You know you're good when you can create a viral YouTube video about inbound marketing while using inbound marketing techniques to effectively promote your inbound marketing business. Simply Genius, Kudos to the guys at Hubspot. 

THE INTERVIEW

What is Your Name? Joseph Muscarella What Industry do you work in?  Graphic Design/ Art Direction What Company do you work for or own?  amplified© graphic design Website: http://www.amplified.cc/ Where  are you located? USA, NJ, Freehold Email: jmusc@amplified.cc

How long have you worked as a Designer? 10 years

Why did you get into design? As a child I found myself constantly with a pencil and paper. Unfortunately I was never a great illustrator. I grew up and started with computer graphics as a way to get my ideas out there, and everyone seemed to enjoy my work. I love taking a concept and turning it into art. I continued my education in design, and I have been involved it in every facet. Even when I had jobs that didn't require any design work I always ended up working on something graphic related. To this day I run my freelance design company, amplified© graphic design.

What 3 Characteristics do you Believe Make up a Great Designer? Creativity, Passion, Eye for balance and layout.

What Projects are you most proud of?  Power of One Fitness, Inc. Complete corporate Identity and total rework of the entire company from logo to layout of facility. www.powerofonefitness.com http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=655242&l=c957a&id=606608967

Spotlight Events The corporate Identity for this company alone landed this new company enough clients to get off the ground. I was said that the design made people believe in the company's professionalism. The owner Scott Cortese could not thank me enough. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=495650&l=3af42&id=606608967

Jes Makeup I am proud of this corporate identity because I created it for a friend that had a small business and it was not making any money. I did the job as a favor to her. The company's new corporate image changed the direction of the company and I am happy to say her clients are steady. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1539916&l=5c2dc&id=606608967

Do you work on all your personal projects exclusively or do you hire other designers  to work on them as well?  Personally

Name 3 Designers or design companies you would trust and hire to work on your personal or business projects:  Name: Chad Bishop Email: chad@thedeliveryagency.com Website: www.thedeliveryagency.com Name: Paul Zara Email: paulzara13@comcast.net Website: http://coroflot.com/paulzara Name: Chris Espiritu Email: espirtiu.chris@gmail.com Website: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=39589163&id=8835700#/photo.php?pid=39589163&id=8835700

 Find this designer complete profile in the dSL Project Directory.

About The dSL Project:
The dSL Project is a community of designers, clients and potential clients working together to enhance the designer-client experience. The Designers Short List Project (dSL) was developed primarily for clients not familiar with the design industry who are looking to hire a designer but cannot decide which designer or design company to choose. 

My goal is to find talented seasoned as well as emerging designers in the industry, ask them 6 basic questions every client would want to know before hiring a designer, giving them a strong starting point in their search for the right designer or design company. If you would like to be a part of this project, simply add your profile to the dSL directory and name your top 3.

Designer From The Ukraine Profile on Odesk.com

I talk about the global economy a lot. And the reason I do is because I'm fascinated by the business reach and earning potential of this new economy, BUT... I recently did a survey, which I will reveal the results once I've analyzed the data, but from that survey I'm under the impression that there are mainly four (4) services employers use to find designers and to fill open positions.

1) Job boards - like Style Careers, Coroflot , Monster, etc
2) Referrals - Getting referred by a friend or colleague
3) Temp agencies - like 24 Seven, Project Solvers and the likes
4) Freelance Projects Auction Sites - like Elance and Odesk.

Now 3 out of 4 of these options, the designer has somewhat of a local control more or less over the competition with which he or she can bid for the design project. But freelance auction sites like elance.com and odesk.com tend to be truly a global effort. Where you are competing with designers all over the world for a local project. Conventional thinking says that the broader your business reach the better, but is that always the case? With websites like Elance and Odesk one would suggest that an obvious flaw or lopsidedness of this type of system is perhaps the dynamic relationship between the project price and designer location.

Same Designer from the Ukraine Hourly Rate $12.22/Hr

What do I mean by this? Well let's say a company in New York decides to use odesk.com for a design project. Using current rates for local designers in New York, this project can be easily quoted at $70/hr and up. Whereas on Odesk.com that same project can be bid down to $15-$20 an hour. Therein lies the million dollar question.

Even though we are now working in a global economy, designers still live in their respective local economies with local bills to pay. How does a designer from New York, Austria or the UK compete with designers living in Africa or India. This is obviously not a new question I'm proposing., but I would really like to get your feedback on whether or not designers find this kind of service useful when looking for new design work?

THE INTERVIEW

What is Your Name? Helena Brusic What Industry do you work in?  Graphic / Web Development and Designer What Company do you work for or own?  Uni of NSW and own Kali7 Studio Website: www.kali7@kali7studio.com Where  are you located? Australia, NSW, Sydney Email: kali7@kali7studio.com

How long have you worked as a Designer? 20 years

Why did you get into design? Start life as an archaeologist illustrator and photographer, one thing led to another, then went back to uni and learnt design, and then later programming.

What 3 Characteristics do you Believe Make up a Great Designer? 1. Can listen first, research second. 2. Innovative with visual ideas. 3. Smart enought to see the big picture - beyond the design.

What Projects are you most proud of?  In poster design, an illustrated poster for Black Dog Insitute, and another for the make a wish foundation which featured a little girl. In brochure deisgn, a terrorism conference for Gilbert + Tobin Law In web design and programming, the new UNSW design Studio (which is not up yet) In advertising, Diabetes Association ad campaign. Portolios: http://publish.web.unsw.edu.au/Photogalleries/gallery1/index.html http://www.coroflot.com/Kali7

Do you work on all your personal projects exclusively or do you hire other designers  to work on them as well?  I primarily work on them all, sometimes I get other designers to take over during the editing stage, I do all concept.

Name 3 Designers or design companies you would trust and hire to work on your personal or business projects:  Name: Melinda Cook. Email: m.cook@unsw.edu.au Name: Casey Website: http://caseyg.com.au Name: ARC Email: g.rosen@arc.unsw.edu.au

 Find this designer complete profile in the dSL Project Directory.

About The dSL Project:
The dSL Project is a community of designers, clients and potential clients working together to enhance the designer-client experience. The Designers Short List Project (dSL) was developed primarily for clients not familiar with the design industry who are looking to hire a designer but cannot decide which designer or design company to choose. 

My goal is to find talented seasoned as well as emerging designers in the industry, ask them 6 basic questions every client would want to know before hiring a designer, giving them a strong starting point in their search for the right designer or design company. If you would like to be a part of this project, simply add your profile to the dSL directory and name your top 3.

I've  been terribly busy lately with the development of the Styleapple website that I haven't had the time to do much of anything else... until I was reminded of the past. Where I started my business and neglected everything around me including my fiancé at the time. I figured once I got the business up and running,  I would do everything else.  BIG MISTAKE.

Being consistent is important in building a business but it is not equivalent to being narrow minded and obsessive ultimately neglecting everything else; the latter can lead to both business and family failure.

As designers we tend to be very passionate about what we do, which is fine.  Just be sure to balance your work life with family and friends. Sometimes your best ideas and breakthroughs come from the outside and when you're not so focused.   The article that pulled me out of the black hole was by Eric Shannon of Internetinc.com who wrote an interesting top 10 list on ‘How to Fail in Business on the Internet'.

And the winner is.... Barack Obama.  Congratulations Senator Barack Obama for becoming the first African American President of the United States of America.   I am in awe of your achievement.

Inbound Marketing has been all the rave in many marketing circles lately and the question is... is it really that big a deal as marketers are making it out to be?  The short answer is yes.

Inbound marketing is summed up by Brian Halligan of Hubspot, a leading internet marketing company: "I advocate doing "inbound marketing" where you help yourself "get found" by people already learning about and shopping in your industry.  In order to do this, you need to set your website up like a "hub" for your industry that attracts visitors naturally through the search engines, through the blogosphere, and through the social media sites.  I believe most marketers today spend 90% of their efforts on outbound marketing and 10% on inbound marketing and I advocate that those ratios flip."

Setting  your website up as a "hub" is key. The Barack Obama campaign has done just that, by implementing a variety of inbound marketing efforts including the blogosphere, the enormous involvement on popular social media networks as well as creating their own social media site and a well developed and optimized website complete with relevant tools to get the right information to the people. For example, a tax calculator that enables visitors to check what their tax reductions would be under a President Obama Administration.  Utilizing these tools together has effectively produced an influx of web traffic to the Barack Obama website.

Just  for fun I did a quick comparison of the Barack Obama website http://www.barackobama.com/ and the John McCain website http://www.johnmccain.com/ on Hubspot's Website Grader tool - A great tool to help you find ways of improving your website effectiveness.  What I found was very telling:

See Full Report >> 

Site: The 2 sites being compared: http://www.barackobama.com/, http://www.johnmccain.com/

Website Grade:  The grade Hubspot gives a website is based on the website's marketing effectiveness, considering a variety of factors including page rank, traffic rank, meta data, heading, etc...  Both sites rate fairly high in the Grade area, a 98% for John McCain and 95% for Barack Obama.

Google Page Rank: Both websites scored a pretty high page rank of 8

Traffic Rank:  This ranking is taken from the Alexa visitor traffic data. The traffic rank for Obama is 753 and McCain- 2580. The smaller the number- the better, just for a point of reference Google has a traffic rank of 1

Blog Rank:  Not Conclusive; Hubspot software did not detect the blog on the Barack Obama website  so I can't compare the two blogs using Website Grader.

But here is where it becomes even more interesting:

Delicious  Bookmarks: John McCain (Johnmccain.com) - 451 bookmarks, Barackobama.com - 2797 bookmarks; approximately 5 times more bookmarks.

Inbound Links:  Johnmccain.com - 1,280,323 links, Barackobama.com - 3,161,675, that's roughly 2 million more inbound links. Inbound links to a website is one of the key sources of traffic.

So how does all of this translate into web traffic:  according to compete.com John McCain website in September had roughly 3.1 million visitors where as barackobama.com pulled in roughly 5.5 million visitors.

Inbound marketing should be a major part of any design company looking to be competitive online.  Finding ways to increase your inbound links is not an option going forward. One of the first things you can do going forward is to take a close look at your design business and brainstorm ideas that you believe would add value to your industry.  Your first thought should exclude any benefits to your company; only think of your industry and the demographic needs.  Once you have figured out the tools that would be truly beneficial to your industry demographics - then you package that tool to represent your design business. Our next Topic in the Branding Campaign series is Website esthetics, ease of use and how the Barack Obama website manages the customer's buying cycle and website conversion.

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Part 3 of the Series -Arguably The Most Effective Branding Campaign Ever

As you're probably aware or have deduced by now that I'm a huge fan of presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama.  That being said, I'll be the first to admit that I had no idea who Barack Obama was 2 years ago.  Today he is one of the most influential elected official America has seen in recent history.  From his Speech against the Iraq War to his speech on Race Relations to his unprecedented presidential campaign which some in the media now calls the democratic juggernaut. Senator Barack Obama has injected the American electorate with ‘Obama Juice' and now we can't seem to get enough of it. 

To explain this phenomenon in a one page blog post is obviously impossible.  Many factors play a role in this exceptional American story.   What I will do is give you a list of things I believe contributed to his branding success.

To develop a compelling brand, the company or organization must maintain 5 crucial elements: A quality product or service, the building of a unique model, the vision to empower people, exceptional communication techniques, and a way to measure progress.  

Quality Product or Service,  First you must have a product or service that has true value and benefits for your consumers or clients. It could be exceptional customer service, a user friendly software or website or a unique approach to design. In some cases a combination of the two can multiply the value of your product or service, Apple Inc. illustrates this synergy very well.  In the case of this election that would be Senator Barack Obama.  His extraordinary education credentials, colorful background, worldview and his ability to reach millions of people through his commanding words gives him that quality stamp needed in the American political arena.  

Build A Unique Model -  Businesses need to distinguish themselves from their competition.  Marty Neumeier of Neutron LLC calls this creating a charismatic brand -  "Any product, service, or organization for which people believe there's no substitute."  Senator Barack Obama Unique Model is "Change You Can Believe In" Senator Obama is running as the candidate that's against the norm of politics in America.  - His focus is building the country from the ground up instead of the top down, ironically separating himself from the majority approach to politics in a democratic society.

 Empower People - Once you have a great product or service and you have created a strong case for your product, you then have to get your customers involved in the process. When customers are involved in your product whether it been providing feedback options at the beta level or requesting feedback of an existing product gives people the sense that you care, which enhances communication and increases customer loyalty.  Senator Barack Obama campaign core is a grass roots movement, everyday people doing extraordinary things.  His record fundraising numbers are based on small donors - working middle class people contributing small sums of money, $5, $10, $25 dollar donations., Giving everyday people a sense of responsibility and power to change their country and ultimately their destiny.

Exploit Communication Technology -  Continuously communicating with your demographics is an effective way to keep your product and service front and center of your clients mind.  With the enormous reach of the internet and mobile communication, a company has a free pass to communicate with their demographics on and offline easily and in lots of cases by the consent of their clients or customers. Senator Barack Obama has utilized this technique in such a way that one would consider his efforts abusive of the technology, with perfect understanding of the medium, the Barack Obama campaign was able  to employ the internet to maximize volunteering and donation efforts leading to record breaking resources in people and campaign contributions.  From  his perfectly executed website to his email outreach to his social networking involvement, to his mobile phone texting campaign, to his mobile phone applications for phone banking.... The Barack Obama campaign was able to effectively use technology as an advantage while their opponents were still trying to figure it out.

Measure Your Progress - Measure your success. Are your messages resonating with your clients? Are your customers subscribing or buying your products due to your new communication strategies?  Utilizing feedback and comments boxes, tracking website visitors, keyword trends and analyzing visitor responses is key to building a successful branding campaign.  The Barack Obama campaign has been diligent in finding out what works and what doesn't work though state and national polling, network and cable news are great resource for feedback; almost instant in some cases. Social media sites like twitter gives the campaign an idea of what the electorate are thinking and saying, sites like Digg  and YouTube emphasizes what the public think is important.  All these measures are keys in gauging and growing the Barack Obama campaign efforts and should be the same key techniques used to grow your small business. Part 4 of this series will be on  how SEO and inbound marketing efforts help create an influx of web traffic to the Barack Obama website.

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The Smashing Blog - All Things New and Smashing From the Front Lines of The indie Fashion Revolution. This blog spotlights indie designers and also have some great interviews of up and coming designers. The smashing darling website is also a great place to sell your new collections; great for young designers.

Independent Fashion Bloggers -  A Fashion community made up of fashion design bloggers and pros  sharing ideas and growing their businesses. A growing resource of information for young  fashion designers or anyone in the fashion industry.

Fashion Incubator - Lessons from the sustainable factory floor.   Definitely a great resource for fashion designers, pattern makers or any fashion professional looking for advice from freelancing to billing clients to pattern making tutorials. 

Jack + Bill - Jack + Bill is a public relations agency dedicated to identifying, branding and publicizing emerging fashion talent.   I need to do a bit more research on them to get more details on how they business, but seem to have a genuine interest in growing young designers.

Final Fashion -  fashion and fiction.  Danielle Meder is a fashion blogger/fashion illustrator who's work I've admired for a while.  Great blog. Very talented illustrator.

Truegrey - Adventures in Fashion Design & Illustration.   Megan Thomas is a fashion blogger/fashion designer who uses the blogosphere to effectively promote her design and illustration projects.

StyleBubble -Fashion blog.  What I like about this blog is how fun it is. The author, Susie is very creative and gives her reader a reason to keep coming back to see what's new whether it be a cool fashion trip she took or simple an outfit that she put together.

Compai - Compai is a crafty, green design studio dedicated to creative projects that employ recycled materials.

Fashion Design Blog - A Collection of Fashion Designers and Design Boutiques blogging and showcases their collections.

Jennyvi Dizon Couture - A custom bridal and eveningwear fashion design label effectively utilizing their blog to promote their business.