02 May
Building Your Corporate Identity With Color
by Shafik Mansur -
www.business2community.com
hello
Have you ever thought about the psychology of colors? Colors are said to be connected to emotions and actions, two interesting ideas when you think about them
Have you ever thought about the psychology of colors? Colors are said to be connected to emotions and actions, two interesting ideas when you think about them in terms of business.
How do you want a customer to feel when they’re looking at your marketing materials or browsing your website? And have you ever considered how your business’ web design, logo, business cards, and brochure colors could be altering your sales, whether good or bad?
According to a design article on Daddu, colors can influence shopping decisions, making the graphic design of your website and marketing materials a very important decision.
Curious how your website measures up? Check out the list below to see what your web design’s colors could be saying to your customers.
Blue — Safe and secure. Good if you need people to trust you.
Green — Calm and confident. Good for making people spend money.
Red — Energetic and vigorous. Good if you want people to risk.
Yellow — Optimistic and cheerful. Good if you want people have fun.
Pink — Romantic and dreamy. Good for (young) female customers.
Orange — Willing to take action. Good if you want people to act.
Black — Powerful and wealthy. Good if you want people to spend money.
The article goes on to say that certain colors work best for certain businesses. For example, if you’re in the beauty or makeup industry, pink might be a good choice because of its strong association with youth and black due to its association with prosperity. If you’re in the auto industry, you might elect your graphic design to include red because it’s associated with energy and speed and black because of its association with luxury.
I asked one of our graphic designers, Will, his opinion on this topic. He said:
“It is important to choose the right colors for your website because colors don’t just make things look pretty, they create a persona for the website. A lot of websites are blue because blue is a comfort color — police uniforms are blue, it conveys trustworthiness and reliability. Other than color, the general brightness of a website is also important. A darker website could be more entertainment-oriented, while a lighter scheme would give a more corporate feel.”
What do you think? Can colors sway a prospective customer’s decision to contact you or purchase your products or services?
Redberry Designs offers our pro bundled website design, marketing and hosting package it delivers everything that you need to take your online marketing and branding to the next level. Submit a request for quote or call us (770.783.0230) today to get started...
About the Author: Shafik Mansur is CEO and Director of Marketing of Redberry Services Redberry Designs. Redberry is an Agency that Shafik and his business partner, Jannice, created and is a specialized firm, Redberry Support Services, LLC in January of 2009 to provide small and midsize enterprises and entrepreneurs with web design, content marketing and web hosting. He is also an avid photographer and his local photographic work is featured at Noonday Photography. At Noonday Photography - Shafik delivers photo journalistic, artistic and beauty-inspired photos. Photographs natural in their beauty, framed masterfully, are art pieces that capture the magic of your day. Our photographer, with diverse experience in many photographic subjects, always provide a fresh take that takes the documenting of your events and projects to the next level. To learn more and to download FREE business tools and articles, as well as join their mailing list, visit the Redberry Services Redberry Designs website at http://www.redberryservices.com. You may print this article for personal use or republish it online only if it is left unaltered and in its entirety, including bylines, links and author information. Contact the author for all other permissions.
30 Aug
Is your small business ready for professional marketing, branding and website development project?
by Jannice Almansur -
We have clients that have experienced anywhere from a 20% upwards to a 60% increase in sales based on the strategies we have implemented for them. If we had to point to the one factor that was consistent among the most successful of them, it would be the fact that they all have real tangible proven business plans. Redberry Website Design partners with small businesses to help them develop and execute their growth strategies. It has been our experience that our clients experience exceptional ROI relative to the investment required to retain our services. One of the biggest challenges that we face when developing a marketing, branding, and website development strategy for prospective clients, is their lack of business plans and concrete financial planning. So I pose this question to you... Are you managing your business for success? ...or is it a series of nebulous conversations, strategies and tactics. Here are some questions that you need to answer before attempting to either acquire outside investors or even before making your own capital investments in resource, services and capital.
Does your small business, organization or non-profit?
- Prepare an annual budget?
- Have financial statements audited or reviewed (not just compiled) by a CPA annually?
- Have a mission and vision statement made known to your employees and customers?
- Engage in planning beyond the current year?
- Have an outside board of directors to help guide your company?
- Have key performance indicators that are reviewed regularly?
- Have a solid growth strategy?
- Have necessary resources (people, money, etc.) to grow?
- Have the desire, drive, and enthusiasm to grow and execute growth strategies?
We would love to hear your comments, thoughts and answers to these questions. Also if anyone has any additional questions that we have not thought of here please feel free to pose them here.
Redberry Designs partners with you to make sure that the findability of your online business is pushed up to the top search engine ranking position. Contact our team to get your project started today! Click Here to Get a Quote Now!
About the Author: Jannice Boyd Almansur (http://www.jannice.info/) is Managing Director of Redberry Atlanta Website Designs. Redberry is an Agency that offers Branding, Website Development and Hosting Solutions and a full portfolio of business content marketing and brand identity solutions for small businesses. To learn more and to download FREE business tools and articles, as well as join their mailing list, visit the our BerryPatch Blog at http://www.redberrydesigns.com/BlogRetrieve.aspx?BlogID=419 and Redberry Atlanta Website Design website at http://www.redberryatlantawebsitedesign.com. You may print this article for personal use or republish it online only if it is left unaltered and in its entirety, including bylines, links and author information. Contact the author for all other permissions.
01 Jun
Content Marketing and Small Businesses Win with Google's Latest Algorithm 'Panda'
by Jannice Almansur -
This is great news for small businesses and content marketers. The team here at Redberry Website Design have been praising the value and benefits for small businesses to develop and implement a consistent high quality content marketing strategy.
We have repeatedly sang the praises of content marketing as being uniquely well suited to small businesses because it is budget friendly - does not take a large investment. In fact, many techniques are DIY; It also removes barriers between you and your community and is shared with friends, family, relatives, colleagues (your community). Being an expert resource within a niche (you do one thing and you do it well) meas that you have many great tips, insights and strategies to give to your prospective clients and existing customers.
Taking the steps to create, share and promote this information through your website's blog and other social media sites is the essence of content marketing and now Google is rewarding your efforts with higher authority search results. Take a moment to read this article below that I found today on HotFrog.com. The author has done a good job explaining exactly what the changes to the Google algorithm mean to all small businesses.
Google's latest major algorithm change puts emphasis on quality content
Google's recent 'Panda' update changed radically the way the world's most powerful search engine indexes and ranks websites. The good news is that Google now respects 'higher-quality content'; the question is just what does that mean for small and medium-sized businesses?
In April 2011, Google - the world's most influential search engine – amended the way it ranks websites in all English-speaking countries with an algorithm update called ' Panda '. Unless you follow search marketing blogs and news you may well have missed this story, but it is vitally important – and beneficial – to the online marketing of small and medium-sized businesses everywhere.
What Panda did was clamp down on so-called 'content farms', content-heavy sites that featured high up on search engines purely on the strength of their text-based content and links. Most of these easily-findable sites are designed to generate ad revenues from page views but the relevance of their content to the average surfer is often limited and leads them to leave the site to look elsewhere for what they really wanted to find. Sites regarded as content farms have seen their visibility hit significantly by Panda while other sites – particularly those with comments and interaction on them – saw their domain visibility increase. An early indication of the early winners and losers can be found on the Searchmetrics blog.
Panda: It's not all black and white
Many of the 'quality content' sites that saw their search engine visibility increase were newspapers' online editions. For marketers this is significant, as coverage from one of these sources will often include a link back to their company website, which post-Panda carries even more weight than before.
This is great news for marketers and their search engine optimization (SEO) strategies as it means that, so long as they continue to follow SEO best practice, they stand a better chance of their content being found on search engines. Marketers can continue doing what they should be doing anyway, which is creating compelling, optimized content that engages target audiences wherever they are in their buying cycle and that can be easily shared on social networks. Given that length of time people stay on a site is also taken into account, it is essential to draw readers further into the website with more intuitive and insightful content.
Perfect your content marketing strategies
Now that Google has done small and medium-sized businesses a favor by punishing content farms' visibility, organizations need to perfect their content marketing strategies to make the most of the changes.
This means not only creating great content - such as blog posts and how-to guides, video and audio content on your own website - but also seeding content around the Web to help it be seen and shared even more. This strategy should include things like posting presentations on Slideshare, uploading informative and shareable video content to video sites such as YouTube or Vimeo (which were classed as 'winners' post-Panda), and sharing content on social networks such as Twitter.
Organizations are often unaware of the great content they already have lying around in folders: presentations from events, reports, white papers. Why re-invent the wheel if you already have a stack of great intellectual property to share already? Think about an editorial calendar and creating content that matches the needs of your different demographic of target audience.
To be effective at SEO and content marketing in general, small and medium-sized businesses need to work out which keywords and phrases they need to focus on and generate relevant, compelling and easily-sharable content around those keywords and phrases. A basic introductory course from an SEO marketing specialist will be money well spent here if you're unsure how SEO works. If you're successful it will pay back in terms of search visibility, traffic and – ultimately – new business. Make sure you track the performance of your keywords on Google – as well as Bing and Yahoo – over time so that you can see which keywords and phrases you need to focus your content marketing on.
Marketing managers should familiarize themselves with Google's own guidelines on how to improve the search visibility of their own website. Google Panda has done small and medium-sized businesses everywhere a favor by punishing content farms, the challenge now is to create that great content that will make the most of the opportunity.
Disclaimer: The 'winners and losers' statistics blog was created by Searchmetrics, a client of the author.
Chris Lee is managing director of London-based online PR consultancy Planet Content . He is also a social media trainer , speaker and contributor to the University of Westminster's New Media Knowledge digital resource
Use this link to read the original post from HotFrog.com.>> http://www.hotfrog.com/sbh/guides/googles-algorithm-puts-emphasis-on-quality.aspx?m=56f19e38-7421-4d41-a7e0-2455dbd9e611
Use this link to read the original post from HotFrog.com.>> http://www.hotfrog.com/sbh/guides/googles-algorithm-puts-emphasis-on-quality.aspx?m=56f19e38-7421-4d41-a7e0-2455dbd9e611
07 May
An Overview of Redberry Atlanta Website Design's Powerful Adobe Hosting Platform
by Jannice Almansur -
HOSTING PLATFORM
- We have combined a solution
- ...that takes into consideration branding, marketing and providing more than just a website, but more so a full service hosting platform with a powerful completely integrated database, content management, e-commerce and email marketing solution.
We give you, the small business owner, the powerful tools to level the playing field, allowing you to compete with the big guys...We put you back in control of creating lasting success! More - Main Features
- Our fully integrated system gives you the power of multiple software suites, easily controlled from one central interface. Managing your business has never been so simple! Learn More or view Full Features
Redberry Designs partners with you to make sure that the findability of your online business is pushed up to the top search engine ranking position. Contact our team to get your project started today! Click Here to Get a Quote Now!
About the Author: Jannice Boyd Almansur (http://www.jannice.info/) is Managing Director of Redberry Atlanta Website Designs. Redberry is an Agency that offers Branding, Website Development and Hosting Solutions and a full portfolio of business content marketing and brand identity solutions for small businesses. To learn more and to download FREE business tools and articles, as well as join their mailing list, visit the our BerryPatch Blog at http://www.redberrydesigns.com/BlogRetrieve.aspx?BlogID=419 and Redberry Atlanta Website Design website at http://www.redberryatlantawebsitedesign.com. You may print this article for personal use or republish it online only if it is left unaltered and in its entirety, including bylines, links and author information. Contact the author for all other permissions.
22 Mar
Easy Steps to Setting Up and Using Windows Live Writer to Post to Your Redberry Website Design Platform Blog.
by Jannice Almansur -
Using Windows Live Writer to post on the fly to your blog on the Redberry Website Design Blogging platform is a snap. Just follow these easy steps to first download Windows Live Writer then connect to your blog on the platform.
Step: 1 Download and Install Windows Live Writer
- Use this link to access and download windows live writer. http://explore.live.com/windows-live-writer?os=other
- Download the program
- Once the install begins >> select windows live essentials 2011
Be patient the download will take about 5 or more minutes.
Once the program completes it will auto launch. It will ask you to create a Hotmail account. Just follow the steps and the system will create the account for you. Once you have your account allow the install to complete. You will have to close and re-launch Outlook.
Step: 2 Create a Hotmail Account and Launch Windows Live Writer
If the program does not launch automatically or take you to the set-up simply select your windows explorer (Short cut= Windows Key+E
In the search bar type “windows live writer” and the program will be found. Select it to launch the program.
Because you already have a blog as part of your website on the Redberry Website Design platform you click Add blog account, and then follow the steps to set up your blog in Writer.
(This is the link to how to connect to the your blog on our system with windows live writer)
Step: 3 Set-up Your Redberry Website Design Platform Blog
Using Windows Live Writer for Blogs
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Contents [hide]
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The system uses the Metaweblog API, allowing you to use a variety of third-party blogging clients to control your blog externally.
Configuring The Blog Account
Step 1: Select The Blog Service
Make sure you have your credentials for your an existing blog created in the Admin.
You will need the following Items:
- remote posting URL for your blog to be added to this (http://mysite.com/MetaweblogAPI.ashx)
- username and password you use to login to the Admin Console
- root URL of your website
- FTP Host Details: FTP hostname: and FTP host Username:
If it's your first time running Live Writer, it will automatically prompt you to create a new blog account, otherwise, open Windows Live Writer and select "Create new Blog Account."
The first window you should see will ask you which blog service you are using. Select "Other Blog Service" and click "Next"
Step 2: Enter Your Blog Details
Enter the web address of the blog, followed by the username and password you use to login to the Admin Console.
This is the web address of your blog: It should look something like this…
http://yourcompanyname.redberrydesigns.com/_blog/yourblogname
If you do not have this information you can contact Me or Shafik or pull up your blog in your browser and copy the full address. Make sure that you copy the main blog address not the address of a post or secondary page.
Your Username and password are the same as what you use to log-in to your website admin area. If you do not have those use the link above to contact us.
If you'd like Live Writer to remember your password, click "Remember Password."
Click "Next"
Step 3: Select The MetaWeblog API
Under "Select Blog Type", choose the "MetaWeblog API" and enter the following URL, substituting "http://mysite.com" with the root URL of your website.
http://mysite.com/MetaweblogAPI.ashx
Enter this in the
Remote posting URL for your blog
http://yourcompanyname.redberrydesigns.com/MetaweblogAPI.ashx
or http://yourwebsitedomainname.com/MetaweblogAPI.ashx
Click "Next"
Step 4: Do Not Load Blog Theme
Our Blog API does not yet support previewing of themes/templates.
When asked if you'd like Live Writer to detect your blog theme and create a temporary post, click "No"
Step 5: Assign A Blog Nickname - You're Finished
If you'd like to assign a blog nickname that will only appear in Live Writer, enter it here.
Click "Finish" and you're done.
Configuring FTP for Image Uploads
Live Writer can automatically resize, upload via FTP and then embed images in your blog posts. To set this up, go Blogs > Edit Blog Settings and then select the "Pictures" tab from the left.
Step 1: Select “Upload pictures to an FTP server” then click “Configure FTP…”
Step 2: Enter your FTP details as you would for any regular FTP client.
Under “Publish pictures into this folder”, type /blogimages - this will be the directory in which embedded images will be stored.
Provide the absolute URL of this directory under “URL of picture publishing folder”, ie. mysite.com/blogimages/
Step 3: Now, when you click "Insert Picture" from the Live Writer interface and insert an image from your local machine, this image will automatically be uploaded via FTP and embedded in the blog post upon publishing.
Step 4: Working With Blog Posts
Opening, Editing and Deleting Posts
Go File > Open, then select the name of your blog from the left sidebar to see a list of all existing blog posts.
From here, you can open, edit and delete existing posts.
Creating A New Post
To create a new post, go File >> New Post.
Draft and Published Posts
Save as draft: If you'd like to save a draft of your blog post in the system to work on at a later date, simply click "Post Draft To Blog" from the "Save Draft" drop-down menu.
This will store the draft blog post in the system, but set the release year to 9999 so it is not displayed on the live blog.
Clicking "Publish" will set the release date to the current day, making it live.
Publish (makes post live): Clicking "Publish" will make the current post live on the front end of your blog.
Redberry Designs partners with you to make sure that the findability of your online business is pushed up to the top search engine ranking position. Contact our team to get your project started today! Click Here to Get a Quote Now!
About the Author: Jannice Boyd Almansur (http://www.jannice.info/) is Managing Director of Redberry Atlanta Website Designs. Redberry is an Agency that offers Branding, Website Development and Hosting Solutions and a full portfolio of business content marketing and brand identity solutions for small businesses. To learn more and to download FREE business tools and articles, as well as join their mailing list, visit the our BerryPatch Blog at http://www.redberrydesigns.com/BlogRetrieve.aspx?BlogID=419 and Redberry Atlanta Website Design website at http://www.redberryatlantawebsitedesign.com. You may print this article for personal use or republish it online only if it is left unaltered and in its entirety, including bylines, links and author information. Contact the author for all other permissions.
17 Mar
Small business Continues to Embrace Social Media
by Shafik Mansur
According to a recent survey by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland's ,
many small businesses are increasing investments in digital channels such as social media, search, and online advertising,
http://www.networksolutions.com/smallbusiness/small-business-success-index-highlights/
According to a recent survey by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland's ,
many small businesses are increasing investments in digital channels such as social media, search, and online advertising,
http://www.networksolutions.com/smallbusiness/small-business-success-index-highlights/
According to a recent survey by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business, many small businesses are increasing investments in digital channels such as social media, search, and online advertising, http://www.networksolutions.com/smallbusiness/small-business-success-index-highlights/
Technology investments on the rise. One way that small businesses responded to improving sales last year was to return to investing in technology. The perceived importance of internet business solutions (IBS) such as websites grew in the past six months; 42 percent consider IBS’ highly important to their success, compared to only 33 percent back in June. The adoption of internet business solutions hit a low point in June, likely a result of recession-related cost cutting, but they surged back the second half of 2010. Over half of small businesses (56 percent) now have websites, up from 46 percent a year ago. Social media is now used by almost a third of small businesses (31 percent), up from 24 percent a year ago and 12 percent two years ago.
Over a quarter (27 percent) of small businesses have a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plan, up from 19 percent a year ago. The only internet business solution in the survey that dropped is the purchase of online advertising in directories, a category that may be affected by the ability to use SEO and social media to find customers without spending. However, many small businesses plan to add online directory ads in the future.
The role of having an online presence in a small business has changed over time. The online channel is more important than a year ago as a way of generating leads for new customers, playing a primary role in this activity for 30 percent of businesses and a secondary role for another 16 percent. While websites are critical for small businesses, 55 percent update their sites less frequently than once a month, and 26 percent update them no more than once a year.
Small business continues to embrace social media. There is almost universal awareness among small business owners of Facebook and Twitter, while half are aware of LinkedIn. The most commonly used social media sites are Facebook (used by 27 percent of all small businesses) and LinkedIn (18 percent). The growth in social media is not cutting into investments in company websites, and is actually contributing to their expansion; 62 percent of social media users feel their use of this medium has no effect on their web investments, while 27 percent believe it will result in greater spending (only 9 percent would spend less or forgo their website).
Small businesses are still grappling with how to get the most out of social media, not surprising because so many users are “newbies.” Owners more often feel that their use of social media has fallen short of expectations (36 percent) than exceeded their expectations (9 percent), and this gap has increased over past survey waves. The main accomplishments from using social media include: staying engaged with customers, developing higher awareness of the company, and identifying and attracting new customers. When asked about their experiences to date with this medium, 63 percent of owners feel it has helped make their customers more loyal, but 56 percent feel it has taken up more time than they expected. Summing up the bottom-line, 25 percent of small business owners estimate that their investment in social media has made a profit while 15 percent estimate they have lost money; the remainder (46 percent) feel they broke even.
Owners are learning to deploy social media in a mobile context. Of those who use social media already, 47 percent use social media to send text messages to customers, while the same share (47 percent) use their mobile devices to respond to other people’s comments on social media sites.
Redberry Atlanta Website Design provides online business solutions for small businesses, not just websites. Because we understand that the purpose of the website and even more so, your online branding and social media strategy is to introduce, reinforce and establish the credibility of you, your company and message, we offer a custom all inclusive website design, branding, social media marketing and maintenance package. Call us now at 770.783.0230 or click here to start your project today.
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