Managing Your Time Wisely

Running a successful business makes it important to effectively manage your time.  If your business is does not manage the office time wisely, how can customers rely on you to help them get their jobs done in time?  Here are a few ideas how to make managing time less stressful and more productive:

Create a written to-do list.  Write down everything you need to complete for each project or daily activities.   Try not to create a mental list since this may add to being overwhelmed when items are forgotten mid-day.  Crossing tasks off as they are completed will help you feel a sense of accomplishment. The crossed off tasks can give you a status overview of your day or a project.

After the to-do list has been created, rearrange the tasks by priority.  Put the time-consuming and most difficult tasks as the first items.  People tend to be more efficient in the morning.  Your time will be managed better by completing the most difficult or time-consuming tasks before you start to feel fatigued later in the day.

Some people work better with deadlines.   If you fall into this category, move your deadline time up by 30 minutes to 1 hour.   This gives you a time to strive for and gives you a little freedom if you need extra time without missing the deadline.

Limit your urge to multitask when in stressful situations. Mistakes can happen if trying to multitask, focus on finishing one to-do task before starting another task.

 On the days you don't complete your list, try to identify what was holding you back from completing more items on the list.  Was the priority order wrong,  too many phone call interruptions or issues out of your control?   Stay calm and figure out how to fix these distractions for the following day.

Managing your time will help your business operations run smoother and customers will notice and appreciate the good service.

How to Handle Charitable Donation Requests

Donating your services or products to a charitable organization is a good way to give back to the community and effective way to build your company's relationships.   As you would like to say yes to all request, it is just not possible.   Here are a some ways your company can handle these request:

Create a dedicated page on your website to handle charitable contribution request.   You can direct visitors to a specific page to submit a form request.  This form allows you to setup an automated response email for every submitted form request. 

This dedicated page can also contain your step-by-step procedures for handling charitable donation requests.   For example, once a form is submitted, it goes to a committee for review and then the organization will be notified whether or not their request can be fulfilled.

This page is a good place to highlight all the charitable organizations and events you have already sponsored.   Include testimonials from the organizations you have supported on this page.   Showcasing your contributions will show the community how supportive and involved you are which will strengthen your brand and reputation. 

Getting people to talk about your business offline

Social media is an essential way to get customers talking about your business.  Word of mouth is still an effective way to keep your business on customer’s minds.  Here are a few ideas to create buzz around your business:

Since MarketMailPrint offers free delivery and pickup, we try to engage with our customers when dropping off a business card order or customer brochures.  Customers have a busy schedule and appreciate staying at the office to handle their day-to-day operations instead of driving in busy traffic to pick up an order at MarketMailPrint.

Tell a story about one of your staff’s accomplishments, achievement or recent trip.   Feature this story  in your business window or front counter.  The story does not need to be very personal but make it interesting to spark conversation.  A table tent may help to make the display even interesting.

Put a guestbook on the front counter or by the receptionist desk.  The presence of a guestbook with help the staff focus on customer service.  Encourage customers to sign in and to write their thoughts about their experience with your business.  Leaving colorful markers or pens by the guestbook may get more customers to participate in signing the book.

Take some of these ideas and incorporate what works best with your business.

What is a Landing Page?

What is a Landing Page?

A landing page is a specific page on your website that is dedicated to a product or service.  Landing pages are created to help online users/customers to find what they are searching for without navigating through an entire website.

Create keywords for these landing pages for SEO so that when a user searches on those keywords in a search engine, the return result will be a link to that specific page on your website not your Home page.   This takes the user/customer to the product or service their searching for.

Landing pages have to be structured well to get the attention of your audience.  Make these pages visually interesting and not complicated.   Focus on one product or service per landing page.  Your content should be easy  for anyone to understand and relate to.   Try to keep your content to a computer monitor length.  Avoid too much text which causes the user to scroll. 

Add a clear call to action comment for the user to take.   Adding a simple statement  such as "call us" or "like us on Facebook" will get this user one step closer to becoming a potential customer.
Tracking these landing pages by analytics will help you see how many visitors came to that landing page and what they clicked on.   This gives you valuable information about your website and landing pages on which ones work well and which ones need improvements.

We, MarketMailPrint, created a landing page that list all our product categories.  This allowed us to create another landing page for one specific product so when clicked, the user is taken directly to the product page not the Home page.  See a sample landing page for MarketMailPrint business cards.

Scoring

     Scoring is creasing a paper for the purpose of making folding easier. If you were to take a sheet of card stock and try to fold it in half, it would look cracked and uneven, and pretty much not very attractive at all. But when you score a sheet of card stock, it indents the paper where it is intended to fold, giving a nice clean and even crease without the cracks.

     In the past, whenever a customer ordered a job that needed to be scored [cards, booklet covers, table tents, pocket folders, etc] we were setting up and scoring these jobs by hand. Even though it proved as a pretty decent arm workout, it was very time consuming. But, good news! We recently obtained a new Auto-Creaser that scores jobs over 10 times faster than before, and just in time for our yearly slew of Christmas and New Years card jobs. With this new machine, we can finish folding job faster and more efficiently.

     Another benefit of this machines is that it can even helps text weight papers look better. Text weights can be folded without scoring because they are light weight sheets. Unfortunately, for many small quantity jobs that are printed on digital copiers, there can still be cracking where the artwork meets the fold. As you may or may not know, copiers lay toner (a polymer/plastic) on top of the paper. Because it's not a real ink and hasn't soaked into the fibers of the paper, digital will crack when folded. Scoring these jobs — especially brochures — dramatically improves the look and quality. Once you see the difference you won't ever want to go back to the old way again.

Preparing Files for Print

Setting up your files properly for print can save yourself and your printer from getting a headache, and will help your prints come out in a quick and timely manner. I'm sure nothing is more inconvenient for you than having your files stuck in the Proof process because your files were not set up properly.

There are some things to do, though, to make sure that your files will print just as you want them. You may have noticed in some of my earlier posts that I try to stress the importance of images being 300dpi and in CMYK. If you're unsure of the resolution of your image, you can either test print in on your own printer, or you can open it in Photoshop. If at any point you remember sizing UP your image, it will probably be low resolution.

It is also very important to make sure your file is in CMYK. This is also something that I have mentioned in a earlier post, but if your images have Pantones or is in RGB, digital printers (which print in CMYK) will convert those colors to their CMYK equivalent. There are true conversion values, but the printer itself, when converting, takes a guess.

Most of them time we do not have all of them typefaces that you are using, so when we open your files in our programs we lose all your typefaces. There is a couple ways around this: if you are sending a file in it's original format (InDesign, Illustrator, etc) you can send in your typefaces as well (Refer back to Sharing InDesign Files on packaging images and fonts). This is extremely helpful for both parties, because then we have the ability to change information in your file without you having to worry about fixing it yourself and then resending it. Remember, most of the time we are still able to open and edit PDFs. The second way, in Illustrator and InDesign, is to outline the fonts. In order to do that, simply highlight all of your text, and in the menu bar go to Text and select Create Outlines. If you set your type in Photoshop, well, just hope for the best.
Make sure your margins are correct (Refer to Margins and Bleeds)! The preferred margin size is a fourth of an inch (.25) away from the edge of the page, but absolutely NO LESS than an eighth of an inch (.125). This is especially helpful when pages inevitably shift while going through the printer and when it is necessary to give booklets a face trim.

If your file has bleeds (which means the color goes all the way to the edge) be sure to export your file WITH the bleed settings. When you click Save As, the Export Adobe PDF window will pop up, and under Bleed and Slug, make sure you select the Use Document Bleed Settings box.

This will make it so when we print and cut down your piece there will be no white lines around the edge. It is not necessary to have the crop and bleed marks in your file, but at the same time it doesn't hurt. You can find those in the same area as the bleed settings, but under the Marks section.

If your file does NOT have bleeds, then that step is not necessary, and simply exporting to PDF will do just fine. But still be sure to double check that everything else that was mentioned is correct.

Finishing Techniques

These finishing techniques are common not only with business cards, but with anything from book covers, to package design, to even wrapping papers. Each of them make your product appealing in its own way, not to mention the combination possibilities are endless!


Embossing is when a page is pressed between two dies and heat and pressure is applied to the back of the page causing an area of the page to rise.

Blind Embossing/Debossing is when a piece is embossed/debossed but no ink is used to add color.

Blind Embossing

Debossing is the opposite of embossing. The page is pressed between two dies, but instead of pressure to the back of the page, heat and pressure is applied to the front of the page causing an area of the page to recede below the surface of the paper.

Debossing (pattern)

Debossing is not as popular as embossing, but it is commonly used to personalize leather materials. The example above is an example of blind debossing, but regular debossing is the same just with added color.

Letterpress is a technique similar to debossing, where the letters are covered in ink and are pressed into a sheet of paper causing a sort of debossed effect. When done right, letterpress work can be absolutely beautiful. You can also use a letter press without having the debossed effect, just flat text, such as how books used to be printed. I can go on forever about Letterpresses, but this is just the letterpress basics. I'll save going more in depth perhaps in a later blog post.

Letterpress

Thermography is a technique where powder, ink, and high heat are combined to create a raised effect on a page. A powdered polymer and a slow drying ink are applied to a page and the page is exposed to extremely high heat causing the powder and ink to melt. When the ink cools it hardens, thus giving the effect of thermographic printing.

Thermography

Engraving is a technique where an image is carved into a flat sheet of metal, and that sheet of metal is coated in ink and used to print. This technique, as you may know, is used to print currency (as well as many other high security paperwork), because it is nearly impossible to recreate the great level of detail.

Engraving

Foil Stamping is a technique where a metallic foil is applied to a page by means of a heated die. Foil Stamping is a little different than the other printing techniques, where you can feel the foil layer on your page, but it doesn't effect the physical dimension on that page like the other techniques. It is, however, often combined with embossing.

Foil Stamping

Die Cutting is a technique where a die is made (similar to a cookie cutter) and is used to knock out a specific shape in a print. It is kind of opposite of the printing techniques mentioned already. Instead of adding color or adding style to the page, die cutting is taking away from the page.

Die-Cuts

Coating/Varnishes are another way to add a little something to your piece. These are pretty popular when it comes to business cards. You can get anything from UV coating, to dull/aqueous, to matte or silk varnishes. Many exist to add levels of tactile quality - from extremely glosses down to flat matte. You can even to spot coating, which is a coating applied in only the places you want them.

Who would want a boring ol' business card when the finishing techniques truly are endless?

Image Sources: http://www.toxel.com/design/2010/06/30/24-creative-die-cut-business-cards/
http://www.gomediazine.com/design-articles/foil-stamping-a-finishing-favorite/
http://www.engravingmachinesite.com/2011/04/22/engraving-2/
http://www.abcoffice.com/office-equipment-news/2011/01/how-does-a-thermography-machine-work-thermographic-printing/
http://www.beastpieces.com/2009/02/capsule-letterpress-folder-invite/
http://www.offsetprintingtechnology.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/deboss2.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Embossing-stationery.jpg