Sigma Creative

Avitae

Christian — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:43:41 +0000

The Client: Avitae

Project Description: Sigma Creative created an unofficial print/web marketing piece for the Avitae brand.

Software Used: Illustrator/Photoshop

Nate Riggs

Christian — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:23:40 +0000

The Client: Nate Riggs

Project Description: Nate Riggs is a communication and social web strategist with a true passion for connecting people with people, promoting genuine and transparent communication, and helping mid-sided to large companies adopt and use social web technology to gain access to new marketing channels.

Nate contacted Sigma Creative about creating an online web presence and graphic design. Sigma Creative merged media from 3rd party vendors to create a graphic banner that kept the brand continuity already created by another agency. Sigma Creative also worked on syncing up email and domain aliasing to point to the same hosting account in order to save on operational overhead while taking advantage of multiple domain touchpoints for increased visibility and search engine optimization.

Client Testimonial: “I hired Chris Adams when I was in a real pinch. I was getting ready to head to a fairly large speaking opportunity in San Diego last year in the logistics and transportation industry. Knowing that once you’re on the podium, people tend to visit your blog, I was faced with having to make some changes to my visual design as well as how and where my blog was being hosted. With one call, Chris came through on point. In less than 24 hours, I had a new header (which is still live at the time of this recommendation) and had switched hosts to Dotster.com. What was really impressive, (and I’m still grateful for this) was how Chris responded when there were issues with the host and domain redirect. Right before I was called to speak, my domain crashed and I lost my business email. I immediately called Chris. By the time I was out of my breakout session, Chris had everything up and running smoothly. He really saved the day for me, and I absolutely recommend him as a web designer, and as a trusted resource…”

Software Used: Illustrator/Photoshop

Standard Rec (Crossbones)

Christian — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:08:56 +0000

The Client: Standard Rec

Project Description: Standard Rec is the less serious side of Sigma Creative. Standard Rec is another business venture that focuses really on the artistic expression side of Sigma Creative’s employees and partners. Standard Rec actually came to be due to Christian’s fixation on wanting to update the image of the international fraternity he belonged to, Phi Kappa Sigma. He felt they could have an edgier look, or at least an updated look that could be marketable without losing the fundamental and traditional aspects of the company.

This particular piece, appropriately named Crossbones, was designed by Christian Adams using stock vector images and brushes.

Software Used: Illustrator/Photoshop

All clothing is printed on American Apparel and comes in a variety of colors and sizes.

Paradigm Shift – Problems with Social Media Overload

Christian — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:43:16 +0000

I do believe there is a saturation now that Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook have hit the mainstream when everybody, legitimate marketers and otherwise, is trying to ride the wave of those not yet on board. Like everything the saturation is due to buzz makers who use the tools in the wrong ways or at least unethical ways, IMHO. There is a right way and a wrong way. The good news is that with social media we are now the gatekeepers and can tune out the garbage in garbage out content. For real revenue generation we have to learn from the past mistakes of traditional marketing that quantity vs quality doesn’t work anymore. It is the offline activities that are the most successful. I believe they are valuable tools getting a bad rap from people who don’t necessarily know how to use them and are being taken advantage of by those that feel the need to spam. However, it is hard to point fingers as it is human nature for some to chase the fast buck by taking advantage of the less educated. We haven’t leveled off in the paradigm shift from traditional marketing to new marketing (social media) and once I think that happens consumers will begin to weed out the snake oil salesman for the diamonds in the rough. It is hard to blame those with “gold rush” fever when you look at the statistics like this:

I think the economy still recovering and the value of personal brand gaining ground or being almost as important or level with company brand adds fuel to the fire. We have talked about it to death, but you know as well as I do that the cream rises to the top due to being a Trust Agent in being genuine and transparent while leading through innovation and reinvention to be a sustainable brand or business.

Establishing a Personal Brand through Rich Media

Christian — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:37:13 +0000

I would like to say I think the most effective way to establish a personal brand is relative. There are things that you have to take into consideration like what industry/market are you trying to pursue and to drill it down even to a niche in said industry/market and build from there.

In today’s social media world building a personal brand means doing “all the above.” If I had to make a choice I would have to say blogging because you can always integrate podcasting and viral videos in to that. That being said blogging is more of a platform in which to distribute your content via podcasting, viral videos, etc.

More importantly than the communication platforms/channels you decide to use is the content itself. The paradigm shift that is social media has done away with the gatekeepers and turned everybody into their own CEO. No longer is the target audience necessarily a captive one. They can make the decision within seven seconds (average viewer’s attention span) if they want to continue to to read, watch, listen to what you have to say. It becomes about creating content that will extend that that seven seconds and make your target audience want more. People want one of two things and that is to learn something or be entertained and in a lot of cases they want both. It boils down to what we like to call, “added value.”

When you have that part figured out then you have to be consistent and stay relevant in keeping up with trending topics within your industry or market niche. This is the same reason Hollywood stars do rash things to extend their fifteen minutes of fame and it is because we have come to expect more from them and they fail to produce because the quality of the content is not there anymore and so we as the target audience move on. The same has to be said for online media distribution.

Whatever it is you decided to do make sure you focus on your strengths/passion and your sphere of influence, or Tribe as Seth Godin among others puts it, will grow. Keep in mind there is no immediacy in establishing a personal brand. Just like in Field of Dreams, “build it and they will come.” It takes a lot of hard work and dedication, but create great content and distribute it on multiple marketing communication channels and they will come.

My last piece of advice is get involved with your local Toasmasters Club. The most successful personal brands take the online into the offline arena as presenters and public speakers.

Four book suggestions for Personal Branding:

Tribes by Seth Godin
Trust Agents by Chris Brogan
Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuck
Me 2.0 by Dan Schawbel

The Social Media Marketing Resume

Christian — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:21:56 +0000

The obvious to me are the ones with links to their social networking profiles and when checking their profiles that they are consistently active in those communities while advocating in a niche market or industry. They also have to be cognizant to social media marketing trends (vanity urls, social media tools, etc.) and the implementation of those tools. If they truly know what they are doing besides existing on social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook and using social media tools like Twitter they are also writing about it in their blog and creating Slideshare presentations on a regular basis. Are they active and are they staying relevant week to week, month to month, year to year while gaining new followers and building a tribe. True social media “experts” are public speakers who are passionate about marketing in their niche industry and future trends while educating others on they why and the how.

Are they truly active and staying relevant beyond their resume? The great thing about Social Media resumes is that it is easier to go on fact finding missions. Some say personal branding is becoming more important to a company that the company brand itself and I tend to agree because it is the people who make that brand what it is. Social media has changed the way we think and act on what was traditional marketing campaigns. A good friend Nate Riggs talks about this in his blog.

Checklist for any resume whether it is for a social media resume or not is:

All that being said some of the best resumes I’ve seen are the online ones and more specifically the ones that usual VisualCV.

http://www.visualcv.com/ariherzog

http://www.visualcv.com/scobleizer

http://www.visualcv.com/guykawasaki

Here is mine, although it is in desperate need of updating it gives you an idea of some of the important elements to look for in a social media marketing resume: http://www.visualcv.com/christianadams and my blog is a mess, but I currently write on various subject matter related to the internet at http://www.mashingthenet.com

I would say the person to look for is the one making waves locally and if they are at various business and social events offline or ask if people have heard of that person. Mashable also has a good post about HOW TO: Build the Ultimate Social Media Resume.

WordPress: More Than A Blog Platform

Christian — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:18:01 +0000

When I started using Joomla a long time ago as a community based membership site I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. This also happened to be the same time when WordPress was known as just a blogging site. Joomla had good developer support with great plugins to increase functionality of a CMS system that provided easy content and got away from the standard Web 2.0 system (phpNuke, e107, etc.) of a 3 column community site with a forum and a couple other bells and whistles.

While Joomla had great backend 3rd party plugins like CRM, forums (VBulletin) and ecommerce bridge solutions like OS Commerce it was bloated and took a lot of time for a non-developer. Fast forward to today and WordPress has changed from a purely blogging focused platform to a more robust multi-dimensional website management tool without having an over abundance of programming knowledge.The great thing I love about WordPress now vs. then is that it has been easily adapted by programmers and plugin developers to be much more interactive and integrated with Social Media Networks for further exposure of marketing/advertising campaigns of a product or service.

WordPress works on both Windows and Linux based systems and is built off of php programming language, but has recently made strides in the jQuery (javascript), Java, Flash and Ajax programming languages. As an Account Manager for a web hosting company I would say we deal with more problems troubleshooting Windows based systems than our Linux based systems running the same set up using WordPress.

As far as e-commerce solutions there are a couple of pretty good choices without having to bridge an account like a forum. There is Shopp http://shopplugin.net/ and then there is one that our company is looking to offer with hosting packages called wp-ecommerce http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce/. So in my opinion WordPress, in recent years, has gone from being just a blogging site and evolving into a fully interactive CMS website solution for businesses and Universities.Harvard is using a multi user version of WordPress called WordPress MU which is what wordpress.com runs on as well. http://mu.wordpress.org/

This summer I attended WordCampColumbus and some representatives from WordPress/Automattic http://automattic.com gave us glimpse into what they had in mind for the future including full HD video integration sans Youtube. http://videopress.com/ The great thing is because of the community support and the commitment of core developers from the company I only see WordPress gaining more market share. It use to be a lot harder to develop a website pre web 2.0. WordPress has narrowed that gap between traditional web developers and the average hobbyist. The best thing I like about WordPress is that it was named in the top three of CMS scripts that maximize Search Engine Optimization (SEO) out of the box. Drupal and Joomla were the other 2 in the top 3. I’m not going to provide a link on this because wherever you search you will get a biased review (including myself) so take it with a grain of salt. Just so you know, while I have talked WordPress up in my answer, I am in no way affiliated with WordPress, Automattic, or any of the other links mentioned in this answer. I just think it is a great php script that has really come a long way since its inception and will only continue to get better.

10 Simple Rules of Etiquette for Twitter

Christian — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:00:23 +0000

Simple Criteria for me to follow and engage you:

1. Picture of yourself or likeness.

2. Where you live. iPhone/Google longtitude/latitude numbers don’t count. That makes more work for me. I’m not going to stalk you.

3. Give me a description. It can be work or non work related. What you are passionate about will come through in your tweets.

4. Don’t auto-dm me upon follow. It is like getting a form letter from my congress person. Their secretary wrote it and stamped used the signature stamp.

5. Half your tweets must be @replies or RTs that you share common beliefs in. If you’re just tweeting information you’re traditionally old. You still haven’t got the point of Twitter. This includes you major news sources (CNN, WSJ, et al). You are not exempt if you’re not listening.

6. Change your Twitter background. Doing so shows you are a creative person and we all are creative in our own way. You could draw stick figures and I would find it better than someone who doesn’t take the time to care about public perception.

7. DON’T YELL. It won’t get your point across anymore.

8. Don’t RT major news all the time for the sake of karma. Nine times out of ten everybody else I am following has RTed the same thing too. Common bonds = common interests = common knowledge.

9. Your tweets must make sense. It is a 140 characters. Make sure you still use the lessons taught to you by your HS grammar teacher. I’m not going to click on a tweet with a bunch of buzz words thrown together.

10. Be yourself. Living in a PC world takes a lot of work. It forces you to live within certain constrains. It limits honest, openness, and ultimately communication. This is where you have to know your audience and find the balance between being funny and sarcastic or being mean and hurtful.

Lewis Howes

Christian — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:45:23 +0000

The Client: Lewis Howes

Project Description: Lewis Howes is best known for co-writing a bestselling and wildly popular social media marketing book, LinkedWorking. Lewis is also a highly sought after public speaker and consultant that helps individuals and companies reach their goals in converting potential leads into profitable and sustainable revenue generation.

Lewis came to Sigma Creative with a clear idea of how he wanted to his site to look like, but wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it. While Lewis had already created several successful brands he was looking for a hub spot to tie them altogether in order to have clear brand continuity and a strong marketing message. This project might have never come to fruition if it wasn’t for the power of social media, word of mouth marketing, and the right timing. Lewis learned about Sigma Creative from one of our clients and talented photographer, Alexandra Copley. Unfortunately the timing wasn’t right as both parties were heavily involved in other projects.

Client Testimonial: “Quality. That is the one word that best describes Sigma Creative. Their work is high quality! There are a lot of good web developers, and there are a lot of good graphic designers, however, it’s hard to find a company that provides high quality in both and delivers results in a short amount of time. I hired Sigma Creative to produce www.lewishowes.com and was completely satisfied with the finished product. I continue to refer others to them and I highly recommend working with Sigma Creative if you want a quality product from someone you can depend on.”

Services Provided:

Project management
Web design
MySQL Database Integration
jQuery coding
Web development (XHTML & CSS)

Alexandra Copley

Christian — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:18:41 +0000

The Client: Alexandra Copley

Project Description: Alexandra Copley is a world re-known award winning photographer and photojournalist known for capturing true cultural experiences with vivid color and realism. Her photos have the power to influence and move others on a deeper level by addressing relevant social issues affecting cultures today.

Alex came to Sigma Creative looking to improve her online web presence and increase her visibility through social media networking and marketing to have an effective personal brand. Sigma Creative created a Twitter background page to start and is in talks to create brand continuity in the redesign of her current website and her social media marketing channels.

Client Testimonial: “Christian is a superstar amongst others in his field. He is a designer who goes out of his way to make his clients happy. He values being accessible to others and knows how to bridge the gap from the web to the real world. His personal touch makes every project he completes the highest quality. Unique, talented and creative are just a few words to describe this self-motivated designer.”

Software Used: Photoshop