Writings from Force 5 Basecamp

05/21/10

In case you haven’t noticed the web is changing. There is a huge movement underway toward clean, simple, user friendly websites that promote productivity and, consumer interaction. The average consumer doesn’t care how creative a design team you have or, how technically advanced your development team is. They want information. Honest, peer driven information. Whether a potential customer is at

05/07/10

Sitemap.xml What are Sitemaps and why are they important? Sitemaps are a tool for developers to inform search engines about the website content that is available to be indexed. The sitemap protocol is made up of XML that contains a list of URLs, last modified dates, and page priorities for your website. Here is a quick sample in simple form

04/14/10

You finally decide your company needs a new website, but you have no idea who to call. You check the yellow pages, Google web design, ask friends and family, and you’re still overwhelmed with all the choices. Who do you call when your brother-in-laws sisters boyfriend will do the job for $500. “We Are Web Sites”, the best web shop

04/05/10

Lately, we’ve been busy – busy ideating that is. Ideating – which is a fancier term for brainstorming – is a core necessity or foundational step within an advertising and marketing agency’s process of generating creative ideas. In almost every case, these creative ideas deliver a need or provide a solution to a client problem.  However, good ideas don’t have

03/26/10

More and more businesses are moving to Facebook as a platform to reach new customers and communicate with existing customers. It is becoming increasingly important to set yourself from the pack in the world of Facebook business pages. Make sure you are getting the most out of your Facebook business page by following Force 5’s Do’s and Don’ts of running

03/19/10

Robots.txt – Telling bots where to go and where not to What is the robots.txt and why is the robots.txt file important? The robots.txt file is placed in the root folder of your website. This file instructs search engine bots what can and cannot be indexed. All you need to do is to define some criteria of what can be

03/11/10

L.L. Bean is taking a leap into new territory! They are creating a brand extension called L.L. Bean Signature. The new line is a collection for men and women with updated styles and cuts. One of their new offerings is called the “Plain Weave Signature Suit,” and sells for just over $200.00. I have looked at the video preview on

02/25/10

Unfortunately last year many business’s pulled back on their marketing and advertising efforts. “Well, something had to give”, a business owner told me. Unfortunately, marketing initiatives may have been the last thing he wanted to pull in a bad economy. Study after study has shown that during down times, the companies that continued marketing came back to “the black” quicker

02/08/10

If you’re a marketer in any capacity and you’re reading this post then I’m 99.9% sure you’ve also read about, or thought about, or discussed some sort of Top 10 list – goals, trends, etc. – for marketing in 2010.  Around the New Year this topic is often fodder for bloggers, trade publications, and the like.  Now that the dust

09/09/09

-Deb DeFreeuw, Certified Brand Strategist, Force 5 The title of this article seems to have mutually exclusive terms – “Buying” and “Friends” An article in Advertising Age September 4, 2009 reported on a company offering to sell you friends for your  Facebook and Twitter Account.  Amazing! The Brisbane-based firm, USocial, offered this week to sell Facebook users 1,000 friends for

06/05/09

My Friend A.J. Fox at Ad-ology Research sent me some interesting facts that his firm conducted regarding reducing advertising during this recession—the botton line?—not  such a good idea!  Here are some facts from the study: Nearly half of U.S. adults believe that a lack of advertising by a retail store, bank or auto dealership during a recession indicates the business must

05/20/09

  (What you really need to know and understand about brand development) There’s a lot of talk about Brand, Branding, and Brand Development. Its all important, and its all straightforward. The problem with most companies in regards to branding is that they haven’t taken time to understand the differences and more importantly, why they need to develop their brand. Defining