Lately, I’ve been hearing a similar concern from a variety of contacts. “We want content. We want a blog. But, how do we come up with new ideas every week?” It’s true, content requires time and effort, but with a little creativity it’s not hard to come up with some stellar subjects that bolster your content strategy. In this article, I’ll review a few of my favorite strategies. 

I lived through the desktop revolution. As a graphic designer I was definitely a rebel, on the front lines. Back in 1985, I made having a MacSE, a condition of taking any job. Exciting times. Typesetting shops were turning into digital prepress houses. Rapidograph pens, mylar, and stat cameras, were all rapidly becoming things of the past. Having drunk the Kool-Aid, I spread the word in my own way. I vividly recall indoctrinating my professor from UCLA, who also ran a high-end book-publishing house. I invited him to stop by after work one evening to spend a couple hours with me, and Aldus PageMaker. A message came a week later that he'd traded out all his drafting tables for Mac II's and PostScript printers.

We've all heard the phrase content is king and have an idea of what that means. In the context of the web it has specific meaning regarding the value of SEO. Search providers (Google, Bing, etc.) seem to be changing the game on us with sophisticated technology like Panda. The underlying goal is straightforward enough—delivering relevant results on searches. After all, that's how they stay in business. Keeping that in mind makes it easier to concentrate on what matters in SEO. However, with the way search engines are changing, is it possibly time to reconsider the statement 'content is king?' Could user experience become the main focus? 

Since the days of the Roman Senate there has been no shortage of advice on the subject of presenting, oratory, speeches, etc. In this blog we'll zero in on one small part of that bigger universe: presenting with a PowerPoint slide deck. Too often we wind up in meetings watching slide after slide of densely packed text and poor visuals. Your mind wanders. You lose focus. A poorly designed slide deck, and a poorly designed presentation, can rob the very life out of your meeting, derail your vision, and undermine the value of what you have to say.

Over the past few years the use of stock photography in marketing campaigns has been increasing exponentially. There are a wide array of options, from high end houses like Corbis and GettyImages to more affordable options like Dreamstime and Shutterstock, all providing a variety of images to meet any companies need. With this rising popularity, accessibilities and quality of stock photography it might be hard to see any reason not to use it for all of your marketing needs, right? Well, there are a few other things to consider before you go running to your nearest stock site and fill your pages with "women laughing alone with salads." How are these photos really connecting your message with the viewer? How can you best use photography to turn your marketing materials and website into creative marketing pieces?

Typically, a company website is divided into various sections including the home page, product and/or service pages, a blog, an "about us" page, and contact / location information. If the brand has experience with marketing their products and services online, they will strategically place Calls To Action throughout the site. Sidebars may contain contact forms, headers may contain a large phone number, and product pages will include prominent Add to Cart buttons.

Branding is one of those essential business bits and pieces that go into the whole of "success." In fact, understand branding, how it works, and how it can benefit your business is vital if you have any hope of growing your business.

In today's increasingly modern and competitive business landscape, you need a modern marketing strategy to survive. But where do you start?

According to the WordPress Blog there are currently 57,316,676 blogs (and counting) that have been created just on their platform and that number is continually growing. Add in more huge numbers of blogs built on other platforms, and you begin to understand the level of competition you're faced with. If you are a new business and are considering starting a new blog, one thing's for sure, you never want to be the only one visiting your own blog.

I'm not willing to accept the excuse that because it's in PowerPoint we can't make it look good or that we're limited in some way. Ever since David Byrne took a turn at creating art in PowerPoint, I've liked the idea of embracing it as a challenge. If people can manage to create art on something like an Etch-a-Sketch, PowerPoint shouldn’t prove a barrier to creativity. Anyway, there really are no limitations, pages can get formatted in any aspect ratio you like, color is as limited as RGB, animation keeps stepping up, and clever use of it can get you close to the elegance of credits in a high-budget, Hollywood flick. And, if and when you do feel a creative pinch just import: movies, eps, png. There are really no excuses for not produce any visual experience with what’s available in PowerPoint.