Startup Weekend is an event that happens around the world which empowers any individual with a fresh idea to develop their own small business strategy, and work with peers to make it a reality. For one weekend, these innovations are cultivated in teams and presented to the group where they are voted on by a panel and awarded a start-up business package.

Here at Adcuda we are excited to spread the word on Startup Weekend! We really can’t say enough about it. Steven Chau, Kansas City Coordinator for Startup Weekend sat down and discussed the merits of the experience along with our own in-house SW alumni.

We invite you to join Adcuda Accounts Director Jennifer Hoyt for some free grub and our top ten tips on why you should be blogging. By the end you’ll not only have a full belly, but have moved past the excuses of not enough time or a small readership to understanding how blogging can help you grow your business.

Below you will find the archived footage of both the presentation and a question and answer session hosted by Adcuda Founder and President Casey Copeland.

Please feel free to begin by downloading the presentation here.

Thanks to everyone who attended the event in person and online! We hope to see you next time.

The Presentation: Hosted by Jennifer Hoyt (41:13)

Question and Answers: Hosted by Casey Copeland (13:15)

If business owners who are poorly situated on the search engines wait until the economy picks up before they invest in their ranking, they are going to miss all the first business that comes when things start to move again.  They will also compromise their market position as their competitors gain momentum early and start moving ahead in the marketplace.

Search engine optimization takes time, it’s not an over-night fix. Smart business owners will make the online marketing investment NOW in order to be better positioned THEN. furthermore, prices for search engine marketing is relatively less expensive now because fewer people are in the game. (Most are “waiting until business picks up”!)  When business picks up, LOTS of people want to be ranking well and that drives up the cost of getting the ranked… (High demand for SEO services ensue)

Smart people buy now when it’s relatively cheap and the competition is light. Everyone else waits and then plays catch-up later at a higher costs…

We Love Typography

Would you care to spend one, maybe two hours of your precious time looking at endless amounts of typography? Yes?  Then this is the place to do it. This page offers constant updated images of signage, hand lettering and other samples of type.

COLOURlovers

Colour Lovers is a handy website for designers and non-designers alike. It keeps you up to date on web, print, and fashion color trends and also allows you to create your own palettes and patterns.

The FWA

Aside from being a clean and well designed website itself, FWA (or Favorite Website Awards) features the best of the best in web design, including a site of the day and insightful articles about design in web and other media outlets.

FFFFound!

Keeping up-to-date on trends is the name of the game in the field of design (or really any field for that matter). Since it’s constantly being updated by members around the world, FFFFound! is a great place to pick up on trends, see what other designers are creating and get inspired.

W3 Schools

This site is less about inspiration and more about brushing up on Javascript code and HTML tags. It’s a great page to check out if you’re feeling a little rusty on your web skills or are wanting to learn more about it!

Thanks for reading through and I hope you were able to find some inspiration (or at least an interesting site to waste some time on)!

Take, for instance, the Batman movie series wisely ousting director Joel Schumacher and replacing him with Christopher Nolan.  Very good move, indeed.

And then there’s Yellow Bot.

Yellow Bot’s refreshing new spin on themselves has opened up new and improved ways for local businesses to connect with customers.

Reinventing yourself can be a great way to not only draw in new and old faces to your website, but by paying heed to Yellow Bot’s new design structure, you begin to notice a couple of subtle, yet possibly important ways for local business listings to say hello to consumer search:

1. Ease of Access: Right off the bat, Yellow Bot improves the one thing that escaped business owners from doing as soon as they got there: submission of business. Err, let me rephrase that: you could submit your business listing the whole time, it’s just for “user-friendly” experience, you kind of had to go Sherlock Holmes on the website before you could find the “Add Business Listing” icon.  Nowadays, there’s an icon at the bottom that’s big, blue and looking for you.
2. Speedy Exposure: Once you’ve claimed your business and added the proper information, Yellow Bot has always been very good about placing your listing up in a timely manner.  Only thing is, this time you’re the star of the show for a day.  By that I mean your newbie listing is given top-shelf treatment via any photos you’ve included.  You’re only given three picture slots, so make them as pleasing to the eye as possible, because the right picture just might turn in the lead you’ve been looking for.

Just like Google’s subtle change to their home page, the warm, inviting colors used by Yellow Bot make the site look appropriate for today’s web design pallets.  Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that Yellow Bot lets you run rampant with your business listing, allows you to add numerous tags and such.

So go on, embrace change and get active with your business listing today!

As long as your numbers prove your design works (with either purely images or live text, also), then there’s no problem. This example, sent by Urban Outfitters yesterday, shows the email marketing trend that many large brands are going with. Without the alt tags (which just say a quick message about what the image is, if not displayed), the email would just be one big white box. A company like U.O. can certainly use their audience to their own advantage when sending emails: they are generally young and probably tech savvy, or at least understand that if you want to see the pretty pictures, you have to take that extra step to ‘Display Images’. It’s a gamble, but it looks like U.O., along with so many other companies, are willing to take it.

So once you get past the ‘Display Images’ issue, what should your all-graphics email look like? It should be worth the extra click, and I feel that Urban Outfitters accomplished that with this email. Their marketing is usually edgy, integrating popular art trends, and with this email they’ve decided to show that using a beautiful color scheme with bold letters is all it takes. Of course the words ‘Free Shipping’ are always a good attraction, but the graphic was only as busy as it needed to be, and as a customer I appreciated that.

The moral of the story: don’t over-stimulate your audience with tons of pictures. The message should be clear, and the graphics should only be used to add to it, not distract.

Early in the history of the modern Internet, the need for order was realized.  Authors and users both wanted some way to connect and that is still true today.  After many ideas were explored and tested on the live Internet, the best solution came in the form of a computerized searching tool -  The Search Engine.

It’s generally agreed that the first modern search engine was Archie back in 1990 which was soon followed by Gopher. These early engines were pretty good at cataloging and indexing files and file contents found on web-servers around the world. Many engines based on similar technology followed and were the popular ways to find things throughout the 90′s.  But, what really propelled the use of the Internet by the masses was the concept of PageRank based on Relevance. This was a new idea first introduced by the 2 year old company called Google in 2000. 

As search engines refined their abilities to deliver relevant results to people searching for particular things, the art of  ’search engine optimization’ came into being.  Commonly known today as SEO, search engine optimization was the practice of writing web pages so that the content was easily understood by the search engines and indexed and cataloged accordingly. This practice soon turned into an abuse free for all as website authors learned how to trick the search engines to deliver pages that had no relevance to what the searcher was looking for. SEO picked up a bit of a bad reputation due to the exposure of this practice. 

Now, in order to be a viable search engine,  relevant pages must be found using more than the ‘on-page’ content. ‘Off-page authority’ has become the source of page relevance that the most successful search engines use today.  Why? Because it’s really hard to fake! Today’s successful SEO professionals understand this and work hard with their clients to create off-page authority.  SEO is quite a different art than it started out to be! 

So what does all this mean in today’s world and online-success? And, how does it relate
to a three legged stool!?  Especially when we’ve really only discussed two legs so far:
1.) Getting a website and
2.) Getting search engines to deliver it. 

First let me define modern ”online-success”.  In the business world and beyond, online success has evolved just as the web has. Originally, online success meant that you were successful in acquiring a domain and publishing a web page…  Tada!  that was it…  Whoopee do! 

As more and more web pages came online, online success became more than just having a web page, it was now all about positioning that web page so that it could be found…  SEO enters the picture.

In its first generation, it was possible for a  seller of GREEN BOWLING BALLS to be positioned #1 for someone searching for Bowling Green, KY!  Regardless of how many green bowling balls were sold, if any, it was deemed that being able to ”SEO” that position was online-success.  The thing was, in spite of occupying that position, true business success wasn’t really attained at all. 

Finally, online success has become a summation of 3 elements (here comes the three legged stool analogy) 1.) Having a website, 2.) the site being seen by relevant visitors and 3.) by a marketing term called Conversion.

Conversion is when an anonymous visitor finds a page, relevant to what they were looking for and becomes, or converts into, a customer, donator, member, contributor or whatever the goal of the web page was to begin with. 

Successful online marketing incorporates all three of these elements. In fact, it’s really impossible to eliminate any of them and still be successful. As a business owner, it’s easy to get caught up in web designer world where all you think about is the site itself. A website occupying a URL does NOT an online success make!  Some SEO companies will say over and over again that “it doesn’t matter how great your site is if no one sees it.”  And that is true to a point. To these companies, ”getting found”  may still be online success.  But a complete online marketer goes one step further and includes conversion as an equally important element in REAL online success.

Some were about Bing’s listing center being down for too long, but to Bing’s credit, maintenance issues for a listing system that big can take a while.

But the more and more I looked over the complaints, the more this issue reared its ugly head. It’s a problem I’ve ranted about many times: The arduous wait for your confirmation letter.

Bing’s listing response time is equivalent to that friend of yours who responds to a text message question a day and a half later, where not only do you forget what the question even was, you’re a little peeved it took so long.

The only exception being that message is your business listing. And since you’re queued up waiting for the letter to be delivered on horseback, the opportunity to be noticed on a search engine that generates immense traffic is being held captive.

Why it’s taking so long to address this is anyone’s guess. It would be in Bing’s best interest to have a listing center that goes toe-to-toe with Google. Not only does Bing have a pretty and diverse home page presentation to draw people in, their listing center is very beneficial for helping small to large businesses get their face out there.

As for the solution, well it’s pretty obvious in some areas (get a better delivery carrier, create an extension number addition for phone verification), but the one area that’s in need of a makeover is the means at which to wrangle in Bing’s customer support.

There’s this method, but I’ve been waiting in line on that one, too. Here’s hoping someone breaks through to them…

Even though a “brand’ is intangible, it refers to the reputation behind your company’s name. A carefully built brand is worth more in actual dollars than all the tangible assets put together. To start, you must decide how you want people to perceive your business – visually as well as internally. Create a mission statement.

I have some experience myself with brand loyalty, as many others do in their shopping. For instance, many people purchase only a certain kind of shampoo and have been using it for years because they trust the brand. Whether it has been in the family for years or just because the product is very efficient, the level of comfort your brand is very important for prospective and long term customers. So how do you go about creating brand loyalty?

Create a logo! Take Nike and Mcdonalds for example, you do not need to read the company’s name to understand what it is. Your logo should allow your brand to be instantly recognized by those familiar with it. To this extent, your logo helps create and reinforce brand awareness. The logo you create should be able to be used consistently in a variety of different media. It should be suitable for corporate letterhead and business cards, as well as for your website and corporate signage (if any).

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http://www.brandbucket.com/ ( We offer a selection of quality hand-picked premium logos and domain names available for sale as ready-to-use brands for your business startup, new product name or blog name. ) My Brandbucket Profile – Need a domain/logo? Buy mine!

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Identify and Describe Your Target Market- Decide whether you want to target lthe entire webhosting community or only a segment of it such as small business websites. Describe your market.

For one, you need consistent advertising. Decide what you can do for your customers, what is the true beneficiary of your product or service. Create a ‘sell line’ that defines your company in a nutshell.

Customer Service – Employ people who can get on board with your brand  – One small non cooperative experience with a customer can greatly affect your business by word of mouth.

Public Relations – Keep the promises you make! Make it easy for your customers to do certain tasks (like return an item, buy online, etc) See what your customers are disappointed with, and make it better/easier

Use the internet – A company with no web presence is archaic. Even if you’re only interested in local sales right now, your customers are on the web, and they’ll want to see you there, too. Get it done now.

Kudos entrepreneur.com

In both Photoshop and Illustrator, you’ll find in the File drop-down menu an option for ‘Save For Web & Devices’. When you click this, a box comes up with a variety of options. Don’t stress! Make it easier on yourself and in the top left corner, click ’4-Up’. This will separate your image into 4 boxes, which will show you the quality for the size.

You’ll notice in the above screen shot that the drop-down menu on the right, labeled ‘Preset:’ is currently on PNG-24. This is where you can choose the different file extensions and then see their qualities and sizes.

PNG
PNGs are great for transparency when you choose the highest quality, but they are known for their large file size. If you use one or two colors, the size will be smaller than those images with every color of the rainbow. Keep this in mind when saving for web.

GIF
GIFs also do transparency, when you choose the highest quality, but they tend to put a white outline around your object or text.

JPGs
JPG is best for small file size, but you cannot do transparency at all. They are also notorious for pixelating or blurring text if you don’t choose the highest possible size.

These are certainly not ‘The Rules’ – as you’ll see in the comparison below, the JPG ended up being the largest file size, when usually it’s the other way around. When there are more colors in the mix, the JPG will almost always be the smallest size, but again the quality sometimes lacks.

Comparing the End Product
Seeing as my example was only one color, the file sizes are comparable. To show when transparency worked, I put the original image (the purple text) over the orange background.

The PNG file size was 10KB with great quality, and was able to do transparency flawless.

The GIF file size was 12KB, and although the transparency works, there is a white outline around the text. Unless your image will be on a white background, transparent gif isn’t usually the best option.

The JPG file size was the most with 19KB, and transparency was not an option. Here it shows that you are forced to have a white background around your image.

Hopefully this quick tutorial helps to clarify when certain extensions should be used, and what their shining qualities are.