Digital Archives - Page 7 of 10

Our View On Instagram’s New Look

SO, WHAT’S CHANGED?

Logo

Instagram have updated its brand image with a new icon. The old iconic Polaroid has been ditched for a new purple and orange logo.

Taking inspiration from the previous design, Instagram have had a freshen up. Still in the form of a camera, the gradient colour format and the simplistic style give the app a clean and fresh look and feel.

Instagram said the new design reflected how the app, bought by Facebook for $1 billion four years ago, had transformed since it was created.

The move to the new logo has been met with mixed emotions, but Instagram assure us that as the app has changed from one where users uploaded photos to make them look more retro, to the social phenomenon it is today, they too have had to evolve.

The App

The inside of the app has also had a redesign, although the navigation and usage remains the same, there is now a new black and white design for backgrounds, icons and menus to make all those snaps really stand out and put a lot more emphasis on your photos and videos – as it should be right?

There are also some new filter options that users can use for their videos and photos! The old favourites, such as Valencia and Juno, are still there, but we are loving the additions. All you need to do is click the manage button, and there is a whole list to choose from.

Supporting Apps

Instagram have also updated the icons for their other supporting apps, including Boomerang and Layout. This has created a consistent brand identity across the Instagram family.

WHAT DO WE THINK?

The EDGE Team have mixed views on the new Instagram branding launch.

Although the brand’s updated look is a big change from the previous, vintage-style Polaroid icon, we think that we will learn to love the new icon and its vibrant colours. However, we do feel that Instagram may have taken its inspiration from PowerPoint, using a gradient we have all seen and probably used in our presentations!

We think that the updated platform has a bit of a feminine look and feel, due to both its icon colour (using pink, purple, yellow and orange gradients) as well as the chic, clean-cut black and white colour scheme.

Some of us also think the changes make the app look much tidier, and maybe even corporate. It has a more professional feel, as we all become more professional in our photography skills!

The choice of new filters is also a big plus to the platform’s update. Although Instagram hasn’t changed the way you navigate around the app, it has added a whole range of photo and video filters for us to experiment with. Hours of fun, and we will be playing with the new filters for weeks! How will we ever choose now?

The Instagram community has evolved, grown and become even more diverse over the last 5 years, hence the reason for the updated look and feel. With over 80 million filtered photos and videos being shared daily, Instagram’s new and professional feel has come along just in time! And overall, EDGE think the change is healthy and we are all going to have to embrace the update, and for some of us who don’t instantly love it, we will learn to. Change is good!

Instagram: What do the Changes Mean?

WHAT’S CHANGED?

Facebook changed its posting system to an algorithmic feed in 2009. This meant that rather than seeing everything posted by everyone you’re friends with in a chronological order, you only see what Facebook thinks is most relevant to you. When Facebook did this back in 2009 people voiced their outrage. So will making the same changes to Instagram cause the same reaction to the platform’s 300 million users?

WHY HAVE THE CHANGES BEEN MADE?

Since the launch of the algorithm, some have heralded it as ‘one of the most annoying features’ of Facebook, but Instagram assure us that the change has been made with the best interests of the user in mind – personalising our online experience.

Instagram’s statement clarified that the changes would only affect the ordering of posts, not whether they appeared at all: “All the posts will still be there, just in a different order”.

Kevin Systrom, the co-founder and CEO of Instagram, said that “On average, people miss about 70 per cent of the posts in their Instagram feed. What this is about is making sure that the 30 per cent you see is the best 30 per cent possible.”

IS THIS REALLY WHAT USERS OF INSTAGRAM WANT?

For people who use Instagram to look at friends’ and family’s profiles, this change may be beneficial as posts won’t be missed through irregular use of the platform. However, for people who use Instagram more regularly, using it for inspiration, to sell their products and for those who shot to Insta-fame, the changes may mean they are now at a disadvantage.

Drops in engagement, including likes and follows, have already been reported by many brands. And with no guarantee surrounding the number of people seeing your posts, it could affect how much those who make money from the platform can ask from advertisers.

The change could also be an issue for brands, because although follower numbers will continue to increase, engagement is no longer a given. Follower count will become less relevant, and brands will need to work harder to create more engaging content to keep users clicking; otherwise, the relationship between the two will drop, and so will the opportunity to appear at the top of users’ feeds.

The way smaller companies and brands are attempting to combat this and to ensure their posts are still seen, is by asking all their current followers to turn on their notifications so that they will be notified each time they have posted something new, this spiked the campaign #turnmeon which many celebrities even joined in on.

HOW CAN YOU KEEP YOUR AUDIENCE ENGAGED?

Use Quality Images

Instagram is a visual platform, and if you’re not up to the standards, you are not even in the engagement race.

Post Regularly

Providing content regularly is key to keeping your Instagram engagement rates high. You need to keep your followers looking forward to something new.

It is recommended that you post every day or at least 5 or 6 times per week. That’s a bare minimum.

On the other hand, you shouldn’t post too much. Somewhere between 3 and 5 times per day is the maximum.

According to a study from CoSchedule, the best times to post on Instagram are:

Monday and Thursday at any time other than 3–4 p.m.
Videos any day at 9 p.m.–8 a.m.
Experiment with 2 a.m., 5 p.m., and Wednesday at 7 p.m.

Use Hashtags That Are Relevant To You

You only have one chance to get your image noticed in the grid before it quickly gets lost.

Your hashtags should be specific and related to your business. Don’t choose the hashtags that have millions of posts related to them.

Interact

When someone comments on your post, always respond. Always write back.

Responding shows how much you value your followers and your community.

Promote Your Account on Your Other Platforms

If you have Twitter, Facebook, YouTube as well and Instagram, make sure you connect all of these to spread your content.

Mention your Instagram account on your website, in your blog posts, and even on your printed materials.

Give your followers on other networks a sample of the great content they will only find on your Instagram account.

Only time will tell if this new way of feeding information to Instagram users will work as it has for Facebook.

But what is the bigger picture? Instagram is now home to a lot of brands. So, are we now seeing the beginning of a move towards monetising Instagram, where organic reach will be limited and posts will need to be boosted to ensure they reach larger audiences? Or, will we be able to pay to get our content posted on specific audiences’ feeds, like on Twitter?. Let us know what you think, tweet us @EDGE_Creative.

Wearable Advertising: Where Do We Start?

THE BENEFITS OF WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY

CES is one of the biggest tech events of the year. Taking place over 4 days in Las Vegas, it is internationally renowned for attracting the biggest and best names in the industry. Tech companies are given a platform to showcase their latest gadgets and ideas to the world.

Back in January, we saw both the weird and the wonderful come out of CES. Visitors got the first glimpses of foldable TVs, consumer drones and even a 4D motion sofa. But what stood out head and shoulders above the rest was the number of wearables that will be coming to market over the next few months and years.

Research by Gartner reported that 50% of respondents said they would buy a smartwatch over a fitness band because it offers more mobile functionalities than fitness bands including all the health apps. Wearables represent the next step in technological advancement and realistically they are only the humble beginnings of where this technology could take us.

So now wearable tech is no longer the stuff of science fiction, how can we as marketers plan, build and design advertising for it?

Mobile ad spend in the UK now accounts for over one-fifth (23%) of all digital advertising, according to the IAB UK’s figures. In February last year, Cisco forecast that global wearable device connections would total 578 million in 2019, compared with 170 million in 2015.

You may think that advertising on smartwatches will just be a natural progression from your mobile marketing, taking on many of the same do’s and don’ts. However, as this technology is still in its infancy, any advertising will require further research and understanding.

KNOW YOUR LIMITS

Before you start any advertising you need to understand the limitations of the device. Although similar to mobiles, the features of a smartwatch are extensively limited in comparison. You are going to be working with an even smaller screen than mobile. Most smartwatches measure in at just 2 inches – that’s up to a third smaller than some mobiles! You will, therefore, need to use micro-layouts to deliver what you want to say. Wearable-friendly content is going to be the key to success with experts saying that you will have 2 seconds to capture your audience’s attention. So any information is going to need to be taken in at a glance, especially within adverts.

WHERE TO START

Due to the size of the space you have to work with, your campaign is going to need to be an adaptation of your mobile campaign for tablet and mobile. It’s advisable, as with mobile, to design the layout first thinking about where text, multimedia such as video or images can go and then write the content with the reduced layout in mind. This will make sure you are in the right mind frame to write your content.

WHAT TO FEATURE

Marketing Tech News reported that ‘Industry analysts are falling over themselves to predict an explosion in the Internet of Things (IoT) over the next few years with the introduction and adoption of connected cars, appliances, wearable technology, and more.’ Although we’re not there yet, it is an important point that you will also need to know the special features and specifications of each device. As with mobiles, these will be interchangeable depending on the device so keep that in mind. There are already some common features found on many smartwatches which you should include in your brainstorming session when thinking about how your campaign will shape up. These include:

Health sensors
Access to texts and phone calls
Voice recognition (Siri and Google)
GPS

As wearable technology advances and more and more people buy the products, advertising on these devices could be a great addition to any marketing strategy. But this will only happen if it is done correctly by brands in a way that consumers find easy to use and digest.

How to Make Your Emailers Mobile Responsive

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO MAKE YOUR EMAILS MOBILE-RESPONSIVE?

After analysing 6 million email campaigns, Campaign Monitor reported that back in 2013, 41% of emails were opened on mobile devices and only 28% were opened on desktop. Times have moved on since 2013 and mobile now dominates in an even bigger way. In general, users will initially glance over an email on their phone and if they are interested they will use a desktop to look into it further.

The main issue with making emailers responsive is that there are so many different types of phones available with different screen sizes and capacities. One size does not fit all, which creates problems for marketers. These problems include small fonts, narrow columns and broken layouts.

HERE ARE SEVERAL TIPS TO MAKE SURE YOUR EMAILS ARE RESPONSIVE

Always design mobile first – There is a huge difference between the way emails are displayed on desktop and mobile. By designing your emailer for mobile firs, it not only helps you to keep the message simple but also means you will think about whether the content is readable and easy to navigate on a smaller screen.

Single column layouts work best – This is because they can stack elegantly rather than being stretched or squished. For best results ensure your layouts are no wider than 500 to 600 pixels. This will mean that if the email does fall apart it will do so more gracefully.

Links and buttons – These should have a minimum target area of 44×44 pixels to make sure that it’s clickable on a small screen.

Keep your message concise – Place all important elements at the beginning of the email. We are an extremely time-poor society so we don’t want to be scrolling for days to get to the point of the email.

Think about your font – Is the text large enough to make it readable on the small screen? Are your conversion points visible and obvious to click?

Customer Journey – Very few marketing campaigns stop at the emailer. We are most often asked to click through to another page to finish an action. Therefore, you need to think about how your landing page looks and works as well as your email. We may take the time to view an email on more than one device but when it comes to landing pages we are less likely to and this can increase bounce rates. Unfortunately, we are fairly unforgiving, so if something doesn’t work instantly we have no time for it.

Think about imagery – Use images thoughtfully throughout the email as they can stretch and distort when resized. Try to stay away from pictures of people as the crop on images like these matter. If a head is cut off it will ruin the overall effect of your emailer. Instead use images such as patterns, landscapes or repeated squares that are not reliant on being one size. It then doesn’t matter where the image is cropped.
Test – The key to success is to test your emailer on different devices before you send it out to check that it doesn’t break and that all the links and click-throughs work. You will then know whether your emailer is responsive.

What is SEO? Search Engine Optimisation Basics

WHAT IS SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO)?

In simple terms, Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is the process of gaining more traffic to your website from search engines like Google or Bing.

Many search engines exist, but we’ll refer to Google throughout this blog as it is the search engine with the largest index of web pages.

Every time a user searches for a word or phrase, known as a search query, Google reviews all the web pages available on the internet that might match that search.

Let’s imagine, for example, that you’re a web developer. A search query that might be relevant for you would be: “Do I need a new website?”

WHY IS SEO IMPORTANT?

Without implementing SEO practices into your marketing strategy, your online visibility will be reduced, meaning your sales and lead potential will be limited. How can you market your web development services online if potential clients can’t find your website?

SEO is the process of driving ‘free’ and relevant traffic to your website by helping your website appear on the search page after a user searches for a service or product you offer. This is typically preferable to other visibility methods, such as paid advertising on Google or social media.

By free, we mean that you don’t pay to rank higher.

With an increased level of relevant traffic to your website, combined with an optimal user experience, you’ll benefit from:

Improved visibility and brand awareness
More leads and sales
A strong foundation for other forms of marketing.

HOW DOES SEO WORK?

If done correctly, when fresh content is published on your website, Google bots (also known as “spiders”) will crawl your website and review its web pages.

Google will then index the page(s), meaning it becomes available to view on the internet.

Each time a search query is entered into the search engine, Google will rank the page based on several factors, including, but not limited to, relevancy to the user’s search query and technical performance, such as speed and authority.

However, Google alone has an index of trillions of web pages. This means you’re battling against countless other websites trying to reach the number one position in those search results.

If the SEO strategy for your page is successful, that new page will appear on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for relevant searches.

Watch Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, explain how search works.

GOOGLE SERP STRUCTURE

A user has searched Google for “website designers” and is directed to a SERP.

At the top, you have ‘paid’ results – these are advertisements that owners have paid for to appear at the top of the page. This is known as Pay Per Click marketing or PPC for short. These paid results can take multiple forms depending on the type of promotion.

Underneath the adverts, you then have the ‘organic’ results. This is where you’re vying against your competitors for your webpage to appear higher on the list.

TYPES OF SEO

There are many subtypes of SEO, which can be grouped into the three main categories discussed below. These factors work in unison to judge and improve the ranking of your website.

WHAT IS ON-PAGE SEO?

On-page SEO refers to everything we can optimise directly on the website, including:

Keywords – these are the phrases that you’re trying to rank your web page for, such as “web designers in Birmingham.”

Content – your webpage(s) should include the relevant keywords and other associated phrases and topics.

Internal linking – visitors to your website should be able to easily navigate to this page from other areas of your website. This includes the main navigation menu, from category pages, or other related blog posts.

Page speed – people are impatient, and Google knows this. So, if your website doesn’t load quickly, you’re at a severe disadvantage when compared to your faster competitors.

WHAT IS OFF-PAGE SEO?

Off-page SEO refers to techniques that don’t occur directly on your website. This can include social media, email marketing, and more, but in most cases, we’re talking about Link Building.

Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to yours. For example, your client may write a blog about the new website you’ve built for them and might choose to credit you and link directly to your website from that blog.

Links indicate to Google that your website is popular, relevant, and trustworthy. The more quality backlinks pointing to your site, the more authoritative it is, and the higher the chance Google ranks you above everyone else.

Backlinks are singular, meaning that if a single client links to your website three times, you have three separate backlinks.

WHAT IS TECHNICAL SEO?

Technical SEO refers to the overall quality of your website’s structure, referring to how well your website is built. There are a few subcategories that Google uses to determine this, including:

Page speed – we have discussed loading speed before, but it’s worth another mention in technical SEO. Google prioritises faster web pages as they provide an overall better user experience.

Mobile-friendliness – your website’s mobile performance is an essential ranking factor. This is what Google ranks you on, regardless of whether you gain more traffic from mobile devices or not. Mobile friendliness is especially important in E-Commerce SEO.

User experience – your clients should be able to find what they need when they visit your website. If not, they’ll likely get frustrated and leave, meaning you’ve lost out on a potential lead.

WHAT ARE THE NEXT STEPS?

Now that you understand the basics of what SEO is, what should your next steps be?

Learn how your SEO is currently performing and how you’re faring against your competitors by claiming your FREE SEO and web audit. We’ll send you an easy-to-understand presentation along with our pricing should you wish to start a campaign with us.

Alternatively, discover how we fully manage an SEO campaign by understanding the processes we go through.

LET’S START A CONVERSATION

As a search engine optimisation company, we’ve helped businesses throughout the UK boost web traffic, grow their customer base, and increase leads and revenue.

We can handle all your marketing needs, from website design and development to social media management and content generation.

If you’d like to find out more about what we do, get in touch by emailing info@edge-creative.com or calling the office on 0121 355 8092.

Search Engine Marketing – Content is King

As Bob said, Times are a-changing. But is your brand ready?

We’re entering an age where brands are seeking new and innovative ways to build relationships with their customers; you’ll see examples of this everywhere you turn. Continue reading “Search Engine Marketing – Content is King”

The Importance of Email Marketing – Best Practices

A form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating marketing messages.

Now we know one definite fact about marketing – that without it, no one would know or have any impression about your brand, product or service… It’s quite simply essential for business.

The digital age has firmly shaken the world’s hand and taken a seat in the boardroom of marketing considerations. Brands across the globe are innovating their marketing practices to consider consumer behaviour regarding digital technology and online interaction, and email marketing is right up there as a leading marketing practice.

According to the think tank organisation, Pew Research Centre, email is the most popular activity on smartphone and tablets. Modern technology has given rise to the possibility that emails can be opened anywhere and at anytime.

ExactTarget state, 90% of smartphone owner’s access the same email account on mobile and desktop.

According to a Smith-Harmon survey, 76 percent of subscribers have made purchases from an email-marketing message.

69% of email recipients report email as spam based solely on the subject line while 35% of email recipients open email based on the subject line alone.

(Source: Convince and Convert)

Email marketing not only influences online purchases but can also spur offline spending in the physical world.

So what does this mean? Well, there’s a lot to consider so here are our top tips to help you on your way.

TOP TIPS FOR EMAIL MARKETING

1) Create 2 or 3 Business Objectives – Keep it Simple

What do you want to tell your recipients, and more importantly, why is it of benefit to them?

2) Focus on Quality Rather Than Quantity

Hitting fewer people who your brand has developed a strong relationship with will result in far better results than hitting random people who don’t know you. However, there are times when purchasing a database can be a viable route but you must ensure the data is current and again quality in terms of your target audience.
Keep this database cleansed and up-to-date!

3) Create a Tailored Message

Ensure you understand what the point of your email piece is, because if you don’t, then your recipients certainly won’t. Refer back to your list of business objectives; understand the needs and desires of your recipients and augment the creativity of the visual and copy to evoke the reaction you desire.

Make the subject line stand out
Ensure clarity of copy and keep it simple
Get to the point of what you’re trying to say
Place a strong call to action that’s easy to see and act upon

4) Test and Analyse the Response

Have reporting tools in place to monitor the impact of your email marketing on online activity. Test the emailer before distribution, make sure everything renders appropriately across different email clients.

A few key statistics to check post the email campaign are bounce rates (emails that weren’t delivered), open rates vs time of distribution and click-throughs.

5) Ensure Consistency and Continuity

An email campaign is exceptionally useful in stimulating and maintaining visitor traffic over some time. Understand your business objectives and gauge whether a burst campaign over a short period is best, perhaps for a sales promotion or a drip campaign where you wish to increase brand perception and awareness.

6) Permission is Paramount

To ensure the quality of your subscription list, devise ways in which you can obtain explicit consent to send e-marketing to recipients. Create subscription areas across your online portfolio, provide downloads or helpful documentation that people can gain access to by supplying you with their data.

Permission is crucial to avoiding the possibility that your emails become spam and end up in the bin!

Why Should My Business Blog?

Since the world has taken to the Internet to communicate, predominantly via social networking sites, blogging has become a very viable route of attracting audiences and readership. However, are businesses making the most of this online behaviour? Continue reading “Why Should My Business Blog?”