WORKING WITH THE WPS:

Artistech has had the pleasure of working with the (US) Women’s Professional Soccer League since early 2011 when we assisted the organization in the design of a new logo for their “See Extraordinary Heroes” campaign.  That campaign was an effort to highlight the phenomenally talented players returning to the league after showing off thier skills in the 2011 Women’s World Cup.

(Above: See Extraordinary Heroes Logo Concepts.)

CRAFTING A NEW WEB EXPERIENCE:

Our next project with the WPS was to skillfully tackle the organization’s website.  The goal was to increase game attendance and cultivate deeper relationships with loyal and new fans.  In approaching this project, Artistech also wanted to challenge flagrant design fouls found on numerous professional sporting websites.  The primary offense is displaying a dizzying amount of information for viewers to click through.

The work Artistech has completed thus far encourages users to explore and digest the wide variety of engaging content the site has to offer, all while keeping the information and navigation clear and consistent.  This project is not live, so what you’ll find below is a small sampling of what we hope you’ll see in the very near future:

(Above: Custom Twitter widget.)

One of the first design decisions we made was to layer or hide unnecessary content, and to give interface elements a healthy amount of padding/spacing between objects.  We always want website visitors to effortlessly see and click on content which interests them.  Interface elements (like the custom-designed Twitter widget above) received design treatments which include soft rounded corners and subtly textured highlights.

TOO MANY CHOICES:

A redesign had to take the League’s diverse audience into consideration.  While looking at web analytics we discovered users often took distinct paths when visiting.  For example, many people wanted to quickly review game scores, while others were more curious about their favorite players.

We redesigned the primary navigation with fewer and larger buttons.  We also moved less popular content into what we call Mega Drop-Downs.  We did this for two reasons.  Firstly, it keeps content accessible while still allowing users to quickly dive deeper into the site.  It also helps to funnel viewers through preferred conversion points; these are areas within the site where people preform an action like buying a ticket or purchasing a team jersey.

(Above: Current navigation design and drop-down.)

(Above: Revised navigation design with mega drop-down.)

(Above: Team page navigation themed with team colors.)

UNIQUE DATA VISUALIZATION:

We designed innovative ways to interact with the schedules, videos and more for both old and new fans.  For example, statistics were previously line items in a simple HTML table.  Our revised concept is to visually display that same information using more interesting data visualization techniques.  In this case we’re using dynamically-generated infographics (shown below).  This is more that just a visual treat; there is a purpose behind it.  For example, showing the number of autographs signed suggests that you can get unprecedented access to these world-class players.  The EST # of Player Tattoos block gives a hint to the variety of interesting characters you might see on the field.

(Above: Dynamic infographics colorfully display league statistics.)

Keep your eyes on www.womensprosoccer.com.  We hope you’ll be able to see all the other exciting interface improvements we crafted.

-Brad Marshall is the Creative Director at Artistech Newmedia Inc.  He co-founded the company in 2003.  He can be reached at brad@artistechnewmedia.com.

Which would you prefer, a steak served in a back alley in aluminum wrap, or a steak served in a well-appointed restaurant with fine tableware?

Presentation matters, and in the last article I wrote about why your brand needs a web designer. This month we’ll look at the other side of the story. What would you think if the well-appointed restaurant brought you fish sticks on a silver platter? That’s what happens when your expertly-designed website doesn’t have quality content inside it.

Content is the core of your messaging, the protein if you will. It’s the way you talk about who you are as a company, what you have to offer, and why you’re better than the alternatives. And it has been my experience that it’s easily neglected in the process of building a website.

It’s too bad when that happens, since I would argue that poor content means you’re being less persuasive and leaving sales on the table. If you had one minute to sell someone on why your offerings are worthwhile, what would you say and how would you say it? What would you add if you had five minutes? What gets you passionate and animated about your company?

If those key points aren’t being communicated persuasively on your website, I think it’s time to ask yourself what it is you want your website to do for you. If you want it to convince people to spend money on your products and services, you need to make sure the message within is convincing. To carry on with my restaurant analogy, do you want to serve steak or fish sticks to your customers? Remember, your competitors are a Google search away.

Some of you will feel that you don’t have the time or aptitude for creating compelling content. That’s perfectly alright; you just need to make sure that someone else does. An agency or copywriter that understands your brand can charbroil the steak while you’re busy managing the restaurant.

-Sam Turri is an Internet Marketing Strategist with Artistech Newmedia Inc. He can be reached at sam@artistechnewmedia.com.

The image used in this post features a portion of a photo © Superbass / CC-BY-SA-3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons). The fishsticks image used in this post is licensed under a CC-BY-SA-3.0 license.

Got your own opinion about website content? Do you think the written word is a thing of the past? Did this blog article make you hungry? Let us know in the comments below!

There’s a local eatery that I know and like. They do what they do well. But as it turns out, their website is a mismatch. It doesn’t represent the quality and care I experience in-person. This is a job for a web designer.

Web design is the creation, manipulation and placement of visual data for the web. Often times the designer is responsible for UX (User Experience), or how people interact with the website. Essentially, web design is the core of the look and feel of a website.

It is entirely possible to launch and maintain a website without getting a designer involved. There are endless website templates available, many of them for free (some of them look good). There are endless options for getting a free website online without any help. But your brand’s online presence should be guided by the eye of a professional; most of us (this writer included) don’t have the knowledge and experience to do design. A good web designer can help you with all aspects of visual presentation and ensuring a quality user experience.

You may ask how credible my opinion is given that I work for a digital agency that offers website design and development. But ask yourself, do you ever visit a website and find yourself repelled by its visual presentation? If your answer is yes, and you care about your brand, then you know you need a web designer. Your website is too valuable a resource to cut corners with.

What can you do if you can’t afford an original website design? Here’s a cheat: hire a designer to help you choose and customize a pre-made template. It’s a tall order to find a generic template on the web, put your name on it, and have it embody your brand. An experienced designer can separate the template wheat from the chaff and then make alterations to suit your needs. It won’t be as good as an original web design, but you’ll still benefit from the designer’s eye at a lower cost.

Sam Turri is Artistech’s Internet Marketing Strategist. He can be reached at sam@artistechnewmedia.com.

Which elements do (and don’t) work for you in a brand’s website? Let us know in the comments below.

The website of old was often a brochure, a static, simple thing that helped people interested in your niche find you and learn about your products and services. We viewed them on giant white boxes called “desktop computers”. Today, most people in our culture are carrying around smartphones, tablets, and laptops (all on the rise, in use and popularity). These people are ready to interact with you – if you’re speaking their (device’s) language.

What is Responsive Design?

Every class of device offers a different browsing experience. How can we provide website visitors with a polished experience regardless of the device they’re using? One solution is to essentially offer two websites; one for “mobile” visitors, and another for traditional computer users. But that just takes us from “one size fits all” to “one size fits a few”.

Responsive/Adaptive Design (broadly called Responsive Design for short), is an alternative. It’s a set of techniques for designing and developing websites that respond to a wide variety of browser resolutions, made possible by modern CSS3 and HTML5 technologies.

Thismanslife offers an interactive demonstration of Responsive Design working its magic; the width of your browser window will change the content within. And to give you an idea of how varied mobile device displays are, see phone-size.com.

At Artistech we’ve worked on multiple Responsive Design websites such as Center Of Gravity and include() wine. We want to share our design and development process for these types of projects.

Adaptive vs. Responsive Layouts

We have two basic design choices when building a responsive website.

Adaptive Layouts

An Adaptive layout is essentially a series of pre-defined layouts for fixed browser widths. Pixel width thresholds are used to determine when Layout A transitions to Layout B (and so on). Within the width threshold of each layout (i.e. between 800 and 1000 pixels wide), the page layout does not change.

See our client Center of Gravity’s website for an example of this technique.

Responsive Layouts

A Responsive (or Liquid) layout responds to each discrete browser width within a minimum and maximum boundary width.

See our include() wine website for an example of this technique. Note that text and images continuously change as you adjust the browser width.

Responsive layouts can be combined with Adaptive layouts as well, as is the case on the include() wine site. So there are multiple pre-defined layouts, plus continuous adjustment of page elements between within the width threshold of each pre-defined layout.

In practice, this combo of Adaptive and Responsive techniques is what we’d call a “Responsive” site.

Which kind do I choose?

It really comes down to time and money. Responsive layouts are resolution independent, so if Apple releases the iPad Mini with a new display width, your Responsive layout will be ready to handle it. For that reason they’re superior to the simpler Adaptive technique. Of course, more complex means more time and/or money during the design, development and testing phases. Adaptive layouts are a nice compromise between budget constraints and user experience.

Design & Development Guidelines

Client Communication

CSS3 and HTML5 are the cutting edge development frameworks for developers offering websites that look and perform great. But we must communicate the challenges inherent in these newer technologies to clients ahead of time. They should expect differences in the way the final product works on older browsers, and the final look may vary from the design mockups.

It’s very important that the designer and developer collaborate when building a responsive prototype. They’ll need to compromise with each other while building a desirable solution for the client.

Your Project Workflow Will Change

With a Responsive layout that responds to hundreds of browser widths, design and development are blended into one. No longer is the design completed and simply passed along to the developer. Now the designer and developer take turns refining the concept based on the how the site is resizing on different devices. This is less of an issue when you’re developing an Adaptive website, which is similar to developing multiple non-responsive websites.

Be Frugal

Mobile-friendly websites need to work well with a wide range of processing power and bandwidth, so it’s important to embrace CSS3/HTML5 technologies in the development process.

Limit the amount of images being used by moving a large portion of the styling away from images and into CSS. You’ll cut down on server requests and bandwidth. Mobile browsers/tablets make this possible with solid support for CSS3.

It’s important to shift away from using fixed widths when developing a Responsive layout. Responsive layouts utilize percentage and em measurements.

Phase One: Wireframes and Prototyping

You’ll be working with multiple states (i.e. 1200+ width, 1024+ width, tablet, mobile devices) for an Adaptive design. Prototyping starts with graphical wireframes of every state that the website will offer, followed by a working version of the Responsive design. This allows the developer, designer and client to get a rough idea of how the site behaves in various states. It’s important to pinpoint possible trouble spots in the design before writing all of the styling.

The developer begins with the smallest resolution and scales upward from there. Layout and design changes are relatively painless at this stage.

Phase Two: Full Design Treatment

Mobile devices are the priority for a responsive design because it’s easier to scale up in resolution rather than down. There’s no room for extras; finding room for core design objectives will be challenging enough.

Content stacks vertically as the site steps down in layout width. It’s important to work out the order of this stacking so that key content isn’t moved to the bottom of the page.

On Responsive layouts we use trial and error to determine which elements are fixed and which elements scale. For example, on our client Prestige Collision’s site, the primary navigation elements are Adaptive, but much of the remaining elements are Responsive.

After establishing the structure and build of the site at the mobile size we will now begin to include new CSS styles for larger screens. As a general guideline we’ll include 320px, 480px, 768px, 1000px and 1200px+. Individual project needs will shape that list.

Now that we have additional CSS styles for different widths, new graphic and layout styles are loaded for each Adaptive state. And because we’re letting CSS do a lot of the heavy lifting, we can save bandwidth and processing power by only loading full styling on larger screens.

Images are an issue in responsive design

Images are the biggest hurdle that developers struggle with in Responsive/Adaptive development. We can load device-specific CSS but not images, so devices will load all of the images on a page regardless of browser width. There’s no easy way to load browser-width-specific images. This means that if our page features a 100kb image, everything from the iPhone to your home computer has to load that image. Two solutions to this bandwidth inefficiency are below.

• Scott Jehl at Filament Group presents a technique that makes use of Apache’s .htaccess file to switch between low and high-res images.
• Matt Wilcox at Adaptive Images came up with an alternative to “Filament’s solution”. It makes use of .htaccess, but also utilizes an external PHP file and JavaScript to generate and serve scaled images for you.

These aren’t a permanent solution to the problem, which will require a broader look at the way we handle images in HTML. Mat Marquis wrote a great article on the challenges we currently face with responsive images, arguing, “I believe that the ultimate solution shouldn’t hinge on scripting or CSS—and certainly nothing like UA detection, cookies, custom scripting on the front end, or any server-side shenanigans. Our aim is to represent and serve content appropriately, and for that reason I believe that this should be solved in markup.”

Is Responsive design the future?

It’s crucial for your website to be usable on a variety of devices. Enterprise-level and content-centric sites (i.e. theglobeandmail.com) will still benefit from separate solutions for mobile and traditional devices. For small/medium sites, Responsive web development is an ideal solution that won’t empty out your bank account. Your audience wants to engage you, and Responsive technologies help make that happen for the foreseeable future.

Further Reading

Ready for even more Responsive goodness? Check this stuff out:

• The responsive design process by Matt Wilcox is another take on doing responsive.
• Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte is a great resource for building responsive sites.
• mediaqueri.es showcases responsive sites.
• csstricks.com is a great resource for CSS and CSS3 techniques and technologies.

We’d like to give a shout out to front-end web development specialist @MattWilcox for giving feedback on a draft version of this article. Thanks Matt!

Our header image was inspired by Andy Clarke’s Fashionably flexible responsive web design slide deck. Andy tweets as @malarkey.

Downloads

• pdf: How much does a web designer make?
• gif: How much does a web designer make?

References

• The Creative Group
• Adventure Quest
• Evony
• Lego
• Khan Academy
• First Lutheran Christian School
• SEOmoz (the page we originally referenced our data from has been redirected)

We type in our search: “used car”. The results we see vary depending on where and who we are. There will be a number of ads displayed, whether we’re actively aware of it or not. On a Google SERP, you’re probably used to seeing ads displayed at the top and to the right of the search results. They look a lot like regular search results. Marketers are paying for these ad placements and the ability to send clicks to a landing page of their choosing. (See google.com/adwords for more information.) In SERPs, the ads you see are related to what you typed as a search (known as “keywords”).

Here’s where it gets interesting. It’s one thing to pay for clicks to your website; it’s another thing to create and measure an SEM campaign with a specific goal in mind. Let’s say you’re placing an ad for a particular search keyword. By designing a landing page specific to your customer’s needs, and then specifying an action those customers can take to support your marketing objectives, you can measure how effective your ad dollars are.

The goal of this hypothetical SEM campaign is to build a list of leads in an effort to sell more of our products.  Since we know what kind of ads our potential customers clicked on, we can take them to a page that cuts right to the chase: “Here’s an offer relevant to what you’re looking for, please provide your contact info so we can follow up with you”. As an example, here’s a lead capture page we helped develop for our client BigSteelBox. The page invites the user to fill out a form to get more information about BigSteelBox’s moving and storage products and services.

Now we’re in business. Between our landing page’s analytics software and the data from our SEM network, we can determine the search keywords and ads that generate leads, and how much it costs to get a lead. If specific ads or keywords aren’t producing business, we can discontinue or refine them.

Now we know exactly when marketing dollars are an expense or an investment. And that, fellow businesspeople, is some comforting (and profitable) knowledge to have.

Sam Turri is Artistech’s Internet Strategist.

What are your experiences with SEM? Which SEM services and techniques work best for you? Hit the comments and let us know!

With the evolution of the terrain park, Big White wanted to have a tool that skiers and boarders would find useful and engaging with in depth information on park builds, information about the TELUS Park team, local rider profiles, events and much more. From the rails to the ski cross course, every feature will be displayed with unique community-driven content including the latest and greatest local images and videos.

Big White’s roots in snowboarding go back nearly thirty years ago with local pioneer snowboarders hiking the slopes. Since then, Big White has developed some of the industry’s top pro’s including the founder of Stepchild Snowboards, Sean Johnson. The Big White terrain park saw its beginnings in 1988 with a few small features and a hand-shaped half pipe. In 2000, Big White fully committed to the terrain park program installing an 1800-foot long double chair and a dirt work structures. Today, Big White finds itself with a $10,000 investment in rails and boxes, summer grooming and dirt work in the terrain park, as well as host to pumping a local’s scene passionate about their sport.

Skier and riders are invited to enter the TELUS Park contest online at www.bigwhite.com/telus-park/event-calendar/telus-park-contests. The winner of the Big White TELUS Park contest will be drawn on the official opening day of the season for the park.

About Big White Ski Resort

Located in the picturesque Okanagan Valley and a short 55-minute drive from Kelowna International Airport, the award-winning Big White Ski Resort is British Columbia’s second largest resort and boasts the most ski-in, ski-out accommodation in Canada. Blessed with sunny weather, dry powder and a mild average temperature, Big White is best known as a family friendly resort where kids and adults can all have fun. For more information, visit www.bigwhite.com or call 1.800.663.2772 for reservations and bookings. Follow us on Twitter @bigwhite.

For further information contact:

Brad Parsons
Sticky Consulting
brad@stickyconsulting.ca

Flynn Seddon
Director of Terrain Parks & Outdoor Events
Big White Ski Resort
fseddon@bigwhite.com

Giuseppe Simpatico
Co-Owner, Digital Account Director
Artistech Newmedia
sep@artistechnewmedia.com

Sara Andersen

Accounting Generalist

TSN – As an avid sports fan I check TSN daily, sometimes several times a day. It provides up to date information on my favourite players and teams and all of my favourite sports (which is pretty much all sports…except curling, I despise curling!).

TSN is easy to navigate and includes photos, scores, schedules, and highlights of various sports events. I also enjoy reading Chris Schultz (or “Schultzy” as his colleagues refer to him). His approach and descriptions of plays are always entertaining and informative.

I also have the TSN App on my iPhone so that I can keep up with my team’s schedules, scores, and news.

Yup, I’m an avid sports fan!

Julie Anderson

Creative Director, Account Manager

Etsy – Because I love handmade and unique things. They have a great UE and I’m always finding design inspiration there. Word of caution: you can easily become lost for many hours surfing through the millions of products available. With that being said, if you can’t find a product anywhere else you’re certain to find it on Etsy.

Pattern Tap – A designer’s handbag of great design elements for websites. If I’m ever stuck for direction on a particular element I just take a browse through the collections and I find my problem is solved rather quickly. You can also create your own sets to keep track of that growing list of neat sites we all stumble upon on a daily basis.

Jeff Harris

Interactive Developer

Smashing Magazine  – A lot of great articles on anything web design and development related.

Ultimate Guitar – I love playing the guitar. This is my number one resource for learning songs and tabs. Lots of good articles as well. Couldn’t live without it!

Jon Lemon

Project & Maintenance Manager

Google Calendar – This keeps us all on track, including our designers, developers, project managers and account directors. In order to meet our project objectives and not exceed the budget or timeline, Google Calendar is the way to go!

Firebug – For the developer in me, this is probably one of the greatest tools in my toolbox. Using the analogy of a mechanic with a vehicle, Firebug gives a web designer the ability to ‘look under the hood’ of a website and see how it’s running. Definitely could not live without it!

Kitzie Stern’s Kirtan Podcast – Working in a digital agency would not be the same without music. Kitzie Stern’s Kirtan Podcast is what’s playing in my ear-buds while working on the computer. What’s kirtan, you might ask? Kirtan is a very simple and powerful way to meditate. It’s effortless and joyful; the music does the work for you as you flow with the melody and rhythm. This podcast takes the stress out of the day.

Timothy Lynch

Business Development, Digital Account Director

 One of the great things that I enjoy about the Internet is the accessibility to information. Reading multiple news sites online quickly replaced the one newspaper I used to peruse over my morning coffee.

Mashable is one site that I find myself frequently visiting. It follows the continually-evolving space of social media and the digital culture.

Brad Marshall

Co-Owner, Digital Account Director

I’m a self-confessed newbie travel-hacker. I don’t even travel that often, yet I’m always looking for airfare and hotel bargains. When the opportunity does arise I want to make sure I’m getting the best deal possible.

To travel-hack effectively you can’t rely on just one site.  My inbox is often filled with travel notifications from the likes of TripAdvisor, KAYAK, Expedia, SPG, Lonely Planet, Alaska Air, WestJet, FareCompare, HomeAway, Momondo, SkyScanner, AirFareWatchDog, Jetsetter, AirBnB, Living Social Escapes, Groupon Getaways, and more. Of these, in terms of beauty and usability, I’d have pick Jetsetter as my favourite.

Nicolas Morin

Technical Director, Mobile Developer

Any developer will reach the point of replacing the dated textbook with finding programming resources online (love copy/paste).  Sites I can’t program without are:

stackoverflow – For all my iPhone development.

Google Maps v3 API - Seems like all I’m going these days are Google Maps mashups.

php and javascript – ‘Cause I’m too lazy to remember basic, trivial string and date functions.

But SoundCloud tuned in to Sasha makes programming rad!

Giuseppe Simpatico

Co-Owner, Digital Account Director

YouTube is becoming one of my most used web resources. Sometimes I use it for watching funny clips here and there, but I mainly use it as my personal collection of music and movies; I’ve created playlists featuring both. With YouTube Movies in full swing you can enjoy a classic Jean-Claude Van Damme movie without a subscription!

Vivian Turgeon

Account Director

I used to spend hours at Chapters browsing the various sections. Now I go to Great Group Reads at Booklist Online and browse right from home. Being an avid reader and belonging to a book club, I’m always on the lookout for a great escape. From there I go to Indigo to check more reviews. Then, yes, I may walk down to the library to borrow something or drop by Mosaic Books on Bernard to purchase it (if they have stock). I like supporting local.

My next favourite spot is YouTube for its music videos.  Having a “Smart TV” allows me to view on the big screen while I study, work or relax. Thank you, YouTube!

Sam Turri

Internet Strategist, Project Manager

Rotten Tomatoes entertains and informs me. The informing part involves boiling the opinions of movie critics down to a single data point, a percentage that tells you how much a film is liked or disliked. The entertaining part comes from the excerpts of specific film reviews; I love seeing the ways folks like Peter Travers or Roger Ebert can tear a crappy film apart (I’m thinking of you, Transformers: Dark of the Moon).

Okay, so that’s the stuff we love. What about you? What entertains and inspires you? Which tools make your life measurably better? Enlighten us in the comments below!

Look, we’re real happy for you (and we’re going to let you finish), but we need you to know three things:

1. Digital marketing is never done. Actually, make that just marketing (thanks Scott!).
2. For better or for worse, the brand/corporate web site has legitimate online competition for eyeballs in the form of social media.
3. Just like your website, you need a strategy for your social media activities (thanks Jay!).

Social media is not for trendsetters anymore. It’s simply a part of how we communicate, business included. And while there’s an endless supply of social media services fighting for your ad impressions and clicks, Facebook is certainly king.

“Yeah,” you say. “I made a Facebook business Page. It took me 5 minutes.” Okay, it’s true that a Facebook Page can be made with little effort or skill. But so can websites. What brand wants a second (or third)-rate website? You put all sorts of resources into your kick ass website. We encourage you to translate some of that over to your Facebook page and make it stand out. It won’t magically make you a social media star, but it will help.

So what does that look like? We’ll use some of Artistech’s work as examples. Here are three brands that have added value to their Facebook Pages.

include() Wine

include() is a hobby for Artistech’s executives Brad Marshall and Giuseppe Simpatico…as long as you’re willing to permit the word “hobby” to mean “creating large amounts of additional work outside of work.” There’s a lot of Okanagan wine out there, but the include() brand is built to stand out. Part of how that’s communicated is in graphic design.

Every time somebody says, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” half a bazillion people do exactly that. Nothing was stopping Brad and Sep from creating a tab that communicated this product info in regular text on a white background. But then the content would look just like a bunch of other stuff on Facebook. Information with appealing packaging is more likely to be noticed.

Of course, you don’t just want customers to hear something; you want them to act as a result of hearing it. include() isn’t formally open for business yet, but there’s no need to wait to build a list of potential customers.

It’s a small victory to simply have a prospective customer checking out your Facebook page. You can take your relationship a step further by giving them a fast and easy way to signal interest in what you have to offer. Once you have an email address or phone number and a bit of supporting information, you can focus marketing efforts on people who want to hear what you have to say.

Best Buy Canada

We’ve worked with Best Buy Canada on some of their Facebook promotional campaigns, including Facebook apps like their Back to School contest. Note the visual relationship between their contest website and Facebook Page. An element as simple as color helps to create brand consistency between media channels, and in the case of Facebook it helps you stand out from the pack.

With their Facebook Instant Win game, Best Buy Canada incentivized targeted customers to enter their online contest. It’s a clear example of using a Facebook tab to support a broader objective.

The Takeaways

• Consumer brands need to take Facebook seriously as a marketing and communications channel.
• Ask your graphic designer to translate your website’s look over to your company’s Facebook page. Standardize the visuals that promote your brands across marketing channels.
• Jay Baer says your social media activity should have an objective. He’s right of course. Just like your website, your Facebook Page should have an objective. Do you want to increase your reach via word of mouth? Do you want to generate leads for your sales team? Know what you want to achieve and have a plan to make it happen.

What do you think is important in a quality Facebook presence? What brands have you connected with on Facebook? What are the downsides to using Facebook as a marketing channel? Hit the comments and give us the scoop!

Sam Turri is Artistech’s Internet Strategist.