Letterhead, Business Cards, and Brochures: Make Them Sing

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Letterhead, Business Cards, and Brochures : Make Them "Sing"

With the advent of laser printers, suddenly everyone believed they were a "desktop publisher." People could create everything from logos to postcards to mailing labels on their computer. They could buy software such as Printmaster and scores of other brands, or invest in a Macintosh and graphics software, and even print out menus or brochures, color business cards, and so on. Four- color printers became affordable with ink-jet cartridges, and even laser printers came down in price.

While all of this desktop publishing could be seen as an exciting advent, it also ushered in some decidedly unprofessional work. For instance, Erica has been in publishing for 15 years . She has worked as an editor with best-selling authors. She knows how to spot a typo or poor grammar. Not everyone has this talent or skill. Therefore, she has been places such as doctors ' offices, restaurants , and small shops and picked up brochures riddled with mistakes. Considering that this literature is sending out the company's or doctor's image to the buying or service-seeking public, it doesn't reflect well to have the brochure popped out from desktop publishing software full of mistakes. Perhaps money was saved ”but at what cost?

While people now know how to design logos and create letterhead, and programs like Microsoft Word can even lead you step by step in their creation, if that letter is printed out on cheap copy paper, what does that say about corporate image?

Business cards are often the worst offenders. Office supply stores sell perforated business card sheets that can be fed into laser or ink-jet printers. Once they're printed, a person simply bends on the perforation lines and has business cards ”with tell-tale little rough edges.

What are some hard and fast rules to follow to present a corporate image ”while keeping costs low?

1. If you cannot afford to have professional letterhead and envelopes printed at a print shop, at least purchase good-quality paper. Never use copy paper to send a letter to a client.

2. If you are an entrepreneur, consider hiring a graphic designer to pull together a corporate image for you, including a logo, unless you have a background in art or design. Just as you may have a home-based business, many graphic artists and students do, too. They may be priced more reasonably than a large firm. Thus the cost can be surprisingly reasonable, especially considering it may be your image for many years to come. Another option is to visit a local university and see if the marketing department or graphics department might like to take on designing a logo and slogan as a student project.

3. Never, ever use perforated business cards printed out of your laser printer. They look sloppy . With websites like www.businesscards.com, there is no reason to do this. The cost is minimal ”and if you are a home office professional who thinks "time is money," the finished cards are delivered to your door so you don't even have to leave the house to have them done. Avery now offers no-perf cards to put through your printer, and these do have a more polished appearance. However, if you plan on handing out a lot of cards as you get your business off and running, printing up 500 or more is relatively cheap, and websites like www.businesscards.com even offer you design help.

4. Brochures should also be printed on a nice stock of paper. Paper Direct is an excellent company that offers a variety of brochure paper you can run through your laser or inkjet printer. However, and this is important, if the last time you thought about dangling participles and parallel construction was high school or college, consider having a professional design your brochure. Again, just in our networking circle we know a number of home-based PR professionals who design and create brochures at very competitive prices.

5. If you decide to go to a printer for your letterhead, envelope, business card, and other needs, you can opt for thick paper and a beautiful logo and skip two or four colors as a way to skimp on costs in one area but get the best in another.

6. If you get your paper and card needs at a printer, keep an eye on quantities when you get low. "Rush jobs" are almost always significantly more expensive, and it's one expense that is completely avoidable.

7. Finally, when designing your business cards and letterhead, remember this image may stay with you for a while. Make whatever is created for you "sing." Let the paper, font, logo, and business card reflect the image you want to present to the world.

Websites: Hitching a Ride on the Information Superhighway

Dot.coms remember them and the fury of investing surrounding them? They sent Wall Street spinning on its axis, but then a funny thing happened (or not so funny if you were investing in them) many of them fell out of their orbit and came crashing to earth. What does this mean for the home-based business?

In general, if you think simply putting up a website with products on the information superhighway is going to let you retire early, you may have to re-think that plan. On the other side, we firmly believe most or all businesses require a "presence" on the World Wide Web. Without one, you may seem woefully behind the times.

But what if, for instance, you're a one-person PR firm? You haven't many clients , but those you do have provide fairly steady work. You're savvy enough about how the Internet works to know that you don't expect to gather many new clients by simply putting out your shingle on the Web. Agreed. But, when going to meet a new client, we guarantee you one of their first questions will be, "Do you have a website I can check out?" Such is our culture now.

The first step, then, in pulling together a website, is to get your domain name. You may be frustrated and disappointed to find out your actual corporate name is "taken." You may then have to designate some variation of your name as your website. For instance, if your corporate name is:

Top Ideas, Inc.

You may find that:

topideas.com

is taken. Now what? Start playing around with your corporate name with things like:

topideasinc.com

topideasweb.com

top-ideas.com

One problem is that the farther you get away from your original name, the harder it is for people to find you. Another problem may be alternate spellings. For instance, if your company name is:

Two Girls Typing

Will people look for:

Twogirlstyping.com

or

2girlstyping.com

It pays, if you plan on using your website to drum up some kind of business, and if they're available, to buy the alternates and direct people who go there to your proper website. If you plan on doing something in the public eye, you might also consider buying the " negatives ," such as:

Cartoonman.com

and

Cartoonmansucks.com

This is likely, as we said, only relevant if you do something in the public eye where this might spring up from a grudge or a competitor.

Once you buy your site through Veri-sign or any of the domain-registration companies out there (found on the Web), you'll need a hosting company that will allow you to "park" there until you get your website up. This book cannot possibly cover every bit of information about the Internet. That's another whole book entirely! However, the general idea is to get a hosting package that is competitive (no, they're not all priced the same). You must also decide how big your website is going to be and what its content will be. If you are going to have a "shopping cart" for people to buy products, much as you yourself may do when you visit a clothing shop on-line or Amazon.com, for instance, you need much more "space" than if you merely want two pages that tells a bit about you and your company. These are sometimes called "premium" packages, as they "reserve" more space for you than a site that is basically functioning as a "brochure" on-line.

Though the "shopping carts" for large companies are often designed with very intensive software, do-it-yourself versions are available. Therefore, you need to have some idea of the purpose of your website. Is it for advertising and corporate image purposes only or will you actually allow people to buy a product through it? Will you want to receive e-mail and get feedback from customers? Create a database from customer surveys, and so on?

What about design? Some amazing "do-it-yourself" kits are available that walk you through the process if you are pretty savvy. Jessica Stasinos, a publishing professional and indexer, designed her website by herself and hired a consultant for one hour to "load" it onto the Internet when that single process was just a little beyond her expertise. She is savvy on computers, and can load programs and download images. She is not a designer, but the software made it easy.

Erica herself makes no claim to computer genius. All sites related to her latest book releases are designed by web professionals she hires (all right, she married one). It's all in how comfortable you are on the computer, and where you want to spend your budget as you set up your home-based business.

Finally, once you have a website, remember that your image is out there on the Internet for all to see. If you make changes in your company, add new services, or have new credentials, remember to update from time to time.

Hold the Line: Phones in the Home Office

We covered phones in our technology chapter, but some of that bears repeating, at least in part.

When working from home, ideally your business should have a separate line. But often one line isn't enough. Erica's home has four. And depending on your business, you may follow suit. You might conceivably need a fax line, a line for your Internet provider, one line for your personal use, and one or more for business use. Besides keeping the phone company wealthy, what else should you consider when setting up phone lines for a home office?

• Regardless of how you do it (call waiting or an internal voice mail system that " bounces " clients or business associates into a voice mailbox), never have a caller for business reach a busy signal.

• If you spend a significant portion of your business day on e-mail or the Internet, have a separate line for that use.

• If household noise is a problem, return calls later rather than speaking to a client with kids crying in the background or your dog howling at the mail carrier.

• Just as when you are in a corporate environment, you are encouraged to have your day reflected on your voice mail, do so in your home office. For example, "You have reached the voice mail of Joe Smith. Today is Monday, October 1st. I am at a conference until noon. Please leave a message, and I will return your call as soon as possible."

• "Cute" messages with music, silly sayings, or inspirational words are annoying to busy people. Leave a brief message for callers that allows them to speak as soon as possible.

• If your household has a number of people using the telephone (e.g., two parents and three teens), consider voice mail packages from the phone company that allow you to press different mailbox numbers .

E-Mail Etiquette: Minding Your Manners on the Internet

Most people picking up this book are familiar with e-mail. However, if we accept that this is the case, it's fairly amazing how many people aren't aware of the "rules of the road" when it comes to the Information Superhighway. Every week Erica and Kathy receive e- mails from people who clearly don't know professional e-mail etiquette. We don't mean to sound like Internet " Miss Manners," but there are a number of little rules to keep in mind when sending professional e-mail, so let's take a look at them.

• Never send an e-mail without doing a spell check. Only sending a sentence or two? Positive those two sentences have no errors? Guess again. You know this is true ”you must get those e-mails, too. So do us all a favor and spell check.

• Keep humor or sarcasm to a bare minimum. Although something may seem funny or helpful to you, if read in a different light it may actually come across as inappropriately sarcastic , condescending, or rude. If you aren't sure about slang or abbreviations like IMHO (in my humble opinion) or LOL (laughing out loud) ”DON'T USE THEM!

• In light of the previous comment, remember that the Internet is a culture. Do you know what flaming is? This occurs when someone posts a message to a news group or bulletin board and unintentionally aggravates other users, who may then send " flaming ," rude e-mails back. In this culture then, abbreviations, slang, and comments in general can be perceived differently from when you speak them. It's there in black and white, yet it's open to interpretation. In person, someone might ask, "What did you mean by __________?" Clarification is readily available. Not so in e-mail. Offend once, and you may even lose a client. At the very least, you may hurt feelings or alienate a budding relationship.

• Don't forward jokes and chain letters to professional acquaintances unless your relationship has expanded into a personal friendship ”and ask if they mind getting jokes. Most professionals are simply too busy to wade through a lot of jokes. In addition, some companies have very strict policies about personal e-mail, offensive jokes, and materials. "Big Brother" is out there in many companies, so be wary.

• Just because it's the more casual format of e-mail doesn't mean common business letter courtesy is no longer used. Sign off with a "Sincerely" or "Very Truly Yours," include a salutation, and so forth.

• All those little "smileys" [;-)] or other "emoticons," as they are called, allow you to express emotion. But in professional correspondence, they're not appropriate. Let your words speak for themselves . And let those words be appropriate.

• If you want a colleague to look at a website, learn how to insert the link into your message.

• If you forward something that has already been forwarded a hundred times with "greater than" >> symbols galore or odd spacing, do your receiver a favor and cut, paste, and clean it up, particularly if it's very relevant to your client or associate.

• DON'T "SHOUT" IN E-MAIL. DON'T USE ALL CAPS.

• It goes without saying (but we'll say it anyway), off-color humor, sexist jokes, and even things as blatantly ridiculous as downloaded soft porn images that you think are funny to pass along will come back to haunt you. The rule of thumb many use is: If this was viewed by my boss or was saved by the person I sent it to, would I someday regret sending this (particularly if taken out of context)?

E-mail is a wonderful tool. It's fun at times. It cuts down on phone tag. It is all of those things. But it also can be used very sloppily. Don't be someone who doesn't follow the basic "rules of the road."

So there you have it. You may be one person at a kitchen table, but there's no reason you can't seem like a professional in every sense of the word! Follow these basic suggestions, and you're on your way to building a professional image of which you can be proud.

Nine Ways to Seem Bigger than You Really Are

Whether you are a one-person start-up or a sales rep trying to convey a professional image, here are a few ways to seem bigger than you are:

1. Use professionally printed letterhead and business cards.

2. Have a mission statement or a slogan that conveys your corporate image ”just like the big guns.

3. If it's important for some reason to not seem like you work from home (if, e.g., you are in an industry where you routinely compete against very large firms), get a P. O. box. Also get one if you rent an apartment and/or move every year or two. It saves your clients from constantly having to note address changes.

4. Don't get caught answering the phone fresh out of the shower or with children crying in the background. Let voice mail be your friend.

5. Make sure all correspondence has been proofed and spell-checked.

6. Don't let your 12-year-old design your website (unless he or she is a junior Bill Gates). Let your Web presence reflect your image.

7. A professional image will only carry you so far. Back it up by never missing deadlines, not burning bridges, and meeting clients dressed to impress just as if you were in a corporate environment.

8. No busy signals ”ever. No exceptions.

9. Don't let kids or anyone else answer your business line.

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