What Does Photography do for Your Marketing?
Posted: December 14, 2010 Filed under: design, marketing | Tags: design, graphics, marketing collateral, photography, stock photography, web site design Leave a comment »Your Printed Materials
Pick up a magazine–what is the first thing you see? Open a newspaper–what catches your eye?
If you are like most people, it would be the pictures that attract your initial interest, because we enjoy looking into someone else’s space and discovering new sights. When we look to buy items, we want to see what they look like first. Photography and graphic arts are the primary means of introducing your potential client to your products and services. We are extremely visual creatures, or as they say in the food industries, “We eat with our eyes first.”
When you hand the client your company’s brochure, the character, reputation and credibility of your company is folded into the pages of that pamphlet. Read the rest of this entry »
the power of a team
Posted: October 18, 2010 Filed under: clients, community, design Leave a comment »Over the last couple of weeks, we have been rather insanely busy with a new-and-improved business model for SheTech, a new-and-improved web site (still in development, so bear with us!), and a ton of related details.
It has been a great privilege to work with this crackerjack team we’ve managed to assemble–and I’m not just saying that. For some reason, some truly world-class talent have decided that this little agency is worth their time and attention. This is both invigorating and humbling.
The planning process for SheTech 2011 is fast-paced because it’s so important that we get this going sooner than later; it’s exciting; it’s exhilarating. The coolest part to me is looking around, totally trusting the team to play together really well. We kick ideas around and some great stuff comes up. Where one person lacks a skill or an idea, another more than fills the gap.
Not only are we doing this for ourselves (“eating our own dog food”) in the context of making vast improvements to SheTech and Company, our clients are already beginning to benefit from this richness of creativity as well. We’ve had planning sessions for clients, where some really amazing and innovative ideas have resulted. Man, do I feel lucky to be surrounded by such talented people!
We’re doing this for ourselves. But mostly, we’re doing this for each other.
We’re doing this for our clients.
And their clients.
And their communities.
Man, do I feel lucky.
the power of comparison
Posted: July 12, 2010 Filed under: blogging, clients, customer service, design, marketing, search engine friendly, social media Leave a comment »
Images Coterie Photography, Theresa Saxon, Photographer :: Reflection on the hood of a Ferrari http://www.imagescoterie.com
In a recent visit back to my HQ office in Tennessee (I’m still on contract with OppenheimerFunds in New York City), I met my business partner‘s twin sister. They live on separate coasts and look so much alike they fooled my mother–who has known Theresa for years! Theresa Saxon, my business partner, is a very talented photographer–and so is her twin sister. However, the comparison ends once you start looking at their images. They have quite different specialties and their creative impulses flow in different directions.
It started me to thinking about what SheTech and Company does and how we compare to other providers. We might look like a great many other providers out there, and offer some of the same services–on the surface. Yes, we have a low-cost do it yourself option, and so do many other providers. Where the comparison does and must end is when we start talking about custom work.
With access to top-notch designers and developers all over the country, as well as literally decades of experience in both technology and marketing, we offer a unique blend of expertise resulting in unique web properties designed specifically to meet strategic business needs.
That means that, no, we can’t do a custom web site for $500–often not even for $5,000 (we’re what I like to call “overkill” for that sort of service). But for small, medium and large businesses that have both a marketing budget and the vision of a digital strategy (or need a digital strategy), we are poised to make a web property go from merely good to truly great.
This is because in addition to web production expertise, we are consultants: we sit and work with our client companies to deliver far above and beyond the “cookie cutter” web site that many other, lower cost, providers offer. We ask questions: who is your target audience? What message are you trying to convey? What tone? Will you be including social media in your digital strategy? How? What’s the overarching purpose of your web properties: sales and marketing, information or support (it can be some combination of all three, but one really must dominate)? We research competitors; we research search engine optimization techniques; and so on…
By the way, when you start thinking about a web strategy, remember to focus on the differences between sales strategy and marketing strategy. It’s not always clear which is which, but your direction will be vastly different when you choose one or the other.
SheTech and a Ferrari -- are you ready?
In the end, comparing other web hosting companies with SheTech and Company is a bit like comparing apples with Ferraris. They’re both usually red, and SWEET, but do very different things.
Vrooooooom!
the power of community
Posted: March 19, 2009 Filed under: clients, design, economy | Tags: AIG, AIG scandal, bailout, business ethics, Cafe Femenino, coffee, community, compassion, economy, ethic, ethics, Haven House, local economy, obama, president, trickle-down economics, Vienna Coffee Company 1 Comment »
Haven House web site relaunched 18 March
Today we re-launched Haven House‘s web site (http://www.havenhousetn.org) with an upgraded version of the Joomla! content management system. We’re particularly excited about this launch!
The design of the site is mostly the same as the previous version, with a few minor enhancements, but that’s not what gets us so excited.
What really has us going is that we added a shopping cart.
What does an online shopping cart have to do with domestic violence?
For the first time, Haven House has an online platform to raise money for the shelter and raise awareness in the community in one fell swoop. We’ve started with a few items: an upcoming benefit ride, a car magnet, and awareness bracelets. Best of all, Haven House is offering Café Femenino coffee, with the help of another SheTech and Company client, Vienna Coffee Company.
Coffee?
Yes, coffee.
Every once in a while, a project or idea comes along that truly represents the “everyone wins” model. Café Femenino is one such project, and in this case, benefits the community here at home and the global community.
Let’s start at home
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of Café Femenino either through the Haven House web site or through Vienna Coffee Company, directly benefits Haven House. This helps pay operating expenses and other costs associated with both maintaining the shelter and building awareness in the community.
Also, given that Vienna Coffee Company is a local business, the sale of the coffee helps maintain our own economy here at home.
Now let’s expand our view
Women now make up nearly 30% of the coffee growers in the world, while still having far fewer rights than men in their local communities. In response to this inequity, Café Femenino was formed as a coalition to help women growers gain the same rights as their male counterparts. The coalition, which started in Peru, now represents women coffee growers around the world. It has helped build social programs and support networks, aiding these women in their struggles against poverty and abuse.
Now take an even longer view
The coffee grown by Café Femenino producers is not only certified Fair Trade coffee, it is organic. So the communities in which the coffee is grown benefit as economic inequalities are remedied, and organic growing practices help ensure that the environment is cared for, promising a cleaner future for the green earth and its people and–let’s bring it back home–buyers get coffee that is free of damaging and dangerous chemicals.
See? Everybody wins.
The common good
In light of all the news about the economy, the shocking AIG bonuses in particular, we need to remember that ethical decisions are those made with the common good at their center. In his reaction to the AIG scandal, President Obama used the word “ethic”, which very few reporters seem to be picking up. “Ethic” does have a place in economic policy–or it should! It’s the lack of ethic that has gotten us into this pickle.
On a daily basis, in our normal, everyday lives, our community should be at the heart of our decisions. There’s nothing at all wrong with monetary gain; however, “Does it serve the greater good?” should be the question we always pose to ourselves. At top levels, for decades (centuries? millenia?) failed policies have been rationalized with a failed model (sometimes called the “trickle-down” theory). It doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for a long time, and now it’s falling apart before our eyes. Greed begets greed.
And compassion begets compassion.
Let’s keep compassion at the heart of our decisions.
Learn more
Buy Café Femenino at Haven House’s web site: http://www.havenhousetn.org.
Learn more about the Café Femenino project at their web site: http://www.cafefemenino.com
the power of a fresh perspective
Posted: March 9, 2009 Filed under: blogging, design, marketing, writing | Tags: business communications, design, document review, perspective, relax, rest, review process Leave a comment »Have you ever written a message–say, a new piece of news for your web site–and published it, only to discover after the fact that it contains errors? Having another pair of eyes–or six–goes a long way toward mitigating such embarrassment.
Whether you’re a one-seat consultancy or a corporation with hundreds of employees and a full marketing-communications team, it’s really important to submit any public-facing communication for review–particularly those that affect the overall credibility of the company! Even something as simple as an email autoresponder can benefit from the review process; in that case, it’s one of the first things a potential client sees, and can truly make or break the relationship!
It’s not only the concrete things such as facts about your company and its products and services; it’s the way you address your audience. Grammar, spelling and sentence construction may not be noticed by those people who don’t care about such things, but those who do will be instantly turned off. And in terms of style, for example, the “hard sell” no longer cuts the mustard in most cases; neither does a laundry list of features (now fondly referred to as “featuritis”).
Instead, offer a solution–even if it’s a solution to a problem your client doesn’t know he has. Maybe especially then!
You would be amazed at what a fresh perspective can do for your communications–even your own fresh perspective!
How do you freshen your own perspective?
You can freshen your own perspective in a few key ways:
- Do some research: Don’t fall into the trap of becoming complacent about your methods. The landscape of our business communications, especially in sales and marketing, is constantly shifting. It may no longer be possible to keep up (there’s SO much information out there!), but regular research will help you catch up.
- Get multiple perspectives: If it’s at all possible, fly your communications by people who will look at it from angles other than your own. Do you have a client you trust to offer a good opinion? Ask! And ask associates who work in other business units; their perspective may not apply exactly, but on the other hand they might catch things you missed.
- Step back from your own work: It’s a bit scary how easily we can get tunnel vision about our own work if we’ve been at it for too long. So put it away for a while, work on something completely different, and come back to it later with fresh eyes. I can practically guarantee that you’ll see things you didn’t the first time around, catch details you missed, expose errors, and so on.
This leads me to another way you can get a fresh perspective:
Take a break!
Especially in this uncertain economy, it is altogether too easy to get caught up in working harder, working longer hours, taking fewer breaks–believe me, I am so guilty of this! But even the most precision machinery needs downtime for maintenance, and the human brain (not to mention the human body!) is no exception. Working longer hours does not result in greater productivity, and often results in a reduction!
Here’s an interesting phenomenon, and you have probably experienced it yourself: you’re familiar with the concept of background processing in computers? This is when some heavy number-crunching such as a virus scan or a large equation gets done in the background while you’re carrying out other operations. The brain works the same way: when you relax, your brain continues processing information, and is likely to come up with answers to sticky problems in the oddest unguarded moments–haven’t you even had a “Eureka!” moment while sitting on the pot, or a flash of insight that wakes you up in the middle of the night? I’ve said for years that I do my best work at such times.
Those leaps are often what saves the day, and if you’ve experienced them (as I hope you have), it’s good to remember that you must relax in order for such breakthroughs to occur.
An outside look
Recently we invited comments about our web site from a number of colleagues in the fields of marketing and public relations. Boy, did we get them! Some were very positive, and some were less so. In one case, we received a no-uncertain-terms indication that we were on the wrong track altogether, so we asked for details. This reviewer did not have to do so, but she replied with a very thorough explanation of why she thought so–and we are incredibly grateful, because it caused us to step back and look at our own work with fresh eyes.
The result was an updated design and increased awareness of modern design and usability trends, both for our clients and for the company!
A fresh perspective can make the difference between work that is routine and work that is truly great–we’re not saying we’re there yet, but this experience certainly nudged us (we hope!) back on the right track. We learned a great deal from this experience, and hope that you can, too.
I invite your perspective on this article and any others on this blog or at our (newly redesigned) company site, http://www.shetech.com.
Get your fresh perspective today!
the power of a browser
Posted: September 20, 2008 Filed under: design | Tags: html, Internet Explorer, sef, viztaview, W3C compliance Leave a comment »Recently we have encountered some issues with one of our favorite sites, ViztaView (http://www.viztaview.com). There were two significant issues…
the power of good design
Posted: May 1, 2008 Filed under: design | Tags: css, design, layout, shetech Leave a comment »If you look around on the web these days, you’ll find countless web sites, many of which likely claim to do exactly what you do. Setting yourself apart from the competition involves many things, and in the case of a web site may be as simple as a better design.
Over the years, the web has changed dramatically, and design concepts have changed with it. With the advent, for example of “Web 2.0″ (social networking and interactive sites), web sites have moved in the direction of graphic-intensive designs that rely heavily on visual signposts rather than lots of wording. Studies over the years reveal certain patterns in human responses to visual stimuli, and page design has changed accordingly. One of the most amazing examples is how very graphics-oriented we have become. We’d rather see a picture than read a word, giving entirely new meaning to the phrase “a picture worth a thousand words”.
As bandwidth has increased and display technology has improved, we have seen a surge in animations — and a resulting pendulum swing in the opposite direction. Where a decade ago we thought animated widgets were cool, we see fewer and fewer of them now, having learned that they can actually detract from your message if overused. Too much is, after all, too much!
The broad availability of ready-made templates makes web publishing much easier for personal sites or small businesses that do not have the resources for a full-scale custom site. The hazard there is, of course, that you sacrifice a great deal of individuality and flexibility with an off-the-rack template; at the same time, it offers a great way to step up to the web using the proverbial “baby steps” — a great solution for many people!
Stretching your budget just a tiny bit can, on the other hand, make the difference between a cookie-cutter web site and one that makes you and/or your company look the way you really want to present yourself to the world. We learned years ago that if a company has a gross annual revenue of, say, $200,000 but wanted to look as though it were more like $2 million, a great web site was an excellent place to start. You’ve seen them, too: the sites that make you say “Oh, cool!” out loud, or that just seem to intuitively know what you need and where you want to go.
We strive for that every day.
Rebekkah Hilgraves
Theresa
andyscherer
Peter Mancini
alexasteele
the power of yes
Posted: January 11, 2009 | Author: Rebekkah Hilgraves | Filed under: blogging, design, economy, election, marketing, networking, search engine friendly, social media, writing | Tags: customer service, customer support, economy, good news, language, news, positive attitude, social commentary, social media, social network | 2 Comments »Why are we so fond of bad news? It’s like that morbid compulsion to crane your neck at an auto accident to see if–heaven forbid!–anyone was seriously injured, and then breathe a sigh of relief that it wasn’t you (though if you crane your neck far enough, it might be!). We watch the headlines with the same morbid fascination, shaking our heads and clucking our tongues at some stranger’s (or strangers’) misfortunes.
We watch and drool…until the bad news finds its way to our doorstep.
Read the rest of this entry »