fan Page) is a page you can create to promote your business. Facebook now simply calls them Facebook Pages.

Three examples of new Facebook Page Cover Photos for my clients.

Soon, Facebook will launch the use of Timeline on all Facebook Pages. That means if you have a Facebook Page you should be making plans soon to do a bit of editing to keep up with the Jones’. Also, Facebook has some rules for your review—since these guys are almost impossible to contact, I’d make every effort to not inadvertently wind up on their ‘blacklist.’

So what are the rules? You can read them here. In a nutshell, this is more about the large cover photo at the top of the page than anything. Suffice it to say, you don’t want to add any calls to action, for example: encouraging “Likes,” selling a product or promoting sign ups for a service. Contact information is also a no-no. Don’t add your phone number, email address or URL to the image. There are other places on the page to do that.

In this instance think Facebook is promoting creativity which is a very good thing—so go for it! Need help? I know somebody who can help you, call today! 949.496.7350

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This isn’t the first non-profit project my friend, Debbie Nichols, and I have worked on before. But this time, in 2011, she brought me the opportunity to build Families Called to Duty. Their mission is to support stateside military families of deployed service men and women.

Debbie’s motivation stemmed from first-hand experiences as her enlisted daughter was deployed to Afghanistan by the Air Force. Debbie and husband Alan went from ‘empty nesters’ to parenting their two granddaughters during that deployment. It was an eye-opening experience. While their journey was a challenging but positive one, Debbie realized that not everyone has the resources to have the same successful positive outcome.

Debbie felt so strongly that she needed to share her experience that she wrote a book about it. Her mission: to offer insight to fellow military families so that should the time come, their family is better prepared and knows where to find various forms of available support before the need arises. Subsequently granddaughters, Ivie and Bailey (with Debbies help), wrote a book following a Q&A structure for deployed kids too. In their book, Deployed Kids, the girls help to reassure fellow deployed kids and deal with their unique challenges.

Debbie had also been invited to meet with White House Administration staff in Washington D.C. to be briefed on how to become more effective in her pursuits. So an internet presence was needed to provide a landing spot to help others become informed.

I think in this instance the design process speaks for itself. I incorporated the Blue Star flag (a symbol for deployed families), the American flag, a few iStockPhotos images and I grabbed a few shots from Debbie’s Facebook photo album. We think it worked out nicely.

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Client, Pat Hartley, of Accounting On The Go! recently contacted me and requested that we get together to make her some new shoes. As it turns out, Zazzle now sells (among a bazillion other things) customized Keds Sneakers. I was amazed at just how much we could do with them.

Over the years, I’ve heavily branded Accounting On The Go! and having all the elements in place makes it pretty easy to build things like this.  Visit my Solutions: Case Studies page and you’ll see my Small Business Branding example I designed for AOTG. So once again I was allowed to roll up my sleeves and play with her design elements and made a pair of sneakers that are “too cool for school.” Not only can you add graphics to the key parts of the canvas on the shoes, you can pick colors for the rubber edging, canvas piping, eyelets and shoelaces.  Here are the results.

From time to time I get to be involved with interesting assignments that lure me out of my computer cave. I love when that happens and thought I’d share the outcome with you.

Earlier this year, PCGS client Erika Quest, owner of Studio Q Pilates Conditioning, was assigned to write an article for the IDEA Fitness Journal. IDEA is the world’s largest association for fitness and wellness trainers. Erika has been featured as an IDEA Author and Premier Presenter for the last several years. Erika is also a member of the BOSU® International Master Trainer Team and develops fitness curriculum applying an authentic Pilates-centric twist for use on the BOSU®. Aware of this relationship, IDEA requested a photo spread article featuring a collection of her custom tailored Pilates for the BOSU® routines for the April 2011 issue. In the article, Erika makes this point in her introduction, ”The BOSU® Balance Trainer is the perfect accessory to complement a wide range of authentic Pilates exercises.” Below, you can see a screen shot of the final layout and April’s cover.

My involvement included documenting Erika’s movements with my trusty old Nikon D70 as she demonstrated correct form as well as editing out the background in the final editing process. While Studio Q is beautifully appointed, we discovered after the shoot that my shots with the backgrounds intact might be a little distracting. Once again I will underscore my resemblance to a Swiss Army knife by getting the project completed beautifully, simply and on deadline.

We expect that fitness trainers all over the United States will enjoy Erika’s article for April as well as see a campaign by BOSU® driving home the perfect complementary marketing piece. If you would like to enjoy this article you may download it here.

IDEA is the world’s largest association for fitness & wellness professionals. The IDEA Fitness Journal is the publication IDEA exclusively offers to their worldwide professional membership.

If you’ve read my FREE Creative Brief post you know I believe any creative project will benefit from starting with a plan. Whether you are branding your company or building a Web site, putting your goals on paper is important.

In the spirit of FREE stuff, I will again offer a free questionnaire—this time for a Web site. Should you choose to fill it out with gusto, you will be rewarded with an collection of your responses in one neat and tidy document. After you submit the form I will send an email to you with a PDF document attached with my questions and your answers. When the day comes to contact a creative (like PCGS or the designer/developer of your choice) you will be better equipped to supply them with key information.

Branding vs. Site Planning

This may seem like pointing out the obvious but it must be noted that designing a Web site does not include logo design or branding for a business. Branding should be addressed before you have a site built. But sometimes it isn’t. Any designer worth their salt isn’t going to do it all for the same price as a Web site. So please be prepared. Branding or logo design is a separate project. If you haven’t already done so, check out my FREE Creative Brief post and get started on your first order of business. If you already have that aspect of your marketing plan completed—then by all means, let’s talk about Web site goals.

Diagramming a Site Plan is Highly Recommended

If you want to make your communications with your developer more effective, by all means, sketch out how you think your site should be structured. But there are two aspects to the structure of a site. Page st  My pricing structure is affected by how much time I need to spend in all phases including the planning.

The term “site map” will bring to mind a different meaning for a Webmaster than for most folks, so for the sake of this article I refer to site planning as making a diagram. Something that looks like a genealogy family tree or a very simplified flowchart. Often times people sketch something like this on a napkin at a business lunch. Even if you do make the effort, please don’t be offended if you get a lot of questions or confused looks because without clarification—sometimes a diagram only makes sense to the person who drew it. Don’t worry, a good developer will keep asking questions until everyone is on the same page. It is an additional means of communication that can help clear up any weaknesses that arise from responses in the questionnaire. It can especially help with choosing an ideal site navigation scenario.

If you have a diagram in digital form I provide a place in the form where you can attach it. So grab your diagram and let’s get busy!

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Is your business branded?

Corporate branding is more than a logo. It’s the result of a road map crafted to guide your marketing creatives as they make the best possible impression on your target audience. Where do you find such a road map? It all starts with a Creative Brief.

How does one write a Creative Brief? Here is one of my favorite sayings: ”Once you know the questions—the answers come easy.” It’s hard to be objective where your own business is concerned. If you don’t know what questions to ask yourself, it’s hard to move forward. So to assist you with marketing momentum, I offer my Creative Brief questionnaire as a tool to help gather your thoughts. You will receive a FREE PDF document with your responses to prepare for the day you are ready to take that next big marketing step. My questionnaire asks simple questions that you should already know about your business but perhaps have never put into writing.

Caveat

Please note that my FREE questionnaire will not write an actual final draft creative brief or produce a logo—but once you’ve completed the form you will have a lot of useful information pulled together into one document that can be used for a final design brief, write a request for proposal or scope of work document for your in-house designer, freelancer or agency of your choice. Keep in mind a Creative Brief is only the beginning of the design phase—but many businesses overlook this step and it shows in their weak marketing message.

Your thoughtful responses to the PCGS Creative Brief questionnaire will help remove doubt and assumptions about your goals for a marketing message. They serve as valuable elements in building a solid Creative Brief which will point your designers in the direction of success.

The Pitch

Do I hope you’ll consider PCGS? Of course! But do yourself a favor and put my questionnaire to use. You have nothing to loose. Whether you choose to use my services or not—I hope you will give each question serious consideration. The price is right—FREE! What’s not to love?

Are you on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? While not everyone benefits from social networks—unless you know for sure your business won’t get any traction, why not try a jumpstart for your business? It’s terrific low cost advertising. If you do everything yourself it can even be free. But where do you start? You can start just about anywhere but here I will point out how I would go about it.

Gravatar: Globally Recognized Avatars

Have you ever been to a blog site and noticed that comments to an article often display little icons next to the author of the comment’s name? Often the icon looks sort of generic and repetitive. Those icons are known as “avatars.” But occasionally you’ll see that a few clever folks have managed to customize the avatar associated with their name. In most instances, they registered for a Gravatar.

You can customize your online image with your own personal Gravatar which will follow you to any site that communicates with Gravatar. Most WordPress sites do. A cool example of a fancy Gravatar implementation is found in the WordPress.org forum. It’s a post I made in their forum. If you mouse over it you will see a popup to display sites I want to show off. Click the right spot on my Gravatar popup and you will be taken to my customized profile page at the Gravatar site.

Using Gravatar offers many more social networking advantages for personalization than a simple avatar but I will let you learn about them first hand. Just follow the link.

Twitter for those who have a little something to say

Everybody knows what Twitter is. Have you considered creating an account for your business and how about customizing the profile page too? After all, your profile page can be coordinated with the look of your corporate logo and/or website. All the kids are doing it!

Read the Twitter instructions and learn how to Tweet, ReTweet and hook your Tweets to other social networking sites like Gravatar, LinkedIn and Meetup.com. Keep it brief because you are limited to 140 characters (alas—if only FaceBook would limit their status lines like this). Here are two examples I created for my clients. Accounting On The Go and Erika Quest of Studio Q Pilates Conditioning.

LinkedIn isn’t just for posting resumes

LinkedIn is a terrific social networking site for those who are business and career minded. Customize your profile page with business promotion in mind. If you have a WordPress site you can feed your blog articles to your profile page. LinkedIn has a status line feature that can be shared with Twitter.

A free LinkedIn account also allows you to register to join career related groups that can help you with business advice from your industry’s colleagues.

Yelp hosts reviews for your business

Have you been Yelped? Hopefully only in a good way. If you haven’t heard of Yelp, check them out. See if businesses in your region are getting reviews. One word of caution, reviews can swing both ways, positive and negative. So make sure you have fans to support glowing reviews and work hard to maintain them.

Register your business at Yelp. If appropriate, you can post photos of your building, products or services in action to entice visitors to consider your products or services. Also consider that good Yelping can improve your SEO.

FaceBook is the mac-daddy of all social networking sites

Everyone has a FB account right? You may also notice that many of the people you know have FaceBook Fan pages to promote their business. How about you? Make sure if you sign up that you understand what you are getting. Do your homework and make sure you are getting a fan page and not a group page unless that is what you want.

Here is an example of a fan page that I created for Accounting On The Go! using previously designed and branded pieces that I share with you in my case studies. At this juncture I hope a little light ignites over your brain. You can get free advertising by investing some time with social networking. If you already have a branded identity, it would be crazy not to re-purpose your art for such promotion.

A smart choice for return on your investment

Why only have an avatar when you can be branded? I would love to help you with branding your business but if you already have that aspect of your business addressed—I can help place your message into a handful of social networking sites that just might help with search engine results and translates to new business. Either way, contact me.

HTML or WordPress for your next site?

Hopefully you have a relationship with a Web consultant who can assist you making this decision. But if you haven’t gotten that far yet and you’d like to have a little information before you assign your next Web project, I hope this post will help you make a more informed decision.

There is no one correct answer. What you decide to do is completely up to you. Having said that, let’s look at HTML.

Traditional, “Static,” HTML

Many developers are now transitioning to HTML 5. Is it ready for prime time? Pretty much, but not completely. Can it be used right now? Absolutely. If you happen to currently have an XHTML 1.0 site don’t worry. You don’t need to run out and revamp your site just yet. Just put it on your “To-Do” list—there is no reason to panic. But if you are having a new site built soon, it really should be HTML5 under the hood.

In general, HTML sites are static in that they deliver a finite number of pages. Each page is manually created by your Web developer or designer. There is no database working in the background generating pages when the browser comes a knocking at your Web site’s door. Static sites are simpler. We refer to them as “vanity” sites or “brochure-ware” sites that simply translate your printed marketing message to an online presence. Sites like this can be built and serve as your online very presence nicely. The advantage of this type of site is that there isn’t much about it that will interest hackers.

As a rule of thumb—if your site will not need frequent updates, has a limited number of products and/or services, doesn’t conduct e-commerce or need to track memberships, manage blog posts, events or transactions a static site may be fine for your needs.

Things to keep in mind should you choose the HTML route:

• Make sure you keep a copy of the site backed up for the sake of an emergency or a mistake is made somewhere along the way.
• If you decide to edit the site yourself it will need to know how to use an HTML editor or write HTML.
• You will need to upload your files either though a browser application or a FTP client to your hosting account.
• The cost of such a site is no more or less than a WordPress site. But how much it will cost is yet to be determined because your site, like your business, is unique.

WordPress as a Content Management System or Blog

If you want to enjoy features provided by a database driven content management system (AKA: CMS) you should consider a WordPress site. Yes, WordPress started out being useful for blogging but it now does so much more. Have a look at the WordPress.org site and search through their extend section. There are lots of site features that WordPress makes more convenient. You can (if you have the time) install, maintain and edit it yourself.

But there are a few things you need to keep in mind if you choose to have a WordPress site:

• WordPress is a perpetual work in progress. New versions come out many times each year. It is important to keep WordPress up to date so it will work properly but also for the sake of security. Hackers find weaknesses in older versions of OpenSource applications.
• The WordPress community offers thousands of available plugins (many are free and some for a fee). Some plugins need to be updated almost as often as WordPress itself. Even if you don’t have the plugin activated you’ll need to keep it updated.
• The WordPress community offers thousands of themes (many are free and some for a fee) which may or may not need occasional updates. Themes control the look of your WordPress site and you just might want to customize the theme you choose too.
• You will need to backup your site files as well as backup the MySQL database files regularly.
• Lastly, you should consider putting in place and maintaining security practices to strengthen your sites resistance to hackers.

If your site has a few pages, you may not need WordPress. But if you hope to be able to control the look of your site and extend it in the future with the power of a database, don’t hesitate to use WordPress. The real point of this article is to get you to ask yourself the all important question: What goals do you have for a site? Represent your products or services? Deliver a message or share your thoughts with the world? Collect names and addresses for a mailing list? Create an online meeting place? Sell products?

If you are ready to consider a new or a site update, I invite you to take advantage of my FREE Web Planning Questionnaire which will collect all your site building goals into one documented repository. It could serve as a strong road map for the developer you eventually choose to build your site.

One last consideration, often times I encounter potential clients who have already invested in an HTML site and think that they have a working site that can be used as a foundation for future iterations of a new site. Sadly, only very rarely does that scenario turn out to be true. Often times the person who built the site did so with such poor practices that working from the original site would simply be unethical for a legitimate Web developer to engage.

How much do I charge to build a site? Currently my base price is $2000. But that number is arbitrary and many factors come into play before a price is fixed. Once your goads are defined it becomes much easier to determine which tool to use and how much it takes to build your site. If you need help—contact me today!

Because I love to collect and share links it seemed best to put the business/techie links on another post and reserve this one for the fun stuff.  These links aren’t always funny but they are interesting. This post will also GROW by leaps and bounds. Feel free to subscribe, below.