Monthly Archives: February 2011

February 28, 2011 · 1:34 pm

Site-Member Profile: KJE Design LLC[ design that works ]™

Year established: 1987

Business name:KJE Design LLC[ design that works ]™

Owner/Executive Director name:Karen Engelbretson

Service:Graphic design. I help small businesses succeed with identity and brand design, direct marketing, advertising, promotions, website design and development. For large companies, I create engaging employee communications that help workers understand the value and complexities of their compensation and benefits. For local and state governments, I design and illustrate communications that encourage water quality protection and wildlife habitat restoration.

Unique features, competitive advantage:KJE Design is a collaboration of talented professionals working in design, content development, illustration, animation, photography, web development and printing. I match my clients and their projects with extraordinary talent and services. Together we consistently exceed expectations.

Contact information:Karen EngelbretsonKJE Design LLC651-602-9440karen@kje.comwww.kje.com

Notes:

Recent comment about a compensation brochure…”I thought this communication was extremely well done. You took a complex issue with a lot of moving parts and presented it in a very straight-forward manner. The design was very aesthetically pleasing… the charts, tables and graphs very helpful. We often underestimate the impact of a well designed document. Personally I know I am much more likely to read material that looks good.”

A local small business responds to their website…”Your design is crisp, very unique and fun. It well represents our company’s slogan and service. Ease of navigation, clear and readable – almost lyrical – text. You’ve captured our essence. You really know us, to be able to boil us down to the bare bones, and distill our flavor.”

During her conference, a client takes time to email…”Thank you so much for your hard work. We love you! Can’t tell you how much everyone thinks the booklet, banners, postcards are amazing. Yes, they are being hoarded.”

Following a branding and web development project, music to my ears…”What a classy job you did for us, Karen. Thank you!”

Karen’s *other* emerging business: KJE Felties! There is a Facebook page for that business as well, and here is the photo page from it:

http://www.facebook.com/kjefelties?v=photos

Special Bonus:

Native plant illustrations!

See the full collection here:

https://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20845&id=1252340139&l=3704e8d25f

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Tagged as Karen Engelbretson, KJE Design LLC[ design that works ]™, Site-Member Profile

February 16, 2011 · 4:17 pm

Is Email dead, or are you softly killing it? (via )

Great tips. I hope it never goes away, don’t like the alternatives nearly as much!

Anyone with teenaged children has picked up on this vibe: "Mom, Dad, you're so kooky with your dinosaur e-mail. Poke me or text me. When you call me, you are rudely interrupting my multi-party multi-threaded text sessions I'm having all day with my troops. I have to press the screen to my face, talk to you only, and ignore my friends." There's even a short-hand text message teens broadcast to their posse to explain their temporary absence f … Read More

via

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Filed under Infrastructure, Technology

Tagged as Email, Text Messages

February 16, 2011 · 4:14 pm

Discounting your fees? Strategies to consider..

This article from Six Revisions offers thoughts on the practice of fee-discounting, and ways to make sure the practice doesn’t cause more harm than good.

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Filed under Business

February 14, 2011 · 1:28 pm

Brickfish Contest _ Social Media site report

So, now that the contest is over, it’s interesting to see the viral map of all the activity.

Lots of new sites explored!

I thought I’d type up the list here of sites we posted to, activity per site, and so on.

Most of this list is pretty clear, it will say BF (meaning Brickfish) and then a small number (1-3 usually), that’s the number of times the link was posted from Brickfish to that site or platform. Then a larger number, and that larger number is somewhat mysterious. It has to do with activity levels from that site – could be views as well as votes. Because I believe that if I add up all those larger numbers, it doesn’t equal views exactly, or votes, or the sum of the two. I believe it’s a proportional indication of both view and votes, from that site vs. the total activity.

The complicated part is when the contest was posted to a site, then posted from there to another site. If you look at the map itself you’ll see what I mean.

So, may add/clarify this more as time allows, but wanted to share this in case of interest.

BF – 1 – Instapaper – 4
BF – 1 – Indexor – 21
BF – 1 – Other – 374
(would *reallly* like to know what this is!)
BF – 4 – Facebook – 102 – posted 1 to different Facebook page – 2

BF – 1 – Hi5 – 13 (activity measure)
posted from that Hi5 site as follows:
Hi5 – 1 – MySpace – 29
Hi5 – 1 – LiveJournal – 12
Hi5 – 1 – Xanga – 1

BF – 4 – MySpace – 29 (activity measure)
posted from MySpace as follows:
MySpace – 1 – LiveJournal – 1

BF – 1 – Bebo – 19
BF – 1 – Blogspot – 84
BF – 1 – Twitturls – 4
BF – 1 – Hootsuite – 77
BF – 1 – TypePad – 27
BF – 1 – Email – 1386
BF – 1 – tinyurl – 14
BF – 1 – WordPress – 72
BF – 1 – Tumblr – 101
BF – 1 – Longurl – 8
BF – 1 – LinkedIn – 8
BF – 1 – EfolioMN – 11
BF – 1 – LiveJournal – 15
BF – 1 – Xanga – 2
BF – 1 – Stumbleupon – 4
BF – 1 – mn – 8
BF – 1 – Twitter – 46

If you want to see the other, more viral sites, you can go to the right side bar that says ‘Other Entries’ than below those 4 pics or so, there is a link that says ‘see more.’ That brings you to the whole list. At the very top of that front page of the whole list, there are headers that you can sort by. One of them is ‘Most Viral’. This entry of ours is #21 I believe!

For history on what this was all about, please see the posts tagged as Brickfish. Long story short, my daughter entered in to this contest, and asked for my help. I decided to use the contest as a springboard to implementing more social media for my company, and an impetus to learn more about the functions I had been using. Clarity Solutions did not establish a presence on all these – not MySpace of course. And some of these I didn’t have anything to do with. But the involvement I did have completely met my goals for it!

PS The ‘winners’ haven’t been announced yet. The prizes aren’t that substantial anyway, I was really just interested to see what actions would yield what results, how our efforts compared to others, etc.. And I really appreciate all those of you who helped!!

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Filed under Social Media

Tagged as Bebo, Blogspot, Brickfish, efolioMN, Facebook, Hi5, Hootsuite, Instapaper, LiveJournal, MySpace, Stumbleupon, Tumblr, Twitter, Twitturls, TypePad, WordPress, Xanga

February 14, 2011 · 11:54 am

Site-Member Profile: MDS Resources!

Year Established: 1990

Business/Organization Name: MDS Resource

Owner/Executive Director Name: Mike Schleif

Product/Service: Marketing Local Business Online

Unique Features/Competitive Advantage:
Increase return on advertising investment. Fill your sales funnel with targeted leads. Maximize business growth.

We help business owners who are gloomy about serious business growth in 2011.

May I ask you a question?

I talk with a lot of business owners. Lately, the two biggest problems I’ve been hearing are too few targeted sales leads and poor return on advertising investments. Do either of these ring true with you?

When did you want to start speaking with targeted leads?

Contact Information: 612-235-6060 | mike@mdsresource.net

Notes/Misc other: Call us today for a No obligation, absolutely FREE consultation: 612-235-6060

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Filed under Site-Members

Tagged as Advertising, Marketing, MDS Resource, Mike Schleif, Online

February 7, 2011 · 3:20 pm

Brickfish contest – more on Viral Map (showing social media results)

So, this contest that my daughter entered ends this Wednesday.

I’ve learned a bit about how things work in the Brickfish world. In fact, our entry is still flirting with the top 200, even though it’s getting down to the wire – and there are over 37,000 entries!!!

So, before this all becomes a memory in the constant onrush of today’s technology cascades, just thought I’d write a post collecting all the bits and pieces I’ve learned, especially about the social media map of theirs, in case any of you would like to participate and see how it works.

The map shows sites posted too, and then some measure of activity at each of those sites posted to. So if you want to see how it works for yourself, you could click this link to the contest, then vote (much appreciated), then click on share. You can share it to your WordPress site or to twitter or to any of over 360 other sites (can’t believe how many there are!).

That act of sharing to that other place of yours will cause the map to grow a new limb basically (and will force the print even smaller! Can zoom though, then just have to move the map around to see it all). It doesn’t happen instantly though, has taken a few hours in the past. Now, since it’s in the last few frenetic days of the contest, maybe it will happen faster? Or slower?

And after that, any votes/views from the link you posted will be displayed (proportionally, I’m thinking) in a number by the end of that new limb.

I’m new to the world of social media, but seems an interesting and good way to depict the viral spread of content across all the platforms.

Voting can be done every 12 hours, or 3 hours, or 90 minutes – if you leave the contest open and refresh your browser periodically, every refresh may count as a view, and earlier than you think, you’ll be able to vote again.

I would love to know if you’d like to leave a note as to where you posted it (and will visit any sites/follow/subscribe etc..). Thanks much, and if you have any questions I’ll answer to the best of my abilities!

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Filed under Social Media

Tagged as Brickfish, Social Media

Monthly Archives: February 2011

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