With all this talk about social media, it’s important to note that there are other marketing tools out there that are easy to use, setup, and get your business going with. One of the most basic parts to a good company strategy to search engine optimization involves online maps. Specifically, I’m talking about the new and improved Google Places.

It’s always a good thing to put yourself on a map. If you searched your business on Google Maps, would you be easily found? We are. If you aren’t able to find your company location, it’s probably a good idea to start the process with Google Places. It’ll let you put in basic information about your company (what you do, where you are, your hours, etc.). But it’ll also let you do some pretty cool stuff, including tags (free for the first 30 days), status updates, coupons and more. And now it’ll even let you respond to reviews, making the process of customer feedback and satisfaction that much easier.

So next time your company is dead focused on social media, be sure that you cover Google Places too. It’s free, easy to setup, and takes just a few minutes to get it going.

It’s been a busy summer around the Mindutopia offices, and last week that continued to hold true. We launched two websites — a brand new site for Cleo, a new furniture company in West Michigan, and then a redesign for Slingshot Bikes.

The Slingshot site is especially of interest, because it uses brand new technologies and gives users a look at what riding a Slingshot bike would be like. It’s the ultimate biking website experience.

Cleo, on the other hand, features a simple, minimalistic design that focuses on strong imagery of products.

Check them out! We’ve already got them in our portfolio, but you can access the sites live at cleocab.com and slingshotbikes.com.

We’re proud to announce that our latest web project is now live! Phase 1 of Aquinas College’s website, featuring the homepage and athletics portion of the site, is up and running beautifully. It features an expanded layout, with more call-to-action areas and additional areas for featured content. Additionally, the athletics portion has been completely overhauled, and actually works and functions like an athletics site should.

We’d love for you to check out the work, at http://www.aquinas.edu. Hopefully, we made “all the difference in the world.” We’ll have a link on our portfolio soon.

I stumbled across a blog post today that re-imagined NASA’s branding. All of us know the current logo — the big blue circle with stars that inevitably reflects the atmosphere of outer space as we know it.

The problem? It’s outdated, hasn’t been updated in God knows how long, and it’s looking completely out of touch. BaseNow reflects on what the logo could (and should) be — simple, not impeding, and modern. It should be adaptable for any form of media rather easily and still look top-notch.

Additionally, the slogan “Taking Us There” is just plain cool. It fits the logo perfectly — it’s simple and rememberable.

I give you…the (hopefully sometime soon) new NASA logo.

OK, so not really. But happy Fourth of July! We’ve marked the occasion with nothing else than a new website launch; this time for non-profit group Miles for Special Smiles out of Grand Rapids. They had a huge run yesterday in partnership with the Bostwick Lake Triathlon (another one of our wonderful clients), and the website was completed just in time to spread the word about it at the event.

Check it out for yourself, on our work page or live at http://milesforspecialsmiles.com.

We’ve several launches scheduled for this month, so this is just the beginning! Look out for our new website design for Fastank USA this week, and then a few other bigger projects later in the month. And as always, stay with our blog…we’ll try to be posting more often this month and giving you the latest tips and tricks to enhance your marketing efforts!