I’m thinking of the color… was a guessing game my blind aunt used to like to play with me and my sister. Aunt Mimmi lost her eyesight late in life from diabetes. Looking back, she was likely the reason I developed an eye for design and a love for color; in a room, out doors, at a botanic garden.

Color continues to fascinate me even today, after years of mixing colors and painting on canvas and paper. It’s also been fun to see what color my baby granddaughter gravitates toward. When she was a four months old we gave her a multi-color animal. She especially loved the bright blue part of her toy. It turns out that most people love the color blue. In fact, it’s safe to say that blue is the universally favored color because of its association with sky and water.

Blue is also used by many corporations because it is perceived to be reliable, trustworthy, dependable and committed: IBM is known as “Big Blue.” Blue also inspires confidence.

What Color Best Represents You?

Red? When Bright Spot Therapy Dogs was searching for a corporate color to represent their organization they quickly rejected red. Bright Spot Therapy Dogs wear vests and their handlers wear matching colored shirts. “Sometimes we visits psyche wards and are told never to wear red because it can get some patients too excited.”

It’s true. Red causes the heart to beat faster, and it stimulates the appetite. Red is associated with high energy. It’s provocative, dynamic and passionate — like Tango.

Pink is fun, youthful, feminine and energetic. Pink is sweetness.

Orange, like red, is a color of arousal. If you think of oranges, your mouth may start to water. Orange is glowing sunsets, play and toys. Orange also ‘feels’ loud.

Yellow is sunshine. If you want increase purchases at the point of sale (cash register), put the product in yellow packaging. Yellow and black together are the most visible, attention grabbing color combination of all.

Brown is associated with the earth, as is green.

Purple is identified with the spiritual realm, and royalty.

What’s Hot

In mid December Pantone® announced the color of the 2015. Studying lifestyle color trends around the globe, the Pantone® color team of experts determined that the popularity of brown, and it’s association with plowed earth, hard work and sustenance, and the popular consumption of coffee and chocolate, lead to the equally warm and delicious new shade called Marsala.

Marsala is very versatile and is showing up in fashion, leather goods, hair coloring, home decoration, furniture, and automobiles.

It is perceived as:

• Confident
• Energetic
• Strong
• Real
• Natural

I can’t wait to use it in a website design, in combination with pale sky blue. How about you?

Do you trust someone who misleads you, even if they feel it’s in your best interest?

A woman I know told her children they were not allowed to eat sugary cereal because it was poisonous. One day she was in the grocery store and her young daughter saw another child pick up a box of sweetened cereal.

“Mommy! That child is going to be poisoned! Tell them to put it back!”

The Marketers’ Mantra

Know, like, trust. You’ve probably heard this triptych ad nauseam, but do you now how to make it happen?

A few weeks ago I attended a Strategic Attraction™ Certification Training retreat in Santa Fe, New Mexico (aka SACAT). It was there I had a big “ah-ha” about how to sell something in a way that finally felt authentic: Tell a true story.

Jan Stringer told lots of true stories. Some were fun. Others were serious. One was incredibly sad. Before long, my understanding of Jan’s Strategic Attraction marketing plan deepened, as did my level of ‘know, like and trust,’ for Jan. It was her wonderful stories that had the greatest impact on me — and sold her product. Her stories also made her unique.

What’s Your Story?

In today’s online world, a good story has never been more important for developing a trusting relationship. That’s why, over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be telling stories about the creative solutions I’ve used to help solve my clients’ image problems— because that’s what I do. I help my clients look more professional and eliminate their website shame so they, too, can attract their perfect customer.

Hope you can join me.

For years I have heard others talk about how important it is to “stay in the present moment.” You know, not dwelling in the past or worried about what’s to come.

Easier said than done, or so it seemed until this past Sunday when my minister spoke about being thankful.

“This moment is all we have,” she said, “When we live in the moment we stay ready to be thankful. All the little things add up, and it leads to so much more…By practicing gratitude in your life at the present time, and being aware of it, you are strengthened. Thanking others also strengthens those who receive it.”

She closed by saying, “If you are thinking it, you are being it. By staying thankful we bring more gratitude and thanks into our lives.”

On this Thanksgiving week I wish to be reminded of all the little things that continue to add up — for which I am truly grateful. Thank you to:

• my coaches for helping me stay focused on my purpose
• my accountability buddy for keeping me honest
• my clients for stretching me to do the best job possible
• my dance instructors for keeping life fun
• all the organizers and presenters of the WordCamps I attended this year in Boston, MA and Providence, RI
• the techs who answer my questions and help me “raise the bar”
• my husband for accommodating my long hours
• my friends because they are

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have you ever considered being a sponsor at a live event? It’s a great opportunity to meet and greet your target market, and show and tell them what you do.

As someone who started out as a print designer, I’ve helped many business execs prepare their event booths and promotional materials. Event materials I’ve designed are:

• backlit header banners
• 10′ wrap-around display walls
• interpretive panels
• portable retractable standing banners
• tabletop displays
• brochures
• advertisements
• embroidered logos on t-shirts and directors chairs
• embossed and screen printed logos on pocket folders
• printed sales materials to hand out
• I even helped produce a video for a cable manufacturer

Last year was the first year I set up my own table. Next week I’m heading back to Mount Laurel New Jersey for Christine Gallagher’s The Get OUT There-Live! Workshop. It will be my third time at this fun and informative event, and my second time as an event sponsor.

What promotional items did I choose for myself, and how long did it take to produce them?

One Month Before is Design and Printing Time

• Standing banner
• Table-top display
• Business Cards
• Brochure

Plus

• Choose and order my Self Promotional give-away item
• Offer my complimentary event tickets to clients

Two Weeks Before it’s Time to Finalize Conference Special Offer

• Send Conference Offer table sign to my local printer
• Update my portfolio

One Week Before: Last Minute Details

• Design and printed out my email signup sheet
• Updated my web site
• Create a website page of my latest projects to display on my laptop
• Packup

After making a change to my client’s website, I prepared an email and included the link so my client could see the change. Fortunately I checked the link before sending the message because the change did not show up. I re-opened the job thinking I had not pressed the all important “Update” command.

Much to my surprise the change was made, but each time I entered the site URL in Chrome, and Safari, the old information displayed. Flummoxed, I emailed my client’s hosting company to ask if they were having server problems.

Within minutes a response came back saying the issue would go away as soon as I hit “empty all cache” on W3 Total Cache.

W3 what?

W3 Total Cache is a plugin, but (1) I never added this plugin and (2) wondered why it was there in the first place.

What I learned after Googling W3 Total Cache was:

• It speeds up website performance.
• My client’s web host highly recommends it…and uses it.

If your host doesn’t automatically add W3 Total Cache to your site, you can do it yourself. Here’s how: Go to…

1. Dashboard—> Plugins —> Add New
2. Type in W3 Total Cache into the Search Plugins field (see below)
3. Press Enter on your keyboard
4. Before installing it, check to see if your WordPress theme is compatible with W3 Total Cache. If it is,
5. Click Install Now (see below) 
6. Click Activate Plugin

To Access The Settings Page

1. Dashboard —> Performance
2. Click Page Cache 
3. Unless you wish to tinker, you can leave the default settings

Very Basic Use of W3 Total Cache

1. At the top of your dashboard look for the word Performance and click on it to open the drop down menu
2. Click Empty All Caches

Go ahead and speed things up. Your visitors will thank you.

My client wanted to know how to upload images to her newly customized WordPress website. “Before I show you that, I’d like to show you how to resize your images so your site runs at optimum speed.” (see my training video below) Why?

Web images needed to load fast. If they don’t, prospects aren’t going to stick around.

Print images need to be crisp, sharp and gorgeous. Not so for the web, now that over 50% of searches are done using mobile devices.

iPiccy is Free Image Editing Software

As a graphic designer who designs for both print and web, Adobe Photoshop is a must have / must know tool. It took me a few years to gain proficiency — and I’m still learning. Today, I love Photoshop, but you don’t have to spend the time and energy learning this robust program. Instead you can let iPiccy do the heavy lifting for you, and have images resized in no time.

TIPS:

1. iPiccy works best on Google’s Chrome web browser, or Firefox
2. You do not need to create an iPiccy account to use this program, but if you do, you won’t have to keep logging into iPiccy each time you want to resize an image.
3. jpeg format for web images
4. 72 dpi for web images (dpi=dots per inch)
5. 960-1024 px (px=pixels) width will fill the web header/web banner area of your website (check your theme for exact dimensions)
6. 600 px width will fill the content area of your web page
7. 260-280 px width will fill the sidebar area of your web page (check your theme for exact dimensions)

How Resize Images for the Web Using iPiccy

1. Choose your images and put them in a folder on your desktop (see below for image resources)
2. Log into iPiccy
3. Click Start Editing
4. Click Upload
5. Navigate to the image file on your computer you want to resize
6. In iPiccy click on the yellow tab with the camera icon (see below)
7. Click Resize Image
8. Manually enter the width
9. Click Apply to save your changes
10. To Save your newly resized image click the floppy disc icon in the navigation bar (see below)
11. Rename your file so that you don’t overwrite the original image file on your computer
12. Slide the Quality slider all the way to the right so it’s 100% (see below)
13. Click Save Photo! onto your desktop
14. Your image is now ready to be uploaded it to your WordPress Media Library

Online Stock Photography

Online stock photography sites from least to most expensive:

1. bigstockphoto (what I use for my blog images)
2. istockphoto
3. Shutterstock
4. Fotolia
5. Corbisimage
6. Gettyimages

Free: but most follow restrictions = crediting photographer. If photographer changes their mind and decides to charge for the image you will be charged

1. flickr
2. morgueFile

If you haven’t logged into your WordPress site in a while you may be surprised to learn you need to update a lot of things:

• WordPress
• Your theme
• Your plugins

If they all need to be updated do it in this order:

1. WordPress
2. Your theme
3. Your plugins

The WordPress website in this video had eleven (11) items that needed to be updated, indicated by red circles opposite the Dashboard menu items “Plugins” and “Updates.” Six (6) of these items were plugins, four (4) were Themes and (1) item was WordPress itself.

What To Update First?

Go to Dashboard —> Updates

At the top of the WordPress Updates page you’ll see a message that recommends backing up your entire site first, before beginning your updates. It’s never happened to me, but I’ve been told that sometimes site files can become corrupted during an update, so before you update anything, make a backup of your entire site just in case you need to go back to your pre-updated version.

Unless you have a host like Websynthesis that backs up all sites daily, keeps your seven latest backups and discourages the use of 3rd party plugins for making backups, you’ll need to use a plugin to make your backups.

I like having a hard copy on my desktop, so use Duplicator. Other great choices are:

• BackWPup Free – WordPress Backup Plugin
• BackupBuddy

OK, Now Your Ready

1. Begin by updating WordPress
2. Click the Update Now button
3. If successful you’ll be taken to your login page
4. Log back in

Update Themes Next

Dashboard —> Updates —> WordPress Updates page

NOTE:

You’ll see that Plugin Updates are listed before the Theme Updates — so why am updating the plugins first?

I have asked a number of developers what to update after updating WordPress? They’ve all told me to update the Theme before Plugins because plugins “talk” to the Theme which “talks” to WordPress. My advisors have not failed me yet.

To Update the Themes

1. Scroll down to Themes
2. Select All
3. click Update Themes

Finish By Updating the Plugins the Quick and Easy Way

To update all your Plugins at the same time,

1. Click Select All
2. Select Update Plugins

You’re done!