When I started this project I knew it was going to be a full typographic poster that was just jam packed with text from the blog. It began at the humble poster size of 11″x17″ but as I kept adding more text it continued to grow taller and taller until the final size was 11″x60″. The most difficult part was including every single word from the post but maintaining a sense of flow and rhythm to the sentences.

With a big poster like this you read it differently than when you read the text in the original article. Words are emphasized differently, your eye is drawn around in more of a non-linear fashion, and by breaking up the sentence structure differently you can sometimes glean different meanings from them. I had to create a sense of flow throughout the poster so that the reader doesn’t get lost and confused about what part to read next. I overcame these obstacles by breaking the blog post in to manageable chunks. I would read a section and pick a few key words or phrases that I would want to highlight and then try and work out a solution to wrapping the other text around it. I would almost always try and make sure that each chunk filled the poster from left to right so I would have a clear place to start the next one. Before I began on the next one I would take a look at the overall image and make sure that it flowed and that you could get a gist of the article by glancing at the key words and phrases. I wanted it to look interesting at a glance and also give some insight into what the overall piece is about. It was an incredibly fun project to work on and I hope I get the chance to do more like it. Check out the final version below, post a comment and let me know what you think, and contact us if you would like a full-size 5′ print for $49.00.

I’m beginning the second week of my internship at Elliott Design so let me introduce myself; my name is Angela Stapleton and I am the new Web Developer Intern at Elliott Design.

My interest in web design and development began five years ago when I was working with a close friend to create a website. With little to no knowledge of HTML and CSS I dove in head first to every tutorial I could get my hands on. After much research, I had an understanding of the basic tools needed to begin building my first website. I spent the next year improving my skills and knowledge by building websites for family and friends. With my growing passion for web design I decided to focus my time and energy on getting a degree in web design and development for future opportunities. I gained most of my experience building websites with strictly HTML and CSS; however, I have recently taken the opportunity to learn more about WordPress and all it has to offer. I embrace the opportunity to work among some great people here at Elliott Design and I’m looking forward to learning all I can.

Don Elliott

On one hand it’s amazing to think it’s already been four years, while on the other hand I can’t believe it’s only been four years! I don’t want to go into all the gory details on how the business got started, but I will talk about what I think is possibly the most important lesson I learned: how to build a team.

When I first got to the point where I could begin hiring actual employees (as opposed to sub-contractors) I focused initially on finding what I thought to be the perfect balance between skill-set and cost. A typical business approach to buying say, a printer. What I’ve learned since then is the culture we create within the office is 1000% more important. Having a team of people who are positive, able to connect with each other, and challenge each other in uplifting ways creates a synergy that not only creates better work, but everyone involved, myself included, learns at an astoundingly higher rate. I now hire people based on personality, and their ability to connect with the team, everything else is secondary.

After 4 years of very hard work, I look forward to coming to the office everyday because of our team. I love what I do, but I really love who I get to work with.

Jeremy Ross

Happy Birthday Elliott Design!

Congratulations on turning 4. Although I’ve only known you for the past couple of years, I’ve seen you grow in amazing ways. When we first met, you were living in a little house and supported one full-time, and one part-time employee. You’re processes, designs, and care for your clients have grown significantly since we first met, and all I can say is… I’m proud of you! Now you’ve got 6 full-time employees, your own office on main street, and the best client any small business could ask for! I know it’s a lot of pressure, but you’re handling it great, and your talent, passion and perseverance will continue to take you to great places. I can’t wait to see where you’ll be in four more years!

Ryan Mowery

The staff and the amount of furniture has been growing steadily since I arrived.

I joined Elliott Design in Late 2010 as an Intern and quickly discovered I had found a new home. The environment in the office is nothing short of fantastic. Its inspiring, motivating, educating, friendly, relaxed, and believe it or not, incredibly efficient. The team/office culture is something that I look forward to every single day.

The most important thing I have learned at Elliott Design is that attitude can be everything. You can be worried and stressed about the details and problems that arise in day to day creative work. But this can effect your environment, making it less energetic, less creative, and less enjoyable for you and your co-workers. I know this, because as a person, I tend to be this way. But I’ve found that when I put a positive attitude forward, it drives me to overcome obstacles. In commissioned creative work there are MANY obstacles. Keeping a positive and open attitude helps makes the obstacles seem less important, and less baffling.

I’ve been here for a year and a half, and I have no complaints. I love my team, I love my job. Everyday.

Kyle Hinze

I have a great job. There are days when I might not be in the mood to create or design but as soon as the team gets together I just get so pumped that the entire day is ASTONISHING! I’ve been working here for almost a year as an intern, part-time, and full-time employee. It’s crazy how much a positive and encouraging work environment can effect you at work and at home. We all spend more time here than anywhere else so it’s important to like what you do and have a good time. I’ve had some crappy jobs before and it’s nice to know that I don’t have one now. I’m incredibly proud of the work we produce at Elliott Design and I’m privileged to be able to contribute to it.

Every day I learn something new about design, workflow, process, teamwork, critique, you name it. Elliott Design has made me better at doing what I love to do because WE’RE ALL BETTER TOGETHER. I am stoked to find out how Elliott Design is going to make all of us better during the next year of business.

Taylor Vincelli

Happy Birthday, Elliott Design!

I haven’t known you for all four years of your existence, in fact we met quite recently really, but I feel that we both have grown tremendously since our first encounter a mere seven months ago… I know I have! You have taught me many great lessons, widened my skill set, broadened my outlook on life, and made me a better web developer. Thank you for challenging my abilities and never giving up on me when times are rough. I look forward to watching you grow and achieve the goals that other design companies only dream of setting.

Here’s to many more years of life, prosperity, success, and well… world domination!

These words sincerely written by your own, Taylor Vincelli.

Happy Birthday!

Angela Stapleton

Well I’m off to a great start at Elliott Design. As the new Web Developer Intern, I have been crazy busy learning new tools for developing websites in WordPress. I am very thankful for the opportunity to work with such a great group of people who are all putting forth their best to make Elliott Design strive. Speaking from personal experience, there’s nothing better than a wonderful atmosphere and like minded people to share your time with. I look forward to seeing what the future has in store for Elliott Design.

Lorena Elliott

HAPPY B-DAY ELLIOTT DESIGN!!!

http://ohsobeautifulpaper.com/2011/06/lindsay-bens-modern-venn-diagram-wedding-invitations/

http://www.bravo-company.info/1021/18295/works/change-by-design

http://loren.co/?page=print

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here is a glimpse of our venn diagram beliefs.

We strongly believe that if you want to accomplish your best work you need to take ownership of whatever it is you’re doing. Whether you are a selfish person or not when you feel like you’re making something for yourself and your reputation the end product is going to be a lot better. So don’t just do something to kick it out OWN IT!

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill

Download Here

Kickstarter makes it SUPER easy to find cool projects and become a part of their success by funding them into fruition.  So what’s the big deal?  I want to explore the impact of Kickstarter and how it could change entire product industries.  First, let’s take a look at the largest Kickstarter project ever and see the potential scale of Kickstarter.

Tim Schafer (founder of Double Fine Productions) launched a Kickstarter project for a new video game.  Schafer has helped to define and create the genre of point-and-click games but in the current market that style of game doesn’t sell.  Enter Kickstarter.  He put the project on Kickstarter because he knew that there weren’t any publishers that would actually fund the creation of the game so he bypassed publishers altogether and decided to let us (the consumer) fund the game if we wanted it.  On February 8, 2012 Schafer set the goal of $400,000 ($300,000 to make the game and $100,000 to film the journey) and he set the project free on Kickstarter.  Within hours they had met their funding goal and by March 13, 2012 the project received just over 3.3 million dollars in funding, catapulting it above any other record on Kickstarter.

Crowd funding is an interesting way for projects to get funded.  You ask the consumer to pay money for the product (and possibly a little bit extra for some perks) and then you have to deliver on your promise.  It essentially flips the creator and consumer roles around and the crowd becomes the publisher of the product.  In the video game example with Double Fine it shows that its entirely possible to bypass a publishing company for your product and get it straight into the hands (and wallets) of your target audience.  Some random guy from Vancouver, WA that’s never made a video game in his life isn’t going to be able to launch a project on Kickstarter and immediately raise millions of dollars, but Schafer has shown the potential of Kickstarter.  Projects like this one raise the awareness of Kickstarter as a viable platform to raise money and fund projects for other people.  As more people join the Kickstarter community it will make it easier to launch projects and get them onto the screens of potential buyers.

With projects as large as Double Fine’s adventure video game I think we could see a pretty massive shift of distribution and publishing in certain consumer industries.  In Kickstarters first two years the video game category of the website raised $1,776,372.  In the six weeks after Double Fine’s project was funded $2,890,704 were pledged in the video game category (that’s without including Double Fine, with them included the total is $6,227,075).  In only six weeks Kickstarter helped the independent video game industry gain over 6 million dollars!  There won’t be a massive shift overnight but more and more people are coming to Kickstarter to fund and buy new products.  Large projects are pulling people into the Kickstarter community and those people are turning around and funding more projects that they are passionate about.  Essentially if you have a great idea you can put it out on Kickstarter and let the consumers fund it rather than pitch your idea to another company and hope they will take a chance on your creative endeavor.  Kickstarter certainly won’t kill giant publishing companies but it gives creative individuals a choice to let their audience fund the project.  The graph below shows the average pledges in the video games category.  The dotted line marks the launch of the Double Fine Adventure project.  The graph excludes any pledges for Double Fine so this illustrates the spike in pledges for similar projects after Double Fine started.

A very interesting and unique aspect of switching the roll of the consumer is that we actually have a stake in the project.  We feel as though we are invested in the success of the project, almost like we are actually part of the team that is creating it.  That emotional connection to a product is something that traditional advertising and marketing try to convey but it’s incredibly difficult.  For example, last year I pledged $75 dollars to the making of a documentary called Indie Game: The Movie.  They’re goal was $35,000 and on July 23, 2011 they’re project was successfully funded at $71,335.  By pledging my money I would get an advanced digital copy of the film, a special edition DVD with extra features, and my name as thanks in the credits.  In the months following the completion of the project I visited their website almost daily (sometimes even twice) so I could get the latest updates and videos on the progress of the project.  Eventually they announced that the film was selected at numerous international film festivals including some the biggest ones like Sundance and SXSW.  Not only was it officially selected for these festivals but it won best editing at Sundance and HBO is in talks to pick it up for a possible television series.  Whenever the film experienced success I felt like I won as well because I helped make it by pledging money.

If you are passionate about your product Kickstarter will help your audience find your project.  There is still a lot of work you need to do in promoting it and increasing its visibility but having a place like Kickstarter to send people to in order to fund your project takes a lot of the work off your shoulders.  Kickstarter is an amazing and very viable option for anybody that has a creative idea but doesn’t have the money to launch it.  In the next couple of months there are going to be a lot of big projects on Kickstarter so be on the lookout for things you are interested in.    

I encourage you to go to Kickstarter.com and just browse through some of the categories they have and see what catches your attention.  Kickstarter creates an environment that is not very different from a local saturday market.  When you look at most Kickstarter projects you need to judge whether you think the person creating the project is trustworthy and has a product that you want to pay for.  See for yourself what you think of the Kickstarter platform and continue the discussion in the comments below.

As a designer and artist I am constantly on the search for inspiration, I thought I’d share a short list of my favorite places in NW Portland area.

This list is definitely a work in progress, and I hope to add many many more places to it!

Powells Books

Located: 1005 W Burnside Portland, OR 97209

This place is massive. With over 1,000,000 books, this place is the IDEAL location to seek inspiration no matter what your creative endeavor. I really enjoy Powell’s Book’s because of the vast selection of materials that are readily available. Classic novels, graphic novels, music, movies, and magazines are easily accessible. You can spend hours digging through older letterpress printing and typography books, read inspiring Winston Churchill speak transcipts in the rare book room, then walk downstairs, grab a graphic novel, and sketch out ideas in the coffee shop. 

Learn More Here

Laughing Planet Cafe

Located: Multiple Locations, I like the 922 Northwest 21st Avenue 

Food is an integral part of the creative process. It is hard to think clearly on an empty stomach. Meetings with clients and brainstorming sessions with co-workers are infinitely more enjoyable with food and drinks. Laughing Planet has wonderful, low cost delicious burritos.They are made with local and organic ingredients, and come tightly wrapped in foil, keeping everything clean, hot, and very flavorful. These burritos are extremely great for both a quick bite, or for a full lunch meeting. Laughing Planet also has a nice illustrative aesthetic for their branding, that they execute very effectively throughout all of their locations.

Visit their very cool website

Jimmy Maks

Located: 221 NW 10th Ave. (between Davis and Everett)
“One of the world’s top 100 places to hear jazz.” – Downbeat Magazine

Next to Powells Books, this is the most inspiring place I frequent in Portland. It is a Live Jazz Club that serves food and drinks. Every time i’m here, I always have the uncontrollable urge to draw, or paint. Something about the improvisational Jazz gives me energy to be creative. (The hummus appetizer is also delicious)  I like Monday nights because generally there is not a cover charge, and you can listen to free live Jazz for a few hours.

Click Here for More info 

NW Coffee House

Located: 1951 W Burnside St. Portland, OR 97209

Any creative will tell you their first step in a new project or a great idea is a cup of coffee. (try their mulled cider) NW coffee house  is a nice, minimalist coffee shop on the tail end of NW Portland, it’s more relaxed and is a perfect spot to buckle down and get some work done. It’s located directly across the street from a FedEx where you can quickly and cheaply print out proofs. If you get tired of the NW coffee house vibe, there is a Starbucks around the corner.

More info Click Here

Blick Art Materials

Located: 1115 NW Glisan St. Portland, OR 97209

Art supply stores are an obvious stop for anyone with a creative motivation. I find Blick Art Materials to be inspiring because of the volume and variety in materials they sell. They also offer in store classes and demonstrations, so its not uncommon to learn a new technique or two while you browse around.

Visit their website

Being a NW Portland resident, this list is geared entirely to that area. If you have other cool  and inspiring places, please post a comment explaining what, where, and why, I am ALWAYS looking for new places to go!

Download Yours Here!

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“You’re logo is not your brand!” It’s a commonly heard statement around here and it often surprises people. After all, when you think of Nike you naturally think of their famous swoosh.

Many clients come in because they want a logo that represents everything that they are as a company, everything they do, and don’t forget to include their favorite colors and meaningful symbols! They ultimately want a logo that communicates their entire brand, but quite frankly, that’s not what a logo is supposed to do, even if it were possible.

Branding to a company is like a reputation to a person.

Although you may find yourself attracted to a person for any number of reasons, deep connections are based on shared values, interest, and authenticity. The same is true about your company. Deep  lasting connections are made when customers and clients share values with you. That being the case, the better you define your values, act on them, and communicate about them, the deeper the connection.

How Do You Do It?

1. Act on what you say you value.

We all know that talk is cheap and there’s nothing more disappointing then feeling duped into a relationship only to find out that things were not actually what were stated. I think we’re almost used to this reality, and look at most product claims with a bit of skepticism (or we should). Isn’t it refreshing when you come across a company that follows through with what they say they stand for?

2. Be transparent.

Your product/service is not for everyone. Just admit it up front and you’ll have the respect from both sides from the start. Usually if I hear someone tell me that their product is “not for me” it makes me more curious about it. In that sense, it’s both good marketing, and good branding.

3. Use REAL testimonials.

Today’s consumers are savvy, and skeptical. If you have a phony testimonial, chances are, it will be recognized for what it is and ignored.  It’s better just to leave it out. Authentic testimonials, however, can turn a skeptic into a paying customer, so take the time to ask for them!

4. Address your environmental impact.

No matter which side of the debate you’re on, caring for our environment is important. Not every product out there can be certified “green”, but showing how you address the issue of responsible disposal, giving back to the environment in other ways, or making efforts to reduce environmental impact all need to be talked about openly.

5. Address your audience on their terms.

It’s easy, especially for smaller companies, to talk about themselves in terms that they understand, without regard for their audience. Have a neutral third party read over your marketing and PR materials and listen to their feedback. What are you explaining in detail that no one cares about? What are you assuming everyone else knows because you live with it day-in and day-out?

Some Examples of Values-Based Branding

TOMS Shoes

It’s so simple, “With every pair you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. One for One.” 

Target

You won’t find the same brand value connection with Target, that you do with TOMS, but click here to see how the big boys do social responsibility.

BP

Being in the oil and gas industry, BP has a looming challenge to win our respect. Between the gulf oil crisis, stripping the planet of fossil fuels, and using political leverage for their own profit, we have many reasons to dislike “Big Oil.” On the other hand, most of us need it to get to work everyday.  Click here to read about what BP is doing to win us back.

So, Then What’s a Logo Supposed To Do?

A logo is a memory hook. A simple mark that sticks in peoples’ mind giving them something to attach all of your brand values to. It can’t be your brand, but it can be the thing that brings it to mind. As a customer/client experiences your company, their memories get burned onto the logo, and the logo begins to represent everything you are to them. Ever see a Starbucks logo and suddenly realize you are craving coffee? The logo itself didn’t give you that sense, it simply reminded you (and in turn your body!) of past experiences, which have very real and often visceral memories.

Consider what experiences have been pinned to your logo. If you are in the process of creating a new logo, aim for a symbol that will easily carry the emotions and memories you hope to convey through your brand experience.

This Friday’s wallpaper design was inspired by the recent motion picture Drive, directed by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan. The slogan is the mantra for the spirit of collaboration that we foster here at Elliott Design. When person plays their part, it makes us all… Better Together!

“We’re all huge fans of the film, and the soundtrack can be found on repeat around the office.” – Kyle Hinze, Designer

Download Here

In the 2nd chapter of the Art of War, Sun Tzu explains the cost of war from a logical, brass-tacks point of view. His overall point is that individual battle strategies do not win a war. A war is about sustainability, being able to endure and prevail both emotionally and financially. In the same vein, while a single campaign (e.g. “Increase my Facebook fan base) can be compared to a battle, the war is your company’s overall brand & marketing strategy.

In this article I will explain Sun Tzu’s principles and show how they can be used to:

1. Create sustainable marketing efforts
2. Build and increase a marketing budget

Throwing Money At It vs Organic Growth

Many companies, in particular small to medium sized companies with very rigid budgets, are prone to fall into a paradigm of viewing marketing as just a necessary evil in the world of business. It’s like a priest’s confessional booth, they hate going to it but every once in a while they have to show up to avoid the business going to hell. “Yeah yeah I know we need an ad in the trade journal, here’s my $850 offering, now let me get back to running my business”

This approach to marketing and advertising is a great way to waste time, money, and effort – all of which compile over time to lower a company’s morale. In addition, it misses the entire point of advertising: to increase a company’s profits. If a campaign, no matter how small, does not one fit the following criterion, it should not be executed:

1. Bring in more profit through sales than the overall cost of the entire campaign.
2. Change a company’s lack-luster reputation for the better
3. Increase brand awareness over time to such a level that the cost is justified by future sales
4. Effectively position a company for the success of a future event (e.g. product launch)

Sun Tzu illustrates this very clearly:

“Hence a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy.”

Keeping in mind that we already established (Art of War I) that the ‘enemy’ is not necessarily your competition! The enemy is “Anything that stands in the way of you effectively communicating your company’s message.” Sun Tzu talks about the cost of waging a battle, in particular a prolonged battle. Food, provisions, repairs, and the team’s overall morale. Therefore, by foraging the enemy upon victory, the army can replenish their supplies and boost their morale. In the same way, the marketing campaign’s spoils should exceed the cost. This is called ‘Organic Growth’.

Motivation

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”

Employees and owners alike are vested in the success of a campaign, even if they are not directly involved. Think of it like your favorite sports team (most likely the Timbers I am sure) – the fans are disappointed at a loss and energized by a win, even though they weren’t on the field scoring points. For the players, this is amplified even more. Not only do they have a personal stake in the matter, but they feel the pressure from the team as well.

Sun Tzu’s answer to this is to reward the players by their success. Rewards can come in many forms, but it’s important to build this into the campaign from the beginning. How you choose to manage your team is another topic, but having a plan in place to reward good work is vital. This even goes to single-owner, 1 person shops! If you promise yourself a reward (iPad 3 anyone?) upon the completion of a successful campaign, and build that reward into the budget, you may be surprised how motivated you will become.

Growth

“A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.” -Dave Ramsey

The approach to creating and/or increasing a marketing budget lies in the same principles as Sun Tzu’s foraging rule, which parallels basic principles and building wealth. It takes discipline and consistency, but positive results can happen surprisingly quickly – and the sooner you get to it the sooner it you’ll find success. The process can be made very clear in a few simple steps:

1. Create a Campaign that will create more a profit

Please note I said ‘profit’. If an ad campaign costs $100, and at the end of it you sell a Microwave for $150, that sounds good, but what is the cost of the microwave itself? If it’s over $50 then you’ve lost money. The goods or services you sell have costs, and those costs must be calculated. Therefore, do not consider a campaign successful simply because it grossed more than it cost, consider it successful when there is a profit.

2. Reinvest the profit into the next campaign

If your goal is to create a sustainable marketing budget from scratch, or to increase your marketing budget, then you must have the discipline to buckle down and not spend the profit the campaign made in other areas. The profit constitutes the money left over after all the costs were paid. By applying this back into the next campaign, you can now increase the next campaigns profit by that much more. As a general rule when you have a successful campaign strategy, the more you invest the higher the yield. Soon enough, the profit itself will be able to fund the entire campaign. For smaller companies, this can mean the difference between scraping by and finally landing a $3000/mo marketing budget that pays entirely for itself. Imagine having a 100% commission sales person who does their job well and perfectly represents your company?

3. Review & Improve

Do not take success for granted! People can be fickle, trends change at a whim, new technology gets introduced, things change. A company that is successful at marketing continually refines, modifies, and optimizes their advertising for the best possible outcome. They adapt to changes, they consider new paths, and the respond. By setting profits from existing campaigns into a separate R&D pool, you can fund a team to simply do research and development for new campaigns, without the threat of them being profitable, which frees the team to be creative, and think out of the box.

Bottom Line

These are simple principles that require real discipline, but the rewards can be amazing. By putting the up front, proactive effort into creating effective and sustainable marketing efforts, a company will soon find the freedom to focus on solely what they love to do, rather than spinning their wheels and remaining in a constant state of reaction.

What marketing success have you found? Please share stories below, we can all learn! 

The ad space has shrunk to make more room for profile information and activity on the timeline.  As the word “timeline” suggests, this is a fantastic way to chronologically view activity on Facebook from the most recent posts and interactions all the way back to the day you registered for Facebook.  It seems intuitive that a timeline approach to the visual layout works for an individual, but what does it mean for companies and their Facebook fan pages?  On March 30, 2012 Facebook is converting ALL of the fan pages to the new timeline view as well.

At Elliott Design we’ve been diving into Facebook a lot, creating engaging fan pages that utilize Facebook to it’s full potential.  Now that the pages are all changing it’s a fantastic time to examine this new format to find the strenghths and weaknesses.

COVER IMAGE

The biggest change is the addition of the cover image.  Similar to the cover of a book, this is the first thing people will notice when they land on your page.  This image is very large so there is a lot of room for creativity with the content of the image.  One cool concept is to tie in the cover image with the avatar (Like the Captain Morgan fan page below).  It’s possible to make the avatar look like it is cut out from the cover image.  Creating interesting layouts like this will make your page memorable and drive people towards the “like” button.

CONTENT IS KING

Facebook does a lot of work for you.  They give you a great layout, some amazing new features, and an intuitive layout, but the way you utilize the tools they give you will make you stand out.  The timeline view allows people to quickly scroll through the interactions and posts you’ve made.  If your content isn’t interesting or useful to them there is no reason to continue reading.  In the old layout I would usually look at the first few posts and that’s about it, but with the new view it’s more fun to browse a fan page.  You have a chance to reach more readers than ever before so the content should be something valuable that people will remember and think about even after they leave your page.     

THE TIMELINE

With the timeline it’s possible to view every single previous post or comment you have made.  Everything is archived in chronological order in the timeline.  A unique feature for fan pages is that the timeline can reach back in time as far as you want it to go.  For companies that have been established for a long time this is a neat way to visually represent your company history.  Coca Cola’s timeline goes back to the 1800s so you can read the entire history of the company since before Facebook was created.  All you have to do is create new milestones and set the date that they occurred.  Not only can people view your previous interactions on Facebook, but they can see what your company has done outside of Facebook.  If you can get people to start browsing your timeline you will have a lot of educated people that know all the facts about your business.

PINNING AND HIGHLIGHTING

Facebook is giving us more control with two new features that allow you to make certain sections of the page more prominent.  One of the new features gives us is the ability to pin different sections/posts of yours.  When you choose to pin something on your timeline it will automatically put that item at the top of your timeline for up to seven days.  You can unpin it before the seven days are up if you would like to put it back into its chronological place.  When something is pinned it will have a little orange bookmark in the upper right corner (see the bookmark in the image below).  The other new feature is called highlighting. When you highlight an item it will span the entire width of the timeline.  If you have a piece of information or something you are sharing that you don’t want to get lost in a sea of comments and posts you can use either of these new features.

By making the fan pages more like the personal pages you have a great opportunity to give your brand an identity.  When you interact with people it will feel more like they are talking to a person than talking to a business.  By changing the layout and giving you some control over the page, Facebook allows you to customize your conversation with customers more than ever.  The more creative you can get with the content the more you will stand out above the rest of the fan pages.

“A horse with a knife??” Lorena exclaimed, “What are we going to do??” Unfortunately, the truth behind the misunderstanding was much worse. Taylor was actually declaring a “forced width and height” scenario, an aggressive CSS tactic which dominantes most HTML elements.

Since then the ‘Horse with a knife’ meme has evolved to near obssesive levels amongst a few choice staff members, namely, Kyle and Ryan. Today they declared their obsession by getting joint tattos, designed by Jeremy Ross.

Check out the photos below!

Therefore we have created a Twitter cheat sheet. Think of it as tool box for all your Twitter needs…

*You are free to download and redistribute this to your hearts content. Just leave the Elliott Design logo on there…cheers!

This brings up the main objective of social media; how do I use it to my advantage? For starters, you need to have a goal in mind. Do you want to spread news about your company? Reach more customers by creating an online presence? Figuring out what you want and how you would like to be portrayed are the first steps in creating an online presence. 

Myth #1 - Social Media is Only for Young People. 

I’m always telling my technologically challenged mother these exact words, “Just play around with it, don’t be so afraid to press buttons!” The more you try, the more you’ll learn. When Facebook was first launched, there was no paper user manual, and obviously it still caught on. The beauty of these social networks is that they are geared to be user friendly. Just like websites now, if the user can’t figure them out on the first try, then who is going to waste their time? The ease of use makes these programs a perfect fit for all users.

Myth #2 – Social Media Won’t Do Any Good      

Social Media actually improves your image by helping to reach a wider audience. It gives your company a personality and a face-to-go-with-the-name. It helps with search engine ranking, bringing more traffic to your company site, and makes it easier for potential clients and customers to find you.  And I have to mention the added bonus of showcasing your customer service skills. If a client or customer chooses to voice a complaint publicly, you have the chance to demonstrate your ability to handle and rectify the situation, all in front of your whole audience. People will see your efforts and admire how well you handled the situation, and see how much you care about your customers experience.

Myth #3 – Social Media is Hard Work

I wish I could say this was a myth, but social media is hard work. However, the rewards are worth it. To successfully grow and interact with the community requires dedication and commitment. Like our own Jeremy Ross always says about websites, “You can’t just set it and forget it.” This rings true for social media as well. In order to form online relationships, you have to be a person, not just a robot behind the computer. This involves giving real time responses to questions and engaging with others. Humor is always appreciated and proves a good way to give your company a personality. Luckily, there are programs like TweetDeck or Hootsuite to help with updates, just be sure YOU are there to keep your audience engaged.