I remember an amusing joke the comedian Jerry Seinfeld would often use in his standup act. Paraphrasing it, the joke went something like this: According to a poll on the things people fear most, the number one fear was giving a speech in front of other people. The second greatest fear was death. That meant that if people were going to a funeral, they’d rather be the person in the casket than the person who has to give the eulogy.

Public speaking is not any easy thing to put yourself through. Most people don’t like to be up in front of a crowd where any little mistake is going to make them look foolish in front of all of those people. But what can you really do about it?

There are certain things you can do to help beat your fear and help you give a better speech. The first is simply acknowledging that you are afraid of it. It sounds simple and it sounds like it wouldn’t do anything, but you’d be surprised how much of a difference it can make to admit to yourself that you’re afraid.

The next thing is simply respecting yourself. Take the things you know and understand how important they are and how much it will help everyone else for you to tell it to them. This should help you boost up your confidence.

Next, and this is something a lot of people don’t think about, design and make all of your own visuals. If you planned on using leaflet printing to hand out some leaflets, make them and print them yourself. If you wanted some flyers to give to people, or maybe you had a color poster you were planning to use as a prop, make it yourself.

You can get design programs like Adobe Photo Shop in order to do the work, and if you’re handling all of that color printing on your own it gives you a level of control you wouldn’t normally have. This can help make a big difference mentally when it comes time to get up there in front of everyone else.

You might also want to go to the place you’re going to give your speech at ahead of time to get a feel for the place you’ll be speaking in. The fewer surprises you have the better.

Also, keep your presentation simple. The more complicated things get the more chances there are for things to go wrong. Keeping things simply allows you to have a greater control over what’s going on.

Lastly, do your best to be yourself. The more casual you feel and the more casual you appear the more knowledgeable you’ll seem. If you look nervous people aren’t going to be as likely to take you serious.

It can be a nerve wracking experience, I know, but if you handle things right, you’ll survive the experience.

I’ve heard it from a lot of people and I’ve thought it myself plenty of times: that isn’t my job. What I mean is that you have what was your job and then someone asks you to do something else. That first, gut reaction that I know a lot of people have is that same thought: that isn’t what I do.

Why do so many people react in a way like this? Sometimes it’s going to be a desire not to do more work, but many times it’s a certain fear of having to do a job they’ve never done before. Here is something they need to learn.

In the world of design this is going to be a very true and understandable fear. After all, in other industries if someone asks you to do something like make some copies and you’ve never used a copy machine, it isn’t hard to figure out if you did it right or not. If you have copies you did it right, if you don’t you didn’t.

But in the world of design and commercial printing you can be asked to design some full color flyers, do your best to make them, and then be told afterwards they don’t look right. Maybe you missed some specific detail that goes into a great color flyer and you were unaware of it.

In other words, you won’t always know that you did your job right until someone else looks at it and gives you the okay. This can make for a very nerve wracking situation for the first time you design something you have no experience with. No one wants to be told that they need to go back and start it over from scratch.

But if you really want to get better at what you do, you need to start reveling in those challenges. Sure, it isn’t going to be easy going from designing primarily flyers to having to design a business brochure, or being told the company needs some pamphlet printing done and so you need to get started designing one even though you never have before.

Each time you try something new you’re being provided with a lesson to learn how to design them. Sure, it might get sent back to you with several corrections, but then, now you know what not to do in the future.

I always enjoy being able to expand my knowledge base, and I know it makes me do a better job in the long run. And really, knowing how to make a great flyer might end up helping me with my brochure designs in ways I hadn’t really thought of before.

Don’t just stick to one area of commercial printing when you can learn how to do all of it. 

The closest possibility to you now is your storefront window.  Many business owners fail to take full advantage of the space on your business front.  Exciting colors and an enticing message will convert would be passers by into new customers.

Catalog printing and booklet printing allow for economical direct mail campaigns.  Ideally these should be targeted at an under served niche market.  Many business owners today fail to incorporate these tried and true methods into their overall marketing strategy.

The outdoors also provides many marketing opportunities.  This can range from a billboard to employing the power of poster printing.  A well placed poster can speak to thousands while costing less than your morning latte.

Television and radio are now affordable to the small business owner.  There are many programs providing discounted rates for unsold time.  Make your spot professional and place it on programs your market is likely to watch.

Obviously seeing you are reading this online you are aware of the multitude of interactive marketing possibilities.  However, don’t become too focused with your online segment to the detriment of other avenues.  A well rounded marketing plan translates to a successful one. 

A custom business card or color business cards can be printed now quite economically.  This is especially true for large batches.  The pennies extra per card for a professional product are money well worth spending.  A poor card can cost thousands in lost sales.

Quality color printing can be utilized for other endeavors outside of color business cards.  Posters, catalogs and marketing brochures all have their place in today’s sales world.  Many business owners focus their efforts exclusively online.  This often works to their detriment.

There are audiences who are not to be captured in the interactive environment.  Direct mail allows for effective targeting of a selected niche market.  Sales conversion ratios soar when your message is being delivered to parties seeking the specific service or product you are selling.

Next time you are in need of business card printing make sure you ponder the true cost of a shoddy card.  A custom business card will convey that both your company has its act together.

Many people have the misconception that only high-paid advertising will have any effect on expanding their business. In reality there are many different methods a business can utilize in order to cut the cost of advertising and offset the cost of commercial printing. Things such as distributing business cards throughout the community, placing flyers in visible spots, writing articles for publications in exchange for ad space and placing filler ads in newspapers and magazines are a few of the ways a company can save on the cost of advertising.

You don’t want to use free advertising exclusively but as a supplement to any other advertising you may be doing. This is especially true of online advertising that places a higher ranking on paid advertisements—free advertising is places lower and may remain unseen. Look to free advertising as a way to offset commercial printing of your business tools rather than using it as a way to replace paid advertising. You want to supplement any advertising you are currently doing, especially in cases where your budget for advertising may be approaching its limitations. Develop some ideas of your own and use your company’s slogan and display ads to ad additional flair to mailings, emails, and faxes you send.

The really good kinds of commercials and advertisements are the ones people are still talking about years after they debuted. This is the dream of all advertisers, I’m sure, and I’ve seen my fair share of real knockouts.

The problem is that most of these ads are usually found in magazines and other mainstream forms of printed media. When I get flyers, postcards or other printed material in the mail I can’t help but notice that they have little or no flair. You can tell that whoever designed them didn’t care very much about designing and color printing them but just getting them out the door.

I think people assume that if their ad isn’t going to appear in one of those mainstream formats like newspapers or magazines they don’t need to put as much effort into it. It seems to me this should be just the opposite. Brochure printing doesn’t benefit from the fact that it will automatically be coupled with a magazine people are buying specifically to read. A brochure needs to live or die on its own merits and nothing else.

People should be putting the most effort into these kinds of advertisements. If all I’m being given is a flyer I want that flyer to be captivating or else I’m not going to take the time out of my life to even give it a once over.

The next time I get that truly wonderful looking brochure in the mail I’ll take the time to read what it has to say. Until then I’ll be dropping them right in the trash.

The printed word goes back many centuries.  Since then, initial crude presses have given way to digital printing machines operating at the speed of light.  This is not to say many tried and true color printing methods aren’t still used today. Many techniques dating back decades, if not centuries, are still used by businesses on a widespread basis.

Those seeking quality stationery still rely upon engraving or thermography.  Tee shirt printers still use the screen printing method which has been around for many years.  Advancements have been made printing on round objects with flexography color printing.  Today, one can have printing inserted on virtually any object that exists.

The highest quality and efficiency has been attained with digital color printing.  Today’s sophisticated printing operations can operate on very short deadlines.  Catalogs, marketing brochures, or business cards all are taken to the next level with today’s digital color printing technology.

Many business owners unfortunately neglect many proven advertising routes.  Posters, flyers and color business cards are all great tools which can be targeted to your niche audience.  Failure to address this market segment can translate to lost sales.  Use the power of digital color printing to bring your business to the next level.

In real estate, you often hear that the key is “location, location, location.”  Well, when it comes to advertising yourself to new customers, and making that critical sale, the key is “quality, quality, quality.”

If you cut back on your advertising budget to save money, I can guarantee that you will end up costing yourself even more in the end.  Poor quality ads and flyers just do not resonate with consumers.  In fact, they hurt your standing in their eyes.  Nothing screams “cheap!” more than a poorly designed, cheaply printed ad.  And nothing spells doom to your business more than looking cheap to customers.

Make an effort to spend the money on good, quality commercial printing when you do your marketing materials.  I know it hurts the pocketbook up front, but you will find your pockets bursting with income in the long run.  Adding color and professional paper tells your customers that you care about your product, and you are committed enough to your business to spend what you have to spend to share it with the world.

Don’t let your customers down.  Pay for quality when it comes to your advertising campaign.

Ours is a country of logos. It really isn’t all that surprising when you think about it. We are a consumer culture, and the logo is a great bit of proof. Given all the companies out there who have them, and given all the companies using commercial printing to place them on everything they can, we’re inundated with them in every area of our life.

Do we rebel against this mass of logos, or complain about their presence? Why would we? People like logos. How many shirts have you seen with a company’s logo written across the front, and I’m not just talking about clothing company logos, either. The right kind of logo can be a thing of beauty, something people want to put on their stuff, and the more they like a company the more they want to be associated with it. Just slapping a company name on something isn’t going to be enough. A cool looking design does the job better than a name ever could. Given the attraction people have to the logos, it seems kind of foolish for any company to not have one.

Entry by Philip Roberts