Silver Square

If you feel like you’re starting from square one when you sit down to begin any writing project, your business needs a personalized style guide. Whether you’re writing a blog post, cover letter or recipe, a style guide can give you and your coworkers a consistent foundation to tackle any project. In a nutshell, a style guide is a collection of your business’s writing forms, lingo, rules and exceptions to the rules.

What’s being written and why? Start by surveying all of the writing you do: newsletter articles, blog posts, etc. For each type of writing, come up with one sentence explaining its role in your business. Following that “mission statement” of sorts, establish guidelines for tone, word count and voice for each type of writing.

As an example, the newsletter article should educate potential clients on how your company is serving the community, with some call to action included. Stick with 400-600 words, an affable tone and first-person voice.

What are the rules? The second part of developing your style guide will be an organic process of evaluating and reevaluating, of adding and subtracting rules. These rules can include things like how components such as staff contact information are written in emails, a collection of boilerplates such as your company’s mission statement, and editing and proofreading processes for your company.

These are items that only you can establish. Creating these rules and sharing them with your coworkers helps ensure consistency, accountability and the confidence that you are handling a writing project correctly.

What’s the lingo? I used to edit cookbooks full time. The style guide I created for cookbook writing and editing included at least 100 terms and names not covered by www.m-w.com. My guide included bearnaise, molecular gastronomy, Alain Ducasse and brunoise.

If you work for a law firm, financial institution or swimming pool manufacturer, you have your own set of terms that can be put down on paper to ensure consistency. Start making an alphabetical list. Every time an industry-specific word comes up, add it to your list. You’ll be surprised by how quickly the list grows.

(Check back on Sept. 8 for a post on general style guides and guides for the nitpicker.)

We were talking best practices recently here in the shiny new Silver Square office. Turns out we’ve learned a few things during our 10 years of marketing and design. Here’s a short list of best practices applicable to most businesses.

Turn down projects that aren’t a good fit for your company. Don’t waste time and energy on projects you’re ill-equipped to handle or clients who aren’t open to your way of helping them. Doing so compromises how your company does business and sets the wrong precedent. Just say no, tactfully of course.

Leave things in better shape than you found them. No matter who your clients are, be sure things have improved for them before you say your goodbyes. Leaving on a bad note is the only note they’ll recall when they think of you. That means no repeat business or positive referrals.

Learn from your employees. You hired the best people you could find, right? Encourage them to actively share their know-how with each other and you. It will make everyone better equipped to answer client questions in a pinch, more understanding of each person’s responsibilities, and just plain smarter. Now they’re really the best people you could find.

Enthusiasm is contagious. Your attitude helps shape the overall vibe in your workplace. If Monday mornings drag, get an extra shot of espresso and move on. Wearing your enthusiasm for work on your sleeve is a business-savvy accessory that your coworkers will indubitably imitate.

Never stop innovating. Change is good and healthy for so many reasons. Staying on top of trends in your industry keeps you at the top of your game, making your more marketable. Even when times are good, don’t stop evaluating what is working well and which areas of your business could be improved. Onward and upward.

Have fun! This is no joke. Humor can lighten a mood, make dull things more palatable and inspire interest. That makes for a more productive workplace and happier people. “A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men,” Willy Wonka insightfully said. We believe it.

Moving is always a work in progress. I don’t care if you move up, move down, move across the street or move to Italy. We are in our new digs at the Indiana Design Center in Carmel and it feels good. I can reach my arms out and not touch Clay anymore… but now I have to yell (it’s not that large, we just need a rug to absorb some noise. Add it to the 501 things we need to do yet in this space.)

Please stop by and visit, say hello, send flowers… you know.

OUR NEW ADDRESS:

200 South Rangeline Road
Suite 207 D
Carmel, IN  46032

PHONE:  317-569-5977

I’m a member and volunteer with the Indianapolis Chapter of the American Marketing Association. I’ve been impressed with this organization both from a professional development perspective and the caliber of members they have attracted and retained. One such member, who I’m also happy to call a friend, is Denise Meyer. She wrote a very great post on making sure your social media is adding value, so for today’s blog post, I wanted to just pop you over there to get her knowledge. Enjoy the read.

No, we Squares are not little orange men paid in cacao beans, but we can learn a thing or two from the Oompa-Loompas’ fantastical leader, Willy Wonka.

Wonka on flexibility

Willy Wonka: Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.

Mrs. Teevee: [as Mr. Wonka drinks the formula] That’s 105%!

Mr. Beauregarde: Any good?

Willy Wonka: [smacks his lips, then speaks thinly] Yes.

When Silver Square begins working with new clients, sometimes we discover that they have crystal-clear plans regarding what they need. They want us to simply execute their vision because they don’t have the time, manpower or expertise. But more often than not, our perspective on the clients’ marketing and design needs leads to a modified version of their expectations of us. Instead of just the branding and image work they anticipated, we might also recommend website strategy. That extra 5 percent could be the butterscotch ripple and electricity a client needs to be really good.

Wonka on new things

Willy Wonka: Little surprises around every corner, but nothing dangerous.

If you want to grow your business through better marketing, chances are you’re going to be doing some new things. If you don’t welcome a few surprises, then you’re going to stay stagnant. Silver Square clients know that they’ll become more appealing to customers and potential customers by shaking things up and trying new things.

Wonka on silliness

Willy Wonka: A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.

Humor has its place, and it usually has a place in whatever Silver Square is doing. At the least, humor can lighten a mood, make dull things more palatable and inspire interest. Knowing when and how to use a little nonsense is necessary. When you’ve figured that out, there is always room for a laugh.

Wonka on perpetuity

Willy Wonka: The suspense is terrible… I hope it’ll last.

Marketing isn’t a one-shot deal. You can’t put up a website and expect it to sit there and make money. You can’t run a series of ads and expect that to sustain your business growth for years to come. In order for marketing to really work — to generate interest, to grow customers, to stay compelling — it must be perpetual. It must create suspense. That takes hard work and creativity. It takes a dedication to continuously staying on top of how businesses market themselves. Wonka knows this.

Wonka on victory

Willy Wonka: But Charlie, don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted.

Charlie Bucket: What happened?

Willy Wonka: He lived happily ever after.

Don’t be afraid to visualize the perfect outcome. What could be the harm in that?

Check out http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067992/ for more Wonka wisdom.

 Indiana’s home for professional design enters into strategic marketing relationship

As the 82,000-square-foot Indiana Design Center prepares to officially open in summer of 2010, Silver Square is excited to announce that it will be one of its tenants and business partners.

Located within Carmel’s Arts & Design District, the Indiana Design Center will serve the community of design professionals and its clients by providing a premier collection of resources. Silver Square, a 10-year-old graphic design and marketing firm, has entered into a three-year relationship with the Indiana Design Center to handle all marketing for the building and serve as its agency of record. The firm will also move from its Fishers offices into the multi-use center located at the corner of Range Line Road and 1st Street S.W. this summer.

Melissa Averitt is Vice President and Director of Marketing and Sales for the Indiana Design Center. “Having Silver Square as a tenant is a great advantage. In the Indiana Design Center’s inaugural year, they will be here, working right alongside us to support our efforts to champion design excellence and connect the design community with products, services and potential clients,” she says.

The center will be home to Ferguson (plumbing fixtures, lighting and appliances), J. Baker Interiors (full-service design firm), The Trade Source (decorative fabrics, drapery hardware and wall coverings), Outré (family-owned custom furniture) and other design-related businesses.

“Good design begets good design. We are thrilled to be in this building with these fellow creative types,” says Raquel Richardson, founder and Principal of Silver Square. “The space is energizing, the idea is innovative and the synergy of it all will work well for us.”

In line with the Indiana Design Center’s goals of innovation and Silver Square’s impulse to constantly evolve, Richardson and her team will explore and vet the latest marketing trends to recommend and create the most effective strategies and tactics to grow the center’s business. That mix will most likely include branding, strategy, Web and social media.

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This year, Silver Square Inc. celebrates its 10th anniversary as a creative, trusted graphic design and marketing firm. In case you haven’t heard, Silver Square is known for hitting it out of the park, using funny as a business tactic, offering expert advice through online guides, being brutally honest, exploiting social media and reveling in its clients’ successes. Its clients include Bingham McHale LLP, Peter Dunn, Indiana Small Business Development Center, Walter Knabe and Maddox Industrial. Visit www.silversqaureinc.com or call 317.576.8511.

Set to officially open in summer of 2010, the 82,000-square-foot Indiana Design Center will serve the community of design professionals and their clients by providing a premier collection of resources including fine traditional and contemporary residential and contract furnishings including fabrics, floor coverings, kitchen and bath products, lighting, architectural productions, wallcoverings and accessories. The Indiana Design Center is located at 200 South Rangeline Road in Carmel, Indiana, just 30 minutes/23 miles from Downtown Indianapolis. The Design Center’s proximity to the Carmel Arts & Design District provides access to interior designers, art galleries, showrooms and antique dealers. Please visit the Indiana Design Center Website at www.IndianaDesignCenter.com.