The BLU Group Blog | Advertising | Marketing | Branding

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?

I just finished a catalog project here at BLU. As with all design we do, it was branded in a style consistent the client's brand message and image. It used appropriate fonts, colors, tone of copy, design elements, etc. - all based on their style. But how does a business get to the point of having a style? And once the style is established, how does that remain consistent to help strengthen their brand?

The short answer to that question is developing and following a brand style guide. Let's look a little deeper at what this means.

What is a Style Guide?

When we are first working with a client, a lot of research goes into getting to know them, their objectives, target audience, their competition, and much, much more. In order to do our best work, we need this information. From a design standpoint, the details gleaned allow us to evaluate a client's image and make appropriate adjustments. This ranges from a few design tweaks to full scale image redesigns.

In regards to full scale image redesigns, the best approach would be to have a client who is willing to scrap everything now and apply the new style to everything done from the launch point forward, but in a practical sense this is rarely financially feasible. In most cases we help a client move toward an improved brand a little at a time with each project we work on. No matter how we are adjusting course - a little or a lot - that first project is huge if there isn't an established style guide because it will serve as the foundation of their new or redefined brand style.

Yet, the stakes couldn’t be higher. A business begins with a name — the cornerstone of company identity that shapes branding, company tone and first impressions. Whether you’ll be name-brainstorming yourself or have hired a branding firm, here are a few tips to help you pick the right name for your new business.

1. Set the tone. Your business name sets the tone for all that follows. Think about what’s important to you and your business. What’s the first thing you want a customer to think in regard to your business? For example, a young company breaking into the financial advising field may be more concerned about credibility, and thus forgo the edgy, attention-grabbing name. Your own tone can be playful or academic, edgy or professional. Just make sure it reflects what your business is and what you want it to be in the future.

In real estate, the three most important things are location, location, location. And, the three most important areas to pay attention to in marketing today are automation, automation, automation.

Here are the eight technologies that you can use in any size business to automate and organize your sales and marketing process. These recommendations cover every price point and every intensity level. Take some time to review them and see which of these you’d like to incorporate into your business.

Warning: Don’t take on too many new applications at once. You'll get frustrated and overwhelmed. Instead, choose an area you’d like to automate, then do some research. Try the free trial first. Make a concerted effort to work with each tool until it becomes an integrated part in your process before you take on something new.

1. Customer relationship management tools

CRM tools help you manage the sales process. Sales software has changed from the clunky downloaded contact management systems of the past. They are now sleek social media and mobile integrated platforms that will help you build and develop relationships at any price point.

• Nimble is ideal for companies who build relationships and opportunities through social media introductions such as LinkedIn or Twitter. My favorite feature turns Tweets and comments into action items.