Chatter Creative

The more our company uses Twitter, the more we realize what a valuable tool it is. Not only do we need to be strategic in who we follow, we also need to be strategic in who we allow to follow us. As Twitter starts to become part of our brand we want to make sure that the brand isn’t tarnished by those who follow and those we follow.

Some might think this is egoistical. However, we strongly believe that the people and companies you surround yourself with greatly reflect the company.

It’s easy to follow a bunch of actors, movie stars and random companies. As an agency is it the smartest way to get followers? We’re looking at Twitter the same way we are look at our market. Who is our target market? Who do we want to reach and how will it play a roll in our future?

Only time will tell.

David Letterman Style, here it is:
#10. You’re optimizing your website around really common (probably really popular) keywords that you’ll never be able to rank for. In the last week, I’ve had two people tell me they wanted to optimize their site around “leadership”. I said, good luck competing with Wikipedia and About.com.

#9. Everyone of your title tags has the same keyword phrase in it. And it’s your company name. The title tag on a page is probably the most important On-Page SEO factor to consider when creating new pages. You probably already rank well for a search on your company name, so you can safely leave that out and still get that traffic. So, make sure you pick appropriate keyword phrases for each page that are phrases that someone is going to type into a search engine in order to find a product or service like yours.

#8. Dynamic URLs without your keywords in it. You bought a fancy shopping cart or content management system (CMS) that uses dynamic urls with all kinds of random numbers and random letters in the url. Your URLs should be readable by humans because search engines read words like humans too. The words in your URLs is another very important signal to search engines what that page is about. So, get yourself a CMS that allows you to control your urls or get yourself a URL rewriter. Include your keywords in your URLs.

#7. You used images as headings. Headings are usually the big bold letters right above the content at the top of a page usually below your navigation. See “HubSpot Inbound Internet Marketing Blog”. That’s a heading. If these are “words built with images” (designers do this to control the font of the text), search engines aren’t reading them. These should be text. Pick a web safe font that’s close to what you want. Go with that.

#6. Number 6 is equally egregious, but a little less common nowadays unless your website is circa 1997… If your navigation is built using image buttons instead of text, you’re giving search engine one less signal about what that page is about. See #7 for a fix: Use text.

#5. All of the above. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen sites with all of the above mistakes. Really. Honest.

#4. Doing SEO after the website is designed and built. For some reason, people think SEO should start afterwards. I’ve been racking my brain for an analogy, but it’s really pretty simple: Do you go on a trip before you pack? Do you launch a business before writing some sort of business plan? Do you visit to a friend’s new house without printing out driving directions?

SEO done right allows you to determine what content to write in order to get traffic from search engines. And you shouldn’t design a site before you know what content will be on it. I’m not saying that you should change your business model or product name based on what keywords will be easiest to rank for, but you should consider it. I guarrantee you that your competitors or smart internet marketers are doing this homework. Why not claim the search traffic for your business? It only takes a little bit of planning.

Plus, if you go to a designer or web developer that isn’t an expert at SEO (Most aren’t – even though they say they are), they may not implement a system that allows you to publish new pages and optimize your site around your keywords without paying them $100/hour to make the changes and additions for you. Someone that knows SEO will launch your website in a system that allows you to easily do SEO on a continous basis.

Which brings us to…

#3. Our design firm “DID” SEO for us. This one is probably the most common. There is no such thing as “BEING DONE” with SEO. It’s an ongoing thing. Just the other night, I logged into HubSpot’s Keyword Grader tool and found 2 new keywords that we should target. We rank not-quite-on-the-first-page for both of them and both of them could deliver several several hundred visitors/month once we get to the first page. That’s hundreds more visitors we could attract to our site – with a bit of effort. And we already rank for “internet marketing”, “internet marketing software” and a bunch of other great phrases that are relevant to our business. Doing SEO once is like doing prospecting once. If your salesperson said “I called prospects last month” as a reason for not calling any new prospects this month, what would you say to them right before you fired them?

#2. You built your website entirely in flash. You might as well put an invisible shield up between you and the search engines because they don’t see you.

#1. And the number one most egregious mistake. Drumroll, please… Your site is built entirely in flash, you’re a web design firm and you advertise that you do SEO. I’ve run into two of these people recently. I won’t link to them even though they deserve to be called out.

*Originally posted by Pete Caputa – Internet Marketing for HUBSPOT.COM

I had the opportunity to meet a great speaker, Sunny Kobe Cook who knows something about advertising and marketing. When I first moved to Seattle, Sleep Country USA was drilled into my head. Every time I turned on TV or listened to the radio there seemed to be a Sleep Country ad. To this day I remember them.

Sunny gave the group some advise which I would like to pass along. She stressed that every business should do 4 things in a down economy.

1. Advertising is a MUST.

2. Write handwritten notes and do the small things.

3. Cut your costs by 10% off every bill.

4. Look at your team and make adjustments if necessary.

Sunny Kobe Cook : Consultant, Author, Speaker, Award-winning Entrepreneur

Sunny Kobe Cook began her career as a secretary and gained popularity with the company she founded in 1991, Sleep Country USA. She served both as CEO and Company spokesperson in both radio and television advertisements for many years. During that time, she was named Inc.Magazine’s Northwest Woman Entrepreneur of the Year along with numerous other business and corporate good citizen awards. She was featured on the cover of Washington CEO magazine when her company was the first retailer to ever be recognized as “Best Place to Work.”

Recently, I’ve talked to many people in my profession about why and how to use Twitter. In many cases their reply is the same. “Why would anyone care what I’m doing?” If that’s their answer than they just don’t get it. What’s really strange is that these are people in the creative industry, these are the people who should be embracing the technology and using it in different ways.

My response has always been… Twitter is another outlet to get you message to the masses. Again, I get the reply. I don’t have time to Tweet. Nobody cares. Here today – gone tomorrow.

WRONG! Twitter is the new CB. It’s a way to see what is happening at any given time about any given subject. It’s a way to figure out what is going on around me.

The first thing I do when I get to a new city is I try and figure out where to go. What to do. Who has the best food. Where is the best happy hour. I want to know what people are talking about and what they like doing. I can ask a question and I get instant response.

I also have a Twitter testimonial. I asked followers to review my online portfolio. No more than I asked the question. I get a great response. One follower event noticed a small issue, which I was able to fix right away.

So let me ask you Twitter nay-sayers…Why wouldn’t you tweet? What do you have to lose?

Oh… yah – possible clients, connections and unlimited information.

• eps
Native Adobe Illustrator file
Sometimes referred to as Vector image
Typically CMYK format
Spot colors can be specified
Designers use this type of file
Most people cannot open this type of file on a PC
Higher quality image (300 dpi minimum)

• tif/tiff
Will open in any photo editor program
Most people can open this type of file
Lower quality image
Used primarily for black and white images

• jpg/jpeg
Will open in any photo editor program
Lower quality image – not suitable for commercial printing
Can be used in office applications and web applications
Always RGB format

file names

• CMYK
Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black
Used by everyday color printers

• RGB
Red, Green, Blue
Viewed on a computer screen

• PMS
Exact Pantone color
Used as a special color for exact brand matching
Common for logos in your Corporate ID

The color of authority and power. It is also stylish and timeless. Black can also be overpowering.

Red: The most emotionally intense color, red stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing. It is also the color of love.
Red is usually used as an accent. The most romantic color, pink, is more tranquilizing.

Blue: One of the most popular colors. It causes the opposite reaction as red. Peaceful, tranquil blue causes the body to
produce calming chemicals. Blue can also be cold and depressing. It is a productive color.

Green: Currently the most popular color, green symbolizes nature. It is the easiest color on the eye and can improve vision.
It is a calming, refreshing color. Dark green is masculine, conservative, and implies wealth.

Yellow: An attention getter. While it is considered an optimistic color, people lose their tempers more often with yellow.
Hence its use for legal pads. It also speeds metabolism.
Orange: Vibrant. It’s a combination of red and yellow so it shares some common attributes with those colors. It denotes
energy, warmth, and the sun. But orange has a bit less intensity or aggression than red, calmed by the cheerfulness of yellow.

Purple: The color of royalty, purple connotes luxury, wealth, and sophistication. It is also feminine and romantic.

Brown: Solid, reliable color of earth and is abundant in nature. Light brown implies genuineness, while dark brown is
similar to wood or leather. Brown can also be sad and wistful. Men are more apt to say brown is one of their favorite colors.

Original Piece written by David Johnson – Source: Infoplease.com – Edited by Chatter Creative

A great logo should:

1. Distinguish your company from your competition:
Don’t try to emulate another company. Be your own brand. Less than a decade after Coca-Cola was born, Pepsi quickly became successful by setting themselves apart rather than trying to emulate the leaders.

2. Use meaningful colors:
Different colors and shades can have different effects on people because of color association. Green is associated with the environment and is an appropriate logo for a company like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace. However, green is also associated with motion sickness so would be a poor choice for the interior of a car.

3. Use an appropriate font:
You may generally gravitate to bold, exciting fonts, or feminine curvy fonts but if you are a ballet company, you should probably avoid harsh, clunky lettering, and if you are a football team, you should probably avoid graceful, delicate lettering, even if it’s more attractive to you.

4. Be simple:
Your logo can have some elaborate features but it should be simple enough to make a quick statement.

5. Be memorable:
Your logo should make a statement about your company. The next time a customer needs your kind of business, he’ll choose you just because of brand recognition.

6. Avoid distracting elements:
Your logo does not need, LLC, Inc, and other details. That type of detail can be saved for documentation about your company. The next time you are driving past businesses, take a look at the logos around you and see how other successful logos are handled.

7. Avoid taglines if possible:
Taglines can be an important part of a company’s image but should be separate from a logo. The size of the text in a tagline is so much smaller that it often forces the logo to be bigger in order to accommodate the text.