Marketing Impressions

» Logoworks Now Offers Free Blog Designs

Many of you may or may not know that my first love is all things Web.  My primary personal blog is all about new media communications and how it's affecting business.  Marketing and Small Businesses are a very close second, which is why why I wanted to do this blog.  Now when I can combine the two:

Web 2.0 + SMB Marketing = 1 Happy Blogger :)

Today is just such a day for me at HP.  Logoworks has announced .  As with all things Logoworks they decided to first give it away for free and then if you want more than that they have services that allow for the ultimate in customization.

Some of you are like me and already get the importance of blogging.  Some of you out there I've probably already lost when I mentioned Web 2.0 and blogging.  Believe me when I say that blogs are not just for kids and crazy people to rant about politics and cats.

Blogs are a tool.  In fact WordPress (my personal favorite blogging platform and the one that Logoworks is offering free designs for) is a very powerful (and completely FREE) content management system that I have seen used for an entire company website and you wouldn't even know it was a "blog".

So if it helps, think about it that way:

Logoworks gives away free website designs

If you'd like more information Logoworks is holding a free webinar on May 7 (follow the link to register).

And what good is a newly designed website if you don't have a personalized logo to go with it?  Well never fear Logoworks is giving that away for free too. (How do these guys make any money - oh, not your problem). On May 12 Logoworks will launch the newest version of Logomaker, their free logo design tool, which will be aptly named Logomaker 2.0.

Head over to Logoworks for more details

» The Emotion of Color

Today I'm excited to bring you a guest post from Corey Smith.  Besides being a personal friend (and someone I could strong arm into doing a guest post for me) Corey is a print industry veteran with a diverse background in Marketing and Business.  He also scored bonus points because he is a small business owner himself.  If you're interested in today's topic of color, I'd also recommend the HP Labs blog Mostly Color Perception

Copier and printing industry experts assert that within the next few years business will print more color than black & white. Sort of reminds me of the paperless office promise from 1975.

The fact is, color printing is on the rise. I thought I would share the real value of color. What does color do to the emotions? How does it affect us?

First of all, color has different meanings to different cultures. Depending on your background, you may have different emotions that are aroused when you see a particular color. I will share the most common emotions that come to the average North American.  Many of these meanings will carry across cultural boundaries, but I would be curious how you agree or disagree with my assertions here.

» Save on Paper Printing

 I just came across Lifehacker's Easy Ways to Reduce Wasted Printer Paper, which mentions the PC Magazine article Three Steps to the Paperless Office.  This sparked some thoughts from Vince on printing and printing waste:

"The challenge of printing less is complex. Although there are many applications and areas where people are printing less, there is such a proliferation of information (enabled by the digital transformation of information on the web) that even if people print fewer pages per content topic, there is just a lot more content areas to print out."

» Customized Customer Marketing Material

I was impressed with the customization and turn around time of this project, not to mention the quality of the pieces.

» What's in a name?

Arguably one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make when starting a new business is choosing a name.  For us non creative types it can be horrible.  Especially if you are starting a company with other people.  You then have the additional difficulty of finding a good name that you all like (and one that you can get a good URL for).

I've come across a few good post lately that make suggestions on naming:

» Extreme Identity Makeover

When you first start your business you often don't have much money to spend on a professional designer, so you bootstrap it.  You have a friend or friend of a friend do it, or you go with a basic text logo or clip art.  It get's you started and is "good enough".

As your business grows you get to a point in time where your logo may not represent who you are or it might look dated (I hear that 80's look is coming back).  What do you do now?  You still don't have a ton of money and you have even less time to work through some huge creative process.

» Expert Advice from Business Bloggers

I can't believe I forgot to post this.  With our spring product launch and new Marketing Impressions portal it slipped my mind.  Last week we announced the winners to our Top Business Blog Contest.  If you'd like the back story on this you can read Anita Campbell's post on the topic.  Posts by Anita were also featured in 3 of the winning categories.

This isn't the last you'll hear about ebooks from me, I love 'em.

» The Official Launch of the Marketing Impressions Portal

Today is the official press launch of HP's new Small and Medium Business solutions.  This includes new printers from LaserJet and OfficeJet as well as new supplies coming out this spring.  The press release also highlights many of the resources that HP has available, such as templates, software and partnerships.

In future posts I want to dig into these resources in greater detail but for now you can you can read the press release here and you can check out the newly launched Marketing Impressions portal here.

» Pre-release of the Market Success eBook

9 Steps to Outstanding Market Success

Chapter 1: Focusing

» Helping business owners be better designers

Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm not a designer.  I'm not even sure I could open Photoshop (ok, I could but after that I'd be worthless).  Most small business owners fall in this same boat.  That's why HP's In-House Marketing initiative is so exciting to me.  By offering up a whole slew of resources like templates, classes, software and partnerships we can save small business owners money while helping them make money (aka get more customers).

HP is a recent sponsor of the Small Business Trends new Marketing Tips section.  In general this is shaping up to be a great collections of marketing tips.  One of Anita's first posts was on how to design your first logo.  This is a great mix of general design principles as well as some how-to pointers.

» From blogs to business cards