Guided Creative

Face to face is still vitally important

Face to face is still vitally important

Although we are interacting more online, a recent report (Buyersphere Report 2013) has shown that face-to-face contact is still key when making a B2B purchase.

Whilst it’s important to engage potential clients online through social media channels, the opportunity to build rapport via live interaction should not be overlooked.

The survey, which was conducted with over 500 buyers from the UK, France and Germany who had made a single business purchase of over £20k, also revealed that 1 in 3 B2B buyers attend live exhibitions – which they rated as the single most influential information source to make their purchase decision.

A quarter of buyers in the Buyersphere Report also said that their chosen supplier exhibited at more events or exhibitions than its competitors, which had an impact on their buying decision. So if your company is not exhibiting and your competitors are, you could be missing out on important sales opportunities.

GROWING YOUR BRAND

As well as generating leads and sales, exhibitions can also help to increase brand awareness to secure future sales.

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Have you nailed consistency?

Have you nailed consistency?

Strong branding is the core of any decent marketing strategy: it enables differentiation against the competition and allows people to recognise products and services easily. It builds trust over time and ultimately leads to a more profitable business.

With so many more platforms through which to convey your message than ever before, from blogs, social media, apps and landing pages, it has become even more challenging to remain consistent.

‘Just Do It’ is one of the simplest, most recognisable slogans of all time – a line Nike has used for the past 15 years. Compare this with Reebok, and you’ll find that it has changed its slogan 14 times since 1987.

Branding is more than a logo design. Branding is the style, colours and images you use across all your marketing communications. In this digital world, your tone, voice and personality play an equal role. A brand has to be emotive and engaging. Remember, people establish relationships with and buy from people, not faceless companies.

YOUR BRAND CONSISTENCY CHECKLIST

1. Is your logo clearly identifiable?

Let’s start with your logo design. It’s at the heart of your brand identity. The first element of many killer logos is simplicity. Do you remember the old rainbow-coloured Apple logo? Maybe not, but I bet you have a good idea of what it looks like now.

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5 Essentials to Set up a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog

5 Essentials to Set up a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog

Using free blogging platforms may seem like a great idea in the short term. Why would you want to deal with the technicalities when you only want to write and establish your expertise? However, not hosting your content can have a significant impact on your enterprise in the long run. If you are looking to grow your online business, you need to ensure that you have complete control and ownership of your blog.
Also, it is increasingly accessible these days to own your site. For as low as $10 per month, you can host your website and WordPress Blog. We present a list of 5 essential tools that you will need to set up your WordPress Blog.

1. Domain Name: Choosing a domain name is an essential step in setting up a blog. Since the domain name is directly linked to your branding strategy and cannot be changed later, it is necessary to choose a name that reflects your website’s products and services accurately. A memorable domain name helps people recall better. In fact, a domain name is just like a username for a site. The domain name must be easy to remember and catchy. This name is essential to establish your online presence.

2. Web Hosting: While a domain name is like a phone number for your site, the same is not the case with your web servers. Your site can be hosted on any server. A managed WordPress host will probably cost marginally more than traditional hosting, but your website will be kept secure and backed up consistently. It is essential to have a fast website for setting up a blog, as such portals deliver a better user experience and improve search engine rankings.

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How To Create Your Own Online CV/Resume Website With WordPress

How To Create Your Own Online CV Resume Website With WordPress

Did you know that 56% of all hiring managers are more impressed if a candidate has a personal website? Sadly, only 7% of job seekers actually have a personal website. Think about the big opportunities they’re missing out on. Needless to say, having your own personal website is the best way to win over the hiring committee. By visualizing and showcasing all your work and information in one place, it’s guaranteed that you land an interview. A personal website is also a great way to promote yourself and your professional services. And it’s not just a method used by experts and celebrities either.

Have a look at Guy Gungell’s website and see how he uses the site to showcase his portfolio and services. So, how do you build a website like that? Here’s what you need -:

  • A domain name.
  • WordPress web hosting.
  • A quality theme.

You can get all of this for about $60 USD.

Why WordPress?

There are plenty of websites out there that allow you to create an online resume for free, so why spend money to build one with WordPress? First of all, those “free” online resume websites come with a lot of complications. You either get stuck with a boring website design that makes your resume look like everyone else’s, or you have to pay a monthly fee to publish your resume on the web. A resume tells more about a person than just qualifications and contact information. The design and the way you present your information also have a major impact on impressing your employer. With an online resume built with WordPress, you’ll not only get to set up the website easily with a pre-designed theme, but you’ll also get to customize your resume with a unique and innovative design.

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WordPress on A VPS

WordPress on A VPS

I remember having to make a huge decision about my websites a few years ago. I was using a shared hosting account that supports multiple domain names to host a number of my blogs and websites.

The service was great, but the performance of a shared hosting service could no longer keep up with the traffic I was generating. Naturally, there were two options I could consider: a larger reseller hosting package or a virtual private server (VPS). I had no experience in running a server of my own at the time, so setting up a VPS hosting was a daunting task nonetheless. Fast forward a few years, and I now have several VPS hosting accounts running and supporting hundreds of WordPress blogs and websites without a glitch. If you are in the position I was in a few years ago, these next few tips will help you get started.

Reseller Hosting Vs VPS Hosting

Reseller hosting is great for hosting a large number of sites, but you still don’t have the full control offered by VPS hosting. The performance level of reseller hosting is also higher than the standard shared hosting services; again, you can squeeze more performance out of VPS hosting in most cases.

You can also go into several levels of VPS, such as managed/unmanaged/fully managed, like the options found here, which can be a godsend if you’d like more than your average WHM interface! So, which one should you go for? Based on my experience, VPS is still the better choice for several good reasons. First of all, there are managed VPS hosting services to choose from. Managed VPS allows you to have experienced server administrators set up and maintain the VPS while you focus on the more important matter: managing your websites.

They are more expensive than unmanaged VPS services, but you get so much more performance-wise. VPS is also much more scalable than reseller hosting. Similar to shared hosting, you can only upgrade a reseller hosting account so much before you hit the hosting company’s limits. With VPS, you can always add more processor cores, RAM and disk space at any point in time. You can even reduce the size of your VPS hosting to save money if you don’t need the extra resources. Lastly, even unmanaged VPS is not so difficult to manage now that there are a lot of tutorials, resources and pre-made server images to use.

This brings me to my next point….

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Old school print beats digital hands down

Old school print beats digital hands down

Print has staying power.

Marketing professionals have always strived to create something tangible that will have staying power, and nothing else can rival print in this. It’s tangible, physical and real. What now seems like many moons ago, there was a trend around creating ‘sticky’ websites that increase the average time spent on a website. If a website reached the sticky heights of over 5 minutes on site, it had marketing teams jumping for joy*.

Surely this cannot compare with a brochure that can stay around audiences for a significantly longer span of time, often days, weeks or months?

In fact, new research conducted by the DMA into consumers’ attitudes to brands’ printed marketing, called ‘From letterbox to inbox 2013’, found that nearly half those surveyed said they had retained printed items, with 17% saying they did so regularly.

Print is more engaging

We’re all seeking to engage our audiences with our beautifully crafted adverts, blog posts, e-books, free downloads, free tutorials and videos. Print has the power to engage audiences for longer, and according to a Forbes article, “Consumers are more engaged when reading printed material, unlike websites, which are often skimmed in as little as a 15-second visit.”

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Tricks for better WordPress performance

Tricks for better WordPress performance

WordPress is the favourite blogging platform of our time, which helps us, spread our opinion web-wide.

The success of our posts depends on the quality of their performance, but unfortunately, there are many occasions when users are not maximizing the potential of this platform to their advantage.
It may sound like a challenging task, but we assure you it is an easy operation. For this purpose, we gathered a list of 10 useful tricks that will boost WordPress performance, even when executed by novice and inexperienced bloggers.
Many would agree that the main problem of WordPress is that it is a dynamic script that requires page loading all the time. The execution of queries can slow down performance or even cause a server crash, assuming the site experiences high traffic.
The truth is that you have to keep an eye on the performance at every moment and adjust your blogging settings accordingly.
As complicated as it seems, WordPress performance can be tackled with many tools and methods, from cache paging, leeching prevention, or file compression, to database optimization. All you need is a bit of time; and eventually a piece of professional advice.

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Spicing up Twitter background – Online Tools

Spicing up Twitter background - Online Tools

1.    Free Twitter Designer:

This tool is extremely useful in creating Twitter backgrounds for free, and they will make you look and feel the same as they have been designed by any professional graphic designer.

Visit Free Twitter Designer: http://freetwitterdesigner.com/

2.    Twitter Background Checker:

You can change your profile outlook with this background checker, no matter for smaller or superior resolutions.

Visit Twitter Background Checker: http://twtbg.me/

3.    Twitlay:

This tool is useful in generating customized Twitter backgrounds and layouts for free.

Visit Twitlay: http://twitlay.com/

4.    Twilk:

This application will be putting your friend’s face on the layout as a background of your Twitter page.

Visit Twilk: http://twilk.com/

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7 PSD Profile UI Templates

7 PSD Profile UI Templates

Here you can find 7 free PSD profile UI with different styles to meet different users’ needs.

1# Designed with a score meter

2# You can show name, skills, description, followers, following, events, follow button and do not forget the small green badge

3# Featuring big image, name, following badge and big icons

4# Background image, profile avatar, views, comments, like statistics, hire button, social icons, location, name and description

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Color scheme designer – Online tool

Color scheme designer - Online tool

You can choose between mono, complement, triad, tetrad, analogic and accented analogic colour combinations. After Colorschemedesigner gives you a scheme, you can adjust it.

Adjustment is available for saturation/brightness and contrast. You can do that manually or choose from the drop-down menu (more, less, min, max contrast, dark saturated, pastel, dark pastel, pale dark pastel, almost greys, almost greys with colour accents and a few more varieties).

You will get colour codes, and you can export the scheme as HTML+CSS, XML, Text, ACO (Photoshop palette) or GPL (GIMP palette).

In real-time, you have a scheme preview. You can also get a preview of the scheme in a dark or light website template to see the colour scheme you make in real action.

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