I’ve got a lot of love for my hometown and I’m glad I grew up there. It’s one of the reasons that I want to help businesses in those areas compete with larger companies. It’s been my experience that a unique brand and professional appearance can work wonders to create buzz and attract attention. I think the same goes for towns and communities wanting to promote themselves. Some small towns are on the decline while others are thriving. The ones that are thriving are the ones that have found their identity and do a good job promoting it.

It’s all about being able to differentiate yourself. Find those specific qualities that you or your community offers and showcase them! Is it your schools? The amazing landscape? Is it the attractive business potential? Make people know EXACTLY what you have to offer. Focus your image on the people you WANT to attract and let them come to you. Design is all about that. I know that budgets for many of these communities are limited but what makes these places great is the strength of their communities. Get together, find people with the talent and desire to make their communities better! Make a Facebook page and update it with local events and information about people. Start a blog, create some attractive and consistent community signs. Give your town a personality and brand it! There’s so much potential. Take a look at it for yourself and your community, there’s a lot you can do to strengthen the area you love so much.

I’m not going to get into the benefits of blogging or it’s use as a marketing too. That’s an important topic but I want to cover some basic information on just getting started with blogging. There’s a TON of information out there and while I know I’m not covering it all I wanted to give a crash course.

There are a lot of blogging options available now a days. My friend sent me some links to various other blogs he had found that he liked. The first one was a nice WordPress site of another artist. WordPress is a very popular open source blogging content management system. It has a lot of advantages, it’s free, easy to use and has an active developer base with plenty of useful plugins. It’s also easy to customize and there are PLENTY of free and low cost themes to modify the look of it. You can basically go at it a couple of ways: You can install WordPress on your own server, which requires a bit of bit of web knowhow and very slight database setup(PowerBand Graphic’s site was built this way). There’s TONS of tutorials online thanks to its popularity. You can also host your WordPress site on WordPress’s servers. In that case your site URL would look something like www.yourname.wordpress.com. If you don’t want that you would need to tweak some DNS settings on your domain . Here’s some useful links:

www.wordpress.org (this is for downloading the software to install the blog yourself
www.wordpress.com (this is for using WordPress to host your blog for you)

WordPress isn’t the only blogging platform out there either. Blogger (or blogspot) is owned by Google and is a popular way to blog. This service is all hosted by Blogger though. It’s easy to use, free and easy to integrate advertising(if that’s something you want to do) but doesn’t have the same level of customization that WordPress has. Again, you would have a name like www.yourname.blogger.com unless you change some DNS settings.

Another popular blog is Tumblr. Tumblr is getting very popular because of it’s simplicity, style and customizability. It’s very “stream of consciousness” and not the most robust content management system though.

There’s many many more blogging options out there to say nothing of dedicated content management systems. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Some are free, others are not. Some require a decent amount of upkeep and managing others do not. I have worked and researched systems like Joomla, Drupal, Movable Type, Expression Engine, Concrete5, CushyCMS and LightCMS. All good options but like anything worth researching to find out which one fits your specific needs.

NOW on to selling stuff. Here’s where you can get a little tricky. It depends on how you want to do this. Do you want the process to be automated-full-on-ecommerce with a shopping cart where people go through the process without contacting you? That’s where it can get complicated and the answer depends on how much you want to do the work yourself or hire someone. Most of these solutions require some form of fee or constant updating to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Magento is another free option, it’s a full on ecommerce platform that you can download and install similar to wordpress. This might be a bit overkill and time consuming for you though. Shopify is another option for selling things online. It’s a service with a monthly fee but what is nice is the company handles all of your hosting, security & support. Another possible option would be to create a blog and then also create a shop on Etsy Then my friend could just link his artwork in the store from his blog as he creates it. I’ve never used Etsy myself but I’ve heard it highly recommended by many artists and designers.

Phew! Lot’s of stuff to cover! It might also work to start small and test the waters. Maybe set up your blog and create a post for each item you’d like to sell with pictures and details. Then just have people contact you directly to purchase with a paypal or money order. There aren’t any hidden charges from Google that you should worry about when selling stuff from your blog. You may have to start charging sales tax depending on the state that you sell to (I believe if you use Etsy or Shopify they automate sales tax for you). I’d get an accountant you can trust if possible and get their opinion.

In the end I recommended a combination of WordPress + Etsy as the simplest combination for what my friend wanted to accomplish. Like I said there’s an incredible number of options out there. It depends on how much time you want to do this stuff yourself, your technical ability, budget and what you want your site to do. Do your research, there’s a perfect fit for everyone and you’ll be blogging in no time!

Branding is more than just designs, it’s how you interact with your clients and how much effort you put into your services. From the logo on your business cards to the posts on your blog or Facebook page, it’s the image that you project to your clients. Why is that image important? It’s the first interaction a potential client has with your company. It’s about creating credibility and maintaining trust with your current and prospective clients.

To help illustrate these ideas, I developed the Branding PowerBand. It ties together the different aspects we should all consider when trying to establish a brand.

Your mechanic can tell you that your car’s powerband is the range at which it’s providing you the most power. Your Branding PowerBand is the range at which your company’s consistent and focused branding efforts are working the most effectively and powerfully for you. The ultimate goal is to create as much client trust in your company as possible. Gaining that trust benefits your company in every almost every aspect, from getting more sales to attractive higher quality employee talent.

The initial effort is creating your identity, which is your company’s message. It’s your company’s philosophy, knowing your product, your customers, and who you really are. In its simplest form your identity it is your logo, business cards and the message you associate with them. It has the steepest curve because often it’s the most difficult task when establishing your business. It is the foundation where the rest of your brand is built. You may know what you want to sell or what field you are in but do you know who you are as a business? Ask yourself, “What makes you better than anyone else? Are those fantastic qualities that you have, coming through in everything that represents you?”

The next range of the Branding PowerBand is your marketing and advertising designs. This includes your promotional material, product packaging, and ad campaigns.

After that is your web presence including your domain name, website, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, and online advertisements.

From there you take your brand and continuously build upon it by creating relationships with people and solidifying your brand by being an expert in your field. This includes reaching out to people through e-mail newsletters, blogs and social media networks.

To really make your brand powerful you need to stand back and view all of these things as a whole. It’s about creating a consistent message that engenders trust with your current and new clients.

The designs representing you should be more than just using templates and clip art. If you wouldn’t accept anything but the highest level of quality for what you do for your clients, why should the image for your company be any different? Everything you do in your business is a reflection your quality of work. If you are not presenting yourself in the most meaningful and high quality way possible what does that say about your business?

Here are some questions to ask yourself to see if they may need to review their branding:

• Can you say that the clients you are getting regularly are your ideal clients? If not, you may have a branding issue and need to rethink your message to get the clients that you want.
• What does you or your products have that makes it better and different? If it doesn’t light up you and your client’s eyes you may need to review your branding.

All of us should be thinking about the bigger picture and long term plan. The Internet and social media has created a huge opportunity to create incredible brand equity by blogging about what you love and establishing your expertise. You don’t have to wait until you are successful to form your brand. Start thinking like a large brand at the beginning and you’ll be surprised at how ahead of the game you’ll be.

In the end, the services PowerBand Graphics provides are more than just designs. It’s a relationship that I want to create with people to help their businesses compete at a higher level. Anyone can have branding, but creating truly powerful branding means more than just a logo.

Branding yourself using social media can be a crucial way to drive business and create new venues for you to interact with clients.

The thing is (as he describes in more detail), places like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube are great but you can’t just create an account and expect sales from it the next day (or even over the course of initial months). You have to spend a lot of time building relationships and creating a community. This doesn’t happen overnight. Social media works best when you are not shouting out your daily specials, it works best when you create a genuine face to your company. Let your sales and merchandising staff have an individual voice. Train your marketing team in customer care basics. If you are a one-person show, even better, people love being able to put a face to a profession and humanizing yourself is never a bad thing in this corporate world. Networking online is the same as networking in the real world, you recommend and follow people and products you trust, they in turn do the same for you.

The idea is that you are best at what you do, right? For whatever reason you decided to strike out on your own and build a business that does things different than anyone else. There should be a reason clients choose you so prove it to them! Being an expert in your field is what got you where you are today and letting people tap into that expertise allows you gain their trust and increase your value in their eyes. Soon people will be falling over themselves for your opinion and your business. So keep it simple: work hard, be sincere and treat people with respect. You’ll have social media down in no time…

I’ve worked with enough marketing departments and created enough websites that I realize how important it is to have knowledge of these methods. SEO and SEM have become buzzwords that companies (both legitimate and fraudulent) use to lure individuals in with the promise of cheap guaranteed web traffic. As a lot of things with marketing your business it requires a lot of work and there’s no silver bullet.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing the volume of traffic to your website by organic search results. By organic we mean this the traffic you get when someone types in a keyword into a search engine like Google and your business appears in the results. This type of success in search results is ideal because it is the result of automatic indexing by search engines and is free. Free is good and free marketing is even better. This is not always easy to achieve and there are a lot of factors to take into account when you want to increase your page rank. Unfortunately you can’t just flip a switch and have your business fall under the first page, it’s hard work and there’s a lot of competition to do the very same thing.

Chief among the factors to consider is having a well coded, semantically correct website with relevant content that search engines can index. Having your website built correctly and the code laid out in a way that search engines prefer goes a long way to your first step on the road to SEO. Having other websites link to your site can also increase your page rank. There are also things you can do wrong that can negatively affect your ranking and even get you delisted. This is known as “Black Hat SEO” and it includes things like hiding text by coloring it the same as the background.

Let’s get back to content. Content is huge. If you aren’t providing relevant information to your business then your business will have that much more trouble getting indexed. Search engines LOVE freshly updated information, that’s one of the reasons blogs have gotten so popular. Not only is it a fantastic way to connect with your audience but having constantly updated relevant information is GOLD for search engines.

Now let’s move on to Search Engine Marketing. This is the process by which you pay for your presence online. There are a couple different methods to do this. One is called Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, these are the text ads you see on search result pages usually off to the left or right of the search results. You set a budget and you get charged only when someone clicks your ad. These require consistent monitoring and upkeep to make sure you are getting the most of them but can be very beneficial to your online presence. Paid Inclusion is also a method to increase your page results and involved paying a fee to be included in search engine indexes. Paid inclusion is provided by most search engine companies, the most notable exception being Google.

So there’s some basic information for you to mull over. It’s a lot to know and there’s plenty of information that I haven’t even begun to touch upon but it’s good for any small business owner to know more. Search Engine Marketing can be a daunting and exhausting task but the benefits are worth it. Your website is the lifeblood of your business, it’s crucial that your prospective and current clients be able to find you. Go ahead and shoot me a message if you want to know more.

Consumers have seemingly endless information at their fingertips these days but are your customers finding you when they need to? PowerBand Graphics knows the hard work that small businesses have to put in to obtain and maintain clientele. Just because your business is small doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be connected with the latest technology and have the absolute best cutting edge designs to represent you.

This is the service PowerBand Graphics provides. Drop us a line to see what kind of services we can provide for you.

The reasons for creating your own business are as varied as the business themselves but one thing seems to remain the same: Knowing that you can do something better or more efficiently than anyone else and wanting to make your mark. It’s that kind of entrepreneurial spirit that makes Nebraska and our country great.

When you do make your mark, you want it to be memorable. That’s where your identity comes in. Your logo, company name, colors and even your choice in font represents you. This adds a whole new set of questions you need to ask yourself. How do you want to be perceived by perspective customers? Your identity should convey your company’s values and personality. It’s more than just a random graphic with your name. It should be memorable, descriptive of what you do and immediately recognizable. Your logo is the first indicator that people have of what kind of business you are.

Here’s some examples of clever, well thought out logo designs. A professionally built identity can make all the difference in the world when it comes to standing out from your competition. No amount of clip art or software can compete with a completely unique and professionally created design. Something that you as a client have been closely involved with creating. It’s a crucial part of creating a business, make sure you have something that represents you as well as you do. Take it seriously!

It’s easy to think, “okay, I set up a website in ’99, I’m good, right?” I disagree. Trends come and go for design just like they do for fashion and automobiles. It may be functional, but do you really just want to get by with the minimum?

Websites are the face for your business. As consumers grow and evolve, you want your brand to as well! You don’t want to be perceived as stuck in decades old technology and design when your business isn’t. Even if it’s minor updates a good rule of thumb is to really review your website every three years. Decide what works and what needs improvement. Does your brand and website represent more today than it did when you last designed your site? Are your competitors ahead of you when it comes to style?

Online capabilities are so different than ten years ago. Back then we were hampered by programming limitations, browser compatibility and download speed. Now there are so many options to create interactivity with your clients. Design of websites doesn’t have to be limited to just few images. With more people than ever having broadband you have a much larger chance to really showcase what your business can do.
Take a look, you might be ready to evolve and not know it!