Wondering what the latest and greatest is in the wide, wonderful world of 3-D printing? Check out what researchers at Cornell University (yes, the same people who figured out how to print actual chocolate desert) are doing with silicone these days.
Tags: 3-d printing, printing
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“No honey, we can’t get business cards for the cats!”
Mantra: I will capitalize on my personal brand, I will...ohhhh, squeaky mice!
These words cheerfully greeted me from my computer screen when I staggered out of bed to check up on what happened on Twitter last night. The first thing I did was laugh (really, really hard) at the mental picture of what my three furry feline monsters would do if I handed them a stack of business cards. Tooth marks would definitely mark them as theirs!
The second thing I did was scroll down the screen. Apparently, cats aren’t the only ones dipping their feet in the business card pool. There were dozens of posts featuring creative card ideas and clever new swings.
Then there was the woman who suggested exchanging mommy business cards should be standard etiquette for play dates. This one stopped me in my tracks. Business cards? When my kids were little, contact information for other moms was scrawled on napkins or paper doilies and slapped up on the fridge. I found the concept of entire business cards with the name of the mother and child and their contact information laid neatly out both intriguing and oddly frightening.
Once upon a time, business cards were reserved for salesmen and high level executives. Now we’re seeing them everywhere, from mommy bloggers to job seeking college kids. Cats might be a new one, but somehow I don’t doubt that there are a number of show pooches out there with their own calling cards, carefully cultivating their personal brand.
So let me ask you this. How far is too far when it comes to promoting your personal brand? Is the easy availability of business cards leading us to overdo it, or are we just seeing the newest trend? Will business cards soon become as commonplace as cell phones? What do you think?
Tags: Branding, business cards, marketing, personal branding, printing
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Liposuction. I still haven’t figured out if it’s a dirty word, still spoken in hushed tones by Hollywood starlets who don’t want to admit they’re slowly creeping into old age, or if technology and the advent of reality television have made it the next best thing to a household word.
Stefanie Wilder Taylor got me thinking about liposuction earlier this week, but not the kind that involves sucking the fat out of your thighs. I’m thinking more about the kind that sucks the fat out of your printing.
How Much “Fat” Are You Printing?
It’s impossible to spend enough time discussing the sheer, unequivocal awesomeness of digital printing. It’s fast. It’s detailed. And, most importantly, it steps in as the laser that sucks the fat out of your printing.
When you’ve got fat hanging around on your thighs, it slows you down. Bogs you up. Forces you to expend additional resources just to get through the day. You’re working twice as hard to get the same result.
That’s what happens when you’ve got too much fat in your printing.
Scenario #1: You’re giving the recycling guys a backache.
It can be hard to estimate how many of any given piece you’re going to need. Especially if you’re getting ready to launch a new (fill in the blank) that you’ve never tried before, because you have absolutely, positively no idea what you’re getting yourself into.
Hey, it’s cool. I get it. Less is more…unless more is more. But how much of that “more” is finding its way to the back of your storage closet and, eventually, to the recycling bin? What could you be doing with the money you spent on those posters/flyers/etc? (Hint: You’ll get more results taking your employees out to lunch. Just sayin’)
Scenario #2: You’re printing things you really don’t need to print.
Business cards are a need. Company stationary is a need. But are there things you’re printing you really don’t need to be? I love printed post-its as much as the next guy, but when they start falling off the top shelves it might be time to start scaling back. And how many forms are you using? Could they be consolidated into one?
Not only will your printing budget thank you, your customers will too. And the goodwill you’ll get from not forcing them to spend their day hunched over 101 pieces of paper?
Absolutely priceless.
Is it time for some lipo on your printing? How has your company started to cut the fat?
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First things first: If you’re out on Twitter, I want to know why you haven’t come by to see me yet. Hanging out in the Twitterverse has sparked some great conversations with fellow printers, including this one about what it’s like to be a woman in printing and where the biggest challenge lies.
When I gave a shout-out to my printing ladies in the Twitterverse last week, asking them to tell me what they thought was the hardest part of being a woman in a traditionally male-dominated industry, I was surprised by the answers I got. I figured at least one of them would have something to say about banging their head against the typical glass-ceiling, boy’s club environment. That wasn’t the case. Most of them were concerned about trying to balance their home and work lives without feeling like they were being a horrible wife or mother for putting their career first.
When I read through their responses (and they were plentiful), I had to smile. Because it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, if you’ve got a family, whether it’s husband, child, father, mother, sister or second cousin twice removed, at some point you’re going to have to make a choice. Who do you spend time with? How dead are you going to be if you skip a family dinner because you have a HUGE deadline Monday morning and you need to get a head start on Sunday night? (If your family’s anything like mine, the answer to that is pretty darn dead. Make that decision very, very carefully.)
So how do our printing ladies do it? Several had been known to take their kids to work on their days off, and invite their husbands along on their business trips. Working at all hours of the night to have their days free wasn’t unusual, and many of them recommended working from home as often as possible. And all of them agreed that unless something major popped up, like a deadline that was going to blow up in their face if they didn’t jump on it, like, yesterday, work hours were work hours and family time was family time, and ne’er the twain shall meet.
The struggle to balance work and family life certainly isn’t exclusive to our ladies of the press. How do you balance work and family?
Tags: Business, printing, women in printing, working moms
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Do you like it when people take your words and post them for the world to see without bothering to tell you about it? Of course you don’t. Nobody does. So why are so many companies doing it?
Later on, we’ll talk about why companies make up testimonials for their customers-and why it’s a really bad idea. The whole point of printing testimonials is, after all, to provide your customers with an honest look at the products and services you provide. Today, let’s take a look at the second step in that process-the unwritten rules of etiquette for obtaining those testimonials in the first place.
Everyone loves to talk. You just have to be willing to listen.
How often do you actually get testimonials from your customers? Sometimes? Always? Once or twice a year?
Here’s a news flash for you. Customers LOVE to talk about their experiences. They’ll talk about them over breakfast. They’ll talk about them over lunch. They’ll talk about them at the water cooler.
If your customers aren’t telling you about their experiences, it’s probably because you’re not giving them a chance. Asking “How did everything go?” is begging to be told, “Fine” as they complete their visit and walk away. Offer comment forms. Ask what the best part of their visit was. Put a pad on your front counter and invite them to write a comment on their way out, or drop it anonymously into a comment box.
Social Media is the Best Source for Obtaining Testimonials You’ll Ever Find
Want to know what your customers think about your business? Take a cruise through Facebook and Twitter. They’re out there, and they’re talking. This is a great way to find out what customers really think.
But…
Ask Before You Post/Print
Before you printing testimonials, or posting them on your website, don’t forget to ask the customer in question if they’re okay with their words going public. Most are going to say yes, but every once in a while you’ll get someone who for one reason or another wants to keep the fact that they’re doing business with you just between you. Printing their testimonials without their permission can permanently damage a beautifully budding relationship.
And…
Consider Keeping Testimonials Anonymous
This is a tricky area for most companies, so it’s really up to you and your customers which way you want to go. Printing the customer’s full name will go a long way toward convincing future customers that you’re not making this stuff up; however, it also eliminates any privacy between you and your clientele. Some will be okay with that. Some will not.
There’s another perk to keeping testimonials anonymous, especially when you’re working in the B2B arena. If you print a testimonial that gives the company name and the name of your contact, you’ve just handed your competition a list of your clientele. You didn’t really mean to do that, did you?
I didn’t think so.
When done right, printing testimonials goes a long way toward giving your business the authentic reputation it deserves. How are you making testimonials work for you?
Tags: Business, direct mail marketing, marketing, printing, testimonials
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I’m thrilled to introduce our first guest blogger, Jonathan Barrick, and his views on integrating print and social media. Jonathan is the Marketing Manager at Global Finishing Solutions, LLC, Chair of Business Advisory Committee at Georgian College, and an all-around awesome guy, here to share his best tips for integrating print and social media.
When it comes to listing your social media contact info on your brochure, do you simply say ‘Find us on Facebook’? You’d better hope your customers are very patient while they comb through 500 million users.
We see Facebook and Twitter icons and logos all over the place now. They are very nearly as common place in advertising as phone numbers and email addresses, but what I’ve noticed is that a large number of companies stop short with JUST the logo of the Social Media site that they participate in. Unfortunately, this doesn’t do anything to help the user actually find you on those sites. Since the search functions on Social Media sites can pull up dozens of suggestions for any business name or search term, simply putting the logo of the site somewhere on your brochure can be counter-productive.
Businesses must realize that by doing this, they’re essentially saying “If you go on this site of 500 million users, I’m in there somewhere.” Not to mention the added level of complexity that exists if your business is a single location in a chain. What if there are 5 or 6 different stores from the same chain on Facebook? How easy is it for your users to identify which one is yours? What if corporate head office is listed there, too?
You can see the problem that this presents when you take the time and effort to connect with your customers, but you don’t go those last few steps to ensure that it’s really you that they find when they go looking. Luckily, there are a few simple things you can do to make yourself easier to connect with.
1 – Use a custom URL, and minimize it.
Most social networking sites, like Facebook and LinkedIn, will allow you to customize your URL so that you can shorten it and make it easier to fit on to brochures and business cards. For example, you can easily go from something like this page I found:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ford-Dealership/109108405778479
to a much cleaner example from another page:
http://www.facebook.com/ford.sales
Another tip to minimize the text is to simply remove the ‘http://’ from the URL, since we are all so used to seeing web addresses, it’s hardly a stretch to realize that ‘facebook.com/ford.sales’ should be typed in to the URL bar of a web browser.
To create a customized URL on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/username/
With Twitter, you can follow two ways of approaching this. You can either list your Twitter username: in my case @j_barrick, or your direct URL to your tweets: http://twitter.com/j_barrick. Again, you can use the simplistic: twitter.com/j_barrick and make the URL even cleaner and still make no mistake of which Twitter user is the real deal.
2 – Stick with only your top sites.
You may be tempted to list every single location online where your users can find you, but once you get past Facebook and Twitter, the widespread user base drops off dramatically. You might have a Flickr page, or Tumblr blog, or Myspace page, or several others from the myriad collection of social media sites, but that doesn’t mean you should stuff your materials full of every possible site. As a general rule of thumb, just list the few key sites that you’re most active on, or that you have the largest community. Again, this is all about making it easy on the reader.
3 – Don’t forget your main web address.
Unless you’ve got a VERY specific reason for doing this, don’t leave your regular www. web address off of any of your materials. I’ve seen several instances of companies running ads that are designed solely to drive traffic to their Facebook pages, but unless you’re running a completely dedicated campaign with Facebook traffic as your ultimate objective, this may not be the best course of action.
After all, your website should be the main hub of all your activity. Users should be able to go anywhere you are online from your website, so that would be where you’d list all the ‘other’ locations we talked about back in Tip #2, so don’t miss out on an opportunity to get people to visit your main online home. It can encourage them to check out more of you in other locations.
4 – Avoid ‘stylized’ logos. Stick with the instantly recognizable ones.
If you have picked up a magazine or newspaper in the last 12 months, then you know what the Twitter logo looks like. Same for Facebook. The simple, clean but easily identifiable ‘T’ and ‘F’ icon logos in the official colours are unquestionable about what they represent. But if you start to incorporate ‘fancier’ ones, (maybe they look like stamps, or buttons, or shiny metal), then you run a much greater risk of the general populace not recognizing them.
Example:
Use logos like this: not like this:
in print materials.
The goal here is to ultimately drive people to see what you’re doing on these sites. If they can’t make that immediate association to the social media site brands that they are familiar with, they will be less likely to make that effort.
Bonus Tip: Business Cards
Your business card had better already have your company web address on it, but why not add your Facebook or Twitter URL as well? It’s simply one more way for your users to connect with you, which is the entire purpose of the business card to begin with! This info belongs on your cards, so the next time you print a batch, make that addition.
So overall, I think you can see that simply throwing an icon on your print materials doesn’t really accomplish anything other than ‘Yeah, we’re on Twitter’. If you really want to encourage people to check you out, then you need to make it as easy as possible. You would never put ‘Find us on the Web!’ without listing your web address, so why do that with your Social Media?
End Note: There is another technology being introduced that intends to do a better job of integrating print and web, and that is the QR code. I haven’t touched on that in this article for two reasons: 1 – It’s a bit more advanced in terms of it’s usage and how to integrate it in to your business goals, and this article was intended as the ‘basics’ of putting SM contact info in to print, and 2 – it is still in the early adoption stage, and until every person has a smartphone, and everyone has taken the time to download a QR code reader app for their smartphone, QR codes will continue to be a very specialized way to reach a unique target market. In summary, not enough people know what they are or have the understanding and technology to utilize them effectively.
Jonathan Barrick on Jonathan Barrick:“As the leader of a full-service internal marketing team, I have been responsible for everything from creative direction and execution to budgeting and corporate strategic planning.
“Under my direction, my team handles all social media activities, online strategies, branding, corporate image, web design, graphic design, print layout & design, market research, competitive intelligence analysis, strategic business planning, trade show coordination, event management, advertising creative & scheduling, marketing budgeting, and more.
“My ultimate goal? Ensure that the company I represent is the one that customers desire to do business with above all others.”
You can find Jonathan out on the web at http://about.me/jonbarrick, on Twitter as @j_barrick and as Jonathan Barrick on LinkedIn. Thank you Jonathan, for offering up your awesome insights into the wide world of marketing, printing and putting it all together!
Tags: marketing, print, printing, social media
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Now that Spring has (finally) decided to make an appearance, it’s time to start talking about outdoor events your company’s planning on hosting if you haven’t already…and how you’re planning to promote them.
Digital advertising calls to us in the winter, when it’s too cold to do much more than run from your house to the car (up here, at least) but in the summertime the appeal of posters, flyers, radio ads and street signs calls out to pedestrians sneaking out of their houses for the first (or second or third) taste of the summer sun.
So how can you promote your outdoor events?
1) Pop up flyers. They’re cheap. They’re easy. But with the right graphics, when used along major walkways they’re extremely effective in attracting foot traffic.
2) Partner with your local zoo or other outdoor venue. Is there a zoo, an amusement park or other outdoor locality that attracts a huge volume of people every summer? Partner up with them to offer discount tickets, exclusive offers or other perks and make their traffic, your traffic.
3) Promote at other outdoor events. Are there other major outdoor events going on near you that attract your kind of people? Talk to the sponsors and ask about setting up a booth or having people float through the crowd passing out flyers and other information.
4) Put it on the radio. People are cranking up the tunes and flying down the highway with the windows down. Their to-do list isn’t the first thing on their mind. You can make that work for you.
5) Finally, don’t forget to let your customers know about it! Every person who walks through your door should know what’s going on before they walk back out. Easy traffic, easy marketing, easy promotion. Don’t let that pass you by!
Tags: marketing, printing, promoting summer events
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Good morning all! How was your Easter?
Since we’re traveling today, one of the first things my kids asked for when they got up this morning was print out a massive pile of Easter-themed coloring sheets to keep the kids out of trouble on the ride back home. I then proceeded to get so many requests from social media friends, tweeps and peeps who wanted to do the same that I thought I’d take today’s blog and give you a round-up of the best sites out on the web to find free printable coloring sheets for your kids.
Remember, once you print out one sheet you can also take a sharpie and add hats, mustaches, balloons, bubbles and other fun accessory items, then scan and print en masse. That’s a favorite around here!
1) Easter Coloring Pages Collection
2) Easter Coloring Pages (This site has a Draw the Face on the Bunny that’s been a huge hit around
here this weekend!)
3) Easter Coloring Pages, also home to the virtual Easter coloring book.
4) Easter Coloring Pages from ColoringBookFun.com
5) Disney Princess Coloring Pages, for everyone with a little girl who knows Easter just isn’t Easter without Ariel!
And don’t forget to stop by www.lucylearns.com, where I found this adorable bunny!
Are your kids still home on spring break? Share a link to your favorite kids’ printables and activities below, and have a great afternoon!
Tags: coloring sheets, easter, printing
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Time to take a moment and look back over other top blogs in printing, marketing and graphic design through the week! All of these are linked by a common thread-a genuine desire to help you make the most of your naturally creative tendencies and power your printing and design.
1) How to create maps for wedding invitations- Weddings are special occasions for everyone-except for lost guests.
2) How to write a thank you note- Having trouble finding the right words to thank your Cousin Sal for that mango slicer? Should you even bother? Oh yes you should. LESLIE HARPOLD tells why and demonstrates how to write the perfect, honest thank-you note every time.
3) 10 reasons why you should pay for stock photos- Stock photos and illustrations won’t solve all your graphic needs but there are a lot of uses for them in online learning. Unless you always shoot your own photos, the question is whether you should pay for stock photos and illustrations or use one of the free services.
4) Cut the crap and write better now- Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think.If you want to ‘get in touch with your feelings,’ fine — talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts.
5) Do you recognize these 10 mental blocks to creative thinking?- Whether you’re trying to solve a tough problem, start a business, get attention for that business or write an interesting article, creative thinking is crucial. The process boils down to changing your perspective and seeing things differently than you currently do.
Tags: creative thinking, marketing, print design, print graphics, printing
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What’s the most important thing you put on your business cards?
We all grew up with the cut and dried template of the perfect business card dangled in front of our faces. The one that listed our name, our company, our job title and our company information. Back when there were only a handful of businesses running around. Your customers have a little bit more to choose from these days.
With that in mind, your business card has to do a lot more than just toss out your name and your phone number. So what’s the most important thing your business cards should say?
Your job title isn’t enough. Somewhere on your card should be a description of your services. Are you a carpet specialist or a carpet installation specialist? A cleaner? A master of carpet repair? “Specialist” is a widely used frame that’s way too broad for most of today’s niche businesses. If your would-be customers don’t see your particular niche when they look at your card, you’re going to get filed back in the part of their brain that isn’t going to remember you next week.
Are any of the “old” components you were putting on when you were printing your business cards any less important just because you’re thinking about starting fresh? Absolutely not. These “fresh” cards should still have your name on there somewhere. That lets you capitalize on any personal connection you hope to build. You need not only a phone number, but also an email address and website URL where they can go for more information on your businesses and services.
A fax number is good, although not necessarily essential. It’s a small step for most people to pick up the phone, call a business and ask for their fax number.
What’s the most important thing you put on your business cards?
Tags: business cards, marketing, printing
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