We have completed our annual revamping of the Artline Greetings web site. This is the ONLY web site to use for sending your business or corporate greeting cards.

Visit their web site to place your order,or if you prefer you can call up Tom and Margaret to get a friendly personalized solution to your holiday or other greeting card needs.

Labels: Business Resources, New Sites

The nightmare scenario: the government wants to take your property by eminent domain. According to the U.S. Constitution, you have the right to “just compensation.” You know very well that your idea of just compensation disagrees with the government’s!

The Law Offices of the McLaughlin Brothers have been representing eminent domain clients for over 80 years. This is their specialty. Cases have involved diverse types of real estate such as office buildings, manufacturing plants, industrial parks, vacant land, parking lots, cranberry bogs, private water companies, shopping malls, office buildings, landfills, piers, beaches, storage facilities, apartment buildings, churches, restaurants, billboards, golf courses, residential subdivisions, radio antennas, gas stations, warehouses, chemical plants, industrial land, gravel pits, granite quarries, conservation land, land taken for water supplies and single and multi-family dwellings.

Koa Media recently helped the McLaughlin Brothers firm establish a new web presence.

www.mclaughlinbrothers.com

Labels: Business Resources, New Sites

Electronic House Publishing is the industry leader of information for the custom electronics (CE) market. They offer a wide range magazines for the custom installer, from amateur to high-level professional. They organize a number of trade shows around the needs of the industry. Now they are using that experience to help businesses target the CE market with their new, Koa-built web site, CEDataOnline.com. Visitors can learn more about the industry from a marketing perspective, purchase industry reports, and even order targeted mailing lists.

www.CEDataOnline.com

Labels: Business Resources, New Sites

Why can't we all just get along?

In the business world, this more than just a simple wish. Understanding how a team functions and works together can make the difference between stunning success and staggering failure. The Skout Group develops and deploys tools for objectively measuring key drivers of non-financial performance. Team leaders, managers and executives use these results to make informed decisions to improve decision making and enhance performance. Insights into the corporate culture of different organizations can help determine how disparate groups can effectively work together.

Skout Group was founded by David Gebler, a thought leader in value-based ethics and culture risk management. The Skout Group web site was recently designed by Koa Media.

www.SkoutGroup.com

Labels: Business Resources, New Sites

One day last week as I was driving home I had a little meltdown. Being a bit of news junkie I had allowed myself to become obsessed with the financial collapse of seemingly stable institutions, and the resulting panic that was setting in. I am of the opinion that trickle down economics works basically one way- when things are bad, you-know-what trickles down! So I managed to work myself into a state about the end of my financial world. Anyhow, I got home and went on a self-imposed news fast. No news TV, no incendiary commentary, not even baseball. I allowed myself an evening of cooking, guitar and walking to de-stress from the past few days of news.

The next day I felt better. I gave my mind a chance to work on its own, to work around what a change in the economy might mean for my business, and what I might do about it. I also realized that I am not the only one in this predicament. Many small business owners must be seriously concerned about what all this means for their future. Many of them are our clients.

The tendency at times like these is to look for any and all expenses to slash. I think that the exercise of looking at everything is appropriate. If things do go south we have a plan in place for reducing expenses as needed. But my goal is to use the panic as an incentive to get a bigger share of the pie. As business owners, we have all worked too hard for too long to let a slump kick us in the teeth.

So what are we doing? Going back to the marketing basics. Looking at our prospect lists. Looking at where business is coming from and stepping up efforts to market to those segments. Looking at our messaging to see if it reflects where we are right now. Effective marketing doesn’t have to cost more, but it requires you to think more.

So I have been thinking. Less news. More thinking. Here are a few things we are doing:

• Reviewing our web site to be sure the content reflects who we are today and delivers the most recent evolution of our message (when was the last time you actually read your own web site?)
• Identifying new target markets based on recent trends in our business. We are looking at what services are most profitable, and how we can leverage them.
• Developing a marketing calendar that is attainable. Marketing requires activity, and without a schedule those activities can easily be placed at the end of a long to-do list.
• Spending more time with our blog! Writing about your experiences and insights with your business helps establish you as an expert in your field. It also helps you clarify and grow your own perspective of your business. It makes you more self-aware.

That’s my story of using perspective to alleviate the panic. A creative mind coupled with good information and some smart work can be successful in any climate.

Labels: economy, Koa, Marketing

Many people cringe at the thought of summer's demise. Those first few cool evenings at the end of August and into September remind us that in a few short weeks we'll pass the autumnal equinox into fall. All those warm weather activities will wane until sometime next year.

But that crisp air that signals fall's pending arrival has another effect. We start thinking about getting organized, getting serious, moving forward. Summer was great, but playtime is over. Time to get busy. Many of us in business, even those of us who don't have a seasonal business, find that we are ready to make some changes for the better. Colleagues have told me they are "tightening things up", "getting organized", "rethinking things", "making new plans".

Your web site is a great place to apply some of this organizational momentum. Here are some ideas to think about this fall to add some life to a web site that has been taking the summer off:

• Rewrite some copy. Tired of the same old message? I'll bet since your web copy was written (unless your site is brand new) that your perspective on your business has changed. It has likely become more refined, more defined. Take some of the new vocabulary you use to talk about your business and incorporate it into your site.
• New pics. Fresh imagery tells the frequent visitor something has changed. Use photos that are sharp and clear, photography can make or break the look of a web site.
  
• Add some interactivity. What can you do to engage your visitors? How about a weekly poll? Or a blog, if you like to write. Some video may be intriguing, as well.
• Add new content. More content on your web site can help position you as an expert in your field. A blog is one way to add content. You can also add additional pages of content that provide support for what you do. Increasing relevant content on your web site is one way to help improve your search engine rankings.

These suggestions can all be done without a major overhaul of your site. Think of it as cleaning out the garage or painting the trim. Sometimes it's the little things that have the biggest impact! And you'll feel that smug sense of accomplishment when you are done.