While working on a white paper about hospital and physician marketing, this analogy popped into my head. Now, I’m not trying to play to anyone’s ego here, but this comparison really does lend some insight to positioning your facility in a competitive market.

Living here in Raleigh, North Carolina, there is rarely a day that I don’t drive past the RBC Center. For those of you who are not familiar with it, let me share a few facts:

• It has called Raleigh home since 1999
• It houses over 770,000 square feet of entertainment and sports space
• It seats up to 19,500 fans and has 66 luxury suites
• It has 8,000 parking spaces and is easily accessible from any direction
• It can transform from hardwood court to ice rink in under 6 hours
• It has hosted numerous events from Rodeo to Rock and Roll
• It is home to both the NC State Men’s Basketball team & the Carolina Hurricanes

These are just a few of the things that make the RBC Center a great venue. Unfortunately, none of these things are remotely of interest to the majority of people who descend upon this location each and every week. Well, with the exception of the last two.

It’s not the features of the RBC Center that bring in the crowds. It’s the rock stars, the rodeo riders, the on-ice excitement, and the buzzer beating three point shots that pack this stadium. People come for the events and they come to engage with their idols. They want to be part of the very best doing what they do best. Hmmm…sounds a little bit like the expectations of selecting a hospital.

As healthcare consumers we appreciate convenient locations and ample parking. We appreciate the beautiful façade of the building. We appreciate all the life improving technology that is housed inside. But, what really draws us there is the need to see our own type of rock star, the highly skilled medical provider that is going to make whatever ailment we have better. We are here to engage with a physician.

Keep this most important fact top of mind when developing your presence. Align the strengths of your facility with the skills of your physicians. Make them both inseparable to your community. Insure when someone is searching for either a facility or a physician in your area, both of those searches lead to your front door with a unified message.

While we do appreciate all the features you have to offer, what will really bring us in is the talent. Specialties are great, but we connect with the specialist. If you want your “venue” to stand out from all the others, focus on the connection between the physicians and your facility. Promote the talent within!

I would love to hear your feedback on this.

One easy way to customize your brand’s fan page is to add the Static FBML application. When added to a Facebook Page, the free app acts as a blank canvas for you to add images, copy and links using the FBML code. Then, whatever you design can be added as a tab on your page, and you can even make your customized tab the first thing new visitors see when they land on your page. The more proficient you are with designing and coding, the more elaborate and engaging your Facebook page can become!

Signal recently launched two custom Facebook pages for clients, Bald Head Island Limited and PictureThatSound.

Give New Visitors a Warm Welcome

For the Bald Head Island page, Signal created a custom “Welcome” tab that serves as the landing page for visitors who are not yet fans. The “Welcome” tab also provides links to the Bald Head Island website and blog, along with a the Discussions tab on their page.

Once you become a fan of the page, on subsequent visits you will automatically land on the Wall tab. Here we added a customized, elongated profile photo featuring Old Baldy lighthouse, a major attraction at the beach vacation destination. The size of the photo immediately draws a viewer’s attention. Scroll down the Wall a bit and you’ll see callouts along the left sidebar that serve as reminders to subscribe to the Island Times blog and search homes for sale on the island.

Since the addition of these custom features, Bald Head Island saw their Facebook fan base nearly double in only three months. In addition, referrals to their website from Facebook have jumped significantly, and conversion rates for traffic from Facebook have increased.

Show Off Your Goods

Signal also created custom Facebook elements for PictureThatSound, a recently introduced product that makes it easy to add sound to your scrapbooks. Since the product is so new and original, it’s important that viewers see exactly what it looks like as soon as they land on the page, rather than arriving on the wall and searching for information. That’s why Signal created a custom landing tab with embedded Flash animation that both shows the product’s appearance and takes viewers through a step by step process explaining how it works. The tab also has a “Buy Now” call to action that leads directly to the PictureThatSound website, as well as links back to the Discussions and Photos tabs on Facebook.

Signal also designed another elongated profile image for this page. It features both the company’s logo and an image of the actual product. Since the launch, PictureThatSound’s Facebook page has become an active community where memory keepers share ideas and post pictures of their finished projects.

Be more than a Face in the Crowd
Your audience is likely spending more and more time on Facebook. When they stumble upon your business page, will it catch their eye? Are the benefits to becoming a fan pretty clear? From better visitor-to-fan conversion ratios, to increased participation and referral traffic, it is obvious that putting a little extra planning and design into your Facebook page can really pay off and help you reach your goals!

Ever wished there was an easier way to edit photos on your computer? We recently discovered a free online image editing tool that’s perfect for businesses that don’t want to invest in Adobe Photoshop, but have the occasional need to prepare images for their blog or Facebook page. It’s called Pixlr Editor, and it’s similar to Photoshop and other well-known software, but it’s very intuitive and it’s free!

Pixlr allows you to easily crop, resize, filter and adjust your images. You can even create new images from scratch and layer one image over another. The novelty of this tool comes from the fact that all editing functions are performed directly from your browser on an easy-to-use interface, with no purchase, no registration and no installation necessary. Once you’re done editing, you simply download your image and save it to your computer.

While Pixlr is not meant to replace professional applications like Photoshop, it is definitely an easy solution for handling quick image edits or fixes with a polished look and feel. And oh, did we mention… it’s free!

Give it try: http://www.pixlr.com/editor/

The conference is March 24-26 at the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Nashville.  The conference will bring together marketing professionals from service businesses in the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee.  There will be many opportunities to learn the latest techniques in service marketing, including branding, social media marketing, and winning the pitch.

Signal will also be attending the conference.  We’re excited to be attending sessions, manning our booth, and giving out fabulous door prizes.

Come on down!

Google has pioneered the principle of “blended search,” or “universal search,” which means that search results from a variety of content categories – including video, news, images, shopping results and more – are brought together on a results page in an attempt to bring the user the most relevant possible matches.

A search for something like “landscaping” in Google will return not only regular web pages, but also images of landscaping ideas, local business listings pinpointed on a map, related news articles and more.

If you search for something more specific like “growing a pumpkin patch” videos will appear as thumbnails directly in the results page. See how it stands out on a results page otherwise dominated by your basic blue links and black preview text.

Although it is possible to earn a thumbnail spot like this from any online video service, you’re likely to see better results if you host your videos on YouTube. Google tends to rank YouTube videos more favorably over Hulu, Metacafe, etc. Google also tends to favorably rank web pages with embedded video content. Notice the top results for our search for “landscaping” all have embedded video content on their page.

Signal has found excellent results from adding and optimizing online video for numerous clients. YouTube specifically outperforms the rest. It’s easy to use, it offers cool ways to embed and share your videos online, and it greatly amplifies your chances of being found by web searchers. Not too shabby a deal.

Twitter is a great resource for companies to further market themselves, post company news, drive traffic to their web site and much more. Although tweets are typically viewed as simple text messages, there’s opportunity to create a memorable Twitter landing page that can tie in with an existing web site design or corporate standards.

Backgrounds
Twitter allows you to customize the look of a Twitter homepage by either selecting a provided theme or uploading a custom background image. The latter option gives you the ability to make the Twitter homepage communicate a company’s brand identity, culture or graphic style.

But Twitter backgrounds are a tricky canvas for designing on, because the entire central area of the page will be taken up by Twitter content. In effect, you’re only designing around the edges of the page. The Twitter content area floats on top of the background and remains centered at a width of 763 pixels. In the case of a smaller monitor, the content area could cover up a rather large percent of the background. The most failsafe practice is to create a layout that covers a 1920 x 1200 pixel area. This will accommodate most screen sizes and the design will appear seamless. You also have the ability to tile a smaller background image. Don’t forget that visitors are there for the purpose of sorting and reading the content that dominates the page, so make sure the background is not so loud and distracting that it competes for attention.

One good practice is to work in a company logo, mission statement and contact info into the left side of the background image. See sample below. Bear in mind that these elements could be covered up or cropped when the page is viewed on smaller monitors.

You can find more examples of creative and compelling Twitter backgrounds at the Smashing Magazine site.

Customizing Colors
Within the settings menu you are allowed to make some simple adjustments to change colors in the page layout. Twitter gives you the options to set colors for the background, text, links, sidebar and the sidebar border. This is helpful if you’re trying to match an existing web site, and you can also view these changes instantly.

Picture
The last item I would like to discuss is the personal picture, the thumbnail image that identifies a user on Twitter pages. This is another opportunity to get the corporate branding displayed. The picture image is always square, so make sure when uploading the image or logo that it’s in a square format. Otherwise, the corporate identity may be arbitrarily cropped. The maximum size is 700k and can be a jpg, gif or png file. If a complex or oddly proportioned logo doesn’t work when reduced down to this size and shape, use your judgment to find a tasteful solution — even if that means tweaking the prescribed corporate identity standards just a touch. You might zoom into or isolate a distinctive part of the logomark in a way that that works well and stands out in this format.

Got a Favorite?
We want to hear about your favorite Twitter profile backgrounds – send us a tweet! We’re @signalinc on Twitter.

After clicking the Translate button, visitors see the translations directly on the page.

This can be a great addition to pretty much any site, but particularly useful for site owners who know they have potential with international audiences and may not have the budget to pay professional (human) translators to do a thorough job. Keep in mind Google states that “Automatic translation is convenient and helps people get a quick gist of the page. However, its not a perfect substitute for the art of professional translation.”

If you’re worried Google’s “gist” may do more harm than help, test it! The gadget is powered by Google Translate – test your content here and get an opinion on the quality of the translation. You can also use the Google Translator Toolkit to edit weak areas in the translation of your web pages and set that version as a preferred, global translation.

Site owners should also keep in mind that although this gadget will help make their content more accessible, it will not help them increase visibility in international search engines. And the gadget can’t translate everything. If you’re using elements like text in images or Flash, it’s important to note they will remain in their original language.

On a related note, another new offering from Google Translate is 1-click translations from your browser’s toolbar! Just drag and drop your language from this page (scroll to the bottom) into your browser’s toolbar. Then whenever you want to translate a webpage, just click the new button on your toolbar.

Often when designing a site I find myself spending a good deal of time organizing content and thinking through how the end user can best absorb the information displayed on a page. Recently many companies are beginning to include social media as another method for viewers to become engaged with their site and their company. This becomes another level of content that needs to be well planned before the site moves to the design phase. Below are a few important considerations.

Level of Presence
The first step is to determine which forms of social media the client wants to be involved in. For instance, do they want or have a Facebook, Twitter or YouTube page? Then you need to find out the degree to which this media will feature on their main site. Would they like a simple link or something more attention-getting? You also need to determine whether this needs to be integrated into the landing page or located within a news page.

Adding Social Media Icons
The easiest and most understated approach to show that a company is involved with social media is to include a simple link or icon to the site. This can be placed easily within in a footer or strategically within the main content. Each social media has its own distinctive icon available as a download. Many sites also offer a wide variety of free icon styles from buttons to hand-sketched looks. One good source for finding unique social media icons is Smashing Magazine.

Using Social Media Widgets
As discussed in a previous blog post, social media widgets provide an easy way for a web site to display a few lines of recent news, drive more site traffic and generate a higher level of awareness of their social media involvement. When including a widget within a site design, it’s important to know how much you can customize these small applications. For instance, can you change the size, background color, text color, etc. to fit your design. Some widgets are more customizable than others, which can help determine which style of widget to use or whether to include one at all. Take the time to show the client how it will appear on the site and what the widget can do. Each method of social media offers its own type of widgets and there’s also opportunity to use third party widgets.

For example: a YouTube Video Bar widget allows users to watch the selected video channels without leaving the site.

Twitter offers a Profile widget that displays recent Twitter updates on the site.

And Facebook offers a Fan Box widget which invites site visitors to become the company’s Facebook fans.

One last thing to note as you begin the site design process is to be aware of and understand this growing form of communication. As designers we need to continually seek out fresh ways to incorporate this media into our layout and adapt our design to fit the customer’s social media needs.

Coming up next: Tips for Designing Twitter Pages

What are widgets? They’re cool, customizable mini-applications that can be embedded directly into to a web page, bringing live feeds, games and user specific information to your visitors. Popular social media sites offer simple chunks of code you can insert on your site to create instant widgets.

For example, by adding a Facebook widget to your company’s site, you immediately have a visually attractive and customized entry point readily available for visitors to connect with you. Via your Facebook widget, visitors can see up-to-the-minute wall postings and become your fan with a click. And of course the widget links directly to your Facebook page.

There is a vast and growing range of widgets available. Below is an example showing how Signal has combined three widgets (including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook) on one “connect with us” page. Visit the Alma Lasers Connect page and see the widgets in action!

Social media, on the other hand, is the more natural way to go about entering the party. You would meet people and engage in conversation, learning about them and telling them about yourself. Hopefully you find common ground and become friends. Then, maybe that person will tell their friends about you, and they’ll come up to you and start talking with you. Or maybe they’ll talk amongst themselves about you.

It all starts by building a relationship with a conversation.

So, don’t be the guy holding the big goofy sign. Act naturally and start the conversations with people.

- Jim Ellis