5 Productive Things to Do During Your Holiday Downtime

Taking time off during the holidays is necessary to recharge your batteries and spend time with family and friends.

While it can be tempting to take time off completely during the holidays, there is something to be said for dealing with some things that have been hanging around for “when you have time.”

Well, now is ‘the time’ and you will find that just trying one or two things on this list will make a big difference when you return to your office after the holidays.

Play With That New Technology

There is never the right time to learn a new technology when you’re up to your neck in client work. Time off during the holidays is the perfect time to play around with a new technology you’ve been wanting to learn. You’re not taking time away from client work and you can spend an hour here and there learning. No pressure!

Catch Up On Reading

Spend some of your downtime escaping in a good book. For me, the ultimate relaxing afternoon is curling up on the couch with a good mystery and a glass of wine.

You can also read for work. You may be too busy during your normal week to read business-related books, so now is the time to crack them open and educated yourself about your industry or job.

Write Thank-you Notes

Thank-you notes are a great way to keep in touch with your clients and show your appreciation for their business. Sending a hand written note will distinguish your business from your competitors. Today, we seem to be so informal, using email as the only way to communicate.

If you don’t know what to say in a thank-you note, we’ve got you covered. Click HERE for a link to Hallmark’s website which has some great ideas for writing that personal thank-you note.

Set Goals for Next Year

Spend some time during the holidays to reflect on the past year and set goals for the upcoming year. Having a set of goals gives you a baseline for measuring your success and keeps you motivated to stay on course.

Learn a New Job-related Skill

You may want to learn a new skill to make your job easier to perform. The holidays are the perfect time to take an online course. If you’ve always wanted to learn Photoshop, search online for courses that are offered and sign up. By spending few hours a day for a week or two learning a new skill will allow you to comfortably integrate this skill into your job.

Yes, holidays are meant for relaxation but by spending a few hours on work-related things, you will enter the New Year better prepared. 

The way to achieve your own success is to be willing to help somebody else get it first. – Iyanla Vanzant

Merry Christmas!

Happy Hannukah!

Happy First Day of Winter!

Rebranding Checklist

OMG! When you run a small business and you’re looking to rebrand, you forget how many things you’ve got branded with your company name and logo.

Blue Dog Marketing is in the process of rebranding (look for an announcement in early 2017!) so we’re putting together a checklist of everything we need to do to make the renaming of our company a smooth process.

Here is what we’ve come up with so far:

The new name

You have to work with an attorney to do a search to see if your new business name is available and you can legally use it. If someone else has already registered the business name in another state, you can be sued for infringement. Your attorney will also check the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to make sure the trademark is available. We’re using Tracy Jong of Tracy Jong Law Firm. She specialized in small business law and is easy to work with.

This was all the easy part….seriously! Now comes all the work integrating your new name into your business.

Website and Social Media

You need to make sure the domain name you want is available. When you find want you want, purchase it! You can have your old domain address point to your new rebranded website to help make the transition easy. Oh, that means you also need a new website!

You will also want to make sure the social media handles you want are available. If they aren’t, work on something as close to your brand as possible. Switch your social media profiles to the new name so you can retain your fans and followers.

New Logo

Design a new logo. Being a marketing firm, this part is easy for us. For others thinking about rebranding, this is where you’ll want a marketing firm to assist you.

Update your website with your new logo and name. For a few months, you should have some content on the home page letting people know that you have rebranded and that they are on the correct website.

Marketing Materials

Update all your marketing materials. This includes not only your brochures and sell sheets but your business cards, email signatures, proposal forms, invoices, trade show booths, and giveaways.

Your email signature can also be another way of letting people know that you have rebranded. Just like on your website, use your email signature to tell people who you used to be so they’re not confused.

Notify people

Your clients and vendors are the first people you should notify once the rebrand is in place. Formal announcements are a great way of letting people know about your rebrand.

Send out press releases announcing your rebrand. This is a great place to tell the story of your brand.

You also have to update your bank account. And notify any organizations that you belong to, such as a Chamber of Commerce, so they have your membership correct.

If you can, hold a launch party for your clients and vendors. What a great way to get the buzz going about your new and exciting venture!

We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s a part of success. – Arianna Huffington

Thinking About Rebranding Your Business?

A business’ brand is their core identity. It is the collection of the ideals, values, characteristics and personality of your company.

Sometimes, brands rebrand. There are many reasons why. For some, a crisis occurred; for others, they just felt they needed to come up with a more modern brand.

Rebranding isn’t something that should be done on a whim.

But if you are deciding to rebrand, here are some important steps for you to take:

Identify your goals

Like any marketing strategy, you must first identify your goals. Are you just reshaping your company’s image or are you rebuilding from scratch? Have you identified a new market that you must appeal to?

Your name change should coincide with other business principles changing too. You risk losing all the brand value you’ve built if this isn’t the case.

If you’ve outgrown your original mission, it’s time to rebrand. Over time, markets change and a rebrand is necessary to keep your company competitive.

If you have too many names for your business, it’s definitely time to rebrand. Consider the story about FedEx. Before they became FedEx, now a well-known company and logo, they were Federal Express and they had too many names for too many services. 

After a year of research, they rebranded to their new identity, FedEx.

Get professional help

Working with a marketing firm can help you do a rebrand the right way. You need so much ‘new stuff’ like a logo, website, domain name and more. A marketing firm can help you with all of these.

Have a story

Give your new brand a story. Find out what makes your products or services resonate with your clients.

Announce your new brand

Rollout your new brand in a series of formal announcements. Celebrate the change with your clients by possibly holding a launch party.

Blue Dog Marketing will be rebranding in early 2017. We want to share this experience with our clients and readers so if or when they decide to rebrand, we can better assist them with all the steps necessary to have a successful rebrand experience. Stay tuned!

We become what we think about. – Earl Nightingale

My best successes came on the heels of failure. – Barbara Corcoran

Why Your Business Needs a Blog

It’s so easy to talk yourself into not writing a blog. I don’t have the time. What should I write about? I’m not a very good writer.

Well, I’m not buying those excuses. Blogging is one of the best ways to improve your online presence and grow your business so you need to start blogging….now!

Why does your business need a blog?

Be the expert

Blogging about a subject sets you up as an expert on the subject. Write about what you know and what you do for a living.

Be Visible

Blogging increases your business’ visibility. A blog increased your chances of being found online. Adding your blog to your website increases your website’s ranking on Google searches.

Share your blog posts on your social media platforms too. This will increase your visibility too. Business professionals visit sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter every day and will see your posts.

Keep your clients informed

Set yourself apart from other bloggers by keeping on top of what’s happening in your field. Read industry magazines and articles about the most recent developments. Share this information with your clients and other readers of your blog.

Remember about 18 months ago when Google changed the search engine algorithms and if you wanted your website to rank on the first page, your website had to be mobile-friendly? I read about this and quickly wrote a blog letting my readers know about this change. It was crucial that they get their websites mobile-friendly fast so they didn’t slip in the rankings.

Your excuses…

If you think you don’t have the time, it’s easy to schedule your posts with software like Hootsuite.com. Your blogs can be posted once a week or once a month. Just pick a schedule and stick to it.

If you think you can’t write, believe me, the more you do it, the better you will become. Just start writing and keep it up. You will see an improvement.

If you really don’t think you have the time or the skill to blog for your business, then contact a marketing firm, like Blue Dog Marketing, and we can ghost-blog for you! 

Best Free Stock Photo Sites

If you’re like me, you need great images for your blog posts. Did you know that even if you find a great picture on the web you may not have permission to use it? Many companies and photographers have sued small businesses like yours because you have not paid to use an image that was found online.

You can go to some of the stock photo companies online and purchase images but that can get costly and quite often the pictures are cheesy.

You can find high-quality stock photos online for free. Yes, free!

Here are some of the sites I use so check them out:

Unsplash                  

Unsplash uploads 10 news photos everyday so this is a site you’ll want to check back with often. There are a lot of great photos for business use here. Definitely worthy of being bookmarked.

Death to the Stock Photo                                   

Death to the Stock Photo will send you a batch of free pictures every month. Just sign up on their site.

Negative Space                              

You can get new images every week from Negative Space. All of their photos are available without copyright restrictions….you can use them however you want.

Kaboompics                        

Are you looking for some great fashion, food or landscape photos? Check out this site.

Startup Stock Photos                   

This site has some great photos for many different businesses to use.

Stokpic                                 

Get 10 new photos sent to you every 2 weeks from Stokpic. You can use these on your website, in a brochure or an ad…basically anywhere you need a great photo.

Now that you have some great free places to get amazing, professional photos to use on your website, marketing materials, or blog, be sure to use these great images instead of trolling the web. 

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities. - Maya Angelou

How to Deal With Negative Customers on Social Media

As a small business, you are marketing yourself on various social media platforms. This is a good thing. But, anytime you post and give your readers a platform where they can comment about your products or services, you do have some risk.

When you allow your readers to comment on your posts you could get a bad review or a damaging comment. And these negatives are out there on the Internet for everyone to see.

While you can’t completely avoid negative comments on social media, you can plan on how to respond to it in a professional manner. This will reflect well on your brand.

Set up Google Alerts

You want to know what people are saying about your company. If you can’t see their comments, how will you know?

It’s easy to set up Google Alerts to notify you when your brand has been mentioned online. This will give you a chance to respond, if necessary.

Step back

Don’t take everything posted in your comments so seriously. Sometimes negative comments are just a by-product of the world we now live in. People feel safe making negative comments online because it’s sort of anonymous and they just don’t think about the effects of what they are saying online.  Some people intentionally malign individuals and companies online just to get a rise out of them. Don’t play into their wacko plans.

You have to avoid letting people’s comments get to you. Sometimes, you just have to ignore things and let them go.

Don’t be defensive

It’s difficult to not feel defensive when facing a negative comment about your company – especially one that you don’t feel is accurate. Remember that everything you post online is visible to everyone so you can’t afford to get defensive and go after the person who made the comment. This will make you look like a bully, which isn’t healthy for your company’s image.

Acknowledge when you’ve made a mistake

It is possible that a negative comment about your business is justified. If that is the case, you need to quickly give an apology to the affected person and make a promise to do better in the future.

While using social media is a great way to promote your small business, you have to keep an ear to the digital ground and identify and respond to comments about your company so that your time promoting your small business on social media isn’t wasted.

Today is Cyber Monday. Are you shopping online?

It's Small Business Saturday! Shop local for your holiday gifts!

Happy Thanksgiving!

How to Avoid Social Media Mistakes for Your Small Business

We’re all plugged into social media. It’s a daily part of our lives. We post and share information on Facebook and Instagram; we tweet about our lives and our businesses on Twitter; we look for jobs on LinkedIn; and we post and watch videos on YouTube.

There are more than 1.71 billion monthly active users just on Facebook so your small business should seriously look at having a presence on Facebook if you don’t already.

It’s so easy to make mistakes on social media when it comes to posting for your business. Here are some tips to avoid making mistakes with your small business social media posts.

Be focused

There are dozens of great social media platforms available and some of them are pretty strong. It’s tempting to be active on all of them. Unless you have a great social media team working for you, you won’t be able to successfully make an impact on all of the social media platforms.

If you try to be everywhere, you will quickly be overwhelmed. It’s best to choose 2 or 3 social media platforms that would work for your business. Knowing who your target audience is will help you choose which social media channels will work for your small business.

Be consistent

Most small business owners don’t have time to post every day. If they have free time, they’re tempted to post several times during that day. This is not the best way to make use of social media or your time.

Create a social media content calendar and stick to it. There are many tools, such as Hootsuite, that allow you to schedule your posts to different social media platforms. Your readers will come to expect a post from you on the same day and time each week. Don’t disappoint them.

Use spell check

You want to present a professional image on social media so make sure your posts are free of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes.

Make sure your reread your content before publishing it to ensure it is perfect.

Be social

You’re on social media so be social with your followers. Responding to comments and questions is important. You want to engage your followers and this is the way to do it.

Are you ready to leap into social media for your small business? If you need help, Blue Dog Marketing can assist you in creating a content calendar and even writing your posts for you. Give us a call!

The difference between successful people and others is how long they spend time feeling sorry for themselves. – Barbara Corcoran

Life-fulfilling work is never about the money – when you feel true passion for something, you instinctively find ways to nurture it. – Eileen Fisher

Create a 2017 Marketing Plan Even If You Don’t Want To

2017 will be here before you know it, so now is the time to prepare your small business for the coming year by creating your 2017 marketing plan.

It’s so tempting to stick with the same old marketing plan that you’ve been using with the hopes that it will work better next year. But that’s not a smart move. Now is the time to update your marketing strategy for the upcoming year.

Here are a few ideas to help you create your 2017 marketing plan:

Review last year’s plan

See what worked and what didn’t work. Not all your great plans for 2016 turned out as you expected. If you can look at what didn’t work and understand what went wrong, you won’t make those same mistakes again.

Reviewing your marketing plan will give you concrete evidence that supports continuing or changes your marketing strategy. This one of the most important things you should think about when creating or updating your marketing plan for 2017.

Include new technology

Since technology is here to stay, your marketing tactics should include ways to use technology.

To increase your profits in 2017, use technology in new ways to deliver content and services. Are you using a mobile app to reach your audience? Do you have a strong online presence? Are you using the correct social media platforms?

Increase spending on ads

Advertising can be expensive, but you can measure ROI (return on investment) advertising online and with other platforms. Include advertising in your 2017 strategy. Plan your ad placement smartly and you’ll see positive results.

Include new products and services

Are you adding new products or services in 2017? Don’t use the same marketing tactics on new products or services that you are using on existing products and services. You want your customers excited about your latest offerings. This necessitates a change in marketing emphasis.

Sure, last year’s marketing plan worked fairly well for your business, but why not aim for better results in 2017 by creating an updated marketing plan?

Happy Veterans Day!

Do You Have a Social Media Calendar?

As business owners, we’re all busy. When we’re busy, we need to have a plan in place so tasks get done even if we forget about them.

Successful social media requires you to regularly post on your social media platforms.

A social media calendar helps you get organized. You won’t be scrambling when your next post is due! If you use your social media calendar the right way, you can plan your posts weeks, or even months, in advance.

By having a great post on hand to post will save you time. No having to search online for a great post to share or frantically write something last minute.

With a social media calendar, you can plan your posts for each social media platform instead of using the same thing for each one. You can also plan for holidays and such fun days as National Beer Day.

Your social media calendar can be in something as simple as an Excel spreadsheet if that works for you. Just set it up as a calendar and put your topic titles in each day you want to post. In Excel you can even paste your posts into a column so you have them for reference and you can re-promote past content.

The next step is to spend a few hours writing all your posts for the month. Then it’s done and you just have to post them on the day they are due.

Get your social media organized and you’ll be more likely to stick to your schedule. And your readers will love you for it!

Option A is not available. So let’s kick the sh** out of option B. – Sheryl Sandberg

Fall Back tonight! Turn your clocks back an hour.

You must learn from other people’s mistakes. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself. – Sam Levenson

Who Is Your Target Market?

If you are a small business owner, consultant or entrepreneur, you need to choose a target market…who your customers are! Concentrating on your probable customers will save you both time and money because you will be ‘talking’ to the people who are most likely to purchase from you.

How do you find your target market?

Here are four tips to help you hone in on your potential customers.

Problem solve

Think about whose needs and problems you can solve. Your potential customers are those whose problems you can solve.

Think about it this way, the more a person’s need matches your product or service the easier it will be to persuade them to buy from you.

Who are your current customers?

Take a look at who your current customers are. The traits of your current customers can be a guide for what to look for in your target market.  Don’t have any customers yet? Take a look at the next tip.

What is you competition doing?

If you really want to get more insight into your target market, check out what your competition is doing and who their customers are.  Can you do the same thing, only better?

Is there a gap in the market your competitor is missing? You can market to that niche to sell to an untapped customer base.

What makes you unique?

Know what sets you apart from your competition. It’s the added value that you offer that differentiates you from the competition and can win you customers.

Shout this added value from Facebook, Twitter and all your other social media platforms. Have it on your website home page. Use testimonials and pictures of your 

real clients when promoting your services.

Once you’ve defined your target market, it’s time to start letting everyone know who you are and how you can solve their problems. Focus on where your customers are. Now’s the time to go get ‘em!

Happy Halloween!

5 Tips to Avoid the Most Common Mistakes Beginner Bloggers Make

Blogging sure looks easy until you have to sit down and write a couple of posts a week. That’s when beginner bloggers see how difficult it really can be. And that’s when it’s so easy to make mistakes.

Here are 5 tips to help you avoid the mistakes that most beginner bloggers make.

You don’t know where to get your ideas

Don’t write in a vacuum.  You may think what you want to write about is a great idea but does your target audience feel the same way?

Time spent learning what issues are important to your target audience is time well spent. Survey your current customers. Ask your sales staff what questions they’ve heard from your customers. This is where you should be getting your topic ideas from.

Once you start writing your blog, pay attention to the questions your readers post. That is another great source of writing ideas.

Be yourself

Writing a blog post can almost take you back to high school and having to write an assignment for a class. You really weren’t allowed to ‘be yourself’ in your writing for a history essay. Blogging is different. You want your readers to get to know you and your small business. This will build trust and eventually will turn into sales.

When you write your post, be conversational in your writing. Your readers will enjoy that style and come back for more of your posts.

Target your topics

When you start blogging, it can be daunting to write about specific topics. But that is what your readers want.

It’s too difficult to do justice to a broad subject, such as ‘How to Do Social Media Marketing for Small Business,’ in a blog. That topic could easily fill a book! Take the broad subject and break it down into small specific topics. From the ‘How to Do Social Media Marketing for Small Business,’ I can have quite a few blog topics to write on such as:

- How easily Facebook advertising can target your customers

- How to create a Facebook business page

- Is Pinterest the right social media channel for your business?

- How can I make Twitter work for my business?

You get the picture! Also, specific topics tend to attract a more targeted audience which is how you can drill through all the social media noise and find the right target audience for your business.

Be original

Don’t plagiarize content from someone else. Your site could be penalized by Google, which naturally wouldn’t be good for business!

If you really like an article or post by someone else, re-post it and give credit to the author. If you want to use a portion of someone’s post, cite them in your blog.

Stick to a schedule

Consistency is the key to attracting and keeping your audience. If your audience knows that you post twice a week, say Tuesday and Thursday mornings, they will tend to come back at those times to read your most recent post.

Make that commitment to blog on a regular schedule. Use an editorial calendar to plan your post topics, dates, and which social media channel you will post which blog to. By planning in advance, you can write your topics ahead of time and schedule them weeks, even months, out.

Are you ready to start your small business blog now?

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. – Aristotle

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. – Mark Twain

7 Tips to Create Content Strategy for Social Media

Today, it is imperative that small businesses have a presence on social media. That sounds great, but how do you make it happen?

Having a presence is more than creating an account on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. You have to post content….relevant, interesting and educational content….on these social media platforms. You need to have a planned content strategy to be effective. Here are 7 tips for creating your small business social media content strategy.

Determine Your Goals

What do you want to achieve from your social efforts? Be specific. Keep in mind that each social media platform is different and has its own unique audience, so create separate goals for each individual social network you plan to use.

Create Your Brand’s Identity

Social media is a great place for small businesses to strengthen their branding. Know what your business’ unique story is.

Check Out Your Competitors

See what your competitors are doing on social media. What is working for them? You can be inspired by what they do and take it to the next level.

 

Use an Editorial Calendar

An Editorial Calendar will help you determine when and where to post your content. Decide which social media platforms will get certain posts, videos, and visuals, and when.

Take a look at an entire year so you can plan some posts for holidays and any sales you plan. Then, work on your content one month at a time.

 

Which Platforms Are For You?

Don’t jump into social media and join everyone out there. You’ll be overwhelmed and your social media marketing will fail.

Take a look at where your customers are. If they are on Pinterest, then you need to be there too. Are they on Facebook? Perhaps your company would only benefit from being on LinkedIn.

When thinking about which social media platforms you should be on, don’t forget that you should also be blogging. Blogging will establish you as an expert in your industry.

 

Be Social

Part of being on social media is being social. So monitor your comments and respond when someone comments on your post.

 

Analyze and Optimize For Best Results

Make sure you’re not wasting your time with the wrong posts or even the wrong social media platform. Check out your analytics to see how well your posts are performing. Most social media networks provide analytics for business pages so you should be checking them often to understand which posts were popular and which weren’t.

Happy Boss' Day!

 

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. – Ayn Rand

5 Tips for Having a Killer Website

Your website is the online representation of your business. It’s often the first place potential clients ‘see’ you. It’s impossible to have a successful business in today’s world without a website….a good website!

Here are 5 tips for creating a killer website. Even if you already have a website, these tips might help you improve what you already have.

Have a Vision

Before you start designing a website or working with a web designer, take a look at the websites your competition has. Do you really like something they are doing?

Look at other business websites. You might find a layout or a design that really speaks to you. It’s easy for a web designer to take your inspiration and make it totally yours.

Have the Right Logo

Your logo is your brand’s identity. Your logo should be on everything you use to market your products or services – your website, your business cards, your sales literature and promotional items. 

Your logo ties everything together. Work with an expert graphic designer to come up with a unique logo that best represents your business.

Choose the Right Domain

You want to be found online so choosing the right domain will help. Usually, companies choose a domain that matches their business name.

What do you do if the domain name you want is already taken? This is no reason to be discouraged since there are now many new domain suffixes that are available to use instead of .com. Explore alternative domain names for your website.

Good Content

Your content is the backbone of your website. Since you only have about 8 seconds (yes, that’s right….only 8 seconds!) to grab a viewer’s attention, your content must be clear and concise. Your visitors must be able to quickly see you understand their pain points and how you can help them.

On your website, your content must be short and succinct. Lists and bullet points are a great way to get your information out there without it being overwhelming to the reader.

Use Great Photos

The photos you use on your website are really very important. Great pictures can tell the story of your brand, while poor images can damage your professional image online. Work with a professional photographer to capture great shots of your products or even your team working or having fun.

Are you ready to start working on your business’ website?

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done. – Peter Drucker

Happy Columbus Day!

There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. – Roger Staubach

3 New Facebook Features You Need to Try

Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform. But Facebook isn’t resting on its laurels. They are constantly keeping things fresh by adding new features.

If you are looking to promote your website or get more visitors to your Facebook business page, take a look at some of Facebook’s latest updates.

Save items to read later

Sometimes you just don’t have the time to read a post that catches your attention. And then when you get time to read it, you can’t find it! Don’t you hate that?

Well, now you can save and bookmark some of the things you see on Facebook to read later. Click here to see how to save and view a post later.

Instant Article

A recently introduced way to publish articles and blog posts right into the Facebook platform is Instant Articles. Once you’ve published a post, you can direct your readers to the full article within the Facebook platform. And the article loads 10X faster than other mobile web articles. The articles are published using your mobile device and the Facebook app.

Have your shop on Facebook

In beta trials now, Facebook is letting some lucky small business owners have the option of adding a store right on their Facebook page.  The ‘Shop’ section will be added to the top of your Facebook business page. Facebook has partnered with payment processor Stripe to let people buy and sell products from within Facebook pages.

Take a look at these new Facebook features to see if you can incorporate any of them into your small business social media plan. 

Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves. – Lord Chesterfield

Does Your Small Business or Startup Need a Logo?

Quite often, the success of a brand is not due to the products it sells but rather to the emotional connection the audience has with the brand message. Your logo can act as a great marketing tool to promote your brand’s message and create emotional engagement with your target audience.

Think about how your brand’s logo is processed by a viewer. Their subconscious plays a big part in how they react to your logo. Your goal should be to have a logo that communicates your brand’s message in an instant.

Why do I need a logo?

The smaller the business, the more you need a great logo. A logo inspires trust in your brand and trust is a vital part of growing your business. A logo-less company is basically a faceless company. A visual identity creates a familiarity with your brand that a small business or startup can’t afford to miss.

What color should I use?

Color affects people’s decisions, both consciously and subconsciously. Colors have meaning so make sure the colors you choose for your logo represent both your company and your target audience.

·        Blue is a color of trust, stability and authority. You will often see it used in the financial and technology sectors.

·        Red is high energy, passion and demands a call to action. Choosing red for your logo can make it feel more dynamic.

·        Green is compassionate, and reflects nature and wildlife.

What should my logo look like?

Your logo should be unique to you and your business. You want it to stand out and differentiate you from your competitors.

Think outside the box when coming up with ideas for your logo. Remember not all brands’ logos reflect their industry. Apple, which sells computers and technology, doesn’t have a computer as their logo. Yet, the Apple logo is recognizable and synonymous with great technology….not apples.

A good designer will work with you to create a logo that is perfect for your small business or startup.