The BLU Group Blog

Multi-tasking has become a way of life for many of us and with our responsibilities pulling us in many different directions; it’s easy to become overwhelmed. As an Account Executive at an advertising agency, I manage anywhere from 15-20 clients on a daily basis and am juggling dozens of projects at any given time. Since most of us can’t cut down on the amount of things we have to do, learning how to manage our time better can help one go from spinning your wheels to actually getting somewhere. Here are five tips I practice in order to utilize my time more effectively in order to get more done:

1. Prioritize Your Tasks – First thing every morning create a list of the tasks that need to get done that day. Rank them in order of importance and list the amount of time you expect each to take. This puts a clear plan in place and will allow you to fit them in throughout the day amongst various other responsibilities.

With the vast integration of social media into marketing, now more than ever it is crucial to remember that the main purpose of advertising should be to get people to JOIN your brand rather than just BUY your products.

In fact, social media has actually facilitated the notion of joining a brand instead of merely buying that brand’s products every once in a while. Whether it is through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, FourSquare, Instagram, Pinterest or any of the many other social media outlets, brands are encouraging their fans and followers to become a part of the brand instead of just a consumer.

Below are three brands that are effectively creating a platform for consumers to connect further with their brand:

Recently I've been working with a variety of different jQuery plug-ins on websites and wanted to share three of my favorites.

1. Nivo Slider - Photo slideshow with a lot of different customizing options and effects. Learn more about the Nivo Slider here.

2. Galleria - A simple JavaScript image gallery framework. What's nice with Galleria is that they have a lot of different themes (at an added cost per theme) that not only handle images, but also works with Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, and Vimeo. Check out the Galleria website to learn more about this great plug-in.

3. drPlayer - A playlist of mp3 files with simple styling. This player/playlist uses Flash along with jQuery to get the desired result. Click here to learn more about this plug-in.

4. TN3 Gallery - A photo slideshow framework that is customizable, and can also pull from Flickr. To learn more about this gallery click here.

One of the most tried and true forms of advertising is the print ad. As early as the 18th century, print ads in England were taking shape. Print ads not only convey a brands image, they offer a creative and unique way to reveal a new product or promotion. However, printing in advertising is not limited to print ads. There are many ways an advertising agency can utilize printing, be it direct mail, brochures, banners, billboards, business cards, and more. Understanding the basic printing jargon is crucial for the beginning Account Executive. Below are a few key terms that are essential when working with your printer.

Recently I updated our website with a new look that included a web font. Web fonts are great. They allow designers to carry over the look and feel of print pieces to the web. I have been using web fonts for a while on various clients’ websites.

• Body & Sol
• ABEE, Inc.

Those web fonts were achieved using a site called Cufon.

Cufon is a really nice alternative to buying a web font version of the font you use for your company. The way Cufon works is that it “consists of two individual parts – a font generator, which converts fonts to a proprietary format and a rendering engine written in JavaScript.” If you would like to learn more about Cufon click here.

Two more ways to use web fonts on your website are to use Typekit or to buy the web version of the font you want to use and load it onto your server.

When LinkedIn went live in 2003, it made its mark as a place for professionals to network and job hunt. People signed up, posted their resumes and waited for good things to happen. Now the social networking site is evolving into a robust tool for helping individuals and businesses succeed.

That’s right, businesses. There are 2 million business pages on LinkedIn. Viewers can learn about a business, “follow it” to hear about its latest products, and of course, search for job openings. Many employees also are linked to their employer’s company page, making it easier for businesses to find connections and sales prospects.

If you’ve kept a passive LinkedIn account for years, consider strategies for using the service to benefit yourself and your company. "Is there a place for small business on LinkedIn? Absolutely, yes,” says Lori Ruff, a social media trainer who wrote the book Rock the World with Your Online Presence with her partner, Mike O’Neil.

“If you ask small business people where their business and leads come from, most will tell you it’s from referrals,” Ruff says. “They can mimic that same behavior in the online space, and they will be more successful because it just enhances everything. You can speak to 10 to 15 people at a networking event, but on LinkedIn you can speak to hundreds of people and tell them so much more.”

Even though Facebook tends to dominate social web, Twitter is an important tool for social sharing and for building your own community. Twitter is an ideal tool to use to stay informed and to drive traffic to social properties. Most importantly, it helps you build relationships with like-minded people.

Below are tips that enable you to increase engagement with your communities on Twitter.

1. Infuse personality into your profile

People trust people, not default profile images. Use a real picture of yourself and infuse your unique personality into your bio. This generates interest and encourages people to not only follow you but relate to your passions and keep an eye on your tweets. It all leads to more retweets.

2. Be the first to break the news

Choose a topic (or several topics) that are near and dear to your heart and consistently provide valuable information. That will allow you to position yourself as an expert in that area and your followers will come to rely on the valuable information that's hitting their Twitter streams.

If you stay on top of the latest and greatest, try to break the news to your followers as you get it. That will increase the number of retweets you get and will foster the conversation around your news.

3. Tweet consistently, leave space

When building or designing a new printed or online piece it is important to be as efficient as possible. This way you stay on or under budget and stay as stress free as you can. Even though each project is different, and there are different procedures for both web and print work, some parts of projects are the same. Here are five tips to help you be as quick and efficient as you can be:

1. Get Organized. The more organized you can be at the beginning of a project the better off you are. Not only will this keep all of the project pieces in one place, but also help you streamline your workflow. By that I mean since everything is in one place/folder you can work on one piece at a time and put them all together in the end.

Let’s say you’re designing a brochure. You’ll have a document with the copy (text), images/artwork that you want to use, Photoshop and Illustrator files, maybe some sketches of your ideas, your InDesign working file, etc. All of these documents in one folder can get overwhelming and pieces could be lost. To organize this project you could create folders on your computer for:

As a web developer, I believe that all businesses should have a professionally designed, fully functional website that allows them to add and change their content and images easily. It’s also important to have great Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so they can be found by their prospects and customers. As a programmer, a custom content management system (CMS) always seemed like the perfect solution. This might be true with the right budget, but with a limited budget, this isn’t always possible.
 
Sometimes, off-the-shelf type products or templates can work great with the right amount of knowledge behind it and a little TLC. Using CMS programs like Drupal and WordPress or purchasing the right template package can still bring a lot of bang for their buck. I’m not suggesting to do it all yourself, in the end, you’ll be as bald as I am. But having a professional make adjustments and customize these products can save you significant development/programming time and still give you the professional look and functionality you are looking for.
 

Having a comments board on your website can be an effective way to drive traffic to your site. A board gives everyone with an opinion (read: everyone) an opportunity to share their two cents, often on whatever comes to mind. It creates a community.

What makes comment boards so good at garnering hits is that people involved in a message board discussion will often visit many times, coming back to see what people thought of their comments, to read other comments, or quite often, to argue with other commenters.

But because comment boards are usually open invitation parties full of strangers, these arguments can get downright ugly. Not everyone is a thoughtful guest. Some people visit just to “troll,” or intentionally inflame the discussion. And when people start mucking things up, they often don't stop until EVERYONE IS TALKING IN ALL CAPS AND RUINING CHRISTMAS FOR EVERYONE.

It can get real ugly. If you want to see how ugly it can get, read YouTube comments for awhile and peer into the belly of the beast.

Along with the trolls, sites can get polluted a number of other ways as well—advertisers, squatters, everything that comes from having an open door policy. That’s where moderators, or “mods,” can help.

What’s a mod?