#32 Squirrels and Whales
Not all customers are equal. One of the keys to a successful business is identifying which are the best fit for your business. In this week’s podcast I talk about squirrels ( companies which are too small) and whales (companies which are too big)
Thanks to Matt Nettleton of Trustpointe, for his inspiration for this image!
Back to School with Roundpeg Radio
The temperatures and the leaves are starting to fall, as the kids return to school, so back to school songs are in the air.
Or are they? You decide this week as we look for your suggestions of Autumn and back to school songs. We’ll start off at 10 am with Van Halen’s Hot for Teacher and Pink Floyd Another Brick in the Wall, to get the day going, but the rest of the day is up to you.
As always we will be live until 3 PM today. Then play list will be up all week. So send your song requests to @roundpegradio.
NOTE: The widget takes a minute to load, and you’ll have to refresh to see the new songs. Make sure your speakers are on!
Snow in July
Every now and then we have are lucky enough to bring on a new client who has a good idea of what they want, challenges us with interesting assignments, and is fun to work with. Hittle Snow is exatly that type of client. Erik, the Director of Operations came to us, hoping to refresh the look for their snow removal company. A division of a more well established, and well know company (Hittle Landscape) they were hoping to carve out a distinctive identity. Erik was open to new ideas, gave us timely and useful feedback, and pushed us gently through several rounds of revisions, till both he and we were satisfied.
The logo was only the first step in a comprehensive project which will include a redesign of their website and multiple directmail peices. The easy communication between Roundpeg and Hittle helped the design project flow smoothy, allowing us to begin working on the other elements of the project.
About the Design
Hittle Snow’s old logo had some interesting stylistic qualities, bu was a bit dated. Selecting the font was a challenge. Hittle Snow didn’t want to be too edgy, but at the same time, they also didn’t want a boring, typical serif/sans serif font. The font that we ended up using is a serif, but it’s very distinctive, sharp edges and subtle curves. We liked the H so much, we carried it into the logo.
We wanted to clearly communicate this was a snow removal company, and decided to add a snowflake symbol easily encapsulate who Hittle Snow was. Picking a snowflake was also a bit difficult. We all know that no two snowflakes are the same, and we sure learned that! By nature, snowflakes are complex shapes, but we still needed a design that could be printed on trucks, embroidered on shirts, and used in lots of different collateral. After consultations with printers and embroiderers, we wound up with a great snowflake that strikes a balance between complexity and simplicity.
The customer is so pleased with the design, we have also created several variations for their landscape division. Working on this project was a lot of fun. Hittle Snow is a wonderful client, and I think that in the end, we gave them a unique but classic brand.
Redesign for Recycling
One of the things I enjoy about my job is the chance to stretch my skills to achieve ideal results for my clients. Recently, I had another an opportunity to do just that, as I constructed a web site for Karle Enviro Organic Recycling, an industry leader in bio solids management.
The majority of our clients are comprised of companies offering consumer products and business services. As an industrial company, Karle Enviro presented some interesting challenges. We couldn’t fall back on the same sources for stock photography since IStock doesn’t have a wide assortment of images of industrial waste so Taylor stepped up to the challenge by building attractive banners which brought a bit of life to each page.
Karle Enviro has locations in both Indiana and Florida. While they are part of the same parent, the two units operate independently, with slightly different service offerings. They wanted to be able to benefit from a single primary domain to improve their search visibility, while still presenting distinct faces to their clients. Our solution was to create essentially three sites in one. The primary URL drives visitors to a landing page with a brief overview of the company and two large buttons driving visitors to either the Indiana or Florida sub domain. All three sites have a similar look and feel as visitors move seamlessly from one to the other. However the banners have been modified to feature local phone numbers and contact information.
Beyond the look of any site, are the words. Karle Enviro’s work requires such a high-level of expertise and we needed to support that image with intelligent, factual copy. Luckily, the client was patient as we worked together to formulate strong, engaging copy. I was lucky to have Allison around in this regard.
Karle Enviro is proud of their new robust, functional site, and so are we. This project gave me the opportunity the think in new ways and discover new tricks in web design. I couldn’t be happier about that (or my newly-acquired organic recycling knowledge).
To see the new site, simply visit the Karle Enviro Main Page.
Lessons from BlogIndiana
I have had the weekend to process my thoughts about Day One of Blog Indiana. First comment: Noah and Shawn once again put on a great show. This years event was absolutely the best, and I am sorry I couldn’t participate for both days.
I have stacks of notes, (ok Megs of digital notes) lots to think about and lots to share. Here are just a few of my key takeaways from the day:
- @JasonFalls – Social Media Explorer opened the conference with a presentation on making social media a conversation. I have heard Jason speak on several occasions before this, and I always enjoy his sensible approach to social media. Friday was no exception. There was so much content in his presentation, but the core was the idea that you need to build trust. And the things you do to build trust on line is not all that different then what you do to build trust off line. More from this session
- IU East is a small school, making big waves with social media. Taking an integrated approach, tying their media together ( print and eResources) and getting everyone, even the Chancellor of the university involved they are one of the most engaged universities. Sure IU Bloomington, has many, many, many more students connected to their fan page, but when you look at real engagement : Likes and Comments per post compared to the total number of fans, IUE outperforms Bloomington. This session really made me think about who are my peers and competition on line. It may not be companies of the same size at all.
- Jeremy Dearringer, the CEO of Slingshot SEO, had some interesting information to share about what affects your online reputation. What stood out most for me the most was how quickly negative information can spread. 70% of surfers will click on negative result first. You have to have a lot of very positive information to combat a little negative press. The other really powerful element was the fact that people search for company names more often then key words. And when they do, the conversion is significantly higher.
- A look behind the scenes at Scotty’s was great. While I was sorry I didn’t get to see @brewhouse himself, he was well represented by Bruce McClain. And that was an important part of the message – To be successful, your social media strategy has to grow out beyond the owner!
That is just a start. There are a few more longer posts in the works with themes inspired by other sessions. And I can’t wait for the video to see what I missed. what did you learn at BIN2010?
