I was playing around with some style option in Photoshop and I made a pretty cool looking plastic effect.

These styles are best used on a heavy thick type of font and are free to use in any project you have. Commercial or Personal

You can download the styles here.

In its debut weekend, over 5 million units of the iphone 5 were sold. For all of its beauty, people universally dislike the new Apple Maps app. Businesses will notice that Apple now uses Yelp! instead of Google Places for local business listings and reviews. This is pretty big for Yelp, a young public company, and a pretty big deal for you! Check to see if your business shows up on the iPhone 5 or any other Apple product running iOS 6, Apple’s latest version of its operating system. Also check if your business shows up in the relevant Yelp! categories.

In 2011, 487.7 million smartphones were shipped, a 62.7% increase over 2010. This marks the first time smartphones shipments topped that of PCs (only 414.6 million PCs shipped). Most people don’t replace PCs as often as they do smartphones, of course. But there’s no denying people are becoming more and more attached to mobile devices. There are many ways to tailor your marketing and advertising to mobile devices. Google Adwords offers numerous mobile PPC advertising options, including click-to-call. An email marketing campaign reaches people with smartphones and tablet devices who check their email while they’re on the go. Give us a call if you’d like more

On February 1, Facebook filed for an initial public offering and expects to begin selling shares this spring. In 2011 Facebook had profits of $1 billion on sales of $3.7 billion. 85% of that revenue came from advertising and the rest from social gaming and other fees. Facebook expects to raise at least 5 billion and hopes to raise as much as 10 billion when it begins selling stock in April or May. This is likely to be the biggest Internet or technology IPO ever.

For online marketers, the message is: social media must be embraced! Its impact is growing stronger every day. Facebook and other social media platforms will continue to be aggressive in finding ways to compete with search engines. In addition to having a presence on social media sites, many marketers are adding Facebook pay-per-click to their advertising plans. From 2010 to 2011, the number of PPC ads delivered on Facebook grew 42% and the average price per ad grew 18%. Keep in mind that it’s easy to make costly mistakes when you first venture into social media marketing. Call us if you want help with social media.

We pay very close attention to search rankings and social media trends. No doubt, search engines are trying to figure out a way to incorporate social signals (activity on social media sites) into search results. How much of an impact this currently has on search rankings is up for debate. So far, we don’t see a significant impact. We recommend that you participate in social media activities so you’re prepared for the day when social media becomes an important factor in search rankings. Evidently, that day is coming!

Social media certainly has a place in online marketing. Facebook has 800 million users (compare that to Google+’s 62 million) and more than 50% of Facebook users log on every day. Twitter has more than 100 million users and posts more than 250 million tweets per day. Facebook and other social media sites are great for reaching out to customers and building a community around your business. We’ll be happy to talk to you about adding social media to your online marketing plan.