by Kristina Parker | Jan 20, 2014 | Design, Latest
If you’ve been on the internet long enough, for something a lot more sensible than cat videos and pointless Facebook updates (say for instance, for making some real money) then you’ve also- on multiple occasions- come to that moment where you’ve had to get a website for yourself. Now, getting a website that actually works wonders for your business AND manages to survive the regular spate of Google updates is no cakewalk. You need a pro to do the best for your website. Luckily, it’s easy for you to find a good web developer, but how do you get the one you can trust?
One simple test is by making him discuss things that no other web developer would want to, like these four things…
You can’t go ahead without a plan
If you’re going for anything major, you need a plan. Many business owners think of their website as a whole different entity, as opposed to considering it a major aspect of the marketing strategy. Therefore, it doesn’t really make sense for you to just put random or no content up for users to see. Web design actually varies based on its purpose. So, obviously marketing plan counts. After all, it is the one thing that gives you solid direction. A good web developer understands this, and expects you to let him in on the plan too. This will help him come up with a more relevant design, which is perfectly in line with your goals and objectives.Talk to him about your target audience and the kind of growth you expect from the website. Don’t shy away from deep discussions about your plans with the developer.
Bad content
While the whole ‘Content is King’ thing may be over-hyped, there is a reason it has become the hype. Unique, relevant and original content is what lends your site the credibility that keeps people coming back to it. If the content is bad, no masterstroke of web design is going to save it. And if your web designer/developer isn’t telling you that already, you’re pretty much being taken for a ride. Agreed that the web developer isn’t really a big expert on the subject firsthand, however, he’s seen enough of web content to be able to distinguish the good ones from the bad. Moreover, publishing the content on a website is a major part of the web design. So, the bad content will eventually translate into bad design.
You will want to change
Nothing on the internet is stable or constant. Trends are changing on a daily basis and people are constantly on the lookout for something new and fresh. As a business, you have to constantly stay on your toes, so that you’re not lost in the crowd and clutter out there. This will require you to make some changes in the future. You wouldn’t want to stay out of tune with your audience. You need to maintain your appeal. Plus, somewhere down the line, your objectives and goals will change, so will your needs. Imprisoning your website in the last century with technology that cannot be altered or changed is one of the first things a good web developer will prevent you from doing.
Demand feedback
You’re not going anywhere without this. Yes, you may have a specific vision in mind. And yes, it’s for YOUR business, but don’t forget that you are putting it out for the world to see. It’s about the users- your target audience. And it is important that your website doesn’t fall flat on its face due to lack of appeal. This is why feedback helps; it lets you know what the other side is thinking. No developer is going to let you go live with a website without getting adequate feedback first.
The secret behind the success of any collaboration is clear and open communication, and of course, great attention to detail. Stick to these, and you should be sorted. Good luck!
by Miriam Hara | Jan 19, 2014 | Advertising, Latest
The Olympic Games are quickly approaching and brands are all out there with emotive and sports related advertising . No sooner have we recovered from ringing in the new year and all the holiday season advertising, we are now being served with heart tugging emotive advertising. It goes without saying the Marketers have realized that they don’t need to be an actual Olympic sponsor to jump on the coat tails of the winter Olympic games. Brand Sponsors and non sponsors alike have realized the benefits of not only presenting brands emotively, but offering up a good dose of inspiration.
None has done the job of inspiring and bringing tears to our eyes than P&G, with its Tribute to Moms. To call this creative piece an ad, does not do justice to the concept or intent. This is not an ad: this is a tribute to the dedication and commitment of Moms all over the world. Cross culture. Cross Border. It inspires all, acknowledges all…nothing left to say, but pass the tissue please! (and let’s hope it’s a tissue from P&G!)
However, brands aren’t the only ones capitalizing on emotion and inspiration. Countries and their sports affiliates have fine-tuned the art of emotive advertising to a science.
In Canada, the Canadian Olympic Games association has launched a “We are Winter” initiative that is inspiring as it is culturally in line with Canadian thinking.
With less than a month to go for the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia to get here, the Canadian Olympic Games has launched its “We Are Winter” campaign. The Calgary Herald reported that the campaign features two 60-second and four 30-second television spots, as well as one 15-second spot.
On the olympic.ca site, the videos are engaging and beautifully executed, highlighting 17 athletes with their stories and challenges all the while, articulating their competitive sport in very human terms. At once they are emotional, inspiring and dare I say a tad patriotic. Here are a few of them.
Kaillie Humphries
Roz Groenewoud
Denny Morrison
Hope you enjoyed this Canadian inspiration. Let the Olympic Games begin!
by Belinda Lui | Jan 11, 2014 | Latest, Social Media
Business blogging, or what has now been coined as content marketing, has increasingly become a good source of networking for businesses. As I sit here, ready to write my first blog post of 2014, I am aware of how difficult it is to constantly provide valuable information that will be relevant for 3H’s target audience and potential business partners.
The 3Hhoopla Blog and content generation was our priority for the year 2013. We have achieved a visibility among peers and that was no easy task. Creating content was at the forefront of our initiatives as was leveraging that content on our Facebook Page and Twitter community…. and more specifically our LinkedIn group. This took time and effort, but well worth both.
Here are some good business blogging blockbusters that have enabled us to overcome the forever blinking cursor waiting for the start of a thought! Hope these help!
Be mindful:
Be ready to note ideas… anywhere… anytime. It used to be that you needed a pen and notepad by your bed, just in case you had a great idea. Not so today. Mobile devices and the ease of note-taking has never been easier. Be prepared and open to see anything from a conversation to a client question to an internal discussion with colleagues as material for blog content. Be prepared to also capture those thoughts somewhere…anywhere for future reference.
Develop a process:
It’s important to develop a process in which you prepare yourself to write. Writing isn’t easy for everyone… so why make it any harder? Create an environment which you will be able to get down and write with limited amount of interruption. Yes, this does sound like meditation and in fact, I do believe it is. Once you create a process and environment which you initiate a few times, your mind will be aware of the cues, making it easier for you to focus and write.
Create thought paragraphs:
When you do start writing, allow yourself to go off on tangents.I know this goes against many other recommendations: you definitely need to establish the premise of your content, however, sometimes by letting go and writing instinctively, a blog post will write itself. Create what I term to be “thought paragraphs”. Thanks to technology, it’s easy to copy and paste and juggle thought statements to develop a cohesive blog post.
Checklist your keywords:
Content creation for brands and businesses must be focused. It’s not just about writing. It’s about establishing your business, brand or product on the horizon of the internet. It’s about getting found. Establish your basic premise and focus on the keywords that speak to the basic premise of your business. List them and always go back to these words and create a list of secondary keywords that are relevant to the primary keywords. This will enable you to establish a checklist to evaluate each blog post to make sure that they build on your overall content marketing strategy.
Hopefully these tips will be handy for your business content in 2014!
by Belinda Lui | Jan 9, 2014 | Latest, Social Media
A Social Strategy is one that every business should implement — given that we’re well into the digital age, it would be a bad business choice to rule out altogether. Given that you do decide to approach the Social Strategy challenge, there are aspects to every platform that you should consider. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula to promoting product or services online. So before you do, take a look at these 8 statistics on social media platforms:
To create a successful Social Strategy, consider these 8 statistics on Social Media:
1. THE FASTEST GROWING DEMOGRAPHIC ON TWITTER IS THE 55–64 YEAR AGE BRACKET.
This demographic has grown 79% since 2012. This is especially important to consider since the prevailing idea that social media is “just for teenagers” is clearly no longer the case. It certainly points to the importance of having a solid social media strategy if these age brackets fit into your target demographic.
2. 189 MILLION OF FACEBOOK’S USERS ARE “MOBILE ONLY”
There are probably more users accessing Facebook from their mobile device than you thought. Consider this fact when you’re creating an ad or content and how it might be viewed in this manner. Mobile use generates 30% of Facebook’s ad revenue.
3. YOUTUBE REACHES MORE U.S. ADULTS AGED 18–34 THAN ANY CABLE NETWORK
Did you think TV was the best way to reach the masses? Well if you’re after the 18–34 year old demographic in the U.S., you’ll have more luck reaching them through YouTube. Of course, one video won’t necessarily reach more viewers than a cable network could, but utilizing a platform with such a wide user base makes a lot of sense.
4. EVERY SECOND TWO NEW MEMBERS JOIN LINKEDIN
LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, continues to grow every second. From groups to blogs to job listings, this platform is a rich source of information and conversation for professionals who want to connect to others in their industry.
5. LINKEDIN HAS A LOWER PERCENTAGE OF ACTIVE USERS THAN PINTEREST, GOOGLE+, TWITTER AND FACEBOOK
Although LinkedIn has a fast growing network of new users, they are also less active than their social media counterparts. Consider hosting contests and surveys on sites like Facebook and Twitter and your news-related content for LinkedIn.
6. 93% OF MARKETERS USE SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS
There is reportedly only 7% of Marketers that aren’t using Social Media for their business. If you’re a part of that statistic, it might be time to hop on the Social Strategy bandwagon!
7. 25% OF SMARTPHONE OWNERS AGES 18–44 SAY THEY CAN’T RECALL THE LAST TIME THEIR SMARTPHONE WASN’T NEXT TO THEM
This means that at least 25% of smartphone owners are pretty much always connected. You can reach them through various platforms at any time of the day.
8. EVEN THOUGH 62% OF MARKETERS BLOG OR PLAN TO BLOG IN 2014, ONLY 9% OF US MARKETING COMPANIES EMPLOY A FULL-TIME BLOGGER
Blogging is clearly a big focus for marketers who want to take advantage of social media and content marketing. This is great, because blogging for your business has lots of advantages: you can control your company blog, you can set the tone and use it to market your product, share company news or provide interesting information for your customers. With only 9% of marketing companies hiring bloggers full-time, however, the pressure to produce high-quality content consistently will be a lot higher.
(Information from: Fast Company)
by Belinda Lui | Jan 6, 2014 | Latest, Social Media
In a generation of file-sharing, we may find that the lines that separate innocent enjoyment and online piracy to be a bit blurred. First, it was Napster that took a major hit in 2001 when record labels went after the file-sharing giant for copyright infringement that eventually resulted in its bankruptcy. Now Megaupload, a company that started in 2005, was charged for allegedly operating as a business dedicated to copyright infringement in January of 2012. Like YouTube, Megaupload was a website where users could upload videos and share them with friends. Unfortunately, the videos that were uploaded weren’t always legally owned by the users. Megaupload faced many criticisms about online piracy that eventually led to Kim Dotcom, Megaupload’s owner, being arrested.
You can watch Vice‘s mini-documentary on the Megaupload case here:
This controversial case surrounds the argument of whether it is ultimately the service provider or the end-user’s fault. Kim Dotcom argues that it is not the company’s responsibility to monitor and track the activity of its users in its entirety.In his defense, YouTube offers the same service and gets much less slack for the same type of activity. Albeit, YouTube does a mediocre job at monitoring the activity on its site, there is still plenty of copyright infringement happening without any real consequence, it seems.
The topic of online file-sharing has been a tricky one for years. If I’m sharing a song or video with a friend with the sole intention of expression, should it still be considered a crime? It seems clear that when files are shared for the purpose of making money, it is a crime. What if it’s not? At what point does it become illegal? Who is to blame? As a form of Social Media, what should businesses be aware of to avoid criticism in copyright infringement?
In the case of Kim Dotcom and Megaupload, what are your thoughts on how the trial should pan out?
