This week’s design inspiration comes from the king of all things internet–Google.

Since its launch, Google has become the most innovative company on the web from their websites to their site applications.
I’ve always admired the incredible detail in the Google logos that are used to celebrate certain important historical/international events.

So, in past to present order, here is a collection of beautiful and artistic adaptations of the Google logo.

Apr 22, 2009: Earth Day

May 07, 2009:Alexander Popov’s Invention of the Radio

May 20, 2009:Scientists unveil fossil of Darwinius masillae

July 4th 2009:US Independence Day

July 23, 2009: Comic-Con® 2009

August 29, 2009:Michael Jackson’s Birthday

Sept 7, 2009:Brasil Independence Day

Sept 16, 2009:Mexico’s Independence Day

Sept 21, 2009:H.G. Wells’ Birthday

Oct 02, 2009:Brazil Wins 2016 Olympics

View all Google Holiday Logos

Of course the creative genius of google doesn’t stop here, click to view all holiday logos from Google.

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<3 Love Ya!
-Mel

Minute Monday for August 10, 2009

60 seconds to marketing and design inspiration….starting now!

Long Island Trip

Last week I traveled to my hometown of Greenport on the beautiful Long Island, Ny to spend time with my family.

One of the great things about Long Island is certainly the beautiful views. Living in the city of Philadelphia now, it’s so different to not be able to have beaches only blocks away in any direction.

So perhaps these five photos I took on my trip will help to soothe you. For 60 seconds immerse yourself in a sea of relaxation letting the salt water mist gently kiss your cheeks…

Okay, perhaps I got a little carried away lol..

5 Inspiring Long Island Photos

1. Sunset through Trees

2. 62 Steps Beach

3. Southold Beach

4. Southold Beach (another view)

5. 62 Steps Beach Sunset

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Would you believe I still didn’t get a damn tan! lol..
<3 Love Ya!
-Mel

The online marketing industry is overwhelmed with promises to bring about overnight success to your internet business venture, but what can you trust and more importantly, how do you know the difference between valid claims or a scam?

Over the years, my experiences have strengthened my outlook towards my personal success. Although I am very critical of the projects I join, that doesn’t affect my general outlook towards success. I don’t limit my capabilities by numbers (or dollar amounts)–there are certain specific things I know to aim for, but other than that I wholeheartedly welcome success my way.

This concept has essentially crafted my viewpoint(s) surrounding marketing techniques. Here are a couple of guidelines to consider to adapt and optimize your knowledge for your future marketing efforts.

Top 5 Myths of Online Marketing

5. There’s No Such Things As “Honest Marketing”

-Don’t confuse this statement with the idea that all marketers are utilizing malicious techniques to bring about success–in fact, if you truly believe that then marketing is not the avenue for you. Marketing is a game of words, meaning, and influence. It is your duty to portray your product as the best and most innovative product on the market–whether it truly is or it isn’t (but doesn’t it help if it is).

If marketing was “honest” then the pharmaceutical industry would certainly be out of business. Instead, they push drugs that took several hundreds of million of dollars to bring to the market, only to have them recalled for drug-related deaths a year later. You don’t make a marketing statement by saying that your product or service is “okay;” you make a statement and more importantly profit by calling it the best in the industry with supporting facts.

4. Copy Your Way To Success

- The top gurus in anything you’re interested in wouldn’t make any money if they told you that the key to success is bringing uniqueness to your field. Instead, they have crafted their ebooks and best sellers with information specifically geared for you to follow their process with biased strategies leading to biased results.
Although some marketing techniques can be applied to a wide spectrum of industries, their effectiveness differs. Knowing which techniques are best for you is just a part of playing the game of marketing.

3. It Takes Years For Online Success

- Online success is determined or achieved by a number of different variables: industry, niche, and marketing campaign. I see a lot of internet entrepreneurs becoming disgruntled because success seems impossible. If this is the case, then you need to take a good look at your current marketing plan, or make sure you start one. Being interested in the graphic design industry has opened my eyes to how quickly anyone can grow their site but how much industry plays a big part in drawing in readers.

I think typically speaking, it’s harder to grow the popularity of a website if its in the business/making money online industries. Personally, unless these blogs offer advice unachievable by their competition–they usually result in mediocre posts and boring reads.

2. Traditional Marketing Ideas Don’t Work

- This is actually the idea that inspired today’s post. I recently read on John Chow’s blog that he received press from a newspaper. The comments on the post began to annoy me when I realized that many people found traditional marketing efforts weak and ineffective. The truth is, if you’re marketing efforts fail in anything you do–it has to do with your approach and how right that approach is for you, moreover someone’s incompetence to get useful results from their marketing is only a fault of their own–not the technique. Many people have become really big-headed thinking that they know enough about online marketing that they can dispute traditional marketing concepts.

However, all online marketing is rooted in traditional marketing concepts. For instance, social networking online stems from when people actually do it in person at events. Webinars are online seminars, and article marketing offline has been used by many companies to submit articles and press releases related to their products to national publications. Technically, none of it is that new, it’s just that technology has significantly aided in the process of getting faster results rather than pen and paper.

So do yourself a favor, first research the topic of marketing itself in its general form before venturing into specified strategies leading to either wasted time/money or failure.

1. There Are “Secrets” To Success

- There are no rules to how you can achieve success in marketing, and furthermore there are no secrets to success. What has happened is that there is knowledge that is widely known by people, and information that only a minute population is aware of. So somehow this has transformed to the idea that there are secrets to making a lot of money. However, having secrets is purely a marketing gimmick. This doesn’t mean that the product is of less quality, it just means that its creator is using common marketing terminology to promote it.

The reason why I bring this up and it’s so important to me, is that people always want to put up an excuse or limitations for why they aren’t where they want to be in their life. And I understand, sometimes it’s so hard to hold yourself accountable but the day you do is the day you’ll learn what you’re doing wrong. Success is about growth, and you’re not going to have significant growth without discovery. So, set your ego aside on the table, reevaluate the situation, make plans to take action, and then finally–just do it.

1.5 You Have To Love What You Do To Be Successful

- How many celebrities can you name who are worth millions of dollars and yet seem to have every problem in the world? Although loving what you do makes it easier to do it, it’s not what is going to bring about success. So many gurus have exhausted this concept that is has made beginners think that its the holy grail to success.

Here’s a question–are you even good at what you love? American Idol is a prime example of a person who can love to sing but then gets torn to pieces by Simon Cowell because they can’t carry a note. We all want to achieve this “fairytale” of being self sufficient and self reliant, but again, you have to hold yourself accountable and evaluate your strengths and weaknesses.

You don’t need to love something to be successful, you just have to be great at it.

What Myths Can You Think Of

You think there are any myths about online marketing that I’ve left out? Comment and discuss…

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<3 Love Ya!
-Mel

Here at awalkinmyshoes.com I’ll make it my duty to reveal all the strategies and methods from marketing that I’ve acquired both online and offline.

When I initially had my start-up, Incentivest, I immediately tried to put in place different marketing strategies in order to later optimize on getting the business seen–even in its prematurity. One of my first goals was to get the company press as soon as possible as a way to bring attention to not only its methods of financial therapy, but also to bring forward such a “newsworthy story” of a young entrepreneur.

Doing this early would allow me to build credibility for the company, as well as open it up to financial opportunities (thus leading to making money).

The Setup

To thoroughly discuss the setup of how I received press, I have to go back to the days when I was a marketing associate for the company that later funded me. I wanted to bring press to the company by utilizing something I knew from high school…

My high school–in Long Island, NY, was a high school that got regularly featured in our county’s newspaper, The Suffolk Times. One specific time at which it gets featured is during Black History Month, when a motivational speaker usually comes in to discuss black history.

Since the company I worked for was made up of predominantly black individuals–I knew that getting them to speak at my former high school would be the easiest, quickest, and most beneficial press they could receive.

I will make a note, however, from this experience for you to all learn from: The two heads of the company (my main speakers), backed out of this opportunity ONE day before we left after I had planned this almost 2 1/2 months ahead of time. This could’ve been a great opportunity to be seen as giving back to a community (even though the company originates in philadelphia), while also showing that you care about educating young people. If you do not plan to take press opportunities seriously, not only will you be wasting the time and effort of your marketing personnel, but you will be bringing down the level of impact you have on the press by leading to “replacement individuals.” And, you will also be bringing down the level of impact of receiving financial opportunities. So if good press is planned–stick to it.

Even with my replacement speakers, a reporter from the local newspaper still showed up, and the company received great press for it’s inspiring story. After wards, I held on to the reporter’s business card for future stories.

This first experience allowed me to understand what is involved and required in a press experience as well as what is needed to make sure it goes as planned for the next time.

Getting My Company Press

When I felt it was ready to introduce Incentivest, here are the following steps I took to receive my own press:

1. I created a “newsworthy” press release- When I first started the company, I made sure to create several press releases based on the story behind Incentivest. In fact, I created one general press release to send to local philadelphia papers, and later created another press release specifically for Long Island NY(my hometown) related papers. Press releases are almost like article marketing online, except that you shouldn’t have a press release for every good marketing post like you commonly find with online article marketing. The key concept(s) here are to either provide the press with new factual information about an industry, or supply them with an inspiring story. When creating my press releases I followed a general format from an image I actually found online.

View the Ideal Press Release Format

2. Catchy Titles- I made sure to title all press releases with words that would stand out from the crowd and initiate interest. The title for my NY targeted press release was “19 Year Old with a Niche”, subtitle–”06′ Greenport High School Alumni Turned Entrepreneur.”

View to read my press release (pdf document)

3. Using Established Contacts- Now that I already had a story done about my funder’s company, I was able to directly e-mail and correspond with the reporter who wrote that article. I e-mailed the official press release to the reporter with the subtitle (since it’s more directly related to my hometown) as the subject of the e-mail. Knowing the reporter helped me to bypass a waiting/screening process for new stories.

4. Interview by e-mail- No later than 24 hours did I receive a follow up e-mail from that reporter wanting to interview me for a story. She gave me an option to interview by e-mail, which I took to form ideal answers for the article in an effort to avoid fumbling my company’s first press attempt. I only suggest you do this when you’re new, otherwise phone conversations are a great way to display your confidence, intelligence about your industry, sincerity towards the topic, and authenticates a better relationship with the reporter.

5. The Final Article - With the answers I gave, the reporter had continued questions about the company and my story. It took about 3 weeks before the article entered the paper, and another two weeks for me to receive it. By the way, ALWAYS keep an original copy of all articles related to company press.

I posted the entire article here on my blog as well as another post about my opinions of it.

View the final Suffolk Times article about Incentivest
View my review about the article

The Suffolk Times: Facts

Just to understand the reach of The Suffolk Times newspaper, here are some facts about it.
Total Distribution:11,520

“To appreciate just how much The Suffolk Times is relied upon as the source for news and information on the North Fork, this is all you really need to know: The newspaper has a paid circulation of more than 10,000 in a community that has fewer than 8,000 homes. ” The Suffolk Times

The paper also reaches a rather unknown community of significant wealth on the North Fork of Long Island. Long Island is home to “The Hamptons”, as well as many movie/tv stars who can sometimes be seen in my hometown, so you can understand my desire to get good press here.

Feedback and Opportunity

I received significant feedback from people who knew me directly–they hadn’t heard from me in awhile, and were happy to congratulate me on the start-up. I received message after message about how the word spread throughout the town.

Soon, my older sister approached me with news that a non-profit organization called “C.A.S.T.” which she is an employee of, asked her about getting in contact with me to incorporate my financial therapy services/knowledge into their program. C.A.S.T. is actually a non-profit in which my grandmother was responsible for assisting the establishment and maintenance of programs for the poor and unemployed.

It really bums me out that soon after this opportunity arose, problems with my funder began to lead to the early dissolution of Incentivest. I would’ve loved to have contributed to the company my grandmother helped to establish while also providing assistance to my hometown.

Future Benefits of this Press

1. Press Release Writing Experience-All in all, I now know what to ideally include in a press release and how to write it so that grabs the attention of a reporter.

2. Interview Experience- I also know what to expect from a reporter, and how to effectively prepare for an interview prior to the interviewing process. I now believe that the next time I’m interviewed, it will be a much easier experience for me.

3. Established Buzz in My Community- Even though Incentivest is now dissolved, I know that I have created a buzz in my community that will lead to new and better opportunities with my future business(es).

4. Bookmarking My Experience-This article has essentially acted as a bookmark for my experience with my former company, and still supports my story as a young entrepreneur. It will help me in the future to refer this article to reporters for added credibility and substance to my story.

Just from knowing a couple of facts from my high school, I was able to land two press opportunities that have overall strengthened my marketing and PR experience, while adding to my journey as a young entrepreneur. I hope that my experiences can become valid reflections of my experience, and plan to continue to share them with you with each new one that comes along.

Be sure to understand the significance of this experience when you see the press I will receive in the near future….

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Toodles!
-Melody

This past weekend I decided to conduct an experiment to test the online marketing belief that “commenting on other blogs will bring you traffic.”

200 Blogs

In order to really test the benefits of commenting on other blogs, I decided to pick a rather large number of blogs to comment on. I certainly don’t doubt that I’ll hear the common, “wow, you must have a lot of time on your hands,” response–but when you consider the amount of time people waste watching tv or doing other things, planning my time was really easy.

I gathered the 200 URLs to the blogs ahead of time just to make sure that I would be commenting on blogs that actually existed. My list was a variety of the top popular websites, as well as the smaller ones in an effort to diversify the process. The topics covered by these blogs included: online marketing, business, entrepreneurship, and making money online.

Time

The entire experiment took me about five hours to complete over a course of two days. And the bulk of my commenting was done during the evening hours (I’m such an insomniac).

Speeding Up The Process

A couple of things helped me to speed up the process of commenting–I definitely didn’t want to spend too much time on one particular blog. The following things that helped me included:

1. I’m a GoogleBot- I scanned more posts than I actually decided to read. In fact, I do this all the time in order to avoid redundance. Usually, if I see that a post is like the thousands of articles I’ve read and heard before, I’ll look for the keywords that I’m not familiar with just to save time.

2. Speedy Fingers- It certainly helps that I type 76 words per minute. I took classes in junior high school for typing, and yes, I type the way you’re supposed to–with all 10 fingers strategically placed for optimal reach.

3. Same Topic, Same Comment- For websites that were repeating in posts (and there were so many), my comments were always relevant to the topic, but I found myself having to repeat the same words all the time.

4. Don’t Linger- Just for experiment purposes, I didn’t linger on a blog or go to any other posts aside from the one I commented on–which was usually the first or most recent post.

5. Multiple Windows- You could say it’s a bad habit of mine, but whenever I’m surfing the web in general I have several tabs open of different websites. I did the same for this and pasted several links into different browser tabs so that when I was done with one comment, I could quickly move onto the next.

6. No Controversy- I also avoided my conventional way of commenting, which is to pose a question or situation to initiate further thoughts about either the authors post, or my comment. I’m not saying I’m a “bitch” on other blogs–because I don’t ever try to be, but I have a very unconventional style of thinking that I like to express.

Things That Slowed Me Down

Of course, there were a couple of situations I came across that hindered me from working as fast as I would’ve liked. They included:

1. Captcha Codes From Hell- If you’re one of those people that has a captcha code enabled on your blog–PLEASE for the love of humankind, consider taking it off. Don’t be surprised if there are less comments on your blog, simply because you have a captcha code. I understand that people want to bypass potential spammers, but I honestly just find them as a headache. Some captcha codes are SO HARD TO READ, and I’m not going to try to re-submit my comment five times just to make sure it finally gets through. Also, you have to seriously monitor these codes because if there are any errors–the code is BLANK….yea, so why even do it?

2. Addition for First Graders- Another interesting form of a captcha code I came across, was the one that asks for you to type the result of 2 + 2. Can you believe that some people have this AND a captcha code! This just makes me believe that some people have way to many plugins installed on their site.

3. Same Topic, Same Comment- Although it helped to speed up the process some of the time, I really didn’t enjoy having to put similar comments on several blogs. I wanted each comment to be relative to the post without seeming generic.

Sans “Great Post”

As I mentioned above, none of my comments were “great post,” and instead, related to the actual post I read. I personally find those comments irritating because they don’t really add to the conversation.

The Results

When I first started this experiment, I think the time I started it (evening) in combination to the speed at which I was commenting didn’t really help to bring a lot of visitors to my site. However as the days passed I received more and more visitors.

Overall, I’ve received over 200 pageviews (and counting) from commenting on 200 blogs over the last four days. A lot of traffic is directed from the same blogs, so I wouldn’t necessarily say that I received a view from every single blog.

Overall Benefits

Besides adding to the traffic of my website, I’ve seen an increase number of Twitter followers as well as RSS subscribers. This process also helped me to discover other websites that I would actually like specifically because they don’t spew the same information over and over again, but out of 200 blogs I only bookmarked two pages….I guess I’m pretty picky though.

So Comments Do Lead To Traffic?

Yes, comments lead to added traffic and promotion of your site. However, unless you decide to comment on 200 blogs each day, or each week, you really have to work to get the traffic…so I certainly don’t recommend it for the basis of your online marketing.

Want to see another experiment?

I hope this experiment helps you to understand the value of commenting on other blogs, but also the responsibility/work that comes with it. If you have any other online marketing suggestions you would like me to experiment, or perhaps, debunk, feel free to leave a suggestion below.

Toodles
-Mel