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Pixels Ink

Archive for June, 2010

How Blogging Affects Business | Online Communities | Blog

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

How Blogging Affects Your Business

There are tons of reasons that blogging is taken up by business owners, and there are just as many blogging subjects as there are reasons to do it. Traditionally, online communities were built to bring people together, so each community would usually feature a different subject, such examples might be talking small business strategies or coming together to discuss interests in finance. The first weblog was penned around 1994 and the shorter version of the word ‘blog’ was later used as the technology improved. Later, it was able to support basic images and now design firms build blogs into websites of owners that want to move on or expand the business from their basic shop or info site to something much bigger.

Blogs get people involved. Online discussion groups absolutely thrive nowadays; you could find a blog about any kind of subject or interest, so just how does blogging affect your business? We wrote this to bring you some info and to clear up some grey areas concerned with blogging.

So, not everyone likes the idea. Blogging is often seen as a fairly informal way to build online communities, to create an interest with like minded people. Its also a way to announce to people exactly what might be going on within the large or small business, how it is progressing and expanding perhaps.

With a static website, businesses can struggle to update them, often paying and outsourcing updates to companies that can maintain the site and update it as and when required. A blog uses a simple user interface so that anyone can easily update it, great for those that don’t know code and don’t have a similar interface (content management system) on the main website. Whats exciting about blogs is that they are open for comment which can keep a blog looking lively and up to date, with commenting being open for the owner to edit and delete as appropriate.

What to Blog About

Journal

In general everyday life of an individual or business, so not necessarily personal, blogs might be written in form of diaries or journals

News

Extremely popular are new blogs. Those which are kept fresh and concern daily news bulletins are fascinating to most people, blogging allows a business to launch news in real time

Topics

Perhaps an area of a business is of interest to some, specialised areas such as web design are common and allows designers to share information with readers, it can be more informal than a static website

Marketing

Business owners use blogging to their advantage, it’s a way of letting people see another side of a company, keep up with current events and a good way to stay in touch with customers and potential clients

There are so many ways to blog and any business or individual looking to start a blog will no doubt evolve and expend the amount of categories on the blog over time. Blogging has not only become an extension of a business website, but a staple of modern day vibrant business ‘online’ communities.

Small Business Marketing Materials – Using Leaflet Design, Flyers and More for Exposure

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Small Business marketing materials are used to promote business, brand image and of course services and offers a company wishes to shout about. Materials for marketing should be the absolute core of any small business as they can be used to promote and market a number of products and services, and help raise the popularity of the profession a business is involved in. Leaflet design, posters, banners and flyers – they are seen by the public every single day; hundreds of times over, and really can hit a target consumer right between the eyes!

A whole array of marketing materials are available for design to individual businesses making each one unique. The company logo and the services that the company wants to promote can all be put on their, as can the company tag line or mission statement – getting across to clients exactly what the company is about. Spending in the wrong places though can have disastrous consequences,

Bruach Marketing Materials

So, promote the business using the following marketing materials, for smaller businesses with little budget should consider business cards and headed stationery at the very least:

  • Flyers, Leaflets, Brochures, Catalogues
  • Posters and Banners
  • Annual Reports
  • Website Banners and Advertisements
  • Business Cards
  • Stationery

Simply put, high quality small business marketing material needs to be consistent with the brand or the message. Alternative needs for each business in the UK means that any designed and printed products should be unique to that company. They also should be of a genuine quality; black and white is fine so long as it reflects a brand. Brightly coloured and well designed is good, as long as it’s not copied by hand on poor quality paper. We think you get the message here – so many small businesses and entrepreneurs choose to design their own material which is fine, however this doesn’t always give off the professional approach that a business needs to get them off the ground and running.

Kaniker Health Clinic Marketing Materials

Successful business needs professionalism, whatever the industry, and promoting it using quality materials is first thing to be considered, should the budget suit. Some companies select the less expensive option to go with ready to use promotional products and off-the-shelf, though they cannot be expected to be unique and could cause some embarrassment where two companies meet and the same graphics have been used.

Ninety Nine Bar & Kitchen Marketing Materials

That said, sometimes cheaper alternatives are the only option for low budget new companies, or small business, but we don’t recommend scrimping on the essentials. Stationery should be printed on good quality paper, use both sides if you wish to promote products or services as well as showing customers your logo on the front, and for invoices and quotations a lesser expensive option should be to print some stationery yourself using a template you have set up on your computer, but try to always print in colour. Of course, larger budgets can have marketing material professionally designed and printed.

View some examples of our marketing design~: http://www.pixelsink.com/dundee-marketing-materials.php

Copywriting

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

Copywriting for Brochures, Leaflets, Websites and Mailshots to Boost Sales

When you’re planning anything involving copywriting – brochures, leaflets, websites, mailshots and e-marketing, you might just be interested to find out about copywriting, and how finding a professional can really help a small business directly boost sales. Finding somebody that can write in way you want to – with humour, professionalism, technical ability or informality – can mean a real difference between the good and bad of your copy, and a good team should be able to edit any copy to bring it up to date, grammatically correct and put all the dots, I’s and apostrophes in the right place!

Most marketing materials, advertising and website text involves a good standard of copywriting – there’s no point in setting up articles on your website or sales copy on your latest marketing posters if it has a chance of sounding out of context or reading incorrectly.

Good copywriting, despite whether it is to appear on leaflets, websites, brochures or mailshots, should involve your customer, or indeed your potential client. It should engage them, so much so that you should, right now, be able to think of at least four positive features that your product or service gives to a customer.

Struggling?

Write down what really captivates your audience, your customer and consumer – you need to be including complete core products that your business offers, and true features they have. If you seem to be getting muddled with features and benefits of your product or service, then that’s where good copywriting comes in. There is one thing your customer will part money for, and that is a product or service that really gives them something to improve what they already use, or have, or to give them an added luxury compared to what they are used to.

A benefit is great – but that tells a customer what you are able to do, it does not tell them the features, or what your product does to advantage your customer.

Take a vacuum without a bag  … keep reading, it’s relevant! If you telephone the sales department and ask them what the benefits of their product are, you might hear

We offer a revolutionary patented technology in a bagless upright “ or “ Our vacuum is superior to that of one with a bag and its got x, y and z tools attached to it for variations of usage “.

Hmm, that doesn’t tell you how exactly it helps you, though they are benefits they are made up of the company jargon so not many would understand that. What you want to know is that

the bagless offers stronger suction using an upright motion that collects and shreds larger pieces, as well as fine dust particles which is great for allergy sufferers “.

There are a few features in that one sentence, that gives a good idea to a customer whether its an improvement on what they already use.

We hope you get that comparison, a benefit is great but its of no use to your customer if it doesn’t hold advantages compared to what they are used to, they want features so they can tell if the product or service is of benefit to them, not you. It takes a lot to entice a customer away from a current product, or even more so to pay for something they don’t already benefit from at all!

So, we bear this in mind. Any kind of sales copy should contain positive features and entice your customer to buy. Any marketing material needs to involve some kind of sales copy, however subtle, because at the end of the day as a business owner you will be promoting your servives or a new product and you need to draw in new customers.

Three things should help you plan for such copywriting, and hopefully you will consider these using a decent amount of time – or at the very least consult your graphic, web and print designers who are usually experts in meeting your requirements as far as marketing, copyrighting and design goes. Sounds like an overall superior package, but we assure you there are companies out there that offer exactly those type of services, in particular copywriting services that get you noticed and increase profits.