I had the opportunity on August 18th to speak to the Central Minnesota Wedding Association (CMWA) on web design, search engine optimization and business blogging at Reichel’s Event Center.   The CMWA consists of over 75 businesses with talented professionals in photography, video, catering, floral, dresses, jewelry, event venues, music and more.

My presentation went great and we covered a lot of great information on viewing your website as an employee.   The CMWA group has a great vibe and they had a flurry of good questions for me in the Q & A portion.  Somehow, I survived.

Here are just a few of the great businesses I was able to speak to and with last night:

Mestads Bridal,  Mulligans Event Center,  Yapuncich Photography,  Pianist For Parties,  Northern Lights Video,  Blooming Creations,  Icing Dreams Specialty Cakes,  Capture Video,  Blackberryridge Golf Course,  PrimeTime Wedding DJ and Reichel’s Catering.

Thanks for having me out CMWA!

While our main focus at Five Technology is usually web related, we won’t turn away the opportunity for great creative work in other forms when asked.  Easiway Systems of Minnesota wanted us to design their new logo as they sought to align their brand with their trusted reputation, outstanding product line and then launch a new e-commerce website.

Over the last 20 years, EasiWay has grown to be a leader in the screen printing industry, making the most efficient and environmentally friendly screen cleaning and reclaiming products and solutions.  They desired a new look that was crisp, clean, had a water element and a touch of green.

Here are are initial logo design concepts:

EasiWay was impressed and excited with their design choices and it made narrowing down a few to explore difficult.  Through further discussion and ideas, one logo design concept was chosen to work from.  We then presented  a few versions and ultimately came up with a winner.

EasiWay’s new logo design:

The team at Easiway Systems was great to work with and we are now creating their new product labels as well as their e-commerce enabled website.  Stay tuned for the launch of the new website in the near future.

The value of Twitter is something that is widely debated as it continues to grow.  The extremes are those who can’t live without it and others that can’t fathom how it’s worth one second of their day.  In the middle are a lot of people trying it out, maybe for their small business, maybe just for fun.

My Twitter use has a very high value to me and if fact it even has a number.  I’ve posted in the past on the benefits Twitter showed me right form the start, how it can drive blog traffic and a big attempt to amount 100 reasons for a business to Twitter (still short, add one!).

My Twitter ROI as of today is:  $13.50 per Tweet

As of the tweet I’ll put out to announce this blog post, I’ll have closed just over $25,200 in business only and directly because of Twitter and my 1,870 updates. That is just plain cool.  Even better is I have many more projects being quoted, referrals being given and connections being made.  Strictly from Twitter.

I’ve received this business from Twitter in a few routes:

• Industry peers. Thanks to Twitter I have connected with numerous other talented web designers and developers that have passed me leads.  Twitter allowed us to connect, view links to work we’ve put out and made them think of Five when there was a project or lead that didn’t fit them.  This has been both humbling and exciting as a some very talented people themselves think enough of our services to recommend us.
• Marketing proffesionals. I’ve connected with internal marketing talent from various companies locally and nationally that have put me on to RFPs, projects and other needs that I would have never known about without a connection via Twitter.
• Twitter friends. It might be baseball related, small business related, music related or another interest I have put out there, but I have connections that are non-web design related.  The replies and conversation might be about about the Minnesota Twins offense, but then a direct message comes out of nowhere with a contact person at a company that needs web help.

Do you have a Twitter ROI or a Value Per Tweet (VPT)?  Share it if you can.  I’m constantly amazed at the value I get from Twitter in news, connections, knowledge, ideas and yes … even sales.  I’m looking to add to my Twitter ROI.

While many companies and organizations rush to redesign their website to improve it’s performance, they overlook a simple change in approach that might make the biggest impact.

A shift is taking place on the web for small business.  Websites and web content are moving to reality, far away from marketing hype.  If a company can change their approach and find ways to bring valuable content to users, then they can improve traffic and ultimately leads.

A Clear View, Show What You Can Do
A buzz word in the web design world is transparency.  To me, this simply applies to the ability to show potential customers and current clients just what you can do for them.  Instead of pitching them that you are “the best, the leader, number one” why not drill into exactly how you can help them?

Example 1: A CPA Firm could use their content to outline their menu of accounting services … and their content might read the very same as 10,000 other CPA websites in their industry.  If they shift their approach, they could provide a summary of how they helped a small business find financial efficiency, position it for growth and help it succeed.

They could show their target market exactly what they ARE doing and make it easy for that user to understand the type of benefits they bring with their service.  Their services mix to create success for a client, instead of a users trying to guess what they need off the standard services list.

Example 2: A Restaurant can show their menu items and a burger is a burger is a burger in print version.  But if you take a short video clip of making your gourmet or special burger, post a series of photos and customer comments on it … you have something to bring hungry stomachs in.

In taking the approach to show the reality of your ingredients, the process and the visual WOW factor, you have created a distinct difference from your competitors websites.

Those are just two quick examples of how taking a better approach to web content and involving ideas, media and real web content can have an impact.  EVERY business out there can find these valuable ways to better illustrate how they can benefit, help and serve their clients and customers.

Build you website visitor a clearer picture on your offering, expertise and process and you will become a clear choice as the one to buy from.

The Big Omaha conference on May 7th and 8th in Nebraska was a great 2 day collection of events and speakers in web, business and creative.  While many conferences in the web design world deal with “how-to” and strategy, I found Big Omaha to push theories and lines of thinking.

The line-up of speakers featured some great Internet minds.  Kicking off Friday morning was Jason Fried of 37signals.

Jason stressed getting away from failure (it’s not cool), the value in eliminating interruption, focusing on the  day at hand and not a 2 year or 5 year plan, putting the most effort into the things that don’t change in your business (service, process), and the value of your by-product.  I had a ton of interest in finding the by-product of your business, not just the specific service you offer, but the knowledge in the process of it.  This can translate into books, speaking events and more.

Another speaker I really enjoyed was Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless Tees.  His time on stage focuses on transparency and accessibility.  He outlined how these things contribute to success of his company.  Jeffrey hit upon the message of spending time with your community of customers/users and listening to them, reacting to them and acting on the right moves.

Gary Vaynerchuk closed out the presentations with his “loud” presentation (loud in a good way).  His passion for getting people to hustle, work hard, build a brand and deliver your expertise in any way possible is a great message.  Gary definitely let his feelings be known on how the Internet will squash everything … newspapers, TV and possibly high education. Gary also did some great Q & A with the crowd as well.

Other attendees recapped the conference as well, so check out Shane Adam’s blog, Read Write Web and Silicon Florist.  Check out Managing The Edge, it has a decent video segment of interviews from the conference as well.

It was a well put together conference, crazy successful for a first time conference.  I was encouraged by the fact I hold some of the same value in transparency and making things happen.  I also picked up some great ideas on other theories and ideas to strengthen the Five brand and business of web design.

In such an evolving industry it’s great to listen to great Internet minds and also interact with others fighting the good fight daily.  Overall, I give Big Omaha an A- and look forward to next year.