Proliferation

Jul 28
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What Is Responsive and Adaptive Web Design?

By | web development, website design | No Comments

Website design is ever-evolving, and part of that is because how we view websites is constantly changing. According to the Global Web Index, 80 percent of people in the states view the internet on their phone. Additionally, 47 percent surf the web on their tablet, and 37 percent use their game consoles. Using a PC or laptop is still the most popular way at 91 percent, but new technologies such as smart televisions and smart watches are also becoming new platforms for people to search the internet.

What this means for website design is that you have to come up with design techniques that best benefit the user’s experience with any given website. Two of the more prominent website design choices have been responsive design and adaptive design. They sound like synonyms for one another, but they offer different approaches to how someone should experience a site.

Responsive Design

Responsive websites are flexible and fluid, and they respond to the size of your web browser. So for example, if you have your browser open at full screen on your laptop but then minimize the screen to only half of your desktop, you’ll see the website resize along with your browser.

Adaptive Design

Adaptive chooses static layouts over a responsive website design approach. Adaptive design detects what size your browser is at, and it’ll load the layout it believes is the best fit for your browser size. Traditionally, adaptive design layouts have about six adaptive layouts for the six most common screen widths. So for example, if you have your browser’s width at 320, the adaptive design will load its layout for that screen width; and if you expand that screen width to 1200, the adaptive layout will then load its design for that size. The design will only adapt to a new layout when the browser hits specific widths.

Which Design Should You Use?

You generally have more control over what your website looks like with adaptive design because you’re deciding how users experience your website at any given size. With responsive, the user gets to view the site how they please, but this usually makes more work for your website design strategy because you’ll have to consider every type of layout size a user could put your website through.

Jul 27
0

Three Ways to Combat Writer’s Block

By | content marketing | No Comments

Writer’s block doesn’t always mean that you have to stare at a wall for hours until an idea hits you; on the contrary, you should view writer’s block as a way to formulate new, fresh ideas. Content marketing doesn’t have to be tough — especially if you’re producing a high volume of content for clients all over Utah and beyond. But with a few simple tips, you can get out of that rut that you’ve been in for the past few hours. Here are three pointers to help you break out of your writer’s block — without throwing anything at your kitchen walls.

writers-block-real

Jul 26
0

Advertising During the Olympics Faces Change

By | advertising, marketing agencies | No Comments

Advertising for the Olympics is second only to advertising done during the super bowl. Marketing agencies across the country are pulling up a chair and grabbing their popcorn to watch. This year, the marketing changes put in place by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will make it one we can’t forget.

Exclusivity Is No More

For years brands like Coca Cola, Nike and McDonalds had a “You can’t sit with us!” kind of attitude. These 40 official Olympic sponsors created a blackout for all other advertisers. The other advertisers weren’t allowed to use the athletes or any Olympic intellectual property that might detract from these few special weeks. Athletes couldn’t even tweet a “Thank you!” to their promoters if their sponsors weren’t part of the special 40 club.

After complaints from athletes who pointed out that this was the only time the great people of America know their names, the IOC made the decision to even the playing field for other advertisers. Marketing agencies that represent these athletes now have the opportunity to feature them in generic ads throughout the entirety of the summer Olympics.

Companies like Under Armor are shouting for joy. Under Armor supports 250 athletes during the games. They have already included Michael Phelps in their newest “Rule Yourself” campaign.

Step Your Game Up

Some are complaining that evening the playing field is going to ruin the prestige that came with being part of the exclusive 40. The toughest of the marketing agencies are saying, “Bring it on.” No, I’m not quoting the cheerleader movie (Go Toros!).

Top agencies are promising to fight for the customer’s attention. Great advertising campaigns are more important than they ever were before. Who will get the gold and who’s about to belly flop? Turn off “Pokemon Go” during the commercials, because you are bound to see some legendary material.

Jul 22
0

Differences Between Web Design and Web Development

By | web development, website design | No Comments

Just because web development and website design sound the same, doesn’t mean they are. Think of it like dessert and desert. They sound similar, sure, but they couldn’t be further from each other.

To break it down in its simplest terms, web development deals with coding and making a website that’s accessible to users, and website design deals with the aesthetics and creative design aspects of a website. They’re both important to have and one doesn’t really work without the other.

What a Web Designer Does

From the outside, people might think website design is just picking what colors the site should have and what fonts you should use. They do that, but that’s barely a fraction of the job.

Designers conceptualize what they want the website to look like. Once they go through every painstaking detail that comes with choosing a cohesive and pleasing design, they then start creating a wireframe for the site. A wireframe is essentially a blueprint for the website. It’s a visual guide that gives an example of how the website should look through a skeletal framework.

What a Web Developer Does

Remember how in every other scene in “The Matrix” there was a person frantically typing on a computer? What they were doing was coding, and that’s pretty much what web development is: coding and putting together a website. Once the design has been established and the wireframe is completed, a web developer will turn that concept into reality by coding the website. Developers might use HTML, Javascript or another coding language to make a website come to life.

What They Have in Common

It might not seem like there’s a lot of middle ground between the two positions, but they have some similarities with each other. Just like web development, website design requires you to understand a formula or flow of how a website should look. And just like a web designer, web developers need to be creative sometime with their code, and they need to think outside of the box to create a site that fits a designer’s needs.

Jul 22
0

Reasons Why Social Media Is Important to SEO

By | SEO, Utah, Utah SEO | No Comments

If your SEO strategy doesn’t involve social media, then please, fire your SEO team. Social media and SEO go together like cookies and milk. If you want your company’s reach to go beyond the borders of Utah, you’ll need to integrate an SEO strategy that involves social media.

Social Media Boosts Your Link Building Like Crazy

In its simplest definition, SEO is about building links to your website, and social media is about engaging with people and promoting the things you care about. Let’s say your company that’s based in Utah has 500 followers on Twitter. If you post a link to an article or a page from your website on Twitter, that post has a chance of being shared by at least a quarter of your followers. Every time that link is shared, it will go to a whole new audience outside of Utah that you couldn’t reach.

Twitter handles 19 billion search queries a month (that’s five times more than Bing), and if your tweet is shared enough, it could be prominently displayed as a search result on Twitter. If your tweet comes across the eyes of an influential site, they could feature it on their site, and that would boost your SEO on Google immensely. People from outside of Utah will take notice of your company.

Having an Active Social Media Presence Builds Traffic to Your Website

SEO will boost your website’s presence on search results, but that doesn’t mean you get a large returning audience. Social Media builds a real audience that brings real traffic to your website — but that’s only if you have an active social media presence. Interact with your followers and post links to your site, and you’ll see your web traffic go up.

Social Media Works as Quality Control for Your Site

Social media can be brutal sometimes. If your followers don’t like what you wrote, they’ll be sure to tell you. Or maybe you post a link to an article that gets no likes or shares. That probably means the post wasn’t interesting to your audience. Your audience knows what they want and don’t want, and if you respond to how they interact, you’ll be able to make more content that your followers want to see, which boosts your traffic and your presence online. This comes back to the idea of having quality over quantity. You need a lot of links to build up your SEO potential, but don’t let your quality slip in the process.

Jul 20
0

The Gaga Principle: Making Your Content Stand Out

By | content marketing, Utah | No Comments

In the past few years, content marketing has exploded from a relatively new concept to the industry standard. Everyone from marketers in Utah to entrepreneurs on the East Coast creates content, which means it’s becoming ever more difficult to be relevant. With so much content available, how can you make your content stand out?

Take a minute and think about Lady Gaga. That’s right, Gaga. You’re thinking, “What in the world does Lady Gaga have to do with content marketing in Utah?” Well, wherever she goes, the woman stands out. Her popularity soared because she was able to find a niche audience and give them what they wanted.

Being relevant in content marketing follows this same principle — the Gaga principle, if you will. The Gaga principle states that to be relevant your content must be unique, be directed to a specific audience and be valuable to that audience.

When we say that your content should be unique, you say, “duh.” However, creating unique content is easier said than done. Writers tend to glean inspiration from others, but if you search “content marketing in Utah” and then write an article about the exact same topic as the top article on the web, you’re just saying something somebody else has said in a different way. Search the web for ideas, but instead of looking at what is out there, ask yourself, “What isn’t in these search results? What is missing?” That’s what you should write about.

The more specific your audience, the better. The most common problem when creating content is trying to appeal to multiple audiences at once. Pick one, and the more niche the audience the better. Don’t just write for adults ages 18–30. Write for adults ages 18–30 in Utah who own dogs. When this demographic searches, your content will appear instead of being lost in a sea of hundreds of pieces.

After you select a niche audience, write content that is valuable to them. The best content gives people useful information. A good rule of thumb is that the more in-depth your content is, the more valuable your content will be.

You can make your content relevant. You really can. It takes time, research and planning, but it’s worth it. By working to give a specific audience unique and valuable content, your popularity will grow. As Lady Gaga would say, you’re on the edge of glory.

Jul 20
0

How to Get Consumers to Love Advertising Like We Do

By | advertising | No Comments

We love advertising. We do. We love it. We love it more than Kanye loves Kanye, more than Olivia Newton John honestly loves you, more than Whitney will always love you. There’s just one problem. Sometimes we think we might be the only ones. You see, marketing agencies live and breathe advertisements, but it’s becoming more and more simple for consumers to avoid them if they want to.

It started with DVR. Don’t want to watch commercials? Just skip over them. Then, there were ad-blockers. The internet was suddenly ad free. Now you can pay extra on services such as Hulu or YouTube Red to avoid watching commercials and advertisements as you stream entertainment. You can cut the cord and use streaming apps and devices like Roku to watch TV without really watching TV.

Part of us thinks that all of this is great. For decades the job of marketing agencies has been to help consumers get what they want. But we can’t break up with advertising. We love it. We want consumers to love it too.

How do you help a consumer fall in love with advertising? Make it relevant to them. The days of tossing a catchy jingle out into the open air and hoping for the best are over. Most consumers will never even hear the jingle.

Today, marketing agencies have to work together with brands to produce advertising that is less display and more distribution. Advertisements must become something consumers don’t want to live without. What will your advertisement teach consumers? What information will it provide that they absolutely need to know? Will it make their lives better? Will it make them feel something — nostalgia, pride or… love?

When in doubt, think Super Bowl. Super Bowl commercials are probably some of the last advertisements consumers actively seek after. Why? Because they inform them, teach them and make them feel something. For 30 seconds, they make consumers love advertising too. Don’t break up with advertising. Just make it better.

Jul 18
0

Reading and Content Marketing? Yes, There’s a Link

By | content marketing, Utah | No Comments

It’s a fairly known fact that avid readers make avid writers; however, does reading on a regular basis contribute directly to a higher success rate for content marketers? Reading on a regular basis expands vocabulary, heightens the ability to empathize and stretches personal world-views. How do these attributes contribute directly to a successful content marketing campaign —and is there a link between the two?

 

Edward Abbey’s Unintentional Content Marketing Move
Edward Abbey’s novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, chronicled a group of environmental terror-ists/activists who traveled frequently throughout the American West (with quite a few references to Southern Utah). The novel was well-written and quickly became one of the most influential pieces of fiction to protect environmentally questionable activities.

The writer, Edward Abbey perhaps inadvertently used his voracious reading skills and witty writ-ing style to create a piece of environmentally-conscious fiction that would go on to unintention-ally became a content marketing centerpiece for political activism, specifically throughout the Southern Utah region.

 

Reading to Adapt to Different Brand Voices
Avid readers don’t just adapt the diction of whatever author they’re currently engrossed in; they also learn to embody the distinct voices, personalities and quirks of protagonists. The ability to embody a wide variety of different brand voices is the golden fleece of content marketing — and a skill set that any avid reader picked up long ago.

Reading on a regular basis — whether it’s sci-fi, fantasy, fiction, non-fiction or autobiographical — familiarizes the reader with different character and author voices, which ultimately serves greater positive purposes within the content marketing spectrum.

 

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Read Everything
Here’s our advice for any current content marketing experts or wannabe content marketers: Read. Read everything you can get your hands on, whether it’s a discount, trash novel that you’ve found at a garage sale or it’s a non-fiction guide to the deserts of Southern Utah. Read-ing on a regular basis will up your content marketing game.

Jul 18
0

In-App Advertising or In-App Purchasing?

By | marketing agencies, Mobile marketing | No Comments

In the world of advertising and marketing, we’re always looking for the next big thing. Marketing agencies thrive on being ahead of the game, leading the pack, blazing new trails and all that good stuff. The best marketing agencies tackle the questions that actually affect the industry. Here’s one we’d like to take on: Which business model is better — in-app advertising or in-app purchasing?

In-App Advertising

We’ll take on in-app advertising first. Right now, in-app advertising works like this: Developers offer app downloads for free with the idea that a growing base of app users will provide data to help drive advertising sales. It’s basically the same approach that began two decades ago with internet banner ads. But they were boring, so today video ads are all the rage.

In-app advertisers use video ads during apps’ natural breaks and pauses, some even incentivizing consumers with app perks for watching an entire advertisement. The Interactive Advertising Bureau released a study forecasting that mobile video ad revenue in the United States will exceed $4.4 billion in 2018. Not too shabby.

In-App Purchasing

On the other side of the aisle for marketing agencies is in-app purchasing. This advertising model depends on revenue from users paying to purchase the app and then continuing to purchase virtual or physical products within the app. The newest approach to in-app purchasing is sponsorship. Basically, this means an app developer joins up with advertisers who reward users for completing certain tasks within the app. The overall goal? Work ads into the app in a way that helps the app engage users.

Two Is Better Than One

So which is better for business? We say, why choose? Both strategies can work together as app development becomes more refined. App developers can start with an in-app advertising approach and offer the app for free download with ads. Then, developers can pull in the in-app purchasing model by offering added paid features. When it comes to in-app purchasing and in-app advertising, two is better than one.

Jul 15
0

What Is SEO?

By | SEO | No Comments

SEO stands for search engine optimization. Search engine optimization refers to the process of procuring increased organic (non-paid) traffic to your webpage from major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!

The more effort is put into optimizing a webpage for search engines, the more likely that webpage is to rank among the first page of search results for a particular set of search terms. For digital marketing companies, this is the end goal — a high-ranking, authoritative webpage that brings in traffic from all corners of the internet, whether consumers are searching from their homes in Utah or European coffee shops.

So How Does SEO Work, Exactly?

Let’s start with search engines. Search engines have two major functions: crawling the internet for information and indexing said information, and providing search users with the most relevant webpages according to their chosen search terms.

Search engine crawlers (or “spiders”) accomplish this by first gathering a backlog of information on the world’s websites. Search engine crawlers will take into account a site’s written content, overall site organization, URL structure, site elements, ALT attributes, rich media and more. All of this information helps search engines better understand what a webpage is about.

Search engine crawlers also gather information by way of links; if a number of webpages related to a particular topic all link to one external webpage that’s related, the webpage that is the destination of those links is determined to be the most authoritative of them all — and therefore the most likely to show up on the search results for that topic.

Say for example someone performs a search for “restaurants in Utah,” the search engine crawlers would go through millions of webpages and mazes of links related to “restaurants” and “Utah” until they come up with the most relevant and authoritative results for that search query. Getting your webpage into one of those top results is the purpose of SEO.

SEO Is for Humans and Search Engines Alike

Despite its name, SEO isn’t only important for search engines. Often, optimizing a webpage for search engines and optimizing a webpage for human visitors are one and the same.

A well-optimized webpage will do one of three things: provide a transaction, such as purchasing a particular product, provide information, such as the best restaurants in Utah, or simply exist as a destination to which people are trying to navigate. Not only that, a webpage that employs good SEO will accomplish one of these three things well, making the experience as smooth as possible for the consumer.

In the end, the webpage that accomplishes the searcher’s goal in the best and most efficient way will be the webpage that sits on the iron throne of the search rankings.