Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

Design Elements For Online Consistency

How do you create an online brand instead of just a web presence?

The answer is to create consistency across all of your online designs.

1. Header Graphics. Many online designs such as websites, blogs and newsletters have a header image across the top of the page. You should design a set of headers that meets the specifications for each application while still remaining consistent. For example, website headers are often 800 or more pixels wide, while newsletter headers are typically 600 pixels wide. And, your newsletter and website headers will likely have different text content and titles - but should look similar.

2. Logo. Your logo should appear on all of your online designs, with the exception of your Gravatar.

3. Visual Vocabulary. Your Visual Vocabulary consists of all of the visual elements and graphics aside from your logo that appear on your materials. In the case of online design, this includes the design of your navigation items, the page background, a promotional box treatment for the sidebar, stock photography, buttons, watermarks, illustrations, charts/graphs, table treatments, page borders... you get the idea. There are lots of opportunities for creating consistency here.

4. Fonts. Your fonts should be web-safe (available on all computers) and consistent across all of your online designs. For example, if you use Arial as the text font on your website, you should use that on your blog and newsletter as well. You won't always have control over this - for example, you can't change the text font on your Facebook fan page posts - but take advantage of this where you have the option.

5. Color palette. This is one of the widest-ranging options. You can even change your color palette on your YouTube page and Twitter sidebars. Select a color palette that's broad enough to allow you to specify all the options and work in different situations (for example, colors that work as backgrounds for black text, and others that work for white text). And, use a consistent hierarchy of colors if you can - for example, always using dark green as your navigation bar color - across all applications.

6. Headshot. Use the same headshot - or limited set of a few headshots - across all of your materials. This goes a long way towards establishing consistency through simple repetition.

Examples: You can use these elements to varying degrees and still create a unified look:

A brand with a unifying color palette:

 

A set of unified header images: 

 

A brand with unifying header images, color palettes, headshots and backgrounds:

 

A brand with unified headers, logos, rich Visual Vocabulary fonts, and color palettes 

 

Pop-Ups To Promote Your Newsletter: Yay or Nay?

I'd love your feedback on this issue.

• What do you think about using pop-ups to ask for sign ups to your newsletter?
• Do you like seeing pop-ups on other websites? Why?
• Do you have a pop-up on your website? Does it help you get more sign-ups?
• Has a pop-up ever encouraged you to sign up for a newsletter that you otherwise would not have signed up for?
• Would you prefer a pop-up to show up when you first arrive at a page, or when you leave? 

Please leave your answers in the comments! 

20 Places To Promote Your Newsletter Online

1. In the side bar of every page of your website.

2. On its' own page on your website (allows you to give more details on the newsletter)
3. On the sidebar of your blog

4. In your About the Author blurb on articles that you publish on other sites

5. On the About the Author blurb on articles that you distribute through article distribution services

6. In online press releases

7. In outgoing-link campaigns

8. In Twitter posts (post about your newsletter when it's about to come out, or post about your free offer)

9. In your LinkedIn profile

10. On your Facebook page

11. On the sidebar of your Facebook profile

12. In any videos you post to YouTube or Vimeo

13. In your blog comments on other blogs

14. Ask referral partners to mention your newsletter on their sites

15. Ask referral partners to mention your newsletter on their blog

16. In the newsletter itself - ask people to forward it to a friend

17. On blogs that you guest-post on

18. On sites that you have a member profile on

19. On forums that you participate in

20. In your email signature

Whew! What am I missing? Add your ideas in the comments.

9 Places To Promote Your Newsletter Offline

Where should you promote your newsletter? You can promote it both online and offline. Tell people about it in person, and also through online techniques.

Let's talk about offline (or, in-person) techniques first. You can promote your newsletters:

1. While you're networking

2. At trade shows

3. During your speaking engagements

4. During client engagements and consultations

5. At the end of a new client meeting

6. At business clubs

7. While you're attending workshops

8. Send postcards to your offline mailing list promoting your newsletter

9. Promote your newsletter in books or articles you publish

Two More Newsletter Sign-Up Boxes

Anatomy of an Effective Newsletter Sign-Up Box

1. Easy-to-read, highly visible headline. And, the headline clearly states what the newsletter is about.

2. A product packaging shot of the free bonuses that come along with the newsletter. Shows potential subscribers that they will receive something valuable.

3. A call to action that explains the free gift and tells people to sign up.

4. A privacy statement to reassure subscribers that their information will not be shared. 

5. A link to a page that explains the newsletter and free offer in more detail. (You can see that page at http://www.elf-design.com/newsletter-branding.html

Getting Your Newsletter Into Your Clients’ Email Inboxes

If you’re going to go to the trouble of publishing a newsletter to promote your business, then you need to get existing and potential customers and people who want to learn from you to sign up. After all, publishing a newsletter is an investment of both time (to put the newsletter together) and money (to cover the newsletter-sending service fees). It won’t pay off to publish a newsletter that no one reads.

You have a major challenge in making this happen – rising above the crop of other newsletters out there. Your newsletter has to be valuable enough to be allowed into peoples’ overcrowded inboxes. It’s like your clients’ email inboxes are a velvet-ropes club, and your newsletter is trying to get to the head of the line.

How can your newsletter stand out as a VIP?

Follow these 4 steps to increase your newsletters’ “cool” factor and its’ value:

1. Pack your newsletter with consistently valuable information. If your information attractive and useful, it will have a better chance of getting in. How do you do this? Think about questions that your clients have, and how you can help them by answering those questions. Write about topics that are interesting and relevant for your target audience. And, be consistent with the quality of your information - get a reputation for always giving out valuable information in your newsletter. 
   
   Don’t worry about giving away too much information – there will be people on your newsletter list who will implement your advice, but there will also be a group who would rather hire you than do it themselves. Mention at the end of the article that you offer products or services related to the topic of the article (but don’t fill the newsletter with sales pitches).
   
   Keep in mind that the content you create for your newsletter is your intellectual property. You’ll be able to use that information to promote your business in other ways, such as publishing it on your website, adding it to article distribution sites, or even packaging it into a product that you can sell. 

2. Package your newsletter attractively. Have you ever bought a product, or chosen one brand over another, just because of the package design? Even though your newsletter is not a physical product, and people aren’t paying to receive it, packaging it well can still help increase the perceived value of the newsletter. The packaging for your newsletter is like having a trendy outfit – it can help you stand out from the crowd.
   
   In order to package your newsletter, create a cover graphic for the newsletter itself, or for the sign-up gift (which we’ll talk about in the next point) that looks like a booklet or magazine. Use that cover image on your website to market the newsletter. Having an image appear along with your promotional text can make your newsletter offer more attention-grabbing.
   
   The other half of newsletter packaging is to design your newsletter template itself well. Create a header graphic that matches your other marketing materials. Design the section headings and titles of articles so that your newsletter is easy to read and doesn’t confuse the reader. Clearly distinguish any sales offers in the newsletter from the informative content. And, use images in the newsletter to add visual interest.

3. Offer a great sign-up gift. Create a free report, MP3 recording, video or workbook that directly relates to your clients’ needs. Offer that as a free gift to entice people to sign up for your newsletter.
   
   The main purpose of this sign-up gift is to offer readers something in exchange for their email address. Giving them something in return for their permission to contact them makes the exchange seem more fair – and if your giveaway is high-quality, it may even seem to them that they’re getting the better end of the deal.
   
   The other purpose of this sign-up gift is to make sure that people get some information immediately when they register – when their interest in your newsletter offer and getting information from you is the strongest. That way, they can begin learning before the next issue of your newsletter is published.

4. Make it easy to sign up. You want to make sure that once readers decide that they want to sign up for the newsletter, it will be easy for them to do so, like having your ID and cash ready when you get to the front of the line at a club. Tell people exactly what you need from them, and exactly what they’ll get by signing up. Clearly describe what your newsletter is about, who would benefit most from signing up, and how they can register. Use a direct call to action on your website, and tell people where to enter their email (such as “Enter your email below to receive the newsletter”)
   
   In addition to a clear message about signing up for the newsletter, design your newsletter sign-up box so that it stands out from the rest of the content on your web page. This ensures that prospects can tell, at a glance, that it’s there and that they should sign up. Style your headline and call to action so that they’re easy to read at a glance and highly visible. And consider including a product shot of your free gift or your newsletter cover to call even more attention to the sign up area (see step 2).

If you make sure that your newsletter looks - and is - valuable to your readers, and that you make it enticing and easy to sign up for the newsletter, more and more readers will raise the velvet ropes on their email inboxes and let you in.

 

 

Newsletter versus Blog Subscription & RSS Streams

A small business can handle their "Keep In Touch" Marketing (where you keep in touch with past clients, interested prospects and people who have requested that you email them) in a few different ways, such as:

• Email Newsletter
• Blog Subscriptions
• RSS streams 

Should you have an ezine list or have people subscribe to your blog?

The answer to this depends on the amount of work you want to do in your marketing. 

Newsletter

Running a newsletter mailing list is more work - you have to write the newsletters and send them out. You can customize this option more - from look and feel, to the frequency that the newsletters are sent out with, to other offers or promotions that you send out with your information. But, this also means that you have to do the work of sending out an email newsletter:

• signing up for a newsletter service
• setting the account up
• designing your email newsletter template
• setting up your newsletter each time it has to go out
• testing and sending it

And, that is the process you have to go through each time the newsletter has to go out (and I'm not even talking about putting together your articles and offers for the newsletter)

Blog Subscriptions

If you just have people subscribe to your blog (through a service such as Feedblitz, which integrates easily with Typepad or Wordpress), then the work of sending out the newsletter is done for you. Your blog posts, if you have made any, get emailed to people who sign up once a day. You don't have to do anything extra. If you don't write a blog post, nothing gets sent out. And, if you want to communicate with your list, you just post on the blog - and take care of 2 marketing tasks at once, because your blog is refreshed and your customers have been updated.

Feedblitz also allows you to log in to your account on their site and view a list of your subscribers - to see exactly who's subscribed. There are other features on their site that allow you to email your subscribers separately from your blog - for example, if you want to make a special discount offer to subscribers only.

RSS Feeds

The other option is to have people read your blog through RSS Streams, or RSS assistance programs like Feedburner. These are neat and easy for the client to do - they just grab your RSS address from your blog and then paste it into their email program or RSS aggregator. And, they increase the likelihood that people will keep up with your blog - instead of leaving it to them to remember to pull up your blog site every few days. But, the major disadvantage to you here is that they don't have to give you their details in exchange. That means that you can only communicate with these contacts through the blog - which is better than nothing, but not ideal.

Newsletter Post Roundup

Here are some past articles I've written on the topic of email newsletters:

Get A Good Email Newsletter Service:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The Newsletter Service Decision: Which New Company To Go To?

What Should You Write About In Your Newsletter?

What Are The Most Important Elements To Have In Your Email Newsletter?

When To Send Your Newsletter?

Should Your Newsletter Be Pretty?

How To Move Your Newsletter, Part 3

The last step to moving your newsletter is to open the new list up for new subscribers. How to do this:

1. Revisit your opt-in messages and autoresponders that are attached to your mailing list, and modify them for the general public.

2. Generate sign-up box code for your website, and replace your existing mailing list sign-up with the new code. Make sure that if you have this linked anywhere else - on your social media pages, your blog, on other websites, etc. - that you replace those as well.

Then, don't forget to keep promoting and publishing that newsletter!