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In a sea of competitors you are one!
We make you Number One! |
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| Greetings! |
 It's been an incredible month at Grey Goose Graphics. We hope that as you read about the recent events at our studio you will clearly hear three things;
1.) We continue to dedicate a significant amount of time and resources to bring each and every client quality, cost effective and state of the art solutions using the latest technology available.
2.) We are not only prepared to take on your project today, but are already taking steps towards adapting our studio, technology and skill sets to address new standards, techniques and offerings still in various stages of research and development.
3.) We really enjoy being on the edge of emerging technology and creative services. While many of our competitors continue to stay in their comfort zones, on a daily basis we are advancing our technology and education as well as experimenting with the many possible ways of integrating these advancements.
We enjoy what we do each and everyday and understand that you, our valued clients and friends, continue to play a big part in our success.
Once again, thank you for your business and allowing us the opportunity to exceed your expectations. We look forward working with you everyday! As always, feel free to contact us with any questions you might have.
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| Welcome! |
Since our last newsletter, we would like to welcome the following new clients to our growing family...
We are happy to have you on board!
RA Solutions
Chenango Bridge, NY
Hillside Homes, LLC
Owego, NY
Zarni DeWet
Boston, MA
Upstate Marketing
Chenango Bridge, NY
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| New Releases from Grey Goose Graphics... | |
Since our last newsletter we have released several new projects...
Websites:
RA Solutions
Upstate Marketing
Custom Presentations:
 | | Absolute Ambulance Billing |
We have several sites in various stages of development and many video projects underway!
Be sure to check back next month for more releases!
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Grey Goose Graphics 2011 Mini Cooper
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Well if you haven't heard yet... Grey Goose Graphics is proud to announce the arrival of our new 2011 Mini Cooper S.
It's an incredible, high-performance two-door with lots of zip and amenities which allows our team to continue the fun we have in the studio out on the open road. The turbocharged 181 hp / six speed transmission delivers a top speed of 141 mi./h with a 0 to 60 mi./h acceleration of 6.6 seconds. Protected by six airbags, at first glance the cockpit appears somewhat retro but is actually loaded with the latest technology and integration.
Of course, it was designed using our corporate color scheme and is branded accordingly. Our custom license plates and frames are on order and will provide the finishing touches soon.
This is just one example of keeping the business "fun". Want to go motoring? Give us a call, we would love to share the fun. (More photos are on our Facebook page.)
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Customizing Social Media Posting
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 Regular users of social media have their pet peeves. For example, some complain when friends share too much information about their children or pets. Others don't enjoy when businesses or organizations they Like or follow talk only about themselves and are all about making a sale. Another common pet peeve is when people, businesses, or organizations post the exact same thing in multiple places.
If you're active on social media, chances are good you've done the last one. Sometimes it makes sense. After all, it's easy, saves time, and there's nothing exactly wrong with doing so. But if you really want to show your fans and followers you care, and that you appreciate them connecting with you in multiple ways, then it's a good idea to customize your message on each of those channels.
Here are three easy ways you can keep your social media posts varied:
1. Change the wording: Read each of your social media posts on their own and as a series, while recognizing that many of your best customers, members, or prospects may see it on more than one social network. Even a slight wording change can make the posts feel different (for example, remove the Twitter hashtag from your Facebook post).
2. Highlight something else: In most articles or email newsletters, there are multiple points that would be interesting for your fans and followers. You can highlight a different data point, a different takeaway for an upcoming event, a different article, etc.
3. Change the image: In addition to changing the message itself, if you are posting to different social accounts or networks, you can make your content appear new and unique by attaching a different image for each. That way, as people scroll through their news feeds, they won't feel like they've seen it all before.
With social media marketing, it's often the little things that make the difference between being seen as a brand that "gets it" and one that is using social as just another promotion vehicle. Customizing your message is one simple way to show your fans and followers that you're putting in the effort and deserve their attention.
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Video Crew Captures first frames
| We are excited to announce that the video division is now fully functional. All of our equipment arrived safely and has been set up. We are sure we will continue to expand our equipment and capabilities as this new area of our business grows and evolves, but for now it's all systems go.
We are excited to have completed several "practice shoots" and associated editing and completed our first official shoot at EPAC one week ago. We are now in the editing stages with one of four videos which will be produced for The Tyson Alston Band and Singer - Song Writer Zarni. We promise to share links next month so you may see a small sample of what our current capabilities are. If you do not want to wait until next month's newsletter... make sure you are following us on Facebook! We'll have the videos up there first!
As with any new venture, we expect to continue to grow and evolve as we obtain additional experience with this format.
If you are looking for video to support your website, a commercial, or any other project, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss the endless options available. Contact us today!
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New Technology at Grey Goose Graphics
| If you have not yet figured out, our business relies on gadgets. From cameras, tablets, ergonomic keyboards and phones to widescreen monitors back up devices and sound gear. As we continue to expand with newer offerings and services, we often find ourselves researching new equipment, implementing cutting edge technology and getting some real life experience... really fast.
With the implementation of our new video services we recently implemented two significant advancements in technology at our studio. One we know you heard of... one we know will be new to most of you. We are sharing this information with our clients for two reasons... To provide you with some basic information about some of the newer technology and to provide you with a quick summary of how we integrated it in our business to possibly spark ideas for you or your organization.
We recently integrated an iPad2 in to our work flow. As most of you know, our studio is powered by a PC environment. We specifically keep it this way as most of our clients operate in a PC environment and the daily interface is seamless without having to worry about cross platform compatibility.
The iPad2 has quickly provided us with many benefits over our PCs, laptops, and net-books. It's relatively small (packs well), has a great battery life - up to 10hrs (we don't need to carry cords), and has a nice display for viewing items with clients. We have several applications to assist us specifically with video production, story boarding and preview/editing as well as applications which still allow us to communicate with our PC network and clients. We are on our way to a paperless operation with this and not only is going green the right thing to do... it's cutting our operating expenses by improving our work flow and efficiencies. (It turns on and off with a zero boot time... we figure that saves us a couple of hours each week alone!) It's a great tool and a work horse!
This past week we found ourselves moving many large files around for video editing and had a couple of problems... First... our client hard drives were filling fast, our editing was choppy as the hard drives were unable to keep up with computer processor and we had increasing concerns about security, back up and redundancy. After a couple sleepless nights, some research and going back to our team from our recent work in Orlando... we purchased a Drobo.
 While we spent some time reviewing this technology early on in our business planing for our recent expansion, we originally thought that this significant expense in technology was something we could grow into as our company grew. We were wrong. During our first shoot we captured almost 90GB of video and audio. We quickly got a real life lesson on the importance of bandwidth at the local machine level and a solid refresher in redundancy and raid configurations.
Enter Drobo! A Drobo is a unique hard drive enclosure which can tie in to a system using USB 2.0, USB 3.0, firewire, or eSata technology. It allows easy insertion of hard drives in up to 12 bays depending on your enclosure and the specs... (And your budget - some models where over $3500 without the hard drives...) Once inserted it uses a "beyond raid" technology to ensure not only incredible performance but also data security and redundancy protecting you for WHEN (not IF) your hard drive fails. It allows mixing and matching of hard drives (size and manufacturer) and took us less time to set up than reheating a pizza did! We opted for a 5 bay unit and stacked in 5 x 2TB drives linking to our computer via an eSata connection. We are now able to push and pull files without delay and have seen an incredible improvement in not only our editing capabilities, but also our system performance in general. (Minimizing the use of the other hard drives resulted in an overall increase in our system speed.)
If you have any questions or are looking to integrate a new technology into your organization... contact us! We'd love to hear what you are doing!
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YouTube vs. Google; It's getting closer than you realize
| The YouTube versus Google competition is on the minds of many. To bring you all up to speed, last year Google purchased YouTube and began implementing technology from both companies across both platforms. For many years Google has been the number one search engine in the world, and the acquisition of YouTube was believed to be a strategy to keep Google number one.
In 2010, analysts predicted that YouTube would surpass Google in 2011 as a search engine. We recently had the opportunity to participate in a webinar in which the analysts have now predicted that YouTube will take the lead in 2011 sometime during October.
Over the past couple weeks, we've had the opportunity to discuss these findings and opinions with our peers, clients, and Associates. During these discussions, we noted several important key facts which came up that we believe would be of value to you if we repeated them here.
First, we were amazed at the number of people we spoke with who still did not recognize YouTube as a search engine. The reality is more and more people every day want to watch Internet content versus read Internet content. This has led to the use of YouTube being utilized for initial search information. For example, if you are shopping for a new piece of technology you could just as easily go to YouTube, and enter in the information for your search as you would in Google. What will be returned are videos applying to your search instead of webpages or other content. So if we were looking at a new camera, we could expect to find everything from reviews and tutorials to commercials or diagnostic processes/technical support. In the event no videos were found on the subject you were looking for, you would also be provided with the traditional web or text links. We have noted more and more clients utilizing YouTube for variety of topics and have also noticed the increasing YouTube utilization within our studio.
Next, we found it interesting to note the increasingly significant numbers of video on YouTube for a wide variety of topics. From help with the cell phone to use of a new software title to learning how to tie a shoe or hit a baseball, there are videos on YouTube. In fact, we would challenge you to try a couple of searches in which you look to stump the returns. We think you'll be pleasantly surprised on how much information in the form of a video exists on YouTube.
Lastly, we recently received an alignment in our thinking as far as the demographic users of YouTube. While we work very hard to remain objective in everything we do, because we are exposed to so much data, often organized into charts allowing us to make predictions and/or identify trends, we sometimes get caught up and have general beliefs which on occasion are proven false. This is the case with the demographic users of YouTube. If you had asked us last month "Who uses YouTube?" our reply would have been straightforward and something like "The teens through those in their mid-20s, mostly hand-held or laptop users, and those with a significant comfort level with technology." Our recent discussions clearly opened her eyes across many areas. We heard stories of students under age 10 using YouTube in the classroom, elderly people who had issues with eyesight and difficulty reading, and a couple examples from people who were not comfortable with computers and/or technology in general, would could get to YouTube and get a video instruction on a specific task at hand that they wished to complete. This led us to look for formal demographic reports regarding the utilization of YouTube. What we found was something very similar to the use of Facebook. YouTube users span almost every age group and every demographic which we could conceptualize.
So by now, you're probably wondering why were talking about YouTube, how it's being used and who is using it... Here's the scoop. It is not uncommon for us to go only a couple days before one of our clients will ask us about search engine optimization and making sure that they are found on Google. While we develop our websites to ensure our clients have a strong presence across the entire web including other search engine such as Ask, Yahoo, etc.our clients primary focus seems to be on where they come up with Google. If you do not have a YouTube presence, now is the time to start thinking about one.
Again, the key to YouTube is a video. If you want to come up high on YouTube or above text links on YouTube (Which are below every other video that is returned on the search) you need to have video. Even if you have video on your website, you need it on YouTube. If you do not yet have a video, that's a great place to start. If you do have a video, where is it placed?
As always, feel free to give us a call or contact us via e-mail with any questions.
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The Snippet Section
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Our monthly contribution of snippets of information which we believe may be helpful to pass on.
- Hosting & Domain Purchasing Discounts - Did you know that if you are buying a new hosting package or switching hosting providers discounts are often provided for purchasing extended terms up front. For example some hosting companies discount their pricing up to 40% if you purchase behind year one or two at the time your hosting account is set up. Some clients wish to leverage these discounts by switching hosting companies every few years. If this is something you may be interested in, let us know, we can make it happen. (Remember changing a hosting account also requires changing e-mail configuration which needs to be considered in the overall cost-benefit ratio of making such a switch.)
- WiFi & Weather - More and more establishments are offering free Wi-Fi services. We have also seen an increase in the amount of Wi-Fi available outdoors. We recently read an article discussing the number of erroneous returns of laptops for poor Wi-Fi reception which was believed to be attributed to whether. Wi-Fi is like any other radio signal and can be affected by obstructions such as walls, windows, and other landscape features. It can also be affected by weather. If you are having Wi-Fi issues outdoors, before you get tied up in a long technical support phone call or possibly return your equipment, it's a good idea to check your Wi-Fi indoors on a network you know to be strong and reliable.
- USB - FireWire - eSata - We recently completed several hours of research regarding the different ways to connect external devices to a computer. Currently there are basically four different protocols in use. USB version 2.0, USB version 3.0, FireWire, and eSata. it was interesting to note that the performance of each of these protocols was dependent on the individual use of the protocol. For example looking at speed FireWire was faster than USB version 3.0 when moving large files, however USB version 3.0 was faster than FireWire when moving the same amount of data but broken up into smaller files. USB version 3.0 is a faster and perhaps slightly more reliable protocol than USB 2.0 however it is currently not widely supported and is slightly more expensive than USB 2.0. eSata outperformed every other protocol as far as speed and reliability, however it was more expensive to implement as most computers require additional hardware and software to support. The take-home message here is that you need to understand what the device will be used for before choosing your protocol as one is clearly not more advantageous than any of the others.
Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.
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Spring Hours
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 Spring core business hours
are as follows:
Monday -Friday 8:30am to 5:00pm.
We remain available outside of these core hours by
appointment only. |
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 We urge all clients to visit our page by clicking on the link below. Once on our page, be sure to "like us" so communications can be delivered to you directly from our account. Like what you see? Be sure to share our page with your friends! Click here to visit our facebook page (& LIKE US) or visit our website (& LIKE US at the bottom of the home page.) Thank you for your continued business and spending some time with us today. We value you as a customer and continue to enjoy our relationship with you.
Thanks for your business!
Sincerely,
John J. Hussar Owner/Principle Designer
Grey Goose Graphics, LLC |
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