Wrapping up the blog year with a special greeting. Use the player if you’d like to hear me read the poem to you.

Click here to download…

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Eid, Winter Solstice, all of the above or none of the above, I hope you’ll enjoy this holiday greeting loosely based on the poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”:

‘Twas the night before Christmas and across many lands
Inspired pros were winding down daily demands
The conference calls were over, the ezines were sent,
The blogs were all written, the budget was spent.

Though Know More Marketing often operates into the night,
For once even Sylvia was turning off the light.
And elsewhere, seen blowing out holiday candles,
Were the hardworking people behind Certified Humane Raised & Handled.

ASPCA’s dashboard team had crunched the last number
And just settled in for some much-deserved slumber.
At PetSmart Charities, they’d also hit the bed sheets
With visions of excelling in forecasting spreadsheets.

Continue reading A Very Special Holiday Greeting

As red flashes from an ambulance’s siren light, you immediately slow down to give way. You step on the brake at an intersection or railroad crossing when you see red. These signals are designed to draw immediate attention.

Red is also a color of attraction. Think of a red dress, red lipstick or red nail polish. More than just sexy or passionate, though, red can exude power, dynamism and energy. Honda, Lego, Toshiba, Canon and CNN all feature red in their brands.

Many food companies use red because it stimulates appetite. You see it all over McDonald’s, in signage, interiors, and as you reach into a carton of fries. KFC, Coca Cola, Nestle, and Kellogg’s also whet the appetite with red.

In fact, red is one of the most commonly used colors in branding, advertising and in many Websites because of these connotations.

Designing Your Website with Red

Red also creates the visual illusion of expanding and moving toward you, evoking a sensation of warmth that encourages people to linger. It also creates a sense of urgency. This makes the color red especially useful in advertisements or Websites to move the audience to take action, to click on a link or to buy. Think about how often in stores you see the word “SALE” in red against a white background.

While widely used in many advertisements and brand logos, red may appear aggressive or jarring in Websites meant to connote serenity, freshness, or cleanliness, like those for spa and health facilities. These sites benefit from cooler colors such as blue and green to convey their message.

Many sites that use red combine it with neutral colors, especially white, to make it easy on the eyes. Check out http://www.Target.com as an example. If not used as a brand color, red is often included in Websites to give emphasis.

The key to determining the suitability of red in your Website is its congruence to your theme or product. If your main message is conveyed by the symbolism of red, then, then heat up your Website and your results with this bold color.

In a future ezine, I’ll talk more about using Wordpress software (wordpress.org) for your Website / blog. Briefly it’s easy to use, affordable and works well with search engines.

I built the http://www.InspiredRaw.com site by myself with no prior training in html. At times it was fun and highly satisfying. And at times, quite frankly, it was time consuming and frustrating.

Recently I learned about the WordPress Blog Training Videos from Joel Williams, Blog Tech Guy. I bought them and was really impressed with the simple step-by-step from purchasing your domain to how to post pages and images to extra help on working with aweber. And don’t miss the section on back-ups, because site crashes do happen.

If you’re building a new site or want to save time and hassle managing the one you have while enhancing your capabilities, check out http://tinyurl.com/WPTraining. Joel also offers services to do the basic tech-y stuff that intimidate many of us such as installing Wordpress and plugins, establishing the RSS feed on your blog, and setting up Google Analytics to track your site stats. He’s only taking on new clients by referral, so if you’re interested in the start-up package, please let him know I sent you.

How much is your billable time worth? $75 an hour? $100 and hour? $200 an hour? Just do the math and I think you’ll see a very quick return on investment for the videos or Web / blog set-up. I don’t want to think about how much time and opportunity cost I had working on my site.

I will definitely be recommending the video series and the blog / site set-up services to new clients in 2010. Full disclosure that I enthusiastically joined the affiliate program on this one. As I’ve mentioned, I only recommend products I’ve tried and really believe can help your business. And I know that last week I said blog entries aren’t generally about promotion, but knowing that many of you are starting Websites and can really get help here, I consider it a public service announcement .

Two weeks ago my citrus juicer broke. It had held up well for a couple of years of frequent use, other than an annoying tendency to trip the circuit breaker if I pushed down too hard.

While I didn’t have any complaints with it, I wondered if there was anything better at a similarly moderate price point. Disappointed that Consumer Reports didn’t have any comparisons, I went to Amazon to check user ratings.

Seeking Quality and Value

What I was looking for was a model that would reliably do the job. I was pleased when I found good ratings for a reasonably priced juicer from Tribest. I’m familiar with Tribest because I’ve had the company’s personal blender for many years.

Tribest has created an image of quality for me. The blender is powerful for its size and has performed consistently.  I get periodic catalogs that look highly professional.

And comments at Amazon suggested the juicer would also be a well-made product (good example of the power of word-of-mouth marketing). I especially noted mentions that it was not made of plastic like the juicer I had. Plastic conveys flimsiness and inferiority, so the Tribest seemed superior.

It’s the Whole Package

And the good new is that’s true… at least based on the three times I’ve used it so far. But I had an odd experience with the user manual.

Continue reading A Juicy Lesson In Design & Marketing

In my teleclass “3 Must-Do Steps for Websites that Get Results,” I worked with Mila Ilina on her site Raw-Radiance.com. At the time, her blog design did not include a prominent ezine sign-up.

We discussed whether it’s enough to have the blog subscription. After all, in both cases, someone is agreeing to receive information. So what’s the difference?

Well, I didn’t know! Fortunately, as a member of Raw Professionals Online, I was able to take that questions to small business coach extraordinaire Sandy Martini. With her permission, I’m sharing what she said.

Your ezine/email list gives you three important advantages over your blog subscription list in marketing your business:

• With an ezine, you set an expectation with readers. Whether you’re delivering weekly, biweekly or monthly, people know what to anticipate. They can look forward to regular, predictable communication.

• Continue reading What’s the Key to Getting More Business Faster: Blog Subscription or Ezine Sign-up?