• Cover photo. Instead of having a row of business-related photos at the top of your page, you’ll have a large photo on top, and your business’ profile photo will be set in the left corner of this photo. This gives you the opportunity to create a unique Facebook logo for your business. Choose an image for your cover photo that reflects your business’ values and add a slogan to it. Make sure your business page’s profile picture reflects the same feeling as the logo and blends well with your cover photo.
• Two column layout, divided by a timeline. The Timeline layout is meant to allow readers to view a page’s “story,” in narrative form. Your customers can drag the timeline to see what you were doing in the past. Use this to your advantage to tell your customers how your business has progressed. For example, post photos of your grand opening, your biggest sale, the first positive review you got and so forth. Label your photos with the correct dates so they go in the right part of your timeline. If you take the time to do this, prospective customers can get a sense of your business’ history and values.
• Tabs on top instead of landing page. The new Timeline format won’t allow you to set a custom landing page with coupons or recent news the way the old business page format did. Instead, you can choose which three tabs run across the top of the page. Use your tabs to help with your branding; choose tabs that reflect popular projects or items of interest to your customers.
• Ability to pin items to top of page. The Timeline feature allows you to pin items that are important to you. Pinned items appear at the top of your page regardless of how much other content you have on your page. You can use pins to help solidify your marketing efforts. Pin links to blogs, recent events and other items that you want your customers to see as soon as they access your page.
• Private messaging capabilities. You will now be able to send private messages to customers who have joined your page. You can use this to send targeted messages to customers who might be interested in a particular sale or follow up on a customer concern.

When setting up your Facebook business page using Timeline, keep in mind that your cover photo, tabs and first two items are most important. These items make up the part of your page that is “above the fold”–the portion of the page customers see when they first load it. The above the fold information is more important than the rest of your Timeline because prospective customers may not scroll down to see what else you have on your page. You want your entire page to look professional, but concentrate on the above the fold material first so that you can get customers’ attention right away and encourage them to join your page.

1. Broad Oak Energy, Inc. – founded 2005 – David B. Braddock ‘74, JD Braddock ‘03, Cory Parrott ‘03
2. Public Properties, LLC – founded 2000 – Ben Butler ‘85
3. Joubert Law Firm – founded 2002 – John “Johnny” Joubert ‘93
4. General Informatics, LLC – founded 2001 – Mohit Vij ‘97
5. Ryan Gootee General Contractors, LLC – founded 2004 – Ryan Gootee ‘96
6. Gatorworks Web Design, LLC – founded 2004 – Brian Rodriguez ‘06, Charlie Davis ‘03
7. Construction Management Solutions, LLC – founded 2005 – Kyle G. Flettrich ‘05
8. Doerle Food Services, LLC – founded 1950 – Carolyn Doerle ‘80
9. Petro TV, LLC – founded 2005 – Ethan J. Cheramie ‘95
10. Worley Catastrophe Response – founded 1976 – Michael Worley ‘84

According to LSU Stephenson Entrepreneurship Institute Director of Development Jill Roshto, the LSU 100 celebrates the success of LSU graduates and recognizes the impact of LSU on the local, regional and national economies. LSU 100 is co-hosted by LSU and LSU SEI. The full list of winners is available for viewing at www.lsu100.com/honorees.

Our company met the following requirements for inclusion in the LSU 100:

• Has been in business for five years or more
• Has had verifiable revenues of $100,000 or more for the last calendar year
• A former LSU student owns at least 50 percent of the company or is a CEO, president or managing partner
• Operates in a manner consistent with the mission of LSU and LSU SEI

We are honored to be a part of a list of such distinguished companies. We’d like to thank our friends, family, unbelievable staff, and of course all of our amazing clients!

Wow. It’s already April. Did anybody else see that coming? It kind of snuck up on us.

Well, what a day to have this month’s Stabbed in the Art. Yes, it’s still the first Friday just like every other month. BUT, this particular Friday is April Fool’s Day. We don’t have any surprises in store for you (yet), but feel free to bring your mischievous side with you to the show.

If you’ve never attended Stabbed in the Art, here are the details:

Friday, April 1st (first Friday of every month), 6:00 – 10:00pm
1284 Perkins Rd (corner of Perkins and Terrace next to the Garden District Animal Hospital)

Local Artists (usually between 15-20)
100% of sale goes to artist (no commission)

Are you an artist? Know one? All you have to do is bring your art by the TigerDistrict.com warehouse (address above) between 1:00 - 6:00 pm. It’s first come, first serve on space to hang (space has been going quick, so the earlier the better). Bring your art (and necessary hardware to hang your work) and some wine or beer to give out, and you’re welcome to join us. It’s pretty much that simple. Feel free to email me if you have questions about that. We’re always looking for new artists, so please come!

Some other cool events to keep in mind (details below):

Live Art Battle at the Varsity with a live aerialist

F.A.M.E. The 2nd Annual Little Black Dress Edition @ Varsity Theatre – April 9

Hosted by: Gerald Spohrer, Martine Duhe, Josh Fontenot, Dustin Singletary, Brock Hanna, and Dexter Fontenot

DJ Triz-A provides the soundtrack for the evening. The theme for the evening is little black dresses for the women while men dress nicely to complement. Also that night for your entertainment is a live aerialist performance by Ashley Gieg (girls will literally be swinging from the ceiling) and a live art battle with Alex Harvie, TJ Black, Marc Fresh, and Jade Brady.

18 to enter
Sponsored by vitaminwater and Smirnoff

Photography by Viral Image Productions

www.wildflowerpresents.com

Stabbed’s very own Alex Harvie will be going head-to-head with Christopher Turner in a Live Art Battle.

225 Hot of the Press Party

Roux House
Thursday March 31st
5:30-7:30pm

Mentorship Academy April Fool’s Comedy night

http://bit.ly/LOL_BR

Friday, April 1st @ 339 Florida St. Downtown BR

LOL Comedy Series Featuring BET’s Comic View Comedian Van Chew

Hosted by Tony King is Funny

plus special guest C-Bazz and Friends

Starts at 8pm

$10 Suggested Donation

For more info, call 225-346-5180

-All proceeds to benefit Mentorship Academy of Digital Arts and Science and Technology-

Republished from an email sent by Jared Loftus of Stabbed in the Art.

So I went, and RubyConf was pretty awesome. It was filled with people who love the language and what can be done with it. I really liked that the conference wasn’t just about Rails, it was about Ruby in general, so I got to learn about all sorts of things that are out of the scope of what I normally do with Rails. I learned about MacRuby, a project that aims to let people write apps for the Mac (and hopefully iOS, eventually) in Ruby. This opens the door to a lot more people who want to write Mac code because they don’t have to learn another programming language.

I was highly impressed with Daniel Jackoway, a young Stanford undergrad who had lots to say about his project Ruboto, which is Ruby for Android devices. He was very knowledgeable for someone his age. It was pretty inspiring to listen to his talk.

I also learned a lot about app security and best practices for keeping your apps safe from prying eyes, and how to write more future-proof, manageable code. It’s good to plan ahead when coding so that you don’t hate yourself later on when you come back and try to decipher what you wrote and how it works. I also learned about Ruby 1.9, the latest version of Ruby, what it supports and why it’s much better than the current version of Ruby in most cases.

I even ran into some cool people who write web applications that I use every day, like Chargify.

My favorite part, however was when a Japanese programmer, Shugo Maeda gave a talk. His English wasn’t very good, and Matsumoto had to translate a lot of what he was saying. Eventually he was done with his presentation and asked if there were any questions. A guy from the audience asked a question, but both Matsumoto and Shugo had a difficult time understanding just what he was asking. Eventually, someone got the bright idea to have him come up and write code that demonstrated his question. It was amazing to see how quickly everyone in the room was on the same page when he did that. The question was quickly answered after that. It was really amazing to see a real-life example in which it was clearly shown that we might not all speak the same language, but we all understood the same language, Ruby.

All in all, it was a really fun time, much new knowledge was gained, I got to put faces to usernames that I’d only seen online, and I learned so much about what is being done with Ruby outside of Rails. RubyConf 2010 was awesome.

We’re proud of what Zach is doing and excited to have assisted him with his new website.

The new PolicyPitch.com website designed by Gatorworks

The Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC)

Scheduled for April 8-11 in New Orleans, the SRLC is the most prominent GOP gathering outside of the national convention. Confirmed speakers include Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Tax Gov. Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and more. The SRLC will be carried on Fox and CNN, and Sean Hannity will broadcast live. More than 3,500 people are expected to participate.

We are pleased to have had such a large impact on the national conference.

SRLC Website Screenshot

Here is a quick tour of the main areas of the site:

Once the child creates an account, he/she will be greeted by the elf and see this home page. This is Santa's Island where the child can begin their journey!

If the child clicks on the snowman, he/she will see a naked snowman with a box that contains various articles of clothing and accessories. The child can click and drag the items over to the snowman to create one of their own. If an article of clothing doesn’t look just right, then the child can drag the item over to the trash can to remove it.

We decided to make a cowboy, bowler Snowman!

If the child goes over to Santa’s Mailroom, he/she will see a very active room with letters being sucked down a pipeline and being dropped into a pile in the center of the room. A friendly elf is quickly sorting the letters into “naughty” or “nice” pipelines that go directly to Santa’s office. If the child clicks on the colored letters on the ground, he/she can read a letter written from other children to Santa.

The Elf in Santa's Mailroom quickly sorts letters from children across the world.

Santa’s Toy Factory is my favorite part of the website. This is where children can see the worker elves in action making plenty of toys. There’s a countdown to Christmas on the wall at the top right, and the child has the option to click on a toy of their choice on the conveyor belt. If the child clicks on a toy, a window will pop-up that pulls the actual image of the product from Amazon. Then, the child has the option to add the toy to his/her “wishlist.”

Toys are quickly being assembled by elves in Santa's Toy Factory.

The final component of the site allows the child to email Santa Claus, and the child has the option to include items in the email that they selected from Santa’s Toy Factory.

So, as you can see, this was a rather involved project that required a great deal of custom illustration and then custom animation (and action script) using Adobe Flash. We were very excited to win an ADDY for this project at the 2010 awards show this year.

I invite you to visit the actual site so you can see these screenshots come to life and hear the jolly Christmas music we have playing in the background. If you have children, I encourage you to let them visit the site and have some fun next Christmas!

Do you like this site? Check out some other completed projects by our award-winning team.

With more than 60,000 entries annually, the national ADDY® Awards are the world’s largest and arguably toughest advertising competition. The ADDY® Awards represent the true spirit of creative excellence by recognizing all forms of advertising from media of all types, creative by all sizes and entrants of all levels from around the world. The American Advertising Federation conducts the ADDY® Awards through its 200 member advertising clubs and 15 districts. It is the only creative awards program administered by the advertising industry, for the industry.

This year’s local competition produced 446 entries from Baton Rouge professionals and LSU students. Judging was held January 16, 2010 at Lamar Advertising. Renee Miller, President/Creative Director of The Miller Group in Los Angles, Ca.; Jim Dudley, Broadcast, Copywriter, Creative Director of Dudley Creative in Roanoke, Va.; and Jimmy Ball, Art Director/Designer, Photographer, Interactive of Jimmy Ball Design in Dallas, Texas, served as judges for the competition.

Gatorworks brought home a Silver ADDY award for their client project, Santa’s Online Wishlist. Santa’s Online Wishlist is an interactive website where children can dress a snowman, have fun in Santa’s Toy Factory, view Santa’s Mailroom, and best of all send emails to Santa Claus. The website took approximately 6 months to hand-draw, custom illustrate, and then custom animate using Adobe Flash software. David Link, Creative Director and lead designer/developer on the project, said, “It’s really nice to be recognized for our hard work, especially in a community as talented as AAF.”

At the red carpet ceremony, 41 gold ADDY®s, 50 silver ADDY®s, three Special Judge’s Awards, a Mosaic Award, Best of Show and Best of Category awards were presented. Advertising students were also recognized with 17 gold ADDY®s, 19 silver ADDY®s, a Best of Show and Special Judges’ Awards. ADDY® 2010* also recognized professional excellence on the business side of the advertising industry with its Pinnacle Awards.

Mallery Mele leads the king cake cooking class

After the shop tour it was time to make our homemade king cakes. Now, for those of you who don’t know, Mele Printing bakes thousands of cookies each month for their clients. Many of their clients plan to receive their printing order on a Monday or a Wednesday so they’ll be sure to also receive a nice batch of fresh cookies. Anyway, each of us was given a log of dough with cinnamon rolled in the middle. We worked our dough in the form of a circle and threw it in the oven.

Once we took the cakes out of the oven, we dug out a few holes with our fingers on the bottom of the cakes to create a canal to insert fillings. I put strawberry and cream cheese in mine. Then, we flipped the cakes over and drenched them in hot icing and topped them with sugar. It was a masterpiece!

The event was an innovative way for Mele’s clients to learn more about their company all the while celebrating the rich history and culture of Southern Louisiana. We’re proud that Mele Printing is one of our vendors, and we look forward to fostering a long-term relationship with them!

Brian Rodriguez bakes his first Mardi Gras King Cake

Here is your chance to decide on the elite creative advertising work in Baton Rouge. American Advertising Federation-Baton Rouge has created online voting for four different categories – print, radio, broadcast and interactive – to be awarded at the 2010 ADDY® Awards.

Voting is held online at http://www.aafbr-pca.org/. You can vote once per entry every 24 hours for as many entries as you want in each category. The entrant with the most votes wins! Voting closes at the end of the day on February 14, 2010.

Winner’s will be announced the night of the 2010 ADDY® Awards show on February 20 at the Louisiana State Museum. Tickets are available online at http://www.addy2010.com for $60 and $30 for students. Doors open at 6:30 for a cocktail reception prior to the show.

All entries into 2010 People’s Choice Awards are property of each owner. All entries included were entered properly using the guidelines placed by AAF National and AAF-Baton Rouge.