Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
Today, we’ll cover web design marketing best practices and tips for small business.
Most businesses, from one person start-ups to small and mid-size businesses to international conglomerates, need to have a presence on the Web. A strong website can help a small business to more effectively market its products or services – even if the small businesses’ customers are all local. A strong website can also help individuals and businesses to promote their brands online, including on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Classmates, Bebo, Yelp, Foursquare and others.
If you need help, you can leverage crowdSPRING’s community of more than 67,000 designers and writers for your custom web design. Whether you leverage crowdSPRING’s community to develop a Web presence for your small business, work with a freelance designer or design firm, or create a design yourself, you might find the following 10 tips useful:
1. Keep the site design simple, fresh, and unique.
Your website reflects your brand and is the first impression a visitor will form when they visit your site for the first time.
The homepage is typically the most important part of a small business web design. This is what your potential customers will first see when they visit your website. And because most small business sites have fewer than a dozen pages total, the homepage is an important anchor for your overall site. It must answer several important questions – including who you are and what you do.
Consider the impression you want to make and the message that you want to communicate to your customers and potential customers. Keep in mind that users typically read only 28% of the words during an average visit, so don’t overload your homepage with a lot of text.
Consider that your visitors might be visiting from laptops and mobile phones, so try to avoid designing pages for a large monitor size or pages that use more complex features such as flash animation or navigation (flash isn’t supported on the iPhone, for example).
Tip: Particularly on your homepage – but also on any pages where you’re trying to persuade the user to take some action – think about what action you want the user to take and create a prominent “call to action” button. For tips on creative effective calls to action, I suggest you review 10 Techniques For An Effective ‘Call To Action’.
2. Showscase your products and services. You’re selling a product or service. Make sure that you clearly showcase that product or service on your homepage. I’ve seen many small business web designs that failed to effectively show their products or services. You have only a few seconds to make a first impression and you should make sure that the impression you make is professional. Most small businesses can benefit from professional photographs (or videos) of their business.
Even in non-recessionary times it can be difficult to get a new business off the ground. Start-up costs are high, investors are keeping the purse-strings tied tight, and customers are not exactly spending with élan. The restaurant business, traditionally a hothouse for entrepreneurism, suffered greatly in the current downturn but is rebounding, with industry-wide sales trending upwards over 2009 and restaurants hiring again, albeit slowly. This doesn’t mean that it’s any easier to open a restaurant today, but some really imaginative chefs are getting around this and a couple of interesting trends have developed in cities across the country.
The question for a chef who wants to start her own restaurant today is how to build an engaged and loyal audience and do so with less risk and lower startup capital. Part of the answer lies in technology, mobility, and a smaller footprint which allows for iteration and evolution of the business as it develops, without the relentless pressure of huge overhead. Well two models have appeared in the last couple of years which may radically change the industry and how foodies consume the latest in chef-made goodness.
In cities across the country (led by Los Angeles) people are flocking to food trucks for their lunches (and breakfasts, dinners, and desserts) where young chefs are creating gourmet meals and serving them through the window of the truck to folks who not only line up by the dozens, but follow these businesses online via Facebook and Twitter to find out where they’ll be parked on any given day. One of the first and most famous of the new-wave of food trucks is Kogi Korean BBQ To Go, an LA-based company whose fleet has grown to four trucks selling a completely delicious hybrid blend of Korean-Mexican delights. Kogi has almost 70,000 Twitter followers (@kogibbq), a web-based schedule so fans can see where the trucks will be on any given day, and has garnered tons of media attention, only adding to their legend. Competitors have sprung up and one organization that represents these young businesses, the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association, lists 66 members on it’s website. One of these companies, World Fare, even sourced the design for their truck (actually a double-decker bus, with seating on top) via a crowdSPRING project!
Another interesting model has been wandering around Oakland, California this year. A group of young chefs (many of them alums of the legendary Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse) unable to fund their own restaurants, banded together to find an audience for their creations using a new model. They call it “The Pop-up General Store,” and it is a cousin to both the food-truck and the old-fashioned farmer’s market. Together with the trucks, Pop Up General Store begs the question: does an aspiring restauranteur really need square footage, armies of staff, tables and chairs, and all of the accompanying overhead when they have the option to be the Bedouins of the food business?
A few weeks ago, Wieden + Kennedy began executing a ground-breaking social media campaign on behalf of its client, Old Spice. The foundation for the campaign was set when Old Spice introduced during the Superbowl, the “Old Spice Man,” played by Isaiah Mustafa, a television actor and a former NFL wide receiver. Mustafa, playing “The man your man could smell like”, generated a great deal of buzz about Old Spice (a bit more background in our post from earlier this week – Small business and startups: engage your customers the old(spice)-fashioned way). According to Adweek, that commercial generated over 12 million view on YouTube.
In late June and early July 2010, Old Spice launched two new Mustafa ads, continuing the theme of “The man your man could smell like.” Shortly after the second ad – on July 13 – Old Spice started a full blown and unprecedented social media campaign. That day, Old Spice’s twitter account sent the following message to its Twitter followers:
Following that tweet, Mustafa proceeded to engage with individual Twitter users, posting numerous tweets and nearly 200 custom short videos on YouTube. One video even helped a Twitter user propose marriage to his girlfriend:
Old Spice’s novel social media campaign generated an incredible amount of buzz – especially in social media circles. It also generated a barrage of misleading articles and news reports – such as here and here. The inaccuracies were likely influenced by a July 12 AdWeek article reporting that Old Spice sales had dropped 7 percent during the prior 52 weeks. AdWeek correctly reported the sales figures for the 52 week period ending June 13 (one month prior to the social media campaign):
For instance, P&G picked up the Film Grand Prix this year for Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” spot from Wieden + Kennedy. Launched in February, it’s racked up nearly 12.2 million YouTube views. But in the 52 weeks ended June 13, sales of the featured product, Red Zone After Hours Body Wash, have dropped 7 percent, per SymphonyIRI (this excludes those sold at Walmart). P&G execs were not available to comment.
As you can imagine, the buzz about the purported drop in sales and ROI failure of Old Spice’s social media campaign, was deafening.
What if some of the world’s most respected artists, including Picasso, Monet, Dr. Seuss, Dalí, Van Gogh and 21 other famous artists were each asked to paint a letter of the English alphabet – in their own unique style? How would each of their letters look?
crowdSPRING’s Audree Rowe wrote and illustrated a fun book for kids and art lovers – Art and the Alphabet. Audree’s book contains fun facts about each artist, and a hand painted illustration of how each artist might have drawn or painted their letter.
Audree is looking for a publisher, so the book isn’t available for purchase (yet). But take my word – it’s awesome!
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
Considering buying a generic logo from a “logo store”? Weigh the legal & business risks – http://bit.ly/dtxKJ3
Tips on Effective Use of Crowdsourcing for Small Businesses & Entrepreneurs – http://bit.ly/bdnUeG
Customer loyalty is critical to all businesses, and this loyalty can be built by small businesses by engaging their audience with their own brands through content creation. Blog posts, videos, advertising, and social media interaction should be designed to serve a larger engagement strategy.
The last few weeks have seen an explosion online, on TV, and in the press about an old, (and frankly) washed-up brand, turned new again through a strong, consistent, and creative campaign. Old Spice is a 71 year old brand, which was acquired by Proctor and Gamble in 1990, and which has seen astronomical growth in sales and market share over the past 3 years, due in large part to a creative campaign targeting young men aged 18-34. In 2006 Wieden and Kennedy landed the Old Spice account and started fresh, injecting humor in the advertising across multiple platforms and developing engaging characters and promotions.
There are two interesting things at work here: first is that an “old” brand with historically low brand equity can be updated for modern audiences and marketed to a new demographic by using effective spokespeople, humorous messages, and cross-platform strategies. The second is that the social web can be used to engage this new-found audience with lightning-strike quickness when the groundwork is well-laid and the audience well-prepped.
This did not happen overnight. in 2007 when W+K launched the campaign they introduced several new products, new packaging, and a new logo for the brand. This re-branding allowed them to change the messaging and, over time, change the perception of the brand among the key demographic. They did this through commercials featuring celebrities such as Neal Patrick Harris; through print ads which used silly “Keep it Clean” captions to offset the imagery, and through a website which offered tongue-in-cheek advice on topics such as “Easy ways to avoid getting picked in a lineup.” In two years, the campaign developed a loyal following and garnered 19% of market share, moving Old Spice into the #2 position behind the segment leader, Right Guard, and ahead of the 20-something powerhouse Axe body spray.
College can be a really difficult time for young people, so can the time right after you graduate. All of a sudden there’s this great big world, tons of decisions, and a whole lot of competition to score that dream job, meet “the one” and hopefully leave something positive behind. With this comes a load of stress, doubt, anxiety – a lot of things that we naturally experience, but have never learned how to channel in a positive way. Yeah, we learn math and science, but what about tools to manage stress? Everyone’s got it, so it would only make sense.
Enter YES+ (pronounced “Yes Plus”), a workshop offered through international non-profit, the Art of Living Foundation, that teaches young people how to free the mind of stress, worry and anxiety while helping one obtain sustainable happiness.
Young people are actively seeking ways to make a difference on campuses, in their communities and in the world. YES+ gives people powerful tools to keep moving, stay inspired, and remain stress-free no matter what the challenge. A lot of times, stress, insecurity, or maybe fear of the unknown prevents us from going after our dreams. YES+ inspires young people to have big dreams and go after them with full force. So the big question is how do you really do this? YES+ offers features powerful breathing and relaxation techniques and knowledge, that not only gives you a deep sense of peace, but also helps to increase energy and focus. Thousands of young people throughout the US and internationally have turned to YES+ as a way to be more efficient, happy and successful human beings.
YES+ posted a project on crowdSPRING searching for their new logo design! I had a chance to talk with Gopika from YES+ and I asked her a few questions to help you guys out so take a look…
1. How did you get things designed before crowdSPRING?
Traditionally we have done most of our design in-house. The Art of Living Foundation (http://www.artofliving.org/?q=intl) operates almost entirely on volunteer contributions, so we are lucky to get a lot of work done that way. As we continue to grow in size we have started to put infrastructure in place, but even now, as one of the largest NGOs in the world, we dont have a large in house marketing department. So our work is typically a combination of our volunteers and our much smaller number of employees.
A few years ago, the British Royal Mint crowdsourced the design of new coins. That competition attracted 4,000 entries from 500 people. Anyone was eligible to compete. Specially invited artists, Royal Mint engravers and artists from other countries competed with people of all ages, from everywhere.
Today, a jury selected by the Indian government picked a new symbol for the Indian rupee – to rival similar symbols for the US dollar ($), the euro (€), the UK pound (£) and the Japanese Yen (¥). The new rupee symbol was picked from over 3,000 entries submitted in a crowdsourcing competition to design the new symbol (the winner received $5,352 in cash). Udaya Kumar, a post-graduate student submitted the winning design.
India wanted to differentiate its currency from neighboring Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka – all of these countries used the abbreviation “Rs”.
The new symbol will be included in the “Unicode Standard” to ensure that it’s easily displayed in electronic and print media (this process can take up to two years).
Kumar’s concept, an official said, is based on the Tricolour and “arithmetic equivalence”. While the white space between the two horizontal lines gives the impression of the national flag with the Ashok Chakra, the two bold parallel lines stand for ‘equals to’, representing balance in the economy, both within and with other economies of the world.
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
crowdSPRING is the world's #1 marketplace for entrepreneurs, small businesses, nonprofits and agencies who need custom logo design, web design, a new company name or other writing and design services. Over 105,000 designers and writers work on crowdSPRING. We are trusted by more than 26,000 satisfied clients around the world.
Kogi has almost 70,000 Twitter followers (
This did not happen overnight. in 2007 when W+K launched the campaign they introduced several new products, new packaging, and a new logo for the brand. This re-branding allowed them to change the messaging and, over time, change the perception of the brand among the key demographic. They did this through commercials featuring celebrities such as Neal Patrick Harris; through print ads which used silly “Keep it Clean” captions to offset the imagery, and through a 
