Logo or No Logo?

There are a few areas of your business that should be considered essential such as a good computer, up-to-date accounting software, a logo, business cards and a great web site. If you wouldn't trust an amateur with an important business function such as accounting, why would you trust an amateur with your brand identity, the key to your marketing success? Lack of a logo or having a poor logo creates the possibility that your clients will not respect you or take you seriously.

If you do not establish a clean, high-quality, and consistent look and feel to your materials, you will have a much more difficult time gaining the trust of potential clients. All of the Fortune 500 companies have a logo because it makes them look more professional. If you want to be perceived as offering a high-caliber service, you also have to look the part.

When you have a top-notch brand identity, new customers will contact you because they remember your logo, have held on to your business card, or are impressed by your brochure. Once you have a timeless logo and set of marketing materials designed, you can use them for years to come to bring in new clientele or to bring in return business. Your logo is the first representation of your business that all your clients will see, and if it's done right, will be remembered for years to come.

Using the Mobile Web for Business Growth

Many experts predict that mobile web usage will overtake PC usage in just a few years. Look around you and it is easy to see that the number of people using multipurpose smartphones such as iPhones, Blackberries, and Droids is definitely skyrocketing.

Here are several important steps you should take to ensure that your business can take advantage of mobile media:

First of all, when designing your web site, make sure that it is mobile-friendly.
Many mobile users are impatient, and they want information to come up quickly. Often, flash design take too long to come up, or are not usable on Apple devices.

Also, make sure your website is optimized for mobile searches. Google and Bing have separate indexes for mobile content. Simple key word usage throughout your site is very important. In other words, make sure you mention your product or service by name on every page.

The next important step is to start a Facebook Fan page. Many mobile device users are active on Facebook, so it helps to encourage your customers and visitors to sign up as Facebook fans so you can use the networking site to share information about your business and retain return customers.

On that same note, you should become active on Twitter. It is easy for people with smartphones to use Twitter for sharing information, and many people like to retweet useful web links.

You should also make sure your business is listed on Google Maps because a lot of mobile users go to Google Maps first when searching for local businesses. You can also sign up for FourSquare. Its members keep each other informed of their whereabouts and write reviews and recommendations for other FourSquare members to help them make good decisions about where to eat or shop.

It seems that the best time to start thinking about this new mobile revolution is at the very beginning when you are setting up your new business and its web site. It is always helpful to make sure that your business is visible where the most potential customers can be found, and in this day and age, that may well be on their iPods and smartphones.

Ten Things to Consider before you Start your New Website

Here are the top 10 things to consider before choosing to design a new website. Thinking about these things ahead of time will help make your site a success.

1. What is your target market? Will your business meet the needs of your clients? Think about the goal of your website. Is it to sell items strictly from your online store or is it just informative?

2. How much money will it take to get your website up and running? Consider how much you will need to maintain your site per month? Will your site make you money rather than costing you more than it brings in?

3. Think about the domain name you will use. It should be short, easy to remember and tell people what to expect from your website. Spend a considerable amount of time choosing the right domain name because you cannot easily change it.

4. Consider where you will find a web host. A good website hosting company will be able to provide your customers with fast and reliable website views at a price that you can afford.

5. Think about who will design your website. You will be performing ongoing work with your website designer, so choose carefully. Make sure that you choose a designer that will povide you with one-on-one service without making you wait weeks.

6. While planning your site, research the keywords that people currently use to find your service or products so that you can provide the necessary optimized content as the website is being built.

7. Think about how you can best make your website easy to use. Remember that different kinds of people have different levels of technical savvy. Make sure your website is designed in such a way that all users will be able to easily get information and navigate your site.

8. How can you make your site visually interesting? Consider using pictures and a color theme throughout. While it is the text that sells your product, if your page is uninteresting to look at, it’s unlikely your text will get read. Make sure that you can supply your designer with all the pictures that you will use such as company or product photos.

9. Decide who will maintain and advertise your website. Will it be you or are you going to pay for your designer to do it? Think about the time involved and the different ways you will market your site.

10. Consider making use of social networking sites to get the word out about your new site, and think about starting a blog. Blogs can tell about the people behind your company and the issues in your industry. You may want to have a blog started just after or even at the same time that you launch your website.

Proper consideration and planning can make all the difference between making your new site a success or a failure, especially if this is your first time out.

Writing Articles for Small Business Marketing

Marketing through writing articles is one of the best forms of free advertising available for bringing new visitors to your website. Writing articles usually leads to increased website visitors. One goal in writing an article is for people to read and learn about your business and your topic.

After writing an article, you need to get it published in order to drive traffic to your site. You'll need to submit it to ezine publishers such as EzineArticles.com and article directories that will get it ranked in search engines.

Writing articles for ezines uses a basic format that you should become familiar with. You should subscribe to several good, high quality ezines that can be found by doing a basic web search on Google or any other search engine. You want to review the articles in an ezine so that you can get a basic idea of the layout that is expected when you submit your article. Most ezines require a title, the author's name, a catch line or paragraph, the body of the article, and an author's resource box. The resource information is probably the most important tool for getting hits to your website.

So, if you like to write, and you know what your industry and potential customers are interested in, get those articles out there and don't forget to also get a blog like this one started.

If it doesn't have a Copyright Notice, is it still copyrighted?

Copyright is a protection that covers published and unpublished works as long as they are fixed in material form. Copyright protection begins when this work is actually created and put in any tangible form. For instance, if I write original song lyrics, the copyright begins at the moment the lyrics are put on paper in any form. Further proof can be created by putting the lyrics in an envelope and mailing them, thus using the postmark to establish the date of creation. Next, it is a good idea to register the copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office if you hope to be able to sue for monetary damages.

However, if it doesn't have a copyright notice, is it still copyrighted? Today almost all major nations follow the Berne Copyright Convention. In the USA, almost everything created privately and originally after April 1, 1989 is copyrighted and protected whether it has a notice or not. This also applies to digital art and graphics.

As long as you are the true author of the work, it is legal to place the copyright © symbol next to your name. Actually, it is your right to do so. The best way to place a copyright notice is as follows: Copyright © (first date of creation) (name of owner) ex.: Copyright © 2010 Sheryl Skutelsky. You can use C in a circle © instead of "Copyright" but "(C)" has never been given legal force. The phrase "All Rights Reserved" used to be required in some nations but is now not legally needed most places. The dates that you see in a copyright statement do not refer to the dates that the owner's material will expire, but rather the dates that the material was created or modified.

When you see more than one date in a copyright, it means that certain things were created in one year and modified in another. It does not refer to the date that a copyright will expire. The Berne Convention establishes a minimum period that lasts the life of the author and fifty years after his or her death.

So, remember that in this digital age almost all things are copyrighted the moment they are written, and no copyright notice is required. Copyright can still be violated whether it is registered or not, but only the amount of damages is affected by that. By the way, posting E-mail is technically a violation, but revealing facts from E-mail you got isn't. The law doesn't do much to protect works with no commercial value. Copyright law was recently amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which changed Internet copyright in many ways by making computer programs illegal to copy. It might be a violation just to link to a web page, but it's undecided as of this date.

For more information, I found the following to be of great help: http://www.directlegal.com/learning_center.htm

For actually filing a copyright go to: http://www.copyright.gov/eco/.
Be careful with sites that charge just to help you file a copyright. The advantages of filing electronically include a lower filing fee of $35 for a basic claim and faster processing time. The next best option for registering basic claims is the new fill-in Form. The fee for a basic registration on Form CO is $50.

The fee for a basic registration using one of the government forms is $65 payable by check or money order. Form CON (continuation sheet for applications) is also still available in paper. These paper forms are not accessible on the Copyright Office website; however, staff will send them to you by postal mail upon request if you write to:

U.S. Copyright Office
101 Independence Avenue SE
Washington, DC 20559-6000
(202) 707-3000

Branding and Trust

One of the hardest things to do when creating a brand is creating trust in your company and its products or services. Gimmicks are good, but a good reputation is even more important.

How do you get the public to trust your business? Treat your customers or clients exactly as you would want to be treated if you were dealing with your business. It comes down to that old adage, "Treat others the way you would want them to treat you."

It won't be long before your honesty and sincerity bring in testimonials and word of mouth referrals making your brand shine.

Trust me on this!

Brand Building Doesn’t Have to Cost a Fortune

It isn’t necessary for a small business to have a huge advertising budget, but there are a few must haves to cement your brand identity.

First of all, you really do need a logo to give your business a recognizable face. Consistently using your logo on all printed materials increases brand image and awareness.

A web site is another must have in this digital age, as well as business cards that make use of your logo. These give potential clients a way to easily look up and get information on your business.

It doesn’t require spending a fortune to create a fabulous brand, but it does take planning and consistency. You need to know the image you want others to have of you and your business, and then, most important of all, you must get the word out.

Start using Facebook and Twitter to get people to check out your products or services. Always use your logo on all the social media pages. Also try to write articles which will show you to be an expert in your field. Finally, make sure that you do your homework on search engine optimization to make sure that your website comes up on the first page of the major Internet search engines using appropriate key words for your industry. A web site is useless if no one can find it.

5 Things to Consider before Finding a Logo Design Service

Your logo is a major element of your business identity. It is the first thing that a potential customer sees, and thus it makes the all important first impression.

Creating a great logo is a crucial responsibility of a graphic design service. Designers are professionally trained in creating simple, yet outstanding concepts that appeal to expressions about a product or service. A good designer will be aware of what colors and styles work best in a particular industry and how to design something unique upon your specified instructions.

Before setting out to have your logo designed, here are 5 basic things to consider:

1. What type of image are you going for? Do you want a descriptive logo with images or just a play on words?
2. What basic color would you like to use to represent your business? Will it fit in with your color scheme that is already in place on your web site or in your business correspondence?
3. What is the most important feature of your business that you would quickly like to convey? Is it a product or a service?
4. Do you want a complex or simple logo design? Large corporations like Nike or Target do well with simple, but a new small business might need more to make it memorable since it won’t have the huge exposure that the big guys can afford.
5. Do you want your business name to be part of your logo? Small businesses may find this feature more important because of their need for exposure without the capital for large scale advertising services.

Should You Invest in Small Business Branding in these Trying Times?

In general, branding is the look and feel of your business that you are trying to present to your customers. In this day and age, branding is very important if you hope to help your business grow successfully on the Internet. If you are a new business owner, branding your business should be one of your top priorities.

Your potential customers need to know who you are, what you sell, and what your business is about, and they need to know this very quickly in this fast paced environment. This is a vital part of any marketing strategy.

If you look at 10 different websites for the same product, what would stand out as being special about each site that would draw customers to it? Branding helps you to do something unique to make your website stand out and have its own flavor or feel that can be recognized on all types of Internet social sites, blogs, or wherever it is shown.

Many small business owners don't have the time or money to brand their business. The problem that arises when branding is not a priority is that new competition in their selected profession can easily attract their former customers.

Try to remember that if you successfully brand your business, the branding works for you by selling for you behind the scenes. Pay attention to whether or not your web name is too generic. Does it represent the true niche you are selling in? Is your logo one that will give the potential customer a powerful visual of what your company is all about?

Today more than ever, it is critical to have a website, or at the very least, a business page on one of the social or networking sites such as Facebook or Linked In. This is where need to be creative. Don't just use any old website design and think it will attract millions of customers. It is imperative that you research and find out what others are doing in your profession, and figure out what you can do to stand out.

One key element of branding that is often overlooked is your customer service. What can you do to convince your potential customers that they will be in good hands? Remember, if you take good care of your customers, they will take great care of you. Word of mouth is a very powerful tool in bringing that new business in.

Many new small business owners do not take the time to brand their business effectively. Money invested in creating your unique look and feel will always be money well spent. If you can effectively stand out among the rest, you will ensure more customers, more sales, and a successful business that will endure during this trying period in the economy.

So, You have an Idea for a Small Business

Okay, so you think you have this great idea for a new small business venture. Now what? Well, think of it as your new baby. You need to protect it, nurture it, and then watch it grow.

If your idea is unique, the first thing you need to do is protect it from being stolen. Make sure that anyone that you share your new idea with first signs a standard non-disclosure. If you don't want to invest in a lawyer early on, you can find a standard form on the Internet at sites like www.rocketlawyer.com.

Like any new baby, you want to put your new idea in the hands of a professional that you can trust to help it grow. You'll need to find someone to help you with small business branding. This includes creating a company name, logo, letterhead, business cards, and a web site. Make sure that you file the proper paperwork with your county. This usually means a DBA form (doing business as) which can be done at a site such as www.simplefilings.com. This form will be necessary if you plan to open a bank account under the name of your new business. You'll also need someone to point you in the right direction when it comes to advertising and search engine optimization. Look on the Internet for a good graphic designer, and don't be afraid to check out their references. You don't want to trust your new baby to just any one.

Your logo is a key element. It will be your calling card that will appear on all your printed materials, so choose it wisely. A good graphic designer can help you find the right look and feel for your new business, but keep your original idea at the forefront. Remember, this is your baby. Put all your enthusiasm into this new venture, and you'll be able to feel proud as you watch all your hard work pay off. Good luck.