That's all they have and I can't do a darn thing with it. What shame - what a loss - that at some point they've hired someone to create a logo for their business (the face of their business) and they don't have access to it. There is nothing I can do for someone at that point. They either have to track down the designer who created it for them, or I have to do my best to recreate it, which essentially involves paying me for something they've already paid for.

Go look for your company's logo. Did you hire a professional designer to create it for you? If so, they should have provided it to you in various file formats like an .eps, .jpg, .tif, .psd, .gif and .png. The .eps file is "gold" so to speak. It's vector (a line illustration) that can be resized to any size or resolution without degradation (unlike .psd/.tif/.jpg/.gif/.png files that are created with pixels. The resolution of those files is translated into dpi, or dots per inch. See the example of my logo below). .Eps files can go from a brochure to a billboard and continue to look as brilliant as you are. Another designer can also take that .eps file and convert it into any of the other file formats you or they may need in order to get your job done.

[Side note: If your cousin's neighbor's high school son designed it for you, it's quite possible that the art you paid for was not created in professional design software, and therefore will not be adequate for most print applications. I fully encourage the hiring of creative up-and-comers for these types of endeavors, but be sure they're capable of providing you with usable files.]

Here are the instructions I provide to my clients when I send them their newly-created logo:

I will always have your logos saved in my archive. But to protect your investment in your logo and your brand, I suggest to all of my clients that these files are saved in various locations. Save them to a few discs that you can give to vendors (i.e. screenprinters, designers, etc.) that you won't worry about getting back. Save them in a few locations at work, whether on hard drives or on discs, so that your company will always have access to quality logo files.

Your homework: Find your logo. Stat. It should be the first item on your priority list. Make sure you have, at the very least, the "gold" .eps file. If you don't have it, or if you only have a .gif or a .jpg of your logo, contact the designer immediately and get the files. Then, save the logo in various locations as described above so it's available to a few trusted co-workers. Nobody wants to get hit by a bus, but it happens. And if you need assistance figuring out if the files you have are sufficient for the print/web applications your company may need in the future, don't want until you're scrambling to get your project done - shoot me an email now and I'm happy to take a look.

My logo looks awful here, doesn't it? I took my .eps file and resized it to 1" @ 72dpi .jpg. I then increased its size to 5", still at 72dpi. You can see what happened to it. For print applications, you need your logo at 300dpi. So imagine how crummy this thing would look if I did that? If there is anything on your print materials that should look brilliant - it's your company's logo.

• Binders & Notebooks
• Product Boxes
• Brochures & Stationery
• CD-Roms
• DVDs
• Hardcover Books
• Magazines, Reports & Newsletters
• Paperback Books
• Presentations & Screenshots
• Gift Cards
• Bundles & Courses

If you'd like a beautiful image of your product to place on your website, give me a call!

Also, if anyone has the phone number for Epson tech support, I'd appreciate it.

Have a great day! :)

The discussion included passionate exchanges about topics such as:
1) Font
2) Color
3) The redesign of Red Ruff and Blue Mews - and whether or not Red Ruff looks crippled now (seriously)
4) The change from all caps to all lowercase
5) Whether or not the animals should be aligned with the baseline of "petco" or the tagline

Two discussions though were my favorites. The first, about adding the word "healthy" to the tagline:

"I HATE THE NEW LOGO ITS WAYYY MEAN WHAT IF YOU FOUND A PET ON THE STREAT GAVE IT ITS SHOTS AND STUFF BUT IT STILL ISNT HEALTHY SO YOU GO TO PETCO TO BUY FOOD BUT HE CANT COME CAUSE HES NOT HEALTHY"

"The new one isn't bad, but I just don't think that "healthy" should be put in there. I know they're trying to get people to focus on feeding their pets better, but you're going to have people (because this is the way the world works, unfortuntely) that are offended because their pet may suffer from an illness that can not be cured, or has nothing to do with how their owner is taking care of them."

"If I had an overweight or sick animal I wouldn't go to Petco anymore."

Have we become so PC that we're actually going to crucify a company for adding the word "healthy" to their tagline, because someone with a less-than-healthy animal is offended? Seriously, who would possibly be offended? And if you are offended, may I suggest there are a multitude of other offensive things you should get worked up about? If you notice, all three comments above are from people who think they know what someone who has an unhealthy animal would say. They're not comments from people who actually own unhealthy animals. And if you have an unhealthy animal, how about you come to Petco ("where the healthy pets go") where we sell everything you need: food, shelter, toys and diversions, grooming supplies, etc.

The other discussion really made me laugh:

"Really a new logo? The money that was waisted on the time and resources to create your 'new' logo could have better been spent on a donation to helping animal shelters. You always ask your customers to make donations when they purchase items at your store maybe you should do as you ask."

Yes, because a business should not be concerned about marketing. At all. Rather than continuing further with my point in my own words, allow me to have another FB user do it for me:

"Petco is a business. They are not wasting money when they spend it on things like marketing. For those who say they should have donated the money they used for this, do you ever buy yourself new clothes or home decor or do you use all of your money for benevolence?"

What is the lesson here? For those who responded to Petco's call for opinions: If you're going to give one, please learn how to spell and turn off your caps lock if you would like any credibility. And for Petco?

"You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not please all of the people all of the time."

 And don't ask questions on Facebook that you really don't want 273 answers to.

We're having to ask our respondents, without including a postage paid return envelope, to either return the survey to our Clubhouse by hand or via USPS. Please forgive me, but my faith in my neighbors for this amount of self-motivation is lacking. Not that I can blame them.

So, I just developed an online survey using the same information and shortened the 63-character survey web address to 13-chracters using Tiny URL. I am going to include that web address in the letter in the hopes that it will make taking the survey even easier. The survey could also be emailed and posted to our community Facebook page - if, of course, we had a list of emails or more than 20 people on the Facebook page.

The number of resources out there for saving money and increasing the response to your marketing/communication efforts is astonishing. They key of course is to take advantage of them, and building your contact database.

"Facebook released the results of a study it conducted on what types of posts by the Facebook Pages of journalists performed the best. Among the highlights: Incorporating personal analysis in posts increased referral clicks by 20%, and including a thumbnail image when posting a link boosted Likes by 65% and comments by 50%."

Other highlights include:

• Turn off auto-posting: Cross-posting Twitter and Facebook updates can decrease your clicks because you are not able to include personal analysis. Turn off the auto-posting and include more personal comment with your post.

• Posts with thumbnail images get more feedback.

• Posts Thursday through Sunday have higher engagement rates. (However, there is fluctuation on this find by industry. As stated, this study was focused on journalists and folks tend to read news on the weekends. I have personally observed more Facebook activity during the week, early morning and late afternoon. I have also found, as a West Coaster with a majority of East Coast friends, to not bother to post anything on a Friday afternoon!)

The best thing you can do is follow your Page Insights, which will allow you craft your posting strategy based on your performance trends.

Click here for the entire article.

Source: Facebook’s Study of Journalist Page Engagement Reveals Page Post Best Practices (http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/07/13/facebook-page-post-best-practices/)

Cool Chicks Read merch on Café Press

Cool Chicks Read on Facebook

First Book on Facebook

First Book Website

Crowdsourcing is considered exploitative in our business - and in many others - because designers who have submitted work for these contests, but are not chosen, are not compensated for their efforts. And, when a service becomes commoditized, the standards for that service diminish.

If you would like to learn more, please read Laurel's blog here. And click here to find out what the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), of which I am a professional member, has to say about crowdsourcing.

Source: Crowdsourcing in My Face (http://laurelsdesigndeli.blogspot.com/2011/08/crowdsourcing-in-my-face.html) by Laurel Black

Monitoring your social media presence is incredibly important - but many business owners and marketers are concerned it will take too much time.

You don't need a whole team devoted to social media monitoring - with some tools and these free tips, even one single person can keep an eye on your social media presence. Cover these 5 steps over a cup of coffee and you'll build social media into a healthy daily inbound marketing routine!

1) Check Twitter for chatter about your company (2 minutes): Use tools like TweetDeck or Twitter Search to monitor conversations about your company in real-time.

2) Scan Google Alerts (1.5 minutes): Check Google Alerts for your company name, products, executives or brand terms. To set this up, enter your search terms in a Google Alert and select to receive updates as they happen or once daily. Now, when people blog about your products, an alert will be sent to your inbox. You can read the articles and respond right away!

3) Check Facebook stats (1 minute): Visit your Company Page's Facebook Insights. This can be found under the page's main photo if you are an admin for your page. Scan your active users and interaction stats. Check out your wall posts or new discussions if you have them enabled for your page.

4) Answer Industry-related LinkedIn questions (3 minutes): Search for questions on LinkedIn that you or members of your company can answer. You can set up an RSS feed for specific question categories to go to your Google Reader as well. When you find a relevant question, respond and include a link to your website or a relevant blog post that might be helpful to your audience.

5) Use Google Reader to check Flickr, Digg and others (2.5 minutes): Also set up RSS feeds for searches on your company name and industry terms in other social media sites. Similar to monitoring LinkedIn and Twitter, your Reader will serve as a great place to centralize your other searches too!

Want to monitor, engage, and measure your social media presence all with one tool? HubSpot's inbound marketing software makes this easy. Our Inbound Marketing Specialists can show you a demonstration of the tools with some of your very own brand and industry keywords.