Designed for Mobile Use…

When you’re trying to find information, going from a 20 inch monitor screen to a tiny smartphone screen can be frustrating. It often seems that most apps haven’t quite mastered how to intuitively design an app for ease of use. Alas, last week I downloaded the Expedia app on my iPhone 4s and immediately fell in love. The landing page features two columns with rotating images. The photos feature some of the most popular destinations on the planet and beckon for the user to click through and book their next vacation. My happiness with the app caught me so off guard that I almost forgot why I downloaded it in the first place!

I was able to refocus and clicked on the top ‘flights’ button that was easy to find (sometimes with these apps it seems like way to much work to figure out where I can find a flight search)! I put in my dates and destination – Vegas Baby! – and initiated the search. The next screen was equally as entertaining as it featured a plane window whose view shifted with my iphone. Maybe I’m easily amused but I thought it was awesome that I could play with the window shade while soaring on this virtual plane.

Unfortunately, the search results were pretty similar to what I found with my Orbitz app and my Southwest app but the experience was much more enjoyable… and isn’t that what mobile interface design is all about?

3 Strategies for Posting on Your Facebook Business Page

Creating a Facebook page for your business is a cinch! But once it’s there, how do you increase it’s exposure? You’ve got to build an audience, and you have to do that with relevant and useful content. Here’s just 3 strategies on how you can do that.

#1 Share something that interests you.

Like most of the population, if you want the answer to something, one of your first steps is hopping on google and seeing what others have to say about the subject. Most times, you will find useful information and then you’ll be on your way. But wait – why not share what you’ve just learned with the rest of your friends and followers? Not only will you be helping others but you’ll establish yourself as a great resource for the information and increase your credibility!

Often times when I’m researching how to improve my own business, I stumble upon information that my clients will also find educational. Facebook is a great platform to push this out to them. Plus, it’s quick, so I don’t mind spending my time to do it. You could skip the personal message but it’ll be more effective to give your audience a quick preview of what you found useful.

 

After posting, you will be able to see if people found your share as beneficial as you did. For 2 minutes of work, I reached 8 people.

 

 

 

 

#2 Capture a moment.

It’s been proven that viewers are much more likely to click on a post if there’s an image or video involved. Maybe you just finished a job or made a sale. If you own a storefront, what’s the weather like outside? Have you gotten new inventory in?

One of my clients is T&L Tree & Landscaping. The owner, Laura Hauser, does a great job of updating her followers on the odd jobs or weather she and her team encounters on a daily basis. The content is interesting and informative and the pictures say it all.

#3 Connect Your Product with a Current Event.

Is there a movie out that pokes fun or promotes your product or service? If you can connect the mainstream media to your business, hop on that bandw

agon! Social media is all about being quick and in the moment so ride whatever trend is in and enjoy the free publicity! Take our client GRIP Greater Rochester Identity Protection‘s post for example. They capitalized on a new feature film that came out a couple days ago.

 

SEO and getting to the top of google

Recently in a client meeting, the client shared that they had just purchased a domain that contained extremely relevant keywords for their business. He is a real estate agent and purchased a domain with ‘www.citystate.com’ for our city. He now wants to utilize it in the best way and, since he already has a website, was prepared to make a community page where he could advertise his business along with any other local business that wanted to share the space. It was an interesting concept, yet also raised some red flags. And it got me thinking…How important is it to have keywords in your domain.

SEOmoz.com put out a great study on Search Ranking Factors. The results show that keywords in a domain only account for 11% of search results. I encourage you to read through the article. These stats are changing every year and social media is playing a larger part every year. This was a bit of an eye-opener for me as well.

If these categories aren’t clear to you, there’s an interesting article that explains the top 5 here: http://www.boxcarmarketing.com/blog/item/top-5-ranking-factors-in-search/

 

Getting what you want, even when you don’t know what that is.

The main invite

Weddings can be expensive. Anyone who has had a wedding, planned one or even attended one, has first hand knowledge of this. Most of us have to work with a limited budget and pick and choose our battles and what we want to splurge on. I recently had the opportunity to work with a bride who prioritized the quality of her invite. She felt that the invite would be on of her guests’ first impressions of the evening they were invited to attend and prided herself on giving them as much information as possible up front. She also (as most brides do), had a very concrete image of what she wanted-some of which was and was not possible.

At Lime Creative, one of our goals is to help new business owners go through the process of branding. Most entrepreneurs have no idea how to creatively market their business or to represent their brand to their target audience. Helping brides is somewhat the same. Brides typically have no experience in printing, color management, or how to create a system of unity so that it looks like all the little pieces are going into the same puzzle. That’s where we can help. We are more than willing to talk a bride through the process and even let them share in the glory. We can give them options and help them narrow down what might work best in their wedding.

Here’s what we did for Josh & Katie:
Let’s start off by saying that Josh did not have any part in this. That was his choice and his responsibilities were to create the menu and select the music for the big day. Katie took on the task of the invite. A few of her must-haves were
1) absolutely NO WHITE
2) pink, silver and black color scheme
(this evolved into metallic pink, silver and metallic black)
3) map for guests
4) printed on metallic paper
5) logo created and incorporated
6) main invite to be traditional and simple

She was very happy with the results as we accomplished all of these things. There were inevitably some hiccups. For one, you cannot print color ink on black paper. Have you ever tried using a sharpie or marker on black paper? It’s the same thing. You also will have a very hard time printing onto metallic paper. In order for the paper to have a metallic sheen, a finish is applied, making it difficult for the ink to ‘set’ into the fibers of the paper. This left us with just a few printing options. What we decided to go with is a combination of letterpress and foiling. See the results below, the inserts are letterpress and the invite and logo are foiled.

Logo on the inside flap

The 3 inserts, including the RS

How bad do you want it?

Every once in a while, you come across a sentence or photo or person or….well it could be anything, that motivates you. Reinvigorates you. Sparks motivation. Gives you passion. How do you tap into that? Is it a food or place?

I’m the assistant volleyball coach at a college here in Rochester part-time. One of our hardest working players sent our team and staff a video this spring that spoke to me. And it still is. The video can be down here. Besides the motivating images, the message in this video has been burned into my brain.

“When you want success as much as you want to breathe,
you will be successful”

This message rings true to me. I want to succeed at all I do. I want to be the best. Or so I tell myself. I need to remind myself sometimes of what I want and how badly I’m willing to work for it. What am I willing to give up in order to obtain my goals? Am I so busy training for success that I forgot to eat? Am I working so hard that I don’t have time to run errands? To go to a party? To watch Hulu? To scan Pinterest and facebook? Sometimes the answer is no, and that’s what is holding me back. I remember this video and the message it shows and THAT is usually enough to motivate me to fight through any distractions that are in my way of my goals.

For me, my mornings are key to my success that day. When I wake up well-rested and early (around 6:30am), I need to make sure that I get to work on my company within an hour. My best ideas come to me when I’m in the shower or getting ready in the morning. I often make voice notes and go through a couple sticky notes before I actually sit down at my desk. And that helps me form my list for the day. Everyone is different, morning is my GO time. And I try to take full advantage while I can.

Don’t use that tone!

comments coming soon

Google+ makes itself relevant

About 6 months ago I made the switch to an iphone. I’ve always used Apple, since the ’90s, and it just seemed to make sense. But I definitely miss my Droid Global. There are things on the Android phones that make the iphone seem primitive and vice versa. But without getting into that comparison, let me just say what I missed about the Android.

Google runs the Android. I use gmail, google docs, google calendar and google voice. They are easier to use and all right there! And they ran seamlessly on my Droid. Also, the google maps on my Droid was perfect, it acted just like a gps, yet much less complicated because it searched for the location as I was typing.

Despite my love for google, when they realized Google+ and the circles it uses., it seemed silly and an exact copy of facebook – so I never used it (although one of my friends did force me to click one button to join). That all changed when I went to leave a review for my favorite restaurant in Le Puy En Velay, France – La Mappemonde. I’ve left reviews before and I had to create a user name and persona to do so on Google Maps. But this time, my picture and name were all ready to go from my enrollment in Google+. I hesitated…I didn’t know how much I wanted my information to be out there for my review…and it was a good review! What if it were a bad critique and I still had my picture and name associated with it…

So I suppose it’s up to every individual with how comfortable they feel with that, but the point is that most people use google maps and facebook separately. But now google has meshed their Google+ platform with their Google Places and made it relevant. They’ve also revised the interface and how you review places.

What this means for businesses is that they need to pay attention to their Google Places pages and customize them to fit this new format. The new interface is much more visually appealing, feature large thumbnails of pictures.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, take a look at this article, which is full of screen shots and comparisons. I’ll be busy editing Lime Creative’s place page.