Above the fold: a rule to be broken

Since the earliest days of the newspaper industry, the front page of the paper was laid out to get the top stories above the fold. Inside the paper, was a similar situation. Savvy ad execs like Don Draper knew that if a quarter page ad fell in the middle of that crease, readership would plummet. The fold could make you or break you. These days, this line of thinking has carried over into the Internet. There remains an abiding notion that an optimum website design lives above the fold (the depth of your browser window.) But even this is starting to change.

Why Businesses Should Consider Using a Content Management System in 2010

A Content Management System (CMS) is used for creating and managing the content on a website. A CMS offers people who know little about HTML with a set of tools that makes editing a website as easy as editing a Microsoft Word document.

Agency Creative designed and developed a website for Equest that featured a Content Management System. We will use their site as an example to show you why a CMS website was beneficial for Equest and why it can also be beneficial for your business.

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A Content Management System website would allow for you to have less dependence on your developer when it comes to quick edits.

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With time, comes change. Websites should not ignore this rule. With a CMS website, businesses have the power to constantly tweak their website’s content to reflect trends that are always changing.

Let’s examine a brief scenario involving the Equest “About Us” page.



Lets say Equest notices numerous comments on their Facebook fan page about one of their newer services. Naturally, Equest decides it would benefit users if they mentioned this service on their "About Us" page. All they’d need to do is

1. Log in to their CMS with their chosen username and password


2. Find the page (under articles for the CMS system)


3. Add the new content using the built-in WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor.


4. Click Save

After those four steps, their “About Us” page would be updated.

Here is the system at a closer look.



On the left side of the page is the WYSIWYG editor. Here users can change the content, upload photos, create links and much more. On the right, there are options to change the Meta description and keywords for search engine optimization purposes.

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Conclusion

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We wanted to give Equest a well-branded site that gave them the ability to make quick edits. The CMS solution was perfect for them. In fact, it is perfect for any business that needs complete control over the speed and implementation of website content editing.

If your industry demands websites with up-to-minute information or you are constantly going to your developer to make edits to your website, a Content Management System is an efficient solution.

If you are interested in learning more about a CMS website for your business, you should contact us at info@agencycreative.com or call us at 972-488-1660. You can also look over two more CMS websites we developed for another client below.

http://www.financialfreedomofamerica.com/

http://www.firstfinancialfreedommortgage.com/

dPi re-energizes its brand

dPi has just named Agency Creative as agency of record. Based in Dallas, dPi is a leading provider of energy and home phone services to the growing pre-paid market. No contracts, no deposit, no I.D. are required to switch on your electricity or home phone. Just pay up front. It’s that easy. But reaching this “pay as you go” market is no easy task. They are a very diverse and mobile group. Consequently, it’s our job to break through language barriers, culture barriers and connect with the dPi customer. We do everything from TV to social media marketing. And it all has to be done in multiple languages for multiple audiences, not to mention multiple channel partners. Everything has to build the brand, as well as build demand. And, at the end of the day, we do it. We do it well. And we do it at a breakneck speed. After all, this is retail.

Holiday Cyber Shopping

Black Friday’s results were an encouragement to American retailers. Sales grew a whopping .05%. Okay, strike “whopping.” Still, considering the poor state of the economy, not too shabby. But the real news is what happened online. There, sales were up 11%. That’s a hefty $595 million. Pretty “whopping.”

Rather than queuing up in your long johns in some frosty parking lot waiting for Walmart’s doors to open, the smart customers pointed and clicked through their Christmas lists. They filled up their cyber shopping carts and checked out without standing in a single line. Plus, they did this all in the toasty comfort of their own homes.

Forecasters believe that Black Friday is just the tip of the iceberg. Trends indicate that online shopping begins to go through the roof on the Monday following Thanksgiving weekend. These emerging trends in holiday shopping reveal how consumers are deepening their love affair with the Internet. Now is the time for marketers to put their brand where the customers are lining up: the Web. You don’t have to have an e-commerce site to see results. Look at social media. A recent survey indicates that Facebook, Twitter and customer reviews are some of the most effective tactics for mobilizing consumers to talk up products (Etailing survey of 117 companies, September 2009). Leveraging social media can improve your organic rankings on search engines, populate the Internet with positive product reviews and even raise the click-through rates of your online banner ads.

Today, having a marketing plan that wisely utilizes the Web is essential in both building your brand and building demand. Marketers who embrace this trend will reap the dividends. Those who don’t will be, like that midnight line in the Walmart parking lot, left out in the cold.

Making that sensory emotional connection.

A couple months ago, on a warm Saturday evening, I was sitting on the patio at Stan’s Blue Note in Dallas with some friends. While I was somewhat paying attention to the conversation, as I was updating my Facebook status, I heard a familiar song come over the bar stereo. “Like a rock, I was strong as I could be…” If you’re like me, and not familiar with the man behind the music (Bob Seger, I looked him up on Google), you might have another way of connecting with this song…through those long-running Chevrolet truck commercials.

One thing a lot of great brands have in common is their ability to connect emotionally with consumers via the five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. In the case of my encounter with Mr. Seger, sound is all I needed to remind me that Chevy trucks are built like a rock and can withstand extensive mileage, weather and wear and tear for many years. This is great example of a brand that drove home a strong selling point with a catchy classic that mirrored its most important product attribute.

And when fighting a consumer’s mind for recall and recognition, especially these days with so much traditional and digital clutter, you have to tap into a consumer’s senses and connect with them on a personal level. Whether you do it through an exciting TV spot, a catchy radio tune or a compelling logo that shapes your brand around a their brain, your consumer will remember you.

One of the more common, widely exposed senses is sight. And a good example of brand consistently triggering your eyeballs is McDonalds. You’ll find nothing new here that’ll tell you why McDonalds is number one in the fast food category. And why they’ll most likely stay number one for a while. When you’re driving in your car and you see the Golden Arches in sight, a quarter mile down the road amongst a handful of other fast food joints, odds are your mind will gravitate towards this iconic sign. That’s because you probably don’t need to see the name of the restaurant to know that McDonalds will satisfy your craving for short-term, inexpensive happiness. At least you know what makes me happy.

While the two aforementioned senses ruled consumer advertising for nearly a century and a half, according to world renowned branding guru Martin Lindstrom, author of “Brand Sense – Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound” (2005), the other untapped senses must be tapped in order to make an effective sensory connection.

Starbucks is a great example of a brand that tied smell with its most obvious product: coffee. It wasn’t until 2008 when Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz reinstated the idea of freshly ground coffee beans at Starbucks locations. The thought was to bring back that rich, coffee aroma to trigger that powerful emotion in Starbucks customers. One whiff of this successful smell would leave a mental note in customers’ minds as to where they needed to pick up their next cup of Joe.

At Agency Creative, we really get to know our clients’ brands and help them make that emotional connection with their consumers. We dig deep to understand what makes their brand unique and special, and discover how we can expose their greatest qualities.

Will Google Wave be the final death nail of e-mail?

Since May of this year, Google Wave has been highly anticipated by the Internet community. It’s Google’s newest project that they are slowly releasing to the public. On September 30th, the beta version of Google Wave was launched and access was given to a select few 100,000 people for testing.

It has been referred to as a game-changer for communication and even the death of e-mail. So how is Google Wave going to back these statements up? With key features that make Google Wave much cleaner, more efficient and just more fun than e-mail. Let’s take a look below.

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How is it different from e-mail?

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Google Waves are messages between two or more people online. Google claims that the idea of e-mail came more than 40 years ago. So, with the help of the two brothers who invented Google Maps, the Google team sat down and recreated an online messaging tool that is more efficient and also comes with all the bells and whistles of Web 2.0.

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Features

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1. Real-Time Updates. Updates to Waves will be real-time. Real-time means the days of clicking “send” after you type your message are over. With Google Wave your text will simply appear to all recipients as you type it. So if you and your co-worker have a Wave open at the same time, his or her words appear as they type them. After your co-worker is done typing, there will be no need to click a send button because the message will already be visible to you. (For those of you concerned about your case of chronic impulse typing, real-time updates can be disabled.)

2. Web site and Blog Embedding. Your wave can also function as a dynamic part of your blog or Web site. If you choose, you can embed your Wave onto your blog or Web site so you or all of the people included in the Wave can update your blog or Web site in real-time with ease.

3. Wiki Functionality. You may not know this, but before it became today’s go-to encyclopedia, Wikis were primarily used internally among employees of companies for editing documents. Google Wave is bringing this technology into homes and offices with easy accessibility. Imagine being able to have four co-workers attached to a Wave with the ability to all read a document and make changes as necessary without having to print it out and send it through the office.

Random Fact: Before Facebook went international they used a Wiki-type service to have the social network translated in numerous languages. They put out a request to bilingual users of the English site and asked them to comb through the content and translate it into whatever language they knew other than English. The plan worked and they had their site translated cost-free by users of Facebook.

4. Gadgets within Google Waves. Much like blogs and Web sites today, you will be able to have gadgets functioning within your Wave. One of the gadgets that has been shown off is a translation tool. It works like this: you are talking to someone from Russia and neither one of you are fluent in the other’s native tongue. As you both start the Wave with each other you also enable the translation gadget. As you type to your recipient the gadget takes the message in real-time and translates it for you. This in turn creates a seamless conversation between two people who do not speak the same language.

5. Message rewind. If you are invited to a Wave a week after it was started you will probably have a few questions as far as what chronological order messages were typed. This will not be much of a problem. First off, these messages will probably look something like your Facebook wall today. Someone posts a message, and someone else can leave a comment under that message. If that is not enough for you, you can rewind the message back to the beginning so you can watch what order each addition was added.

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How can you get a Google Wave account?

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Right now the only way you can get an account is if someone you know has one already and they nominate you to be an early user. If you do not know anyone with an account, then you have to wait for the full release, which is unknown at this time.

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Learn more about Google Wave

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Short illustration video that briefly describes Google Wave. (2:15)

Google’s short video on Google Wave (7:52)

Google’s long video on Google Wave (1:20:11)

7 Ways to Build Your Brand using Twitter

Let’s get one thing straight. Twitter is not some trendy, high-tech way for teenage girls to pass notes during biology class. It is a foundational marketing tool that can seriously improve your organic ranking on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. If your brand isn’t taking advantage of Twitter, be forewarned, you will soon be left behind. Here are the basics of making Twitter work for your business:

1. Choose a strong Username.
Choose a one word Twitter username that is relevant to your company and is easy to remember. Your user name becomes part of your Twitter URL, e.g. http://www.twitter.com/Jackbox. This creates a static URL for future search indexing.

2. Pick a good Account Name.
Your account name is what appears in your profile, next to your icon/image. This can be different than your Twitter username. Jack in the Box uses simply Jack Box for their account name. You will want to choose an account name that promotes your company or brand.

3. Promote it like a wild man.
Once your account is set up, start building your list of followers. A good way to do this is to prominently display your Twitter URL on your Web site and Facebook page. Along with the Twitter icon, have a blurb encouraging users to “follow” your brand on Twitter.

4. 26 characters. One plot.
The first 26 characters of each tweet are important for SEO. They determine what appears in the tweet title tag and hence what shows up as a search result on most search engines.

5. Keywords are key.
Wherever possible, start your tweet with a keyword phrase to theme the message, e.g. Energy Saving tip of the day.

6. Make it easy to re-tweet.
By limiting the number of characters in your tweets to about 120, your followers can easily add RT @YourUserName in front of the tweet and pass it on.

7. Link, link, link.
Whenever possible, insert links in your tweets to direct users to content on your website. Twitter is a significant traffic driver for blogs and websites. To keep the character count down, use a URL shortener like Is.gd or Bit.ly. In some cases, Twitter automatically shortens your URLs using bit.ly.

You can View Agency Creative's Twitter at twitter.com/AgencyCreative

Related Article:

Is Social Media Marketing Right For My Business