What should your business be doing with social media?
Should your business be on social media? To answer this question, simply ask – are your customers on social media?
The answer is likely a yes, considering how many folks use social media these days. Virtually everyone, every business and organization, and even dogs have an account on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or some other site. Odds are good that most of your customers already use one or more of the many social media networks. This means that unless your business is making the most of its social media opportunities, then you’re probably not maximizing your marketing potential.
Social media marketing has many benefits. First of all, it’s free. Most social media platforms don’t charge money to activate, access, or post. The advertisements, specials, and other promotions your business can run on social media will reach both existing customers whom you have already engaged, as well as their friends with similar interests who are potential new customers – social media marketing is viral in nature. With social media you can reach a large customer audience (Facebook alone has over a billion users).
Paid advertisements on social media obviously cost money, but they also offer “geo-targeting,” which works within the social media to direct your message to the most relevant audiences. This means paid social media ads can offer a better return on investment than many other ad mediums.
Publishing on social media can be done almost instantly, so you don’t have to wait for the turnaround and production time that other media may require.
Your business can increase traffic to its website by using social media to direct customers there. If you do not yet have a website, a social media page can serve as your business’s online presence until you get a site up and running.
Social media also allows you to better interact with and understand both your customers and other businesses. You’ll be able to see what your markets are up to, based on their posts and comments. You’ll also be able to communicate directly with your audience, since customers will be able to message you and post on your business’s wall. This allows for new channels of customer service.
Of course, just because most social media is “free” doesn’t mean it comes entirely without cost. An effective social media page takes time and effort to be managed. Accounts must be checked several times a day to make sure your business is maintaining the presence it wants.
Since social media can be published quickly, it also means most messages have a short shelf life before they’re buried at the bottom of everyone’s news feeds. Social media must be updated regularly to stay fresh to your audience. Customers expect a quick response when they message you or post on your wall. Your business must also be prepared to account for and mitigate negative comments if they are posted on your wall. A poorly maintained social media account can look bad in the eyes of customers and hurt a business’s reputation.
Often, a business may not have the social media savvy it takes to build a quality presence, or they may not be able to afford the time and effort that social media requires. That’s where O2 Creative comes into play. We’re experienced with all kinds of social media for all kinds of businesses. We can offer advice and consulting on better social media practices, or we can even manage accounts for businesses. We’ll help your business utilize social media to its maximum potential, and get you better connected with your market.
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Digital vs. Print Media
Digital vs. Print Media
Nowadays, consumers are exposed to digital media at least as much as print. The growing prevalence of smart phones and tablets, and the wireless networks that connect them, mean that more and more folks will view media on a digital device. Of course, this also means more and more consumers will view advertisements on digital devices as well.
For marketing and advertising, digital media has several benefits. It can be less expensive than print media, depending on the details of each campaign. Digital campaigns can also usually be produced, launched, and updated faster than print.
Digital media can be interactive in several ways. A promotion on social media allows for marketers to communicate directly with consumers, using messaging, commenting, tweeting, wall posting, and other methods to answer questions and offer incentives. Users are also usually able to search for a digital document, or search within the document itself. A digital advertisement could also be interactive, such as a game or contest that allows for participation and further engages consumers.
Digital ads allow for relatively more control over exactly who sees them than print ads, so marketers can more easily target them toward specific demographics. Many digital ads can generate consumer information as well, offering insight over who exactly is viewing the ads. For instance, Google AdWords and Facebook Ads offer analysis on user trends and successful referrals generated by the advertisements.
This is not to say that print media is dying out – not by a long shot. Print media offers a more physical, tangible medium to consumers. It’s something folks can take with them. It’s more professional, more convenient, and just nicer to be able to give someone a brochure or business card instead of having to say, “Hey, let me email you real fast” or “Hey, go find me on Facebook real quick” every time you want to make a contact.
Print ads can also have a localized presence that’s much harder to achieve with digital media. Signs and banners can create attention and help consumers physically find you. Well placed posters, flyers, and other print media can be distributed within a community to help generate exposure and direct consumers to you. Plenty of consumers also still get information from print media such as newspapers and magazines.
So which one is better – digital or print? That’s a complex and nuanced question, but we think there’s really only one good answer – BOTH.
Each medium has unique advantages, so a good campaign should incorporate both digital and print media. The best ad campaigns utilize the right combination of media, depending on market size and scope, demographic targets, products or services offered, budgetary considerations, and other factors. Certain consumers are best reached on digital media, others still prefer print. The right combination of media channels allows for the best communication with your entire consumer audience, and also maximizes your campaign’s return on investment as well.
At O2 Creative we work extensively with both digital and print media. We can create the most innovative advertisements and get them distributed on the most effective media channels, whether it may be digital, print, or the right combination of both.
After all, the end goal isn’t simply to debate whether digital or print media is better. The end goal is to create a campaign that will be most successful for you.
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SEO – what it is, and what it does
We’ve had more and more questions lately about search engine optimization, or SEO. What is it? How does it work? What does it afford me and my website? The answers to these questions can get pretty long-winded and technical, but we’ll try our best to keep it short and sweet.
Search engines (like Google) work in 3 ways. First, they “crawl” the Internet, or use algorithmic computer programs to fetch data from websites. These programs determine which sites to crawl, how often to crawl them, and how many pages to fetch from each site. The programs do this by using data from previous searches, as well as sitemap data provided by webmasters – you know, the webmasters who design websites to be optimized for search engines.
Next, the search engine programs use all that data they obtained from crawling to create a massive index of the Internet. This index includes the words on webpages as well as other info, such as key content tags and attributes designed by webmasters to help search engines find websites.
Finally, when a user conducts a search, the search engine serves up search results based on what indexed data appears to be most relevant. Relevancy is based on many factors, including content keywords, behind-the-scenes website data, and PageRank, which is the measure of importance of a page based on how many other webpages link to it. Webmasters who design sites for SEO optimization account for these relevancy factors to improve the ranking of a page in search results.
In plainer terms, webmasters who optimize your website for SEO do lots of things both to a site’s displayed content and a site’s architecture to make sure your website can be found when folks search for it. Because, if no one can find your site, what good does it do?
It should be noted that search engines don’t accept payment to crawl sites more frequently. There are indeed paid advertisements that will appear as “sponsored links,” but the “organic” search results appear based on whose site is the most relevant and best optimized, not who paid the most to get it there.
And since websites are added and updated virtually all the time, SEO also must be continuously managed for the best keywords, content tags, and links. This is what we do at O2 Creative.
When clients ask us to manage websites for SEO, we consider it an ongoing process. We’re constantly making sure all the content and all the design and all the architecture and every other little thing about a site is as current and complete as possible. We’ll continually look at your website, consider what search engines think of it, how it compares to competitors, how many other Internet users will end up linking to it, and many other factors to make sure your site stays optimized.
Because we want to keep our clients and their websites…well…relevant!
Click here for our next blog post – digital vs. print media!
The importance of mobile websites
How many folks access the Internet on mobile devices? Quite a few, actually, and the numbers continue to grow. Experts predict that by 2014, more people will surf the ‘net on mobile devices than on desktop computers. That means more and more people will be doing business on mobile devices as well. They’ll be using their smart phones and tablets from anywhere and everywhere to access the websites of businesses like…well, you.
Of course, just because customers can find your website on mobile devices doesn’t necessarily mean their mobile experience with your website will be a good one. If your website isn’t designed to be viewed on mobile devices, then it probably doesn’t have the right graphics, buttons, navigation screens, sizes, and other details to make it easy to view on a smart phone or tablet. It can make your website look disorderly and unprofessional, which is not the impression you want to be giving customers. You should make the effort to get your website mobile-friendly. It’ll make more and more of your customers happy, which will undoubtedly make you happy, too!
75% of customers prefer a mobile-friendly website when surfing the net on their mobile devices. That means if you indeed have a mobile-friendly website, then the majority of mobile device customers will favor you over…oh, say, your competitor who doesn’t have a mobile-friendly website.
Roughly half of customers say they are less likely to do business with someone if a mobile website experience was bad. They think it’s indicative of a business that just doesn’t care. But, of course you care! That’s why you should develop your mobile site – to please the customers. Before, you know, the customers just stop bothering with you and start doing business with somebody else.
Long story short, an optimized mobile website pleases your customers because it makes doing business with you that much easier, whenever, wherever. If you don’t have a good mobile website, then your customer’s experience with your website may not be good, either. It could frustrate your customers, which could cause them to simply do business elsewhere, and ultimately end up tarnishing your entire brand image. Don’t let that happen.
At O2 Creative, we’ve optimized websites for businesses large and small. We make sure a website is clean and easy to navigate from any smart phone or tablet, anywhere and at any time. So if you want to mobile-optimize your website, or create a dedicated mobile site, then come talk to us. Trust us – your customers, and everyone else involved in your business, will appreciate it.
Click here for more information about mobile websites in the original Yahoo article.
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O2 Creative’s new brand logo!
At O2 Creative, we’re always trying to keep things fresh. New concepts, new perspectives, new designs, and new ideas are just another day in the life for us. We’re constantly trying to push the limits for both our clients and ourselves. We strive for a spirit of innovation, and avoid simply reworking the same old tricks.
That’s why we’ve recently decided to rebrand ourselves.
(Considering we spend so much time thinking up new branding for so many other businesses, we thought it was only appropriate to give ourselves a new look as well.)
With our new logo, we went with a design we think is clean, cool, and one-of-a-kind, just like everything else about O2 Creative. We hope you like it, because we sure do.
We want a brand to be unique and recognizable, as individual as the company it represents. We look for branding designs that are contemporary without just being trendy; timeless without being dated; something that will make folks stop and wonder, “Why didn’t we think of that?”
We believe every business should stop and revisit their brand identity every now and then. A well-executed rebranding can improve a business’s presence within its market. It can generate attention from new audiences while also revitalizing the interest of existing customers. And it can ultimately refresh a business’s identity to help it move onto bigger and better things.
If you’re a new startup that is trying to establish an identity, or an existing operation that is thinking it’s time for an updated look, let us know. We’d love to help you design a brand that is sure to make your presence known in your market and your community. And since it’s coming from the clever folks at O2 Creative, you know your new brand is going to be original and exclusive, instantly recognizable yet unlike anything anyone has ever seen.
In other words, we’re all about the freshest, most exceptional brand designs. Because cookie cutters are for baking, not branding.
To the left is our new logo, which is the one representing us going forward. For reference, our old logo is to the right, which you still may see around from time to time. It has served us well, but over time we decided it wasn’t quite as identifiable as we wanted it to be, and ultimately agreed it was time for a crisper design.
Click here for our next blog post – mobile websites!
Winter Park Jazz Festival Design
Winter Park Jazz Festival 2013, graphic design for all collateral, online design, print design. Winter Park, Colorado’s favorite playground present the 2013 Jazz Festival design.