As Lorraine has become a nationally recognized speaker, she’s spending more time out of the office, traveling the country. It’s great knowing she’s out there promoting our brand across the U.S., but the change comes with challenges-and growth opportunities for those of us left behind.

Business at Roundpeg starts with Lorraine. She’s the cog in the wheel, so it’s not uncommon for us to include her on every single business decision. Our’s is a fast-paced business, and sometimes things don’t go exactly according to plan. When thingsdo  go wrong, or simply take an unexpected turn, my first instinct is to run to the boss so she can get me out of whatever mess I have created. She is out safety net, but when I depend on her, I know I am taking her time and energy away from what she’s working on and I am inhibiting my our own development.

When she is not here Taylor, Allison, and I are responsible for the success of Roundpeg. We have to trust our judgement, and make decisions. We have to be fearless. Slowly, I’m learning to figure things out for myself. I’m learning to trust my judgement and make decisions which affect our clients and our business. And I’m learning to do so without fear. ( It helps to know Lorraine will back my decisions. She may tell me later how she might have handled if differently, but she will support commitments I make to clients in her absence. )

For that reason, Lorraine’s speaking tours have been a blessing in disguise. The other VP’s and I are learning we can make the right decision most of the time. There’s a REASON Lorraine trusts us. We’ve had to grow up and realize the more ownership we each take in Roundpeg’s success, the more we will see that success become a reality.

Looking down the road, I’m excited. I can’t wait to see our entire team grow as problem-solvers, decision-makers, and eventually, corporate officers.

If anyone sees Lorraine out though…please let her know when she gets a chance, I have a couple questions…

As Facebook expands their reach, launching a geographic platform ( Facebook Places) to compete with foursquare, it raises once again the question – Is Facebook All You Need? With custom fan pages, the simple user interface, the ability to take messages viral, why do you even need your own blog or web site?

The Answer … Control!!

While Facbook is an amazing tool, it is their tool, not yours. It is their game, their rules, and they can change the rules any time. This message was hammered home to me in several different presentations at BlogIndidana last week.

• After building a significant following on Facebook, Scotty’s Brewhouse had reached the maximum number of friends. Giving up most of their traditional marketing, they had come to rely on the platform to stay in touch with customers, promote location based specials and build a following. Yes they have a website, but it is their fan page and twitter stream which really allows them to connect with their clients.

When they reached their maximum Facebook shut them down. Now they were able to rebuild, but they had some significant scrambling to do, and some customer connections were lost forever ( not many, but some)

• FBML!!! – Facebook launched FBML – A quirky tool which allowed developers to create really cool Welcome pages as part of the fan page. I have met several designers recently who argued with FBML, they would never need to build another “real website” .  Not convinced it would replace traditional websites, we still took on the challenge of learning the quirks of FBML. The result are some some really cool fan pages:

1. roundpeg
2. startingpoint
3. Lipstick on the Rim ( This is my favorite)

The problem – Facebook is moving away from FBML – The first warning  something was in the air, was a notice pages needed to be resized. So all of our designs have been downsized to 530 Px from 730. Not bad, but definitely not something I wanted to do. But the bigger issue? They are abandoning FBML. So now, instead of working on new projects, we need to find another way to add the custom tabs, and rebuild our sites and the ones we have created for our clients. Their game, their rules, their toys.

• As I was researching this topic, I found a blog by Jeff Bullas with one more reason:  Facebook is not forever ( Think AOL).  Sooner or later something else will come along.  Their obsolescence becomes yours. With your site, you control, when, how and why you morph.

Have I given up on Facebook? Absolutely not. It is a powerful tool, which allows us to connect our clients with their constiuacy and DRIVE THEM TO THE CLIENT WEBSITE. That is the bottom line,:  Think of Facebook as a giant party, where you can meet lots of people, maybe even the love of your life.. Meet them at Facebook then bring them home to dance!

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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!

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!

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.

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.

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?