Continue reading »]]>

One of the hardest questions of the image editing world is whether to use GIMP or Adobe Photoshop for image editing software. This is a paradoxical question, as there are moments where GIMP is more preferable than Adobe Photoshop, and others where Photoshop is the better choice of software. However, by analyzing the user’s needs prior to choosing between the two, one can better decide which program to use.

For Economy – GIMP

GIMP is free while Photoshop costs anywhere from $75 to $600, depending on the package. This is perhaps the greatest advantage of GIMP, as it is more than capable to perform everything a photography enthusiast or semi-professional designer would need. However, GIMP is unequipped with the advanced features that many professionals require. For example, the lack of a full-blown CYMK support would cut the deal immediately for many of the users working in the printing industry.

For Professionals – Photoshop

Photoshop has more full blown features, whereas GIMP is but a toddler compared to Photoshop. This is very important for many professionals who require usage of specific features such as CYMK support, among many others. Photoshop also has better integration with applications, allowing graphics design for games and animation to be done in the software itself, whereas GIMP does not have such mature features. While GIMP has more than enough features for the average user, one must keep in mind that most professionals are not average users.

For Enthusiasts – GIMP

The average user usually does not need the bulk of the features Photoshop has to offer. Most people do not have printing equipment that requires CYMK support. Most people also do not wish to spend a couple hundred dollars on a software package with features that they will probably never use. GIMP, on the other hand, has the basic features that an amateur photographer or enthusiast might need to use. However, it does not cost a couple hundred dollars. In fact, it costs nothing at all. It is a lot more economically efficient for an amateur enthusiast to use GIMP.

For Being Straightforward – Photoshop

Photoshop is developed by a team of professional programmers at Adobe and has been constantly updated for several years. Adobe Photoshop’s user interface is much more fine tuned and is simpler to use than GIMP. The user interface for GIMP is quite rough when in comparison with Photoshop, and the hotkeys not so simple to grasp. In addition to this, GIMP only has several published books and references to aid the user in areas they do not have experience in. However, there are countless books that include full lessons on every function of Photoshop out there in book stores as well as the internet.

The answer to whether one should use GIMP or Photoshop depends entirely on the person and what they will be using the software for. For professionals and those who prefer straightforward experiences – Photoshop is the way to go. On the other hand, for users who wish to edit a few pictures now and then and wish to use the software for simple projects – GIMP is the image editing software to consider.

Continue reading »]]> By Shannon Walker

Social Media Changing the Way We Do Business

Unlike our predecessors in commerce, the role of small business owner has significantly changed in terms of advertising.  To gain market share and effectively engage customers; companies must take a social media approach to marketing.  This means marketing to clients beyond normal business hours (8am to 5pm) and reaching new consumers beyond the doorstep of the business.  

Why to Incorporate Social Media into Your Business Growth Strategy

First, social media marketing offers an avenue for multi-directional conversations with customers on a personal basis.  Facebook illustrates a great example of how this interaction works.  My hairstylist started a Facebook page for her business.  She gives her clients her business card with information to find her on Facebook.  Why would her customers want to check out her Facebook page?  Simple.  There are several hairstyle photo galleries including New Hairdo’s hot on the scene, Wedding and Other Special Occasion Hairdo’s and client Hairdo’s.  The client hairdo’s are also posted by her clients.  Her clients will tag her as their hairstylist, which links entire client network back to the hairstylist.  It’s brilliant!  And you know what?  The new customers produced from this interaction are a warm sell.  They have already seen the results of a satisfied client.  

Secondly, Social media provides asynchronous communication.  It does not require both parties to be present.  For example, your last appointment left early and you have a few minutes to follow up with a potential client.  Great!  Instead of calling on the phone unsure of the time commitment you just made, you can zip onto Twitter and type a message (no longer than 140 characters) to find out how things are going.  Can you imagine?  What a quick way to stay in touch with your clients.  

Third, social media offers small businesses the means to perform large scale Research and Development (R&D) for new and potential products.  Let’s say that you are interested in carrying XYZ brand of Golfballs, however, you are unsure of their popularity.  Why not check Twitter?  Type #Golfballs  or #XYZbrand which will give you what people think of that particular product throughout the world. 

Finally, social media breaks traditional borders that normally would limit new client growth.  For example, I recently found a new customer through a social networking site that is interested in a product (still in development).  This new client is on a completely different continent!  This is not unheard of; however, what provided a competitive edge over someone else offering similar web-based services was my ability to personalize our interaction and answer questions that general website information and auto responders do not offer.

These are just a few of the advantages social media marketing has to offer small businesses.  Social media allows you to break into extended client networks without being overbearing.  Instead, the contact becomes a natural progression.  This progression happens 24 hours a day 7 days a week—while you are sleeping your comments are being read.  In addition, social media provides cost effective avenues to find out how new products will be received and how current products are performing.  

Overall, social media marketing is equivalent to the transformation from the Industrial Age into the Information Age.  In the Social Media Age, it is not just about how we use data.  It is about humanizing our relationship with our clients while using technology.   

Continue reading »]]> Welcome to the New Year! 

Have you thought about what your goals will be this year?  I have been thinking about it and I would like to share with you what I plan on focusing on this year.

Build repository for online help for small business owners.  Over the past couple years, I have focused mostly on helping my clients with their projects and put many of my own on the back burner.  Not this year… As I see it, I can help a greater number of people by creating content online.  So, please keep checking back to BrainworkCreative.com for helpful tips and tricks for YOUR business. 

1. Get over the stage fright!  I have wanted to make video training for software a long time coming.  However, I have a bit of stage fright on the end result.  I am a great public speaker/ trainer and fairly good at writing, however, the idea of being immortalized poorly on video has held me back.  I will let you know when I post my first video.  Very exciting stuff!
2. Keep plugging away on my personal goals.  I set goals last year and I am proud to say that I have been doing very well with those.  This year I will keep heading in the right direction.

What are your goals for this year?  Might I suggest – PUT YOUR GOALS IN WRITING!  There are a great many minds that agree on the fact that written goals are much more likely to be accomplished.  Also, it gives you a way to bench mark how you are doing throughout the year.

What ever your goals will be, here’s a cheer for you – YOU CAN DO IT!

Take Care,

S. Walker

Continue reading »]]> By S.Walker

6:30 am – Our four year old son comes into our bedroom to tell me he has to pee.  “Go pee.  Make sure to put the seat up and turn the light on.”  Son, “I peed!  I get a treat!”  I, mom, stumble out of bed to the kitchen to start our day.  (Try to convince a child that a mandarin orange is a special treat. Quite the trick that I have perfected!)

6:45 am – Turn the Television on in the living room and turn on the computer in the dining area (right next to the living room).  Unfortunately, I am not one of those lucky people with an office secluded in some part of the house.  During the course of a normal day, I constantly flip between web designer, copywriter, social media guru, search engine optimization expert, and mommy.  Talk about Jekle and Mr. Hyde.  One minute I have my sweet, loving voice explaining why there’s sunshine outside to strong willed and intelligent business woman explaining the merit of running a campaign for product launches. 

7:00 am – Husband stirring and looking for coffee.  I make a pot of coffee, throw a load of laundry in the washer and sit down to write an article for one of my blog sites. 

7:40 am – It’s time to run downstairs and put another load of laundry in the washer, start the first load in the dryer.  Oh, crap, forgot to print out that article to check for editing errors.  Run back upstairs, click print.  Our son is foraging and looking for a snack and a drink.  Done.  It’s time to find graphics, edit article and post on the blog. 

8:00 am – Finished and I feel great.  Switching Gears to social media and backlinking.  Twitter, done.  Redgage, done.  Infobarrel, done.  Follow up on forums and research new strategies. 

8:45 am – Time to dress our son and get him to preschool.  He doesn’t want to wear that shirt.  He can’t remember how to change his pants or his boots.  Finally, a tantrum.  Time for parenting. 

9:05 am – Arrive to preschool late, again.  Apologize to the teacher.  Teacher asks if I am able to stay and help with special projects.  (Out of guilt of disrupting the class… “Yes, I can stay.”)  By the way, I really love his teacher.  One of the most patient, loving and intelligent people I know.  I enjoy helping her.  In the perfect world, I wouldn’t be thinking of my client’s project that’s due this afternoon the entire time I am helping.

11:30 am – Time to head home.

11:45 am – Make lunch for my son and myself.  Start another pot of coffee.  Eat lunch at my computer while checking / answering emails. 

12:30 pm – Create an agenda for client meeting and email client the agenda.  Run downstairs, throw dry clothes in a basket and swap wet and dirty clothes to keep the process moving.

1:00 pm Call client to discuss projects and deadlines. 

1:30 pm Check on our son and start him with playdough at the kitchen table.  Time to start client projects. 

2:45 pm I wonder why the dog has playdough in his fur.  Kitchen, dear lord.  Ask son to clean up his mess.  Turn on the television.  Sweep up the rest of the mess.

3:00 pm Continue working on projects.

4:30 pm Finish projects.  It’s time to start dinner, wash dishes, and teach son how to set the table. 

5:30 pm Dinner time! 

6:30 pm Clean up.  Start a bath for son. 

6:45 pm Check analytics on websites, check to see if anything needs attention in email.  Start next client’s project. 

7:00 pm PJ time for our son!  He watches a bit of TV  while I continue working on projects.  Doh!  Laundry!  Run downstairs and swap laundry again…. The clean laundry is starting to pile up.  It will definitely be wrinkled.  Does it matter?  I work from home.  Meh, there’s always a wet washcloth in the dry to take out wrinkles. 

8:30 pm Time to read books in bed with our son.  I know you’re tired, mommy… You still need to show your enthuasiam – bring the books alive.  “Growl said mamma bear, someone’s been sleeping in my bed…”  Hugs and Pisses (He can’t get his K’s yet. I need to work on that one.)

9:00 pm Sit down at my computer again.  I am exhausted.  There’s still more to do.  I can see the leftovers on the counter from where I am.  Gah, those need to go in the fridge.  Walk over and clean up the kitchen.  Start a pot of tea. 

9:30 pm Sit down at the computer with a cup of hot tea.  Relax, while working at a leasurely pace on web work—mostly my projects at this point. 

11:00 pm I really should go to bed.  It’s late.

12:42 am I am so tired.  I just want to finish this last little bit.  It’s soooo quiet and peaceful. 

 1:15 am Ok, laundry is folded.  I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.  I can put the clothes away tomorrow and work on unfinished projects-they will be here tomorrow.

 6:30 am “I need to pee, mommy.”

Continue reading »]]> by S.Walker

Over the years, I have helped many small businesses with their online business and identity.  One question that pops up early in my relationship most clients is, “Can I use free web hosting or do I need to register a domain name and pay for hosting?”  

While this seems like a straightforward answer, the truth is that the answer isn’t always that easy.  For a small business controlling operational costs, this can be the difference between being competitive in a tough market and failing to compete with big brand name giants. 

A lot of small businesses decide to start a website using free hosting services.  The advantage of using this type of hosting services is that setup is free (not including time invested in creating the website).  Most free services offer a portfolio of templates to assist the non-technical user to set up a website quickly.

The disadvantage of using free web hosting is as follows:
1.    The business does not own your domain name.
2.    Free websites cover their expenses by loading the small business website with their affiliate / third party advertisers.
3.    Other businesses may have the exact same website layout as yours (looses branding)
4.    It is difficult to transfer a free website to professional hosting. (usually costs money) shopping carts, etc
5.    Free websites creator software still require some level of design and writing knowledge to create “good material”.

Before we continue this conversation, let’s look at a few scenarios:

Company A decides to purchase their own domain name and hosting.  They build their own website.  To get to their business online, a customer will type www.CompanyA.com, which will bring them to the home page.  From there, they may wish to visit products by clicking the products button on the page.  This will load the products page – www.CompanyA.com/products.html

Company B decides to use free web hosting.  They go to a free hosting website and fill out the online form and this becomes a subdomain on the free hosting website.  The domain URL is displayed as http://companyb.freewebhost.com.  When the customer clicks the products button, the URL displayed is http://companyb.freewebhost.com/products.html. 

Another option that is becoming somewhat more popular is “hover” or “stealth” modes.  For this scenario, Company C purchases a domain name and then signs up for free web hosting.  On their business cards, they print Visit Us Online! www.CompanyC.com  When the customer types www.CompanyC.com, they are automatically routed to the free hosting location.  No matter what other page they visit on the company’s website, the URL will not change.  It stays www.CompanyC.com.  With this said, hover and stealth modes are not perfected yet and quite often will have varying results across different internet browsers (i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, SeaMonkey, etc.)

Your head spinning yet? Hang in there!  Let’s take a look at what this really means.

Company A – This method offers a strong branding and identity foundation.  The business cards, the letterhead, the customer receipts, the sales promotions (landing pages) can all be coordinated together.  If the business wanted to create a special introductory offer page to entice people on marketing collateral, the business can easily put www.CompanyA.com/IntroOffer While this may cost a bit more in the beginning, it has the most potential for growth—such as adding a shopping cart or a client tracking database.

Company B – This method offers a low cost way to advertise your business.  Whether this will work for your business or not depends on the level of branding and identity you are willing to sacrifice.  Also, as a company grows they may decide to change their hosting to update their company image.  This migration to another service can be costly—as you may need to have someone migrate data from the old location to the new location or at the very least will take time away from you focusing on your business while you provide technical support for your website. 

If you want to run a sales promotion, adding long web address can be cumbersome.   This address does not have the same psychological effect as having your own website.  Part of promoting is having the customer connect with your company on a regular basis – “be front of mind”. 

Company C – This strategy may be an acceptable solution, however, you will still encounter similar issues as Company B (i.e. migrating, tech support, etc.)  In addition, the hover and stealth modes offer an extra layer of technology and therefore add another layer of things that can possibly go wrong.  Can you imagine spending $5 on a door hanger to promote a new special only to find that the link didn’t display or work when it was typed in? Gah!

Conclusion

While there may be good reasons to use strategy 2 and 3, strategy 1 offers the best company appearance and least amount of headache as your company grows.
 

Continue reading »]]> Authored by S.Walker

Great!  It’s a bright day and you open your doors to 24-hour around the clock business with your new website.  After hours, days, or maybe even months of wordsmithing the right content to drive sales and increase product sales and interest, you still have very little traffic coming to your website.  Moreover, the customers you do have coming to your website either

a)    spend very little time viewing your services / products or
b)    just don’t seem to be interested in purchasing your products / services. 

How can this be?  Well, I am afraid you may have fallen victim to what many people online suffer from in terms of proper marketing and understanding how web marketing can work for or against your business. 

In this article, we will cover a few topics to help increase this knowledge and hopefully increase sales coming to your online storefront.  The methods discussed are widely used by over a quarter million search engine optimization experts and can offer a great deal of insight into the inner workings of web marketing. 

Understanding Online Ad Copy and Keywords

Just as in traditional marketing, your main goal is to provide compelling ad copy that will entice people to buy your products and services.  Online marketing offers a twist.  Not only do you need to market to people but you must also provide words that the search engines will deem as relevant to the topic being searched for by the person using their search engine.  To do this, search engines use complex algorithms and automated programs to scan your website content. 

Complicated, eh?  Not really.  To put it simply, you need to use the words (keywords) that people are searching for in your ad copy.  This helps the search engines categorize your website properly so that your website is served to the right people who are interested in your products. 

Little Local Fish Competing with Big Business Dogs

The order in which people are served websites in search results is highly competitive.  If you performed a search for “coffee” in the search engines, you will find that the competition consists of big name brands.  Starbucks, Folgers, and Gevalia all fall within the first ten search results on page one.

Now, if you searched for “premium coffee Salt Lake, Utah”, You’d start to see local companies such as Big Dog Coffee Co. make it into the top ten searches.  This process of adding phrases is called long tail keywords.  Long tail keywords may be searched for less times than the broader keyword; however, they are easier to use in search strategies to obtain better search results. 

Leading Customers to the Sale

While using the right keywords will help you bring traffic to your website, it is still very important to provide advertisements that will attract customers to buy your products / services.  This is where traditional marketing strategies will help you build solid content, which include concepts such as a Call to Action.  A call to action is a request of the consumer to perform a particular action.  It is up to you as to whether you want them to sign up for a monthly newsletter or to purchase the newest widget you have to offer. 

Tools to Create Strong Ad Campaigns and Help Permeate Your Target Market

One of the best tools that I have found in assessing the viability of wording to market my customers products is Market Samurai.  Market Samurai is a robust suite of tools that takes a great amount of guess work out of whether a keyword phrase will successfully drive traffic to your website. 
 

For a 7-day trial visit – http://www.marketsamurai.com/c/bwcreate

(This is My Affiliate Link, which isn’t making me rich but does help pay for my virtual roof over my head.)

With Market Samurai, you can enter keywords into the keyword module and it will give you

a)    Similar Search Phrases
b)    Search Frequency
c)    Keyword Competition
d)    Exceptional Training Videos for
a.    Search Engine Optimization
b.    How to Use Market Samurai

There are free tools that will give you this information but it would be up to you to extrapolate the data and carry out the mathematical formulas on each keyword phrase to see if it offers the right amount of traffic to your website.  One such tool is Google External Keyword Tool. 

In conclusion, with proper research and strategy to gain market share, your web sales have the potential to increase significantly.  Check to see what keywords you can build into your online marketing to bring qualified customers into your presence without paying a fortune to contend with Big name brands. 

Continue reading »]]> Authored by S.Walker

It is intriguing to discover how after a while, companies transform their image.  You will find many reasons for an image change—including a “brand-new look”, fresh color palettes, and superior design.   The result of improving a company identity may be enhanced profits and greater consumer identification.  Nevertheless, it must be considered carefully as it can damage a company’s well-acquired status too.
 

Apple Logos (shown above) have transformed substantially.  Nearly all customers who were born following the creation of Apple would not identify with the prior logo design whatsoever.  Furthermore, the current logo design provides customer an effective symbol to identify with.  It is frequently referred to in five words or less. The initial logo design did not have the identical strength in focus.

Eventually, companies may get a new appearance.  The advantage of brand-new image might produce fresh and familiar clients needing to pay extra attention to their products or services-as they do not recognize the new branding.  The disadvantage is merely that – the organization looses brand recognition.
 

(Shown Above) You will discover many improvements the Cardinals made to their logo design.  Initially, they changed the type font.  One significant alteration of the font was the transition from print to cursive and the much more bold letters.  Next, the Cardinals transformed the appearance of their birds, which have much more coloration, detail, along with a more cohesive feel.  Lastly, the Cardinals transformed the color of the softball bat, which softens this aspect to produce more target on the name rather than a bold black bat.

An alternate way to update a company image is to personalize the colour scheme.  A color scheme is a choice of colors that are complimentary to one another and improve brand recognition.  For instance, if an individual mentioned “McDonalds”, you would imagine the colors red and yellow.  With this stated, you will discover lots of companies who have developed their color design over time.  For example, Apple has changed the look and feel of their logo design on many occasions since their beginning.

One last way of modernizing a business logo design might be to discovery innovations in technology, that allow for enhanced graphics.  The logos in the 50s certainly are different from the logos we run into today.  Giving a business a brand new appearance provides clients a feeling of assurance that they are buying with a competitive a company who remains up to date on the latest technology and for that, reason provides top-quality products and solutions.
 

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