Two cat friends were out prowling the neighborhood together when they stumbled upon a big, delicious-looking piece of cake and started fighting over it. The first cat said, “It is my cake because I saw it first.” The second cat said, “No, it is my cake because I picked it up first.”

A monkey came along and overheard the cats fighting over the cake. The monkey said, “I can help by dividing the cake into two pieces so you can share it equally.” The cats agreed and handed the cake over to the monkey.

The monkey split the cake into two parts, but quickly shook his head and said, “Oh no! One piece is bigger.” So, he took a bite of the bigger one. Then he said, “Oh no! Now that piece is bigger…” and he continued taking bites in an attempt to make them equal until the cake was gone, leaving both cats disappointed.

Here’s the way I see it: When you quarrel amongst friends, someone else is most likely to gain from it.

By keeping an eye on your competition’s marketing efforts, you can learn more about them from a customer’s point of view and identify their strengths and weaknesses. You can also see how their marketing materials, promotions, engagement, and prices compare.

Here are a few ways to gain insight on your competition:

• Explore competitor websites and take notes on ideas for improving your website.


• Attend competitor webinars. Be sure to stick around until the Q&A session at the end to hear questions from the audience.


• Sign up for competitor newsletters and follow them on social media. This is an easy way to learn more about their new products and services, promotions, and events they are attending.


• Consider Hootsuite Streams to track keywords, competitors, and hashtags across every social network on an easy-to-use dashboard.


• Visit competitor booths and pick up their literature. See how your booth design, marketing materials, products, and customer engagement strategies compare.


• Inquire about a product or request a quote so you can become a lead. You will receive targeted emails and phone calls, allowing you to see how they handle the customer journey.


• Subscribe to competitor YouTube channels to get alerts for new videos.


• Set up free Google Alerts to track competitor products and announcements that appear on Google.


• Learn about areas that need improvement on your website, as well as your competitor’s website by visiting Website Grader.


• Consider a paid service such as Mention, which enables you to monitor the web and listen to your audience talk about your business/industry, as well as your competition.

If you decide your marketing materials could use a facelift, we would love to help! Visit our website or give us a call today.

Exciting events deserve special announcement cards to honor the occasion. Tri-fold announcements and invitations are a high-impact way to showcase details for an upcoming event, whether personal or professional.

When printed front and back, tri-folds offer six panels of display area for photos, event details, achievements, maps, inspirational quotes, scripture, and other relevant information. The tri-fold design provides organized sections and makes it easy to display a memorable announcement on a table or shelf.

Tri-fold announcements can be designed to fit USPS mailing guidelines as a convenient self-mailing, all-in-one card. Another creative option is adding a perforated tearaway panel, which can be great for an RSVP card or even a coupon.

You can also customize your tri-fold announcements with embossing, foil stamping, custom die-cuts, and more. If you’d like more ideas or samples of announcement cards, our print professionals are here to help! We look forward to hearing from you.

Website image optimization is essential for many reasons. Optimized images improve your website page speed, enhance user experience, and supplement your other SEO efforts. Here are a few examples of WordPress plugins that not only optimize images as you upload them but also optimize images you’ve already uploaded:

• Optimole automatically reduces image size without visually altering them. Once Optimole is installed, it will do its job without you needing to do extra work.


• Imagify has a bulk optimization feature and allows users to choose between three different levels of compression: normal, aggressive, and ultra. It has a restore feature, so if you want to change the quality, you can restore the image(s) and re-compress at a more suitable level.


• ShortPixel will compress 100 images per month and will compress multiple types of files, including PNG, JPG, GIF, WebP, and PDF files.


• Smush scans and strips unneeded data from the images, compresses them, and even resizes them if necessary.

While these are helpful imager optimization tools, you shouldn’t solely rely on the plugins themselves. The best method is to resize images before uploading to your website, and use one of the following plugins to optimize them further. If you ever have questions about image size requirements for print, our team is here to help! Remember, other printers may be nearby, but nobody comes close.