Wow, is it really almost the end of June?  It seems like the Summer is flying by!  After taking some time off for the wedding in May (which was the best day ever, by the way!), I have been working, working, working to get caught back up! I wanted to take a short break though to share two projects that we just completed which I am very excited about! Both are WordPress websites for local Charlottesville ladies and we loved being a part of both of them!

First, Congratulations to April on the launch of Armillary Coaching! April already had beautiful branding by Watermark Design but needed a simple website to share her services and upcoming events.  With the help of How Joyful Design, we customized a WordPress template for her that meets all of her needs and is easy for her to update as she grows and adds more events.  If you need help finding some direction in your personal or professional life, give April a call! Also, be sure to check out the list of workshops that she has coming up.  The Vision Board Workshop sounds really cool to me!   Check out the full site by clicking on this image:

The second site is for a great local ‘challenge’ called The Better Business Challenge.  They also had great branding already but needed a website to share information on the challenge with participants and those considering taking part.  We also worked with How Joyful Design on this project to customize a site for them that features their sponsors & participants and offers lots of resources on how to incorporate more efficient and sustainable practices into business.  If you’re a local business, please check it out…it certainly creates a win-win situation for everyone involved! Check out the full site by clicking on this image:

In honor of this beautiful 80 degree weather, the project that we chose for today was finishing up the content and images on a Caribbean Travel WordPress website that we have been working on for a few weeks now.  First, thank you Corin for choosing us to help with a site for your very fun new business and thanks to Joy at How Joyful Design Studio for making it look so bright & beachy! It certainly makes me want to take a vacation!

If you’re interested in traveling to these amazing places, contact Corin for details.  She has some GREAT deals on all inclusive packages!

As if you couldn’t have guessed, I love WordPress.  I have used it for everything from personal blogging to simple client websites to more complicated sites that involve developers & designers.  But, this month, I am cheating on WordPress with Tumblr.

My husband Chris and I are doing a 25 day program called Clean which essentially involves eating no processed foods, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, etc.  They advise you to keep a journal to keep you on track.  Maybe it’s just because of the business that I am in but I didn’t see how a written journal stored in an undisclosed location at my house was going to keep me on track.  So, I started a blog.  It was a little scary at first but on the days that we have considered giving up, the thought of my readers knowing that I have failed has kept me going.  Sure, we are doing it for ourselves and I don’t *really* care what others things but hey, whatever works…

The Clean Program Book

When I started thinking about my goals for the Clean blog I wanted something simple to set up, easy to post to, and most likely something temporary since I don’t have a plan for this particular blog space past about 25 days or so.  I also knew that for business purposes I should really experiment with some of the other blogging tools out there and I have already checked Blogger off of that list.  So, I decided to try out Tumblr.

I have to say, for what it’s made for, it’s pretty awesome.  A step in between Twitter and a full fledged blog like WordPress, I would say it’s the easiest to use blog platform I have seen.   It is perfect for beginners starting a personal blog and those who don’t have a ton of time to invest in their blog.  It’s also great for micro blogs.  For example, I have a client who has a custom WordPress site which includes a great blog but we now have a few Tumblr blogs floating around out there on specific areas of their work.  It’s great for SEO and it allows them to really focus on specific areas individually.

I have found that you can very easily upload photos, video, quotes, etc. from a smart phone which means that I do it more often than I normally would.  Then, I log in on my computer and write a full blog post each night..or sometimes I do that from my phone as well.  It also allows me to update some of the colors and other details on the template with no problem to make it a bit more ‘me’ that the ones they offer.  My blog is also linked to Facebook & Twitter.  The whole process feels really simple and user friendly.  If you want a simple personal blog or a micro blog in addition to your main blog, try having an affair with Tumblr!  If you are looking for a fully customizable blog or website tool with all of the widgets and plug ins that you could ever dream of, I would suggest sticking to WordPress.

Check out our CLEAN journey on my Tumblr BLOG!

I hope you all had a wonderful Turkey Day yesterday and enjoyed time with family & friends! I certainly have a LOT to be thankful for this year!

One thing that I am NOT thankful for are the 75 spam comments that I woke up to this morning.  Ugh. I did have a basic spam filter plug-in installed but when that isn’t quite enough there is another option that has worked for me (so far!) every time I have used it.  It is called Akismet and you learn more about what it is and how to install it HERE.  Spam fighting= done.

Have questions about installing it on your blog?  Send me an e-mail.

Your mom taught you to share, right?  As an adult, we don’t share toys nearly as much as we share content that we find online.  If you have a blog, I am sure you want your readers to be able to share your content with their friends.  The key is to make it very easy for them to do and to be sure they can share it in the way that they prefer.  One reader may prefer to e-mail a link to her dad while another may want to share your post on Facebook.  Here is an easy way to add one of those share buttons that you see all over the internet now to your own WordPress blog.

• Visit the Add To Any page on WordPress.org Plugin Directory
• Download the Plugin
• Zip the file that downloads (right click on the file and choose compress)
• Log into your WordPress dashboard
• On the left about halfway down, choose ‘Plugins’
• Upload the file that you just downloaded
• Click Activate
• You can go into the settings for the plugin and play with how large it is, whether it always shows up, etc. if you would like.

You will then see this at the bottom of each blog post:

I just arrived in Raleigh, NC (America’s most wired city according to Forbes) for the Internet Summit which starts tomorrow morning at the convention center. The 2010 Summit will feature over 100 industry expert speakers from such companies as Google, Cisco, Salesforce.com, Go Daddy, Microsoft, Autotrader.com, Yahoo!, Red Hat, Mashable, StumbleUpon, Playboy, Lulu, SkyMall, Discovery Channel and many more.  So far all is good…I checked into the hotel to find that they do not have wireless access in the rooms (really!?) BUT they do in the bar.  And, the bar has Family Guy on TV.  This is my kind of town!

I am sitting here enjoying a glass of wine (and a debate with the guy next to me as to why I would choose a wine glass vs. a pint glass for a nice Cabernet…again, really?!) as I review the agenda for the next two days.  It looks like it’s going to be a busy couple of days! Here is a quick overview of the sessions that I have chosen to attend:

Wednesday
Creating A Powerful Social Media Plan

• Social Media Strategy: The Most Important Elements of Success
• What Social Media Tools Do You Need?
• Making the tools work for you – Part I – Blogging, widgets and wikis, podcasts, online videos
• Making the tools work for you – Part II – Twitter, Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com
• Integrating and monitoring social media

And in the afternoon…

The Future of the Web
Integrated Social Media Marketing
Web Analytics and Measurement
And, of course, a Welcome Reception and After Party

Thursday
Online Advertising
Maximizing E-mail Marketing
Ad Words
Lunch with Keynote Speaker: Bob Parsons from GoDaddy (what I want to know is whether Jillian and Danica will be there?)
Search Marketing
Reputation Management

I will blog as much as possible throughout the conference and look forward to bringing back lots of great new knowledge to apply to future projects!  Keep an eye on the Garnet Blog, Facebook and Twitter for the latest from IS 10 in Raleigh!

Welcome to the official blog of Garnet Marketing.  Can you believe we didn’t really have one until now?  I can’t either! What a bad example we have been! It has been on the list for quite a while and finally, here it is!  And, even better, it’s a WordPress blog. Although we have clients who use several other blog platforms I’m not  afraid to admit that I am slightly obsessed with WordPress. Not nearly as obsessed as I am with Etsy but we will save that for another post!

We hope this blog will be an interesting and fun marketing + social media resource for small businesses. Because we have been slackers on getting this thing going we have a running list of ideas to share! We plan to share marketing tips, marketing related stories that we come across (okay, maybe they won’t ALWAYS even be marketing related), and other random things that we find interesting and hope you will too.

If you ever have a topic that you would like to learn more about, please contact us.  We would be happy to add it to our list of future blog topics.  Enjoy!