Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand Podcast presented by ArtVersion Creative Agency. Tune into Podcast 46 for more on visual branding. We are going to discuss:

You are listening to Rediscover Your Brand Podcasts brought to you by ArtVersion Interactive Agency.

Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand Podcasts! I’m your host Mike McCormick and, you know, for the past couple of weeks we catch strictly on an Internet focus. We’ve gone down many steps talking about the nitty gritty small items that really cover a lot of specs.

But then we’ve gone into simple. You know, more kind of tools and marketing strategies that the Internet offers. We’ve talked about different mobile platforms we’ve gone pretty far. We’ve covered, responsive in and out on both angles. And the Internet has done us what it should. It has brought us to this point where we need to be.

Especially last week when I brought up email promotions with the holiday season and SBC every year. The internet is progressing more for our businesses to use more strategies. Especially in this time of year since it is the holiday season. So, with that in mind, I wanna talk about a little different type of focus today. I know the internet has been kind of our main focus for a while now for a little bit over a month and we’ve done a lot of ins and outs. We’ve given a lot of great strategies and tools, and we’ve talked about SEO. We’ve talked about content and we talked about responsive web design. We talked about ecommerce sites and now you can improve them. Then we went all the way to email promotional, you know, marketing strategies on how you can promote your email marketing strategies.

I really like the Internet and I like where it’s taking us and where we’re going. And there are a ton of topics for us to be talking about. In the next upcoming weeks, there’s going to be a lot more topics that we can keep pushing with the Internet. But today I kind of wanted to talk about a little different topic, and this topic can be reflected to the Internet because aspects of this topic are brought already into the Internet and they’re used in the Internet. But this topic covers your whole strategy plan altogether. So today I really wanted to discuss visual branding.

And you know when it comes to visual branding, there’s a lot of different aspects that you can do, and there’s a lot of things out there that you can do. So I’m going to go over some quick stuff, some easy facts and easy things that you should implement. I’m not telling you how you should design your visual aspects, that is completely up to you. You’re the ones you create your own brand, and then you should go out there and figure out what works best for you.

But I am going to give you some quick insights on why we should really be utilizing it, what visual branding and brand consistency is. Why we need to be consistent and how visual branding can really help your business. And I’m going to always leave that door open like I always do.

And I’m going to go with it from there, but the one thing about visual branding is it does reflect on every aspect that you do. So when I said we’re kind of leaving the Internet, everything that I said today is going to reflect back to the Internet because the Internet is sort of that focus.

That really needs to be out there with a lot of these visual branding things so you know, reflecting back visual branding will reflect back on that. Since we’re drifting away from the Internet, don’t be a little too, you know, pushed away from it. We will come back to it, but this does technically reflect on it, so let’s get started. Let’s get this ball rolling right now.

What do we want to talk about today? Let’s start with the topic of what is visual branding.

A lot of people get this mixed up compared to what is branding. Visual branding and branding are pretty different when your branding is kind of this bigger topic, but visual branding is like a smaller aspect in it when it comes down to all the visual elements in the design elements that you implement into your brand.

Visual branding is kind of like, you know, your visual logo, your brand mascot, just the different things that are utilized to show your brand visually to the public. And it’s kind of a little different because it doesn’t really go into how you’re going to present slogans. Now you’re going to present your content strategies with it. This is more kind of just the visual aspect of your logo. What’s your brand mascot? What visual aspects of the design elements are really out there today that are being utilized to show your brand?

So that’s visual branding. Now branding as a whole is a completely different subject that you know we could take awhile on and it’s just a lot easier if that was set aside to have its own podcast. Because today we only want to discuss visual branding and the different elements that go with it. So to move on there, we all want to know why should we use visual branding? What about visual branding is going to keep me on-board? Is it going to keep me on track, is it going to keep me wanting to use it when there are so many other things that could do so many other marketing strategies? But when it comes down to it, visual branding affects a lot of your other marketing strategies in general.

But you should utilize it because you gotta create that face. You gotta create that logo that people you know can side with when you look at larger businesses and it comes down to like their visual branding in their logos. You see certain logos that when you see it and it doesn’t even have the organization’s name or the business of the company or the corporate name across it. But you see the logo, and all of a sudden it just clicks. You say you know that logo goes with that company no matter what.

You know we want to try and build that within our visual brands. That’s really why we should be utilizing that. We want to build that consistency where people know they can visually see who we are and what we do without having to really pull it apart and think about what is going on with inside our brand. And that’s the visual branding aspect that comes to it. You know you see a lot of large brands and when it comes to their logo, people understand the logo before they even understand anything else that comes with the business because they know the logo. They see the logo design.

So and that’s what they go with it and it goes with the color schemes and it goes with everything. So this is kind of really why we should be utilizing visual branding right there. It’s really simple. Straight to the point. And you’re creating that visual gap. That element between your target audience in yourself, and it comes down to knowing your target audience. And knowing what they’re looking for. If it hasn’t been working, your visual plan hasn’t been working now you know what your target audience is looking for. You know, give them those visual elements and we’ve seen in the past with other organizations.

They had one complete logo and this is who they were forever and they decided they were going to change it within. You know, as short as a week I’ve seen it with some companies, but you know some other companies it took up to a good. You know two or three months or they decide to jump back to the old logo because people you know saw that. So always remember.

Thinking about the reasons why and where your company is going and on the visual aspects that you have always think about, you know your target audience and I’ve said it so many times it all my other podcasts. But it really comes down to knowing your target audience. Knowing what they’re looking for and you can go there from there.

Brand consistency is the next topic. I really wanted to talk about it, and this is huge with visual branding because we have many times where you know there are larger organizations, even some smaller ones where you have different departments who you know they’re using different stuff with the logo with your visual aspects and they’re not communicating. So you get people who have this file, which is a huge logo and they want to put in an email and it smashed down really small and crumpled up and it just doesn’t look right. We see that a lot.

You know, sometimes the logo just doesn’t look good in black and white, or people are trying to make t-shirts and they’re trying to blow the logo up. And this and that. So we really gotta figure out brand consistency and figure out a way that we have a dynamic logo that looks good in any setting and you really gotta stand out with that, especially with black and white because things are going to get a photocopy. Things are going to look different all the time.

If you’re creating an intricate design that has you know too much gradients in it, and the second you put it in black and white’s not gonna look as good as it could. So when it comes to building consistency, remember all your department’s with inside your organization who are probably going to be utilizing that for letterheads, emails, envelopes. When you’re making stuff across different medias, if it’s going to be in black and white, it’s going to be in color. If it’s going to be 1000 different colors. Because there are organizations out there who change the colors little logo, sometimes you see it in red. Sometimes you see it in green. Sometimes it’s in blue, yellow, pink, black. You know it’s in all different colors, so you gotta remember you had to create a logo that’s diverse to handle.

The amount of colors that are out there and was really where it comes with brand consistency. To think about, you know how it’s going to consistently flow across and you should be able to. You gotta start thinking about creating templates. If you have an email template everyone’s emails gotta have the same signature at the bottom with this team logo.

Instead of people trying to figure out how to make that themselves in the office, create an email template if you’re sending out certain letters. Create a template for a letterhead template. You know if it’s envelopes you know, make sure you print enough envelopes that are exactly the same. If it’s t-shirts, make sure that the logo is placed right. Create these templates out there that create the brand consistency. Make sure it’s available and it will last in different colors, especially black and white. So you want to have a solid design that’s you know represents who your brand is, but is not that intricate.

So you can have an awesome logo because if it’s really intricate, it’s not gonna look good. Especially in black and white. You’re going to see the lines in this nut and it’s just not gonna be what you can truly want it to be. So really think about you know how it’s going to look across all different medias, because this is your brand. This is your logo, and if it doesn’t look scaled down from a large photo or scaled up from smaller photo, it’s gotta look consistently exactly the same. You know when the different sizes and the different changes you don’t want things to look smashed or stretched out. You want them to look perfectly the same. So when designing your logo, create a logo that is diverse enough that you can be able to do that, and then you know have those templates on hand with your logo in it for the different medias. You know that you’re possibly going to be using so people don’t have to in your office. Try and create what they what they want out of their email or their letterheads envelopes. There you have to try and recreate that with your logo when it just doesn’t come out right because remember, your brand is what people the visual branding elements are. What people you know they connect your brand with, they see that they understand that they believe that it’s their thing.

So that’s kind of where you have to go with it. Let’s move on. Now, how can visual brand branding help your business? This is kind of this is simple straightforward topic. I’m going to briefly cover this because there’s so many elements that come into how we can help your business. I’m just going to give you an overview, let you adventure out and go find out what you really need. But like I’ve said throughout this whole podcast, visual branding is basically a way of connecting between your target audience.

If you’re business-to-customer, it’s that visual element that they’re going to remember you by. It’s the like a symbol that creates your identity. Say you have a mascot. People will remember your mascot, you know. Think about larger companies who have had mascots forever. When it comes to thinking about that company, we really think about the mask as being like the face. The leader of this cartoon type of mascot. This fictional unrealistic leader who was there and that’s their company. So bring that to people? Remember that people grow to love that they go to learn it. It becomes something that excites them and involves them in. With that in mind, that’s how you can build your business and build your target audience with it. Remember they’ll pass it on to other people, and your audience will just keep growing.

Those visual elements that they can see and remember. So that’s the simple way there. But when it comes to the how, there’s so many fun and amazing benefits that go along with it. It just really comes down to you venturing out, finding out how it fits for your organization and if it will help with your target audience. Because, remember, out of everything that visual branding reflects upon and how amazing it is, you always have to remember to know your target audience in what they’re looking for. Your target audience has to like your visual elements and it has to be appealing to them. It has to pull them in for the reasons why.

So really, start thinking about your target audience, who they are and what they can do for you. And then you know you could grow with your target audience. From there, if you just give them what they want because there’s so many other people out there who have the same desires as them, they just don’t know it. And you also don’t know it. Many of us don’t know it too, but our audiences can potentially be a lot larger than we think.

Visual branding. It’s just fun and exciting. But this does cover all things, especially like I said, we weren’t talking about the Internet before, but your logo has to go somewhere on your website. You have visual elements on your website design that reflects all of your print media and anything that you send out. Emails, newsletters, business cards. It’s that visual element. Visual branding does reflect a lot, so I always keep a lot of these tips in mind.

Go out, venture, and find out what really suits your company or organization. Embrace that, but keep it clean and keep it consistent. And have fun with it.

Well, that’s about it for episode 46 of the Rediscover Your Brand Podcast. I’m your host Mike McCormick and this has been brought to you by ArtVersion Interactive Agency. You may contact us on Facebook, Twitter, or our website. Thanks for listening!

The post 46 – Visual Branding Podcast appeared first on ArtVersion.

Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick. For the past couple weeks we have kept our main focus on the internet and different topics, many fun and it has been a blast. Well to move on we are going to keep the same internet presence going with a fun, new and exciting topic this topic will cover a lot of stuff that we can reflect back on to with the holiday season. This week we are going to cover e-Mail Promotional Marketing. You may ask why we are going to cover e-Mail promotions, and it is because it is the holiday season and we should send them out to all of our target audiences just wishing them a happy holidays. Now we all want to know what is going to be covered in today’s podcast so let’s go over that right now!

e-Mail Promotional Marketing is a way of emailing someone a card to express a particular event or holiday. e-Mail promotions within business can become fun and exciting because they open a door for any type of campaign we choose to put on to be acted like a holiday. There are just a couple of aspects every business and/or organization needs to take and implement into their e-Mail Promotional Marketing to present successful e-Mail Promotional Marketing to their target audience, who will accept the offers presented with the cards. If these steps are not taken accordingly they might have as much success as you would like. Now I am not telling you that you have to do these, I am going given proven suggestions that have worked, but are up to you to take these steps on your own, and mostly you must always KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE AND WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING FOR. And before we get into everything it is the holiday season so you may see more success this time of the year just a helpful hint.

Let’s begin talking about a couple of tips we should use when putting together e-Mail Promotions. First, don’t go to simple on the graphic design elements, no one really likes to just read text they need something that will draw them in wanting to read your e-Mail Promotions, having graphic design elements that are visual appealing will draw in your target audience wanting to look at what you have to say. Next, make sure it always reflects your brand, your brand is the most important part of the of any promotion you put out, remember this is your brand that is doing that, so why not reflect brand, it is pretty much a no brainer, but should always reflect all the brand elements you present to your audience. Third, you should try to present an offer of some sort; your audience is always looking to get something out of what they are doing for them so try to present them with something useful within the card to keep them coming back for more. Fourth, always make sure they are able to unsubscribe from your list, you do not want anyone to think your e-Mail Promotional are spam, so allowing them to be taken off your mailing list will help. Fifth, use more informal language that includes humor, our audiences want to know that we can communicate on a more friendly level. Sixth, track all the emails that are forwarded from your audiences to others not on your current mailing list, this will allow you to see how many more people are seeing your offers, this will help to grow your business. Seventh, keep it simple and straight forward to the point; we want to direct our audience to our site from the promotion we don’t want them to delete it because there’s too much content, so less is more when creating e-Mail promotions and the content inside them. Eighth, keep it personal; try to always use the audience’s members name within the e-Mail promotion, this will help them to believe that you truly care about them, wanting them to come back again.

All of these tips should help you create the perfect e-Mail Promotions for your business, and there is so much more you can do to make them better, you just need to adventure out and try, and with the holiday season upon us it is time we start to push more and more e-Mail promotions and promotions to get audiences to our websites.

The post 45 – e-Mail Promotional Marketing appeared first on ArtVersion.

Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand Podcast presented by ArtVersion Creative Agency. Tune into Podcast 44 for more on e-commerce.

You are listening to Rediscover Your Brand Podcasts brought to you by ArtVersion Interactive Agency.

Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand Podcasts. I’m your host Mike McCormick and, you know, for the past couple of weeks, we’ve kept down that Internet topic. We’ve gone pretty far down and talked about many different strategies. You know, it’s where we started.

And we left it for a little bit, but we decided to come back and come back and come back again and there’s so many different aspects with the Internet. It’s such a fun topic and it’s really cool. And, you know, we’ve covered everything from the mobile Internet to your desktop Internet to just websites in general and what you can really do with it, so we’ve gone really far and we’re always wondering what strategies are going to come next. 

So that is the one thing that I’m always gonna talk about. I’m always going to bring those fun, exciting strategies for you and under the table so you know last week we had one of our biggest topics and it was an amazing fun topic and it was really exciting and we did a lot of you know, talking about a little different aspects with it. And I just wanted to say this before I really got in today’s topic. It’s one of those topics that’s just not going to go away, even though you know I might now be blatantly putting it out there and saying this is the content strategy you gotta use. This is the SEO strategy you gotta use. You know, they’re pretty much when it comes to the Internet.

And it comes even outside the Internet. Sometimes these are the tools and aspects that are always going to be building to everything I’m saying, so there are always going to be more about content strategies. More about what you can do with SEO and always knowing your target audience. You know it’s the biggest factor and you know you may hear it again today, so keep thinking about that.

So when it comes to those topics, you know I might not be blatantly saying it, but there will reflect because of every benefit that I talk about. Every strategy I talk about, why those are always connected in with your content strategies and with your SEO strategies. Put your website to be #1 on search engines, so to move on from there. I want to keep the same Internet focus today. You know it’s been a really cool adventure. It’s been really fun and exciting to talk about.

There’s a lot of thoughts that went into picking today’s topic, and there’s so many things out there. And when it came down to what I was gonna choose today, you know why I wasn’t going to go with something more broad? Or something more specific? Was it only going to tailor to one group was getting tailored to everybody and kind of picked a topic that I had been covered yet? We do talk about it here and there in our blogs. It’s one of the topics that we do work on a lot at ArtVersion. You know, we are proud to say that we work on this.

So when I picked this topic, I thought you know it may be appropriate, especially for the holiday season right now. I’m going to talk about e-commerce. And, you know, e-commerce is going to be fun. It’s going to be exciting, and it’s the holiday season and a lot of people are buying online. We just had Black Friday last week and now Monday yesterday was Cyber Monday which a lot of people were shopping online.

So I figured this week, since we’re in the holiday season talking about e-commerce and maybe a couple of aspects that are not for this season. But for next season implementing in four seasons does take awhile, the beginning of the year is going to be starting and a lot of people’s budgets are going to be renewed. It’s a good time to figure out what’s to be on your ecommerce site this holiday season because it’s going to take you almost full year to revamp and have the perfect website for it. So I really want to talk about ecommerce and I just think it’s the perfect time to get your mind started thinking especially with the beginning of the year. If you have any e-commerce site or if you don’t but you know you might want to have an e-commerce site, they’re really cool. They are a lot of fun, but even if you do not have any e-commerce site, this is the time where you should really be reviewing your website in general because it is the holiday season. It is where most retailers make a lot of their money. A lot of the income comes in right about now, especially with a lot of larger retailers. I’ve worked in retail in the past, and so I know how it works.

But this is usually the time, so I’m going to talk about this now so you can be reviewing your site over the next couple of weeks and then when the new year hits, you’ll be able to start planning. Start figuring out what you can do better for next year’s holiday season, and even implementing different sales throughout the rest of the year. I figured this was the perfect time to leave that door open right away through everything I talk about. I want you guys to go out and I want you to adventure. But when it comes down to it, I’m going to tell you what the converse is. I’m going to give you some brief reasons why we should utilize it and then I’m going to talk about the benefits. A couple benefits I’m not really going to go into.

Then you’ll know nitty gritty of the benefits, because that’s something that if I told you how to do it, you’re not going to have that full experience of learning it on your own. So I want you to go out there and be excited and get really adventurous with learning to help the new and exciting things that you can you can get from it. So I’m going to talk about some important benefits. Go through all the fun, exciting stuff about it. You know there’s a lot of basic benefits you can learn from it. But you know that’s what I’m gonna talk about and I’m really going to focus on our target audience today, because when it comes to e-commerce and knowing who your target audience is, a lot of that is covered later. So keep that in mind. So let’s get this ball rolling. Let’s start talking.

So, to start, we all want to know what is e-commerce is. For those who are listening, you know this is going to help you if you already understand e-commerce platforms. I’m just going to give you a brief review if you don’t already understand e-commerce. I’m going to tell you what you e-commerce is, so it’s going to be fun. So what is e-commerce? That’s the big thing we want to know right now.

In ecommerce, basically it’s really simple. It pretty much stands for Internet Commerce, and commerce is basically just selling services and products. E-commerce is basically creating a website where you sell your services. You sell your products to people all over the globe who can purchase your stuff. 

It’s basically going online and doing online shopping and online purchasing. So e-commerce is like that? You’re able to do that?

So that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. Now, it does come down to different factors on how you are going to sell it. I mean there are larger ecommerce sites and there are smaller ecommerce sites, but pretty much utilizing an ecommerce site will grow your target audience. Let’s move on a little bit now and let’s talk about why you should utilize them. So say you have any size business, small, medium, large, extra large. You know any size business, but you know focusing really on mostly larger businesses and medium size, they kind of already used them. But the smaller businesses, you know you can become that larger business just by utilizing an e-commerce site. If you have a store location, you’re limiting your target audience to right then and there, and that’s not the reason why we want to build. Our target audience is because there’s a lot of times where we create products. Most of this create products that are completely different than anything else on the market, and we want to grow our target audience in today’s day and age. We have that perfect tool of the Internet and e-commerce that we can grow. 

Put the information out there and try to have them come to us kind of way. You know with our own store locations and this and that, it can become difficult. E-commerce closes that gap. It pretty much allows us to have people purchase new items on there. And you know, kind of give back a little bit more. So the reasons are pretty much to grow our target audience, which will grow into 1000 benefits. And having all these benefits, which I’ll get to the benefits later. But really, you know, growing our name, growing our brand, and that’s why we should utilize e-commerce, especially when we have something that’s different than everybody else on the market. When we had that one unique thing and we want to push it out to people across the globe or across the nation, you know and say we only have one location or two locations and we’re kind of a small organization. 

In this is kind of a way to branch out, once we branch out we can become a lot bigger. Or we can do a lot more. So that’s where it comes with e-commerce, which is kind of cool, but there are a lot of design aspects that go into why we should use them. I mean one is that they’ll always reflect our brand too when it comes down to it. When, like the design aspect and why we should really utilize it, is it kind of gives that almost similar look and feel if you plan it right and you know how, what exactly what you’re doing if you know your target audience, you know what they’re looking for and you know what they like.

Going on that website is almost like being in the store because it gives that similar look and feel. It’s got that presentation like the way you present your product. It has your logo, it’s got your color scheme. It’s got your brand built into it. 

So it kind of allows people to almost feel like they’re with you through that e-commerce site, and that’s the real reason why too. And that helps a lot more than you know. Another great reason is which is also a benefit and I could go into this a little bit later, but talk about it now. It’s easier to explain things you know when it comes to you. Being in the store, a lot of people want to learn about a product before they buy. They have it in mind, but they want to learn about it.

Trying to talk to someone or getting to talk to somebody trying to get all their questions, answers, and it’s usually always simple questions that is going to take up a lot more time than when you can just post in bullet points or small paragraphs on each product, which will take a lot less time for them to read it, understand it really quickly. Purchase that product and move on to another product they can purchase. Then rather than the store where they spend their whole amount of time that they planned on being in the store. Learning about a single product and at that point you know they might have spent too much time. They don’t even buy the product in or you know. If they do buy the product, sometimes that’s the only product they’re going to buy, so we have to look at it like that. You know, we can explain more, have more advantages, and you can even set up question and answer on there for them to even learn more to get past further questions that they might have had. But they might not have been able to ask in the store because of the time aspect.

So we can sell more. We can learn more inches, simpler, and it’s a lot faster and it really, you know we gotta keep expanding our target audience. So let’s get into some of the great benefits here. We’ll cover the benefits. I’d love to tell you every single benefit, but honestly I want to leave that door open one because you should go out and venture for yourself. Second, we would be sitting here all day. Just listen to me talk and I could go on for hours. I can even go on for days of the thousands of benefits and you know everybody has a different benefit. From all the success stories, I’ve heard having e-commerce sites we could go on for awhile but I want you to go out and see the benefits that are out there for yourself. Choose the ones that really reflect your brand in your organization will help you guys strive forward.

So when it comes to the benefits, I’m really going to talk about a couple. Let’s start with the target audience. Knowing your target audience. This is the best benefit of all, because if you know what your target audience is, you know what they’re looking for. You know how I talked about this couple of minutes ago, but I’m going to bring it up again. They’re going to spend more money on their site. You’re going to come back more and more again, they’re going to spend less time purchasing one item than they would in your store, so they’re going to purchase more.

You know all that in general is that’s one huge benefit, but we also have to look at if we know our target audience and we know what they’re looking for when they’re going to purchase stuff. They’re going to tell their friends, they’re going to tell their families, they’re going to tell their coworkers, they’re going to go out and tell people about this, and that’s going to expand our target audience. So when we expand our target audience, we open an array of doors that we never thought would be possible.

Pretty much just, you know, go out and how do I put it on? We can go out and expand our audience, expand them to new individuals who we never thought would come to us and we can gain more people. We can gain more return on our investments and pretty much we can build our brand and build our name. And we can then go on and build sub-brands and create more products. Create even better products. Expand our product line. So all of these are just massive huge benefits. Now the second one is we create more employment for workers within our country. Now I know a lot of you are like well this now with the economy. But we’re building our economy and when we build our economy, people spend more money. 

And when people spend more money, we bring in more business. We employ more people and it’s just to keep cycle. So if we can build an e-commerce site and we can expand our target audience, we’ll have to hire more people by hiring more people. We’re building on the economy so it ends up becoming a huge benefit for us and we will get a larger return on our investment. It also builds up another benefit. It builds up our email lists. The one thing about email lists is it helps us reach out to other people who purchased once or twice before, you know, and within those we could send them greeting cards. We could sell them e-blasts. We could send up a ton of stuff through email, bringing them in. So if we build up our email sites and we push, you know, different email blasts with advertising in them which don’t take as long. They’re pretty cost-effective, so they’re not going to cost much. They’re going to come back and bring more money.

So all of these right there. Those are the simple benefits that we can improve. And then secondly, we can almost create our own virtual store location on the Internet. Having our own virtual store location helps people out a lot because people like to have that look and feel of a brand when they’re in a store and reflecting that on the Internet is almost a benefit because people are willing to buy more because they are, you know getting that feeling from it, even if they’re not there now. Thirdly, if we build our online e-commerce, we can build more store locations because we’ll have such a larger target audience. 

When, for instance, if somebody needs something really quickly, they can run out to one of our store locations instead of ordering online, which could help if you have more store locations. It’s kind of just a huge cycle of everything. That kind of just pulls out from having such a useful tool like e-commerce. Now all these benefits are pretty amazing and they always refer back to how much we’re going to put ourselves out there.  If we want to fully put ourselves out there, expand our target audience and everything we do, we can. There’s so many more benefits you can take. But if you want to limit yourself and you don’t think you’re going to have, you know too much that you’re going to be doing, then you know you’re going to limit your target audience and things can be limited. So if you want to expand, you can expand to the limits. You can expand past the limit. Now if you’re going to limit yourself, you’re cutting yourself off whatever you’ve limited yourself, so that’s how you have to look at it when it comes with benefits. And there’s just so many more out there and there’s just so many more things, but e-commerce is kind of cool, and it’s really important to be successful by always knowing your target audience. Because your target audience, if they like what they see, they like their experience, they’re going to come back and they’re going to purchase more. So really to get all these benefits, you know, research your target audience, figure out exactly what they’re looking for, and you know as things change. Update with them. Kind of keep following current trends, have it applied to your e-commerce site.

And that’s how you can grow and evolve, especially in this holiday season. You’ll be able to see what you’re doing right and see what you’re doing wrong. But when it comes to it, if you know you didn’t have that great of a holiday season as you had in the past, but you haven’t really changed anything, look to see what people are looking for today and then look to see what they’re looking for tomorrow. Especially tomorrow, because if you can look ahead and you find out what’s going to be trending in the future, you can tailor your site to that when that point comes. So always try to stay one step ahead of the game. Stay a step ahead of your target audience by knowing what they’re like and knowing what their patterns and what that pattern scheme is they’re going to be liking.

This is the perfect time now because it is the holiday season, where you can fully judge on what you’re looking for and you know we. At ArtVersion, we’ve done plenty of sites and we’ve offered many benefits to people. We’ve done e-commerce sites, we’ve done catalog sites, so even if you do a catalog site and refer back this all applies to that too. When it comes to catalog websites which are really similar to e-commerce, when you press a buy button, I know some of you out there may have them, but for those who don’t, basically when you would press buy it would send you or to the website of the company could buy it from.

Like the vendor, you can buy from or it’ll send you to a page with a bunch of vendors on it which is really cool and exciting. And for a lot of manufacturing companies where you have your products being sent out to vendors. Catalog sites will help you a lot more than e-commerce sites because then you know they can pick the vendor that they like buying it from. It’s kind of like a win-win situation. So if you were just strictly manufacturing, you work with a ton of vendors. You might want to be thinking about using the catalog site, but within those catalog sites, all these benefits refer back. But it really comes down to knowing your target audience and what they’re going to be looking for so we stay a step ahead of them.

Because you know the one thing about trends is: they are here today and gone tomorrow. And sometimes what people call for doesn’t always work out in everyone’s favor. So that’s the one thing you really have to look forward to. If they are here today, they can be gone tomorrow. So you always gotta stay on top of that and just know what people are looking for. Then expand your target audience and create those mailing lists with email advertising. You know the stuff that you can have that only reward people who are on your mailing list. You know if you do say today, 10% off every purchase your whole purchase, if you click here and make you know gives you a promo code to put in and then you know with those you’ll end up building your target audience, because they’ll tell their friends, they’ll tell their families, and they’ll tell their coworkers “Hey I got 10% off at so and so today because I got an email blast from it” and they’ll be like oh, “how do you do that?” and be like yeah all the time you just have to sign up. 

And people end up spending money. It’s kind of a loss leader, but it ends up working out in the end because, you know, you give someone 10% off today. But they saw something they liked and they don’t have that 10% off. They’re going to come back tomorrow and they’re going to buy it because they missed out on their own. But you know if they still wanted it, so that’s kind of a huge benefit right there. So when it comes to e-commerce, just know your target audience know what they’re looking for. Provide the benefits that you feel are right for them, and provide them with the right information so you can get the benefits that you feel are right for you. 

Well that’s about it. I just want you guys to go out, invent, and find the right aspects for your commerce. The time is right now. The holiday season is the time for you to be researching your own e-commerce sites. So next year you can be 10 times better than you were this year for the holiday season.

Well that’s about it for episode 44 of the Rediscover Your Brand Podcast. I’m your host Mike McCormick and this has been brought to you by ArtVersion Interactive Agency. You may contact us on Facebook, Twitter or our website. Thanks for listening!

The post 44 – Ecommerce appeared first on ArtVersion.

Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick. For the past couple weeks we have pushed our focus mainly on the internet and have provided you with great marketing strategies, to help promote your brand in new and exciting ways. We have also talked that internet focus further into strictly talking about the mobile web on some, and others integrating the mobile web into other awesome internet strategies. Now talking about the internet has been fun and it has been really exciting, but sometimes we need to focus on other subjects in this similar field, now I would like to do that but I would also like to keep that internet flow going, so I picked a topic that is pretty diverse it is mostly for the internet but can also help you in your other creative aspects as well. Today we are going to talk about SEO with your current content strategies. Now I know everyone is excited that I am bringing the topic of content strategies, it is a fun and amazing topic, but last time we had more of a broad focus and talked about many different aspects in content strategies. Well, this week we are going to push all our focus on the SEO aspects of content strategies. SEO, just like content is one of those topics that is always going and evolve with new trends, and it is also one of those topics like content again that I will slightly refer to more in other future podcast. But, for now I believe it is appropriate for this topic to have a podcast all to its self. Now today we are going start our discussion by talking about what SEO is, how it works, and why it is important, to go on from there we will talk about benefits along with useful tips to use when refer your content strategies to SEO, and finally we will end the discussion with a quick refresh on why content strategies are important. Now I hope everyone is as excited as I am for this topic, so let’s get this ball rolling and get started with SEO and content strategies!

To start I want to talk about what SEO is. SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO is a concept based around how high your page will be placed on different search engines, such as Google and Bing. The steps that go into making your website on the top of the first page are based around multiple aspects that go into your site mostly including your content.

Content plays a huge role in SEO, you content is what is being pulled in from search engines when users are searching for specific things. Like I have said in the past and I will say it again know your target audience and know what they are looking for. This is extremely important when dealing with SEO, because giving your audience what they are looking for will help move you to the top of the page when searching specific things that your organization offers. Having strong SEO behind your website will help grow your target audience.

Now let’s get down to the reasons why content is extremely important to your organization’s website, and the tools you can utilize to boost your SEO performance. Within your industry becoming an industry leader can be simply achieved today through the internet. When it comes to content and SEO the first thing you need to know is what your audience is looking for and how they would be searching for. Specific topics, products and services are a couple of the things that come to mind when people are looking for certain things. Being able to push material on your site that fully reflects how people would be searching will help your organizations SEO performance. Utilizing other tools in your site, like blogs and podcast, where you talk about information about your service will help boost your SEO as well. You must remember to keep up with your blogs and podcast, and post often, because that will show search engines that you are an industry leader, you may be thinking that you do not want to do this to much because you will be overwhelming your audience, which can be true depending on your audience, but providing a substantial amount of information will push you to the top of search engines and prove to your audience that you know what you are talking about that you are proven industry leader. So posting often on blogs and podcast will help your search engine performance. Next providing information within the same industry group will help too, re-posting the same exact information twice and penalize you, but being creative and writing information on your current trends and applying them to your organizations service will help show search engines that you are on top everything that is going on. Recurring links throughout your whole site with multiple pages of various content will also show that you are a diverse company, but you need to be careful in your content and make sure everything is focused around your organization and the services you offer within your industry market. And remember to always provide a strong call to action within your content, your call to action shows that you have a purpose, if it is clear and understandable the search engine will be able to pick it up fast.

SEO is always changing daily, so you need to always be on top of the action you use on your site. SEO is based off of text and links, which are highly embraced within your content. Content is the strongest provider, for your SEO performance, being on top of it and knowing what you are doing along with knowing who your target audience is and what they are looking for will help you boost your current SEO.

That’s it for episode 43 of the Rediscover Your Brand podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick and this been brought you by ArtVersion Interactive Agency. You may contact us on Facebook at Facebook.com/ArtVersion, on Twitter at Twitter.com/ArtVersion, or just on ArtVersion.com. Thanks for Listening!

The post 43 – SEO and Content Strategies appeared first on ArtVersion.

Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand Podcast presented by ArtVersion Creative Agency. Tune into Podcast 42 for more on open source platforms. We are going to discuss:

You are listening to Rediscover Your Brand Podcasts brought to you by ArtVersion Interactive Agency.

Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand Podcasts. I’m your host Mike McCormick and, you know, for the past couple of weeks, we decided to take that path down the Internet way. 

And you know, we started out that way. We left it for a little bit, and then we came right back. And it’s been pretty good. You know we’ve been talking about a lot of different strategies that will help your company and your business grow. And what you can do to get yourself out there. More platforms that are useful for organizations that you might not have thought of in the past.

Ten years ago they released social media like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google Plus. Those things weren’t around when we really needed them before in the past, but they’re around today, so why not utilize something? That’s why I covered a lot of those strategies and we kind of moved on with that. And then you know, for a while our main focus is straight on talking about the mobile web.

The mobile web is such an exciting and fun topic. We talked about all the different platforms where you can utilize it, why it’s important, why you gotta, you know, just go out there and keep doing it. We talked about having those interactive brochures on the mobile web but we didn’t talk about the Internet. It came through and we had a lot of mobile stuff in there. All these advances are great and they’re awesome and they’re fun and they’re exciting. And that’s what I wanted to talk about those different things that were, you know, going on with the web and the mobile web. Now today I want to continue that same Internet focus that we have been talking about now for a while.

And that we have been going with and that we have been pushing forward with. But this one is focused mostly on your website in this topic that I’m going to talk about today. It’s one of the most extremely important topics that I will talk about. You know, it goes along with your whole Internet being especially different. And it’s fun, it’s exciting and it’s going to be really cool. Today we’re going to talk about open source platforms now when there are a ton of open source platforms out there and I can talk about every advantage and disadvantage of each single platform and go on for hours, possibly days, because there’s so many ones that are out there that are fun and useful and exciting, and the tools that are just built into these things that you can realize.

I mean, I could keep going and going, but honestly that wouldn’t be fun for anybody and it wouldn’t be fun because that would take out all the adventure that you guys are always looking for when you’re looking for how tools are utilized. That’s why I always leave that door open and I want you guys to go out there and I want you to see for yourselves how to utilize them. So I’m going to make it a little simple. For today, I’m going to focus my intention just an open-source platforms as a whole. You know, I may discuss some of the larger aspects of them and some larger things that you know you can utilize with the open-source platforms, but I’m not going to go into full detail on, you know, talking strictly about WordPress or Drupal or Magento.

They give you guys that open fields of finding the one that best suits your needs, that best fits your website. The type of site that you’re building in.

Like I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again and I’ll keep on saying – you know your target audience because when you’re building your website alone and you’re putting all your information out there, you’re going to want to know what your target audience is looking for. And that knowing what they’re looking for is going to help you create that awesome user interface which is going to create the awesome user experience, but you gotta have that back-end.

That platform on the back-end is going to help you out a lot more in the future when it comes to knowing exactly what your target audience wants. So knowing that applying that you’ll be able to find the best platform for you. So you know we’re going to keep it pretty simple today. Basically I’m going to tell you what open source platforms are. I’m going to compare them to closed-source platforms because that is the really big concept that’s out there. Today is open-source and closed-source platforms. Especially so you know how to utilize them. What comes down to what your host is going to choose for you. Or can you choose it yourself?

You know I’m going to talk about a couple of different benefits. There are two open-source platforms, and then I’m going to really look into open-source platforms into the future. If we were to judge 50 years ago what our future would be like today, we probably would not have seen the advances in the mobile web and social media and the different email platforms that are out there today. I’ll talk about why open-source platforms are the best for you. You know your long-run material, the long-run stuff that you’re going to need. So you know that’s pretty much the stuff that we’re going to cover today, and it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be exciting, so let’s get the ball rolling. And let’s get this thing started.

So let’s talk about what are open source platforms. Basically, open source platforms are your back-end on your website. Having them being open allows you to go in anytime you want change anything you want on them. A lot of times you know they provide a lot of plugins for your website, so you can add multiple things without having to figure out the code for yourself. Or you know, trying to hire somebody to write the code for you, because those codes are already written as plugins for you open source platforms that are really usually pretty simple. I mean they may come to the point where anybody in your organization, when need be, can log in under account that’s created for them and go in and edit the content that’s on your site or add new stuff. Just have fun with changing different things on your website.

As your organization grows, and as you advance with your company, things do change, trends change, so you’re going to want to have that ability to keep going in. And that’s what open source platforms offer for you. So really, having the open source platform is basically the back end of your website. The front end of your website is what the user sees, what the user does in the front end. You know you need a strong back end to have a strong front end. The front end covers the whole design aspect, but the back end allows those you know plugins those links.

All the fun stuff on your website happens because the back end there, so that’s the really cool part about it is you get to have all these fun little things. It’s like you know you want to have certain toolbars and certain things that move in a certain way. Well, you know you want your front end to be visible that way. Well, your back end will be able to control how everything works that way from your back end through the design. And that’s the cool part about it. You know you have the front end, and you have the back end. Controlling stuff on the back end will allow it to push forward to the front end, creating that one-of-a-kind award-winning first-class user experience that we’re all looking for. And that’s the most important aspect. Having an open-source platform will allow you to do that.

Now to go on, I kind of want to compare them to closed-source platforms because you know, closed-source is kind of a thing that’s out there and it’s one of those things that a lot of people don’t know that you can control so much. You know Drupal and Magento. All of these are fun and a lot of people don’t see it like that. I’ve got a couple of friends out there and you know here and there I’ve been talking with them about all this stuff and they thought that WordPress was only useful for blogs, but it’s not. It’s used for everything. They didn’t know that a lot of these back-ends you could do that, especially the ones who own their small businesses. They have small websites and they pay their hosts to also control everything. So they didn’t know that they were able to change things in, you know, really change the design anytime they wanted to add and implement new stuff. Change how certain things on their small business with their ecommerce sites work and how they can view things they didn’t know because the closed source platform doesn’t allow you to do that. And when it’s closed source, you can’t.

It’s your company. To what extent do you want to take it? Do you want to pull so you know it’s your business? What extent are you going to go to? Allow somebody to control everything that you can have on there? And that’s why you know when you compared to open source it, you know there isn’t really much to compare. One is closed in, you know you’re pulling in giving and taking. How much are you going to give him this month so they can let you do more? And that’s what it really comes down to. With an open source, it’s like, you know it’s my website. I own everything. I control it. I don’t have to worry about anything really happening. Anything bad happening? You know if it does happen, I could go in and change it. You know I don’t have to wake up one day and be like something’s trending and I call up, you know, the controller, the host, because we’re all going to have hosts you know somebody’s got to host the domain name for us too.

For it to be out there, but you want to pick a host that allows you to have that open source behind it, and that’s the one aspect that it comes down to. And you gotta really think about it because if you had that host who allows you to do whatever you want, whenever you want, your company is going to achieve more. If you have a host that you know they control every little aspect of what you do when you wake up that one day and something is really trending and something is really hitting and you really gotta push it out, ’cause it’s going to. You know, it’s the one small balancing factor. I don’t want to put anybody in that position but say it’s a small balancing factor and this small balancing factor can extend you further out than you ever existed in, you know on one hand, but if you don’t do it, it’s not really going to do much, but you really want to do that and you wake up in that closed source platform when you call, and you’re trying to get through and you’re trying to get it done. And they just won’t budge.

I think I am doing what I really want to be doing right now if my organization is pushing that because there are so many other aspects that can be pushing my organization. But you know, there’s these controllers who are not. So when it comes down to it, if you have a closed source platform right now, you might really want to rethink your host. You might want to find a new host. It’s kind of hard when you’ve got everything already established. When you’re trying to advance your business all the time and you know you want to do more, you got locked into account. 

And that’s the other cool thing. Open-source platforms don’t ever lock you into a contract. There’s nothing there. You know you don’t like it. Today you get up and leave tomorrow. You don’t. Actually, you know you don’t like it today. Get up and leave today, because nobody’s going to stop you or tell you what to do. You know you could jump from one open-source platform to another, and it’s no big deal. It’s not like you’re locked into anything and you can do as much as you want because there’s nothing that’s blocking you. And unlike a closed source platform where you’re going to be locked in, you’re going to be locked into every single second that is going to be there.

Which these kind of boil over into the benefits. So let’s go on and move on to the benefits right now. Really quickly, there’s so many benefits and I want you guys to go and see them for yourselves. But really, when it comes down to things that are trending, things that are new, things that are exciting, these are the benefits you really have to open your mind to.

Open-source platforms are updating constantly. The plugins are always changing, they always know it’s going to be trending. They’re always going to know what people want and they’re doing it. They’re providing what people are looking for and they’re giving you the plug in so you don’t have to go out and write the code. But on the other hand, there’s a couple of open source platforms out there that you know you do have to write the code for. But if you’re

working on WordPress or Drupal, you’re gonna be going to have those plugins already built in for you because they’re already thinking about it because they are the bigger picture and they want you guys to have everything there. But on the other hand, say you know you got an inhouse coder, you know you got a guy who can code and who can make it unique. One of a kind. Nobody else has seen it on any other website. That is another thing that other open-source platforms will allow you to do. Completely awesome to everything you’re looking for and that’s really cool that you can do that. And that’s a huge benefit right there in the second bite.

If you own everything, you control everything, and that is huge. I’ve said it before a couple of times already in this podcast and I’ll say it again. But the fact of the matter is that you control everything that you do. How exciting is that? You know you don’t have to worry about any contract fees. You don’t have to worry about anything going wrong. And on the other hand, you also know you can have your own design in-house or you can go out to an agency and if there’s something you don’t like, you can redesign it, which is also cool. Creating that bigger user interface, that better first class award-winning user experience that we all want. We all want our companies to have that on its websites. And even in the mobile world you can control how you create your applications, how you create your mobile websites, how you create your responsive site.

Especially, you know a lot of these pretty much open source will allow all of them. You know all the open source back ends will allow for responsive web design. How exciting is that? And that’s really awesome that you can have that. Especially since responsive web design is going to be the next greatest web design platform that’s out there, it’s going to be that pushing factor that everyone is going to need. And, you know, but it’s going to be a little battle getting there, but it is in having platforms that support that is going to be really exciting to you.

And I’ll say it again, you control everything the second your target audience decides that they’re looking for something a little different. You can jump on that without even thinking. You could just give them what they’re asking for, and that’s the cool thing about it is knowing your target audience. It’s what I’ve said so many times in the past, but when it comes to an open-source platform, it really gets applied. 

So that’s the one cool thing, and you know, there’s a ton in tools and you can do so many different things and you can strictly edit whenever you want. You can have a blog or a podcast and you can write on it as much as you want. You could talk with them as much as you want. You don’t have to worry about different things and trying to. They allow you to add links whenever they want you to. You can add different, you know scrolls at the top. You can add, you know, a different media content. You can add multiple pages. You could go back and take pages out and you can have a so much fun with that. And those are a ton of the benefits right there. And when it really comes down to it, a lot of the benefits are just endless. This is also one of the biggest things that I like to tell people is that these open-source platforms are free. You don’t have to pay a single dime to be using them.

Sometimes they’ll charge you for upgrades on plugins or they’ll give you a plugin for download, but really, what’s a dollar in today’s age for a plugin that’s going to change your whole user experience? And it’s going to make everything 100 times better, so that $1 is going to bring in 1000 times as much. You know, even 100,000 times if you’re a larger organization. So I mean they may charge you for the plugins because you don’t have to write the code, but on the other hand, if you don’t want to pay that, you know $1 that they charge a lot of them.

So it comes down to being really cost-effective because you’re not locked into a contract that doesn’t allow you to do anything. And that’s what you really gotta think about is you could be stuck in the contract today with your closed source platform and you’re kind of stuck. You’re locked in, you can’t do anything and you’re paying every single month for. 

This back end you really aren’t able to use or you can control your own website. You can have an open source platform. And when you need certain plugins, they might charge you here in their forum, but there is minimal charge. Besides if you’re only paying for that specific plugin at that time, once it’s bought it’s yours. It’s not anybody else’s, it’s yours. So that’s what it comes down to. You’re not paying to use the back end of your own website.

And why should you have these extensive contracts, these extensive fees? So you have those that is just probably the highest end benefit you can go. There’s so many more out there and I want everybody who’s listening to just go out and adventure. Find out what you need and what’s best. I mean, it comes down to whatever your type of website is. If it’s ecommerce, you might want to try one. If it’s a blog site, you might want to try another. You want to see really which ones provide the best back end for you with some pretty cool plugins. They all have really cool plugins, but you’ll just check them out, see what plugins will really excite you and what’s great for your organization. What’s good for your target audience is knowing your target audience is always the most important thing when you’re talking about the web because they’re the ones who are going through your experience that you’re presenting for them. 

But I’ll move on from those benefits because I really want you guys to adventure and I really want you guys to learn them for yourselves. That’s why the door is open and you know I can give you a brief look into what the larger benefits are. But there’s so many smaller ones that you really have to go adventure out and see I mean the smaller ones. They create more of a larger benefit In the long run than some of these larger benefits that are out there that I went over.

Let’s talk about your website in the future and let’s see about what. Where do you see your website in the future? That’s one you know topic that a lot of people see. Where do you see your organization? Where do you see the internet going and where do you see your website? And technology grows and we grow with it because we have to grow with it. And if you don’t grow with it, you know you should start growing. You should start adapting more towards it, and I know sometimes you know being in early adapters not the best, but it’s better than being a late adapter.

You gotta be on the ball and you gotta learn about it. You gotta go out and educate yourself and you gotta find out what is out there and what is going to be needed. And that’s why we’re here. We’re here to always educate you guys so you guys can find out what the best is and when it comes into the future you know it’s so hard to tell these days like I said. 50 years ago, nobody would ever think that social networking was going to be the largest thing that the mobile web was going to overcome. PCs living alone that people would have PC’s in their houses. When we look at all these aspects and all these different things. This is where we really gotta, you know get down, get deep and we gotta you know talk about these aspects because we don’t think about them as much as we thought we would. 50 years ago, even 20 years ago, you know 10 years ago things started getting implemented, but you know, 10 years ago nobody thought that the mobile Internet would take over PC’s and that will be this largest thing that it is becoming today. So when it comes to the future, it’s one of those aspects that we really don’t know. 

But when it comes down to open source platforms and closed source platforms, open source is probably the best for the future because it allows for the futuristic longview look that you can see, and it allows you to depth to it if you have a closed source platform. I’ve said this a ton of times. You’ll be locked into that one contract. You’ll be locked into certain things you can do in certain things you can’t do in. Like I said before, you know when certain things just you know they become. The big thing then there trending out there doesn’t allow for you in your contract to do that.

And with them, they’re going to allow you to adapt to it. And all these people who are building these backends that are open source are adapting as they grow. So in the long run you gotta think about what’s going to be the best for your business, what’s going to allow you to adapt, what’s going to allow you to push forward, and that’s the open source platform way of doing it. That’s why I said we never know what’s going to happen in the future, but we have to pick the best option that is out there for our organizations. I’m not here to judge anybody. I’m not here to tell you guys what to do or what not to do, but I am going to say that open source platform are better than closed source platforms when you’re talking about the future.

Open source platforms are the way to go when you’re thinking about the future because they allow you to adapt. They allow you to grow. They allow you to figure out what you’re going to do next and what you’re going to do in a year, what you’re going to do in two years. Even what you going to do tomorrow, a week or in a month. You know the short term future comes faster than the long term future, but having these ideas set in motion is just that’s the one thing the open source platform backends allow you to do. And then they allow you to change your front end whenever you want to, which is also better for the future, because we do grow.

If I was doing this podcast two years ago, I would probably never have said anything about responsive, because responsive is still kind of a new platform. But this is today. Open source platforms allow for responsibility. That’s why you see a lot of these companies who haven’t changed their websites in almost a decade, haven’t changed in over years because they’re locked into contracts and they can’t. But you know, the design aspects and how you can build things. And you know how HTML5 wasn’t even around five years ago.Here appear an array of web tables, web capable devices, but a lot of those websites who are out there control the back end that they’re utilizing.

And it’s one of those things that’s hard to think about, but why not just go with the platform? You know that allows you to adapt, allows you to grow and allows you to be happy. So you really gotta think about your options and think about what you’re doing when it comes down to that. Open source platforms are really exciting and they’re really fun, but the thing I want you guys to get out of this is that you’re not locked into any contract. They’re very cost effective. They allow you to adapt and allow you to grow. They allow you to do anything you want, and most of all they allow you to own your website. So that’s why open source platforms are as cool as they are.

Well that’s about it for episode 42 of the Rediscover Your Brand Podcast. I’m your host Mike McCormick and this has been brought to you by ArtVersion Interactive Agency. You may contact us on Facebook, Twitter or our website. Thanks for listening!

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Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick.  Last week we talked about the mobile internet and we compared Dedicated Mobile Sites to Responsive Web Design, we covered a lot of aspects of these two platforms and to move on from there, mobile and the mobile is just one of those topics am not really to leave yet, but the topic I am going to talk about today can also affect the desktop user as well, so this is not going to be primary mobile based but I will cover a lot of the mobile benefits you can get. So today let’s talk about Interactive materials, brochures, magazines, flyers, pretty much anything that used to only be used for print items, which can now be used as interactive material. Well, today we are going to discuss what interactive brochures are, how they work, and the benefits you can achieve from using these interactive brochures.

Let’s first talk about what interactive materials are, in the past many times these were print materials that organizations would put out to display their current portfolio, or advertisements or just promotional material. These print items were just straight content information. As we moved into the digital age many organizations started using these just on digital platforms but were not made to be interactive with the user. Now, these can be used as interactive materials allowing your audience to become involved with the material you are presenting to them, these also allow your audience to jump around at any given point to give the sections that interest them the most.

Now we all want to know how they work. Now, these interactive materials are designed in a matter strictly for the digital realm. On the mobile use these interactive materials can be downloaded as applications or into e-readers that allow your audience view and interactive with them. They may be designed on templates which allow you to just plug and play with your content or you can design them from scratch, having them be one of kind.

There is an array of benefits that these interactive materials offer.  Having these on a digital platform will allow your user to spend more time by going through more than one of the promotional materials that you offer. They also take away the pain of having to spend the mass amount of money on print materials. These also allow for your user to spread your word faster on the go with mobile devices by just popping it open whenever they please. Most of the benefits that come from these interactive materials are mostly cost-effective and will help grow your target audience.

That’s it for Episode 41 of the Rediscover Your Brand podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick, and this has been brought to you by ArtVersion Interactive Agency! You may contact us on Facebook at Facebook.com/Artversion, on Twitter at Twitter.com/Artversion, or just at Artversion.com. Thanks for Listening!

The post 41 – Interactive Materials appeared first on ArtVersion.

Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick! Last week we decided to talk about microsites and how they can benefit your brand. Well I decided that for this week I want to keep that Internet focus going, I know we drifted away for a couple weeks and focus on topics that were appropriate for the time. Now I want keep the internet focus going this week.  When deciding on a topic to cover, I wanted a topic that is relevant to today’s standards and something that will be beneficial for all of your organizations.  So I figured that talking about the mobile internet world would be an appropriate topic to cover. However we have already someone covered this topic but since it is pretty big and there are new aspects to it every day, it is even more appropriate to keep covering it. So today we are going to discuss Dedicated Mobile Sites VS Responsive Web Design. We will cover what both, Dedicated Mobile Sites and Responsive Web Design, are, we will also cover the benefits of both, and I’ll give you some inside tips when it is appropriate to use one or the other. Now like I said last week, I will provide you will insight, tips, and advice on Dedicated Mobile Sites and Responsive Web Design, but I am going to leave that door open for you to choose which one is best for your organization and your brand.

To start Dedicated Mobile Sites are a way of designing for the web that is strictly for mobile web browsers. Dedicated mobile sites are simplified versions of your main website, this means they present a similar look and feel but are completely different from your main website.  Dedicated Mobile sites are designed strictly for mobile web browsers, providing an experience that is comfortable to use and not frustrating, such as sites that are not dedicated or responsive which apply extra effort of pinching pulling and zooming to view content.

Now to move on lets discuss what Responsive Web Design is. Responsive Web Design is a new advance in the web design world. Responsive Web Design is also referred to as RWD, so if I say RWD you will know what I am talking about. So RWD is a pretty interest concept. It basically is a way of designing for that web that allows you to just design one single site that will adjust its size and visibility to the screen it is being displayed on. This is connected to mobile because the site will reformat its self for any web-capable device.

Now both of these concepts present different point of views of how a site will be viewed on a mobile device but have similar concepts, which are to provide websites to mobile users in an appropriate manner.

So since we have established what both Dedicated Sites and RWD are, let’s get into the fun stuff and talk about the pros and cons for both. This part is going to be really fun because just like every other podcast the most important piece of information I want you to get out of this whole podcast is, know your target audience and know what they are looking from you!

Now in this podcast, you might be wondering why I am always starting with dedicated mobile sites instead of responsive, and it is not because Dedicated came first or one is more important than the other, I am simply just going in alphabetical order to make it simple and interesting at the same time.

Dedicated mobile sites are a method of designing firmly for the mobile web. Dedicated mobile sites display a user interface that is suitably demonstrated for a mobile device. These sites are usually not as large as your regular website and cannot enclose as much content as a desktop site. Many organizations get unenthusiastic about dedicated mobile sites when they find out their content gets narrowed; however, these are actually really wonderful for microsites.  At times your target audience will agree with your decision for a dedicated mobile site because it will offer just amount of information they are looking for.

Now on the other side of the situation, responsive web design (RWD) is the latest, ground-breaking, means for designing not only for the mobile web; it is also for the desktop web. RWD is a way of designing for the web that manufactures a website on a flexible grid pattern and allows the site to regulate its size properly, to the screen size it is being shown on. With RWD organizations only have to construct and uphold a single website across all web-capable platforms, RWD also permits your audience to acquire their experience everywhere they go. On the advantage, RWD will not limit any of your organization’s contemporary web content. With the shortcoming, RWD carries all that large content across all platforms, making load times considerably time-consuming compared to dedicated mobile sites. Sites assembled on the RWD platform will provide an astonishing user interfaces, along with the unchanged, superlative user experiences, across all web-capable platforms.

Knowing your target audience and applying what they would like to see from you to your brand, is the best way you will find out which platform will have that perfect fit with your organization’s mobile presence. There are assortments of benefits you will achieve from either Responsive Web Design (RWD) or Dedicated Mobile Sites, and I could talk about them all day, but I am not because I want you to experience them for yourself.

That’s it for episode 40 of the Rediscover Your Brand podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick, and this has been brought to you by ArtVersion Interactive Agency. You May contact us on Facebook at Facebook.com/Artversion, on Twitter at Twitter.com/Artversion, and at Artversion.com. Thanks for Listening! 

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Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick! Last week we had a pretty awesome conversation about annual reports and how your organization can design a stellar report, which will even amaze your competitors. Now we have drifted away from talking about the internet for a while, but it is such a huge topic and has so many different elements and aspects to it, that I decided it is something that we just cannot forget out, even if we move on to other topics for a while. So today I am going to bring our focus back to the internet and talk about a pretty interesting topic. We are going to discuss Microsites. Microsites are pretty awesome, and I am going to talk about them because they are more than just an exceptional way to expand your brand. For today’s discussion, we are going to cover what Microsites, why you should use them, and the benefits of using Microsites.

To start let’s go over a brief description and overview of what Microsites are. Microsites are smaller websites designed to be their own entity from their main website. Microsites are allowed to have their own domain name but must always lead back to your main site. It is a pretty simple concept to understand they are mostly used to promote campaigns, programs, and products, to expand your organization’s brand.

Before I get into the why you should use Microsites and the benefits of them, these two topics go hand-in-hand so I will be covering them together, I would like to briefly discuss why you should be thinking about using Microsites, instead of just landing pages. Landing pages are easy to make and maintain because they are just additional pages to your website which is nice for just brief descriptions of products and events. When it comes to Microsites over landing pages, Microsites are more appropriate to use because first they are built so your audience will focus all their attention on the particular item you are pushing to promote. This is an exceptional to keep audience attention because the sites are built around one solid topic of your brand and not your entire brand, where on your website your audience comes to learn about the brand as a whole and may not focus all their attention on one item. Secondly, Microsites allow you to provide much more content about this item of your brand that would not be able to do on a landing page. Adding more content on a particular item, of your brand, will ensure users to stay on the site longer and most likely link back to your main site to learn about the other aspects of your brand. Microsites provide more flexibility than just landing pages.

Now let’s talk about why you should Microsites and this will tie in with all the benefits you will receive from using them. I am adding the benefits into the reason why you should so these Microsites because every reason why you should use them is actually an added benefit for your organization, they are that AWESOME!

First of all, Microsites are a great way to expand your brand! When I talk about expanding your brand, I do not mean change or image or who are. I am talking about your sub-brands that make up your brand has a whole. Bring those sub-brands out by giving them their own space. Many may not see promoting your larger brand as smaller brands as a good thing, but actually, it is a huge benefit because it will help boost your sales on those products you want to run larger campaigns on.  So they allow you to extend the image of a particular item you are selling and would like to promote more.

Microsites are also good for SEO purposes. Now there are a lot of rumors out there saying that these extra sites do not help your SEO and that you need to do even more work for the SEO then, which is actually not true at all. Microsites will always link back to your main site, which will help bring in more traffic boosting your SEO in an organic method. They will also boost your SEO for having similar content on these sites as you would on your main site. Now I say similar because you should never have exactly the same content and that is how it would not help your SEO at all and you would be penalized for it, but if the content is similar than your SEO will get boosted for your main site for talking about related topics.

Microsites provide an array of benefits that I could talk about all day but I really want you to expand your horizons and find them for yourself.

That’s it for Episodes 39 of the Rediscover Your Brand podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick and this has been brought to you by ArtVersion Interactive Agency. You may contact us on Facebook at Facebook.com/Artversion, on Twitter at Twitter.com/Artversion, or just at Artversion.com. Thanks for Listening!

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Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick. Last week we took a stroll down content strategy lane, during that podcast I spoke about how the ideas of content strategy and how it can be connected to pretty much all of my other podcasts, and it is such a huge topic it will not be last time you hear about it. Now with content strategy still fresh in your mind I wanted to cover a topic that presents the ideas I said last week and the previous weeks but from a different angle. You probably have noticed that over the past couple of weeks our main focus has been about the internet, along with content, and how you can utilize these tools for your benefit, well I wanted to say these topics are extremely important but since the year is winding down, I wanted to cover a topic that is appropriate for this time of the year. For today’s show, we are going to discuss annual reports. Now I know that for many of you listening, the idea of annual reports is something that you do not want to hear just yet but to have a well-established and extraordinarily designed report, this is the time you need to start thinking about it. Today we are going to discuss a lot of different aspects pertaining to Annual Reports and we are basically going to cover what annual reports are, why we should utilize them, and a bunch of different CONTENT STRATEGIES that will your report be better than the best that is out there.

Now I may move fast because there are a lot of aspects we are going to be covering today, so let’s start out by giving a brief overview and explanation of Annual Reports.  To start I want to say that annual reports are an extraordinary way to connect with your stockholder and investors as well as give them an inside look into how your organization is running. Well, these reports are simply a way to report all your financial information that you have collaborated throughout the year and a way to compare it this year to past years and to predict your future financial status.

Why! We all want to know why we should present annual reports to stockholders, investors, and futures stockholders/investors. It is simple we all invest in different things because we see potential gain from them or it is something that we truly believe which is awesome but at times many of us are truly unaware of what is actually going on and sometimes we also forget the reason why we invest in something and annual reports do just that. Annual reports bring investors and stockholders up to date as well as give an actual inside look to see how an organization is performing. Annual reports give stockholders and investors a reason to stay with your organization, now we all know that sometimes we may have a rough year, and putting out a report sounds discouraging, which is sometimes right but on the other hand, you can use these reports to your advantage and build up a solid structure on what went wrong and how you are going to not only repair the miss haps but also strive to the future. This will help recognize that you are not giving up and you have a solid plan to get back on top. There are so many reasons I could talk about on how you can benefit from annual reports but frankly, that would take up too much time, now, on the other hand, there really is not a reason why should not put some kind of annual report.

Alright now it is time to talk about the content strategies annual reports, I know this is what everyone has been waiting for and it is going to be exciting. To start I want to talk about balancing your content on your annual reports. When comes to balancing your content, your audience does not want a bunch of pages with straight text followed by another group of pages will just numbers. Integrate your text and number content together so it is easy for the reader to understand exactly what they are looking at in terms of numbers.  But also balance out how you design and create each page to keep the readers experience a more enjoyable and interactive.

Now I would like to talk about explaining the concepts behind your products, your business, pretty much your livelihood within the reports. Everything your company does it great, but remember these reports do not always have to be about numbers, you are giving stockholders and investors an inside look into your organization so why give them a brief glance at how things are done, what goes on during all stages of creating your products, what makes your product so strong. Showing your audience these factors will help bring them in more, wanting more, and help bring others into your organization. To add on to this an important thing to note is to not be afraid to get personal. And when I say do not be afraid to get person, I am not just saying a letter from the CEO or President because those are a give every annual report should at least have something from the CEO or president in it. What I am talking about when I say do not be afraid to get personal is to go interview your employees the ones who work hard every day to keep your brand alive, the ones who are pushing to assemble parts for your products, talk to these employees, interview them and release their stories to the public, take significant quotes and put them in sections of the report that reflects off of their attributions to the company its self.  Now you may be wondering why I am telling to put these employees’ stories’ and quotes into your reports and it is because it establishes an emotional appeal for your audience. It is always more than exceptional to display numbers and explanations along with detailed timelines of how your company does business and those are things that are important but to create a real connection with your stockholders and investors throughout these reports you should add an emotional appeal to create that emotional connect with your organization.

Now let’s talk about your envelope and packaging design. First I just would like to clarify that print materials are still appropriate to use when establishing your annual report. Even though many organizations are strictly using digital reports, it is appropriate to provide both for your target audience.  Since we have established that both print and digital materials are both appropriate to use when pushing your annual reports, let’s start talking about the envelope and packaging design that goes into your annual reports. Now you might think that the design of the packaging that my report comes in is not really important and I should probably just use a plan package because the most important stuff is on the side, well this is not always the case. Your package design is one of the most important elements of your annual report because it is the first thing your audience will see before jumping into the report, so you will want a design that grasps your audience in wanting to report your report as well as reflects your organization’s brand and style that the report is designed in.

Annual Reports can be fun and exciting so why not go out and produce a product that will is more than just numbers on a piece of paper.

That is it for Episode 38 of the Rediscover Your Brand Podcast, I’m your host Mike McCormick and this has been brought to you by ArtVersion Interactive Agency! You may contact us on Facebook at Facebook.com/Artversion, on Twitter at Twitter.com/Artversion, or at Artversion.com. Thanks For Listening!

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Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick. Last week we took the path of photography and grasped a good amount of elements to help your organization advance into the photography world. This we are going to set our focus on content strategies. This is one of the most important topics we are going to cover and will include an overview of previous topics. I am pretty much going to go over what content strategy is and then go on to a how and why while relating content strategies back to previous topics throughout today’s show.

Let’s start out by talking about what content strategy is. First content is all the material that you make public, pretty much can be anything from articles, pictures, products, rants, raves, pretty much anything that you desire and you want to be known to the public is content. Now the strategy behind your content is really important, as much as you may want to make something public your target audience may not want to know that information, it may be unappealing as well as provide a lack of importance. The idea of content strategy comes from knowing your target audience and what content they want to see, hear, and even feel from your organization. Creating content that you believe in and is relevant to your audience is the best way to start your strategic planning.

When wondering why we need to push different strategies comes down to the simple answer of how you want your brand to be viewed. Our image and our brand are what make our organizations stay alive, they giving meaning and life to outsiders. Knowing how you want your brand to be viewed is the whole purpose behind content strategy. Our target audiences want to see specific things from our organizations but they do not know exactly what those things are yet because we have not created them. Our brands are viewed in a particular way because that’s how we want others to see them but we must remember that our audience is only going to see it that way if it is something they are looking for. However, this all comes down to making our content something that we believe in. It is easy to just give our target audience whatever they want, but if your organization does not really believe in what they are saying, you are not going to fool anyone. If you believe in everything you say your audience will believe in it too.

Knowing your target audience on all different media platforms has become crucial in today’s world. Content strategies must be applied on social sites also and not only on your website. Each social site provides your organization with a different target audience and knowing exactly what each audience is looking for, is what our organizations need. When you post content on a social site such as Facebook you will know that the Facebook audience is looking for a more out of the box simple experience that does not apply much effort but is still fun and different while those posts are awesome in their own right, they are not always appropriate for your LinkedIn audience, on LinkedIn they are looking for more of a professional tone with helpful tips in the business world, which may also lead over into your Pinterest page because your audience on Pinterest is usually looking for how-to and help tips but more on at-home manner than in office. Now you see that all these sites are similar but different in their own way so finding out which site has what type of audience will be crucial for your existence on the social web. Now your main site should have content for all users because you will want to bring back all your social followers to your main site and tailor to one community on your site may push other target audiences. So when it comes to content strategy and your target audiences remember to tailor your social sites to specific audiences and when it comes to your main site remember to have content that will connect all those individual audiences together.

Recycling and repackaging old content is not always a bad thing. You must remember that you control all your content and bringing items back in style is up to your own discretion. You may wonder sometimes or think about how you are going to be able to always come up with new exciting content that will amaze your audience and keep them in tune.  Well, you already have had amazing content, and expanding on what you have already is never a bad idea. Repackaging old content, bringing back to life, and taking a new angle will keep your audience coming back and back again and again. Remember that content brought them in and has kept them involved with your organization since, you do not have to keep re-posting the same content you and take different angles on it, expand it into a new topic, and also view it from a different light. We all know users like new things but if it cannot be connected to your already existing brand you will lose audience members. Your past is a pathway to the future for any organization and it works the same for your content, look at what you have done already and package or repackage new content with a similar feel to keep your audience coming back for more.

Lastly, before I wrap everything up I want to talk about SEO and how it is applied to your content. More SEO is an important topic and I briefly want to talk about it because there is an enough material for another podcast show. Now SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it basically is idea of raising your search engine ranking through your content. Now content is very important to SEO because of what you post will affect the ranking you will receive. Now with the new rules of SEO for a high ranking, you must obtain social sites and post content that reflects your organization. When building content for SEO purposes you should find out what is trending in your industry and build your content around it. Having content that reflects current trends will boost your SEO and boost your online traffic providing your organization with a much wider target audience.

Content Strategies is an extremely important aspect to an organization’s brand. These strategies help grow target audiences and help to raise awareness of how your organization is behaving in society. Having well-established content that truly believes in will keep organization ahead of the game.

That’s it for episode 37 of the Rediscover Your Brand podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick and this has been brought to you by ArtVersion Interactive Agency. You may contact us on Facebook at Facebook.com/Artversion, on Twitter at Twitter.com/Artversion or at Artversion.com. Thanks For Listening!

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