In Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug gives a spot-on guide to website usability— all that stuff that helps visitors to your site find what they’re looking for. What Krug’s book doesn’t touch on is the relationship between usability and search engine optimization (SEO) —how visitors actually find your site in the first place.

I really don’t fault Krug for this (too much) since it’s not his area of primary expertise, and there’s plenty written elsewhere on SEO. Still, a nod to SEO might have been nice since some principles of usability that Krug advocates can appear to be in conflict with best practices in SEO.

If you’ve read Krug’s book along with a few guides to SEO, you probably know what I mean.

The current maxim for SEO is “content is king” with textual content sitting high atop the searchability throne. If you want search engines to find your site, you need good copy. A picture may say a thousand words to most of us, but to bat-blind Web crawlers, a picture only whispers whatever you can squeeze into its alt tag.

In contrast, to make sites more user-friendly, Krug suggests you “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.” (Cue hearty shouts of approval from graphic designers everywhere.) Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to ask you to humor me for a moment. If I say the word “writer,” what picture pops into your head? My bet is that your imagination immediately conjured up an image of a bespectacled man or woman sitting in the lone corner of a coffee shop with a Moleskine and a pen. Of course, your imagined writer is not conversing with the other customers or being engaged with the world because the best writing comes from the inner-depths of a writer’s mind and soul … right? Well, yes and no.

Poetry and fiction may be more personal works, thus requiring seclusion from the distraction of others. But agency copywriting is a different ball game altogether.

Marketing writing is a form of communication that is constantly evolving, and to be successful copywriters need to be actively involved with others. I have learned a few things from my experience in writing copy for Hile: Read the rest of this entry »

“Is that Greek?”

Imagine you’re a client eagerly about to review Hile’s proposed design for a new website. You click on the link we’ve given you and there on your screen you see a mocked-up web page featuring clean, stylish design, a just-right photo for your banner image and … wait a minute. What the heck? In place of where the copy should go you see this:

Where you thought you’d see words somehow related to your company’s industry or purpose, there in its place is what appears to be a long, lost Romance language. You rack your brain trying to decipher what is now taking the place of the expected text. Of course, the words (if you can call them that) are there to show you how the page will look with copy and, unfortunately, hold as much meaning as a baby’s babble.

What Lorem Ipsum basically comes down to is designing and organizing a website, brochure, etc. that visually looks like the finished product. It doesn’t distract the viewer with actual copy, and the letters are spaced out well enough so that it appears on the page just as intelligible English would.  Read the rest of this entry »

Twenty years ago after my doctor recommended I get more exercise, I, like 40 million other Americans, went out and bought a treadmill. I knew that the odds of exercising long-term in our unfinished basement were against me (only 3 in 10 Americans exercise regularly) but I was going to beat the odds. I swore that I wouldn’t become a statistic by letting my treadmill turn into a back-of-the-basement, spider web covered, clothes hanger.

My 3-day a week treadmill regimen lasted 2 years.

Yup! I was a statistic. (Lest you think I’m a total slackard, I was exercising sporadically, but not on our expensive treadmill.)

Two and a half years ago when I decided to launch our company blog I had the same noble intentions as my early exercise aspirations. I promised myself I’d write two fresh posts a week, including compelling interviews with industry leaders, and that my entries would be GOOD. By my fifteenth post I realized that all those great ideas I’d had when I decided to become Mr. Social Media had run out. Read the rest of this entry »

I am approaching 30 years of running my own business and although I’ve made plenty of mistakes I’ve learned a few things too. I know this because my wife keeps telling me how much I’ve changed as a businessman (I assume she meant this as a compliment). Also, in almost 3 decades I’ve only ever had one employee quit because they didn’t like working for me (after only 3 days on the job).

To make a point, I’ve turned my subject matter on its head. So instead of entitling this post “10 Tips Toward Business Success” (I know I wouldn’t read an article with that tired cliché of a title), I’ve written one with a more engaging name (and hopefully more meaty content as well).

So here are my tips in no particular order:

1. Be passionless. Look at your business as just a way to make a living and nothing more. That will assure you take the easiest path to any challenge, and will expedite your company’s demise.
2. Nurture your ego. Make sure you view yourself as the supreme expert in every situation. And while you’re at it, make sure everybody else knows it too. If you look to surround yourself with people more talented than you in their areas of expertise, and give them the freedom to exercise their gifts, you run the risk of losing power even if you end up ultimately being more successful. Read the rest of this entry »

After seeing a need for legal brand protection for their clients, Hile Design has formed a strategic partnership with brand clearance and protection expert IPPES LLC and the company’s President and Chief Legal Officer, Tim Kroninger.

IPPES, an acronym for Intellectual Property Protection and Enforcement Specialists, offers a federally registered proprietary service program, IPPES ProtectEnforce, which allows companies to protect and enforce their most valuable assets: their identities or “brands.” This includes brand clearance, with comprehensive legal availability and conflict searches, as well as enhanced protection for brands, trademarks, Internet domain names, and copyrights. IPPES uniquely blends the industries of law and business to effectively offer its services to companies of all types and sizes.

Businesses, including startups and those introducing new brands or re-branding themselves, are currently facing cease-and-desist demand letters and lawsuits for unknowingly creating brand names and logos that are already in use or their competitors believe are too close to their brands. Moreover, as the Internet gets more and more populated, the amount of available domain names decrease. The problem becomes worse due to the existence of cyber-squatters—people and companies that register domain names and then charge exorbitant prices to sell them to companies that should have rightfully owned them in the first place. Along with brand development, design, and web development services, Hile Design is now offering a unique way to overcome these challenges.

By partnering with IPPES, Hile Design will offer clients what other advertising agencies do not—a way to not only create a brand but to legally own and protect it. Hile Design is always looking to add more value to their services and this new partnership with IPPES will provide additional industry-leading services and “peace of mind” for present and future clients.

Recently I’ve noticed a lot of what I consider braggadocio in the marketing world. Of course this is nothing new, but according to the rules of today’s branding etiquette, it seems out of place. I’m not talking about companies throwing out empty advertising claims like, “We’re the Best” or “Our Quality Is Unsurpassed” (all statements that can’t be quantified). No, what I’m addressing lies within the marketing community itself.

As I peruse LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ as well as other professional social sites I see marketing people describing themselves as Visionaries, Gurus, Luminaries and Pioneers. There are enough people out there labeling themselves as such that I can’t help but think, “C’mon, all these people can’t be Visionaries!” Besides, “Visionary” and “Guru” are such subjective titles—especially when ascribed to oneself. And for whatever reason, most of the people describing themselves with these monikers seem to be involved in the social media arena, which seems ironic.

As far as I know Albert Einstein never described himself as a genius. He left that to others. Read the rest of this entry »

This summer I said farewell to my friends at Hile Design and hopped on a plane to spend a 5-week stint in England, where I studied literature at Oxford University and learned the correct way to drink tea and play croquet. I did fairly well academically, but how does an A in English translate to quality work in the office?

I’d like to think that the expenses of this trip paid for more than college credit and that what I learned while across the pond may be applied to the work I’m doing here at Hile.

So, besides finally being able to define a “crumpet,” what have I learned? My literature courses revolved around legendary writers such as Jane Austen, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll. But, at Hile I’m not writing about ill-fated courtships or magical rings. Now that I’m out of the classroom and back in the office I feel like I’ve taken a tumble through a rabbit hole to land on my head in the world of advertising.

However, my job here can really be boiled down to one thing: words. Constructing, organizing, manipulating, sometimes even creating words is really what my job as an assistant copywriter comes down to. And what were Tolkien and Austen really doing but stringing together words to fashion a plot and characters? Read the rest of this entry »