Photo Sources

Veer
Shutterstock
iStockphoto
PhotoXpress
Dreamstime
Panthermedia
Polylooks
EveryStockPhoto
Thinkstock
Jupiter Images
Getty Images
Matton Images
123RF
Stockvault.net
Corbis Images
Google Images
Stock.xchg
Flickr

Marketing and Social Media

Marketing through social media seems a bit pointless to me -- I'd much rather be social in person than online -- but, since I'm not a Facebook fan, I guess that's probably why (but that's a whole other story).

And, I can't see the value of 140 word sound bites coming at you from all these sources -- sounds like word clutter.  (An interesting book I'm reading is "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" by Nicholas Carr.)

However, with 40 million people on Facebook (or is it more now?), I'm probably in the minority -- and obviously, a lot of people like Twitter. So, from a marketing perspective, would a small company be better off spending a bit of regular time on Facebook/Twitter than to spend the money on keeping a website updated?

Here's a brief summary of different social media and their pro's and con's from Constant Contact:
http://www.constantcontact.com/social-media-for-small-business/index.jsp


I think to be effective at Twitter and Facebook, you do have to have updates more often than a website -- and Twitter's format almost requires at least a 3x/week posting from a business otherwise I think it looks like it was just done for marketing purposes instead of giving helpful info to followers (similar to a 3 year old website with no changes). 

 Here's (in my opinion) someone who's handling facebook and twitter very effectively for a small business (she's an acupuncturist) -- HOWEVER, she's doing a daily sentence or two on Facebook and sending it to twitter.

The pro's on facebook and twitter is she's not spending a lot of time doing it, however, she is doing it daily (a morning ritual?).  The blog then can be more in-depth but it doesn't have to be as regular -- looks like every 3 weeks or so.

Her facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Novato-CA/Heart-to-Heart-Medical-Center/73206361399

Her twitter page:
http://twitter.com/DrShiroko

And her website and blog (she updates the blog every 2 or 3 weeks:
http://www.hthmc.com/blog/

Things to think about...  the world is a changin'!

Resources for websites

My favorite sources for web design:

url purchases and management: http://namecheap.com
hosting: http://bluehost.com
templates: http://www.metamorphozis.com/
Dreamweaver:   http://adobe.com
ftp transfer:   http://filezilla-project.org/
tutorials:  http://www.lynda.com
Photoshop (CS4 but Elements works as well):  http://adobe.com

spoongraphics grunge

So why are so many very cool and "hip" designers from the UK? Here's a great design blog -- with free stuff on Tuesdays. Quite a bit of grunge that's a great look.

http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/

Vector designs

Very cool vector designs to buy -- I really like the floral designs. On sale for another hour and 15 minutes tonight...?

http://www.designious.com/

Podcast software

Camtasia: Software to put together a video podcast:
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp

And a video that used it:
http://8weekstoprofits.com/blog/blogvideo3/

Graphic Design Sources

Adobe offers some visual design curriculum for use by schools -- some Photoshop related, some using other software:
http://www.adobe.com/education/instruction/teach/visualdesign.html

Here's a graphic design class syllabus with some resources, assignments, etc.
http://finearts.fontbonne.edu/115/115syl.html

A Graphic Design website to explore further:
http://gdbasics.com/index.php?s=pointlineplane