I have always heard that most businesses fail due to poor accounting skills.  I can understand that.  There is no use in having a product or service if you are not going to collect your fees at the end of the day or appropriately balance your budget and funds.  My brother just took over a department that had not been producing a profit for a long time.  After some analysis, they realized that work was going out the door but the fees were not being collected.

Before you go off creating grand marketing schemes and investing in support, basics of business need to be in good shape.  This also includes client services which is a fundamental part of marketing.  No need to crack open new business if you cannot properly take care of the business that you do have.

But if all your chickens and eggs are efficiently working for you, then perhaps it is time to invest in future marketing efforts to broaden your horizon.

I am really fascnicated with all of the changes that Facebook has made and how I have seen them flourish into actual usable strategies.  When I started marketing my business on Facebook about a year and half ago, I played with some advertising just to see what would happen.  After spending over $200, I didn’t feel like I really got much from it.  The focus must be to gain fans so that they in turn can see what your company is doing and particpate.  In the end you would hope for a client or referral.

I eventually stopped the advertising and moved onto different projects.  Recently I played with the Facebook advertising again for some groups that I was involved with.  I was amazed at the response.  I then tried it for myself, Bella Verde, and in a matter of days I had 50 new likes.  I have to say, I am impressed.  On the group that I am working with, I had about 300 likes in a matter of days.

When the new Facebook features were implemented and they began to roll out the new timeline, people were of course upset.  Who likes change?  My husband thought that the panel they had on the right hand side was insane, a duplication of your timeline and account information.  I thought it was silly myself, but now I see that the Facebook developers were smart.

In the end it is about money right?  Facebook’s main goal has to be to bring advertisers in and in turn advertisers have to get some sort of Return on Investment.  If you take a look at the image to the left, your eye is drawn to your personal information.  Out of curiosity you want to see the “people you may know” and there are your events which you want to keep tabs on.  And right below that you have an “ad”.

This is great, instead of a bunch of ads flying around that your eye ignores, you are drawn to this.  I was noticing it for myself as I have liked many pages that were advertised to me.

Another tool that I see them utilizing is that they are telling me that someone on my friends list likes that page too.  They are validating this choice for me, if one of my friends likes it, then I should too.

Being that I participated in the Facebook advertsiing prior to the changes and just recently, I can definaltey see the differences and the benefits.  If you want to enhance your social media reach, give me a call.

When I asked my colleague how long he designed his logo, he answered, “over 30 years.”  There are a few reasons as to why you need to update your logo.

In this situation, he is asking me, a 33 year old to design a website for him.  His website will be done in Word Press, a modern content management tool.  Frankly, I don’t feel that my design style, my design era and a modern day design tool, can work with a logo that was designed 30 years ago.

I enjoy Interior Design and one of the things that I enjoy doing is taking pieces from different cultures and eras and meshing them together to create a personal design.  So perhaps there are some logos designed in the 80′s that could mesh into modern day design, but I have failed to find one in the construction industry.  I also think that the 80s was a horrible year for design.

What inspired me to write this blog entry was the young lady that I met yesterday at the INC. Magazine event with Dan Heath as the speaker.  Ms. Lameisha sat next to me and was very energetic.  She told me that she had just recently graduated from the Academy of Arts in Graphic Design and handed me her business card.  As we were chatting I made the comment that our business cards looked a lot alike and we had a similar design style.  I found it funny, that we were similar in age, but had never met before, and have very different training backgrounds, but our design style was very similar.

If you take a look at the cards below, even though very different concepts, the look and feel of the card is very similar.  The actual printed card also shared similar paper and coating.  I am a business card snob and feel that it is a first impression and you want to be proud of it when you hand it over to a new contact.

Which brought me back to my original thought of designing a website for my colleague.  Who is from a different generation, before I was even born he was already in the groove of work life.  Not to say that it will happen here, but I find myself playing a psychologist many times with my clients.  They not only have this deep rooted affection for their business that they created and a logo that they approved, but they also have this younger person sitting in front of them trying to convince them how to modernize their business.  And this is not a logo only problem; this is every aspect of a business.  I have had conversations with people as to why using a fax is obsolete and frankly, a bit silly.

Just as the younger generation needs to embrace the knowledge and experience that the older generation has retained, the older generation needs to embrace the energy and modern ideas that the youngsters bring to the field.  If it were not for the younger generation, and their “outside the box” ideas, we wouldn’t have Silicon Valley, and I wouldn’t have this great tool Word Press to post this blog entry.  Sometimes we need to step outside of our comfort zone in order to make room for innovation and creation.

Let the designing begin.

CHAT was organized in order to assist Marketing Coordinators in succeeding within the Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industry.

My topic will be designing marketing materials.  Once I started working on my presentation I became very motivated  and rapidly put together a plan that will hopefully illustrate good design practices for marketers.

My focus will be on: Organization, Aesthetics and Branding.

You can click here and download my Bella Verde Marketing Materials Design Presentation.