As one of the newest members of the CNP team, I feel very fortunate to say that I work with some of the most generous people I've ever known.

Florida Public Relations Association's Dick Pope/Polk County Chapter recently challenged its members to be a part of an initiative to collect and donate essential hygiene items for the 2,500+ homeless children within the Polk County school system. After hearing of this sad situation, Chris and I set a goal for CNP to collect 16 sets, one from each employee. One set would include shampoo, conditioner, soap, a toothbrush, toothpaste, combs, a hairbrush, washcloths and deodorant.

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Recently, Google announced that it will begin supporting the Schema.org markup for organization logos. The Schema.org logo item property has existed for some time now, so if you’re already using it, then great! That logo will begin showing up in search result pages associated with your organization.

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My old professor for Work Design & Human Factors would be proud that I’m making my desk more ergonomic. And, I don’t feel like I’m throwing away a tree trunk’s worth of paper!

For those with decades of experience with online content the question may seem ridiculous, because to us spam looks like spam. Over the years I’ve found certain sources I can trust and some that I skeeve … utterly. To those new to relying on the web for information, however, identifying trustworthy content can be far more challenging.

For those unfamiliar with the web, (the short-timers) here are some secondary cues that can be helpful to sift through the silt of spam and find those tiny gold nuggets of truth: Continue Reading

One of the things I love most about working at CNP is being surrounded by so many creative and artistically talented people. As an account director, my artwork usually consists of stick figure drawings of concepts to help communicate the client’s vision to our design team. I routinely sit back in awe of how they turn that vision into a thing of beauty.

And I am not the only one impressed by this talent!

Our very own graphic designer, Robin Fight, is being recognized by Women in the Arts, Inc. in the “Celebrating the Genius of Women” exhibit at the Orlando Public Library. Robin is passionate about sketching and illustrating and it clearly shows through in her personal artwork. Continue Reading

Search engine optimization (SEO) can get complicated, perhaps overcomplicated. In desperate attempts to “fool” search engines with link webs, content farms, forum spamming, etc. many SEOs have lost sight of what’s really important: having a well-coded site that presents information in a way that both search engines and humans can easily understand, that's well-represented across the Internet. Here are a few pieces of low-hanging SEO fruit that you can start doing today:

Install Google Webmaster Tools

Google provides a suite of very effective tools that allow you to diagnose problems on a website and communicate that website’s disposition to Google. Resolve any HTML errors Continue Reading

Naming or re-naming your company, organization or startup? Heed the sage advice from Gary Backaus, Chief Creative Officer at Memphis-based ad agency archer>malmo. It means your name should be a natural outgrowth of your core purpose, essence or mission – not some disconnected, confusing contrivance that requires justification or explanation.

We’re very privileged to have one of the best photographers in the country right around the corner. Check out this great profile in The Ledger.

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Successful ads attract Attention, arouse Interest, stimulate Desire and present a compelling call for Action – in that order. If you want to create ads that get noticed, are appreciated and acted upon, A.I.D.A. is the tried-and-true formula.

An ad typically appears in paid media. That means it has to compete with other ads to get noticed by hyper-short attention spans. But A.I.D.A. applies to other communication contexts, too. Brochures, social media posts, postcards, even executive presentations all have to compete in one way or another to get noticed and succeed. For simplicity, I’ll use the word “ad” as a placeholder for all of these forms. Continue Reading