Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

Dots pattern

Another pattern - this would make a cute web background, stationery or fabric...

Contact me at elf@elf-design.com if you're interested in purchasing it!

Book recommendation

I just finished reading "The Reach of a Chef" - and I was surprised how much this book talked about branding and growing your business. If you're interested in food or cooking and you're thinking about branding your business or growing your brand, then give this book a read.

Check out the book

Being just you vs. being a company

If you have a one-person business, there are two ways that you can go about branding yourself. 

You can brand yourself as just yourself, and create a logo based on just your name and your personality. The advantage to this is that the business brand can be very tied to you - which means that your customers will typically expect to have you involved directly in their accounts and possibly even the day-to-day management of their projects.

Or, you can brand yourself as a larger business entity. In this type of brand, you typically give your company its' own name and concentrate on separating your personality from the company's. This can help you manage customer relationships, and can also help your company grow later on. But, it can take more soul-searching and work to initially set up.

Q&A: Digital printing and color inconsistency

QUESTION:

I just got the new batch of business cards that we ordered: they don't match the batches we ordered before. Did something get changed in the artwork? How do we fix this?

ANSWER:

No, the color values on the card artwork are all the same as in prior (successful) batches of printing. I haven't changed a thing having to do with the color.

That's one of the drawbacks of digital printing. While you can get relatively low quantities of cards at lower prices than traditional printing, you don't get the consistency of color that you would with traditional printing - especially when the batches are printed at different times. The calibration of the printer can change, or the way that they process the files can change, and you can wind up with different colors even though the artwork hasn't changed.

So, every time we send them something to print, we're hoping that their results will be consistent - but that's not always the case.

If getting the right color is really that important, then it might make sense to look into traditional printing - that guarantees that the colors will always be consistent. Traditional printers use Pantone inks, which have greater color accuracy than the CMYK process used by digital printers.

What don't you do?

When you're creating your business brand, it's as important to think about what you don't do as well as what you actually do.

Some questions:

- Who don't you help?

- What services don't you perform? 

- What sort of results don't you create?

- What sorts of things would you refer out to colleagues for?

- What would you be relieved to not have to do any more?

- If you had to talk your clients out of going with one aspect of your services, which one would you choose?

And, then, some new questions about what you really want:

- If you had to pick one or two things to do day in and day out, what would those be?

- If you had to focus down to one single thing, what would help your clients the most?

- What do you want to be known for?

- What do you prefer to do? 

- What comes easily for you?

Susan Borkin Logo

I designed this logo for a writer, coach, teacher and psychotherapist. 

We designed the pen icon, which is a modernized fountain pen. The pen also forms the centerline of the "psi" symbol - the symbol for psychology. Together they form the psi-pen - clever, huh?

We used a cursive font that resembles a signature because of the personal nature of her writing and teaching. 

The purple and silver color palette is symbolic of psychology and the mind.

The positioning of the icon after the name makes it appear as if the pen has just written the signature. It also makes the logo more eye-catching and unconventional to position the icon on the right side rather than on the left.

Another pattern - calling this one "Wooglies"

I'm liking the color palette on this one. It would, again, be a great background image for cards or business materials. I can also see this as a binder cover or scrapbook page, or as fabric.

Contact me at elf@elf-design.com if you're interested in purchasing it!

Search Engine Optimization: It's Not Who You Know, It's Who Knows You

Many small businesses start their websites and put a "Links" page up as one of their first few pages—thinking that this will help them rank better.

Many small businesses start their websites and put a "Links" page up as one of their first few pages—thinking that this will help them rank better.

While it's a nice gesture to link to your vendors, associates, resources, and products you like—and your customers may even find this page helpful or interesting—having a links page alone won't help your website to rank better.

Instead, You Want Your Website to Be Like A Prom Queen

That's not to say you want your website to wear a sparkly dress or a shiny tiara or make a sappy acceptance speech.

Instead, the way your website should resemble a prom queen is more about the election process. Prom queen election results aren't based on strategy, marketing, qualifications, or campaign speeches—as much as they are on popularity.

Just as with prom queens, your small business's website's search engine ranking results are about popularity. It's not the links on your site that contribute to raising your ranking but the links coming into your site from other sites that help you to rank better.

But getting links coming into my website is harder than just putting links on my site!

That's the whole point. The search engines don't want to make it easy for you to come up at the top. If that were the case, they'd have a whole mess of under-qualified websites at the top of the rankings, just because those site owners had the time to add pages and pages of links to their site.

The search engines want to make sure that only the best sites, with the most relevant content, show at the top of their listings. How they do that is by looking just at the "hard stuff"—things like well-written content and good coding—and then making sure that those sites have good-quality links coming in from other sites.

What constitutes a good quality link?

If what you need is links coming into your site, then does that mean you should find every directory site you can and get your site listed? Or that you should use a website link-building service that guarantees to get your link on a bunch of sites for a low price?

Those strategies give you a lot of incoming links, but it's not so much about quantity as it is about the quality of those links. The search engines base your site's popularity partially on the popularity of the other sites pointing to it. Having the New York Times link to your site is a lot more valuable than garnering attention from Bob's Shrimp Shack.

So, how do you get these valuable links?

Link strategies that can help your website come up well include:

• Offering articles for publication on other websites. If you require sites publishing your articles to link back to your site, you'll wind up with many incoming links—which is great. You may even find guest author opportunities on a recurring basis, which can get several links back to your site instead of just one.
• Putting out a press release. If it leads to an article, then a newspaper or magazine will probably put the article on its website. If the article includes a link to your site, that will help your rankings.
• Putting your link on your partner's sites. If you regularly work with other businesses, they may be willing to exchange links with you. This makes sense, and it gets a link back to your site.

However, I don't recommend you exchange links with every company that comes your way—that will just make your site look unfocused and unprofessional. Exchanging only with companies directly related to yours will help your customers and your ranking.

• Taking advantage of link opportunities with professional organizations. If you belong to a professional organization such as the Chamber of Commerce or another organization that offers an online membership directory, be sure to get your link listed there. It's often a membership benefit that can be overlooked.
• Commenting on blogs and listing your website. If you have relevant, interesting comments, posting them on other professional blogs and referencing your business website can help raise your ranking.
• Starting a blog and linking to your site from your posts. This may sound a bit like cheating, but as long as you make sure that your blog contains high-quality information as well as links back to your site, it can pay off in a big way with both search engines and visitors.

Even if you only take a few of these steps, you'll increase the number of incoming links to your site and your site's perceived popularity. And, this will increase your chances of being elected "prom queen" and wearing the sparkly tiara of a high ranking on the search engines. 

Bowl and spoon pattern

I'm getting around to developing some patterns that I've had sketched for a while...

This pattern is for sale, and would be especially charming on a dishtowel or oven mitt set...

Contact me at elf@elf-design.com if you're interested in purchasing it!

Trademarking process: an inside view

What's the process for trademarking your logo like? How do you go about it? What happens?

I've been asked these question often. I don't know all of the legal stuff that goes on behind-the-scenes when you're trademarking a logo, but I did trademark my logo a couple of summers ago, so I can tell you a bit about the process.

First, I designed my logo. Then, I sat with it for a bit to make sure that I liked the logo well enough to stick with it for a good bit of time. I also wanted to make sure that the logo worked for my clients as well, and that they reacted well to it.

Once I figured out that my logo met these qualifications, I looked into the options for a company to help me through the trademarking process. I wanted something affordable, yet, knowledgeable and helpful. I went with www.legalzoom.com.

They had an easy form to fill out, plus I uploaded my logo art to their site in black and white. 

A couple of weeks later I got a big book of research back from them on other logos that might compete with my registration. Part of the fee was refundable until I OK'd the process from a perspective of the competition - and whether I thought that I'd be able to get my logo registered once it made it to the government level. 

Then I looked through the book, decided that nothing in there was particularly close to my logo, and sent my OK to Legal Zoom. They did all the paperwork and sent it all to the government people.

After another (long) while, I heard back - the government sent me a scary letter that looked very official. I opened it, and inside there was a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo about how I couldn't trademark the use of the word "design" by itself, because that term was too general. That was a relief - I was sure the thin envelope was going to be telling me that my trademark wouldn't be granted at all. So, I had to sign away any possible claim I might be trying to establish to that. Well, I was pretty OK with that... so I signed the form and mailed it back.

Then another long, silent time went by. Then, one day, a big lovely envelope arrived in the mail. Inside, there was a folder with all sorts of certificates and official-looking papers, that basically said that I own the trademark to my logo. Yay!

After celebrating a bit, I changed the TM sign on my logo on my marketing materials and website to the circle-R symbol. 

That's how it went for me. Your mileage may vary - but the process was pretty painless when I did it!