When you hear the phrase “Green Marketing”, what image pops in your mind? Some of you will think of traditional and web marketing approaches to eco-friendly industries. Others will think of strategically eco-friendly methods to marketing which can be applied to any business.

My business aims to be the former. But I get there by also being the latter. Let’s be intellectually honest at the outset: even if we save trees from being chopped because we read newspapers and magazines on Kindles, iPads, and Nooks, the energy and resources necessary to power your servers and create your computers didn’t materialize from thin air. You pay a price for living in the information age, whether you realize it or not.

Take a baby step: hosting wisely

Did you know that the average server produces the same emissions as a 15 mpg SUV? I didn’t… until this year. Now, I’m not here to tell you which hosting company to use. All I’ll tell you is that the hosting company I use, Host Gator, has a negative carbon footprint. All of HostGator shared and reseller servers are 130% wind powered! That’s right. HostGator is giving more energy back than it’s using. That’s the equivalent of protecting 551 acres of forest for a year. How awesome is that?

Not every company can go green overnight. I realize that. What started out as a perfectly acceptable business mindset 20 years ago has been turned on its ear, and business owners are scrambling to determine the best ways to make their company’s green. Not only is it the responsible thing to do. It’s going to become the norm at some point. Early adopters become brilliant trendsetters and the stragglers are seen as uncaring or indifferent.

Do you make sound business decisions that also give back to our planet? If not, start small by switching your hosting to a greener provider today.

The Client: Lifetime Family Wellness Center provides chiropractic, massage, nutritional therapy, cold laser treatments, and overall health consulting. Dr. JB Haggerton has taken to blogging like a fly to a horses’ ass. In other words, he was made for blogging. Check out their blog on-site and get some amazing tips on real food, fitness, and baby related products.

What we did: We began with a little rebranding. I provided the custom logo for the company that communicates bright and cheerful energy that can be felt the moment you step inside the office. Then I installed WordPress on their new hosting account I helped them select. I imported all the content from the old site that was staying, and then customized The Station theme by Woothemes to give their site a unique look and feel. I provided custom banner images for the home page and main navigation pages so that every page gives off the energy each person experiences when they receive treatment.

What was wrong: Wellspring was in need of some serious rebranding. As you can see above, the previous design did not make good use of space. Various sizes and styles of boxes were employed to call attention to different activities. The color scheme was dated. And the secondary navigation wasn’t visible until you clicked and arrived on a primary nav link page.

Then there’s the logo. The church avatar actually wasn’t bad at all. If you take the ripple part of the wave above and put it in a box and turn the whole thing grey scale, you have an interesting avatar or logo. But on the website itself, it just doesn’t work with the long streaming blue and the simple font. Some people have mistaken the image to be a banner or sheet rippling in the wind rather than water.

What we did: We started with the logo. I met with the client and discussed at length the identity of the church, the meaning behind the name, and their existing preferences. They were open to interpretation, so I presented them with multiple comps. After several rounds of revisions, we landed on this look. The green and blue box is split by a body of water, perhaps a river, running through. We stayed away from images of springs simply because they all look too decorative and fountain-y, to coin a new word.

Next, I gave them the flexibility of keeping the site continually fresh for less by focusing above the fold on event-based banners. These banners link to landing pages providing additional information. As events come and go, Wellspring will be able to keep the site looking updated and fresh by just ordering new banners.

The site was built on WordPress, as expected. WordPress provides the user friendly dashboard which the client can use to make changes or updates without spending extra budget on contractors.

The site features a blog, sermon archive, calendar of Jack’s speaking schedule, and list of upcoming events. Coming soon is the church bookstore, where Wellspring will be able to sell books and teaching series online for the first time.

My wife gave birth to our second child six weeks ago. Her blog has been growing in popularity all year. We knew that when the baby came, she’d have to get some rest. Blogging is just too much to ask of a mother immediately after giving birth. The Lord gave me a strategy for turning her pregnancy leave into a traffic boost.

Since I’ve built more than 20 websites on WordPress over the past few years, we opened her blog up to guest bloggers and I offered my services for free to the guest blogger that draws the most unique commentors.

Read the whole story here.

For those of you who have waited and hoped for a trouble-free internet connection at your local Starbucks, the wait is over. July 1st, 2010 marks a new holiday for us all. Free the Wifi Day is upon us.

Join us in celebrating this momentus occasion. Bring your laptop, netbook, or iPad and work from Starbucks all day on Friday, July 2nd. We’ll be at our local Starbucks in NRH, kickin’ it “free and full of purpose.”

Happy Free Wifi Day!