The F7 Blog
Figureseven, Inc. has been helping businesses maximize their offline and online marketing efforts for over a decade. This blog provides insight, tips and advice from our experts to help you achieve your marketing goals.
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3 Ways to Improve Your Next Powerpoint Presentation
By Greg Czarnowski, Principal, Figureseven, Inc.
August 5, 2010
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Del.icio.usOne of the biggest problems with Powerpoint presentations is the creator’s desire to tell too much, too soon. In the rush to get all of their pertinent information across to the audience, they overwhelm them with content and images. Here are 3 ways to improve your next presentation:
- Reduce your slide content to no more than three bullets – providing too much information on any one slide will reduce the viewer’s ability to process and store it.
- Use the fade treatment to introduce one element at a time on your slides so that you, the presenter, maintain control over how the information is being processed. Put up 3 bullets at once and your audience might move on to bullets two and three before you are ready for them to do so (and miss some critical point of information about bullet #1).
- Do not hand out a copy of your presentation until it is over. You can let audience members know that they will be receiving one, but, as before, if they have it in their hands, you lose control over what they are looking at – they may glance ahead to a later slide and miss something important you are trying to convey about the one you are on.
These simple concepts that will provide you with far better control over both the message you are trying to deliver as well as how it is received.
What Makes a Web Page Design Effective
By Greg Czarnowski, Principal, Figureseven, Inc.
July 29, 2010 in Web Site Design, Branding, Marketing
- Use color carefully – try to create your pages utilizing a specific design palette so that colors complement each other. Also remember that overuse of different colors on a page confuses and distracts – make sure that when you’re using a different color to highlight images or text that you do not overuse it and nullify its distinguishing effect.
- Organize text into “bite-sized” chunks whenever possible. In this way, content is easier to digest (pun intended) and understand. I always think of how easy it is to read a Spenser novel by Robert Parker – the chapters are short and it is always easy to follow the storyline because of this feature. Treat your product and service descriptions in the same way. Use bullets to break up long sections of text that otherwise might bore or overwhelm the reader.
- Use white space – it effectively sets off both images and content and will draw a person’s eye to a section for that reason. People feel crowded and rushed in their lives – use white space to visually create the perception of openness and calm – it will get your information processed more often.
- Use a big enough font size to insure that your content is readable. Smaller type sizes might get you more information “above the fold,” but they will also frustrate those individuals who have vision problems.
- Avoid centering your content on the page. Most everything that people are used to reading is not centered. Put people in a comfort zone by having your content justified.
The Old Lady and the Broom.
By Jeremy Daly, President, Figureseven, Inc.
June 16, 2010 in Web Site Management
Like most small business owners, I’m a busy guy. Add my two daughters (2 and 4) and my life gets exponentially more hectic. So to the dismay of my wife (and my neighbors), making sure my yard always looks good is generally at the bottom of my priority list. It usually takes me a few weeks of saying things to my wife like, “I need to pull those weeds from the walk” or “yup, I really need to trim back that rose bush” before I finally take an entire day and just work on all these things that have been building up for a month or more. I find that I do this with other things as well, like that stack of papers on my desk or the piles of clean laundry in the basket on my bedroom floor. The problem with doing these things after you’ve reached critical mass is that you only get about a week before the cycle starts all over, and your wife starts to complain again.
This is often the behavior of most small businesses when it comes to their websites. They know their site is getting stale and out-of-date, they know their customers and their staff are starting to complain, and they know that they have to do something about it! Then finally, after months of inaction, they make the call and get their site updated. And the cycle starts again.
What’s wrong with "inside the box?"
By Jeremy Daly, President, Figureseven, Inc.
June 9, 2010 in Branding, Marketing
Last night, as I was watching Ray Allen miss every shot he took, a commercial came on during the NBA finals with human-like hamsters dressed like Justin Bieber background dancers reprising Black Sheep’s 1992 song The Choice is Yours. While it may have seemed like a good idea at the time, the creepy looking Pixar-esque hamsters on Hamsterdam Ave singing “you can get with this (the new Kia Soul) or you can get with that (a toaster, a cardboard box painted as a van, etc.),” just left me confused and wondering whom their target audience was exactly.
While I appreciated the reference to the original artists on one of the hamsters’ iPhone screens, as well as the overall creativity of the advertisement itself, I was neither persuaded to buy, nor to research the vehicle any further. In fact, I had to rewind my DVR just to see what the make and model of the car was (because at first I thought it was a Honda Element).
Social Media Management
By Greg Czarnowski, Principal, Figureseven, Inc.
May 13, 2010 in Web Site Management, Social Media
A number of our clients continue to ask us how they can use social media to build their business. Here are 3 simple ways to leverage Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn relationships to impact the way that you do business:
1. Deliver Special Offers
Use social media platforms as a means of letting people know about special, limited time promotions. Message distribution is instantaneous, so you can really limit the timeframe for the availability of the offer and test the methodology while you’re at it.
