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What does your Out of Office message say about you?

I just sent an email, and buried on the cc line was the email of someone who lives about as far across the country from me as possible. I’ve never met him and likely never will. We were just 2 independent souls whose professional email addresses were both included on a message that connected us. I responded to the email – replying to all – and received the following Out of Office message:

“My daughter is being born! Be back later.”

I had to respond. Not only because I wanted to congratulate this excited father-to-be on the expansion of his family, but to let him know his message had made my day.
 
When was the last time an Out of Office message invoked an emotion in you?

Most of us are in the habit of keeping our Out of Office replies professional. In fact, they are dry – dessert sand dry.

“I will be out of the office Monday through Friday returning Monday with limited access to emails. If you need assistance in my absence please contact XYZ”

It gets the job done, but there is no connection.

So, your challenge this week is to figure out some new and innovative ways to make an impact with your Out of Office message! We want to hear from you! Reply back with creative messages you have used or seen in the past or ideas you plan to use in the future!

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Kerry Brooks is Co-owner of ProfessionalEdge Associates, offering a wide range of marketing and support services to businesses that want to increase their success, but aren't in a position to add to their staff. Visit the ProfessionalEdge website at www.gettheprofessionaledge.com, email info@gettheprofessionaledge.com, follow them on Twitter @profedge, or like their Facebook page.

Ten tips to keep your website fresh

You’ve heard us say that your website is one of your front doors, especially if you are an online or remote business. It should be clean, free of cobwebs, with a fresh coat of paint, and oh so welcoming.

Here are ten simple tips to help you keep your website fresh:

Keep the look and feel current

The look and feel of your website (and other company collateral and social media sites) is as important as the clothes you wear. It is the eye-catching part of your brand and it is important that it represents your company today, not 5 years ago. It doesn’t take a total rewrite of your website to update the look and feel. It can be as simple as a new header, some new pictures, or a new color scheme. Don’t let your look and feel get stale or that’s the impression customers and potential customers will receive.

Change content often – it’s not that hard!

You will often hear the mantra “Content is King!” and it’s the absolute truth. The content on your website should change often and there are many different ways to do that. Some companies nowadays use a blog or Facebook page in lieu of a website. That is one way to assure that your content is always current – so long as you are always posting new content. But if you are using a traditional website, you can easily update content. We talk about several ways to do this below.

Access is everything

It is critical that people know how to stay connected with your business. Be sure that access to you is prominent on the home page and throughout your site. Update icons and links as you add new social mediums. Don’t make people search to figure out how to keep in touch.

Tell people the good stuff going on

One of the easiest ways to keep content up-to-date is to include current information about your sales, new customers, new staff, new products, improvements to old products, etc. Include a quick summary on your home page and allow visitors to drill down to get more information.

Talk about your team

One of your greatest assets is your team and you should showcase your team members as often as possible. This serves two purposes – let’s your customers learn more about your team, and is a morale booster. If you are just a small shop and showcasing would equal tooting your own horn, include information about your partners, board members, star vendors, etc. They are all a part of your team!

Use your current customers to help you get new customers

There is nothing better than a customer testimonial to help tell your story. Look how Amazon.com uses customer reviews to help sell each and every product in their massive arsenal. Request testimonials from everyone and post them on your website!

Add video to spark interest

Video captures attention – it’s something unique and quick that can tell your story. Add video to your website – particularly on the home page. But don’t have it play automatically! That can be a huge turn off to your visitors.

Add promotions or events

Be sure to update your website with every promotion and event you hold. Don’t forget to capitalize on national events like Small Business Saturday so you can leverage their marketing!

Add a Twitter or RSS feed 

You can add some simple code to your website that will continue working for you without any additional work on your part. Add a simple Twitter feed or RSS list and it will do the updating for you!

Make it a priority!

The most important thing to remember is, even though it seems like a daunting task, if you make updating your website a priority you can make it happen in just a few minutes each week. So make it a priority! Add it to your task list!

These simple tips can help you keep your website fresh and inviting so people will want to continue to visit through that door.

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Kerry Brooks is Co-owner of ProfessionalEdge Associates, offering a wide range of marketing and support services to businesses that want to increase their success, but aren't in a position to add to their staff. Visit the ProfessionalEdge website at www.gettheprofessionaledge.com, email info@gettheprofessionaledge.com, follow them on Twitter @profedge, or like their Facebook page.

How do you put your tray down at the end of the day?

Recently I read the following post on a friend’s Facebook page and was reminded of it at 3 AM this morning when my mind was racing from one work or life-related topic to another.

A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they'd be asked the "half empty or half full" question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: ..."How heavy is this glass of water?"

Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.

She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn't change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes." She continued, "The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything."

It’s important to remember to let go of your stresses. As early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don't carry them through the evening and into the night. Remember to put the glass down!

In today’s world, we don’t only carry one glass. Sometimes it feels like there is a tray of 100 different glasses we are lifting carefully as we step over the loads of laundry and scattered kid and canine toys. There are different sized glasses, some holding more water than others. Hopefully, none of the glasses is too full so that it throws the entire tray off balance and everything comes crashing to the ground.

So, this post is a call-out to all of you. What are your tricks for making sure you place that tray in a safe spot at the end of your day, tucked away out of your mind, hopefully some of the water having evaporated leaving it lighter when you pick it up along with the Legos the next morning?

 

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Kerry Brooks is Co-owner of ProfessionalEdge Associates, offering a wide range of marketing and support services to businesses that want to increase their success, but aren't in a position to add to their staff. Visit the ProfessionalEdge website at www.gettheprofessionaledge.com, email info@gettheprofessionaledge.com, follow them on Twitter @profedge, or like their Facebook page.

 

What the heck is a JPEG and do I even need one?

So you have designed your logo or other elements of your look and feel or had someone design them for you. As we discussed in our recent blog The Many New Faces of Your Logo, logos or similar graphic elements should first be designed in vector format so they will be fully scalable up or down and will meet any of your future design sizes and needs without compromising the quality of the graphic. But there are so many other things to consider. For example, you can’t use an .eps or .ai vector graphic on a website or on your blog. So what the heck is a .gif and a .jpg? And, when should you just use a Word doc with your graphics or photos inserted in them (hint: NEVER!)?

As graphic designers we’ve seen it all. We often receive logo files or ads to place in conference program books, on websites, in collateral and the like, and we receive everything you can imagine. We’ve seen teeny, tiny low resolution photos, small ads that are actually small graphics with a lot of white space around them in an 8 ½” x 11” file, and yes, even graphics placed in Word documents. It’s important that businesses understand the importance of your graphics and what formats you will need in order to assure your brand is always best representing you. If you use a graphic designer, be sure they know your needs and goals so they provide you with all the files you need up front.

Following are some graphic dos and don’ts as well as some different graphic and photo formats, each with a small explanation of what they are and when they might be needed.

Graphic Do’s

• Do know the basic graphics formats you will need
• Do get your files from your graphic designer (they are YOUR graphics!)
• Do hire a graphic designer if you don’t have the talent in house to look your best – it will cost you less in the long run!
• Do use high resolution photos and vector graphics for your printed materials

Graphic Don’ts

• Don’t design your look and feel, logos, ads, or other collateral in Word or some other non-graphic program
• Don’t stretch photos, resize them
• Don’t use photos or other graphics off the web for your printed materials
• Don’t ever take a low resolution graphic, turn it into an .eps and think it will be high resolution

Basic Graphic Formats for Small Businesses

AI - Adobe Illustrator's metafile format. This is the native Illustrator file type and is a vector format. You can create .eps files from an .ai file.

EPS - Encapsulated Postscript files can be created using Adobe Illustrator plus a host of other software programs. If the original file is a vector file, your .eps will be vector as well. This is a common graphic file type and you should have a vector version of your logo (in multiple colors!) as an .eps so it can be sized up or down to meet any need.

GIF - Graphics Interchange Format  is a very efficient and still quite popular picture format. GIF animations are a popular form of Web multimedia, because they're small and display in most current browsers without needing a special plug-in or taking up many computer resources. GIF’s only have 256 colors, or 256 shades of grey. This is a format you may want to use for online graphics, but not for your print materials.

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), commonly called JPEG and with the filename extension .jpg, can be an efficient image type. Your digital camera may save files as JPEGs. JPEGs can be optimized and some of their data discarded so they can be useful for web-based applications. JPEGs can also support CMYK (four color separation) so they can be used in printed materials as long as the resolution is high and the compression is low.

PNG - The Portable Network Graphics format, pronounced "ping". We like .png files for use on the web because they can have a transparent background and still have a high resolution at a low file size.

PSD - Adobe Photoshop's native format, which stores all of its layers, selections, and miscellaneous other image data. This is a source file similar to AI.

TIF - TIFF stands for Tag Image File Format. TIFF is a very popular professional graphics format used for printing because it allows for CMYK separation with out compression.

There are many, many other graphic file formats, but these are just some of the basics that may be helpful as you run your business and work to put your best brand forward every day. Do you have all the graphic files you need?

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Kerry Brooks is Co-owner of ProfessionalEdge Associates, offering a wide range of marketing and support services to businesses that want to increase their success, but aren't in a position to add to their staff. Visit the ProfessionalEdge website at www.gettheprofessionaledge.com, email info@gettheprofessionaledge.com, follow them on Twitter @profedge, or like their Facebook page.