Why Facebook?

Using social media as an internet marketing strategy is an effective way to increase “word-of mouth,” or friend to friend recommendation, of a brand while also building valuable links to the brand’s website.

Currently, Facebook leads social media sites with over 800 million users. About 75% of Facebook users “like” brands on Facebook, and 30% of Facebook users use it as a platform to share reviews and news of the companies. People are more likely to buy a product or recommend it to a friend after becoming a Facebook fan of the brand.

Facebook has recently made changes that could help small businesses to gain customers and leads through social media interaction on Facebook. Changes applied in September to the Newsfeed have positively impacted the visibility of posts and shared material. The latest newsfeed is a hybrid combining “Top News” with “Recent Stories”.

Implications of Newsfeed Changes

This hybrid Newsfeed has changed the way the users interact with posts. In the month since these updates were made, impressions per posts have gone down, while amount of “likes” and comments have increased. This is because the newsfeed prioritizes pages that are most interacted with; posts that are the most engaging with the most “likes” and comments have gone to the top of the list while less engaging content goes to bottom. Posts are also spending less time on the newsfeed. The more engaging a post, the more people will see it. However, most people will see a post only once in their newsfeed. This means that status updates, even the most engaging and shareable, are spending less time on an individual newsfeed.

Pointers to Increase Visibility

In light of the changes with the Facebook newsfeed, there are two strategies you can use to increase interactions of users with your brand.

First, create engaging and shareable content to promote friend recommendations and word-of-mouth advertising. One way to achieve this is by giving incentives for interactions. Examples of this is creating contests or discounts for “likes” of a product or brand. This has been shown to increase repeated engagements from individual users and increase “fans” of a page.

Second, to compensate for the decrease in total visibility of posts, increase the amount and frequency of posts. This includes increased responses and interaction with users posting on your page.

Finally, reap the rewards of your efforts. Remember, Facebook’s achievement of over 800 million active users really speaks volumes about how people are using the internet and the vital role social media sites are playing. Social media marketing presents a golden opportunity to grow brand recognition and loyalty in a way never before possible. Take advantage of this opportunity!

Most analysts agree that 2010 was the year that social media finally became a force in the business world. Now in 2011, it is fast becoming the “must do” on the list of marketing strategies in order for a company to avoid getting left behind in the online world. And, when you consider that most people no longer use the yellow pages to find a business, getting left behind in the online world can just mean your business is left behind period.

Social Media Marketing Basics

Put in simple terms, social media marketing is the act of creating a page for your brand on social media networking sites to promote your website, services, and products. Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn allow individuals to create personal or business pages to connect with friends or customers online. Through building a presence on social media sites, your business is positioned in the light of “friend” rather than just another “ad” that is quickly ignored.

Social media marketing is, above all, about the soft sell. This is extremely important to understand when building a social media campaign. Blatant advertising mixed with a constant stream of links straight back to your site can be viewed as spam in a social media environment and cause you to lose followers. Successful social media marketing is more the art of creating interest and conversation which then leads potential clients into completing a desired action.

A successful social media campaign must strike the right balance between conversation and advertising.

Create Interest & Trust In Your Brand

Reports show that people are much more likely to trust a friend’s recommendation when choosing products or services. This holds true online as well. An effective social media campaign results in followers linking back to your website and sharing your site with their “friends” through their social media accounts. The links gained through social media also provide an added bonus in how search engines value and rank your website. The links gained through social media are akin to votes in favor of your website and send a strong signal to search engines that your website is trusted.

One of the best ways to drum up sales is to get people to recommend your services or products to their their social network. Effective social media campaigns create the online version of “word-of-mouth” advertising while providing a convenient central hub to spark interest in products, services, and other topics related to your business.

Social Media & Viral Marketing

The hot words in advertising today are “gone viral.” If an advertisement or promotion has “gone viral,” it means that people are talking about it all around the web, all around the world. Social media facilitates this “viral” process because people can share links to your company’s videos, articles, pictures, or promotions with their social network. If you create something that strikes a chord in people, they will likely forward it on to their friends, who forward it on to their friends, and so on.

While the concept of social media marketing is very easy to grasp, actually launching and managing a successful social media campaign can prove to be a difficult and time consuming task. Effective social media marketing requires strategic planning, the right tools, the right voice and an understanding of the nature of the market.

Clickbrand is full service internet marketing agency providing search engine optimization, pay-per-click, and social media campaigns tailored to the individual needs of each business. Contact Clickbrand today for a FREE quote tailored to fit your social media marketing needs.

The majority of people have made one of the “big three” search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and Bing) their main portal to search for products and services on the Web. And, people who are not using one of the “big three” search engines, are still likely carrying out their searches online via another search engine.

The search engines use algorithms to determine the value of a website which determines where the site will show in search results. For this reason, any seasoned veteran of online marketing will tell you the first step in creating a successful website is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This consists of a variety of techniques applied to your website to help ensure the site is indexed by search engines and ranks well in organic search results.

SEO Technique #1: Keyword Optimization

An important SEO technique involves making sure you use “the right” keywords in your website. Keywords are defined as the terms people enter into the search box on search engines to find products or services.

The best keywords to use in content on a website are:

a) Keywords relating to products or services offered on the website.

b) Keywords that have a favorable search volume to competition ratio.

The search to competition ratio can be determined through a comprehensive keyword analysis. Once the optimal keywords have been identified, they are then implemented into URLs, meta tags, titles, content, and links throughout the website. Keep in mind that it is important to use keywords appropriately. Over-use of keywords, or “keyword stuffing”, is frowned upon and can negatively impact search rankings.

SEO Technique #2: Meta tags

Meta tags include the meta title, meta keywords, meta description, and alt tags. Meta tags need to be filled out correctly and placed in the source code for each page of your website. Search engines “read” your site differently from human beings. Properly filled out meta tags tell search engines what each page is about and provides the title and description that normally appears in the organic search results for an individual page.

If these tags are not filled out properly, you are taking a gamble that the search engines will “know” what each page is about, which search terms are most relevant, and will provide a good description of your site’s page in the organic search results. Leaving these tags blank often means fewer pages are properly indexed with poor descriptions showing in search results.

SEO Technique #3: Quality Links

Search engine optimization is, in some ways, a popularity contest. Search engines place a fair amount of weight on high quality links back to your website. High quality links are links coming from trusted sites as determined by search engines. It is important to implement a good link building strategy for your website as these links are similar to votes for your site to the search engines. The more votes your site has from other trusted sites, the more trusted your site will be. This affects how your site ranks in search engine results.

Gain Online Success

The above three techniques are really just the basics, there are many SEO tools to help you gain an edge in your online marketing efforts. The Web is an ever-growing and ever-changing landscape. Unless you know how to get your site on the coveted first page, someone else will take that spot right out from under you. Implementing strategic SEO techniques is just one of many important steps to achieving online success.

Clickbrand is full service internet marketing agency providing search engine optimization, pay per click, and social media services tailored to the individual needs of each business. Contact Clickbrand today for a free custom quote to fit your SEO needs.

Browse through some websites currently out there and you might notice that photography dominates as the main artwork on many website designs. As a web designer, it would be great to hire a professional photographer and get exactly what is wanted and needed for a web design. In reality however, this scenario is not very likely. Fortunately, there are some great alternatives and resources to turn to.

Here is a quick summary of the different factors that influence what, where, and how to choose photography for a web design project.

One of the first things to think about is accessibility. Can a photoshoot be arranged or will the art be found through stock images or provided by the client? With non-local clients, it is much more difficult to arrange photo shoots. Scheduling and time constraints also weigh heavily on the decision of dealing with photographers or not.

For those reasons, the majority of projects will use stock photography and art. It is easily and readily available to anyone. There are tons of photography resources online – iStockphoto, Veer, and Corbis, just to name a few. You perform a search and once you find something you like, the photo could be yours with a click of a download.

As the saying goes, “You get what you paid for!” The budget limitation of a project can greatly influence where and what type of photography you can use.

Custom photography and working with professional photographers can be quite expensive. There are photography fees, equipment fees… etc. that factors into a custom photoshoot. Since this is most likely the most expensive method, it is often a huge limitation to go through this route as a resource for images and art.

While stock images rate high in accessibility, the allotted budget of a project can narrow down the choices greatly. Take the resources I’ve mentioned above for example. Between Veer and iStockphoto, Veer would be a great resource to look into if the client has a bigger budget, as images typically price around the hundreds range. iStockphoto on the other hand, is a popular resource for projects with a tighter budget. Images can start as low as $1, and typically stays within the $1-$20 range.

Another route to mention is client provided imagery. This happens most often with redesign projects and the client already has photos from a previous design or photo shoot. Clients prefer this as it saves them from spending extra budget on photo art. This could work in your favor, as it also saves you the time and effort from searching for new images and allows more time for design, but could also work against you, because of the limited flexibility in getting the images to fit with the rest of the design.

When thinking about “photo quality,” the first to come to mind would be: pixilation, graininess, sharp vs. blurry… etc. In this case though, photo quality is all about the aesthetic quality that a person would perceive when they see the photo. A high-quality photo will feel unique and has a certain emotion or personality attached to it. A low-quality photo is the opposite; it is generic, cheesy and can come off forced. The quality of photos can vary greatly between one resource to the next. As most would agree, images found on Veer have a much nicer quality, while iStockphoto may appear as more “stock” or generic.

Custom/Professional Photographers: Low accessibility, high budget, high quality, high flexibility for creativity.

Stock Images (High-Quality): High accessibility, med-high budget, high quality, flexibility for creativity varies.

Stock Images (Low-Quality): High accessibility, low budget, low-med quality, flexibility for creativity varies.

Regardless of where the photos come from, it is most important to think about how you will integrate the images with the rest of the designs. Whether it is thinking about a simple crop and place or doing some heavy photoshop work to piece together something really creative, it is up to you as a designer to transform the photography and turn it into art.

Most web designers start out creating a photoshop document with the size intended to fit universally with all screen dimensions. However, print designers, literally design on a whole other scale. Photoshop is a program that shares compatibility useful for both the Web and Print documents. The two are unique forms of design that cross paths every now and then, but definitely have their distinguished members of the family.  Below I am going to illustrate the main attributes of both and point out their differences.

Audience

The experience of your audience becomes important when creating a project for both Web and Print design. In print design, the attention of your audience is important, such as getting the audience to sit on a page of a magazine long enough to get the main concept and message across. The main limitation of this particular area is quantity. It is expensive to put an Ad in a magazine, therefore your company only has the budget for a one page ad. In this ad, you have to design it using textures, shapes and imagery to sell your product and/or services.

In web design, you really have no limitations as far as quantity. Your website can consist of as much interactivity and links as you would like (within reason). Your main challenge is to get the user to stay on your website. What keeps them interested? What drives them away? For example, as far as a standard sky scraper ad on a website page, you have the ability to have that ad link to another site and so on and so forth.

Layout

The experience of your audience becomes important when creating a project for both Web and Print design. In Print Design, the attention of your audience is important, such as getting the audience to sit on a page of a magazine long enough to get the main concept and message across. The main limitation of this particular area is quantity. It is expensive to put an Ad in a magazine, therefore your company only has the budget for a one page ad. In this ad, you have to design it using textures, shapes and imagery to sell your product and/or services.

As far as layout in Web Design, you are working in pixels instead of inches. More than likely, your design is multiple pages, designing a website for instance. In this circumstance, you need to keep consistency throughout. Another challenge in web design, is to design your site to look the best on all monitors and monitor resolutions. This is where color partakes in the difference between print and web.

Color

It’s important to know the difference between colors in Web and Print design. You are viewing colors either on paper or on a monitor. You have a choice between RGB (Red Green Blue) and CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). In Print Design, You need to use CMYK for print design in order for the colors to match better with your chosen printer. These are colors you choose from a palette and identify with a code that you provide to your printer.

In Web Design, you need to use RGB, which gives you the colors that will show up best on a monitor. Consider the difference from monitor to monitor (brightness vs. contrast). Colors are represented by “hexadecimal values”, which are in a 6-digit format. Followed by Color, you get quality, and that is what I’m going to hit on next.

Quality

There is a difference between printer quality and web quality. For instance, with Print Design, you want the best given quality for print. Pixels are highly important in this case. For a high quality print, you are going to want to set your image at 300 dpi (digital pixels per inch). This will make your illustration, photograph and/or graphic look at it’s tip top best.

For Web Design, putting documents at 300 dpi is completely unnecessary. If you begin to design a website in such a large formatted document, you better have the patience for it to load on the web! No websites are designed (or should be designed) in 300 dpi. In fact, the resolution used to design anything for the web is 72dpi, whether it be as little as a tiny button, to as big as a half page web ad. There you have it–some insight on the difference between web and print.

Now, here is a fun video I found in vimeo — pretty sweet!

Digital Art Triptych: Web Design from Tyler Joynt on Vimeo.

Take into consideration your own email habits. Do you sit there and go through and read each email thoroughly? Or do you, like many others, skim through emails quickly to determine what is worthy of your attention? With such a short span of time to capture and drive your main points to your audience, your designs must be concise and to the point.

With all these restrictions and disadvantages, it would seem that your email would be very limited and lacking. The trick to utilizing email design to its full potential is to finding that right balance between functionality and aesthetics. Here are some quick helpful tips to get around those pesky limitations:

1) Keep design simple.

Do not overload your design with heavy images, tags, and code! It will only bog it down or increase the chances of errors.

2)   Use inline styles.

Most email clients do not process CSS styles in headers.

3)   Make a Plain text version.

Allow users the option of viewing it in plain text, since not everyone allows HTML emails to come through their mailbox.

4)   Assume images will be blocked.

Never design an email with all images, unless you want to risk people opening a big blank email. You want users immediate access to your email, with or without images showing. This means having real text for headers, links, content that will load immediately.

5)   Utilize your Alt Tags.

Another added solution to the image-blocking problem is to utilize Alt tags. Alt tags give users a better idea what imagery is included in the email, especially when images are blocked by default.

6)   Go back to Tables.

As old-fashioned as it is, tables are very powerful when designing for email. It keeps your email presentable and organized, as most email clients do not process Floating styles. It is also smart to always define the height and width for each cell to ensure that the layout remains intact.

7)   Keep emails no wider than 600 pixels.

With varying monitor sizes from user to user, it is a good idea to keep email designs to a max fixed width. It can be pretty annoying to have a horizontal scroll bar just from opening an email!

8)   Testing, 1,2, 3.

After you’ve designed and coded your email, test it. Several times. What looks good in one email client can look completely different in another, so it’s best to cover as much ground as you can before sending and realizing little errors after.

Emails have grown to be quite a popular form of communication. As the common goal for the majority of businesses is to keep their audience coming back, emails are a great and useful way to not only keep people informed, but to also continue to strengthen your brand and identity. With websites focusing more heavily on functionality and converting traffic, emails pick up where websites leave off. It provides a much more personable method of reaching out and helping develop a stronger relationship between a company and its clients over a period of time.

Have you ever went a day without electricity? I bet not. Try it. Should be interesting. Well, iPhone dependence is becoming more and more common every day. There are so many applications out there that appear to be so helpful, it’s hard to think what you would do without it.

The iPhone can now be used as your very own GPS. GPS systems started out at $900 a piece when they first came out. Now they are going down in price. Who needs a GPS, when you can download an app. to get around on your iPhone for as low as $0.99! The iPhone is now being looked at as the All-In-One, helpful tool. Heck you can even use the thing as a level to put up a picture on the wall!  Yeah, you have the internet to get you to Map Quest from your phone but that takes five-thousand extra steps, so why not get something customized for your phone and your patience.

Again, another new piece of technology, which started out being an auxiliary, is now a necessity for people who are highly adaptive to convenience.

CHECK IT OUT:

5 Navigational iPhone Apps for your curiosity and convenience

iWant is essentially the combination of 3 location based apps:

Restaurant reviews (Yelp, UrbanSpoon), Movie showtimes

(Flixter, Fandango) and Yellow Pages.

G-Park is an Easy-to-use interface for taking a photo of your

parking spot or entering additional notes (if desired), such as

the section or the floor/level you parked on.

Zhiing is a location based messaging utility for sending,

receiving, replying to and forwarding messages with

maps relative to where you’re at now.

Where To? makes it incredibly easy to locate the closest

steakhouse, bank branch, billiard club or anything else

you may be looking for, at the drop of a hat!

With one touch, ETA shows accurate drive-times

from wherever you are to wherever you want to go.

One more click and it tells you the optimal route to take.

So what should be covered in mood boards? The common items to include are: color schemes, patterns, visual research (photograph, illustrations, graphics elements), and typography. Mood boards can help communicate visually what cannot be described in words and will help in creating the initial mock-up designs quicker. Most importantly, mood boards allow for client input early on, making it easier to establish create a mutual understanding of what path the project should follow.

Here’s a sample mood board created for better understanding:

As this was for vacation homes in Park City Utah, the overall theme and feel reflects the beauty and elegance of the scenery found there. The imagery and color scheme used helps emphasize the luxuriousness of the homes and the ability to ‘escape’ from everyday life.

While mood boards are great tool, it’s understandable that some may prefer to do without. Whether its personal preference or lack of time and budget, mood boards might not always be needed. Regardless, mood boards can still be very useful and beneficial in narrowing down and strengthening the focus of a project.

]]> http://www.clickbrand.com/blog/web-design/prepping-for-a-project-utilizing-moodboards/feed/ 0 http://www.clickbrand.com/blog/web-design/tns-type-nerds-society-where-being-a-nerd-is-accepted-period/ http://www.clickbrand.com/blog/web-design/tns-type-nerds-society-where-being-a-nerd-is-accepted-period/#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:36:38 +0000 emily http://clickbrand.com/blog/?p=149 Is it real? Could it be? No, really?! Come on, you know you want to know more about typography! Typography is a very enticing and intriguing subject! Trust me you will be hooked after reading and viewing this entry!

I bet you never met someone so in love with typography? Well, I will try and make this short and sweet and show you lots of examples but bare with me !

Not sure what “typography” means? Well, it’s basically a fancier word for  visually communicating through the design of fonts. Check out  http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/basic/g/typography.htm
First off, from a credited, experienced designer, there is no great design without a great font pairing. If you are one to be attached to Comic Sans then we have a disagreement. I mean come on, that’s SO nineties! It is also a design NO-NO! Another typeface that is over used (especially in most spas these days) is Papyrus. Helvetica is a GOOD example of over-used type as well, but in an exceptional way. Helvetica is beautiful and contemporary, with it’s round curves and delicate appearance–that is why people feel comfortable with it and that is why society accepts it for who it really is, deep down inside.

There is a lot of terminology in typography. One word in particular that people don’t take advantage enough is, tracking. Tracking is the spacing between the letters in a single word. If you’re not sure where to find open tracking or what it is, take a closer look:

Here is a good example of how open tracking is used (this is a logo identity we did for Green LLP, an attorney in Corona Del Mar):

Pay attention to this feature, as it will give you more options and can make your design look completely different. You’d be surprised!

Here are some great examples of typography in advertising. My personal favorite by non-other than, Paula Scher:

Great advertisements:

Typography doesn't have to be screaming to be effective either!

New in Typography: Tungsten (a newly released typeface) CHECK IT OUT!

Well, now that you’ve got a good lesson on typographic design, I think it’s okay to say you are officially a TNS Member! Congratulations, now take the font quiz! Come on, you – can – do – it!

http://ilovetypography.com/fontgame/