Let’s face it, I don’t think anyone shy of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Titanic is good at actually saying their adieus. I, however, am especially bad at it and have strayed away from actually saying one most of my life. Regardless, it is understandably in order, so I will try to keep it short and sweet… Read more…
Newest to Oldest forever and ever
I’m thrilled to be the newest addition to the JLB team. Heading up sales and marketing for JLB allows me the opportunity to be on the front lines for the company and act as point-man for potential clients. My job is to seek and find new leads and contact those who might be in need of social media networking, search engine optimization, targeted advertising or strategic branding. Read more…
It’s been a couple of years since we’ve attended PodCamp. It’s not that we opted out of last year for any particular reason, but we didn’t make it a priority. This year is different. This year, we are going again. And this year, it’s bigger than it’s ever been.
“What’s PodCamp?” you ask… well, it’s one of the South’s premier un-conferences for online interactivity. Think of it as a gathering for nerds, geeks, entrepreneurs, small business owners, big business owners, and pretty much anyone involved or interested in online communications. If you have an interest in social media and/or social networking, then PodCamp is for you. PodCamp describes itself as “a forum for bloggers, marketers, content creators, educators, podcasters and the like to gather, network and learn about the latest trends, tricks and technologies in the interactive world – ultimately making them the superlative gurus in online communications.”
That might sound a little intimidating… PodCamp is really for anyone who is generally interested in online communications. The conference features 35 sessions presented by some of Nashville’s most prolific social media experts, web developers, and content creators. Sessions feature titles like “The Ultimate WordPress Experience,” and “How Mobile Bar Codes Can Help Your Digital Get Physical,” and “Mobile Marketing: How Your Business Can Use It Today.”
An estimated 550 people will attend this year’s PodCamp — and maybe more — PodCamp’s prominence has been growing. (Even The Tennessean has pre-covered the event in its weekend paper.) For our part, JLB is pleased to say that we’ll be featured as a panelist at one of the sessions on Saturday morning. At Paul Campbell’s, “We Did: Stories of Startups,” JLB is set to be one of 4-5 panelists representing small tech in Middle Tennessee.
For those interested, it’s not too late to sign up. And it’s free to attend PodCamp. Just visit the official website and register. We’ll see you there!
We’re just days away from our annual Holiday Hiatus, and it’s crazy to think that another year is coming to an end.
What is “Holiday Hiatus,” you ask? It is the much anticipated end-of-the-year break for Team JLB. Think of it as a college Christmas break… for adults. Typically, we take our annual work Hiatus near the middle-end of December and 2-3 weeks later, we re-emerge (kind of like friendly bears coming out of hibernation) to tackle the new year, sometime during the first week of January. This year, we are taking our Hiatus on Dec. 17 and return on Jan. 5.
For Team JLB, it is a definitive way to mark the turn of the year. We’ve worked hard up to this point — more hours than we planned on — and the Hiatus is a way to re-charge our batteries. A rejuvenation opportunity, if you will. We don’t quite reverse the aging process, but it does give us time for rest and reflection, as we prepare the charge into a new year.
Strategically speaking, the Holiday Hiatus comes at the perfect time of year — when most client projects have wound down and most clients are spending time away from their offices. Then, as soon as things start to percolate in the new year, we’re back in action … refreshed, re-charged and ready to work.
No — we don’t quite “shut it all down.” Someone is still monitoring e-mail at JLB HQ during the Hiatus. If a site crashes or an e-mail stops working or your logo breaks (what? not again…), we’re still johnny-on-the-spot. But the Hiatus is a designated time of rest for our team. And it’s a critical component to each year — giving us a chance to come back with fresh perspectives and new ideas for our clients and their communication strategies.
With all of that said, we hope you enjoy your holidays, too. And… we’ll see you soon. Merry. Merry. And Happy. Happy.
This September, JLB completed a month-long graphic design and web development project for the folks at Forest Park Apartments.
What makes this project notable is how it reflects a series of emerging trends in client requests (and subsequently in the tasks we’ve been executing this year). The key elements requested by Forest Park include: graphic design, web development on an easy-to-use content management platform, search engine optimization, and social networking set up and strategy.
Of course, design and development have been part of our bailiwick for more than seven years now, but the emergence of the importance of a strong (yet simple) content management system, solid search engine optimization, and relevant social networking over the past few years now plays a significant role in the way we design and, subsequently, engineer a website. For example, when we create a design, we are always thinking about ways to incorporate as much text as we can, while still maintaining a strong sense of aesthetic. (We care about textual volume because the search engines tend to give more weight to pages with more content.) Likewise, we are always cognizant of how to incorporate social networking icons or “widgets” (badges that stream status updates into a page).
These days, many clients want as much control over their websites as they can have. An effective, manageable system for updating site content is paramount. We realize that clients want to do things quickly and easily.
Marrying great design with robust functionality, developing pages that will be indexed by search engines (and found by “googlers”), and sync’ing sites with social networking strategies… all are critical to contemporary web design and development.
This week, JLB launched a new website for our Costa Rican client, Events Costa Rica. And, we have to admit, it’s a tasty little spitfire!
Events & Weddings Costa Rica, is a company focused on creating unique, customized wedding and honeymoon experiences in one of the most beautiful countries in the Western Hemisphere. Recently, Samantha Kohn, owner of ECR, approached JLB and asked us to create a clean, professional graphic design in an easy-to-manage content management system. (We’ve known Samantha for a few years now, having helped optimize a previous iteration of her website with very successful results.)
The result of our endeavors? A pretty little website with a tad more than 60 pages of content (yes — we even helped Samantha import all of the existing content from her previous website), engineered on a very robust CMS (thank you, WordPress) with a slideshow tool and an easy-to-update News section, where Samantha can feature various weddings that she’s planned. The best part? All of her content is even better situated for Search Engine Spiders (read: even stronger SEO than before).
Wanna get away? Check out the new site…
Franklin Synergy Bank has just opened a new branch in Franklin and they had their Grand Opening and Ribbon Cutting today! JLB has worked closely with Aimee Punessen, the Senior Vice President of Marketing, Public & Investor Relations to make sure the Grand Opening was a success.
Constant Craving catered the food, Southern Events provided the necessary event equipment and supplies, Cornerstone Music did the sound and the TMA Group (another client of JLB) supplied the shuttle to and from the parking garage. Kevin Wimpy Photography was around again to document the entire event.
Everyone worked hard to pull off a successful Grand Opening for FSB!
This week Team JLB celebrated the launch of a website for the Williamson County-Franklin Chamber of Commerce. After months of planning and strategizing, we have worked together with Chamber staffers to execute a robust, content-driven site that puts a fresh face on a household name in Williamson County.
The Chamber, established in the late 1920s, now serves Williamson County as the premier business organization resource for the area. The Chamber’s diverse membership provides a foundation for monitoring business and community development, and its commitment to the community and its members has helped foster an environment for business growth in this area.
Project Scope
- website graphic design
- website engineering (html, css, php)
- information architecture
- website content management system
- search engine optimization
Project Tools
- wordpress (website content management system)
- google analytics (website statistics)
Stratum Consulting Partners, based in Superior, CO, offers an array of consultation, asset management and productivity solutions for companies across the States. While Stratum has been successful in building its client base over the past several years, the managing partners recognized a need to ramp up their online presence in 2010. Enter JLB.
Our challenge: to create a lead-generating website with strong visual appeal, easy-to-navigate sections, and outstanding search engine optimization. From graphic design, to strategic information architecture, to website engineering, and forward-thinking content placement & markups, Team JLB aims to improve Stratum’s web position and help build its name-recognition on a national level.
It’s a worthy series of tasks we look forward to executing over the next few months.
Social Media #ohsnap