5 Essential Tips for Creating an Effective Brochure

You have made the decision that it’s time to create a new company brochure that shows the products/services you offer.  The goal is to rebrand your company and come out with a new logo, tagline, and positioning statement.  What is your first step?  Can you go out and hire a graphic designer to create this new brochure that is in your head?  The answer is “No”..not without preparing for it first.  The first step is preparation. What items do you need to confirm in advance prior to hiring someone to design it?

Tip #1 – Have your new logo ready and finalized.  If you want to rebrand the company, it’s important to ensure that you have a high res version of your logo ready for the designer. Also, confirm your tagline and make sure you use it on the cover of the brochure by the logo.  You want to brand the company and keep consistency in all your marketing material.

Tip#2 – Organize your selling points – You should be telling a story with your brochure.  Make sure your story has a beginning, middle and end.  Also, it’s important to know your audience and tailor your messaging to your audience.  You want to make the brochure worth reading.  You should have your content finalized prior to hiring a designer.  Use plenty of headlines and subheads and write in simple language. You want your audience to understand it and enjoy reading it.

Tip#3 – Have good photographs – You are telling a story and need to have the appropriate photos of your products or services for your new brochure. Hire a professional photographer to take the right shots and ensure that they are all high res photos.  Remember…photoshop is a great tool to help improve the quality of your photos. Another option is stock photography.  If you choose this route, make sure you select your photos from the various stock photography sites like istock or shutterstock. Your designer can’t read your mind and needs to know up front what photos you would like to include.

Tip#4 – Be specific with your designer – It’s important to communicate up front how you want the brochure to look.  Send him/her all the materials up front which can include, the high res logo, main tagline, high res photos, and most important of all…CONTENT.  You can send a word file with all the brochure text and make notes where you want the photos to go.  Your designer is not a mind reader and will appreciate your guidance.

Tip#5 – Review the brochure format with a printer – Before you even move to the design stage…make sure you know the format of your brochure. Will it be a 16 page brochure, a tri-fold brochure, a 6 page brochure?  This is crucial and will help you determine how many photos you need and the word count for the content.  Also…get pricing to print these different styles.  If you are aware of all costs upfront, then you will not be shocked at the end of the project.

Being prepared is the key to success.  Just make sure you communicate the goal of the brochure with your designer and send all items up front.  Also, you will save money in design costs by reducing the amount of edits required.  By being specific, you will eliminate many rounds of edits that can cost you money!  Once the brochure is completed and ready to go to print….make sure you have multiple people proofread it for errors.  Also, insist upon a matchprint from the printer to check on any color issues or mistakes.  Once you sign off on the matchprint and follow the steps above, you can relax knowing you have created a true masterpiece!

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

Sources:

• Five Essentials for Planning An Effective Brochure
• 7 Effective Tips for Brochure Design
• 5 Easy But Powerful Tips for Creating Brochures

Image: www.boxshot3d.com

Free Twitter and Facebook Tools for Social Media Management

In a previous blog post titled Twitter Tools You May Not Be Able to Live Without, we covered several tools that could quickly become vital management elements in your social sharing toolbox. However, that post was just a month short of a full year ago and in the digital world, we know things progress quickly. There have been some new tools presented that may offer management options that simply were not available a year ago. Here are a few tools you may want to add, rearrange, or organize your social media management toolbox around.

Commun.it

Commun.it is a revolutionary tool that was designed for individuals or businesses that have a need to connect with their fans, followers, or consumers with a more efficient user interface than previously similar tools.

c/o successshowto.com

Manage Twitter Accounts Easily

Commun.it handles the ominous task that diving your followers into appropriate categories can be when your account begins to amass a larger following than is easily handled manually. It can divide them into helpful categories that can help users be more direct with their specific messages for different types of followers.

New Leads – Commun.it’s system can help users find new leads to follow by locating any who mention your site or retweet one of your messages through a currently disconnected fan or follower. Anyone not in your current network who shares your content should show up on Commun.it’s user-friendly dashboard with one-click options to follow, retweet, reply, or favorite their posts.

Engaged Fans – These are the followers you will already have a fairly high level of connectivity with based on the number of direct messages between you, replies to your posts, mentions or retweets.

Influencers – Although you are unlikely to know it without the help of Commun.it, your list of influencers will have shown some previous level of communication with you in the past. Gaining allies in those who have already been supportive of your shared media in the past is quite the easy task with Commun.it’s helpful and suggestive dashboard features.

Supporters – Those who are already among your followers and have the tendency to happily retweet or otherwise share your messages or content via linking. Although supporters do not often engage directly with you, they are a highly valuable commodity on any Twitter account.

Commun.it also shows users the level of engagement with any given follower. The dashboard features will display how many replies, retweets or direct messages have been exchanged between the followers account and your own. In many cases, users can miss out on those highly valuable exchanges and fail to follow those who engage them directly by sharing content. Commun.it will even show you those who have shared your posts without mentioning you by name or @mention.

Check out how BuildMeAnEmpire is utilizing Commun.it as a Twitter tool to help find leads for your business.

Crowdbooster

Crowdbooster can make managing your social media accounts incredibly easy. Easy to integrate with Twitter and Facebook, Crowdbooster allows users

to really get in tune with how social media and sharing is working for them or their businesses. Using Crowdbooster will help users understand how effective Tweets or Facebook shares are faring on the world wide web. Crowdbooster has a user-friendly graphical interface that displays graphs that allow even the business owner with little knowledge of analytics a basic understanding of how their content is being accepted, shared, and otherwise promoted.

Take a look at this video below to get a closer look at Crowdbooster.

c/o forbes.com

Crowdbooster allows users to:

• Manage multiple accounts on Facebook and Twitter to gain a more robust view of marketing efforts on one centralized tool.
• Gain deep insight into their audience by engaging and interacting with those who have the most influence in your sphere. Using these insights will allow users to build on and maintain brand awareness for their products or services.
• Understand and gain follower and fan growth. Learn how tracking long-term engagement on your social media platforms can give you the knowledge and experience you need to learn to drive more growth to your current community.

Crowdbooster does so much more, so if you are looking for a great user-friendly system that manages social media smoothly, it is definitely an option worth looking into.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

Sources:

• Relationship Management with Commun.it
• Manage Twitter Easily with Commun.it
• Commun.it for Business
• What is Crowdbooster?
• How Small Business Owners Can Benefit from Crowdbooster

What is Tout?

We have had many Pinterest and Instagram-a-holics since those two stormed their way onto the social scene. However, short of YouTube we have had very few platforms that have provided us with a quick and easy method for uploading videos. Until now. Tout is a social media platform that enables users to take their own videos, up to 15 seconds long, and shoot them to their Facebook, Twitter, email contacts, or even SMS. With an engaging reply feature, Tout users can enjoy “Tout conversations.”

Combining social networking with the true power that video has to increase conversation and engagement can be a powerful force to be reckoned with when it comes to getting a social buzz going.

Tout Experiences

• Some brands like USA Today, Access Hollywood, The Weather Channel, and CBS are already using Tout to interact directly with their audiences resulting in comments, questions and conversations that help extend the reach of their presence on the internet as well as traditional television.
• Users can view video updates from their friends as well as some big celebrities or record their own Touts that can be shared with both family and friends. With real-time updates, high-quality video and “video everywhere” features, Touters can stay in-the-know about the events in the lives of those who are important to them.
• Many celebrities such as Katie Couric, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Greta van Susteren, and Jeff Probst have begun using Tout to get connected personally with their fans. Big name stars like Stephen Spielberg and Madonna have actually answered Touted questions from fans from the red carpet.

Tout is beginning to change how people interact on social platforms. With more direct interaction in real-time, distance and disconnections are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Social sharing with a more vibrant experience in sound, motion and high-definition color and quality means that for many in the business of social, those things that cannot be shared fully in a still photo have become more up-close-and-personal in rich video media.

Get Touting!

Anyone can sign up at Tout.com and get started creating their own 15 second videos. Do not underestimate how powerful a message you can convey in those few short moments. Users can log in through the site, integrate with their Facebook account, or head to the Android store to grab the app. Check out this fantastic introduction video for Tout.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

Sources:

• What is Tout?
• What is Tout.com For?
• Tout – The Video Twitter
• What Is Tout and Who Uses It? #infographic

What Digital & Social Media Marketers Can Learn from Business Consultants [Opinion]

In the last five years I have heard some wild claims about who makes the best marketer – those claims have ranged from PR professionals, who ‘should be the only people to do it’, to Social Media, to ‘it takes a Sales Professional to provide the best internet marketing.’

I’d like you to think of Digital Assets in the form of a building:

• The windows are Social Media – transparency of course
• The walls are the advertising efforts – the place to display and show
• The doors are the PR – as media attention helps get people to walk through the door
• The shelves, displays and racks are the event planners – presentation and onsite execution
• The Roof is the website – it covers everything else

However, the missing element is the foundation or the business itself. The digital and social media industry has gotten a lot of bad heat on not being effective and I would argue that has happened because the keystone has been missing, the Business Consultant.

I warn almost everyone that I interact with to look for the red flags when meeting a PR, Web, SEO, Social Media, Event Professional, etc. The best way to know if that have any clue what they are talking about will come with the first interaction. Do they start talking to you about their business and products, or do they ask you about yours?

The world is filled with overnight talent and businesses that offer these services and I say talent because most are very good at their niche, unfortunately it seems to end there. Think of it like a great marksman sent off to war to be a sniper without any military training. The ability to hit a target does not translate to being an effect solider, especially in terms of the bigger picture.

The transformed business consultants that are working as project managers and on the rare occasion can provide Web Development, SEO, Social Media and more are carrying with them the greatest lesson the marketing industry can learn, success goes beyond the view, comment and call!

Traditional marketing and advertising was all about visibility and the connection point, the advertising was a success when the consumer connected with your name, product or service.( i.e. someone visited the website, opened the email, opened the text message or called your phone, that is marketing success in the traditional context). The ability to convert that experience into a sale was the business owners problem. This is the reason businesses fail continuously and why corporate leadership is completely in the dark with the digital environment.

How Can We do Better or Demand Better?

Take the Business Consultant approach, inquire about the business model, the products or services, why the target market is the target market. Take the campaign backwards, go from the conversion or sale to the campaigns and tools to reach consumers. Build the model on the business and remember the best in any industry become the best from exploring. Sometimes it’s easier to create new then fix broken.

Why “NO” is so important to the Profession of Digital & Social Media Marketing [Opinion]

The overnight rush of Web developers lead to overnight SEO providers and then the flood of Social Media Marketers. Which in turn lead to every PR, advertising and marketing agency claiming to offer services they knew nothing about to save their revenue streams. The industry changed so fast that quantity quickly overtook quality.

“NO” is crucial to not just the digital and social industry but the recovery of our economy! I was sitting in a session at BlogWorld, it was about monetization, each of the three presenters had the same story the “advertisers found us” and “I spent nothing on advertising”.

I had to go to the mic, this is such a common carless comment that I had an ethical obligation to set straight.

The question: “You said that advertisers found you and that you spent nothing on advertising, but I want you to think of what the cost was… you might not have purchased advertising but clearly you spent time and money to build your…”

All three faces quickly had a look that you couldn’t quite place, perhaps it was horror? Then Lou Mongello of Walt Disney World Radio jumped to answer, “Oh it was so expensive, it cost me time, I had to sell my house and I spent money on all sorts of things”.

Lou Mongello then went on to explain that part of his success came from having his families support and the understanding of sacrifice to accomplish the long term goal.

Don’t Go In Unprepared

Here is the crucial point of this article, because so many enter into digital and social media services unprepared with misrepresentation of their own business model, they are ill equipped to help their clients with the same problem. In the need to create profits they become like AOL, they leap into every adventure without any thought of their clients business model or worse their own long term business model.

Learning to say “NO” allows you to take on clients that will be successful with your talent or service, it garnishes long term revenue for your business and a reputation for growth. It’s not easy being picky in the beginning, or when times are tough, but it is successful! Even more importantly, it keeps others from wasting their life savings on an idea or business that they are underfunded, underequipped or worse ignorant about from losing their time and money. It also prevents the overwhelming false, false from becoming the digital and social media industry. The Social Media Marketer did not intentionally fail you, the web developer did not build a crappy website or fail to generate valuable SEO, the business was flawed and directed to fail from the beginning and the digital and social industry should not take the blame for that.

Pick your clients carefully, for the benefit of them, yourself and our industry.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

Sources:

• AOL’s $850 Million Mistake: Bebo to be Shut Down or Sold
• Eleven Years of Ambition and Failure at AOL
• The Down Side of Being a Digital Market Consultant
• 28 Stimulating Digital and Social Media Marketing Quotes
• Consulting Services

Get the WordOut! On Your Social Networks in One Smooth App

With so many applications fueling our world from our Smartphone’s these days, it seems imperative to filter through all of the mess to find the most flexible, full-bodied, and affordable apps available. When it comes to social media management apps, there are virtual loads of them available on the many different manufacturer app stores around the net.

Top-Notch Social Media Management App

This recent social management tool app addition to the market includes a few vitally helpful element that set it apart from the masses. To get a better idea of how WordOut works for you, check out this informative video. The developers of WordOut wanted to make it as easy as possible for users to post on their favorite social networks – and fast. WordOut can be used to post to multiple social networks like Facebook and Twitter, simultaneously.

Although WordOut developers have many more service ideas in the pipeline. For now, some of the highlights are that with WordOut, users can post in the most simplified manner possible with the following instructions:

1. Write a post or status update.
2. Choose the accounts you want to post on.
3. Click ‘send’ and you are done.

In addition WordOut will soon feature:

1. Instagram Integration
2. LinkedIn Integration
3. Possibly Group Email Support

This social media productivity app was created to help users more fully enjoy their social networks while mobile by removing some of the time killers that can come with frequent social media usage. With WordOut, time spent on networks can be less intrusive and free to carry on with your busy day. WordOut is also a fairly basic app that will let you navigate your status or post updates without showing you those popular sports scores you may be hiding from yourself at the moment.

While more full-service Facebook and Twitter apps can require long load times and many clicks to navigate into, WordOut has a very minimal load time and will allow users to update quicker on an uncluttered application and with as little as one single click.

Limited Data/Network Coverage

There are many who still have mobile phone and devices with limited mobile network coverage and data usage. Using an app like WordOut means you can utilize those famous social networks without loading all of the data that can come along with more full-bodied applications such as bandwidth hogging games or extremely busy networks.

WordOut requires iOS5 or above.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

Sources:

• WordOut – A no nonsense app for posting to Facebook and Twitter FAST
• WordOut! For Twitter and Facebook
• Wordout on Twitter