The Bride Brands the Wedding

/ Marie Hoyt-Pariury

In the year 2016 almost everything is branded. There’s personal branding, business branding, and now wedding branding. Brides are setting up a website and having a logo designed for their special day.

Now, I feel like a bit of a pioneer when it comes to this topic, as I designed a logo for my husband’s 40th birthday to be used on party favors, years ago. But, I wish I was a better designer or that the internet existed back when we got married, but I digress…

Wedding logos or monograms can add a special touch of personalization that can be used even beyond the wedding day. You could use it to order personalized home goods, stationary, cute “his” and “hers” t-shirts to announce to the world that you are newlyweds. If I were to design a logo for a couple that wants to use their logo after the wedding, I would suggest that they not include the wedding date, or change it to “established”, “since” or “founded in…”.

With local and online printers offering digital printing, its convenient and inexpensive to get almost anything customized.

Update: I recently learned that our wedding monogram designs were being used for gobos* that are projected on the wall behind the head table or on the dance floor.

*A gobo (or GOBO) is a physical stencil or template that is placed inside or in front of a light source, to control the shape of the emitted light. A metal gobo with patterned holes allows only the desired shape or pattern of light through, casting a specific pattern of light and shadow into the space.

Free Sample

/ Marie Hoyt-Pariury
Blog graphic

I was just talking with a client about giving away a free sample. A FREE sample you say?! Now why would anyone give something away for free? Isn’t the idea to get customers that will pay for my product or service? Well, yes, and that’s why giving them a “taste” for your product or service might help convert a potential client into a paying customer.

Let me explain my reasoning. You know when you go into a bakery or restaurant and you see that tempting plate with the sign that reads “free sample”, well, you usually take a sample, its free, so what’s the harm. Maybe if you are on a diet or its a food you would never eat you might not take it, but if you do, chances are you’ll be “hooked”. The same business strategy can be used for your business, be it a service or a product. You offer just a sample, or a bite-sized portion to your potential client.

Examples of this would be to offer a free digital download on your website. Often its a one- to two-page PDF offering advice, or tips in your area of expertise. Or it could be a permanent feature on your website, like a brief, one- to two-minute video highlighting the features of your product or service, or a lesson-plan. The same applies to your social media pages.

If you offer a product, your sample could be a branded with your logo product sample. Something very inexpensive. An item that costs very little, like the type of product a business might typically hand-out at a trade show.

Read more

Bumper Sticker

/ Marie Hoyt-Pariury
Design moves people... Educate the world... Connect with others

This was one of the breakout activities from a recent Women’s Business Network of SE MA (WBN) meeting. Our assignment was to come up with a bumper sticker that told people a little something about us, as much info as would fit on a typical bumper sticker.

Since starting Pixel Artists Design in March of 2008 I have been fortunate to have meet so many people that I have done business with and even became friends.

I’d like to think that this summarizes all that I have gained as an independent designer and business owner, and when people read it, they might better understand the person on the other side of the bumper sticker.

How Google Ranks Websites with Video

/ Marie Hoyt-Pariury
Blog graphic

Do you want to get your website to come up on the first page of Google search results? Since Google started giving more attention to its blended results, you can get your website on the first page by creating video content.

Studies have shown that videos were over 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results as part of the blended results.

There are a few steps you can take:

Upload Videos Directly to YouTube

While it won’t guarantee first-page results, Google will index your video if you upload it to YouTube. But this won’t drive traffic to your site since people clicking on the URL will get sent to YouTube and not your site.

Embed a Video on Your Website

Embedding videos onto your website will help get the videos more views. This is important because Google algorithms want to know how many times a video on YouTube has been watched. Almost all of the videos that Google shows on its blended searches are from YouTube.

Embed Videos on Pages with Text

To help search engines like Google get a better understanding of your content, make sure you are putting copy on the page. By either writing an introduction to the video that goes before the embedded video or put the transcript under the video. You will also need the transcript for YouTube, so save the transcript as a txt file. Read more