The Blog | ARK Squared Productions

There are so many different events out there, great causes, places to connect.  So many different choices and we’re always wondering, what’s going to really make the most impact?  It can often be near impossible to decide how to split our networking time most efficiently. Now, when you go to networking events, who do you remember the most?  The people sitting at your table, the couple people you spoke to briefly while grabbing your cup of coffee?  Perhaps.  But I bet you’d really remember the people working at the event – the lady that greeted you at the door, maybe the gentleman at the registration table, and of course the MC of the event.  Which is my point, a lot of the time our networking can be turbo-boosted by simply getting more involved.

There are times at networking events where I’ve felt not very memorable, coming a couple times and feeling like a new face each time.  Only upon getting more involved with the organizing committee, or the like, did I really start getting the “good to see you”‘s, or “how’s business going?”.  I was getting noticed!  It goes along the lines of “The more you put in, the more you get out.”

Another thing that’s great about it is that it can also be a great way to showcase your work, depending on what you do.  Are you a business coach?  Perhaps you can volunteer to lead table discussion exercises at an event.  Graphic Designer?  Maybe the group needs a refreshed brochure, or some sprucing up on their website.  There are lots of ways to help out almost any group if you ask, and then what you do will be showcased in front of everyone who attends!

So think about it the next time you head off to your regular networking event – how can you help pitch in?  Talk to one of those already volunteering and see how your expertise may be of use.

Last post we talked about Facebook Timeline, here I want to expand on one thought a little farther, what to choose for your cover photo.  There are two different main ways that you can go, simply a photo of something or you can make an image that’s fully branded.  We personally have opted for a bit of a hybrid, but lets expand on that a bit more.

So let’s say you decide to go with nice photos.  There’s a couple ways again here that you can go about that, and it has a lot to do with what sort of business you are.  If you’re a product oriented business, from baker to restaurant, retail to Realtor, you likely have product shots you can use.  Be that a picture of a cake you just decorated, one of your signature dishes at your restaurant, some of the products you sell at your store or your star real estate listing – choosing a photo can be a lot of fun.  It’s also a great way to keep your page nice and fresh as you can update it regularly with new items, creations or projects.  Here’s a great example of a cake decorator we know that used one of her creations as her cover photo:

Great way to display your product, remain unique, and by changing it frequently be able to have an easy way to interact with your followers.  Every time you change your photo it will show up on their newsfeeds, so if they’re great shots hopefully you’ll get lots of interaction!

Alternatively to a photo, you can do fully branded images.  This one you may have to be a bit more careful with, officially Facebook has some “rules” for the cover photos, that being said I’ve yet to hear them enforced.  The official rules for cover photos are that they can’t contain:

• Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
• Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

You can still do some pretty good branding even with those rules though – and as mentioned, not sure how much they’re being enforced.  Coke is a great example of how their ideal branded images would look:

Looks snazzy and very much branded.  So there’s definitely a lot that you can do.  If you’re not careful it can also just look like a boring box with text in it though, so you definitely have to be creative – or find someone who is!

Regardless of what type of image you end up going with I’d say not using one is not an option!  Timeline is here, whether we welcome it happily or not, so if you want to look “with the times” getting an image up is very important.  If you need help getting your timeline up and running looking snazzy we’d love to help you out, feel free to contact us!

Whether we like it or not Facebook timeline is coming – and it’s only 3 days away!  Facebook will transition all profiles and pages to “Timline” on March 30th, question is, will you be ready?  We’ve got a couple tips to have your new timeline look nice instead of empty!

So if you don’t prepare in advance, what would your timeline look like?  Probably something like this:

But if you prepare you can have a lovely looking profile that would look something more like this:

Obviously the second option looks much nicer for your business!

There’s a couple of steps that you’ll need to follow.  For starters, you need to prepare your timeline.  If you do it before the automatic transition you can visit Facebook’s Introducing Timeline page.  Here they provide a brief explanation of the major differences and on the bottom bar, presuming you have not previously pre-viewed timeline, you can select “get timeline”.  This will send you to a place where you can give timeline a test drive on your profile/business page without making it live yet.  So you can fiddle and play around without everyone seeing all the tweaking that you’re doing.

So what do you do once you’re in the editing screen?  Two big things you’ll want to do, check and make sure your profile picture still works and maybe update it if it doesn’t, and also add a cover picture.  In case you’re not super familiar/comfortable with facebook highlighted below are the areas I’m talking about:

You may already have a great profile photo, if you do great, that part’s done.  But if you had a professionally designed side-bar style image for the old layout, it may not work well any more.  Here you can either put a headshot or if you’re more that just a one-person operation a logo (preferably in a square orientation!) may be a better option.  Keep in mind, this image will be what people see in their newsfeed when you’re doing any posts – so people need to associate the image with your company whatever you choose.

The big question is for a lot of people, what kind of image to you put as your “cover” image?  There’s two different ways you could go.  You can have one designed for you, like the one we’ve designed for our page, or you can put up pretty much any nice picture.  For photographers this can be a great way to showcase a recent excellent shot you’ve taken, for someone with a product that they make/distribute you could put a shot of that as well.  I know a cake designer that’s put a shot of some beautiful cupcakes that she decorated, all great options.  This can be a very cost effective option as well as you can have your page look professional without paying someone to make custom images for you.

One thing to keep in mind, if you decide to design a custom image do know that sometimes when the page loads only part of your cover image will show until someone scrolls up.  So make sure you keep that in mind when you design/have your image designed for you.  Here’s an example of what I mean:

View before scrolling up:

View after scrolling up:

As you can see, that’s a pretty significant portion of the image that people may not even see!  So if you design an image without thinking about that it’s possible your visitor may not see the whole thing or they may think your image was poorly designed because it gets chopped awkwardly.

So there you go – when timeline comes you can be ready for it too and keep looking professional – even if it’s just a couple of picture changes!  If you or someone you know isn’t super facebook savvy and wants a hand with their profile or page we’d love assisting!  Check out Facebook’s web page specifically about Facebook Pages if you have questions too.

One of the biggest problems of being self employed is that you wear all the hats – CEO, CFO, Office Manager, HR, etc, etc.  So how do you balance all that and still manage to sell your product or service and do all the work?  I’ve learned a few tips along the way that I try to implement myself as much as possible, let me share a few of my favourites with you.

#1 – Network.  Pretty simple, you don’t meet new people, you won’t expand your client base.  This isn’t saying that you’re going out there to meet all your new clients, but network with other business people and build relationships and that’s how you make great referral partners.  Think of it as a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” idea – build relationships, send them referrals and it will come back to you. Check out some of our other posts on networking for more information, particularly the one “The Importance of Networking”.

#2 – Pick 2 of the Three of Price, Service and Quality.  One thing that I was told growing up is to think of a triangle when you offer a product or service.  In each corner there’s one of either price, service or quality and you can only pick one side of the triangle to focus on.  So if you want to offer your clients great service and exceptional quality you can’t compete on price or you’re business is going to fail.  Offering high quality and service can cost you more so it should also cost your clients more.  Thoughts like that apply to either of the other two pairs as well.  Pick two, stick with them, and the third will land where it needs to.

#3 – Time Track.  How many times have you reached the end of your day baffled as to how it ended but you didn’t get anything accomplished, yet you felt busy all day?  Think of it like budgeting, if you don’t track your money you don’t know where you spent it and you can’t figure out where you went wrong – it’s the same with time.  If you don’t track your time you don’t see where your wasting it, also, if you track your time you track the time you’re wasting and you’re less likely to waste as much!  We’ve started using a free service called Toggl – I’d highly recommend it!

#4 – Outsource.  You can’t add hours to a day – but if you take away some of the things that you’re working on that someone else could do for you and for less money, it’s a no brainer.  It could range from hiring a house/office cleaner so you can work instead of cleaning the floors to hiring a bookkeeper – it doesn’t have to be hiring staff.  Traditional outsourcing (be that local or international) may work as well, but simply hiring someone to take some of your administrative tasks off your plate can free up a ton of time.  If you’ve started #3 already and keeping track of your time you should also be able to see the areas that are taking up too much time and good candidates to send off to someone else.

So if you’re feeling like your profitability is a bit lacking lately give a couple or all of these points a shot and see how it helps!  Good luck!

So you’ve finally decided it’s time to make that website you’ve always been putting off, or update your brochure or business card, now what?  Well if you have a designer selected you’ll need to meet with them to make it happen.  Instead of just showing up and hoping they can pull out of your head what you want there are a few things you can do in advance that will help the process start (and thus finish) faster.

One thing that I know I do, and I can imagine other designers do as well, is I tend to base the look of the website, brochure, advertisement, etc, off of the company logo.  So if you have your logo make sure you’ve got it in a very high-quality version and if you’re able to get the original files from whoever created the logo for you even better.  We’ve talked about the importance of a high-quality logo before, so make sure you get this for the designer – vector file if possible.  If you don’t have one perhaps that should be the first step with the designer!

The next thing to make sure you bring along is examples of what you like, if you can get your hands on them.  For websites it’s easy enough to find some sites online that have features that you like and make a list, it may be a bit harder to get examples for a brochure or business card.  That being said, if you have examples from your rolodex or perhaps a flyer you saw when out shopping, grab it and bring it to the meeting.  We’ve probably all heard of or experienced exercises where one person stands up and reads out an explanation of a drawing to make and then everyone in the room has to draw it – well you probably know that everyone in the room comes up with something different from those instructions!  Same goes for design, if you do not have examples to show then your designer has to interpret your instructions and it will likely take longer to get to the final product that you like.  So make sure if at all possible bring examples – and if all else fails do a basic pencil drawing on a piece of paper to outline your main ideas.

Another thing to do is have your content ready.  If you’re making a website take a look at the content on your example websites you’ve got ready and see what sort of content you should be putting online, or if you have ideas of what sort of things you want to say have that ready.  The more that you have ready in advance the faster it will be to piece it all together.  The same goes for any brochures, advertisements or even a simple business card – having the content to start with from the get go means you can get started right away instead of it holding up the process.

If one of my clients or potential clients showed up to a meeting with all of that stuff ready it would make things so much easier!  So next time you meet with your designer have those three things ready: logo, examples, and content, and you’ll have you end product that much faster!

We’re all used to the common questions when networking tying to start up a conversation.  Last week I focused on a common question of “So What Do You Do?” and another common one I get all the time when networking is “So, What’s New With You?” super common but more often then not answered incorrectly which could end a perfectly good conversation before it even has a chance to start!  Probably the most common answer that I hear is “Oh not much, how about you?” and I say FAIL! (Not that I’ve never done it myself of course!)

There are two things I want to point out here, one really great way to answer the question and another to avoid.  A great way to answer the question is to, oh shock, say something new you’re doing!  What I usually do on my way to networking events is to think of some of the great stuff I’m working on for clients or fun projects that could relate to what I do professionally.  Last time I was asked the “What’s New” question I went on to say how I was excited to be designing my sister-in-law’s wedding invitations.  It’s nice and related to what I do, gives an example of how my services can be used and flows nicely into an easy conversation topic.  I think after that we may have talked briefly about weddings.  The importance here is that we kept talking, the conversation didn’t die.

It’s always good to think about things like this before you get to your networking event though, have a few “pocket answers” ready to pull out when you need them so you’re not tempted to say “not much”.  It shows that you’re actually doing business by having something to say you’re working on!  Really, it’s also good to just have a thought of one or two new things you’re working on all the time for those impromptu meetings while grocery shopping or picking up your morning cup of coffee.  A quick little snipit to show you’re trucking along.

One thing that you want to make sure you avoid though is an overwhelm answer.  Saying one or two things that you’re working on can lead to great conversation, but sharing a huge list may give the impression that you’re TOO busy.  Why would someone refer you a new client if you can barely keep on top of what you’ve already got?  Saying that you’re super busy does mean that you’re doing good and likely profitable, but people can also take it as a “don’t refer me any business, my plate’s full already!”  Having a list of projects you’re working on to use in conversation is great, just don’t use the whole list on one person!

A couple of thoughts for when you’re networking next to make sure you’re entering some great conversations instead of stopping them before they have a chance to start!

I’d have to say, next to asking your name or how you’re doing, one of the most popular questions you hear when networking is “So, what do you do?”  Knee jerk response is generally to say what your job title is, what you ARE, so answers like “I’m an accountant” or “I’m a house cleaner” are the norm.  It not only can end the start of a conversation, but it leaves the asker of the question to fill in the blanks and really decide what you do according to whatever experience or stereotype they may have already.  Would you want that?  I’d think not.

So how should one answer the popular “What do you do?” question then?  Instead of saying what you are tell them what you DO.  So instead of accountant, why not tell them how you specialize in relieving stress for business owners by taking care of their numbers instead of them?  Or for the house cleaner, why not tell them how you specialize in helping people to make their homes a healthier place to live?  Much more compelling and leaves less to imagination!  This can also springboard naturally into a great conversation about your company and how you’re awesome at what you do and why your a better choice than your competition.  It would be natural for someone to ask more information about what you do if given a statement like that!

To come up with ideas of what to say to answer this question take a moment to make a list.  List the ways you make your clients lives easier, how you add value to their business or personal life by what you do.  Stumped?  Why not email some of your regular clients that love you and ask them?  Added bonus of that is you could end up with a testimonial to use in your promotional material.  Or ask your teenage daughter/son what they think you do – clarity can often come from someone close to you!

So the next time someone asks you what you do think about your “list” and answer their question – don’t tell them what you are, tell them what you DO!

The cute Valentine’s Doodle from Google really left me thinking today.  I wondered, “hmm, why would a company like Google start changing their logo, just for the fun of it?”  The marketer and business women in me started wondering why would they employ people with the sole purpose of playing with their logo?  So I decided to ask Google.  I typed in “Why Does Google Doodle” to see what I got, and I got great answers.  It connected me to a page on their website in their “Doodle 4 Google” section about Doodle History, and I got to learn all about how it started and why.

To answer my question of why would someone play with a great brand, here they explain it well – having fun is part of the culture at Google, and that is reflected when they have fun with their logo.  Think about it, if you’re a company that has a casual and fun culture, why not reflect that online?  When it’s close to St. Patrick’s Day, why not change the background to green?  Christmas, why not put a Santa hat on your logo?  This type of “fun” may not work with more serious companies, but if you’ve got a fun culture let it come out online too, then you’ll attract the kinds of clients that appreciate that!

Everyone knows when it comes to making an impression on your clients or potential clients the importance of your brand is paramount.  Your brand is generally your first impression with your client.  So if you want your brand to be serious, make sure your online presence reflects that.  Stick with the grey colours, clean logos, think “IBM”.  Fun company with a casual culture?  Make sure you do fun stuff on your website, blog or twitter account, incorporate fun colours – keep it lively.

Your brand, logo, total feel throughout all points of contact with your client needs to reflect your company or you’re not going to attract the types of clients that will appreciate you.  And we all know what happens when we attract clients that DO appreciate us – they treat us well too!  They don’t balk at your fees AND they pay them…on time!  Everyone wins!

So think about it the next time you’re preparing a marketing piece, or even putting together your new twitter background; is it reflecting you well?  If you’re not sure we’d love to sit down with you and help you brainstorm ideas – we’re huge on integrating marketing pieces!

As a graphic designer AND web designer one thing that I often find frustrating is making a site look really cool and making sure it’s as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly as possible. One of the biggest ways that I’ve felt constrained often is by what fonts that I can use.  I mean, sure, I could use whatever font I want really and I’m sure it would look good to my eyes, but what if a potential customer of one of my clients goes to their site and they don’t have that same really cool font on their computer?  Then the font gets substituted and likely does not look as cool and perhaps some alignment may also be off.  So a no-go generally for cool fonts.

So what does a web designer do then?  Well generally you’d either choose a font that you know is common (thus limiting the selection that you have – there’s a reason so many websites use arial for a font!) or you put the text in an image.  Of course if you put the text in an image then Search Engine Spiders can’t read the text and thus it’s not SEO friendly – nevermind accessibility for those with different disabilities!  Well Google has come to the rescue again with yet another cool product – Google Web Fonts.

Google Web Fonts lets you choose from over 430 fonts, and I’m sure that number will continue to climb, and you can use any of them on your website with one line of code in your CSS and one in your HTML.  You just have to follow 3 simple steps from their website:

1. Choose: Search or browse hundreds of font families, then add the ones you like to your Collection.

2. Review: Compare and refine your Collection, even see the styles in a dynamic sample layout.

3. Use: Grab the code Google prepares and you’re ready to add the Collection to your website!

How simple is that? I have one word for it, AWESOME!  Now I don’t have to be constrained to certain fonts in my web design projects – thanks again Google!  What will they think of next?

With the big buzz about Social Media now a days everyone is trying to get on board, whether they want to or not!  Well there are some great tools out there that can make things easier for you whether the thought of Social Media makes your head spin or if you consider yourself a well seasoned expert. We’ve talked before about linking social media, and in there we briefly talked about social media managing tools, but I wanted to expand on that thought a bit more.

When we wrote about linking Social Media accounts I had said that we had ours partially linked, but that has since been un-linked.  The only link that I’d had was that posting on Twitter would put a post on both Facebook and LinkedIn, but I realized that I was starting to use much more “Twitter Speak” so decided that was probably not the best idea anymore.  What I’ve opted for instead is to take advantage of a great service called HootSuite.  There are other great services out there as well, such as TweetDeck which is actually made by the creators of Twitter, but HootSuite is great and I love that I’m supporting a great local Vancouver based company!

What HootSuite does is it allows you to manage multiple social media platforms from one interface.  So you can link to Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, MySpace, and the list goes on, all from one point – and you can also connect to RSS feeds too.  This allows you to manage your messaging and your reading/monitoring.

So for messaging, you have a place where you can write and publish your post and you select any of the places that you want it to post and it will also let you know if you’ve gone over your character limit.  One thing that I also find handy is to write it once for twitter, then copy it to my clipboard, post it, then paste it and edit the “twitter speak” out of it and use it again for LinkedIn and/or Facebook.  It also lets you choose thumbnails for links for facebook too.  So I can write it all in one spot and I’m not having to go to a bunch of different websites, try and remember what I wrote, etc.  Nice and simple!

Then there’s the reading, monitoring and general “staying on top of things” – again, all in one simple place!  By default it makes tabs for the different social media platforms.  Twitter one for example is the Home Feed, Mentions and Direct Messages.  Then you also have the option of making custom tabs and choose what things you want on them.  So you could make one with the main feed from three (or more of course) different Social Media platforms.  One example that is also very nice is you could have a custom stream of a particular topic/keyword – so I might have “web design” or one of my competitors twitter handles so I can see how they’re using it or being mentioned.  Think about it, if you see a tweet from one of your competitors complaining about them, why not swoop in and see if you can make them happy?  I’ve heard countless stories about situations like that happening!

There are really great ways that a tool like this one can be used, and the features that I’ve mentioned are all available free!  Now, you are limited to the amount of accounts that you link with just the free account, but for a basic small business that can be more than enough.  And then if you pay a bit you can have access to more features and the ability to link more accounts.  So the next time you think about Social Media and shudder check out HootSuite or other social media management tools – it may be the de-stressor you’ve been looking for!