February 11, 2012 in Blog by Ken Theriot, Executive Director

Content Drives Traffic, Helps Gain Customers

A recent study by the Content Marketing Institute showed that a top priority for businesses was content marketing in 2011 and it is going to remain so in 2012. The past year, marketers distributed more business-to-business content on social media then ever before. Organizations are learning that the use of infographics, videos, and other interactive media is returning big results! Courtesy of an infographic created by BlueGlass Interactive suggests businesses should look at Mint.com, American Express and Coca-Cola.

The infographic goes on to say that 90% of B2B marketers do some form of content marketing whether they realize it or not and 60% of B2B marketers plan to spend more on content marketing in the next 12 months. Organizations are looking to facilitate activities such as brand awareness, customer acquisition, lead generation, customer retention and loyalty. Those needs have lead to increased article posting and social media tactics to create an opportunity for engagement with their prospective clients.

Bluegrass Interactive states that B2B marketers are allocating 26% of their total budgets on content marketing,with smaller business allocating an even larger share. Content marketing agencies such as Viewspot Network have learned to utilize a wide range of tactics to generate effective and engaging content to the audiences of our clients.

Planning ahead for your organizations content marketing needs can really save you time, money and resources.  As a Digital Engagement and Content Production agency, Viewspot really stresses the need for involving your agency as early as possible so that you can get the most out of your content!

October 6, 2011 in Blog by Ken Theriot, Executive Director

iPhone 4S [RIP Jobs]

Apple released its latest version of the infamous iPhone series on October 4th, 2011. In recent years, we have seen Apple praised, criticized, and a whole lot more for the five releases they have had in the iPhone series. With 3 of those selling currently in stores, you have to believe that Apple is doing something right.

iPhone4S an iFail?

Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011 By: R. Lamontagne, Lead Artist @ViewspotNetwork

Is it the radical  innovation that has propelled Apple to arguably the strongest brand position that has ever existed in modern times? Was it the fruit of Steve Jobs relentless pursuit of perfection with how it worked..how it looked..and how it made the user feel? Is it Apple’s ability to attract the best talent from all over the World and get them under one-roof? Or is Apple’s ability to define the market and make their competitors chase them? Or is it all of these things combined in a nice-perfectly proportioned box just like every Apple product which you would know if you have ever purchased one. Chances are you probably have because I have heard estimates that 2 out of 5 in America currently own an Apple product. If you have ever read Steve Jobs Wikipedia , there is a quote from Jobs about Wayne Gretzky that I think defines the spirit of Apple.

That mentality has allowed Apple and Jobs to define their market but in my opinion Apple changed the game in one other major way, that is often not heard. In the past, the technology defined the experience and the technology was whatever an engineer created. Apple and Jobs made a point of allowing the user to define the technology. This distinction is what made people care about the product because ultimately, the worth or value of something is a perceived-value or perceived-worth. This perception is what elevated Apple to its religious-like status which defined generations of people in their chase for something better, something that was more “them”.

iPhone4S Reviews

The iPhone4S has not been receiving the best reviews, I won’t go over the exact specifications here but you can read them on the iPhone Wikipedia, but have people come to expect to much? Or is it because Apple is more focused on incremental releases of technology to improve their quarterly earnings in order to maintain it’s behemoth valuation and strong stock-price? I think it is a little of both. Apple’s positioning has one major flaw and that is with any mountain you climb, you eventually reach a peak and unless your building the mountain as you go.. at some point you have to go down to find another mountain to climb. Some might say that Apple has been building their own mountain for some time but I think you can recognize it now. Prior to Apple being the most profitable mobile and hand-held company in the World, their main focus was personal computing. However, iOS (the Operating System on the iPhone and iPad) contributes for 2 out of 3 sales at Apple.  So it is easy to say that Apple is more hand-held than personal computer. But when you think about that, I guess in some ways they have redefined what personal computing is. Speaking from my own experiences, I know I check my email more from my iPhone than my desktop and laptop.

Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011

This article was conceived prior to the passing of Steve Jobs on October 5th but I felt it necessary to edit and make mention the man that took the bite from the Apple has officially logged out. Apple’s current CEO released a statement on October 5th which you can read here, that alerted the World that the original Apple Genius had passed. Immediately, the Social Media sphere began the mourning process which was apparent from the (#) hash tags #iSad and #ThankYouSteve and Stay Hungry trending World Wide. In a 2005 commencement speech at Stanford Univeristy (Watch Here), Jobs ended the speech with the quote “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”, telling the graduating class that you need to do what you love and  not settle. He told them that the only way to be great is to do what you love. When I think about that, I believe in his pursuit of what he loved he has allowed millions of people to find what they love, because Apple’s technology has allowed people to create like they have never created before. He helped redefine the tools of creativity and worked relentlessly to get it into your hands (at a profit of course!) but time and time again people always say that their Apple purchase was “worth it” so.. I think it has been a Win-Win situation on all sides. Now with Steve Jobs really gone only time will tell how Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook will steer the ship but one thing is for certain, Steve Job’s has changed the World and his legacy will continue to do that for a long-time to come.

From the team here at Viewspot Network.. Thank you Mr. Jobs and may you Rest in Peace.

August 15, 2011 in Blog by Ken Theriot, Executive Director

Facebook Goes Local

Facebook recently confirmed that it had added the ability to direct Facebook Ads to specific zip codes. This increased functionality will be quite helpful to local businesses that wish to direct their efforts to a more specific geo-demographic area. A Facebook spokesperson told Mashable after the release, “The zip code targeting launched yesterday and this change was made due to requests for such a change”. This is an easy implementation by Facebook that will go a long way for helping smaller businesses to adopt a Facebook Ad Campaign strategy. With Google+ gaining in popularity and their business page functionality being ready for release, Facebook needs to do all of they can to deter any conversion of the potentially very-lucrative local business market that have recently started to adopt social media as a viable medium.

Google+ vs. Facebook

As Google+ looks to monetize their efforts through Social Media and take some of the spotlight from Twitter’s 200 million and Facebook’s 750 million + user base. On July 4th, Google suspended real-time searches when their contract with Twitter expired, which were displaying tweets from Twitter and limited content from Facebook. Google, obviously has no intentions of renewing it as I am sure they will roll out similar functionality with Google+. Google is a formidable opponent and no one knows this better than Zuckerberg so I would expect to see Facebook to step-up to the plate across the board as they ready for this Social Media battle.

Social Media Market

Ultimately, the social media sphere in its entirety will decide what the pecking order for these Internet giants will be. It is my belief that the user will be the victor in almost all outcomes as each company will look to deliver more compelling features to compete. However, it is important to keep track of what has been a public relations nightmare for most of all the social media giants, privacy. Privacy concerns for all of the big guys has been a consistent problem that will most likely not go away without but they will continued to get worked out in the market as the advocates keep them in check.

August 1, 2011 in Blog by Ken Theriot, Executive Director

Google+ First Looks

Google+ or G+ pronounced Google Plus, made its online debut June 28th and has raked in tens of millions of users, despite offering admission only to those who have been invited by other users during its initial phase. Within a day the Google+ iPhone app had become the most popular free application the Apple app store.
Supporters say Google+ could eventually connect with Google’s search and email features to become a seamless addition to people’s online routines. Critics are quick to point out that there is nothing uniquely new or differentiating about the new social media site besides that it comes from the internet giant.
Google+ users organize people into different circles, making it possible to share text, video and links with focused groups, rather than their entire list of followers. This addresses critiques often lobbed at Facebook and Twitter, where dozens of posts from distant acquaintances can drown out ones from closer connections.

Can Google+ go all the way?

Google has a past of releasing new web products with a lot of hype to later just fizzle out. Do you remember Google Wave? Google Wave was a web based platform designed to merge key features of media like e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social network. It was released on September of 2009 to a limited user base then later released to the public. By August 4, 2010 Google had suspended development and handed it over to the Apache Software Foundation, an open source software foundation. More recently, Google released Google Buzz on February 9, 2010 and by February 16th a Harvard law student had already filed a class action lawsuit against Google, alleging that Buzz violated several federal privacy laws. Also on February 16, 2010 the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote “These problems arose because Google attempted to overcome its market disadvantage in competing with Twitter and Facebook by making a secondary use of your information. Google leveraged information gathered in a popular service (Gmail) with a new service (Buzz), and set a default to sharing your email contacts to maximize uptake of the service. In the process, the privacy of Google users was overlooked and ultimately compromised.”
Ryan Paul of Ars Technica noted “there isn’t much in Buzz that is new or original” and “the end result is a service that shows promise but lacks the requisite killer feature or innovative twist that it will need in order to truly keep people engaged.”
Google has also announced that Google + will also have a desktop version, we expect it to be similar to the many Adobe Air applications you see people using to manage their multitude of social networks. However, currently there is no API for 3rd party vendors to add integration.

Some of the specific features of Google+ are:

• “Circles” enables users to organize contacts into groups for sharing, across various Google products and services. Although other users can view a list of people in a user’s collection of circles, they cannot view the names of those circles. The privacy settings also allow users to hide the users in their circles as well as who have them in their circle. Organization is done through a drag-and-drop interface. This system replaces the typical friends list function used by sites such as Facebook.
• “Hangouts” are places used to facilitate group video chat (with a maximum of 10 people participating in a single Hangout at any point in time). However, anyone on the web could potentially join the “Hangout” if they happen to possess the unique URL of the Hangout.
• “Huddle” is a feature available to Android, iPhone, and SMS devices for communicating through instant messaging within circles.
• “Instant Upload” is specific to Android mobile devices; it stores photos or video in a private album for sharing later.
• “Sparks” is a front-end to Google Search, enabling users to identify topics they might be interested in sharing with others; “featured interests” sparks are also available, based on topics others globally are finding interesting. Sparks helps to keep users posted on the latest updates on the topics of their interest.
• In the “Stream,” users see updates from those in their circles. The input box allows users to enter a status update or use icons to upload and share photo and videos. The Stream can be filtered to show only posts from specific Circles.
• Google+ has a “+1″ button to allow people to recommend items.
• Unlike Twitter and Facebook, there is not yet an application programming interface that enables software developers to interact with Google+ programmatically.
• Similar to other Google applications, Google+ provides integration with other Google applications like Gmail, Calendar, Documents, etc.
• A “Data Liberation” option provides the ability to download one’s content from Google+.

• Will Google + go the same way of Wave or will it gain momentum and steal some of the spotlight from Facebook?

• Will you adopt Google+?

We know one thing for certain; you can count on Google to throw its full weight around when trying to get people to adopt it. You can also expect Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter to all adapt to the market place and create similar integrated solutions to mediate any potential user base decline. Ultimately, businesses ability to use Google+ might ultimately decide its fate because social networking is no longer just about communicating with friends it is about brand engagement.

March 3, 2011 in Blog by Ken Theriot, Executive Director

Simplicity in Advertising

Digital Simplicity.

We at Viewspot Network have a saying that is widely used in the world of graphic design and advertising arena, KISS, or Keep It Simple Stupid. We often see start-up companies wanting to deliver comprehensive messages to their clients but often the message is lost in translation. It is important to remember that a consistent and relevant message is always more important then trying to convey every thing you do and every service you offer. If you can not quickly convey your message than leave it on the drawing board until you can.

Effective Communication.

The first step to creating effective communication is KISS or Keep It Simple Stupid; the first step of any B2B or B2C communications is to create the clear and consistent message that you wish to deliver. It is important to convey a lot of information in as few words as possible, this helps keep your message easily understood and removes any room for misinterpretation. If you can not communicate your message effectively and in a concise way, you are more likely to hurt your image and confuse your current or future clientele. If you need to go grab that dusty thesaurus and find ways to switch out some of the unneeded and replace with more concise then do it. If you need more convincing then visit some of the largest companies and look at their ads. One of the best examples is Nike, which arguably has one of the best marketing messages of all time. Just Do It. Their message is short, sweet and to the point….Action with intensity and no fear…

K.I.S.S.

Although this is a short blog entry it is probably one of our most important, because I have many clients that come to me with a prepared copy for their ads and it is apparent that they feel the need to tell their clients everything. Keeping it simple simple & short should be on the top of every businesses’ mind when crafting their next advertising and marketing campaigns. It is easy to understand a businesses’ perspective of wanting to showcase all of the value that they are able to offer, but if you can’t get the client to call in the first place it doesn’t really matter what value you offer.

February 2, 2011 in Blog by Ken Theriot, Executive Director

Marketing: Online vs Traditional

Internet Marketing

As marketers are considering where to spend their ad dollars in 2011, the question of focusing on traditional versus online marketing is at the round table. Traditional marketing initiatives such as newspapers, magazines, periodicals or television are unable to provide marketers with the real-time feedback of online marketing campaigns and companies are starting to take notice.

For example, Facebook Insights provides companies with real-time feedback of their online marketing campaigns by displaying data such as impressions, clicks, likes and interactions. As we can see in the example screen capture, demographic information of targeted audiences is also available; including sex, age range, and geographic location. These metrics ensure marketers receive good returns on their ad dollars.

Real-time Feedback

Also, if a particular promotional campaign is not producing the desired results, marketers can change or modify their ads immediately, unlike traditional forms of advertising. The ability to modify ads at any time gives companies a tremendous advantage for other scenarios as well; for example, if a product recall occurs and market conditions rapidly change, companies can adjust their marketing operations quickly and effectively.

Marketing online isn’t limited to just Facebook and Twitter, there are several other options that must be explored to create maximal exposure including e-mail, text and video blogging, and forums just to name a few. The digital world is changing rapidly and new methods of marketing online are being created as we speak.

We’ll explore other marketing venues more in depth in future posts, stay tuned!

January 27, 2011 in Blog by VPatel

Digital Marketing: Connecting to Influencers

Influence Marketing

The social web is growing at a rapid pace. With the increasing adoption of networking and social collaboration sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ping, and Foursquare, finding key industry influencers is critical to the success of your digital marketing campaign.

For example, with Twitter, your company may have thousands of followers, but how can you determine which followers are opinion leaders/industry influencers? In order to answer this, we must analyze your followers in detail. There are several services that can help with this task, including  Klout, Twitanalyzer, and Twitter Grader. In this post, we’ll explore Klout, an excellent tool for determining how influential your brand is in digital space. This service works by determining your “klout score,” or overall online influence, by measuring over 30 indicators including your friends, followers, retweets, @messages, likes and comments.

Measuring Digital Klout

So, how does this service work and how can it connect you with key influencers? We’ll start with choosing a company that actively uses Twitter to engage its customers: Virgin America Virgin America’s Klout classification makes the company a ‘Thought Leader,’ represented by a red dot on the matrix on the right. The green dots are other Twitter members who are influenced by the brand and the blue dots are members who influence the brand. In this case, the primary influencers for Virgin America consist of two specialists, two explorers and one thought leader.

These metrics are broken down further in the ‘analysis,’ so lets move on to the core numbers.

Influence Metrics

Virgin America’s Klout score is 68 out of 100. Their ‘true reach’ or size of their engaged audience is 34,000, which is more than 100,000 less than their total   Twitter followers (~156,000). Virgin Atlantic’s ‘amplification’ score is 50, which is the likelihood that its Twitter posts will be acted on. Finally, we have the ‘network’ score, which tells us how influential your company’s engaged audience is, in this case ’73.’ Influence metrics such as these can help your company pin-point key influencers and decision makers quickly and effectively. For example, if Virgin America wanted to run a special on discount airfare, they now know that they have 500+ unique retweeters who will help spread the word and a few Twitter posts may be more cost-effective than other marketing initiatives.

While we focused on Twitter and Klout on this post, there are many other tools and services that can help connect you to influencers. Check back for Part 2 of this series and we’ll explore other ways to engage your audience.

January 19, 2011 in Blog by Ken Theriot, Executive Director

Creating An Effective Digital Brand Strategy: Part 2

Strategic Digital Branding Plan

When it comes to creating a Digital Branding Plan, understanding the importance of strategic marketing and knowing the outline for your marketing plan is critical. The Digital Brand Strategy is one part of the strategic marketing plan; as the Internet changes the marketplace and forces businesses to create new advertising channels, spending in traditional media is shifting towards digital media. Every marketing initiative should have clear objectives with realistic and time specific metrics that are consistent with the brand mantra as we had discussed in the first-part of this two-part blog. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on creating a Digital Brand Campaign, assuming that you have already developed a business mission statement and completed a SWOT Analysis to determine where you sit in the marketplace. These steps will also help you identify the competitive advantages that you currently have as an organization.

Creating A Strategy Behind Your Digital Brand

Identify strategic alternatives that your organization should pursue, such as  market penetration, product development, market development and diversification. We will go over the four strategic alternatives in more detail:

Once you have chosen which combination of the four or one in particular that you would like to focus on for this digital marketing strategy, it is important to discuss target market strategies. This way, you can create multiple initiatives to satisfy the varying target markets or create one that encompasses the entire marketplace.

The Four P’s of Marketing

It is often helpful to define several typical lifestyles that make up the majority of your customer base. It is important to consider all of the contributing factors for your particular marketing mix, these can easily be covered by evaluating the 4 P’s. Starting with the Product, which includes the tangible goods, ideas and/or services that you are offering to the market. Next, would be the place which your product/service is available; these are often referred to as distribution channels, which are an important step to facilitating the purchase of your organization’s products/services.

The last two P’s include Price and Promotion, Promotion includes advertising, public relations, sales promotions and personal selling that will be executed for your strategic marketing initiative.  Lastly, but most importantly is Price, I often tell our clients to not get in a price war because it is a MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) strategy because your brand should bring more value then the discounts your competitors can offer.

Digital Branding Metrics

The growing digital media space that consistently commands more ad dollars every year is also seeing an increase in demand for metrics that make sense. This stage is when most organizations start evaluating the points of engagement that were chosen in the promotion stage of the 4 P’s. Engaging your target markets through Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Google AD Words and other high-volume sites that provide almost real-time tracking data creates easy decision for most Marketing Managers and Media Buyers. Digital Signage is making a strong case in the Digital-Out-of-Home (DOOH) advertising segment as systems of metrics are increasingly being refined into the advertising friendly formats that we currently see. As eye-tracking software becomes more prevalent in the market, we will see not only the early adopters of media buyers that we have seen in the past, we will also see digital signage taking a bigger piece of the pie as organizations seek new ways to reach their target markets.

January 6, 2011 in Blog by smclaughlin

Tag Your Digital Signage Audience

Tag your Brand

There is a growing trend in traditional print media which allows viewers to instantly access additional content via their mobile phone. Microsoft Tag is a revolutionary ‘bar code’ system that gives advertisers the ability to communicate with their customers real time. Place it at the bottom of an ad and link it to your official website, online media or even a phone number; the possibilities are wide open.

These Tags are starting to pop up all over the place. In magazines, on packaging, taxi cabs, billboards and even digital signage. The best part about Tag is it’s free for everybody! All you have to do is download the Microsoft Tag Reader Mobile app which is widely available for most smartphones (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry etc.) When and wherever you see a Tag, quickly load up the app and snap a picture. It will take automatically ‘beam’ the content to the viewer. A nice feature that’s included keeps track of all the Tags the viewer has snapped so they can recall it directly later down the road.

The QR (Quick Response) Code system is another customizable bar code system which allows viewers to access media the same way as Tag does. It is black and white, has been around for a few years, and has started to catch on with companies across the globe. You probably have seen these codes on packaging or in magazines, but can’t recall where or what you were looking at. As such, advertisers are hesitant to use these codes in ad campaigns because of the plain, unappealing image next to their brand. Microsoft has taken their system a few steps above this, allowing customers to customize every tag they create in full color and even the ability to add their company’s logo in the tag for added brand awareness.

Tag Your Digital Signage

For the digital signage market, it allows me to offer clients an added medium to boost recall. Since you can Tag almost anything, why not on digital signage? This is a great way for viewers to snap a quick picture and revisit the information later or share it with their friends. While this tool gives your audience a new way to connect to you, it also gives advertisers a great deal of useful information that can be used to help promote your brand. Advertisers can keep track of tagger’s information, mobile device, location and the number of times the viewer accesses your information.

While the Microsoft Tag system is not everywhere yet, don’t be surprised to see them popping up everywhere in the first part of 2011. Audiences and advertisers alike enjoy the simple process to instantly access content from offline media or save the link to view later. Although Viewspot Network has just recently started to add Tag into our medium pool, we are happy with the effectiveness of this tool as a way to promote brand awareness.

We hope you enjoyed your New Years and we look forward to a good year for all of us this year!

December 15, 2010 in Blog by smclaughlin

Spot-on Digital Signage

As a creative designer, how do I fully engage my audience and get my message across in a limited amount of time? How do I catch their attention and make sure they’ll recall it later, say tonight, tomorrow or next week?

This is a tough question that many designers face.

Showing off the best content on the network may work for traditional forms of media, but content for digital-out-of-home campaigns cater to a different kind of audience. How? Because we’re trying to engage people people walking around in a mall or strolling through a store instead of sitting at home on their couch.

With a medium as versatile as a digital screen, getting peoples’ attention may mean using different media components (video,special effects, motion graphics etc) all in one advertisement. Surely this doesn’t apply to all ad’s, but more than likely, you should take full advantage of these items.

For the most part, you will want to keep your ads simple. Keep in mind that you may only catch your audience for a few seconds at any given part in their busy day, so you don’t want to take the chance your ad goes unnoticed or mixed in with ‘the rest.’

Every frame in your content lineup must be able to get the message across to the your viewers.

The ad design layouts for a DOOH campaign should be thought more of as a series of posters. This is the new form of digital print; where the principles of an ink poster are combined with the ability to add motion elements to your ad to catch and keep your audience.

Keeping a few general composition guidelines in your mind while you design your layouts will help enhance your creative work-flow:

1) Keep your core message down to a few keywords. A viewer may only see your ad long enough to read a few words, so you’ll want to keep them to the point.

2) Use a single picture that represents your message. The better your viewer can quickly relate the picture to your message, the better chance of them recalling your message later on. You can always add more layers to your design, but the more you put on the screen the better chance you will bounce your viewers eyes.

3) Stay away from multiple fonts, especially stylized ones. The more stylized you get, the greater risk you take in your audience member not reading it. Sans-serif fonts are the best for viewers, especially if the screen isn’t that large. This will surely come up in design reviews, but most of the time your audience is on the go and also at a distance away from your screen, so the easier and simpler your ad the better chance of recall later.

4) Use Large Font. Text needs to be large enough to read from a distance further than 10 feet away from the screen. Use good contrast in your color schemes; a simple adjustment in color or gradient can greatly improve the overall quality of a spot.

5) Keep your motion quick and simple. Just because you can make something move, doesn’t mean that you should. While you want to capture your viewers eyes, you don’t want their eyes bouncing around and missing the intended message; try to balance the elements.

All of these guidelines are certainly subject to change depending on the screen location, size, audience demographics and intended message. To make your spot as eye-catching and engaging as possible is the goal, but don’t forget you that have a message that you must get across to your audience as best as you can in a short period of time.