facebook3things

Promote Events with Social Methods for More Registrations

We often get asked which tools we use to promote our events. Questions like “Do you use Facebook, linkedin, or Twitter?”  or ” Does social media really help drive registration?” or ” What tool do you use for registration?” If you plan events, and maybe have had these questions also pass through your mind, this post may help. Keep in mind many of our events are designed for under 200 people and have a low ticket price to entry.

Promoting Events with Social Methods As an example we will use PechaKucha Night Raleigh (PKN), an event Cynergie Studio hosts and sponsors 4 times per year. We do use Facebook and Twitter to promote events. When we started promoting back in 2009, we used Facebook, Linkedin, Community calendars, PR, Twitter and other sources. We tested via custom links which of the sources were driving registrations. When we noticed that Facebook was a clear and bold leader, we stopped spending time on all the other PR sources. Why? Well simply put, time. PechaKucha Night is requires lots of coordination and depends on volunteer …

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to have or not to have

To Have, or Not to Have an Email Signature?

Has this ever happened to you?  You try to contact the person you may have a meeting with or perhaps you need to discuss something with this person and you do a quick search in your email and you find their email, boom! Success and so quickly, gotta love gmail :)  Then a quick scan of the email finds absolutely no mention of a phone number for this person. My glee turns quickly into frustration. Have you experienced this?  Perhaps, it is just me, but this seems completely out of touch. So today I challenge you NOT to be one of these folks!

OK folks, email relationship tip #101. Absolutely, positively, always, always provide a current email signature on the bottom of your email. This is good business form and lets the email receiver know you are accessible and legit. I know many good, professional folks that simply do not do this. I don’t get it. It’s best if you do this for every email profile, every platform and since technology makes it ridiculously easy to do, you really have no excuses, ‘K? …

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mad

10 Greatest ‘MAD’ Covers

MAD magazine has been around a long time, in fact since 1952. Below is the very first cover published for the October/November edition. Above is a portion of the October 2012 cover. (Notice the caricatures of Romney and Obama?)

See a compendium of MAD covers at Doug Gilford’s MAD cover site.

I’m not a comic magazine or MAD humor lover at all, but I can’t deny that I do appreciate the consistency and longevity of a magazine that can remain relevant throughout the years. Very, very impressed with that! The simplicity of many of the covers does nothing to diminish the impact of the covers. The talented and fortunate artist’s who illustrated the covers were simply amazing in their concept, composition, and style while maintaining the MAD brand. Speaking of brand, it’s interesting to note that MAD modified their logo many times throughout the years without interrupting their brand at all. With a strong brand – translate this as feeling your marketing imagery can be less rigid in terms of always having your logo appear in the same color or even typeface.

[Original content below from Flavorwire's ...

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Cyn Macgregor, Creative Director

About our Creative Director

Cyn Macgregor

Cyn has over 15 years art direction and design experience in diverse industries to include: publishing, healthcare, medical research, SaaS software, technology, music, art and photography.

As a “creative entrepreneur”, (that’s the term Cyn uses to describe herself) she provides beautifully designed and cost-effective marketing solutions to business owners.  As Creative Director at Cynergie Studio, Cyn works hard to align business messaging with appropriate business graphics, sales materials, websites, marketing strategies, content management, blogs, videos, and social media channels to help build business and earn revenue.

Stuff you might not know about Cyn

An artist. She paints, draws, and creates.  Cyn focuses her energy, experience and affinity for creating on making colorful, feisty and abstract art. Her artwork is best suited to personal or commercial interiors whereby art collectors can fully enjoy seeing the art everyday. She’s a charismatic and passionate visual artist who feels fortunate to have her artwork in homes and businesses in the USA, Europe and South America.

Aka Ms. Cynthia. Many years ago Cyn had young art students who studied with her at Sun&Moon Studio, a business she founded to …

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ss1-dashboard

#1 Secure your Website

WordPress 3.4.2 is the newest software release. If you have not upgraded yet, you should.

#1 Best way to secure your website against possible hacker threat is by keeping your software and plugins updated. Wordpress 3.4.2 was recently released. If you have not upgraded your website yet, you really should consider doing this. Why? Well the  most compelling reason is for security against possible hacker threats. Although WordPress is built on a solid platform, there are folks in the geek world who have other agendas and may try to compromise your website without your knowledge. One great way to secure your website is to keep the architecture software updated and keep your plugins updated as well. You can do this fairly easily via your WP dashboard.

Here are the basic steps:

Login with your admin password Check to be sure you have a recent backup, and if not make one now Look for the button to upgrade Click the button, and when it asks if you are sure you want to upgrade, click yes Test your website to be sure it is functioning properly …

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