Legacy Marketing Services

I just got a call from my printer and they are running an amazing special on brochure printing and I am passing that savings along to you.

Save $100 on brochure printing from now until July 10th.

The special offer is on 8.5″ x 11″ trifold brochures, full color on both sides, on 100 lb gloss book paper.

With this promotion, it is a great time to stock up for your marketing efforts for the rest of the year.

If you would like to take advantage of this offer, your order needs to be in no later than the 10th to get the pricing of $229 for 1000.   To get the best results, your brochure file should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi.

If you would like me to design a new brochure or make changes to an existing one, please let me know as soon as possible because we have to have everything completed by the deadline of the 10th.

Either give me a call at 713.289.0819 or you can order online as well.  Click “Update Cart,” and at the next screen enter the promo code, JULY09, to get the savings.

I just sent this out as part of an advertisers update for the Kingwood Connection and to my eNewsletter List, and thought I would post this on my blog.

Most of you reading this will not be in the Kingwood area; however, wherever you are I am sure there are opportunities for you to do some community marketing on the 4th of July.  If there truly is nothing going on in the area, then pull out a BBQ and make your own event like Rick Alspaugh of Ace Hardware does with his annual Street Dance.

The 4th of July & You

When we moved to Kingwood in 2002, our first taste of Kingwood life were the 4th of July festivities.  We went to our first Kingwood 4th of July parade and received a promotional fan from the RE/MAX float where we later found our Realtor.

There was also a float entry by the neighborhood village we eventually bought in (that is the only time I have seen a float by a village HOA).  When we were looking for homes, that was in the back of my mind because to me it said that it was a friendly, community oriented village.

If you want to forge relationships with the community, participating community events is a great way to do it.   People may not always mention it, but it does make an impact on a customer’s opinion of your company.

I don’t have any affiliation with these events,  I just think that local businesses have a great opportunity and I hate to see anyone miss out.

4th of July Parade

The Kingwood 4th of July Parade is organized by the Kingwood Civic Club.  The fee for commercial entries is $30.  If you have a nonprofit organization, the fee is waived.   Entry forms can be picked up at the Lake Houston YMCA.

Line up starts at 8 am on the corner of Feather Lakes and West Lake Houston Parkway.  Judging starts at 9 am, and the parade starts at 10 am.  The route goes south on West Lake Houston Parkway from Creekwood Middle School, and West on Kingwood Drive to Kingwood High School.

Entry Ideas:   Some businesses go all out and create real floats.  If you have the time, resources, and inspiration to do that . . . awesome!

If not, don’t think you can’t participate.  Get a banner printed for your business, have your employees (or wrangle some friends to do it with you) wear shirts advertising your business, and walk the parade route.  Slap some banners on the side of a pickup truck and drive in the parade. When Kids in Action has participated in the past, they have walked with a parachute and did the thing where they pop up waffle balls during stops.

I do offer banner printing through Legacy Marketing; however, with shipping the time is a little short.  I go to Signs Designs Now on 494 for all my last minute banner and sign printing.  But if you need a banner for the 4th, you need to order it now . . . as in call them first thing Thursday.

If you have a business that offers classes, do little demos during the breaks.  I’m originally from Oregon, and parades are big, especially with the Rose Festival, and there are always entries with exhibitions in the parades.

If you have a landscaping business, create a mini scape in a trailer bed.

Illustrate what you do to parade goers.

Handouts: Be sure to have plenty of business handouts.  If nothing else, hand out your business cards.  Full sized 8.5 x 11 flyers have always seemed a little unweildy  to me for passing out at a parade.  Rack cards or 4″ x 6″ or 5″ x 7″ postcards are great for that.

Parade goers always like getting other “stuff” though.  One year for a mom’s group, we handed out ice pops, which were a big hit.  Tip: if you are going to hand them out get them now, they take a lot longer to freeze when your freezer is full of them.

Candy is always a staple.  Just be sure not to get anything that will melt.  A lot of people hand out water bottles.

If you are looking for little toys and gadgets, we go to Party Wholesalers on the South side of Houston to get our prizes for Picnic on the Park.  If you want to stay a little closer to home, The Goody Bag is on 1960 in Humble.  Right now The Goody Bag has a promotion on their website, $5 off a $25 purchase.

Parade Tips:  Remember it gets hot in July.  Wear sunscreen and be sure to bring plenty of water for your people.

Also, last year I did a float with my friend for her son’s business, the Reptile Wranger , and I could not believe all of the kids that crowded the route . . . some running right up to the floats.  If you are driving and have the manpower to do it, it would be a good idea to have one or two people walk in front of your vehicle to make sure children don’t get too close while it is moving.

Town Center 4th of July Festival

I love events at Town Center and the 4th of July Festival is one of the biggest . . . and I say this as the organizer of Picnic on the Park.

The festival will be from 2 to 9 pm.  Regular vendor booths are $75, food booths are $100.  You can download the application from the web site

I’m pretty sure they will take applications even up to the day of, but give Angela Griffing, the coordinator, a break and get your application in ahead of time if you are planning on doing it.  Trust me, it makes life so much easier if you don’t have to try to get people situated at the last minute.

Frequently Asked Questions: i get these questions all the time for Picnic on the Park, so I’m sure Angela does as well.

What do I get with a booth? You get a 10′ x 10′ space.   You need to bring your own tables, chairs, canopy, etc.  They don’t require a canopy, but I highly recommend it.  If you need electricity, you need to bring a generator.  The electrical situation is very shaky at the park and they just can’t have a bunch of people plugging in or it will blow the breakers.

What do I do if it rains? The event goes on rain or shine.  If starts raining, don’t pack up and go home.  Hunker down in your canopy (see note above), invite passersby in and make new contacts.  It almost always rains on the 4th, but it is never for very long.  Yes, people still come.

People start coming when the event opens, but things really start hopping at around 6 pm as people start coming for the fireworks.

What should I do at my booth? If you have a retail business, it is easier to set up a display that will draw people in and give them something to look at.  Don’t set up a table across the front and making it easy for them to just glance and walk by, put the table to the back and sides and draw them in.

Be friendly.  Make eye contact and smile.  I’ve seen many vendors at my event founder because they sat at the back of their booth with a glum look on their face.  They gave off such a negative vibe, it was almost a physical wall.

If you have a service based business, it is a little harder to come up with something to attract people.  A few examples of successful vendors at our Picnic on the Park event would be The Little Gym that brings mats and wedges for kids to play on.  Jamie at Creekwood Dental participated in her first Kingwood event this year at Picnic on the Park and had a beehive of activity by handing out tattoos  (available at Party Wholesalers or the Goody Bag) and candy filled eggs.   Tracy Woodard was a Plus Sponsor at Picnic on the park and promoted her new resale shop, Everything-N-Between, by renting a helium tank and handing out balloons.

Have sign ups for drawings.  Ask people to sign up for your mailing list and put something in it for them by offering discounts through it (if you don’t have a mailing list or eNewsletter and would like to start one, contact me).  if you still need ideas for your booth and would like to rent one of the games we use for Picnic on the Park , contact me.

Since migrating from Joomla 1.0.x to the 1.5 release, I’ve been very pleased with the changes to the platform.  The backend is more straightforward for the end user.

The challenge is finding the right components and plugins to use with 1.5.  I have been using the platform since 2004, beginning with Mambo before the project forked and Joomla was founded.  I had tested countless add-ons and favorite standbys that I used on all of the sites that I developed.

The release of Joomla 1.5 marked a major update to the platform.  So much so that transitioning a site from 1.0.x to 1.5 requires a migration, not just an upgrade.  In addition, many of the pre 1.5 extensions are not compatible with the new release.  So I have to do all of the research on the extensions for 1.5 again.

A client wanted to add a social bookmarking option to the blog section of her web site running on Joomla 1.5.  Adding that functionality is a simple thing, but again the catch is finding the right plugin out of all of those available.  There are 59 extensions for social bookmarking alone in the Joomla extension gallery. That is a lot to sort through to find just the right extension for your site.

Social Bookmarking Criteria

My client’s needs weren’t elaborate, but there were a few criteria that I was looking for in an extension:

1. The ability to easily enable and disable the bookmarklets for the different sites.
2. Bookmarklets displayed in a list.
3. An “Email to a Friend” option along with the bookmarks.  Joomla does have a built-in “Email to a Friend” feature, but rather than having to style the core option to match the bookmarklets, I preferred that it was a built-in option for the plugin.
4. Since the site was more than just a blog, I wanted the ability to select which content types the bookmarks would display on.

Below is a comparison of the top rated extensions that I tested

Social Bookmarking Plugins Comparison Chart

Module vs Plugin

There are two different approaches that the extension developers could take for the social bookmarking functionality: developing the extension as a module or as a plugin.

If you are not that familiar with Joomla, the difference between the two can be a little confusing.

A plugin performs an action on content items.  A module displays existing information.

A plugin’s output is displayed within the content item itself.  A module is displayed in a module location in the template and is assigned by menu items.

So in reference to the social bookmarking extensions, a plugin would display the bookmarks at the bottom of the content.  One developed as a module would display the bookmarks in a module position on the page.

Extension Selected:  Sexy Bookmarks

I chose the Sexy Bookmarks plugin because it met three of the four of my criteria out of the box, and I could make the fourth work with a little CSS manipulation.

1. Bookmark Selection: Bookmarking services are easily enabled or disabled with radio selectors.
2. Bookmarklets Displayed in a List:  Not only do they display in a list, but they have cool rollover effects as well.
3. Email to a Friend:  This was the only extension that I tested that had this feature.
4. Specify Categories to Display: This was the one criteria that I had to fiddle with to get it to do what I wanted.  The plugin does offer the option to specify the display on the homepage, category lists, or articles; however, it doesn’t give you the option to limit it by category or section.

Fine Tuning the Plugin Display

I got around the inability to specify the display by category or section with CSS.  In Joomla, the displaying of information is controlled by the menu items.  When you set up a menu link, you specify what the name of the link will be, what type of information it will display, and how it will display it.

A cascading  stylesheet  (CSS) basically tells your HTML page how to display specific information.  For example, you could specify in a stylesheet that all heading 2’s (h2) would be 15 points, in the Georgia font, and the color blue.  You could further specify that h2’s with a class of “school” would be orange and those with a class of “work” would be green. (Visit CSS Zen Garden for a vivid illustration of the power of CSS.)

The Joomla menu manager provides the option to specify a page class suffix for each menu item.  Even though the option for a unique ID for each menu item is built in, it isn’t hugely useful in a stock Joomla implementation.  The only place it is output on a page is in the content heading and content page classes, which doesn’t do much for you if you want to style each page differently.

However, there is a way to make that page class suffix more useful.  When designing the client’s site, I coded the body tag to display the page class suffix if one was specified.  This allows for every single page to have a unique ID and to be styled differently.

Since this was already built in to the template, in order to set the bookmarks to only display in the blog section, I set up each menu item related to the blog with the same page class suffix.  Then I set the first CSS definition for the division containing the bookmarks not to display.  The second definiton set the bookmarks to display on any page that had the blog page class suffix.

.sexy-bookmarks {
display: none;
}
body.blog .sexy-bookmarks {
display: block;
}

I know . . . a little convoluted, but it does what I needed it to do.

I hope this review saves someone else time narrowing down extensions.  Which social bookmarketing plugin is your favorite?

With a Netvibes account full of feeds, I’m getting pretty selective in adding new blogs to follow.  However, today I came across a new “Must Follow,” Knowledge Workers which covers topics on “Career management news, tips and advice for people who are paid to think.”

The posts cover career and job tips, business news, writing (it doesn’t matter how profound your thoughts are if you can’t communicate them effectively,) and public relations.

Are you an internet publisher?  Do you provide a medium for visitors to contribute information such as blog comments, a message board, an article or business directory or a classified ads board?  If so, you are.

If so, are you a responsible one?

In the quest for building link backs to their sites, link spammers look for abandoned blogs, forums, and classifieds, anything that allows unmoderated postings, to post their garbage.  Even requiring registration doesn’t deter the spam posting, I constantly have to delete spam ads from the classified section of a community site that I publish even though I very clearly state (in red and bolded letters) that postings of that type will be deleted.

Askimet catches hundreds of spam comments per month on my Wordpress blogs, and that doesn’t count the stock comments that don’t look like spam at first glance, until you notice that they post hundreds of that same comment across the internet . . . including five other posts on your own site.

After noticing a change in traffic on a client’s site recently, I found that the forum area that the client had started and then abandoned had become a haven for porn spammers . . . not the best representation for a business.

Even though you can do a two minute install of PHPbb or Wordpress through Fantastico, a web site requires upkeep beyond the installation.  If you publish a site that allows for user input, you have a moral obligation to monitor the type of information that is posted on your web site.   If left unmanaged, the user input will sink to the lowest common denominator, which can be pretty low on the internet.

Tips to Monitor User Web Postings

Set Your Terms and Conditions for Use

Posting the terms and conditions of your web site is a must, both to let your visitors know what is allowed on the site, but also so that they know how any information they leave on your web site will be used.  If you allow users to input content on your site, it is especially important to line out what is allowed and what is not allowed.

Require User Registration

While requiring registration will not deter the persistent spammer, it will make it a little more difficult by adding one more step.

Include a CAPTCHA image for Submissions

Adding a CAPTCHA requirement will help cut down on automated spam submissions.

Log IP Addresses

Most CMS, forum, and blogging platforms will log IP addresses that will allow you to block problem users.

Use SPAM Blocking Services and/or Black Lists

Just as there are SPAM blocking services for email, services such as Askimet help cut down on the junk submissions for blogs.

Monitor the Site on a Regular Basis

Make sure that you monitor the site on a regular basis in order to catch potential problems before they get out of hand.

Another new web site design that launched in the past couple months was for Events to Treasure, an event and party rental business, located in Kingwood, Texas.

In order to keep costs down for the new business launch, we started with a web page template and modified it to fit the company’s needs.  As with most commercial templates, the HTML file included was a mess; however, we started with the design in Photoshop, customized it, and then coded a XHTML/CSS Wordpress theme incorporating the design.

The site content utilizes the Wordpress page and post system with the main company information as pages and the blog section for latest news.  The Wordpress platform makes it very easy for the owners to post specials, examples of their latest work, update information, and add products on the fly.

Are you ready to take the next step and move your business web site to a content management system (CMS) or blogging platform?  Contact us today!