Online Promotion: Social Networking

When the world shifts gears and operates in a faster pace, we should follow its lead and take up the trend. Online promotion is the fastest promotion.
Modes of online promotion campaign:

• Social networking and blogging
• Promotional trailers
• Email

Social Networking and blogging

Twitter is a social networking site where all you see are status updates. Users are allowed 140 characters to provide an update.

• Today Twitter is part of every product/service/brand promotion campaign.
• Tweets reach people before newspaper, magazine, media stories do.
• It wouldn’t be wrong to say that if you’re not tweeting, you’re not promoting your product/service/brand.

How Twitter Helps in Promotion:

1. Branding: It is a social media platform you can use it to build your brand.
2. Notify Your Customers: Set up a Twitter feed for the specific purpose of notifying customers when new products come in.
3. Find Prospects. It can be used as a means to find potential customers or clients online. Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow users.
4. Direct traffic: It can be used to get traffic to your sales website and if you ask your contacts on Twitter to tweet about it, the message will spread faster and further as other active users pick it up.
5. Network for benefits: Twitter can be used as a socializing platform for you to interact with other like-minded people, especially those in the same industry. It can be used to establish consistent and deeper relationships with loyal customers.

• Facebook has more than 175 million active users worldwide.
• It is the 3rd most visited site in the world and sees over 20 billion page views every month.
• It can therefore be a powerful place to promote product/service/brand.

Using Facebook for Brand Exposure, Traffic and Sales

1. Create your profile page: The starting point for your presence on Facebook is your profile page. By connecting to customers, associates, and friends on Facebook, you can drive huge traffic to your Facebook profile as well as on main website page.
2. Facebook Groups: Groups are the simplest way to build community around your brand or company on Facebook. By starting a group, you create a central place for customers, partners, and friends to participate in conversations around your brand.
3. Facebook Events: It can be used to promote marketing events, sponsored parties, or even product launches, transactions, or company milestones.
4. Facebook Marketplace: It’s a classifieds listing service. You can post a for-sale ad or wanted ad in any of your networks for free.
5. Polls: Polls offer an easy way for marketers to quickly conduct research within their targeted audience.

• The promotional blog is an efficient platform for contests, book reviews, interviews, workshops and other creative methods for promoting books as well as driving sales.
• Blogs are viewed by thousands of visitors each and every day.
• In terms of practical applications, blogs are just like opt-in newsletters, where readers choose to receive information on a regular basis.

With an effective business blog, you can:

1. Humanize your business. Because a blog is much more informal than other websites, you can write posts in your own voice and give your business a more human face.
2. Improve your customer service. Your blog can act as an interactive FAQ, allowing your customers to submit questions and you to answer them. You can also provide product updates, how-to articles, and other information of relevance to your customers.
3. Drive traffic to your sales website. If you keep updating your blog, it can give your traffic levels a real boost.
4. Promote your products or services. You can actually sell products directly from a blog, or you can use your blog to mention new products and direct visitors to your sales website.
5. Give your target market the information they’re looking for. With its automatic archiving feature – by date and category – a blog is a fantastic content-management system.

Promoting your product trailers

YouTube is for posting videos and it can also be used as a highly effective business tool. It can be used to show off your expertise, share knowledge, market your products and connect with customers, colleagues and prospects.
Promote your business on YouTube:

1. Show your product in action using movie trailer-style: fast, creative and catchy.
2. Show the results of someone using your products/services.
3. Conduct an interview with an expert.
4. Post customer video testimonials to add to your credibility.
5. Post links to your videos on various social networks.
6. Post solutions to common product or service problems.
7. Embed videos on your web site, including customer support and product tours.

Email Campaign
E-mail is the most widely used Internet application. An email campaign can be a great way to generate extra income with very little cost and effort.
How email helps in promotion:

1. Allows you to personalize and target your communication to people.
2. Allows the recipient to easily reply, which is a source for valuable feedback.
3. Provides time-stamped proof of an interaction that helps in further correspondence.
4. Allows you to send a message to a large number of recipients for much less than traditional postal rates.
5. Borders are no obstacles in promotion through emails.
6. Allows for more frequent customer contact, which translates into higher revenues.

Traditional ways of promotion are proving less effective in today’s world.
Promotion through social networking communities is really easy, cost effective and fast.
You can now network with anyone anywhere in the world easily online.

Folding

In designing a brochure folding is a major part. You have to keep the area and different folds in mind while designing. There are so many folding possibilities and it is difficult to mention all of them here but I am sharing details of some commonly folding techniques you can use.

Types of Folds:

Barrel Panels

Barrel Folds

Barrel Fold: It is in form of two or more parallel folds. Each fold turns in the same direction. The most common example of Barrel Fold is an letter folded into a mailing envelope. It is also called Roll Fold, Spiral Fold or Tri-Fold. This folding pattern usually have six panels. Three on one side and three on another. One panel on each side is always smaller than the other two and the smaller panel is folded inside the other two. This type of folding is most useful when you have to give varied arrays of information.

 

Double Parallel Panels

Double Parallel Folds

Double Parallel Fold: In this folding pattern the paper is folded in half and then folded in half again with a fold parallel to the first fold creating four panels on each side. In this folding the last two panels need to be slightly narrower than the outer panels so that they fit inside when folded. Double Parallel Fold is also known as Parallel Center Fold or Double Fold. A large amount of information can be given using this form of folding. Front page is usually used for cover and back page for company information. Other six pages can be used for contents and other things.

 

Cross Fold Panels

Cross Folds

Cross Folds: A cross fold brochure is made by folding a page in half in one direction and then folding the folded page in half again in the right direction. After folding it consists of eight panels, four on the front and four on the back. Crossfold pattern is also known as French Fold, Eight Page Right Angle Fold, Quarter-Folds or 8-Panel French Folds

 

Half Fold Panels

Half Fold

Half Fold: A single fold, vertical or horizontal, along the center of the printed piece, such as a greeting card, creating two panels per side. This is the most cost effective form of folding and printing.

 

Z Fold Panels

Z Folds

Z-Folds: Contains two or more parallel folds, each folding in opposite directions. Z-fold is also known as Accordion Fold, or Zigzag. After folding it consists of six panels, three on the front and three on the back

 

Gate Fold Panels

Gate Folds

Gate Folds: In a gatefold the left and right edges fold inward with parallel folds and meet in the middle of the page without overlapping. The paper might be folded again down the middle so that the folded edges meet and a fold is created in center panel of the paper - also known as a double gatefold.

CMYK for Printing

There is a rule in graphic and web designing: RGB for Web and CMYK for Print

There are a few color models used to define colors. The two most important ones here are: RGB and CMY. The RGB color model is an additive model, which means that we can achieve white color by increasing the values of its three "ingredients" (Red, Green and Blue)

On the other hand, the CMY (or CMYK) model is a subtractive one. In this case going towards white color means decreasing values of each color and we achieve black color by increasing the values of its three “ingredients” (Cyan, Magenta and Yellow)

CMYK is a color mode used in color printing. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black). In CMYK mode magenta + yellow produces red, cyan + yellow makes green, magenta + cyan generates blue and magenta, cyan and yellow on a white background produces black.

CMYK vs. RGB

CMYK, or four-color printing, generates a good final printout with excellent contrast. But the color seen on the screen may be different from the one that comes in the final print. This is because the computer screen follows a RGB system, and printers follow a CMYK system.

Why we can not use same coloring system for computer screen and printing? On one hand where computer screen release the light, a paper absorbs the light. A computer screen and a paper reflects colors on different wavelengths of light and that is why sometimes colors in same artwork displayed on a screen may not match with the colors in printouts. Even if we change the color mode of any artwork from RGB to CMYK using some software we can notice the differences in colors.

RGB to CMYK (for Printing)

Mostly scanners, digital cameras, and video capture systems save files as RGB and we work on artwork to correct levels or balancing or anything else before giving it for printing.  Do you work on RGB and after you modify it, you switch to CMYK to print?; or you switch to CMYK directly and you modify it later?

When start with RGB image I prefer to do all or most of image editing in RGB itself as some editing procedures are not available in CMYK. Converting to CMYK is the last step only when file is being sent to a print house. Conversion of RGB files to CMYK can be done in many ways and the method is different from software to software.

Most of the printers prefer your files be delivered in CMYK format. Some may accept RGB with ICC profiles attached, as this allows the printer to use color management methods when converting to CMYK.

If you are printing from your home or office printer, you can use RGB or CMYK. Try both and see which you prefer.

 

Is converting images to CMYK important?

Yes! It's very important if you are working on a print document. Commercial printers mostly accept RGB images without question but using images with a RBG color space can seriously screw up your image. Printers who accept RBG images auto-convert images to CMYK without checking the outcome and they do not bother to adjust levels, balancing etc.

Make sure you convert images to CMYK yourself, so you can do adjustments on the CMYK outcome if needed and keep 100% control over image quality.

Always remember

RGB:  Good for computer/digital use. Bad and not usable for printing

CMYK:  Good for offset and digital printing. Bad and not interpreted correctly on the computer.

Convert Your Windows into a Mac

Many Window users want to switch to Mac. I am sharing here a easy method to convert your existing Window system into a Mac. This method is very cost effective and you don’t need to change your keyboard, mouse etc. for this. Even the commands will remain same but only the look will change. Just follow these simple steps and convert your Windows into a Mac

 

Step 1

Search for the “apple logo” in Google Image search and download one logo of your choice (one which you like the most)

 

Step 2

Take out some printouts of the Apple logo you downloaded.

 

Step 3

Cut the logo in proper shape.

 

Step 4

Take a thick plain white paper A-3 size (glossy is better). Leave apprx. 2 inch from all the side and cut the area in center. It will be like a paper frame as you can see in photograph.

 

Step 5

Keep the paper frame horizontally and paste the logo in the center of the frame.

Step 6

You are about to done. Take this frame and paste it on your Windows monitor. and congratulations you are succeed in converting your Windows into Mac. Here is a photograph how me and my friend converted all the Windows computer in our office into Mac.

Now its your turn.

Do not forget to give your comments.