Small to Large – Business structure and approach

Posted on June 19, 2018 by f4mmedia

There are a couple of joking metaphors that I use concerning business structures and their approaches. When it comes to marketing for your small business you can take a number of approaches:

you can be firmly DIY, which is Ok but perhaps you might have a bit more chance giving someone else some input, a different and perhaps fresh pair of eyes, different ideas and possibly some experience
you can go full on corporate and use a big or at least a big-ish agency, tons of experience, resources, outlets and so on, but then you get all of the hefty pricing, sometimes inflexibility and probably not so much direct and intense concentration on you, your business and its partiicularities
you can go small and local.

… and now to the metaphors …

I have often likened a lot of big corporate operations, basically many decent sized businesses to a tree full of monkeys:

down at the bottom there are hoards of monkeys doing the majority of the hard work, endelessly passing the fruit up the tree but when they look up what is the only thing they see – a wall of monkeys asses.

The small business like f4mmedia I tend to liken to a merry-go-round:

it may not always be going fast, providing a thrill every second, making you squeal with excitement, but there are people beside you and some at your back and you see all-sorts of things as you go round and move.

I tend to liken f4mmedia to a cornershop, which is why I use the tagline – the cornershop of content creation. What you get is that friendly, approachable, admittedly every once in a while grumpy guy behind the counter trying to provide just what you need, knowing you, usually with something for everyone and then if it’s not on the shelf ready to go and get it for you. As we say, we come with everything apart from Arkwright’s till – Open all hours reference for those who don’t know – classic UK comedy!

marketing@f4mmedia.com

design@f4mmedia.com

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f4mmedia on Font Bundles – We provide a range of resources – stock images, illustrations, photoshop, patterns, brushes – something for everyone

Source: f4mmedia | Font Bundles

Trends For 2017

Posted on January 12, 2017 by f4mmedia

At the end of one year and the start of another there are always predictions made about what is likely to happen, what will be popular, what will become successful in the coming year. Here is a round up of various suggestions in a number of fields.

With 2017 just a few days away, companies have begun charting their marketing plans. Content continues to be crucial but isn’t about who can produce the highest volumes anymore, it is about who can adapt to the diversity of multiple platforms and engage their audience across them.The compet

Source: 10 Top Content Marketing Trends For 2017 | DrumUp Blog

As 2016 draws to a close, I rounded-up 10 of what I believe will be the most important design trends of 2017.

Source: The Future is Now: 10 Design Predictions for 2017 | Creative Cloud blog by Adobe

New year, new design trends. One of the great things about web design is that it is constantly evolving. You can find trends or even just hints of things to come almost by chance as new ideas seem to populate all at once. This month’s examples are a lot of fun with websites using space in interesting ways, new online shopping experiences and the return of pastel color palettes. Here’s what’s trending in design this month: 1) Exaggerated use of space The right amount of space can make or break a design. Whether it is white, a background color or surrounds text or images, “empty” space in a design can speak volumes. Exaggerated use of space is one of those design trends that can be a lot of fun, and when used well it can be rather effective in helping users know just how to look at or use a website or app. Open space is an extension of minimal styles that have been popular for some time, but with one major exception: Rather than a symmetrical outline with space all around, these designs

Source: Essential design trends, January 2017 | Webdesigner Depot

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Content – Design, Styles, Marketing – 5

Posted on January 2, 2017 by f4mmedia

Happy New Year!

When it comes to the marketing for your business, your product, serivce, event you can take a thoroughly direct approach – simply state what is what and be damned! Fire those cannons and await a return. Then again you can also take a gentler approach. Setting a scene, providing a background, allowing people to relax into the message you gradually elaborate. In a similar way, your approach can be that big business, boardroom aired and generated, put together still with the feel of the glass windows of the office giving a wide view of the city skyline. A major tagline of F4mmedia is – the cornershop of content creation – there is an approach that has all of that convenience, it has the friendly tones of the local shopkeeper who knows you well, it is a little more informal. It may not have the grand packaging of the big business etc. but it is more comfortable and looks to make it easier to acquire.

Content Marketing Institute’s latest research reveals what the most committed UK marketers do differently, but lessons work for marketers worldwide.

Source: Committed to Content Marketing? Prioritize the Right Things [New UK Research]

Giving your marketing, your branding structure is certainly important. It allows you not only to take aim, rather than just throwing buckshot wildly into the air and seeing what you might hit, if you might hit something. It gives you the chance to tailor your efforts so that you are not wasting time, giving your efforts direction. It allows you to take stock of the whole terrain and your ROI. That structure also tends to mean that you are not rushing what you are doing, giving your efforts chance to take hold, to make themselves noticed in the whole terrain in which you operate.

Predictions for the biggest new things in design, and DIY examples to stay ahead of the the trends.

Source: We asked 16 designers about the next big trends in design

Enterprises need to embrace the lens of design thinking to innovate their legacy products & to transform the lives of their customers & employees.

Source: How Design Thinking Will Revolutionize Enterprises in 2017

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yes! we can all find a use for wood here and there – here is a range of textures, patterns -.png, .pat, .eps, .jpg – great for any project needing colour and texture, that natural feel but with a litt

Source: new wood old wood for free | f4mmedia – Sellfy.com

small business owner creating content, graphics, marketing, also dj, vj and more

Source: des bate (@f4mmedia) • Instagram photos and videos

Type design Nina Stössinger details the three steps you should follow to find the best font.

Source: How to choose the perfect typeface, by Frere-Jones’ Nina Stössinger – News – Digital Arts

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Content – Design, Styles, Marketing – 4

Posted on December 20, 2016 by f4mmedia

The messages you put out there in support of your business are not just bits and pieces of marketing, they come together as the whole story that is your branding. So, what story fits best with the people you are trying to reach – your targets? When you have decided upon the style of story, how can you decorate it to give it more impact?

Where you have a more thoughtful target group it may be useful to use a gentler narrative. Then to this sort of message you can add artier, crafted images with a gentle palette.

For those people who have less time and a more pressing life – your story and imagery needs, often, to be more direct and have brighter more direct colours in use.

Sometimes a natural background, even muted can make the point. Then using a soft, soft palette having your typography tell the story, at least in its emotive details can do the trick.

Sometimes the choice to be made is between the fully frontal business image and the imaginatively crafted art-based image. One shows that you are all business, the other, all creative imagination. Your backstory can be many things – every business and its surroundings, geographic, economic and mercantile, they are all different. Telling that story can be quite different, rather than a simple clone of this or that. In just the same way each particular element of your target audience, your target customer base, they may have similarities, but they also have slight but particular pieces of the purely individual. Make it resonate.

Do you ever find yourself noticing that a certain design element just keeps popping up? Even those tiny details that look somewhat insignificant can be indicators of design trends. That is particularly true with the elements in this month’s roundup. Each of these trends—white edges framing a web design, cinemagraphs and tiny loading animations—are seemingly simple details that enhance the visual experience for users. Here’s what’s trending in design this month: 1) White edges More web designs are using white edges or framing around the perimeter of the design in the web browser. It’s a new twist on an old idea when more websites were built to certain sizes and framing was used for odd browser widths. It’s something that faded as more designers opted for responsive, full-width designs. The new twist with framing is interesting and is a nice way to create a canvas for the design. Most of the sites using this trend include a white—common, but not mandatory—edge around the design.

Source: Essential design trends, December 2016 | Webdesigner Depot

Kayleigh by Font Bundles Store available for $8.00 at FontBundles.net

Source: Kayleigh by Font Bundles Store | Font Bundles

The mythic color standards company says it selected the bright, natural color as a counterpoint to the murky political climate around the world.

Source: Greenery: Pantone hopes its 2017 color of the year will improve our gloomy mood— Quartz

Please like the page – Source: F4mmedia

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Source: new wood old wood for free | f4mmedia – Sellfy.com

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Success on YouTube and beyond

Posted on January 7, 2016 by f4mmedia

Succeeding on YouTube is not easy by a long shot. Often times, you are actively competing against competitors who have been established and popular for a l

Source: Using Devumi To Leverage Social Proof For Greater Success on YouTube

It is so much easier to get yourself a simple marketing video up and on youtube and similar sites. It is no longer the pure domain of the big! It still, though, needs to be produced properly and have a style that speaks to your targets.

A social media attack can be a surreal experience, leaving you bewildered and frustrated. Here’s how to find the best punchlines. – Content Marketing Institute

Source: When Followers Attack: A Monty Python Guide to Maintaining Social Media Harmony

Good videos can be used to drive great sales. These 5 strategies for video advertising will help your company engage users and improve sales.

Source: 5 Reasons Why Video Is Your New Secret Weapon – Marketo

Donovan Hutchinson stamps his snow-caked boots, unwinds his scarf and eases [See what we did there? Did you?] us into December with some tips and resources on integrating animation into our website style guides. A warm animated welcome to 24 ways 2015!

Source: Animating Your Brand ◆ 24 ways

Did you know that the earliest advertisements date back to 4,000 B.C.? That’s right, in early civilization, business owners would paint on highly visible rocks encouraging people to visit their store. 6,000 years later, the paint’s a little different, but the principle is essentially the same. But what if I told you everything is primed to change in a massive way? What if the rocks we’re painting our messages could soon be direct sales channels? The following is a thought-experiment that begins to explore what’s possible.

Source: The Death of Advertising as We Know It — Enterprise Ecommerce Blog – Enterprise Business Marketing, News, Tips & More

Picking your domain name doesn’t have to be hard. Picking your domain name is a process that should be handled carefully with plenty of planning & research.

Source: Things to Consider Before Picking Your Domain Name

Content Marketing

Posted on January 26, 2015 by f4mmedia

The 3 Rs of Content Marketing | Content Marketing.

Create the perfect social post on top 7 networks Infographic | dotRising.

Content comes in various forms and is made available via a number of channels. Options are there for most businesses of whatever size and type. Local shops, services, tradesmen, slightly larger regional businesses – each has the chance to make use of what is there.

Here are a few links and infographics – we gope they help …

Video Tips for Company promos

Posted on January 6, 2015 by f4mmedia

There are so many ways you can approach video for your business. There are a huge number of styles you can employ. Choose a style that fits your brand, fits your message and appeals to your target audience. Think of a continuous line from your logo, to your website, to your graphic content, to your promo videos.

A lot of use is being made of a number of visual styles in website design, graphic design for business and in videos:

– minimal, still being made use of

– geometrics and polygonal backgrounds and textures

– flat design with a hefty use of icons and a bold use of colour.

Threads of these stylistic variations can be used in video. Of course, such basic forms as a direct statement to camera remains as a useful option for many businesses. Also what we may refer to as ‘big picture’, using a scene with particular characters and a suitable setting, added voiceover, soundtrack and text, perhaps as a lower third, is of great use.

Video Tips for Company Videos | Digital Accomplice.

3 Top Tips for a Successful B2B Marketing Video Strategy.

76% of B2B Marketers Use Video Content Marketing, YouTube Top Choice.

The 3 Rs of Content Marketing | Content Marketing.

What are the Top 6 Social Video Trends for Brands in 2015?.

300 Hours of Video Uploaded to YouTube Every Minute Means for Advertisers.

Case study 7 – end notes

Posted on September 12, 2014 by f4mmedia

[the end of the case study notes …

Key areas put to them included:

engagement – calls to action, what can you ask them to do that will help keep you in their mind’s eye
the souvenir principle, have something they can take away – for example, business cards,
a catalogue,
content – styled to your brand and your targets

Other suggestions would include:

networking
business directories
blog articles
what can they associate you with, something external – sponsorship
e-book of services

some of our other work – the entertaining toolbox
f4mmedia on wix

portfolio on behance

portfolio on dropr

youtube – f4mmedia – business and more

youtube – futurhood av – arts and entertainment, music videos and more

f4mmedia documents – downloadable pdf’s

rising setting.

on vk – futurhood av and f4mmedia

colours heard – the other blog

Case study 6 – content

Posted on September 6, 2014 by f4mmedia

[the case study notes continue …

You need something to bring to the party, standing there and simply looking like you is not enough. You need something to say, a way to carry it to your audience and have it suitably styled and designed. Your content can be all sorts of media – text, graphics, photos, video in particular is extremely useful now, audio – podcasts also have a use.

Your content is what you use to fill your channels, the social media and other online areas of presence, website and more. That content becomes the timeline and the scenery of your business journey.

The form of that content can be many things, the material can be a number of things:

basic product and service catalogues
help manuals
introductions to topics
background information on your business

print
digital publishing – e-books/e-zines, catalogues, business service introductions, help manuals
video – animation, film based, intros, ads

Typography and Design Trends 2014

Posted on June 27, 2014 by f4mmedia

With the rise of flat design in web design things have changed and are gradually moving on in terms of design styles for businesses. There are also gradual changes to flat design itself – nothing stays absolutely the same, things develope and grow.

Flat design has brought to the fore a certain simplicity and functionality after all that was skeumorphic before. The stylisation in design terms has moved on above and beyond web design as well. Overall we are seeing a greater use of a simpler palette, more iconic imagery much of the time and a typography which regularly uses fonts with a clear nod towards the handwritten.