If you choose to have a tagline, make sure it is short, memorable and reflects your brand and the emotions you are trying to convey. However the most important thing to keep in mind is that it must mean something to your customers. If the one thing you are trying to stress is security, put that in your tagline. If you want to stress customer service, put words like “friendly” or “courteous” in your tagline. Your tagline shouldn’t be your mission statement. It should be a summary of your mission statement in a few words.

I really can’t state the process of creating a good tagline any better than Allison Nazarian of Business Know-How. However I would add one point to consider in addition to the process that Allison outlines: make your tagline search engine optimized. If you can use targeted key words within your tagline that you’ll be using throughout your website about your product or service, this can maximize your tagline’s benefit to you. Although these words won’t be picked up by search engines if they are in your logo or other images, if you use your tagline in text throughout your website or electronic communications, your search optimization will be realized for these repetitive words in your electronic content.

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Small businesses rarely have the marketing and creative resources to provide appropriate brand building or brand management to ensure their brand maintains consistency and strength as business grows. While it’s always good to have a trained marketing eye to guide you along the way, this list of 10 quick tips will help provide added support for your brand building and management — just a few small items entrepreneurs and small businesses can do to get a jump above other small brands with big ideas.

Originally, I intended to post all of these tips together in a single post, however each tip is a different topic in itself, so I’ve opted to separate them out. As each new item is released, I’ll include links to previously posted tips to make things easy. Enjoy.

Previous tips from this series:

Tip #1: Color Choice

Tip #2: Logo Design

Tip #3: Font Choice

Tip #4: Meaning of “Brand”

The origins of the word “brand,” in the context that we know it today, comes from branding marks ranchers would place on cattle to distinguish one rancher’s herd from another’s. This marking, a brand, helped to identify the cattle as belonging to a particular ranch.

Today’s meaning of the word goes a bit deeper. Many companies and organizations believe that “a brand” is simply their logo, designs or creative elements — all basic markings, much like the cattle, that help identify their organization.

A brand is much more than merely the creative elements. It is everything that makes up the organization. An organization’s “brand” is the soul of the organization. It is customer service. It is sales process. It is strategic direction. It is innovation. All of these things create the soul of the company…the company’s brand. The logos and creative elements are a means to elicit emotion and feeling from those who interact with them. These elements should personify this soul.

Think about it…when you see each of the brands pictured below, you recall interactions you’ve had with these brands and formulate emotions and opinions as a result.

The colors, logos and creative elements chosen to depict these brands attempt to steer your perception into one that the company wants you to believe. Remember Tip #1: Pick colors that mean something? The strongest creative brand elements depict precisely the company’s “soul” for which they represent. Although these feelings and emotions differ from person to person, the organization is in complete control of its brand — through the culture it creates and the elements which depict this culture.

So remember, when formulating your creative branding elements, don’t merely mark your cattle. Consider your organization’s “soul” and choose a direction that reflects the ideals, direction and beliefs that are exhibited by the organization.

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Small businesses rarely have the marketing and creative resources to provide appropriate brand building or brand management to ensure their brand maintains consistency and strength as business grows. While it’s always good to have a trained marketing eye to guide you along the way, this list of 10 quick tips will help provide added support for your brand building and management — just a few small items entrepreneurs and small businesses can do to get a jump above other small brands with big ideas.

Originally, I intended to post all of these tips together in a single post, however each tip is a different topic in itself, so I’ve opted to separate them out. As each new item is released, I’ll include links to previously posted tips to make things easy. Enjoy.

Previous tips from this series:

Tip #1: Color Choice

Tip #2: Logo Design

Tip #3: Font Choice

Technology and cutting-edge brands typically use sans serif fonts. Brands attempting to attract c-level customers usually default to a serif font. Edgier brands tend to use designed fonts. Just as colors and design dictate your brand, your font is equally as important to set the mood for your brand. If your font is too distracting, it can detract from the message written.

In addition to fonts used in logos and in designed materials, you should also choose a font that is common to most computers. If you send a presentation or document to someone, the body copy should be formatted with common fonts so the display on an end user’s computer is the same as yours. If you want specialty fonts in these documents, it’s best to imbed them in an image within the design.

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Small businesses rarely have the marketing and creative resources to provide appropriate brand building or brand management to ensure their brand maintains consistency and strength as business grows. While it’s always good to have a trained marketing eye to guide you along the way, this list of 10 quick tips will help provide added support for your brand building and management — just a few small items entrepreneurs and small businesses can do to get a jump above other small brands with big ideas.

Originally, I intended to post all of these tips together in a single post, however each tip is a different topic in itself, so I’ve opted to separate them out. As each new item is released, I’ll include links to previously posted tips to make things easy. Enjoy.

Previous tips from this series:

Tip #1: Color Choice

Tip #2: Logo Design

A logo design can be a wordmark/logotype, iconic or a combination of the two. It is important to choose a style that fits your business needs, identifies with your brand and is appropriate for your target audience. Since I’m a hockey buff, let’s examine different types of logos using the 2010 NHL Winter Classic. It’s a good example, because it demonstrates different logo designs working well together.

This logo for the Winter Classic is obviously a wordmark logo. It is working together with the NHL logo, which is an iconic logo and the Bridgestone logo, which is another wordmark logo.

This logo for the Winter Classic is a combination logo. It uses the wordmark logo and combines with an illustration to create a different design. One thing to notice in both of these examples is how three distinct brands (Winter Classic, NHL and Bridgstone) work together to create a new identity. Your brand has to have the same flexibility to work together with other brands. Also, notice that the Bridgestone logo is different from one version to the other. We’ll talk more about this technique below.

What logos do I need?

So glad you asked. First, there are two things we are talking about here…design formats and file formats. Design formats are styles of the same logo presented in different ways so that it can be used in different layouts. File formats are the different types of files (.jpg, .gif, .png, etc.) that exist for a logo.

Design Formats for Logos

Unless you are developing products which require their own logos, one logo is generally all that is needed by small businesses and organizations. However, that one logo should be designed in several different ways so that it can, truly, play well with others. Here’s what you need:

1. Multicolored version – the standard version for your logo
2. Single color version- a black, or grayscale version of your logo
3. Reverse Option – a white version of your logo for use on dark or conflicting backgrounds

For each of these versions, you should have a horizontal and vertical option so it can be used in varying design layouts. There are other options you could design (two-dimensional, two color, etc.) however, in narrowing down the basics of what’s needed, this list covers it.

To illustrate these different design formats, here is a chart that shows the TechBelt logo, a logo I worked on with Jared Roberts, in its different design formats.

Design and concept by Jared Roberts, Right Brain + Left Brain

File Formats for Logos

You need three logo files of each design format for everything you’ll do. The file formats you’ll need on hand for day-to-day uses are an EPS, JPG, and PNG/GIF.

	The EPS version will allow your logo to be blown up and shrunk down to any size, while maintaining its details (it’s called a vector file). The EPS version is the version that should be used for all marketing materials (banners, business cards, stationary).
	The JPG will be useful when sharing with others, or when building a Powerpoint presentation. It’s the simple and flexible version of your logo.
	The PNG/GIF allows for you to have a logo with a transparent background while being compatible in electronic and web-based applications.

Your logo should be designed as an EPS, or vector, file first, and then converted to the other file types. These three file types for your logo designs will provide a great start to meeting your daily logo needs.

All logos are the property of their respective owners.

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Small businesses rarely have the marketing and creative resources to provide appropriate brand building or brand management to ensure their brand maintains consistency and strength as business grows. While it’s always good to have a trained marketing eye to guide you along the way, this list of 10 quick tips will help provide added support for your brand building and management — just a few small items entrepreneurs and small businesses can do to get a jump above other small brands with big ideas.

Originally, I intended to post all of these tips together in a single post, however each tip is a different topic in itself, so I’ve opted to separate them out. As each new item is released, I’ll include links to previously posted tips to make things easy. Enjoy.

Previous tips from this series:

Tip #1: Color Choice

Originally, I intended to post all of these tips together in a single post, however each tip is a different topic in itself, so I’ve opted to separate them out. As each new item is released, I’ll include links to previously posted tips to make things easy. Enjoy.

Tip #1: Pick colors that mean something. The colors you choose in your pallete to represent your buisness subconsciously say something about what you are trying to convey and can provide a constant message to your customers. There are many different resources out there that depict the meaning of color in design like this one, or this one. Cameron Chapman of Smashing Magazine provides a very detailed description of the meaning of colors in design with some great examples and other resources. Here’s a list of some basic colors, the meaning behind each and the emotions they elicit in people.

Now do you understand why restaurants often use red as a main color in their pallet , banks are typically blue or green and the inside of planes are normally blue? When colors pass through sensory receivers in the process of converting what your eye views to what your brain receives as an image, they produce emotions and feelings. Don’t simply choose your favorite colors. Choose colors that will mean something to your audience, not yourself.

One downfall of using video is OVER-using video. More and more sites have set videos to autoplay when you land on a page. Having a video autoplay is a distraction and annoyance to the end user. People view sites publicly more and more — from work, from their mobile device, etc. The last thing they want is a video of you blaring over their speakers disrupting those around them.

Using video and creating content is great, but make it an option to view your video. Never force content on folks. Let them decide if they want to receive your content. Video may have killed the radio star…don’t let it kill your website too.

If it sounds like this post was written over the holidays (yes…Christmas 2009), you are correct. Heavy winter storm damage has turned my life over on itself several times and some posts I’ve had in the queue have been neglected. So, here is one from the archives…

Right before I left work for the holiday break, I noticed something unusual in our corporate blog analytics. I normally check at least once daily to see how folks are coming to our blog, what they are reading and what they are clicking…standard stuff, right? One of the referral links was one I had never seen before, so I clicked on it. The site it went to was a company who offered the same services we were trying to attract from our blog. They were using our RSS feed to pull in contet to their site. The problem (for them) is it linked to our blog.

I alerted some of the folks around the office and we had an internal debate to determine if we should be uspet at this or not. I also solicited some feedback from the Twitter community. All were in agreement — although this is very odd for someone to do, we should view it as a compliment and an additional outlet to promote our services. Who knows…if we get enough leads from them posting our content, they may make our fruit basket list next year.

What do you think? Has this ever happened to you?

Effecting real change is never easy, but in the areas of government efficiency and transparency, some are starting to succeed with hard work and the help of social technologies. A key component in these efforts moving forward will be online trust networks.

Originally published on “Economic Architecture.”

With all of the talk about government transparency lately, it’s natural to connect this transparency with social media and Web 2.0 solutions. Citizens can directly connect with their elected officials and local governments to facilitate change and progress, right?

Truly, that’s no different than picking up the phone and making a few calls. Typically, in developing social media strategies, “listening” is weighted more heavily than “responding.” However, in the case of government social media strategies, “listening” and “responding” need to weighted equally. It is just as important, from a citizen’s point of view, to understand that their concern has been heard as it is to know that their concern is being acted upon. Therefore, for a social media campaign to be of any value whatsoever, government officials and/or government social media managers need to be responding to those who share their concerns, for the sake of transparency…and social media wellness.

Now…enter Code for America (CFA). CFA will be providing Web 2.0 strategy and solutions to select cities across the country in an effort to drive citizen participation. Five cities will be chosen from applications due to CFA by February 1, 2010 to host developers that will work to establish online collaboration tools set to launch in 2011.

2011?

Think of how far social media and collaboration tools have come since a year ago. 2011? While the idea, concept and effort is in good spirit, I sincerely hope it’s not in vein.