V.L. Thompson's Blog, page 17

5 Tips on Hiring the Right Employees

Article by Valerie Thompson from blog.psprint.com

I’ve chosen to focus the blogs for this New Year on how to deal with prosperity. Last year we looked at how to acquire business, how to market yourself, and how to deal with the frustrations that come with just starting out your business. And believe me, that subject matter will always be relevant. But if you’ve gotten to the point where all of that advice paid off, and now you’re getting more business than you can handle yourself, you might want to think about bringing some additional people on board.

As a graphic artist, hiring someone doesn’t necessarily mean that you need another graphic artist. You may need an administrative assistant that can handle scheduling and your accounting books. You may need a marketing representative that can keep the business rolling in. But more than likely, you’ll probably be leaning toward bringing another artist in to handle some of the design work.

I came to that point in my business, and boy was it a new experience! I’ve never been anyone else’s boss but my own, and I was just getting the hang of that. But the bottom line was the work was pouring in and I needed help. Here are five of the basics on hiring an employee.

1. Check your budget

You can’t have a paid employee if you don’t have any money. When I started this process, I felt like I was between a rock and a hard place. I had work coming in, but my accounts receivables were out of control. I couldn’t very well “hire” another designer and then tell them to do the work and wait for pay; they can freelance on their own! I had to set up a structure where previous projects not only paid for an employee to handle future ones, but my own bills as well.

If you don’t have the money to pay someone, interns are always a good way to go. Being that they need experience more than anything, you could find some very interested candidates that are currently in college or just graduated. Keep in mind that although students are normally very eager to learn and get started in this industry, their skill level is normally lower simply due to their lack of experience. You would also have to factor in the time that it would take you (or them) to critique, correct and revise their work.

2. Be specific in your job posting

Now that you know that you can (or can’t) pay someone to work for you, you want to create a job posting. This requires that you make a job description that explains the specific duties of the new hire. Make sure to include even the smallest of tasks or details from e-mailing new clients and performing consultations to dropping off print deliveries, making edits to existing projects and helping to brainstorm on new ones. Mention if they need their own transportation, Mac computer, access to the Internet, the ability to work on weekends if applicable, pay and length of time that you’ll need their services. Whatever you know this person is going to do for you, WRITE IT DOWN. It helps if you take one week to go through your regular business routine and write down just what it is that you do. When you’ve finished your list, place a check mark next to those duties that can be performed by the employee.

After you receive notification from interested candidates, sift through them and find which ones you like best. For all others that you’re not interested in, make sure to send them an e-mail or letter that says how you appreciate them applying but you’re not interested. There is nothing worse than wondering if you got the job or not!

3. View a portfolio first

The candidates that you’re interested in should be because you’ve seen their portfolio and are impressed. It may be tempting to hire friends or family because they think they have a flair for art. But you need to see the hard evidence. If they can’t produce a good portfolio, then they can’t be considered. If for some reason you’re on the fence about hiring someone due to their portfolio (or lack of one) there is nothing wrong with having them take a performance test. Set up a simple mock project for them to perform, and see how they do. Have them create a unique business card design or sample flyer. If you’re satisfied with the results, put them in the “hire” pile. If not, send them that oh-so-important regret letter.

4. Make sure they sign a contract

The business of art can be a tricky one simply because we’re dealing with the business of ideas and intellectual property. You don’t want to hire someone who will leave the office at the end of the day and try to use your business ideas and your artwork for their own personal benefit. You also don’t want them going after your clients or replicating your future endeavors, so make sure that you protect yourself.

Draw up a contract that states that the artwork and the ideas that are produced by your company are your property and are not to be shared. If you find that the employee is doing this without your permission, you have the right to take action against them. There is a lot of great information about graphic design contracts on About.com.

5. Screen over the phone and meet in person, if possible

We are so used to e-mails and Internet chats to sustain relationships, but nothing beats the telephone or face-to-face meeting. When you’re doing business with someone, it helps to put a voice or face to your dealings, if possible. You want to make sure, especially if they are going to be doing consultations and meeting clients on behalf of your company that they are well groomed, professional and their speaking voice and phone manner are inviting. Test out their people skills and how they answer questions. An interview is always best, so that you can get the first glimpse on how your working relationship will start off.

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How to Give Your Team Feedback

Article by Rebecca Knight from blogs.hbr.org

Business books, magazines, and blogs are chock full of advice about how to give feedback to individuals, but how do you do the same for your entire team? What type of constructive criticism is appropriate in a group setting? How much is too much? And how should your colleagues help?

What the Experts Say

Providing feedback isn’t solely the team leader’s responsibility, according to Mary Shapiro who teaches organizational behavior at Simmons College and is the author of the HBR Guide to Leading Teams. For starters, that would be impractical. “You can’t be the only one holding everyone accountable because you can’t possibly observe everything that’s going on,” she says. Second, if you’re the only one praising or critiquing, group dynamics suffer. “You want to give everyone the opportunity to say his piece,” she says. Your job as manager is to ensure that team members are “providing regular constructive feedback,” says Roger Schwarz, an organizational psychologist and the author of Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams. “There needs to be an expectation within the team this is a shared leadership responsibility,” he says. Here are some principles to help you lay the groundwork for ensuring and enhancing this effective team practice.

Set expectations early

“When a team works well together, it’s because its members are operating from the same mindset and are clear about their goals and their norms,” says Schwarz. At the start of a new project, help your direct reports “decide how they’re going to work together” — and importantly, how they will “hold each other accountable,” says Shapiro. She recommends coming up with an “explicit agreement” about how the team will handle issues like the division of labor and deadlines. Stipulate, for example, that if a colleague knows he is going to miss an important deadline for his portion of a project, he must email the team at least 24 hours in advance. “If someone doesn’t follow through on the expectations the team created, he’ll get feedback from the group about what happened because he fell short.”

Create opportunities for regular check-ins

There’s no hard-and-fast rule about how often your team should meet to review how things are going, but in general, “it’s better to start out with more structure and relax it over time, than to start out with too little structure and have to impose it later,” Shapiro says. When you’re in the early stages of creating a project plan, schedule regular check-ins as part of the timeline. “If the team is running smoothly you can always cancel the meeting.”

Ask general questions

Giving and receiving feedback is a skill and most people are not naturally good at it, says Shapiro. “One of your goals is to develop your team’s capacity to give feedback and help people get used to articulating how they feel the team is doing.” Take baby steps. At the second or third check-in, ask the group general questions such as, “On a scale of one to five, how well is the team sharing the workload? What needs to change?” As the leader, you’re the moderator of this conversation. Once team members have spoken, offer your two cents about “where the team excels and where it faces challenges,” Schwarz adds.

Work your way up to structured reviews

As your team gets accustomed to working together and sharing feedback, “you need to do a deeper dive into how team members are doing at the individual level,” says Shapiro. Ask each person to prepare specific reviews of colleagues to be read aloud at the next meeting. “Every team member should say one thing they appreciate about the other members and one thing that would be helpful if they did differently.” The aim is to help “people understand how their behavior is impacting others,” she says. “If they hear the same kind of feedback from multiple people, that is powerful.” When it’s your turn, Schwarz recommends validating your observations with others. “Ask: ‘Are you seeing things the same way?’ Get other people’s reactions.”

Keep performance issues out in the open

The management mantra for giving individuals feedback is: “Praise in public, criticize in private.” But in team settings, this goes out the window, according to Schwarz. “In the traditional view, it’s inappropriate to raise issues in a meeting that would make people uncomfortable or put people on the spot.” But your job as a leader is not always to make people feel comfortable. When teams have problems, “it should all be out in the open,” he says. “You alone can’t help people improve; there needs to be a group plan.” After you’ve “harnessed the power of the group” to prompt change, one-on-one conversations with struggling colleagues are then in order, says Shapiro. “Say to them: ‘What did you hear from the team? How are you going to do things differently? And how can I help?’”

Foster team relationships

Conflicts between coworkers are inevitable. But “you can’t just say, ‘I’ll handle it,’ because [as the manager] you can’t solve a problem to which you’re not a primary stakeholder,” Schwarz says. “You can coach people on how to have difficult conversations, and you can help facilitate those conversations, but team members need to address issues where the interdependencies lie.” Help colleagues build trust before problems arise by encouraging open conversation. And, when there is conflict, make sure they understand, they need to “give feedback directly to each other.” says Schwarz. Adds Shapiro: “The only way good work gets done is through good relationships — the better the relationship, the better the work.”

Debrief every project

At the end of a project or when your team is disbanding, schedule a final check-in to discuss “what worked and what didn’t, what should we bring forward and what should we do differently next time,” says Schwarz. Take careful notes: the information gleaned in this session should not only be part of the organization’s final project review, but also part of each team member’s annual performance appraisal, says Shapiro. The objective is to “provide closure on the team and also determine what each member needs to do to further develop,” she says.

Read full article on blogs.hbr.org

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30 Terrific Tools for Small Businesses

Article by Jason Nazar from Forbes.com

What are the right products and vendors to use for my business?  At Docstoc, we have over 30 million registered members, and our small business owners & operators have always asked us this question.  Sometimes we didn’t have the answers, so we built a free service, ExpertCircle to help business operators discover the best products and vendors other professionals use.  Here are my personal reviews on 30 of the top terrific tools for small businesses, feel free to add your own reviews and thoughts on these products by clicking the links.

1.     Accounting & Finance

- Freshbooks: If you need online invoicing, time tracking and expense services, this program is easy to navigate, even for the most novice business owners.
- Wave Accounting: Quickly manage payroll and manage your business receipts for free.
- Expensify: Get a handle on all of your business expenses and invoices so you can concentrate on more important things.

 

2.     Customer Support

- ZenDesk: Streamline your customer service interface, create support boards and streamline your response time.
- GetSatisfaction: A great customer community platform for interacting with your users, getting feedback and providing technical support.
- SurveyMonkey: Build free surveys to conduct market research, and keep a pulse on customer desires and satisfaction.

 

3.     Human Resources

ZipRecruiter:  Find better talent with cross-job-board posting, resume screening and a point-based score chart to find the best candidates.
Intelius: Run a background check on prospective employees, browse criminal records and other information to make sure you’re hiring only the best people.
AnyPerk: Reward employees with one of the most comprehensive perks programs out there, which provides discounts in countless services.

 

4.     Legal

- Legal Zoom Business Attorney Plan: This attorney plan specifically tailored to small businesses provides attorney reviews of contracts and other legal documents, for a fraction of the price.
- Docusign: The most prominent service for eSignatures that is both legal and secure.
- Trademarkia: Search over 6 million registered logos, names and slogans to make sure your name or idea isn’t taken.

 

5.     Sales

- Highrise:  Organize notes, tasks and email conversations for up to 30,000 customers, leads, partners and contacts.
- Leads360: A sales management solution specifically tailored to turn leads into conversion, and track your performance so you can easily improve your sales.
- BidSketch: Create professional and clean client proposals in just minutes, and get a certified client signature when they approve.



6.     Marketing

- MailChimp:  Email marketing made simple with an easy-to-use collection of newsletter templates, as well as the ability to customize your own design.
- SpyFu: A keyword tool for comparing the SEM tactics of your competitors, so that you can meet equal success in your online advertising and SEO campaigns.
- HubSpot: This all-in-one inbound marketing software facilitates SEO blogging tips, lead nurturing, marketing automation and more.

 

Read full article on Forbes.com

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How to Create a Competitive Makeover

Article posted by The Scribe from C12group.com

The alarm sounds after a sobering report reveals your industry is stagnating and your company is losing market share to an incursion of competitors wanting to carve-off a substantial piece of your share.

So how are you going to change ‘the game’ and improve your company’s market position? You will need reliable and up-to-date data collected from:

- Targeted customer research regarding unsatisfied desires and next generation expectations


- Industry benchmarking to highlight strengths, weaknesses and opportunities


- Tracking reports capturing reasons for customer additions and defections

This information is used to form a strategy to fend-off the incursion of competition and increase your share of the stagnant or shrinking market.  But keep in mind there is a danger in just focusing all your resources toward short-term combat with competitors.

 

According to Don Barefoot, CEO of The C12 Group, “Simply focusing on our immediate competition (instead of what’s truly possible) leads to ‘me- too’ mediocrity. Preoccupation with competitors can cause some or all of the following:

- Loss of Brand Identity: Competitors in a given area can copy one another’s products, services, and methods to the point where it’s hard for customers to distinguish between them, forcing unhealthy ‘commodity’ pricing battles.


- Local Myopia: Companies can get so focused on their local struggle with each other that they lose sight of their customers and markets and become an outdated local fraternity (e.g., U.S. textiles, furniture, televisions, etc.).


- Incrementalism: We become so reactive and busy with minor cost-reductions, that breakthrough innovations that would create serious savings or enhanced value are overlooked.


- Short-term-itis: We’re so concerned over short-term sales and income that we ignore vital long-term strategies, opportunities, and the overall health of our business model. This steals the resources necessary to fuel innovation and results in change coming about defensively, only in response to a crisis.

Read full article on C12group.com

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Are You A Leader Or A Hostage?

Article by from C12group.com

As a top executive, have you accommodated high-performing employees that insist on doing things their way – refusing to follow the shared company policies and protocols- in spite of the damage it does to the overall organization?

Perhaps you, as the leader of the company, are so intent on exercising your positional prerogatives that you also regularly take such liberties. If so, no one would ever confuse your workplace as a ‘team-first’ environment and, in either case, these aren’t great places to work. In fact, when the boss acts this way, it simply invites others to behave similarly, defeating any chance to breed a winning culture based on the level of trust and shared values where the very best ‘volunteer’ participants can grow and thrive.

When the anger, threats, defensiveness, and arrogance of ‘top performers’ and leaders are allowed as special freedoms granted to them due to their special status as valuable experts or indispensable assets, we sow the seeds of cynicism, anarchy, and long-term company decline.

For senior Christian business leaders, such an operating culture represents the opposite of the servant leadership Christ has called us to model and promote.

If you’re the CEO and either carry this contagious disease or turn a blind eye to it with key individuals, it’s time to look in the mirror and step up to make necessary corrections. The data is in!

In spite of a few notorious ‘celebrity’ CEOs who serve as the exceptions that prove the rule, trustworthy servant leaders who lead in a humble but firm, team-first manner (aka Good to Great’s ‘Level 5 Leaders’) are generally able to radically outperform their peers.

Next, think about your direct reports and most indispensable employees. If any of them fit this same untouchable, ‘grenade thrower’ profile, and you can’t imagine conducting business without them, you’re facing a real-time personal leadership dilemma. Your fear or hesitancy to confront the issue erodes your leadership, damages the individual in question, hurts your team, and holds the entire company hostage in a way that does long-term damage to the overall health of your organization and its growth prospects.

Fear, habits, and procrastination in resolving these poisonous cultural situations inevitably leads to much bigger losses than we’d experience by acting decisively to confront the issue along the way. The fact is, the guilty party might be willing to reform, assuming we’re committed to providing remedial help and accountability. The trust and respect of our stakeholders (i.e., employees, customers, suppliers, and trade associates) for our leadership and company hangs in the balance.

As Christian business leaders, we’ve accepted a sacred trust as followers of Christ called to lead businesses in a way that honors Him. Our actions as stewards of the businesses He has entrusted to us, should reflect His values and character. When team trust and company core principles are violated by a supposedly ‘untouchable’ top performer and we choose not to take corrective action, long-term damage to our spiritual authority and capacity to lead for maximum impact (both now and for eternity) has taken place.

Jesus was not a respecter of persons and was quick to “call a spade a spade” no matter the position or standing of the person in question. He was quick to call them to high expectations based on objective truth and did so with the person’s eternal best and highest outcome in mind, instructing them to leave their sin, make corrections, or serve God and others more fully. For leaders, tolerating compromise and mistakenly wanting to be “nice” or avoid conflict while everyone else watches and waits is deadly to our efforts to build a God-honoring workplace.

The Bible says, “When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people’s hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong.” (Ecclesiastes 8:11)

So, what’s the best way to free yourself and regain your position as a leader? We should respond as we so often see Jesus and Paul respond in the New Testament: by speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).

Paul said, “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.” (Ephesians 4:25)

The next time someone threatens your company’s unity and teamwork by presuming that they are above known company policies, processes, and core principles, try the following:

• Express your appreciation for the contribution they’ve made, then clearly state those behaviors inconsistent with the company’s ‘team first’ values, core principles and operational protocols – and why they will not be tolerated.
• Ask the employee for constructive ideas on how to fix the problem in a way that would still allow them to be successful.

Read full article on C12group.com

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At Christian Companies, Religious Principles Complement Business Practices

Article by Mark Oppenheimer from NYTimes.com

In June, a federal court ruled that Hobby Lobby, the art-supply chain, could not be fined for refusing to offer its employees morning-after contraception coverage. This challenge to the Affordable Care Act will surely go to the Supreme Court, where Hobby Lobby’s lawyers will argue that a commercial company can, legally speaking, be Christian — with the same rights to religious freedom that a person has.

 In-N-Out Burger, also faith-based, prints Bible verses on milkshake cups and burger bags.

Hobby Lobby is not alone in identifying itself as a Christian business. In-N-Out Burger, Chick-fil-A, the trucking company Covenant Transport, and the clothing store Forever 21 all call or market themselves as Christian or faith-based.

But what does that mean? To promote a conservative agenda? To insist on certain music in their stores or to print Bible verses on their wrappers? What about bigger questions, like how management treats — and how much it pays — its workers?

Most Christian-identified businesses were founded by evangelical Protestants who are mostly politically and socially conservative. (The well-known Roman Catholic businessman Tom Monaghan, who founded and then sold Domino’s Pizza, also finances conservative causes.) Chick-fil-A is well known for its gifts to gay-conversion ministries, but it also supports group foster homes. Tyson Foods, which was founded by evangelicals and, according to its Web site, seeks to “honor God,” offers chaplaincy services to employees.

Hobby Lobby is now famous for its stance against what its founders consider abortion pills. But it also promotes a central liberal goal by offering a minimum wage of $14 an hour for full-time employees, about double that of the fast-food employees who struck nationwide this week for better pay and conditions. Hobby Lobby closes on Sundays because of the Christian Sabbath, but guaranteeing all workers that one day off surely pleases secular workers, too — even if some of them may object to the stores’ Christian-music-only policy.

Forever 21 prints “John 3:16” on the bottom of its shopping bags. Covenant Transport, founded in 1985 by David A. Parker, an evangelical, wears its Christianity on the side of its trucks: in its name, which refers to the many covenants made with God in the Bible, and in its logo, a scroll that recalls the parchment on which biblical texts would first have been written.

The Bible verses on In-N-Out Burger milkshake cups, burger bags and other packaging are quite fun, even for an atheist. The verses are tiny and varied, so you have to hunt and see what turns up. Proverbs 24:16 is on the fry boat: “For though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again, but the wicked are brought down by calamity.”

The verses were introduced by Rich Snyder, the founder’s son, who died in 1993. They “are small because he wanted to express his faith without imposing it on others,” Carl Van Fleet, an In-N-Out spokesman, wrote in an e-mail.

Steve Green, the president of Hobby Lobby and a Southern Baptist, said that the Christian identity of his company affects how it negotiates with vendors.

“We’ll negotiate as, ‘Here’s what we’ll pay,’ and leave it at that,” Mr. Green said on Wednesday. I asked if that meant that they never budged on their initial offers, which seemed improbable. “Sometimes you don’t intend on paying more, but they come back, and things do change,” he said. “But we’re not going to intentionally lie in our negotiating.”

Focusing on particular practices, like quotes on fry boats or gospel music, can obscure deep philosophical divisions among Christians who think about business ethics. For some, the Bible is a kind of business manual you’d buy in an airport bookstore, offering timeless precepts that happen to maximize profits.

Read full article on NYTimes.com

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How to Make Web Videos Pay

Article by Karen E. Klein from Businessweek.com

Question: What are some of the best practices of the people who are successfully monetizing their Internet shows? Can you please share some ideas or tips?

Answer: When people think of Internet shows they may have slick, Hollywood productions in mind, such as Netflix’s (NFLX)House of Cards. Far more common on YouTube (GOOG) and other video hosting sites are tens of thousands of small, independent Web productions ranging from entertainment to how-to videos, product demonstrations, and general silliness.

Most independent producers are hobbyists, posting homemade videos for friends and family without worrying about making money from their efforts. But others are finding ways to profit from their videos, and some are even turning them into lucrative, full-time entrepreneurial ventures.

So, how can you make your Internet show yield an income stream, rather than a mere hobby? Target a specific audience that businesses want to reach, and feed that audience until it’s big enough to attract advertisers.

“Savvy advertisers love Web shows because the content is usually highly targeted to a very specific demographic,” says Andrew Lock, who produces a Web TV show for entrepreneurs called Help! My Business Sucks! “For example, on TV, the best a skateboard advertiser could do is run an ad on a network that attracts young people, but online they can sponsor a skateboard show, which is a 100 percent match for their intended demographic.”

The first part—reaching a targeted viewership—is not difficult for many online content producers. Most are making videos about their own interests and expertise and aiming them at narrow slices of viewers. Yet even a highly targeted audience can be huge: A beauty industry survey released in February by video software analysis company Pixability counted 700 million YouTube beauty video views every month. The company identified 45,000 independent producers making videos about hair, nails, and makeup, some of them teenage girls with more than 1 million followers, says Rob Ciampa, Pixability’s chief marketing officer.

Overall, the independent content producers do a much better job of attracting viewers and subscribers than the established beauty brands do with their videos, he says. That’s probably because the one type of content that does not do well online is anything resembling a television commercial. “The digital audience’s expectations are for genuine subject matter experts,” Ciampa says. “And for a lot of the successful people, monetizing their brand is tied to their personality.”

 

Read full article on Businessweek.com

Adding Personality and Trust to Your Landing Pages Can Maximize Conversion Rates

Article by James Scherer from KISSmetrics on Entrepreneur.com.  Web design by Fresh Consulting

We’re constantly testing and tweaking our landing pages to maximize our conversion rates.

We know a page that converts at 15% instead of 10% can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in increased revenue for our business.

This article will discuss the rising importance of personality and trust in brand communication, particularly in landing page optimization. I’ll give you five strategies for presenting a user-friendly landing page and a personable business that you can apply to improve your conversion rates. We’ll go through techniques that can give your website that certain “something” which gets a visitor to convert.

Before we push on, I’ll quickly preface these recommendations with this: As with any landing page variable, the ones I’ve included in this article are simply tests I’ve seen work in the past, and they may work for your business.

Landing page optimization is a continuous exercise of testing. It is pitting control against variation until you’re satisfied (which you never should be).

I do give case studies for each of the variables I recommend, so you know I’m not just stabbing blindly in the dark. Just remember, these are unproven hypotheses until you test them yourself.

 

Add Personality and Trust to your Landing Page

When we meet someone new, we unconsciously process minor, inexplicable cues. For no specific reason that we are aware of, we either like the person or we don’t.

An example of this unconscious decision making is the fact that we tend to trust someone who is confidently poised, has an open air, and speaks calmly, slowly, and directly. We are less trusting of people who appear weak, closed off, and (here’s where it gets a bit crazy) not very good looking.

Landing pages are no different.

When someone lands on your landing page, the decision to stay takes between three and eight seconds. This decision is made half consciously and half unconsciously. Half of it is based on the value that is communicated quickly and clearly, and half of it is based on those indefinable factors that just “connect” with your landing page traffic (or don’t).

Here’s what I mean:

Below are two lead generation page examples from Software-as-a-Service companies (SaaS). Which would you engage with first?

Site A:

Site B:

These pages had about five seconds to convince us to keep looking and convert.

Can you quantify each and every one of the variables that makes you prefer Site B over Site A? Or is it something more complicated?

Your landing page needs this “je ne sais quoi” – that indefinable something that puts you a notch above your competitors.

Let’s check out five strategies that add personality, increase trust, make your page a friendly one, and overall, can increase your page’s conversion rate and your business revenue.

 

1. Use Friendly Colors

Color psychology is the exploration of how color impacts our perceptions, reactions, and emotions. In marketing terms, it’s about using color tactically to increase engagement, cause a desired action, and create an emotional connection or specific feeling related to your business or your product.

Color triggers the most innate part of our selves. We see green and are calmed because, in the days before supermarkets, green meant water and life. We see the color red, and genuinely, our heartbeat speeds up, causing us to act more quickly on our feelings.

Or did you think it was just a coincidence that HubSpot’s A/B Test of CTA button colors resulted in red outperforming green and conversion rates increasing by 21%?

Color can make your landing page friendly and increase your click-through rate. The right color scheme puts your landing page visitor at ease and is the basis for a good first impression.

It’s all about what you want to communicate with your landing page – the “look” you’re going for. Here are a few recommendations based on color psychology:

The Professional Look: Shades of gray, white, and black – green for CTA

Black and gray evoke sophistication and sincerity when used in partnership with a crisp white (avoid beige, brown, and tans, as they’ll wash out your page).

The Youthful, Startup Look: Dark blue, light blue, gray, and white – orange for CTA

Blue is (across both genders and all age-groups) most people’s favorite color. It is said to create the sensation of trust and security. Lighter blues are calming, while darker blues denote professionalism and sincerity.

The Environmental, Eco-Friendly Look: Green, white, and brown – red or orange for CTA

As I mentioned above, green communicates health and wellbeing. More recently it has started to indicate the eco-friendly movement and environmentalism.

The Female-Focused Look: Purple, white, and beige – orange or yellow for CTA

Purple is the favorite color of 23% of women, and 0% of men. It communicates womanhood, maternity, and comfort. Interestingly, it increases in popularity as women get older.

The Male-Focused Look: Black, red, and gold – red for CTA

Solid black landing pages with vibrant reds communicate strength and permanence, appealing to masculine sensibilities.

Each of these color schemes requires you to know your business’s target market. This also is an essential part of language in landing pages (something I’ll discuss in Section 3 below).

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to use the wrong color scheme, particularly when optimizing CTA buttons. The right amount of contrast can focus your visitor’s attention, while too much contrast can increase bounce rates or even outright scare your landing page traffic.

For instance:

Read the full article on Entrepreneur.com

Differences in Public-Cloud Versus Private-Cloud Security

Article by Karen Scarfone from BizTechMagazine.com

Here are 11 security considerations that IT administrators should weigh as they approach that decision.

When planning a cloud deployment, choosing a public-cloud or private-cloud model is one of the most important decisions to be made, especially from a security perspective. IT administrators should weigh 11 considerations as they approach making that decision.

 

1. How significant are cost savings among the motivations for moving to the cloud?

Generally speaking, greater cost savings can be achieved by moving to a public cloud; lesser savings are achieved in a private cloud. IT decision-makers should carefully evaluate the relative costs of public and private architectures and use cost as a factor in the process, being careful to factor in security-related costs and the potential cost of data breaches.

 

2. Who needs access to data and applications?

If only internal staff members need access to the data and applications, it may make more sense to go with a private cloud. If the general public is going to be accessing the data and applications, a public cloud often makes more sense (in part because it’s likely that the data isn’t as sensitive).

 

3. How much of a security concern are other applications?

Many organizations avoid public clouds and some even avoid private clouds, because of the increased risks of having multiple applications on the same physical server. For applications with particularly sensitive data or services, the traditional architecture of full isolation — (having the resources for one application on a dedicated server) may still provide the best security model.

 

4. Is the organization willing to trust a third party with its data?

This ultimately depends on how sensitive the data is, what the threats are against it, and how much risk the organization is willing to accept. Many IT shops keep the most sensitive data out of public clouds because of the increased risk of compromise, and some organizations are prohibited from using public clouds because of compliance concerns.

 

5. How much visibility do you need into data and application security?

For some types of data, such as data that is available to the general public, organizations may want to log usage of the data for analytical purposes. But it’s not critical to know who is accessing which pieces of data. For particularly sensitive data, extensive visibility is needed because of regulations that require detailed logging of all access. The more visibility an organization needs into security, the more likely it is to favor a private cloud over a public cloud.

 

6. What types of network-based and host-based security controls are required for monitoring application activity?

Some enterprises rely heavily on certain security controls, such as intrusion detection systems. Such security controls might be available in a public cloud, but are much more likely to be available in a private cloud. If an organization requires certain security controls to meet its own policies or external regulations, it should investigate whether they are available from a public-cloud provider.

 

Read full article on BizTechMagazine.com

For Small Businesses, Green Technology Is The Way To Grow

Article by Lisa Wirthman on Forbes.com

The series of extreme weather events of late has made sustainability a choice topic in 2014. More than 80 percent of people taking part in a worldwide survey believe climate change will be responsible for more natural disasters in the future, and three-fourths would use renewable energy if it were more available.

What’s good for the environment is also good for business, said Laurie McCabe, cofounder and partner in research firm SMB Group. And with IT vendors introducing more energy-saving products, it’s easier than ever for small businesses to help the environment, save money and earn customer loyalty by going green.

 

Use the Cloud

Many companies underutilize their technology, McCabe said. Small businesses tend to use only 10 percent to 20 percent of the capacity of their servers, which require the same amount of power regardless of how much capacity is used. Virtualization technology, which partitions hardware to support different types of applications on one server, can help companies reduce the amount of servers they have to purchase, power and support.

Another environmentally friendly solution is cloud computing, McCabe said. Cloud services push applications and services offsite to a third-party data center, reducing a company’s hardware and support needs. And cloud-based service providers have a strong financial incentive to optimize their storage capacity, which can provide a more energy-efficient solution, she said. In fact, if all U.S. office workers moved to the cloud, the energy used by information technology could be reduced by up to 87 percent, studies show.

 

Shop Green

Major IT vendors are also building “green” server and storage systems that require less energy to power and cool, McCabe said. IBM IBM +0.74% Research recently announced solar energy technology that can harness power equal to 2,000 suns for less than 10 cents per kilowatt hour (KWh).

Dell is also “greening” its technology by doubling its green electricity use during manufacturing; switching to padded envelopes to reduce shipment weights by 73 percent; and using recycled soda bottles and plastics to create monitors and desktops, McCabe wrote in a recent blog post.

Regardless of whether small businesses purchase their technology directly or receive services from cloud-based providers, they can “shop green” by inquiring about the sustainability of the systems used to run their applications and data.

 

Read full article on Forbes.com