A style guide creates and defines the standards for internal and external corporate documents. It serves as a reference source and training tool for anyone who reads or writes documentation, which is to say, everyone. A style guide will provide many benefits to your company:

Time Savings. A style guide saves time by providing quick answers to questions that may arise while writing documentation. “What information should be included in a specification?” or “How should I format the address on this letter?” A style guide streamlines the process of composition, thus significantly reducing the time required to create new documents. It also provides for shorter review cycles.

Cost Savings. Employees with access to their company’s style guide spend fewer hours writing, reviewing, and correcting documentation. A style guide reduces the expense of repetitive training and prevents costly mistakes that result when an operator, for instance, is forced to read inconsistent or poorly written operating instructions.

Consistency. A style guide promotes consistency among documents throughout the company. This leads to fewer arguments over questions of style and format and to less duplicated effort, resulting in savings of both time and money.

Professionalism. In helping to write and maintain a style guide, employees have an opportunity to share their expertise and knowledge internally. Externally, your company enhances its image by developing and using an effective time- and money-management tool and by consistently producing quality documentation.

Here’s an example of what one looks like: Style Guide. If your company doesn’t have a style guide, Fingerprint Marketing would be happy to develop one for you.

This newly chosen color is a spirited reddish orange, and continues to provide the energy boost we need to recharge and move forward in today’s world. It’s one of my favorites!

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions. – Pablo Picasso

Ogilvy & Mather was built on Ogilvy’s principles, in particular, that the function of advertising is to sell and that successful advertising for any product is based on information about its consumer.

Here are 38 great principals on advertising and marketing that have been culled from decades of their work and principles. A very interesting read and may help spark some ideas for your business and your next campaign.

How to Create Advertising That Sells: 38 Principles

Definition

Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short) is a process of applying many techniques to make your web site rank high on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines.

SEO Techniques

The goal is to have your page ranked high enough that it is displayed on the first page of search results. To do that your site must be considered authoritative by the search providers algorithms (web crawlers). That is why “content is king” is what people talk about. Of course there’s more to it than that.

The Good News: Coming up with a SEO strategy and sticking with it will improve your search engine results.
The Bad News: It’s going to take up to 6 months to a year before you get meaningful results. There is a lot of competition out there and being successful isn’t going to happen overnight.

Meta Tags

These are HTML tags that are placed in the section of a web page. Important ones are TITLE, KEYWORDS, and DESCRIPTION.

TITLE

This is what you name the web page. Each page on your site should have a unique title that is descriptive of the content. The title will be displayed on the browser’s top bar and will also be used as the search result title. If you don’t have a TITLE tag, your page will be listed as “Untitled” – not good. Keep it brief and to the point. If your page is about fire extinguishers, the title should be something like: “ReddyOrNot.Com | Fire Extinguishers”.
Titles are important but they will only help you if they are topical to your content. For instance, if every page in your web site has the same title, that isn’t going to help you.

DESCRIPTION

This is a BRIEF description of the page content. Each page should have a unique description. The description tag is displayed by search engines underneath the TITLE. It is your chance to say something that will entice a customer to click on your link. Why keep BRIEF? You need to convey your description in less than 160 letters and spaces. Anything after that number will not be displayed in a search result. You can and should add more to the description than 160 characters. Add in other bits that might be interesting to search engines. Lets say you sell a Widget. Your description would include the Widget’s name in the first 160 characters. If there is a common misspelling of your Widget, include that in the description after 160 characters.

KEYWORDS

Back in the old days before search providers got a lot more sophisticated, the KEYWORDS meta tag was very important. It is still used to rank a page but has a much smaller impact on a page rank. Each page should have a unique keywords. Think about all the words that someone would search on to find this page. Add those to your keywords. Include misspellings if applicable. Keep the keywords topical to the content on the page. You can have as many keywords as you like – but keep it topical.

Content

Your goal is to create a site that the search engines consider authoritative and topical to a particular keyword search. Most of this has to do with you writing something on the topic and posting it on your web site. But there are other things you can do to get listed above most of your competitors. Your job is to make it easy for search engines to figure out what the topic is for your page and make it easy for them to index. IMPORTANT – the title, keywords, description, and content should be about the same topic and have some depth.

Heading Tags and Boldness

A well formed page uses Header Tags (h1, h2, h3, etc) OFTEN. This not only breaks up a page so it doesn’t look like one big glob of text that no one wants to read. These tags are used by search engines to guess at what the page is about. A search engine’s crawler will read your code. It doesn’t actually view your page in a browser. A crawler will come across the HTML tag “h1″ and assume that this is an important heading about the content that follows. A “h2″ tag would be a sub-topic, h3 another, and so on. If the Headers include keywords and the content is about the Header, you’re on the right track. You can also bold words or sentences to highlight parts that are important. Just don’t over do it because that makes a page annoying to look at.

Images

Images are important to a page. They help the viewer get a sense for what the page is about quickly and without reading. Each image should have a “alt” tag that is displayed if a customer has images turned off. And since search engine crawlers don’t view your page, they will use this to figure out what the picture is – it is another opportunity to use your keywords. You should also use descriptive words for the image file. AA01.jpg doesn’t mean much to anyone but the person who created it. Using “widget.jpg” is more descriptive. On a design note, you should know something about how to create an image for a web page. Images for the web do not need to be high resolution. They should be sized accordingly. Poorly sized images can have a seriously negative impact on your web site if they slow it down so much that customers leave before they have a chance to load.
If you have an image from a digital camera, it will likely be 1200 x 1600 pixels – far larger than most users computer screens. An image that size could also be 1mb or more in size. One your web site, the image would probably be scaled down to 300 x 500, for example. Resize your image to that size and then save it at 85% quality. You will not notice a difference on a computer screen but the file size will go down to about 40kb – a huge difference.

Flash

Just don’t go there. Save some money and do something else. Indexing the content of a Flash page is difficult… If you’re like many of us, pages that heavily rely on Flash are not so much fun to view unless they are done really, really well. If you have the money and a big name, go for it. Many users find Flash ads to be so annoying that they disable Flash. That doesn’t do you much good if your rely on it and you customers can’t see what you have invested in. In most cases it is best to avoid spending money on Flash-only pages. You can add videos to make your page more interesting but these should be add-ons to the overall content.

Update Often

If your page remains static, the search engines won’t visit as often. When a page is first noticed by a search engine, they will visit your site and look at each page over a period of time (days, weeks). After they are done, they will come back now and then to see if anything has changed. If nothing gets changed, well, you get the idea. Your site should be updated often with new content and revised content. That will keep the search engines coming back. Your page will appear actively maintained and that’s a good thing.

Color is a powerful element for enhancing your designs.  It can help shape what a reader or viewer sees, feels and remembers. It adds an additional “dimension” for communicating ideas and conveying meaning.  Research confirms that color has a strong impact on basic learning behaviors.

Color is convenient and inexpensive to use whether you are working with a high or low budget. Yet, many people feel insecure about working with colors. Keep in mind that each one of us has a lifetime of experience which began with baby toys and continues through life in nature, art, the media, clothes and furnishings. Here are some guidelines and suggestions to aid anyone in the use of color in marketing materials.

Color can be used for a wide variety of objectives:

• Grabs attention
• Helps emphasize a word or item
• Highlights a specific item in a group
• Identifies specific features of equipment (such a red “ON” switch)
• Differentiates variable factors in graphs and charts
• Signals the transition to a new topic or subject
• Prioritizes information or data (cool to warm)
• Shows direction (as in road signs)
• Groups categories of components or ideas
• Adds impact and clarity to drawings
• Directs where the eyes go and whether they track vertically or horizontally
• Reinforces recurring themes
• Illustrates relationships and patterns
• Essential for use in maps
• Makes large collections of data easier to work with
• Speeds the sorting of information and items
• Help students recall key information
• Makes information in manuals easier to find
• Creates or changes a mood
• Energizes the physical space

What are keywords?

They help search engines know what a page on your website is about. Then the search engines are able to guide searchers to pages that cover that topic. This is why deciding the keywords you want to be found for can be so powerful: when you determine your keywords first, you can build your content so it will start ranking when people do a search.

How do I Choose Keywords?

1. Pick your keywords first – Writing content is a lot easier once you know what subjects you want to talk about. If you write your content first, and then try to squeeze your keywords in, your writing could come off sounding stiff and static. Determine your subject matter based on your keywords, and then write naturally, keeping your reader in mind. Remember, you’re not writing for the search engines, you’re writing for your potential customers.

2. Research your competition – By examining the competitors that are ranking better than you for search terms, you can determine what similar keywords you want to rank for. Or you can also use this as an opportunity to rank for keywords that they are missing out on. Write a list of those keywords.

3. Grab a thesaurus – Now that you have your content written, and you have an initial list of keywords you need to branch out. What are some other words people might use to describe what you’re talking about?   Add those words to your list.

4. Determine your best words – Using Google’s keyword tool is a great place to start. Ideally, you’ll want to go through your list of keywords and find the ones with the highest search volume and the lowest amount of competition.

Here you’ll find seven Search Engine Optimization methods that won’t work with search engine algorithms, especially Google’s, now that the search engines are better at detecting what websites truly deserve to rank in search results.

1. Link Building

As opposed to obtaining links to your website from other sites organically, this is when you take a shortcut and buy links from websites to improve search engine rankings. This could include paying for reviews of products, services, etc., as well as using a link brokering service that you pay on a monthly basis to purchase and maintain links on your behalf.

* Why not do it? Um, remember what happened to J.C. Penney? And then Overstock.com? Buying links is a blatant violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. It’s pretty much guaranteed that eventually Google (or your competitors) will catch you in the act. The result? Search engines will lower your rankings and possibly remove your website entirely from search results.
* What to do instead: Earn links organically. That means consistently create unique, quality content that others in your industry will find of interest. Infographics, videos, “Top 10” lists are all known to draw traffic and links. Join relevant online communities and become a trusted member, known for offering advice without being a salesman.

2. Publishing Online Press Releases

These days, there are lots of online wire services offering to blast out your press releases so they get scraped by other sites. The goal is to get attention online and obtain links back to your site.

* Why not do it? From a purely SEO point-of-view, it’s a waste of time and money. Links from low-visibility websites that scrape your press releases do not help you rank better.
* What to do instead: To get high-quality links and press at the same time, start using HARO, where you can connect directly with journalists looking for sources on stories. If you are quoted in a reputable media outlet and the story links to your business’s website, this is a much better way to boost your search engine rankings.

3. Article Submissions

Sounds harmless enough: Write content for various ezine websites that publish your content for free and offer a link back to your website.

* Why not do it? This was not a bad SEO strategy up until Google’s “Farmer Update”, which essentially took away much of the SEO value that the ezine-style content farms had. But even prior to the Farmer Update, writing articles only for the sake of obtaining links resulted in low-quality, barely readable content that did little to grow your brand.
* What to do instead: Spend time writing one insightful article for your own website or guest blog post, rather than writing 10 uninspiring ezine articles. You will find that one high-quality article will often be picked up and linked to from multiple sites.

4. Blog Commenting (only for the sake of a link)

By entering your website url into the comment fields of certain blogs, it was once possible to improve your search engine rankings.

* Why not do it? It’s a waste of time. Now these links offer little to no SEO value and frustrate the very bloggers you should become friends with.
* What to do instead: Leave insightful comments that other users will appreciate. Engage in conversations and be of value to other members. Rarely promote your own content, except when highly relevant. In the long-term your SEO efforts will benefit far greater than leaving random blog comments.

5. Link Exchanging

This is the antiquated practice of linking to a website simply for a link back to yours. The idea is that both parties benefit with improved search engine rankings.

* Why not do it? Most search engine algorithms are able to detect unnatural link schemes, often created by link exchanging. Also, it can hurt your rankings to link to websites that have a lot of low-quality links obtained through link exchanges.
* What to do instead: Find websites where you can write guest blog posts or give an interview in order to obtain a link.

6. Directory Submissions

Many online directories allow you to submit your website for inclusion, which offers a link back to your site.

* Why not do it? Search engines give very little value to these content-poor directories, thus rendering links from them worthless. Don’t waste your time submitting your website to any and every directory. You could go on forever.
* What to do instead: Pick and choose directories. Your chamber of commerce, local directories like Yahoo Local, Google Places, and Dmoz are examples of worthwhile places to submit your website.

7. Keyword Stuffing

To rank higher, you put the same or (almost the same) keywords all over your website.

* Why not do it? Since the early 2000s, most search engine algorithms have been smart enough to identify unnatural language patterns in text and when they detect the overuse of a keyword, your ranking takes a hit.
* What to do instead: Use language that is intended for your users, not search engines. Targeted keywords in conjunction with their synonyms, naturally spread out throughout your text will have a much greater impact on improving your site’s relevancy and rankings.