Proliferation

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.

Jul 15
0

Keyword Research 101

By | SEO | No Comments

Keywords are the single most important aspect of SEO. As such, keyword research takes on an equal importance in the world of SEO; without keyword research, marketing companies cannot know what terms their target audience is using to find relevant products on search engines — something that can cost you dearly.

Get Inside the Customer’s Head

Keyword research begins with an in-depth analysis of your business itself. What kinds of products or services do you sell? What keywords do you want your website to rank highly for? Most importantly, what terms might a potential buyer use to look up something related to your product or service? When it comes to keyword research, the more you can get inside your customer’s head, the better.

Before you decide on a specific keyword or keywords for your SEO strategy, you need to figure out the relative value of that keyword for your business. First, pick a keyword that is immediately relevant to your business. If your business is a marketing agency in Utah, then your keyword might be “marketing agency Utah.”

Perform a Search for Your Chosen Terms

Plug that keyword into Google, Yahoo or Bing and see what results come up. Does that keyword pull up 15 million results or 150 million? For SEO beginners, the more specific your keyword, the better — keywords that target a niche market (such as “marketing agencies Utah”) tend to have fewer competitors, making it easier for your business to rank higher among them. Only once you’ve conquered the niche market you should expand to more generic keywords.

Utilize Keyword Research Tools

Once you’ve done enough of your own keyword research, it’s time to enlist the help of a keyword research tool. The Google Adwords Keyword Planner is the most popular option for this; Google Adwords can tell you how much traffic one of your chosen keywords is likely to bring in. Purchase a sample ad campaign and see how well one of your sample keywords performs; if it doesn’t look like it’ll bring in enough traffic, move on to the next keyword until you find one that works.

Find the Sweet Spot Between Search Volume and Buyer Intent

The best keywords are ones that not only bring in a decent amount of traffic, but are immediately relevant to your product or service — no matter to what point in the buying process they relate.

Whether you’re selling outdoor adventure products in Utah or nautical instruments on the East Coast, your keywords need to be relevant, searchable and not too difficult to rank highly for. Once you’ve got those keywords singled out, you’re well on your way to a highly successful SEO strategy.

Jul 15
0

Just the Basics: SEO FAQs

By | SEO | No Comments

The more effort 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.

FSEO-FAQ

Jul 15
0

Web Development vs. Mobile App Development: Key Differences

By | web development | No Comments

Web development has been in production for the past 20 years — it’s not a relatively new field. It’s inevitable that web development trends will change; however, the details will always stay the same. Yet as soon web developers felt like they were getting the hang of web development, along came a curveball: mobile app development.

As more and more people use their mobile devices exclusively to search the web and connect with people, developers are scrambling to accommodate the mental shift involved with developing for mobile sites and apps.

Adjusting From Web Development to Mobile Apps

Don’t fret, developers; there are a few easy ways that you can make an easy adjustment from web development to mobile app development. The first step? Adhere to user guidelines. Unlike web development, which essentially offers the developer a blank page with which to work from, mobile app development adheres to a set of user guidelines that differ across platforms.

Don’t ignore these guidelines — doing so will ensure that you end up with a mobile app that doesn’t work nearly as well as it should.

Differences in User Experiences

One of the challenges that web developers face is ensuring that their sites can function across several different types of browsers. Generally speaking, the experience across all browsers will remain the same, allowing web developers to use one uniform design.

Mobile app development, however, dictates that each mobile platform is uniquely designed. Mobile apps can differ drastically depending on which platform they’re currently being executed on — and that’s okay. As long as the app is still visually engaging and functions well across every platform, the user experience will remain positive.

Single Purpose or Multi-Purpose?

Purpose is perhaps the largest difference between web development and mobile app development. While websites serve multiple purposes, mobile apps generally only serve either one purpose or a few related purposes. Refrain from attempting to design a mobile app with the functionality of a website — the app will have a high crash rate, and a correspondingly negative user experience.

Jul 15
0

Find Your Next Website Design Muse

By | web development | No Comments

Website design is always evolving. Take a look at some of the best sites from the 90s and early 2000s, and you’ll see how far web design has come. Still, like all great artists, designers need a muse. Without a little inspiration now and then, designers can go stale. Nobody wants that.

Here are a few of our favorite websites to help reignite designers’ creativity. One of them could become your new muse.

Responsive Design

User experience and responsive website design is so important on today’s World Wide Web. Responsive Design dedicates itself to furthering responsive website design. Unlike a lot of sites that feature galleries of different design approaches, Responsive Design also digs deep into the code that makes each design possible.

Crayon

Crayon is easily one of the most inclusive sites out there for gathering visual design ideas. Everyone from designers to marketers can use the site’s extensive search features to sift through more than 35 million websites. That’s a whole lot of inspiring material.

Webdesign Inspiration

The name says it all. Webdesign Inspiration is unique because it allows you to search for sites by industry. If you’re designing a website for a marketing agency, you can see how other industry leaders design their sites.

Dribbble

Dribbble works first and foremost as a portfolio service for website design freelancers. It’s used by a lot of new designers, which means it hosts a lot of new ideas. Since the site works like one large portfolio, it makes it easy to contact and connect with other designers to collaborate on ideas.

CSS Zen Garden

This site is like the super old and extremely wise grandma of all web design sites. CSS Zen Garden has been around for a while, but it’s still entirely relevant. It’s unique in that every design uses the same HTML code with modified CSS files. The entire site is basically one big example of the power of CSS.

Web Design Ledger

Besides just another awesome gallery site, you can visit Web Design Ledger for tutorials, blog posts, interviews with other designers and downloadable templates. No wonder the web community loves it so much.

Jul 15
0

The Most Influential Advertising Execs of All Time

By | advertising, Utah | No Comments

We don’t know about you, but when we think of advertising geniuses, we think of “Mad Men,” Don Draper, Roger Sterling — basically anyone from the AMC hit series. But there are real Don Drapers in today’s market of advertising, and they have killed the advertising world. Advertising agencies not only in Utah but around the globe have looked to these individuals for inspiration and tips on how to be a better advertising agency. They have mastered the art of advertising and have made billions of dollars in revenue for their companies.

Not all advertising is about giving great presentations and using the right colors, and these advertising agency execs, can prove that to you. Some of these names you might not recognize, but their companies you just might.

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