Posts filed under “Voltage News”

Voltage recently appeared in Men's Health magazine offering a few SEM tips on keeping a good appearance online.

Imagine you've met an amazing woman. You enthusiastically exchange info with her, but when you call a few days later, she doesn't pick up or call you back. What happened? She probably did what every modern woman does: She googled you. Thanks to debauched Flickr photos, a boneheaded blog remark, or racy posts on your Facebook wall, she's concluded that you're a cad.

Don't think women won't try to find the good, the bad, and the ugly about you online. A 2006 Pew Research Center survey found that more than half of adult Internet users employ search engines to check up on one another. "I think these numbers would be significantly higher today, especially with romantic relationships," says Harvard computer-science professor Harry Lewis, Ph.D., coauthor of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the Digital Explosion. Use these technological and psychological moves to look great online, and you'll have a much better chance of scoring offline.

Take out the trash
Your first step is to erase as much unsavory content as you can from sites around the Web that you may appear on -- crude blog entries from the past, embarrassing spring-break photos. If it's content owned by you or a friend, either pull it down or hide it from searches, says Lewis. It's actually pretty simple to do that, if you're reasonably Web savvy. Just create a file called "robots.txt" in your site's root directory, and then place the following two lines of code into it: "User-agent: *" and "Disallow: /". Most search engines will now skip right over your site.

If the junk sits on other people's sites, try to find their Web masters at whois.com and send each a polite e-mail request to remove the material, advises Internet privacy expert Kevin B. McDonald of IT security firm Alvaka Networks. It helps if there's a legal issue, such as copyright or slander. "In my nearly 15 years of experience, I've found that the odds of taking content back are a little less than 25 percent," says McDonald, who adds that men should sign up for Google and Yahoo alerts with their names as keywords. This will help track new garbage that may surface.

Secure your good name
The second step in your online image rehab is to control the pages women see when they search for you. If you aren't already using social or business networking sites, sign up for Facebook and LinkedIn. Both are popular and always appear high in search results, says McDonald. At the same time, visit rapleaf.com, a site that helps users track their online presence, to sort out where your name pops up (in accounts and registrations, for example). Then drop Friendster, which makes you look 45, and MySpace, which makes you look 13.

If you need to "de-emphasize" unsavory search results, sign up for additional accounts under your targeted search term (probably your name) at trusted sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and Blogger, says Wade Meredith, a search-engine marketing account manager at Kansas City's Voltage Creative. The more new stuff you post and the more quality links you have heading to and away from your sites, the higher up those pages will appear in searches. "This content will be hoovered up by the Google bots and should at least clean your first page or two of results," Meredith explains. As a final security measure, buy your name at godaddy.com for about $10 a year, if only to keep some fool from nabbing it and posting photos of his beer bong collection.

Sharpen your profile
Your buddies may not give a crap about Facebook, but she very likely will, so populate your page with strong, positive content. "Talk about things you're passionate about," suggests Emmi Sorokin, who runs It's a Man's World, a Boston image-consulting firm. "Talk about your friends, your family, and your favorite activities, to present yourself as someone who is generally happy and contributes to the people around him."

Any posted photos should support that message -- so fewer party shots and bungee cords, more friends, family, kids, and dogs. Note: If someone else attaches your name to a dicey photo, click "remove tag" under the shot, and it'll disappear from the "Photos of You" section of your page.

Facebook's default is to broadcast just about every minor change you make to your profile without your really being aware of it. Fix this on your main page by mousing over "Settings" in the upper-right corner. Click on "Privacy Settings," then click on "News Feed and Wall." From this page, you can uncheck boxes so your friends aren't notified about every hot new friend or flirty wall post.

Keep it together
Even if you take all these steps and the two of you reach couplehood, there's still the potential for problems. First, a blog that mentions both of you could raise her eyebrows. Not only is there the chance she'll misinterpret a remark, but it also creates a forum where others can comment on your relationship in ways that she may also misinterpret. So focus on fun things you do together -- weekend trips, restaurants you've tried -- without going into detail. Basically, "you can blog about your relationship if you write about how great your girl is," says psychologist Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D., author of The Unofficial Guide to Dating Again.

Second, old images may pop up, and attractive women you know will "friend" you. Head off suspicion with forthright honesty. "Make it clear that those goofy photos are part of your past -- that was then, this is now," says clinical psychiatrist Mark Goulston, M.D., author of The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship. When it comes to new friends, just explain how you know them. "That way she doesn't have to go through that nauseating 'Who are these people?' feeling," says relationship expert Debra Burrell, C.S.W. If she can't deal, well, try not to lose any sleep over it. "You want a woman who can accept who you are," says Tessina.

Or at least a meticulously scrubbed-up and filtered version of who you are.

Take a look at the original article, complete with requesite hottie-at-laptop (it is Men's health after all) over at MensHealth.com.

Our bosses are nice, so we'll be off the rest of the week. (There's stuff to eat, family to see, football to watch, naps to take, and plenty to be thankful for.)

Happy Thanksgiving from Voltage and we'll be back on Monday!

[Photo by by Vicki's Nature]

A new video we've been working on for The PKD Foundation.

The Voltage crew took part in the annual Walk for PKD, held by the PKD Foundation, on September 20, 2008 at Theis Park in Kansas City.

I got frisky and built a new theme for our blog this weekend. It's now much more "a part of" when it comes to VoltageCreative.com. It also loads faster, is more readable/scannable and incorporates a few new SEO tricks I've learned in the last few weeks.

Here's the oldie for reference:

And, uh, you're already looking at the new one, so here's a peel-y sticker...

Voltage Creative is excited to announce the addition of our latest team member, Melissa!

Melissa comes to us from the great state of Texas – Dallas to be exact – where she previously graced the hallways of mundayMorning Creative Group. Melissa brings to the table expertise in print and branding design as well as her passion for stellar creative.

Here are some notable details on Melissa:

• Lees' Summit, MO native
• Digs traveling abroad, Sunday brunch and classic blues.
• Does NOT dig traffic or forced karaoke.

Welcome aboard Melissa!



The mark Voltage created for dry ice supplier Allied Refrigeration will appear in the 2008 Design Annual from Print Magazine. Woohoo!

Here's a little background: Allied Refrigeration, an established supplier of dry ice products wished to create a brand for their consumer product. While the brand was new, the product has been available to consumers for decades. The team at Allied wanted to convey the history of the product and catch consumers eyes.

Solution: Focusing on retro typefaces and classic illustrations styles, our team developed a mark that speaks to product use, the longevity of Allied Refrigeration and product quality.

Voltage Founder Ryan Lorei directed the project. Nice job, Ryan!

This is the first post of many on the Voltage Blog. We're an interactive design house located in the Historic River Market in Kansas City.

Otherwise, stick around. We'll be talking modern design & marketing and we'll touch on some of the classics, as well. If you're a blogger or a web developer, we want to entertain you and maybe even solve a problem or two along the way.

Enjoy,
Wade