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As we continue to grow our company, we have found ourselves working out of our respective houses, meeting in cafes, and collaborating over the phone. In order to increase not only our productivity, but also our collaboration, we have moved our design team into the Urban Hive in Sacramento. As you can see they are very excited.
Are you hitting a creative road block? Here are a few techniques to get the ideas going.
1.Write it all down
It's important when you come up short of ideas on a particular project write down everything that comes to your mind without censoring your thoughts. Keep the ideas flowing, silly or serious it can all lead to a breakthrough to your design solution.
2. Know when to step away
At times we get so wrapped up in a project that we forget to step away from it. Take a walk, get some fresh air, don't try to force creativity. Take a break from it and come back with a new perspective.
3. Don't forget to Doodle
A quick drawing is a great way to get out raw ideas in the early design process. Also consider using different mediums when you are sketching such a paint brush, color media, cutting and pasting as well as computer sketching.
4. Find inspiration outside the box
As a designer we are always looking for inspiration. Sometimes we have the tendency to tailor our searches only to design sources. Surf over to National Geographic and check out some nature photography. Take a trip to an art gallery and bring a sketch pad to catch any ideas that may spring up.
So the next time you are short of ideas, try some of these simple techniques to help you along your creative journey.
ENJOY!
The the number two website in the world is Facebook with one billion user worldwide. Naturally, with so much website traffic, the ads on Facebook can be a worthwhile investment for any business local or Fortune 500. One of the best ways to set up a Facebook ad campaign is to build a campaign that builds upon itself so that not only are you building audience, but you are also building awareness of your posts so more people see them and potentially click and visit your site.
Start with the basics
The first and most important thing in building a Facebook campaign is to understand your core audience and your own business. Are you selling online and shipping in the U.S.? Are you a bricks and mortar store only selling product in a certain zip code or area? What are you selling and in what industry? Who are your core customers? Women? Young? Single? etc. Once you understand what you are selling and to whom you can start setting up a Facebook campaign.
Step 1 - Build Audience
The first thing to do is build an audience. It doesn't matter if you have the world's greatest post if you don't have someone to see it. So the start of any Facebook campaign is to build your core audience of people who are interested in what you have to say. Facebook makes this pretty easy to do.
Your campaign will take about ten minutes to get approved. In the mean time you can start building your awareness of your messaging.
Step 2 - Build Awareness
Once you have a audience building campaign set up, it's also time to set up a campaign that is able to show your posts to your audience. While your posts are able to get organic views within the Facebook News Feed, it can be advantageous to have your posts viewed along the left hand side of Facebook as well. This will not only show your posts to your audience but their friends as well. Again, Facebook makes this pretty easy to do.
Using this step means that you should be posting to Facebook once per day. This can be done using the Facebook scheduling feature, which allows you to set a number of posts six months into the future.
You can let your Facebook ad campaign run on auto pilot, checking it every week and making some adjustments. Using this method will not only help you build your audience but also build awareness of your brand and create a large and engaged audience.
Not everybody is an expert in SEO and social media. If they were, we wouldn’t exist! This however, can lead some into trusting their website and social media with the wrong people. As with any other industry, digital marketing has its share of scam artists.
You might be wondering what this would entail in relation to SEO, or social media. We recently came across a company that needed our help optimizing their site, and managing their social media. While scrolling through their Twitter posts over the past few years we noticed something startling; a good amount of this company’s tweets were duplicated every 3-4 weeks. This is a big no-no in social media. I mean think about it, would you want to follow a company that constantly posts the same things every few weeks? I wouldn’t either.
With that in mind, we took a look at this company’s blog. The problems we found here were even more startling. It seems as though whoever was creating their blog content in the past was using duplicate content on a regular basis. This individual took the same template, and merely changed the name of the keyword, and town that the service was offered in. We also found that at some points the blog was littered with clusters of keywords, not-so-cleverly disguised as a list of the services that this company offers. This is a practice known as keyword stuffing, and let’s just say that Google isn’t very fond of this. In fact, keyword stuffing is one of the many things that Google’s Panda updates look for.
What’s the moral of the story here? Even if you don’t know jack about SEO or social media, don’t trust any agency. Do some background research first. Look at their clients’ websites, and speak to their references. This way you can avoid making your digital marketing problems even worse. So unless you want to feel the wrath of Google’s Panda- make sure you pick the right digital marketing firm.
Recording and posting YouTube videos is sometimes put in the same category as blogging. No one has the time or can’t come up with the subject matter. However, like blogging YouTube videos can be a great source of traffic to you site via one of the largest searched traffic sites in the word: YouTube
There is some debate on whether YouTube ranks behind Google as the number two place people search the web for information, but there is no debate that the amount of searches on YouTube is massive. On YouTube you can find old movie clips, concerts from bands, original programming and many free self help videos ranging from learning how to cook to how to swing a golf club.
Like a blog, choosing subject matter should stay within your brand. We typically post videos on some tips and tricks we use every day to monitor social media or do SEO along with presentations we make so people can come back and review them again. Similar to a blog, we use social media to spread the word, but we also embed the videos within our own site so people can view them without leaving the website.
As Google owns YouTube, it’s not surprising that having video results can rocket your brand to the front page of a number of Google search results.
Our most popular blog continues to be how can a business like a another business on Facebook. We continue to get questions as well. In order to help demonstrate how a business can like another business on Facebook we have recorded a quick how to video and posted it to YouTube.
Some of us LOVE InDesign and therefor use it as much as possible. But we’ve all been in that moment where we’re updating a file (ahem…perhaps our portfolio we haven’t touched since graduating) and we get this lovely notification.
Unfortunately, it’s likely you have NO clue where these files may be. But moving forward in your career, we’ve found two great ways to prevent this from happening.
The first option is embedding the files. The photos in most INDD files are low res copies that “link” to the original copy—INDD simply remembers where those files are stored. So if you move files, rename them, or delete them, the link is broken. By imbedding files, they become part of the actual document.
To do this, in the Links Menu (Window>Links) simply select the photo you’d like to embed. In the dropdown menu select “Embed Link” and repeat for all the links necessary.
Embedding links may make things very simple, but it also greatly increases the size of the file and thus, decreases the speed at which you can open, edit, and share the file. So we’ve come up with a very simple solution.
When creating an INDD document, create the file, but also create a folder system. You can set up your folders however you like, but be sure to have a LINKS folder.
When building your INDD file, create a copy of all the photos/files you’ve inserted into the document and paste them into the links file. When sending the files, its likely you don’t need to send the previous 4 revisions of the document, so you shouldn't send the whole document folder. Simply save an additional copy of the document into the Links folder (rename it to projectname_linked). This way, when you re-open a document you haven’t used in a year or send a file to a colleague for editing, ALL the document files are in the same place. Should you move folders around, accidentally clear your desktop, or delete something, you have a copy of the file, and a copy of all the content together. Simply open up the file (the links are probably missing) and relink to the files within the LINKS folder you’ve created.
Problem, wasted time, and massive headache averted.
I have been designing billboards for the past couple of days so I’m taking this opportunity to write about my process when I’m designing them and other advertisements. As a designer you want to catch the viewer's eye, whether it be a poster, ads or billboards. You want to grab your audience’s attention. So remember, less is more. Uncluttered billboards usually achieve greater success. Ideally, your billboard design should consist of 3 main components: a captivating image, a unique slogan and your name, logo and contact info. Here are some tips to help you along in your design process.
1. Do your research
It’s important to know the product or company your designing for. Know the target audience and what kind of message they want the audience to get. Knowing your audience will give you the idea on what kind of design to make.
2. Amount of text: keep it short and sweet
Keep it simple and catchy. You do not want to cram a whole paragraph for those who will only have a few seconds to see it. Keep it to no more than 10 words, include the company name, slogan, info about the product and contact information. The fewer the words, the greater the chance they’ll understand, retain and recall your message.
3. Clean and simple font
Make sure your font is easy to read. Try to stay away from fancy font. It can come out unclear and illegible. Size is important too. Large fonts allow reading at greater distances, giving the viewer more time to process your message.
4. Choosing the right image
Try to find an image that will catch the viewer’s eye and is easily recognizable as well that embodies your company’s mission. Your graphics and message should be thought provoking.
5. Color
Use colors that can get the viewers attention. It’s important to make the text readable. Try to stick with contrasting color. Bold, highly contrasting colors help get you noticed. Like yellow and black. Avoid similar colors like blue and green. Also try using the company’s colors.
6. The Message
Don’t lose focus, remember your message. It is easy to get wrapped up in design and forget the main point. Remember to send the right message when designing. Use a short message that will be remembered by your viewers. Some even use humor in their works, which is most often effective.
I hope this helps!
Here are some examples of well designed billboards:
Examples of bad design:
By now, most people with any knowledge of SEO know that the number of links to a website can greatly increase its page rank. Google treats links almost like an encyclopedia treats citations. That is why it’s not only important that you have a lot of links, but also that those links are coming from as many different domains as possible.
A great tool for checking your link diversity is Open Site Explorer by SEO Moz. Open Site Explorer will give you some important link data about your website, including the number of total links, and the total number of linking root domains. In order to find out if you’re using your links effectively, divide the number of total links, by the linking root domains. This will give you your “Link Diversity Ratio”. Link diversity ratio is an equation that we use in our SEO evaluations. In order to receive a passing grade from us you would want to stay below a ratio of 25.0.
You should also look into what those domains are, as more authoritative domains make for better links. For this, you can use Majestic SEO. Majestic SEO will provide you with some of the more authoritative domains that are linking to your site.
A large part analyzing your links is the anchor text. Anchor text is just the text that is displayed for one of your links. So for our website the most used anchor text is “digital firefly marketing”. Majestic SEO breaks your most used anchor texts down into a pie graph, so you can easily tell what your anchor texts are. One of Google’s numerous penalties takes anchor text into account. According to Google, any website with excessive use of an anchor text is over optimizing. We will usually try to stay under 60% for any given anchor text.
There are plenty of other ways to find more information about your links. Feel free to let us know what tools you use in the comments section below.
One of the latest fads going around design circles is the use of the infograph. An infograph is simply a visual design that tells a story using statistics. But other than design appeal, why create an Infograph?
Sharing is Caring
Maybe it’s because they are one page, or they are pretty colors or tell a story very quickly, but a lot of people like infographs. Because people like them they share them on Facebook, Pin them to their boards on Pinterest and Tweet them out. Pinterest is one of the best examples of why infographs can really help website traffic and SEO. The infograph we put up on Reputation Management a week ago already has 46 repins.
Links Baby Links
Another reason infographs are great is links. While they are easy to share via social media, infograph sites like http://visual.ly can show a large audience your infograph. The Reputation Management infograph that was put up last week garned 3 inbound links back to our site and has been viewed over 1,000 times. Because infographs are pictures, it’s very easy for them to be embedded into other sites which gets you links back to your site. Links back to your site create better SEO
Show your knowledge
Infographs let you show what you are an expert on. We did a infograph on Reputation Management because it’s one of our services. But there are many subjects like cooking bread or how to hit a putt or fashion that could be subject for infographs and provide a quick bit of thought leadership to your brand.
