I have had my Verizon serviced Iphone for 2 weeks now and am loving the device.  The only complaint I have heard is about the battery life on the Iphone.  Blackberrys, Droids, and other high end smartphones also have battery issues so the Iphone is not alone.  While not our typical media topic,as a general fan of the Iphone and Apple products, I have compiled a list below of some ways to improve your Iphone’s battery life.

1. Turn down the LCD. I suggest turning on Auto-Brightness which allows the screen to adjust its brightness based on current lighting conditions.

2. Turn off Vibrate in Games. Playing a game with vibrate happening frequently is an unnecessary battery suck. If you can turn it off, turn it off.  Also if you are playing Angry Birds 24/7 that can greatly decrease battery time.  In general, 3d rendered graphics for game play are heavy power users.  If you plan on having serious game time on a Iphone go ahead and purchase a car charger or consider a backup battery pack.

3. Shut down any apps you are not using. Particularly if you are using GPS applications or apps that utilize locations. While Apple does maintain this is not necessary some of the GPS apps can put a drain on your power.  To view your open apps follow the following steps.  Double click on your Iphone’s “home” button.  This will put all the active applications along the bottom row.  The non-active application will fade from view.  Then simply pick an application and touch it holding it for 2-3 seconds.  All of the icons along the bottom row will start to shake and a “-” sign is placed in the upper right corner.  Touch the “-” and the app will close.  I tend to do this every couple days.

4. Set the Autolock to 1-minute. The iPhone’s autolock is good at shutting off the screen if you forget to when placing it in a pocket, purse or just tossing it on a table after a call.

5. Set Push to Off and Set Fetch Time. Push does use more juice than the fetch mode, which checks for calendar, contact and email syncing at set intervals of 15 minutes to an hour. If you seldom update your contacts and calendars, you might even be better off syncing by cable to iTunes, while you pick up a charge.

6. Turn off Bluetooth. If you rarely use a Bluetooth headset or car kit, you can turn off Bluetooth to save power.

7. Turn off Wi-Fi. If you rarely use Wi-Fi, you can turn it off to save power. Go to Settings > Wi-Fi and set Wi-Fi to Off. Note that if you frequently use your iPhone to browse the web, battery life may be improved by using Wi-Fi instead of cellular data networks. Having said this I don’t ever do it…I like my Wi Fi.

8. Do a monthly battery calibration. According to the Apple website, you should be doing this periodically. Give your iPhone a full charge, then let the battery run out. Recharge. You might want to try this if your Iphone is new as it probably never has been calibrated.

9. Let It Breathe. Charging your iPhone while in certain carrying cases may generate excess heat, which can affect battery capacity. If you notice that your iPhone gets hot when you charge it, take it out of its case first.

If you having battery issues with you new Iphone I encourage you to try some of the above tips.  If they don’t work perhaps slow down on the Angry Bird game play.  Please include any battery saving tricks or tips in the comments section below.

Flash is vector animation software originally designed to create animations for display on web pages.  Originally vector graphics were ideal for use with the Flash software due to their lightweight.  Each newer version of Flash by Macromedia has been more and more controllable by programming where it can even be used as a competitor to HTML coding in building interactive websites.  Typically, most complicated animations, some photo galleries, and many of mini-games on the web are Flash based.

It sounds like a good idea but problems exist when using Flash.  The first is that it requires a plug in to work on devices and browsers.  Many mobile phones, most notably the Iphone and Ipad cannot read Flash content.  This limits the availability for universal viewing of your website or the portions of your website that are coded as a Flash element.  Flash handles text very poorly.  It is both slower to load and less clear than standard HTML designs.  Flash development takes more time, therefore is more expensive to implement than HTML.  Another disadvantage is that Flash is much harder to read by search engines resulting in your website potentially being more difficult for clients find.  Ok, limited on devices, is slower, more expensive and harder for your clients to find, read on to find out why you would possible want to use this on your website.

We actually like to include Flash in our web design toolbox for the following reasons.  It is a great to include in order to code complex animations that are difficult to accomplish with HTML alone.  It is often used to play video.  Flash, once the plug-in is used, is universally accepted and viewed by browsers.  Excellent and exciting eye catching animations can be designed in Flash that can catch you clients or customers eye and make your website look much more exciting.

We recommend the judicious use of Flash on your website by using it to create a presentation as a part of your website.  This type of presentation can function as a commercial where the viewer can sit back and enjoy the show as the Flash movie delivers the message to the client.  Flash can best serve as an enhancement to your standard HTML based website.

You may view an example of our integrated Flash header at www.synergymindbody.com one of our website designs making use of Flash.

Interactive advertising and creating customer connections is the name of the game in the 2011 marketing climate.  Gone are the days when it is cost effective for the small business to only use broadcast methods such as local TV, Radio, or newspaper space.  Small and medium sized business can achieve much better rates of return engaging in social media and smart advertising.  Consumers are doing more research than ever on products and will visit a business virtually via the internet prior to picking up a telephone or visiting a brick and mortar store.  This is a listing of 3 places to start your interactive advertising campaign in 2011.

In 2010 Facebook passed Google for the most visited website, it is easily the world’s most popular social media network.  In 2011 it will continue to be a social media behemoth.  It is a part of over 500 million American lives with most of those subscribers checking in daily.  It continues to be business friendly and forward thinking in its endeavors.  Facebook’s new features like adding Email will increase acceptance and reliance on the Facebook brand. Features like Places, the geo-location service launched in 2010, continue to grow and thrive. Facebook is a must have addition to your advertising portfolio in 2011.  The creation of a business page is free.  A properly designed system of providing updates for you page is a great opportunity to legitimize yourself as an expert in your field.  It establishes your brand.  A true dialogue can be established with your customers or clients.  In 2011 it will be one of the top ways to interact with your customers.  Even if you have avoided having a website a Facebook page can be your vehicle to an online community.

While blogs may seem so 2008 they have new relevance in 2011 as a part of your interactive marketing plan for your business.  A blog can be set up for free and used in for many of the same reasons as a business Facebook page.  It provides a showcase vehicle to the public of  your companies expertise.  It is yet another way to establish your brand and valuable avenue for you to set the stage for dialogue with customers.   A blog can be established for free using WordPress, Blogspot or on of many free blogs offered online.  You can also add a blog to your own website.  In either case, search engines will be able to search out the content placed in the blog.  Increasing your searchability on the web is always a positive.  Since successful blogging is partially dependent on posting frequency and providing updated fresh information, it’s a perfect way to help you, the blogger, stay abreast of the events in a specific field or topic.

Finally, look to mobile for 2011.  A smartphone is required to truly take advantage of the mobile web.  For the first time smartphone sales have drawn even with the sales of regular cell phones.  New phones able to handle the applications can be had for around $50; bringing the price of the mobile web to a far larger population than ever before. As I write this the Android based phone market is growing and Verizon is poised to get the Iphone. This is the year we’ll see an explosion in Mobile advertising and marketing—from apps to location-based services to the Mobile web. If you are yet to take a look at Mobile, now is the time to start. Whether you need a Mobile-optimized website, application, or listing on Foursquare will depend on your individual business … but one thing is for sure—you need to do something!

Mike

On November 15th, Facebook launched its new Messages product, allowing users to see their communication with someone over email, Facebook Messages, Facebook Chat, instant messages, and SMS in the same thread. Facebook automatically delivers messages where it thinks a user is most likely to see them, creates a unified history of the messages, and filters the threads by relationship with the sender to create a Social Inbox.  I have had about a month including holidays to experiment with the new integrated messaging service and this is my review.

This is a massive project to collect all your communications from your traditional email, chats, and even text messages in the same point.  The idea is that a user can see everything you’ve ever discussed with a single friend in a single conversation.  Subject lines go away and you can focus on the person/persons involved in the conversation.  It creates a logical, intuitive flow of conversation.  See this video for the basics and goal of the message system.

New Social Inbox

By far the largest change you will see to your profile is the addition of the new “Messages folder.  The “Messages” folder defaults to hold all of a user’s Messages with friends or friends of friends. “Other Messages” holds Messages with those who aren’t connected to a user, Page updates, Event messages, and messages from old groups. When a user has new Messages, they’ll see counters next to the Messages navigation links in the Facebook home page’s left sidebar.  Users can move conversations between folders to increase or decrease their visibility. Messages from friends of friends display how a user is connected to the sender.  Each thread has a radio button next to it allowing users to toggle it between read and unread. Within each thread, the medium from which a Message was sent is denoted with icons for email or chat. At the bottom of the inbox, users see options to view their Archive or Junk, to which Messages can be assigned to reduce clutter. Users also have the option to permanently delete conversations.  It sounds confusing but is really intuitive when you get started.  The key is remembering that the messages are grouped by sender base to start.

Sending and Receiving Messages

Sending a message is just as intuitive as the remainder of the message system.  Facebook even determines the best way to get the message to the user.   A message is selected and sent Facebook will process it based on the following hierarchy.

1.   If the recipient is actively online they will receive the Message as a chat.

2.   If the recipient is offline the Message will be sent as an reply to email.  It will be sent to the Facebook email account first OR the email account registered to that username if your friends are not using the Facebook new messages service.

3.   You have an option to simply click a box and send it as a text message to their phone.

The neat portion of Facebook Messages is that regardless of how it is sent a record is retained as a “thread” for the user, creating a linear history of the conversation.  This includes chat conversations.

Users can still forward messages, allowing users to add people to the conversation.  Facebook has integrated ways to upload attachements, photos, take photos with an attached webcam and even with a single button record a video to be sent to a recipient which will automatically be attached to the conversation.  You still will have to download any attachments such as excel or docs files but Facebook attaches a link to Office.com to view the images.

How Messages Will Change Communication

It is in no way a formal email killer.  However, it does start the creation of a Social Inbox.  I know that I text, email, chat, and video conference with various individuals during the day.  I almost never delete emails but on occasion I can’t find the one I want.  I can’t remember which folder I put it in or when the timeframe close enough to narrow my search.  I end up searching through various conversations clicking to view one at a time to find the relevant conversation.  Almost 100% of the time I can remember who I was conversing with for my conversation.  This is the appeal for me as once part of a conversation occurs through Facebook Chat or private messages, email and text messages will soon feed back to the Social Inbox which is tagged by whom I was conversing.  While not perfect this system helps me allow more synchronous conversations to happen with asynchronous mediums(texts, email, chat, videos). A centralized historical record makes sense for the way my brain is wired. I like the email system and while still using traditional media for business I have begun migrating my personal correspondence through the new Facebook Messages system.

Getting Started

When a Facebook user receives access to the new Messages product they will see a prompt at the top of their home page.  They are requested to claim their Facebook email address.  It is [your_public_username]@facebook.com.  For example my email is mvlepley@facebook.com.  By default emails from friends and friends of friends are routed to the Messages folder while any other email is placed in the Other folder.  You can then easily go through your Other folder accepting or permanently blocking emails.  Via the Facebook privacy settings you can also prevent non-friends from messaging you. You can then connect your mobile device to your Facebook account so friends can use Messages to send you texts.  In the same way you activate Facebook mobile through Account Settings, you will get  a confirmation code texted, enter the code online and viola you have IM’s directly from emails, chats, or text sent to your Facebook Message center.

Facebook is rolling out the message system slowly and putting people in a queue for the roll out over the next several months.  Select Members have been set up which can invite a limited number of friends to use the New Facebook Messages.  These invites are not delivered immediately but rather by reshuffling you to the top of the queue.  If you are still interested I have a few invites that I have not given out as of yet.  Send me a friend request and a message to mvlepley@facebook.com.  I cannot guarantee you will receive a request but hopefully I can move you forward in the Facebook queue.

If you have any questions or comment leave them in the comments section of this blog.

Many people misunderstand the process of creating a logo, so I wanted to write a short synopsis of how things go from start to finish.

Logo Design

Brainstorming

The first step is to discuss the conce

pts you like and would like to see executed in the logo. This assumes you have a vision of what you want your logo to look like. If you don’t have any ideas, that’s okay. If fact, most people don’t.

Regardless, any designer worth his salt will give you plenty of options to choose from. That’s our job. For any given client, Brainstorm Media usually provides anywhere from 3 to 5 different concepts, along with multiple permutations of each one. It’s better to cover your bases and make SURE your making the right decision.

Design

After you have discussed your logo with your designer, the designer goes to his workshop/lair and hammers out several ideas and concepts for you to preview. In our case this preliminary round of proofs in invaluable in finding out what kind of things

the client liked and doesn’t like. This enables us to further narrow our field of focus in finding the right logo for the client.

This is the longest part of the process, but also the most fun. The designer provides ideas that are varied and cover wide array of concepts. This is usually fun for the client as well as the designer, as both can enjoy the process and see what creative things they can come up with.

After the first round of proofs comes the second round. The good from the first round has been kept and maybe refined further; new avenues are explored. Then, we do it all again, until the client feels they have looked at all their choices and come to a decision. Usually a concept that hangs around for several rounds of proofs is recognized as the clear favorite.

Decision Time

Once the client has decides the final direction they want to go, it’s time to focus on the details. By now the main concept is solid and usually the colors are, too. The fine detail work is not as fun, but just as important. Will the final version be a solid color, or outlined? Does the overlapping icon go in front or in back of the text?

The designer usually provides one last round of proofs, and the client must decide on the final version. You might think the process would be over at this point, but that leaves out the vital last step.

Most clients are not aware that when they “buy” a logo design, they are purchasing intellectual property, which they then OWN. A reputable designer will provide you with a digital copy of your file in multiple formats. They should provide, at minimum, a vector art file (all logos should be created as vector art, see more on this in another article), a high resolution .tif, .jpg and any other format the client desires. This logo is the property of the client, meaning they should not be forced to keep coming back to the designer for versions anytime they want to put their logo on a t-shirt or business card. The designer should provide all the source files for the logo you should ever need at the time of delivery.

I hope this short synopsis has been informative and gives a little clarity to an arcane and sometimes mysterious process. Many people might be afraid to have a professional designer create a logo for their business, but it might just be the best money you ever spend.

To be sure, small business owners find themselves in a very unique situation, in fact, most of the business owners that I know (myself included) are tasked with doing everything from cleaning, to managing customer service, to accounting and facilities maintenance. Truly, it can be a monumental task. Adding to the economic situations, rising costs and worry about a lower profit margin adding another element to manage may seem daunting. However, Social Media is not the place to skimp within your business-marketing plan. Social Media is about sharing and growing information. As your sharing grows, your relevance and presence in the community grows, and so will your financial well being, brand identification, and more importantly your social capital.

What used to be the domain of major companies due to high priced media campaigns competing for the scarce “airtime” resources of newspaper, radio, and TV. In these formats advertising and marketing was a one-way street, producing disconnected advertising by buying the limited time available to shout at random consumers from an untrusted source. The stage is set now for a small business to achieve smart, economical marketing through the near limitless access to the Internet by social media applications. Even more important you can target your advertising through connected, trusted avenues. These social media networks can be used to advertise and grow customers as well as increase your competitive edge through 2 way communications. Real-time, unfiltered customer comments allow a new level of control to your business. Good comments can add incredible trust, value, presence, and relevancy to your business. If bad, you can review your practices and use the comments as an opportunity gain value in the marketplace by adjusting your business model to accommodate criticism. Currently, the stage is set for a small business to really extend and approve their brand at a very reasonable price using social media. When it is done properly social media marketing for small businesses really works!

Everyday my interactions bring me into contact with owners and managers telling me that numbers are way down from previous years. In these times great innovation and growth are born from adversity and tough economic times. Social Media is the new tool for customer relationship management. You need to use these tools to cultivate trust, develop your brand and capture new customers. The beauty of social media is this takes place in real time with measurable results. Your business will get immediate, unfiltered feedback and access to your customer base. Preferably, you as a small business owner are already using social media, but if not getting started today is the most important thing!

The beauty of leveraging social media is that it is not expensive, overly complicated or extremely time consuming. In fact, it almost has a zero startup cost and only your time is involved. Brainstorm Media believes so much in growing the local social media community we welcome the opportunity to visit with you and discuss how social media can be integrated into your business most effectively. We PROVIDE THIS SERVICE FREE for businesses in the local area. If you are excited and ready to embrace or at least try online promotion and social media here are five action items to help you develop and start your marketing plan.

1. List out your business goals and how you would like social media and online marketing to help you achieve them. Your goals can be anything that you would like them to be. Some common examples establishing a web presence, growing customer’s or sales, informing or providing information to the public, and developing a business network.

2. Agree to dedicate 30 minutes per day to developing your social media network.

3. Create a personal facebook page. Your business page can come later but this will lower your apprehension of working in an online environment.

4. Seek out forums, blogs, or community websites. Whether you’re a retail shop, lawn care service, or non-profit some support already exits in your niche on the web. Register with a site and in you have the knowledge see if you can answer some questions.

5. Begin to think about information you can impart to your customers. Think about all the questions you customers ask, or new products, or even item about yourself that would be valuable for you customer’s to know. Write them up even if your note going to publish them. This may provide even more focus or allow you to develop new avenues for your business through exploration of the thought process.

I realize it is often not easy to find the time and change your daily routine. Social media promotion, done correctly, will yield you some measurable results as your network grows. This is the perfect time to develop those social networks and trusts from customers. The key in the startup stages is providing good consistent content to your customer base.

The website is fast becoming a must for every business even a small business. However, 45% of the businesses in the United States don’t have a website yet.Small businesses in particular don’t take advantage of a web presence that can be a very cost effective marketing tool. As competition is particularly fierce for the consumer dollar it is imperative that every business takes advantage of a strong web presence. The Yellow Pages are dead or dying. Customers are finding products and services by searching the web. Google, Yahoo, Bing and local searches are the new 21st century search tools. Google is available on the desktop or even carried with the consumer in the form of a laptop or smart phone. Without a strong website you leave the field to the competition.

A properly optimized website is one of the most cost effective marketing you can utilize. The potential customers that can view or be contacted via a website and the relative modest costs involved put the Return on Investment (ROI) of a website far ahead of other sales approaches such as paid advertisements or cold calling. The customers finding you through a website are far more motivated to buy your product than cold calling or “broadcast” advertising. A professionally crafted website in conjunction with proper search engine optimization (SEO) can be an exciting new weapon in your marketing arsenal. It also allows you to make use of totally free avenues of social marketing, such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIN; using those new and exciting technologies to drive the consumer to your website and your brick and mortar business.

A website is the principle way many consumers review a business for legitimacy. A single anonymous visit to a website can infuse the potential customer with the confidence to make the initial contact. It is a point of easy reference for customer referrals as well. It is much easier for your best customer to give his friends or business associates a website name than fumble for a card or brochure. The website is the most powerful way you can present the very best image of your company. It used to be the business card was the most important low cost marketing tool…now the most important item on the business card is the web address. Often, with the increasing popularity of the Blackberry and Iphone, the information on the card is entered to the device and then thrown away. Its time to look into the investment of a properly search engine optimized website.

A websites design and overall look should mirror the culture of your visitor. A website needs to effectively communicate your corporate message to the customer. Your web designer needs to understand your audience in terms of preference to subject, language, tone and visual presentation. Understanding these preferences help the designer identify content, design options, and graphics that will resonate with your site visitors. While this may seem low tech and simple it is an often skipped step in creating a highly effective website for your business.

It is equally important to evolve the first step of generating a general culture template to developing a focus on your business’s customer. Customer’s are diverse, yet it is important to develop a website that speaks to your customer. These customers are often already defined within your companies overall strategic framework and need to be included as part of virtual market. It is important to review your market, competition, and positioning in conjunction with website design. The website design should enhance your companies strategic vision. Your commercial website, informational or online sales, is destined to fail if your design and development planning is not tied directly to your marketing strategy.

The final stumbling block is the development of an easy to understand interface and content. Your products and services may be complex but their presentation on a website must be fairly simple. They need to be elegant, clean, and intuitive. Anticipating a customers needs, questions, and possible points of confusion must be accounted for in order to develop a successful website. A design must eliminate as much confusion as possible, inviting the visitor to ask questions with clear concise contact information. Extraordinary effort leads to abandonment of a website and loss of a potential client or customer.

Website design and development are highly technical design fields but it is equally important to develop these high tech avenues with solid marketing. Brainstorm Media believes in partnering with our client to deliver and produce those simple, intuitive experiences which reinforce and build a business brand.

Lets begin with the basics of how search engines like Yahoo! work. Internet search engines, such as Yahoo, Google, and Bing, catalog each and every web page on the net. They accomplish this by sending out automated “robots” to search the page for certain tags, keywords, and links. It is estimated that there are approximately twenty billion pages and that only eight to ten billion are ever crawled by a “bot” or “spider”. That means less than 50% of websites are crawled by a search engine spider. Most of the sites not crawled by a spider have not been developed using proper SEO in relation to submission of a site to a search engine. As you can imagine proper submission is a must to even get you in the game. Brainstorm Media can assist you in submission of your site or simply provide you with the tools to accomplish it yourself.

These indexing robots search the site reviewing Meta Tags, proper coding and content for relevant material in order to properly store your website in an indexed file. The search engines then have a huge database of managed words from which to match queries. When a person types a request in a search box millions of calculations are made and the relevant material is delivered to the consumer. SEO can drastically increase your chances of having a search engine appropriately index your website to perform a proper match to the customer. The search is the process of getting your customer to see your website.

Finally, it is important to recognize that the indexing is done by developed algorithms used by each separate search engine. While you may show up very quickly in a Google search it may take longer to show up in a Bing search. These search engines often work independently of one another. The algorithms are changed periodically so SEO tends to be a continual process. Proper Search Engine Optimization should be a part of your website design development. After all why spend all the money and attention to developing a great site if not to drive customers to your business? If you designed your website in house or had someone build it for you, Brainstorm Media can review your site for proper SEO implementation. Next article we will get into the nuts and bolts of how SOE is accomplished.