Great Find: Create Your Own WordPress Theme

Filed Under Branding, Design, Great Finds, Marketing, Successful Blog | 2 Comments

Something to Do This Weekend

You’ve got some energy and a weekend to change things around. Why not go for it?

Great Find: Blog design 101: Creating your own WordPress theme by Rachel Cunliffe
Type of Article: How-to on WordPress Theme design
Permalink: http://cre8d-design.com/blog/2006/01/27/blog-design-101-creating-your-own-wordpress-theme/
Target Audience: Designers and the brave among others

Content: Rachel Cunliffe, blog (and website) designer from New Zealand, is well known for her work around the blogosphere. She did Darren’s unique Problogger.net design among others. This classic post gives some start up advice and links . . . with more links in the comments . . . and even more links in the related posts. Click the title shot below for a peek. Rachel’s blog, cre8d design, is the real Great Find here.

Great design is curb appeal, branding, and promotion.

Thanks Rachel, for giving us a start. We’ll use this until we can hire YOU.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Great Find: Color and Font Codes

Filed Under Basics, Design, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats, Tools | 4 Comments

HTML Color and Font Codes

When I first started blogging, I was anxious to do what I could do in print–add emphasis using color or maybe once on a rare occasion change the font for flavor. But I was new to HTML and the rules had me baffled. I recently found this simple tutorial that not only shows how, but also shows which fonts are those that usually work.

Great Find: Color in Your Text from Writing up.com
Type of article: HTML tutorial
Permalink: http://www.writingup.com/htmltutor/color_in_your_text_from_htmltutor
Target Audience: Folks who want to know more about HTML
Content: This tutorial starts out with the basic code for changing the font and the color of your text.

Then the tutorial offers two clicks further. The first click takes you to choosing type fonts. While you are there, you can see how each font looks and check whether it is available on your computer. The second click shows you a basic color chart and color words to allow a chance for experimentation.

This tutorial is great for new bloggers or for seasoned bloggers in a hurry looking for a color change in their typography.

Click this screenshot title to go there.

I’m adding this to the NEW BLOGGER PAGE in the side bar.

–ME “Liz Strauss

Getting Customers to Stop by to See You

Filed Under Content, Customer Think, Design, Successful Blog | 1 Comment

Walking the Trade Show Floor

Yesterday walking the trade show floor, I felt I was in a 3-D blog world. Aisles and aisle of blogs sitting side by side with real people in and around them. They were all in the same market, different niches. Some were not easy to tell apart. I was scanning the signage to get a clue. Oh my! 60% were woefully inadequate. Here’s what I saw.

Company names with not a hint of what they do.
A list of what the company does, but no name to pull it together.
Taglines that said abolutely nothing, i.e. making things happen — good things? bad things? It didn’t say.
Taglines that said the same five buzz words that I found at most every other booth.

It seemed clear to me that the folks who designed these books — 3-D blogs — were thinking of what they thought the customer should know rather than thinking of what the customer might have come to find out. Standing outside each booth that I’m talking about I only had one question. Read more

Great Find: Adding Show-Hide and Categories

Filed Under Design, Marketing, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats, Tools | 2 Comments

Improbulus Offers Us 2 in 1

There’s a reason I wrote poetry to Improbulus the blogger at A Consuming Experience. She is one great researcher, analyst, problem solver, who does everyone a service in every post she writes. Her analysis and deep research are featured in Technorati’s family of support pages.

This post is a two-in-one special for you. What I give you today is WAY COOL.

Great Find: How to include categories for your blog (manual, expand-collapse) by Improbulus
Type of Article: How-to article on adding show/hide feature and categories to blogging platforms that don’t offer those features.
Permalink: http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/2006/01/how-to-include-categories-for-
Target Audience: Anyone who needs to add a way to do categories or show/hide features to their blog platform

Content: If there’s an interesting problem to be figured out, Improbulus has been on it and found a way to deal with–if not, she’s found out who’s already done that. This particular entry in her archives demonstrates how to break a post and continue it on the next page in the lower function blog platforms. It also shows how to manually add posts to categories in a platform, such as Blogger–the platform that Improbulus uses. The great news is she offers the exact code and how to use it. Click the Consuming Experience to access the article.

Adding categories is great promotion for page views. It pulls readers deeper into your blog. I’m going to have to write her another poem, but first I need to add categories to my blogspot blog.

If you use this post, how about leaving Improbulus a comment or better yet, linking to it. It’s always a great idea to support folks who do us these kinds of big favors.

Brand you and me. Improbulus understands that BIG TIME.

–Me “Liz” Strauss

Cool Designs April 2006

Filed Under Branding, Design, Marketing, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

Successful Blogs Look Successful

Spring is time we think of spring cleaning. I’ve been thinking it was time to show off some of the folks who add to the wonder and beauty of the blogosphere. So here’s the first in a showcase of great blog designs. As I said last December, successful bloggers are constantly trading ideas and talking about things. Design is always a topic folks like to discuss.

As always, click the screenshots to get a closer look.

You’ll never convince me that no one’s listening when Yas, CFrederick, Lindsay, Bocker, and Karsten talk. They bring together ideas, information, and design as news. They’re always thinking and creating.

Veerle’s blog was sent to me as a recommendation by two people. She not only knows her stuff. She knows how to make it look easy and fun.

Brother Jones is the blog of Brother Jones Artworks. This page features the art of illustrator, Dennis. Visit the site to see Don and Doug, and the Brother Jones Band too.

Tom Coates, who works for Yahoo, masterminds this intelligent, playful blog. The minimalist design pulls my eyes right into it. I love the best use of highlights I’ve seen on the Internet. AND he’s more fun to read than those serious Google guys.

Design Melt Down is the Studio/Working Blog of Patrick McNeil. It has pages of information and tutorials for folks to browse and learn from, as well as outstanding design.

It’s a magazine. It’s a blog. It’s a walk through an art museum in your living room that feels like a tour through a toy store. Pingmag is like no other blog and uses design to let you know.

Blogs are getting further and further from the look of the printed page. Take your time. Get ideas for your own blog. Now’s the time to spruce up, clean up, paint, polish, and promote your blog again. Give your brand new curb appeal. Take a lead from the pros.

If you don’t love what you see here, I plan on doing another feature like this, so e-mail me a link to where I might find some other great design at lizsun2@gmail.com.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
More Blog Designs to Discuss

The "Got Milk?" Man, Chartreuse, & Liz Singing in Harmony

Filed Under Analysis, Branding, Design, Marketing, Strategy, Successful Blog, Trends | 4 Comments

Where We Live and Breathe

Advertising has a responsibility to act like a thing that is going to be unavoidably in the environment, where we live and breathe. And we have a responsibility to make that work in such a way that it is welcomed and not scorned.

–Jeff Goodby, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, of “Got Milk?” fame as quoted in BusinessWeekonline, Advertising Advice from the “Got Milk” Man

When a guy knows what he’s talking about, almost everything he says is worth quoting. That’s how I felt reading BusinessWeekonline Managing Editor, David Kiley’s interview with Jeff Goodby, the guy behind such famous advertising as the “Got Milk?” slogan. I wished that Mr. Goodby was required reading for every designer that I ever met or would meet. But then all of the good ones already subscribe to what Jeff Goodby was saying.

Mr. Goodby was talking about how the audience gets to pick what’s good.

I suppose it’s crystal clear already that he and I agree completely, but that’s not what this article is about. This article is about a three-way conversation that’s been happening on three different subjects, in three different places, the same thing has been being said.

The “Got Milk?” Man, Chartreuse, and Liz

Jeff Goodby, Chartreuse, BETA, and Liz Strauss. What do we three have in common? A clear vision of how to reach and keep one. On three slightly different notes, we three each say things that sound a lot alike. Heck if we were on a street corner, we’d be doing some great harmony and collecting some serious cash.

Jeff Goodby said

Our job is to come up with more advertising that people actually seek out. It’s the same way with successful design. When you design something right, people don’t just accept it, they seek it out. And then they tell their friends about it or show it off.

Chartreuse said

Look at Overture (now Yahoo Search Marketing).

These are the most profitable advertising business models around, because consumers tell advertisers what theyâ€™re looking for first, rather than advertisers telling consumers what they should buy and hoping for the best.

I said

Everett knew that being who you are is a bond with the community. It the basis on which all relationships are forged. Being any less and youâ€™re only a bad facsimile of what you could be. Your personal brand can be the strongest advantage you bring to your business life.

Be brand YOU and youâ€™re the only one. No one can compete with that.

Three separate takes on the same subject–Henry Ford you had a great idea, but your work is done. Rest in peace. The assembly line has lost its promise, and one-size-fits-all now fits no one.

Analysis–What Are We Saying?

Content is king, but the king reports to the Emperor. The Audience-Emperor knows damn well whether we’re wearing clothes and which designer made them too. We already decide what is relevant content to us and we tell advertisers by the way we use search engines. We already decide what ads work by the products we spend our money on. Jeff Goodby gets that, that’s why he respects us and voices a responsibility to keeping our environment filled with advertising we enjoy. He realizes he is one of us.

Advertising we seek out. There’s a concept–a simple wonder, a basic what if. The advertisers who get it will be the ones who are us, not the ones who think, “They versus us.”

Strategy–To Promote Your Business

None of us are partners in a fabulous San Francisco Advertising firm. Though I’d love to work for Mr. Goodby, I don’t suppose he’ll be offering me a job soon. I’m guessing you’re probably in the same place as I am. So how might we push this analysis into strategy for our brand and our businesses?

Be authentic, practical, and nice. Don’t promote your business on its glorious, high falutin’ intangible values. Do needs-benefits selling. Know me and what I need and show me how you provide it better, with more-invested, gentler service than the other guy ever could.
Make it fun to work with you. No matter what you’re involved in, it should be something that adds to the world of enjoyment. Fun is magnetic and always feels free. It’s hard enough to find these days. Jeff Goodby says it has to be simple and interesting to the consumer in the way the cowabduction spoof he did for Milk Producers was, if you want folks to seek it out. If you offer that kind of creativity to me, you can bet, I’ll not only seek it out, I’ll forgive the occasional slip.
Let me be who I am. Don’t try to change the way I do things. Trust that I know my needs better than you do. Show me how I can do what I already do more easily. That will win my loyalty. That will get me to talk about what a good relationship you have with your customers.
Let me be smarter than you are. and sweeter too. Chartreuse says, “Treat the smart girls like they are pretty and the pretty girls like they are smart.” Believe me, it works for boys too. That is the key to customer relationships and to building customer evangelists. That is the intangible value-added, making the customer the center of all you do.
Know the upside-down nature of the Internet. Understand that it will move out into the real-world environment, not the other way around. Make something so good that folks will seek you out to find it. We find what works well and stick with it. We will keep looking until the one worth sticking with is found.
Offer a product or a service that fills an actual need I have. I put this last on purpose. The changes in the world are happening so fast that needs are opening at an unprecedented rate of explosion. Some will close right back up again by getting filled or expiring. Think through the product or service you offer. Make certain it has staying power, be sure that I am willing and able to pay what it will cost you to make it available. Then add that you include the unique BIG IDEA of your brand so that I will only want YOU to do the work for me.

The power base has slowly shifted to the audience-consumer. A busines without customers is not a business. I have that tatooed where you cannot look.

More MSM Unhappiness

Until now control of the distribution channels and advertising markets, limited what the consumer could access, but with the WWW shopping mall, I can search the world over to find that little store that has the “just right” item I am looking for. I no longer need to settle for one-size fits all.

Chartreuse and I know this. We see it in our friends and ourselves. Smart advertisers, such as Jeff Goodby, are well aware of this too. Those who cannot see it–the telcos, Internet providers and the Mainstream Media–will fight to save the old world way of doing business. They want to keep those advertising dollars that Jeff Goodby sees turning into entertaining Internet websites that advertise as well as delight.

There is significant money involved and significant changes to life styles should Jeff Goodby’s vision of advertising–one that Chartreuse and I also see–become the future. Were I the Mainstream Media, I don’t think I would want to lose control.

Everyday the world gets smaller. At the moment, you and I get larger and more powerful. Some folks don’t like that idea.

Personally, I do.

It would be hard to break out into a chorus of “Blue Moon” under a streetlight in Chicago with Chartreuse and Jeff Goodby, if someone else were around telling us what to do.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Great Find: 20 Rules of Smart & Successful Web Development

Filed Under Basics, Design, Great Finds, Successful Blog | 2 Comments

Sometimes you find a golden nugget . . .

Great Find: 20 Rules of Smart and Successful Web Development by Vitaly Friedman
Type of article: Online business basics and web development
Permalink: http://www.alvit.de/blog/article/20-rules-of-smart-and-successful-web-development-and-web-design
Target Audience: Any person who wants to do business on the Internet and every web developer or person who hires one

Content: Vitaly Friedman is a web developer who can write. He’s also a deep thinker who learns from what he does. I read this article not once. but twice–both times wishing I could say I wrote it, thinking he said what I’ve always wanted to say. From Respect your visitors. and Care about your content. to Learn to handle the Creative Block. and Be aware of the Power of the Web.I felt I was listening to a kindred spirit talking– one who said it so much better than I might have said it.

So I’ll leave you to him. Click the screenshot for the best article I’ve read on the subject in a very long time–maybe ever.

It’s always nice to find a new hero.

–Me “Liz” Strauss

Call for Designers

Filed Under Design, Marketing, Successful Blog | Leave a Comment

Spring is time to dust our blogs off. Everyone is thinking about color. I’d like to feature some designs again like we did last fall.

So choose the blog design and blog desgner that you think deserves some recognition and e-mail me at lizsun2@gmail.com with a link, your name, and why that design is special. That’s all there is to it.

I’ll keep you posted as links come and then we’ll have a real design extravaganza. Maybe we’ll invite some designers in to give us some design advice.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Great Find: One Click Clipart and Photo Searcher

Filed Under Design, Great Finds, Successful Blog, Tools | 6 Comments

Thinking-Intensive Image Searches

When I’m looking for a specific image to illustrate a post, going to the usual sources can be a time consuming adventure that leads down a long path to nowhere. Maybe all that I want is an idea–an image of someone falling behind. Unfortunately most photo and image sources are organized with more literal tags. So I’m forced to think of what sort of images might portray the figurative thought that I’m going for.

This morning I’m using a tool that gets past that problem. You’ll see it in use in the article I’m writing about thinking outside the box. Thought you might like to use it as well. So I’m taking a break to post this first.

WebPlaces.com

Great Find: WebPlaces.com ClipartSearcher
Type of site: Specialized One click searcher for images
Permalink: http://www.webplaces.com/search/
Audience: Anyone looking for images to illustrate content.
Content: The screenshot/link is self-explanatory. Do be aware that not all images are free use. So be sure to check copyright, as any responsible publisher would. If searching for free use images, start with .gov and then go to the original page and look for copyright, permission, or privacy statements.

This is a great tool for quickly finding what’s available on the Internet, providing images for your readers that aren’t overused. Fresh images creatively chosen draw readers into your posts and make your message stronger so that readers understand it easier and stay to read longer. It’s one more way that images are subtle, but powerful blog promotion.

Try a test. Post with images and without. See which draw more readers and then let me know.

ME “Liz” Strauss

Great Photo Resources to Support Readers

Filed Under Branding, Design, Great Finds, Marketing, Successful Blog, Tools | 10 Comments

When it comes to dressing up a blog visually, great photos go a long toward class and style–if they are well-chosen and well placed to support your message. Photos can draw in an undecided reader and can communicate a message faster and more deeply than words. In that way they can be underscore what you are trying to say, making it more powerful and give it more emotion.

The advantages of using photos with readers have been researched by educators.

Photos involve the reader more interactively. Therefore your message gets “heard” more deeply.
Visual learners are drawn in by photos. They find the information in instructional photos more easily accessible. They pick up the information there first and process it, then the words on the page make more sense to them.
Decorative photos make an article more appealing and inviting. Blocks of text don’t seem intimidating to readers when illustrated by photos.

Well-placed photos also can take an unremarkable template and “kick it up a notch,” giving it the feel of a more sophisticated design. If you have no experience, do give it a try, but read up on design basics before you begin. Add photos slowly and be careful not to have them overwhelm the text in size. Then ask a customer-reader or designer friend to give you feedback on your choices until you feel confident.

Experienced or not, you’re going to need to get some photos–not everyone is a photographer with a great library to pull from. Here are some resources on basic design, places to find free and inexpensive stock photos, and photoshop tutorials.

The first is
Photoshop Tutorials Blog, and not just the blog, but the page with the listing that shows where you might find some smashing images to spice up your blog posts. To access the listing, click this logo

You’ll find a few more if you visit Presentation Zen and get Garr’s tips on using stock photos.

If you’re up for taking your own photos, you might check out this series from Kodak on The Top 10 Tips for Taking Pictures.

Photos are an integral part of any design and add to the “curb appeal” of a any blog or online business. How might you use photos to strengthen your brand, your blog, your business?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Turning Reluctant Readers into Loyal Fans
Blog Promotion: Checking Out Curb Appeal

keep looking »

Successful Blog

You're Only a Stranger Once

Something to Do This Weekend

HTML Color and Font Codes

Walking the Trade Show Floor

Improbulus Offers Us 2 in 1

Successful Blogs Look Successful

Where We Live and Breathe

Advertising has a responsibility to act like a thing that is going to be unavoidably in the environment, where we live and breathe. And we have a responsibility to make that work in such a way that it is welcomed and not scorned.

The “Got Milk?” Man, Chartreuse, and Liz

Analysis–What Are We Saying?

Strategy–To Promote Your Business

More MSM Unhappiness

Thinking-Intensive Image Searches

WebPlaces.com

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