The Roundpeg crew enjoyed a team building trip to the Super Bowl festivities last Friday. Have you had a chance to check out the fun?

Although it’s easy to get distracted this week we continue to publish at least one blog post daily. If you’ve been visiting Super Bowl Village on a daily basis you may have missed out. Now’s your chance to catch up.

Saturday - Faces of Roundpeg: New Characters – Jenna and Peter
We are a bit more polished, more professional and more grown up thanks to our newest cast members.

Sunday – What’s In a Theme?
Peter explains (to Romeo?) the basics behind WordPress themes.

Monday - Knowing When to Walk Away: Dealing with Anger Online
Always good to think before you respond whether in person or online.

Tuesday – Sometimes What’s Old is New Again
Sharing the love for WordPress plug in Tweet Old Post.

MTFW: Unfunded with Nick Carter
Listen to our talk with Nick Carter about his experiences growing his firm, AddressTwo as an “unfunded” venture.

Wednesday – Your New Truck is a Website
The inspiration for a client’s rebranding came from their original truck sign.

Thursday – Use FAQs as Blog Post Starters
FAQs and answers to questions make great content for blog posts.

Friday – Why Playing Hooky Can Help Your Business

Reflecting on our Adventure in the SuperBowl Village, Allison talks about why these types of outing are good for your business

Another week where if we waited an hour here in Indianapolis, the weather changed. We’ve had ice, snow and on the rare side for January, thunderstorms.

Our blogs this week seem to have followed the pattern of one of our favorite interview questions…so weather you favor words, pictures or numbers, we’ve covered it in at least one of our blogs during the past week. If you’ve missed one or several, here’s a quick recap:

Saturday – Faces of Roundpeg: The Boy Band
Lorraine’s ode to Taylor & Jay and the way things used to be.

Sunday – Make Pictures Part of Your Web Design Strategy
Pictures are cropping up more often on blog posts, this article explains why.

Monday – Taking Stock of Your Image
In the “old” days, designers cringed at the thought of using stock photos, Jenna explains how to modify those photos to have a bigger impact and save money.

Tuesday - I Don’t Like Football, But I Love the Super Bowl
Most of us don’t realize all that hosting a Super Bowl brings to a local community as part of the Super 46, Lorraine explains what makes the Super Bowl special for the hosting city.

Marketing in Handcuffs with Muhammad Yasin:  More than a Few Words
For this week’s podcast we’ll be joined by Muhammad Yasin, social media strategist for HCCMIS, a travel health insurance company. The topic is learning how you can make regulations work in your favor.

Wednesday - Indianapolis Social Media: Way More than 46
Allison shares her thoughts on how the Super 46 could have been handled more effectively. What are your thoughts?

Thursday - It’s In the Numbers: 4 Strategies for Blog Success
Lorraine explains why paying attention to numbers in blog posts makes a difference.

Friday – You Can’t Save Everyone
This is the marketing version of you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

If you noticed that the weekly summary was published late this week, that is because the Roundpeg crew took the day off to head downtown to experience the pre Superbowl activities.  If you are in Indy, be sure to check it out before it is gone.

Things move faster today than they did 50 years ago. Letters which took several days to arrive were replaced by fax, overnight mail, email and text.  Today we expect immediate responses to questions, inquires and requests.  We want our news as it happens. Everything is now, now, now! But it doesn’t need to be.

Recently I have noticed a subtle shift as I take back control of my time by unplugging occasionally. Reading an article by Louis Gray, I realize it isn’t just me. The same technology which allows us to be connected 24/7 allows us to determine when we want to be connected. I don’t sit and watch TV shows when the networks think I should. I record them and watch when it is convenient for me. I turn off my cell phone when I don’t want to be interrupted, and only check email and Twitter a few times a day.

This proactive approach to time management has allowed me to get more done, giving me a chance to focus on one thing at a time (As an adult with severe ADD, this is not easy to do).  But acknowledging that not every question needs an immediate answer has allowed me to redefine my time. My customers still get quick responses because when I carve out time to answer email, I answer all of it, and don’t close the application till I am at Inbox Zero.

What about you? Are you a slave to real time or are you creating “you” time?

In order to be a success in life, you must know thyself. In order to be a success in business, you must know thy company.

Does it all sound just a little too metaphysical and self help-y for you? Stick with me.

In order to have a successful business, you must understand your own strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of your staff. Even the best built team will have flaws: too many introverts, too little attention to detail, too big and unwieldy. By understanding these deficits, you can position your company in a way that can minimize their impact.

You must also know your audience. Remember, everyone is not your customer. Broadcasting your message too loudly or to the wrong prospects is a sure path to failure. Make sure you genuinely understand who you can best help with your services and your price point, and who it’s probably better to send elsewhere.

Know your limits. For instance, we’re a web design firm. Where does our service level stop–at launch? A month after? Does it extend indefinitely to every problem the client has with the site, whether or not it has anything to do with our design? For you, it might be establishing a returns policy or a lemon policy. But if you don’t know where you have to draw the line, you’ll find yourself running into significant problems.

Know who you are. So many times we sit down with a client and ask them who they really are, what’s most important to them, what they want their clients to know about them, and they’re dumbfounded. Without this information, we can’t help position you properly in the marketplace. We can’t craft the right messages and put them in the right places. We can, however, help you think deeply and come up with some pretty good answers about who you are what’s important.

As we start the new year, devote some time to understanding yourself and your business. You’ll come out ahead.

The first week of 2012 was exactly what I expected.  It started a bit slow, with the Monday holiday, but definitely picked up steam as the week progressed.  We launched our 1st quarter seminars and we are almost sold out for our first class.  (If you are interested in attending, don’t wait, reserve your seat now.   We have already started two new web design projects, and we are excited about what else is in the works.

With everything going on, we still had time to write some interesting blog posts. If you didn’t have a chance to stop by this week, here is a summary of what you missed.

Saturday – Faces of Roundpeg: The Interns

Interns are a part of the fabric of Roundpeg. I am a teacher at heart, and I love sharing what I know about marketing with people who are interested in learning. Every semester we have one, two or three individuals who are testing their careers with us.

Sunday - Start the Year Right

I love New Year’s Day. On this day almost anything seems possible. Closing the books on 2011, it is time to plan for the year ahead.  And just like every year for the last ten years, I am putting the finishing touches on my business plan.

The Web Strategy Organization Chart

Oli Gardner wrote a blog post, which is actually a small novel, outlining a six month plan to improving your search position. In it he, outlined the elements which come together to create an effective web strategy. His infograhpic gave me the inspiration for this post.

Monday – Plunger Bouquets and Other Bad Design Ideas

Jenna shares some of the things that make her want to set her graphic design degree on fire.

January Press Refresh

It is a new year, and time for new resolutions. How about making yours to whip your website into shape? We can help. At Roundpeg, we believe in empowering our website design clients to maintain and tweak their websites, continually improving their content and SEO.

Tuesday - Just One Story

Allison explains why business owners who can’t focus one message remind us of the person who trap us in a conversation who can’t just tell you a straightforward story? You want them to tell you one simple thing, but they have to expound on every detail…

More than a Few Words:  The Client Experience

Branding does not stop at the edge of the paper or the bottom of a website. True branding extends into all facets of your customer experience. How you answer your phone, greet guests as they visit and even furnish your office all combine to create a brand impression. This week, we spoke  to interior designer James Kuster, specifically about how he works with clients to extend their brand into all facets of the customer experience.

Wednesday - Roundpeg in Three Words

One of the most interesting and sometimes difficult question a business owners should answer as they write their first business plan is this:What are your company values? This is different then your mission, which is why the business exists or your vision, which is a snapshot of where you will be in five years.Values are about the core or soul of your business.

Thursday New Website is Work of Art

One of Roundpeg’s first WordPress web design projects was the site we built for my husband’s metal sculpting business. In the four years since the site was built, WordPress has grown tremendously as a platform, and so have our skills as a web design team. It was time for a major overhaul of AballStudio.com

Friday -Taking Online Relationships Offline: Richmond Social Media Club, 1/13

Allison talks about her friendship with Randy Clark.  She describes how it started online, but has grown into so much more, they will be taking it on the road for a presentation in Richmond later this month.

So, I left to go to the store on my bike. I love bikes, don’t you? Biking is great, like that time I went biking through the foothills of Mount Everest. Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Peru? It was awesome, we ate guinea pig. It reminded me of the pet gerbil I had as a kid. But, anyway, I was on my way to the store...

Don’t you hate getting caught in a conversation with someone who can’t just tell you a straightforward story? You want them to tell you one simple thing, but they have to expound on every detail, get caught on every tangent. Instead of focusing like a laser on one narrative, they dart around from thread to thread, and the true story gets lost.

Many brands have this exact problem. Instead of honing in on their one selling proposition, they want to be all things to all people–and tell all the stories at once. They’re experienced–been around since 1665!–but still on the cutting edge. They’re the cheapest around, but they don’t forget about quality, no sir! And their customer service is the best in the industry, but it’s all no-pressure sales. It’s just what makes Company X unique!

With all that messy muddle in there, you can’t pick out what’s really important and what does differentiate your small business  from the rest of it’s competitors. We get it, you want to be good at everything. You want to be just all-around awesome and make sure everyone knows it. But your true essence is getting caught in that contradictory tangle and your prospective client walks away with a sigh–you’re just like everyone else.

So instead of trying to tell your entire life story in one sitting, tease out the one story that matters. Maybe it is your long tradition and experience in your industry, which allows you insight no one else has. Or maybe it is that incredible customer service, with your patient and friendly staff who are like family. Find what makes you different and embrace it. Sing that story loud and proud, and use it to get people in the door. Then you can wow them with all those other stories. But when it comes to your marketing, keep your stories simple and streamlined.

What story do you tell?

Hard to imagine that we are at year’s end. Not to be cliche, but where has the time gone?  All of us who work here at Roundpeg know to expect the unexpected when we walk in the door and this week has not been an exception to that rule. While we are ready to celebrate the New Year, we’ve made it through this week by the skin of our teeth.

Have you had time to check out our blogs this week? From our list of personal favorite blog posts to our business plans for 2012, we’ve covered a lot of territory.  Happy New Year & we’re looking forward to a new year of blogging. What are you looking forward to?

Saturday – Faces of Roundpeg: Matt and the Gift of Words
Matt shared some words of wisdom with Lorraine when she was starting Roundpeg. Is there someone who has gifted you with their words this year?

Sunday – Simple Season’s Greetings from Roundpeg
Jenna designed the 2011 Roundpeg holiday card to reflect our new aesthetic. We wish our clients, friends and families a wonderful holiday season.

Monday – Hidden Gems from 2011
Last week we shared the top ten most popular blog posts, this week we tell you a little bit about our favorites from 2011.

Tuesday – All American Doesn’t Have to be Red, White & Blue
The challenge of designing a logo that will look good not only on the product but on a website as well.

MTFW: Your Baby is Ugly
Roundpeg designers Jenna Giles and Peter Wolfgram  discussed the challenges and rewards of working with graphic design clients.

Wednesday – Small Business Social Media Strategy for 2012
Social media became mainstream in 2011, how do you plan to use it in 2012?

Thursday – The Cobbler’s Children: 2012 Roundpeg Goals
This post is a list of our goals for 2012.

Friday – What Did Your Letter Say?
At the beginning of 2011, Lorraine wrote a letter about what she hoped to accomplish this year. Read this blog to see how her year wrapped up.

Happy New Year!

On January 2,  I gave you an assignment. I challenged you to write a letter to yourself about the year ahead. You were supposed to give it to a friend, and have them hold it till now. Did you do it? What did you write about, and how did the year turn out?

In my letter, I wrote about big plans for 2011. I expected us to grow our sales by 50%, add two members to our team and launch an updated website by mid year. I planned to take another vacation out of the country and finally retire the Volvo, exchanging it for a newer car (but still a convertible!).

So how did  I do?

The Team: Hello, Goodbye, Hello, Goodbye

We have a number of new staff members, but not all of them came to us the way I expected.

We lost our “boy band” when Jay and Taylor both left to chase new dreams this summer. And with their departure,  a piece of my heart. They were hard to replace, and we still haven’t found the right person for our business development role. Fortunately we found Jenna, who has definitely added her own spice to the mix at Roundpeg. Her experience at Angie’s List has brought a sense of order to our team and a fresh feel to our designs.

We gave two of our interns slots at Roundpeg — Sharayah joined the team as a production artist in June. She helped us make the transition from Taylor to Jenna. Still a full time student, the pressure of trying to work and finish her degree finally caught up with her. She left as the fall semester was wrapping up. And then we were lucky that Peter dropped into our life with a mix of writing and design skills. He is truly our secret weapon with the ability to switch from writing to design and back again.

So when you are done tallying the score card, we are the same size  we were a year ago, but we are interviewing candidates for a web coordinator role and expect to have it  filled by the end of January.

Our Website:  All Grown Up

We launched the new design as planned this summer, and I love it. The new look is exactly what I wanted: sophisticated, but still fun. The grown-up design has allowed us to present a favorable impression to companies who might not have given us a second look in the past, but it still features photos of the animals and the occasional odd event. I have held back from making any major design changes since launch, but I am sure to start tweaking again after the first of the year.

Vacation and Travel

Lots of travel this fall as I gave presentations on social media to groups around the country. I was tired of airplanes as the year wound down, but not too tired to spend Thanksgiving in Hawaii. Officially still the US, but definitely another world. My son came from Tokyo and my daughter joined us as well. I came back tan and relaxed. Exactly what I hoped for in my vacation.

Sales up 25%, but Revenue up 75%

What I learned this year, was that I didn’t have to sell more, I just needed to sell more profitable projects!  With that foundation in place, in 2012, I plan to sell more too.

And the Car

My eleven year old Volvo has been sent to its resting place. And though it took me several months to figure out what I wanted, I finally made up my mind. On nice days, even in January, you will see me cruising around town, with the top down  in my Volkswagen Eos.

And now, 2012

Did writing the goals down make a difference in the year’s outcome? I believe it did. On a regular basis I reflected back on what I had written and adjusted my activities to move me closer to that goal. Later today I will be writing another letter with plans for 2012. What will it contain? You will have to wait till next year to find out!

There’s no industry in which the old saw “the cobbler’s children have no shoes” is more true than marketing. We spend so much time focusing on our clients’ success, saving our very best ideas for them, that it’s easy to let our own marketing grow stale and complacent. But as we look towards 2012, it’s time to stop letting our own children go barefoot. Here’s our list of what we want to accomplish in 2012–what goals are you setting for your company in the new year?

• Revitalize our email marketing. We design and write email newsletters for clients every month, but our own is usually a rushed and hurried affair sent off to a stale list that sees few new registrants. No more. We’ve decided to make our newsletter a priority in the new year as a way to provide value to friends and clients as well as keep our name top of mind. So go ahead, sign up in that box to the right. You can choose to join one of our newly segmented lists and start receiving great content twice a month.
• Give back to our clients. You might not know that Lorraine started life as a teacher. In fact, her undergraduate degree is in education. So ongoing education for Roundpeg clients is one of the cornerstones of our business: we believe in empowering clients to take control of their own marketing. While we include WordPress training for all of our web clients, it can be hard for them to stay accountable and engaged in keeping their websites updated. To help them, we’re rolling out a new seminar series, Press Refresh. Open just to our web clients, these seminars help busy business owners continually improve their skills and stay on the track for success.
• Network more. I love social networking. It lets me meet new people while not actually having to be social. For an introvert. it’s fabulous. But let’s face it, nothing replaces good old fashioned face-to-face networking for meeting new prospects and strategic partners. It’s easy to let networking fall to the wayside when you get busy and can justify away its loss with social networking. Ultimately, however, people buy from people they like and trust, and in person networking is the fastest way to build that trust.
• Tinker more. When we launched this website in July, we loved it. It was clean! It was modern! It didn’t have circles! But as we’ve played with it and grown into the site, we’ve realized some things weren’t perfect, like our calls to action or certain page names. So we’re playing with them, doing AB testing, finding what works and jettisoning what doesn’t. In the new year, I hope we keep this constant quest for progress and improvement.

Last week we talked about the most popular posts of 2011. Those superstars got retweeted, shared and reaped loads of traffic. But there are other posts. Good posts, full of interesting information and terrible jokes, that for whatever reason never got much attention.

So we’re going to give them a second chance. Here are the Roundpeg staff’s favorite blog posts from 2011 which you may have missed:

Peter: Would You Jump Off the Roof for Social Media?
Heidi Cohen’s strategic questions offer a key to satisfying and successful social media engagement. Many people don’t think they have anything to write or talk about. That’s just not true. The rewards of reaching out with social media are worth a quick brainstorm to figure out what’s interesting about you. The tips in this post are a great primer for anyone looking to get started with social media.

Allison: Don’t Be Good at Social Media
When you spend all day mired in the echo chamber that is social media, it can be easy to get caught up in being “good” at social media. But that’s not the point at all: the point is to build loyalty, brand awareness and sales. It’s an important reminder for everyone.

 Jenna: Pick Your Palette
Color theory is undeniably one of the most important aspects of design.  The colors we choose when creating a logo, web design etc. can evoke so many different emotions, it is important to choose them wisely.

Lorraine: How to Discipline Your Boss
I love this post because it gives you some insight into the very strange and very special relationship I have with Allison.   It is also a great how-to for other young employees on how to sell their ideas to supervisors.

Rebecca – Whatever Happens, Happens for the Best & Moments
As the “mom” of the Roundpeg crew, I overlook our little family. Our little white house is filled with such positive energy it is usually a refreshing change from my legal address which is too often these days filled with hormonal teenage angst. So, when “my” boys decided to spread their wings and fly, it left us all reeling. Their final blog posts still move me to tears but they are also happy tears as we hear back from both Taylor and Jay and follow their travels on Twitter and Facebook.