You may remember learning about Ivan Pavlov who documented the conditioned response theory in the early 1900s. Pavlov gave his dogs a treat while ringing a bell. Eventually Pavlov’s dogs salivated at the sound of the bell even when no treat was in sight.*

Simply Put

The ringing of the bell cued the dogs to retrieve the stored memory of enjoying their treats and to begin salivating. For the experiment to work the cue needed to be simple and not easily confused with other commands.

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Place a check in the box. Circle the best answer. Simple forms and shapes — lines, squares, circles, triangles, rectangles — are the easiest to remember and to retrieve later. You can trigger an emotional response on cue with a simply designed logo. For a logo to become the cue to retrieve a stored memory and provoke an emotion response, use simple shapes that are

not easily confused with other cues. In other words, every time you tell your story to provoke an emotional response, show your audience a simple shape: your logo.

Tell Me the Story Again!

Once you define and create your story or tag line along with your simply designed trigger to provoke an emotional response, your work is truly just beginning. Pavlov’s dogs would have never salivated on cue if Pavlov had not rang that bell and fed those dogs treats regularly and repeatedly.

McDonald’s®, hp®, and Nabisco® had to saturate the market with their stories while flashing their logos in your face before they became the nationally recognized companies they are today. Hardly a day goes by without hearing, seeing, and feeling their presence in our lives. Tell your story every time you meet someone through your web sites, business cards, brochures, and business forms . . . and show them your brand new logo!

Contact Site Schemes today to create your logo, web site, business cards, brochures, and business forms.

So many times I have heard that the best form of advertising is word of mouth and networking. This is also true in the world of web site marketing. Networking on the web comes in several different forms.

The February issue of the Virtual Assistant Update focused on search engines: submitting web sites, optimizing pages, and placement tracking.

That article describes how search engines use different formulas for ranking sites based upon keywords. Another way to boost your rankings is to boost your link popularity.

Your goal is to acquire links from content-rich sites to your web site. You can do this in a number of ways.

• Exchange links with web sites with similar or compatible services
• Join a web ring
• Buy e-zine advertising
• Join professional associations that provide links to their members
• Contribute to chat rooms and groups that discuss topics related to your web site

Site Schemes provides web hosting packages and virtual assistant services to help you network through search engines and can help you find web resources to increase your link popularity.