Archive for July, 2009

I am so excited to be featured on The Mom Buzz!  Erin has written a nice review and allowed me to do a giveaway/contest on her site!  So, a special welcome to anyone visiting from The Mom Buzz!  I’m so glad you found Dramatic Design!  Please be sure to look around and leave me a comment to let me know you were here!

The giveaway/contest that I am doing for The Mom Buzz is for a free, custom-designed, 1-3 column, widget-ready WordPress template!  That’s a $200 value!  You can look through my blog and portfolio to see some of my work.  If you happen to have found this contest/giveaway through some other method, you are welcome to enter, of course!  Just visit the post on The Mom Buzz for all the details.

While you are here, I would like to offer you a bonus, just for stopping by!  When you sign up for the Dramatic Design newsletter with this special link, I will send you a link to download the book  “Let’s Talk Social Media For Small Business” by John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing and send you periodic newsletters about marketing your small business.  I hope that you will find them helpful, but you will be able to unsubscribe at any time, of course.  I never give out your personal information, so you won’t receive any spam from me–ever!

Thanks for entering the contest!  Good luck!

Marketing is so important to the success of small businesses that I wanted to talk a little about it today.  Your marketing should be purposeful and consistent.   Spend time marketing your business at least once a week and the results will pay off!

To make it fun, I have created a Meme:  “A quiz or survey that is copied from one webpage or online journal to another, each participant filling in his or her personal answers.”

Here are the rules:

• Every Monday, write a blog post about what you are going to do to market your small business this week.
• Include the Monday Marketing graphic code in your blog post.
• Sign up below so we can visit your blog and gain inspiration and ideas.

Easy, right?  The more we network with this, the better off we will all be, so be sure to share your Marketing Monday Meme blog post links on Twitter with the hashtag #mmm (#mm is already being used) and spread the word on your other social networking sites, too!  I’m excited to see all the new ideas for small-business marketing out there!

There is also a button available for your side bar, if you would like.  The code is here.
 

 

I had the pleasure to work with colleague, Jessica Colon, on another project.  She needed a blog header for www.beginthetransformation.org.  This is the first header that I came up with, along with how it looked within the site:

Jessica’s client preferred something a little plainer for this site, though and really wanted a plain white background.  Below you will see the final product by itself, then a screenshot of the site with the header in place.

This is a prime example of how the vision of the designer and the client can differ.  Neither is wrong–it’s just a matter of taste and direction where the site is going.  The best person to determine the direction of the site is the client.  I never take creative differences personally–in the end, the client needs to be happy with his/her site.

Kim, thank you for all of your hard work. You did a great job in creating a beautiful website header. You listened to my needs and created something that everyone loves.

Which of the above designs do you prefer?

Susan at Thornapple Financial Center took advantage of a special “current client-only” promotional offer to update the look of her website and convert it to WordPress.  WordPress is an easily-to-update user-friendly content management system that Dramatic Design has chosen as a specialty.

Direct Comparison:

As you can see, the old site (left) looks dated and lifeless.  It was passive and static.  Now look at the newly redesigned site on the right.  What a difference!  The colors draw you in and envelope you–the green and gold play with the type of business the site describes.  It invites you to participate with comments and to spread the word with social networking!  Important announcements are conveniently located right in the sidebar, so you don’t have to hunt for them.

The new Thornapple Financial Center website also includes an email form that invites clients to sign up to receive her newsletter by email, instead of snail-mail, thus, saving her company money and perhaps saving a tree or two along the way.  Category pages allow visitors to look directly at the posts that interest them and an interactive Google map allows visitors to get direction from their location to the Thornapple Financial Center office.  This is a site for 2009!

Kim has built our website and it is fantastic!  She is professional, always has insightful ideas and is very patient with ALL of our questions.  Her prices are competitive,and more importantly you get a great return on your investment.

Kris Foote, Thornapple Financial Center