Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

Tech tip: Editing your PDFs

So, you have a PDF of a designed file that you want to edit. But, how to get it edited?

Part of the answer to that depends on what it is that you want to edit:

Go back to the designer or original files if you want to edit:

• The graphics, color palette, or photos in the document
  
• A PDF that's been locked for security purposes
  
• A significant amount of text
  
• The font that the text is in
  
• Tables or graphs
  

You can edit the text yourself if you have:

• The fonts that the text is in, installed on your computer
  
• Adobe Acrobat Professional Version
  
• The original document with the fonts not in an outlined format
  
• Only small changes (the text editing tool within Acrobat may only select a word or a few words at a time - changing long blocks of information would be tedious).
  

To make your changes:
1. Open your document in Acrobat Professional
2. Select Tools > Advanced > Touch Up Text Tools
3. Select the text you'd like to change
4. Make your edits
5. Save your file!

Tech tip: Making your PDFs smaller

If you've created a PDF on your computer, but it's come together with a huge file size, you may want to make it smaller so that you can email it more easily. There are a couple of ways to go about this:

• If you have Adobe Acrobat Professional - there's a command under File called "Reduce File Size". That should shrink the file.

• If that doesn't work, or doesn't take the file size down enough, then you can go back to the master document and make sure that your document is as small as possible. Make sure that any graphics are on the small side - file-size wise. If you have inserted large file sizes, then they'll add to the overall file size of your PDF.

  For example, if you've put a photo in your document - say, your headshot - but you have inserted the original photo that the photographer gave you, then it's likely that it will be much bigger than it needs to be. I suggest scaling and downsizing your images in Photoshop before placing them into the document that you're making the PDF out of. That should significantly reduce the file size.
  

Hey, can you send me that font you used in my designs?

This is an innocent question that I get all the time from my clients at the end of a project. But, fonts, like computer programs, are pieces of software. When I purchase fonts to use in my designs, I’m purchasing a license for my business only. So, it would be a violation of that license to pass the font along to you – even if it’s just for your reference. It’s actually illegal to share fonts, and there’s a possibility that we could both get fined if I do share fonts with you.

And, there’s actually a good chance that even if I sent the font to you, you wouldn’t be able to do much with it. There are different font formats available for Macs and PCs (you can read more about that here, in “Some technical info about font file types”. So, if I sent you my Mac-based font, and you only have a PC, then it actually wouldn’t do you any good!

A designer’s font license does allow for the font to be sent to a commercial printer, for their one-time use while printing the designed files. But, there’s always a chance of font incompatibilities or conflicts, so it’s often best to avoid doing so if possible.

Oh, no! I don’t want to be a lawbreaker. What do I do?

You have two (pretty reasonable) choices of how you can handle the fonts in the files that your designer turns over to you:

• If you only have a little bit of a particular font in your designs – say, your logo font or tagline font – you could ask your designer to convert the fonts for those pieces to outlines, or to rasterize those fonts in your document. Or, if you don’t plan to edit your own pieces, you can have your designer outline or rasterize the fonts before sending them to the printer to preserve their appearance.

  Outlining fonts is a command available in most illustration programs, like Illustrator and Freehand. It converts the font data in your document to vector shapes. This means that you can no longer edit the fonts by typing, but it also means that if someone opens your document on a computer that doesn’t have the font you used installed, it will still look right.

  Rasterizing fonts is the equivalent of outlining fonts for photographic programs, like Photoshop. This command converts the font data to pixels. This will also preserve the appearance of the font on all computers.

• If you plan to edit your designed materials, or to create additional materials to match, you should invest in purchasing copies of your specialty fonts. Typically, there are only a few fonts in a company’s Visual Vocabulary, and, the average font isn’t that expensive. It’s a good investment to own your company’s fonts so that you can make all your corporate communications look consistent.

  Ask your designer what fonts are used in your document. They should be able to tell you the various fonts used in your pieces, and the roles that they should be used in. Or, if you worked with your designer long ago and can’t locate them to ask, you could use the “What the Font” tool to identify your font. It’s a free online tool that’s pretty accurate.

  Then, you can buy your fonts online. I recommend myfonts.com to purchase fonts – they have a wide selection at reasonable prices.

  Finally, you’ll have to install your fonts on your computer. On a Mac, use the Fontbook application to manage your fonts. If you’re on a PC, ask your computer tech about how to do this step (I haven’t tried installing fonts on a Windows machine in years!)
  

Happy (legal) fonting!

Save time with email signatures

Your email signature file can be a valuable resource to save your contacts time and even to save you from writing repetitive emails.

First of all, what is an email signature?
It’s a little patch of text that you can set up in the preferences in your email program, and once it’s set up, it will be included in all of your emails. Nowadays, even some web-based email programs have email signatures available.

And, what do they do?
Have you ever had to dig through all of your emails from a client to find their phone number? Or, visit their website to get their address for a meeting? It can take a while. If you don’t have an email signature that includes your contact information, your clients, prospects and vendors are probably going through the same amount of effort to find your contact details. This can get pretty annoying after a while. And, if you can remove even small annoyances from your customer service delivery, then you’ll have clients who are that much happier.

What should you put in it?
At the least, a signature should include:

• Your name
  
• Your company name (be sure to include “Inc.” or some version of that if you’re incorporated)
  
• Your phone number
  
• Your website
  
• Your tagline (to extend your brand)
  

Your signature can also include a short promotion for an article you’ve written, a special offer, or even a subscription to your newsletter. This promo can change from time to time as you market different specials.

How do they save you from writing repetitive emails?
You can actually set up multiple email signatures within most email programs (Outlook and Mac Mail do this particularly well). If you find that you’re constantly writing the same kind of email, save a template of that email as a new signature. The next time that you need to write that email (and every time after that), you only have to select the email signature and do a bit of editing to your template. I use this for many types of emails, including:

• Various emails to new prospects who come in to my marketing funnel through my website.
  
• The email that goes out to new clients explaining my contract
  
• Emails that get sent to clients with each round of a logo
  
• Emails that go out with the final deliverables for a project
  

My signatures save me an average of an hour of time each week!

Stuff to consider when looking for a website host

• Available Backend Functionality: Running contact forms, forums, galleries, and other “whistles and bells” on a website require that the website host either have various scripts and programs available, or, at the least, have the capability to run those scripts and programs. It can be convenient to host your site with a company that has the scripts and programs that you need already installed on their servers, because then they’ll maintain the programs, upgrade them and take care of things for you.

  Ask your designer or programmer if you need to host your site on a Windows or UNIX platform. As the business owner, you don’t really have to know what the answer means, just that your site is hosted on the correct type of machine for your needs.

  
  

• Access to Customer Service: Imagine: it’s Friday afternoon, and you go to check up on your lovely website. And, when you type in your URL, you discover that the site’s down! Oh, no! So, now you dig around to contact support, and you discover that your only way to contact your support staff is by a website form on their site, and that they only answer questions from 8am to 6pm Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday! Aaah! Wouldn’t you be happier if you could actually talk to a person and get your site back up right now, instead of waiting, worrying and steaming about it all weekend long?

  So, when you sign up for a host, check out what their customer service availability is, and what methods they let you use to get in touch with people. I strongly recommend not going with a host that only offers a support email or web form – calling a phone number is often the best way to get things resolved. If possible, try calling their support line – see if you get a person or a machine, if there are long hold times, if the people you get in touch with are courteous, and helpful. Also, make sure that you can understand the support staff – that they’re not too technical, and that they don’t have unintelligible accents.

  
  

• Maintenance: Does the company update the software on the servers frequently enough to keep up with the latest advances? Do they perform maintenance at convenient times, or do they take down the servers during your prime business hours? Do the scripts and programs that they offer actually work? Make sure that the answer to all of these is “yes” before committing to a host.

  
  

• Email Needs: Having a branded email address is really important for your online brand. So, that means that your website host will actually wind up managing your email for you as well. Ask your computer guru whether you need an IMAP or Pop3 email account, and then make sure that your website host offers that type of account for you. And, have them set up your email so that it also looks like it’s coming from your branded email address. It’s often easiest – and tempting - to just set up an email forward to your existing account, but then any mail that you send out won’t have your domain name on it. Taking the time to set things up correctly will make your small business look bigger.

  Also, consider how many email addresses you’ll want to set up – many hosts will allow a set number of email addresses to be set up with an account. You’ll want one for each person in your company, of course, but then also having separate emails for different autoresponders, separate emails for your forms, and for different “departments” in your business, like administration, sales, and contacts, can really make your business look more like it’s not just you (even if it is).

  
  

• Storage Space: For the average website, any host will give you plenty of hosting space – my host offers up to 20 gigabites of file storage with every account they host. The average graphical site won’t go over 5 or 10 megabytes, so you’d never even approach the full capacity. But, if you’re planning to have PDF files available for downloads, integrate a lot of scripts, tools and software, or make audio downloads available on your site, those can really add to your site’s size quickly. Make sure you have the space you need available.

  
  

• Credibility: Make sure that the host you choose is established, and will be around for a while. You want your site to be up and available, and if your host shuts down, your site will too. You’ll also probably do some customization of your site to work with the host that you choose. If your host then shuts down, or makes major changes to its’ software systems, you’ll have to re-invest and re-code your site! Pick a host that will stay in business.

  And, host credibility becoming more and more important for email purposes – if your host gets blacklisted on spam sites, then you won’t be able to send out your emails! Make sure your host works with credible companies and has anti-spam practices in place.
  

• And, of course, price: Working with the cheapest web host, or a free hosting company, is usually not the best choice for a small business. But, for a simple website, you don’t need to be paying all that much for a good-quality web host. For example, I pay $8 per month for my host, which is a pretty reasonable price. And, many hosts will offer a discount if you pay for a year all at once – which is more convenient anyways!

Make a commission from Amazon Books

To earn a commission from any Amazon books you promote on your website:

1. Sign up for an Amazon Associates account:
http://associates.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/104-5828546-7026338?node=3435371/104-5828546-7026338

2. They have a tool that will generate a link that you can put on your website. This will be under your Associates account, in a section called "Build Links". This is actually a pretty cool tool; they have all kinds of links with graphics, without graphics, etc. available.

3. Copy-and-paste those links into your website's HTML code, or into your HTML emails!

That's all there is to it!