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Boost Your Facebook Post Engagement WIth These 10 Tricks

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 15:31:02 GMT

There's hardly a business owner or marketing expert who hasn’t realized this: social media marketing is the best way to enhance brand image and user engagement. Although ev eryone knows this, we constantly see bad examples of social media marketing. Facebook, as the largest social media network, is the place where we see brilliant marketing strategies in action, but we also see undermining techniques that can easily ruin a business.

The biggest question for a Facebook marketer is this: how do you get people engaged with your post? You can’t expect them to check your page on a daily basis. They are surrounded by ads and information, so you have to do something special to earn their attention.

A Unique Approach

Maria Popovich, marketing expert at BestEssays, emphasizes the fact that Facebook content shouldn't be overly promotional:

"[Facebook audiences] want to connect with your brand in a way that makes it part of their lifestyle. That’s the direction Facebook marketing should aim for: developing close connection with the brand’s users, and engaging them through personalized posts."

How do you achieve high engagement with each post we publish on your Facebook pages? Here are 10 tricks to get you started:

1. Start a Contest

People like contests so much that they specifically search for ones they can join. Contests with valuable prizes are a great way to attract more traffic towards your Facebook page. However, it’s also a great way to engage your current followers. First of all, you’ll ask them to do something in order to enter the contest. For example, you’ll ask them to like and share the post, and drop a comment on it. Then, most people will repeatedly visit your page to see if the winners are announced.

Contests are awesome because they get people excited to try your brand.

2. Invest in Facebook Ads

No matter how awesome your posts are and how carefully you plan their timing, not everyone from your target audience will see them. Thanks to an advertising method that Facebook calls Page Post Engagement adverts, you can keep up with all your followers and reach new ones at the same time.

3. Ask Your Questions

So you want to know more about your target audience? Of course you do! To get all information you need, you rely on data from all kinds of sources. That’s important, but so is direct communication. Facebook is the perfect platform for that. Why don’t you just ask your followers what they expect from your brand and what improvements they would like to see?

These types of questions engage people because they encourage them to talk about themselves. You can do this by asking questions through status updates, but you can also publish polls or surveys on your Facebook page.

4. Call Them to Action

Posting high-quality content all the time makes a true difference, but you won’t see great results if you fail to include a clear call to action. Be direct and simply ask your followers to engage. Ask them to like, share, and comment. Such a call triggers their need to contribute towards something they like.

5. Enhance the Visual Appeal of Your Page

A single relevant image can boost the engagement on your page more than a brilliant textual status update. People are visual creatures. The statistics are interesting, to say the least: 51% of B2B marketers made visual content a priority in 2016. B2C marketers place even greater importance on visual marketing when compared to B2B marketers.

Here’s the lesson: thrive on visuals! The cover and profile photo are important, so make them super attractive. Keep including relevant images, infographics, and videos in the posts you share.

6. Check Out the Competitors

How do you become better than your competitors? You observe what they are doing and you offer something more creative, more useful, and more cost-effective to the same audience. The trends in social media marketing are dictated not only by the consumers, but by the competition as well. When you’re in such a competitive environment, there are only two things you can do: adapt or die. Of course you’ll adapt!

Stalk the most successful competitors. What are they doing differently to engage the Facebook audience? You won’t copy their strategy, but these insights will help you improve your own approach.

7. Get Traffic from Other Channels

Your social media strategy is probably not limited to Facebook. You’re also trying to build presence on Quora, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and other online communities. You can drive traffic from there to your Facebook page. All you have to do is include a link to your Facebook page in the description. Ad links to important Facebook status updates in the updates you post on other social media. You can get people to join the conversation on Facebook if you show them how effective it is.

8. Experiment with Your Content Format

You already know you should include images and videos to make your posts more attractive, but that’s not all. To engage your Facebook audience, you should try expressing your status updates through different types of content. Instead of adding a video from another source to your status update, why don’t you just turn your own words into a video? Instead of attaching a stock image to make the post visually appealing, why don’t you create an infographic that expresses the text in visual format?

Explore with different types of content and see what your audience likes the most.

9. Find the Right Posting Frequency

Many Facebook marketers make the same mistake: they think that more posts lead to greater engagement. That’s not necessarily the case. "Two posts a day" used to be a golden rule for Facebook marketing, but that can work only if you have a large audience. A study by Hubspot showed that for a smaller base of followers, posting twice per day will result in 50% lower engagement per post.

Find out what works for you. It’s not about the quantity of posts. It’s mainly about the quality. If you notice that your audience likes what you’re doing and you have more things to say, keep posting more frequently. If you’re not getting them engaged enough, improve the quality before you start working on the quantity of posts.

10. Mind the Timing

Even though Facebook is available 24/7, it doesn’t mean you can post any time. If you want better post engagement, timing is crucial. For this purpose, you have to find out when your target audience is on Facebook. If you’re targeting singles in their 20s, for example, you wouldn’t be able to reach them late at night or early in the morning. If you’re targeting people with office jobs, you won’t reach them during office hours.

The best times to post on social media are different for each business, but you can get hints from different studies. Your followers give you hints, too. Try posting at a different time every day to see when you can get people engaged.

Engagement is hard, but obtainable

Encouraging people to like, share, and comment on your posts is not a completely straightforward task. You have to catch the vibe of your audience and stay visible to them at all times. But with a robust strategy and thoughtful audience analysis, it's possible to master your Facebook presence and keep the audience engaged.

Official 2020 Video Marketing Guide (With Infographic)

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Fri, 21 Feb 2020 14:19:03 GMT

Video remains the most engaging, most shared type of content on social media.

Video remains the most engaging, most shared type of content on social media, and if you haven't considered how you can get more video into your digital marketing approach, it may be worth assessing as we move into 2020.

The immediacy of video provides greater appeal, making it easier for viewers to consume you messaging as they scroll through their increasingly busy social streams. The addition of autoplay adds further to this - and at a time where there are so many different elements competing for our attention online, tapping into any means to grab your audience can only be beneficial.

It has already been a couple of years since video started playing a crucial role in marketing. Back in 2017, 74% of all internet traffic was from videos and over 500 million people watched Facebook videos on a daily basis. Three years later, we can spot significant changes in light of all the predictions years ago. Facebook has its own video platform and fairly competes with YouTube in the struggle for users’ attention.

All these recent advancements prove that video is the future of marketing and in 2020, it will only gain momentum. If you want to know the current state of video marketing in detail and understand where it is heading in the nearest future, check out this infographic by Depositphotos.

3 video marketing trends for 2020

Short videos

In 2020, video marketing will resemble racing to some extent. YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook users want relevant information here and now and brands should aim to ensure that. A brand that managed to grab the user’s attention first, will win the race and get a lead or even a customer in the future.

The finding that 73% of marketing videos are shorter than two minutes is the evidence to support this. What’s even more interesting, last year, brands started repurposing YouTube ads into 6-second-long videos. They turn out to be enough for a viewer to get the message and decide if they would like to get acquainted with a brand, a product or services.

In brief, in 2020, marketing videos should be as short and concise as possible and 6-second-long bumper ads might not be the limit of an average video length.

Vertical content

We live in an era when a significant part of our communication and entertainment is via mobile devices. We talk in messengers with our friends and colleagues, share our experience on social media with thousands of followers, and watch hundreds of hours of videos to entertain and educate ourselves. The tendency of spending more and more time staring into black mirrors has turned out to be a reason for marketers to produce more vertical content. Moreover, vertical videos tend to show 90% completion rate in terms of ad views.

Also read: 5 Reasons Why Mundane Micro-Influencer Content Is Insanely Popular [Infographic]

With this information in mind, marketers should perceive vertical videos as one of the main visual trends of 2020 and make every effort to provide an audience with content in the most convenient format.

Videos as a part of the omnichannel experience

In addition to a convenient format, videos should also be shown to an audience at the right time and place. For instance, Google’s research has shown that 55% of people watch online videos while shopping in-store. Some of them are using videos instead of a shopping list, while others turn to them for assistance in decision-making. What this means is that videos are not only there to entertain but also to make people's lives and decision-making easier.

If you make videos a part of the omnichannel experience, your results from a solid strategy might be even more impressive than you thought, thanks to the potential boost you might get with this format.

If you're still not sure about the potential of video content for your business, take a look at this collection of stats, put together by the team from Deposit Photos. In it, they outline a range of video usage insights, including specific breakdowns of video content performance on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

It takes more work, and generally more investment, to create effective video. But the data suggests it may well be worth it.

Take a look at the full infographic below.

Social Media Video Marketing 101

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 16:57:13 GMT

3 Traits of Successful Video Marketing

The value of social media video marketing is pretty obvious these days. In fact, a report from Wibbitz found that providing video ROI was the least difficult challenge facing social video marketers. Instead, the challenges of effective social video marketing have more to do with how brands approach video creation.

Video marketing is not a monolithic content channel: The strategies that work for producing video on certain channels don’t necessarily translate to social platforms. For example, the Wibbitz report suggests that high-quality video production tends to have an adverse impact on social video performance, because the polished appearance of this content runs counter to consumers’ desire for authenticity.

Even so, social media is the single-best channel for distributing branded video content: 62 percent of marketers told Wibbitz that social ads are their most effective video format. But to maximize your ROI on social media, your standard video strategy may require some adaptation.

Here’s a look at some social media video best practices that address the evolving challenges facing brands in 2019.

Prioritizing Shareability Over Views

Social media is an excellent platform to distribute your video content—and that distribution can happen through both organic and paid channels. While increasing your content’s views is one of the ultimate measures of success, “views” isn’t a metric worth your attention when creating video content and developing a distribution strategy.

Social algorithms, particularly Facebook’s, are increasing the emphasis placed on how much your content is shared, according to Business2Community. Even with a smaller footprint to organically distribute your videos on Facebook, high share rates—combined with consistent user engagement of three minutes or more—can increase the organic reach of this content to ultimately generate more views. Facebook’s goal is to elevate video content that is more interesting to its users, and its algorithm dictates that the most engaging content, and the content that will keep users active in Facebook’s News Feed for longer, is content that gets shared at a high clip by its users.

The best way to create shareable video is to design content that triggers one of the emotions synonymous with viral content. According to the Content Marketing Institute, content that sparks “happiness, surprise, admiration, or satisfaction” is most likely to generate the shareability that leads to a viral moment.

Making Use of Multiple Creation Tools

Editing software like Final Cut Pro is one of the cornerstones of successful video creation, but it isn’t a comprehensive suite that meets all of your video production needs. Wibbitz notes that even for companies producing between three and 10 videos every month, at least nine video creation tools are being used. And when brands produce 50 or more videos in a month, the number of tools used in creation can climb into the 30s.

Every marketing department must operate within their budgetary limits when adopting these creation tools, but it’s smart to advocate for at least for some core solutions that provide the most essential video creation services.

In addition to video recording hardware—which can range from professional video cameras to the camera on a smartphone—video producers also need to consider their needs regarding audio recording, lighting, and editing, as well as stock image, video and audio libraries. These may not always be top of mind, but they’re all core components of successful social media video production.

If you’re going the low-budget, high-authenticity route and shooting on an iPhone, keep in mind that there are many different solutions that can enhance the quality of your video production. You can pick up different lenses and affix them to your camera to create different shot styles not available on the device, or spend a few bucks on one of the many video production and editing apps available to empower your low-cost video production with high-quality mobile creation tools.

Choosing Native Over Embedded Videos

Embedded videos are a precursor to native videos on social media, and they’re much easier to post to social accounts. But as Forbes points out, that ease of use comes with some limitations. The biggest difference is that native videos, which are uploaded straight to the social media platform itself, are able to autoplay when they appear in a user’s News Feed. Embedded videos don’t, and they depend on a user clicking “play.”

Because native videos start up on their own, they naturally generate more views than embedded videos. If your brand is capable of creating engaging, shareable video content, native ads are a great way to win over viewers that might otherwise not seek out your content. Native video is excellent for capitalizing on passive social media consumption behaviors, and switching over to native videos when posting this content has become one of the top social media video marketing best practices for brands to follow. Not convinced? Well, a native video on Facebook is 10 times more likely to be shared than anything you post to YouTube. How’s that for ROI?

Video content can be useful across many different traditional and digital marketing channels, but social media is a different beast. If you want to have success driving ROI from social video content, you need to create content that specifically serves the users and social platforms on the receiving end of these video campaigns. So hone in on the needs and wants of your audience and employ these social media video best practices if you want to stay competitive this year and in the future, too.

INFOGRAPHIC: 2019 Social Media Statistics That Matter

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 14:35:52 GMT

New 2019 Social Media Statistics for Business

Social Media is now a part of everyday life in 2019. We use social media to interact with friends, family, and business colleagues almost all the time. But just how much does social media effect the overall communicative process when it comes to business?

This infographic from the team at Statusbrew gives us some insight into "the business side of social"
- they've gathered together a range of key social media usage stats, which not only highlight just how many people are logging onto social, and how often, but they also highlight key business opportunities available through social networks, with a range of platform-specific and social business stats in the list.

Most of the numbers here have more recently been updated (Facebook's risen to 2.3 billion, LinkedIn's gone up to 610 million members overall, while Twitter has declined to 321 million MAU), but overall, this is a good collection of helpful data points, which underline the potential of social platforms for outreach.

You can read Statusbrew's full report here , or check out the infographic below.

VIDEO TUTORIAL: Create 3D Text and Lighting in AE

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 20:40:18 GMT

Video Walkthrough on Creating 3D Text and Lights in Adobe After Effects

In this video tutorial, Crown Media Studio's Chris Silva will walk you through the steps required to create some stunning 3D Text and volumetric lighting effects in Adobe After Effects. You can create awesome intros and logo stings foloowing the simple steps provided in the tutorial, and all of the processes Chris uses are all native to After Effects so you won't need to purchase any third party plugins to create these great 3D text effects.

VIDEO TUTORIAL: How to Create a Pop Out 3D 'Polaroid' Look in Photoshop

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Wed, 15 May 2019 21:09:07 GMT

Take a 2D Photo and Turn Any Subject into a "3D" Figure

Crown Media Studio's Chris Silva guides you through the process of creating a Pop Out 3D effect out of any 2D Subject.

Video Tutorial: Using the Rotobrush Tool in After Effects

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sat, 05 Jan 2019 19:58:08 GMT

In this video tutorial, Crown Media Studio's Chris Silva will walk you through the basics of how to use the rotobrush tool in Adobe After Effects CC 2019 to seperate a subject from the background of a video clip. The rotobrush tool in After Effects is a lot like the quick selection tool in Photoshop, and creates an effect similar to keying when using green screen footage.

Video Marketing Statistics 2019 (Infographic)

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sat, 05 Jan 2019 19:45:32 GMT

Video Marketing Statistics That Prove You Need it In Your Business

Content marketing plays a crucial role in the success of many companies and small businesses today. Through publishing fresh, relevant, and helpful content in the form of blog, articles, how-to guides, and whitepapers, businesses can build authority, awareness, and thought leadership, while at the same time, amass more loyal followers and potentially acquire new customers across different digital channels.

However, as years pass, and more and more companies publish their own content on the web, the likelihood of a typical content to get consumed and shared – let alone reach its target audience – has also waned. Known as content saturation – this challenge has been limiting the reach of many content marketers for the last recent years. In fact, BuzzSumo revealed that in 2017, the average content marketing article only managed to attract 4 social shares – a 50% decrease from 8 social shares in BuzzSumo’s analysis two years prior.

In order to address this pressing issue, more and more content marketers are diversifying their distribution channels and utilize new content platforms that appeal more to the modern, fast-paced audience. This includes videos, which according to many reports, is one – if not the most consumed types of content in the digital landscape nowadays.

Entertaining, highly shareable, and easily digestible – there’s a lot of reasons why you should integrate videos in your content marketing mix. To give you more insights, here are the key takeaways of the infographic from a top digital marketing research company, which details the top video marketing statistics that prove you need it in your business:

Videos will represent 82% of all internet traffic by 2021.
85% of people like to see more video from brands.
81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.
Video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year.
83% of marketers using video marketing think it gives them good ROI.

To learn more about what these statistics mean, check out the full infographic below.

Video Tutorial: How to make a 2D Photo 3D in Adobe Photoshop

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 04:24:30 GMT

In this video tutorial, we will show you how to turn a 2D Photo into a 3D environment suitable for animating in Adobe After Effects.

In this video tutorial, Chris Silva from Crown Media Studio show's you how to use the vanishing point filter effect in Adobe Photoshop to transform a 2D Photo into a 3D environment that you can then animate in Adobe After Effects. Having the ability to turn your 2D Photo into a 3D environment opens up a world of amazing possibilities for merging 2D artwork and animation into photorealistic 3D environments using 3D layers in Adobe After Effects.

3 Creative Holiday Social Media Marketing Ideas

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:00:43 GMT

Social Media Marketing for the Holidays

IDEA 1: Decorate Your Profile Picture and Cover Photo

Your Cover Photo should always primarily represent the values and personality of your brand, but if you want to get your audience in the season spirit you have to change it to reflect the holiday season. People are browsing social media more than usual so fresh Cover Photos will motivate them to check your social media and look for special offers or gift ideas.

To start, try to picture the Cover Photo as your billboard and ask yourself what information you want to promote during the holiday season. Maybe you have some special holiday products you want to showcase or some special holiday deals your fans would like to hear about? Tell that to your audience with a simple and effective design that consists of a bold background color and playful combination of serif and sans serif fonts.

We suggest you try Arvo or EB Garamond as serif and Glober or Din as your sans serif fonts.

Even if your business cannot offer any special holiday discounts, post a picture of your office Christmas decorations and brand it elegantly with your logo to give an inviting and festive vibe to your social media.

According to research, each person has an average of 5 social media accounts but actively uses three so don’t stop on just one social media platform. Upload similar holiday-themed cover images to all your other social media accounts to create consistency and enable visitors to easily find and recognize your brand on their preferred social media network.

In a similar way you should shake up your Profile image and make people think about Christmas whenever they see your updates on the Newsfeed. If you cannot add a Santa hat, mistletoe symbol or some other holiday accents to your logo, you can always use festive-related hashtags and place them under your logo. Choose more generic hashtags such as #Wishlist2015 or #Christmas2015, or create your own hashtag as a part of the holiday marketing campaign, like Sears has been doing for several years now.

This will tie in all your social media accounts and help shoppers who are using Twitter or Instagram to research your offer in more detail.

Idea 2: Share the Joy of Christmas

Social media is meant to be social, so use the holiday season to give your posts some festive spin. You will get people excited not only about the season but also about your brand!

You can start by creating posts that ask people what’s their most memorable Christmas moment, favorite holiday food, best part of Christmas: opening presents, dinner or the post lunch feeling?

If you are in a business that can benefit from recipe posts, you shouldn’t miss the opportunity to talk about food during the festive season. Share recipes or cooking tips, ask fans to share their own or to post a review once they make your dish.

People also love “this vs. that” questions, so you can ask them what they prefer to eat or drink around the holidays: cider or eggnog?

Whatever you choose to write about, make sure that your text is not invading the image. Use background shapes as a text holder so that the recipe is easy to read and experiment with fun and festive fonts such as Animatic or Toscuchet CM as they will perfectly capture the relaxed atmosphere of the season.

Your tips and tricks can go beyond cooking ideas. You can help your audience learn how to decorate their home, choose the best gift or perfectly wrap their gifts.

Conversation on any of these topics will make you look knowledgeable and bring you closer to shoppers.

People tend to remember information grouped in three so if you want to get your message across choose three main points and design them as bullet or number lists. It will help you communicate the information without making your design complicated or busy.

Idea 3: Show the Magic of Giving

The holiday season is a time to remind ourselves that we should be helping others more, so share that thought and your efforts with your audience. Prepare a special holiday eBook and encourage downloads by saying you will offer 100 dollars for every 100 downloads. Or create a special hashtag and promise you will donate 1 dollar for each shared tweet that contains such hashtag.

For inspiration take a look at the #MacysBelieve hashtag campaign that invites kids to send their letters to Santa at Macy’s stores. For every letter received Macy’s is donating a dollar to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In 2013 the hashtag campaign ended up raising 2 million dollars!

When designing your posts, use a photo of people who will receive the help, as that will have the strongest impact on your audience. For better legibility place a transparent layer over your photo and contrast the color of letters with the color of the background. Use up to 2 fonts and play with their size and weight for more variety.

5 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2019

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 23:50:15 GMT

The world of social media is constantly changing, bringing new trends, ideas, and unspoken rules each year. In most cases, the changes aren’t sudden or unexpected, but rather gradual and relatively predictable - for example, who was really surprised to see Google + shut down?

In this post, I’ll go through the expected social media trends of 2019. Some of them are already here, and growing slowly, but aren’t at full hype just yet. Some are big and booming, and expected to get even bigger in 2019.

Here are the most expected, and truth be told, exciting shifts of note:

1. Social listening

Social listening (monitoring) is the act of crawling the web and social media platforms to find all mentions of a brand (or any other keywords). This includes untagged brand mentions on social media, mentions of industry keywords that signal the interest to buy a product, mentions on blogs, forums, and news sites. The current primary goals of social listening are customer service and reputation management, even though there are, of course, many others.

While using social listening for these two causes is expected to become even bigger, the real trend of 2019 is going to be using social media listening for lead generation and social selling. So far, only a tiny number of brands do this, yet that number is gradually rising as marketers discover that they can find people looking for the exact services they offer on social media.

Some tools are even introducing features made specifically for lead generation in their toolbox.

Given that people sharing their frustrations, ideas, and recommendations online are not about to stop, social listening usage will continue to grow, and expand to include new possibilities.

If you’d like to start with social listening before 2019 arrives, check out this list of tools .

2. Video content

Every year, video content continues to grow, and in 2019, video content is expected to once again dominate the market. In fact, according to some experts, 80% of what we consume online will soon be video content.

This is especially true for live videos. Having always been popular on YouTube, the trend has now taken over Facebook and Instagram, to the point when we get notified when someone is going live.

The authentic and ephemeral nature of live videos seems to make them especially attractive and meaningful to social media users. Live videos increase the perceived trustworthiness and relevance of a brand, and it’s a trend that you don't want to ignore.

It should go without saying that you have to deliver engaging and exciting content, just as you would on a blog or anywhere else, but we’ll mention this anyway, just in case.

The main reason that videos have become more and more popular is that it’s getting easier to film, even on a rather good production level. But while your audience will be forgiving - it’s understood that live videos are spontaneous and things can go wrong - you definitely should seek to avoid annoying technical problems where possible.

3. Micro-influencers

In the past couple of years, social media influencers have become a major trend. We now have Instagram stars, Twitter influencers, YouTube millionaires. These people have millions of followers - their every post, or vlog, or tweet is instantly seen by more people than TV ad makers could ever hope for. It was grand and revolutionary when the power of social media influencers became clear to everyone - and it still is.

However, as the number of social media influencers has grown over time, prices for their services have also skyrocketed. That's lead more businesses to look at other alternatives, including micro-influencer marketing.

As opposed to major influencers, micro-influencers exist in every marketing niche. They have followings of fewer than 10 000 people, but most of their followers are genuinely interested in what they have to say. And they're very engaged - micro-influencers are often considered experts in their niche.

These smaller names are not massively targeted by advertisers, so they are trustworthy and down-to-earth. The marketing potential is very high and marketers are about to recognize this in 2019.

4. Personalization

Given the vast amount of information being uploaded by people each day, it's become very easy to get insights into all kinds of information about the people sitting behind the screen. This has opened the door for enhanced personalization, and that, in turn, has increased consumer expectation for the same.

Content, products, emails - all of it can now be based on the consumer’s purchase history, clicked links, social media posts, and other behavior. Booking.com, for example, notifies you about deals in the locations you’ve been to, Netflix offers shows to watch based on your taste, Amazon and eBay show products similar to the ones you’ve bought before. And this is before you even consider Google and Facebook - they know us inside and out, and use this information to make our experience personalized.

While personalized marketing can be unsettling (especially when you consider all the information companies have on you), it’s also truly convenient for the user, and customers are not likely to give up the benefits any time soon.

As much as 96% of marketers believe that personalization advances customer relationship. Customers might worry about vague privacy risks, but they still appreciate the suggested product they’ve been looking for, as well as the notification of the sale in their favorite shop.

Despite the concerns, personalization is clearly the way to go for marketers to boost campaign performance.

5. Timeliness

The almost immediate future of marketing is real-time communication. The social media trends in marketing are the 24/7 customer support, real-time social selling, chatbots, and constant monitoring for a potential social media crisis.

This is because social media never sleeps - customers continue to use your products, talk about them online, and buy new items at any given moment. This has been happening for a while, and finally, technology has caught up - we now have the tools to look for mentions of a brand in real time, tools that schedule content to be posted at any point, chatbots that offer immediate help.

In 2019, consumers will expect their Twitter complaint to be answered straight away, and won’t get surprised when you immediately comment on the “Does anyone know a good alternative to Trello?” with an offer of your product. It’s just the world we live in - no one has the time to wait. People want their problems solved and their needs met, now.

Conclusion

As a marketer, I can’t wait for these trends to come into more significant effect, and to change our lives for the better. As always, 2019 will prove to be challenging as marketers seek to adapt, but new tools and options will enhance the consumer process, and provide new ways to connect and convert in real-time. Contact Crown Media Studio to discover more great ways to connect with your market audiences.

Media center dedicated to inspiring Charleston teacher

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 06:01:44 GMT

Nell Wiseman cultivated a long-reaching history of students

CHARLESTON -- The high school's social media center was dedicated to the late Charleston english teacher Nell Wiseman Saturday afternoon.

Wiseman, who had taught English at the school since 1959, died Oct. 10 in St. John’s Hospital in Springfield.

Wiseman's death, or more aptly her life, drew a large audience back in October at her memorial service , and school officials sought to honor her again. The dedication Sunday included speeches from those close to her.

"I am amazed," Bob Wiseman, Nell's husband, said of the dedication. "I know that Nell would certainly appreciate all this. It is a great honor."

Trevor Doughty, Charleston High School principal, said the dedication was "fitting" for a person of her caliber. He said she was not only a "Charleston icon" but a "teaching icon."

The dedication includes a sign above the indoor entrance to the media center and a plaque outside the door.

"Nell taught English to more than 8,000 students at Charleston high School (and thousands more at Lake Land College) in her 58 year career (1959-2017) and was a passionate advocate for every student to achieve his or her potential," an excerpt from the plaque reads. "Nell was recognized locally, statewide and nationally for her teaching excellence."

4 Types Of Stories You Can Tell Through Video Marketing

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 10:57:01 GMT

Ideas for using video to attract new customers, increase sales and grow your business.

Forgive us if you heard this before, but video marketing is kind of a big deal. Just check out these stats:

500 million hours’ worth of videos are watched on YouTube every day (HubSpot)
More than 500 million people watch videos on Facebook every day (TubularInsights)
87% of online marketers use video as part of their content marketing strategy (OutBrain)
83% of marketing professionals think video marketing strategies have good ROI (Wyzowl)
Video marketers get 66% more qualified annual leads (Aberdeen Group)
Video marketing efforts can achieve a 54% increase in brand awareness (Aberdeen Group)
Marketers that use video content grow revenue 49% faster than those who don’t (VidYard)

These stats ought to paint a pretty clear picture of the importance of video. However, when it comes to developing video content, many industrial marketers struggle to figure out just what kind of story they want to tell.

The Explainer
This video takes some aspect of your company and explains it to your audience. Many video marketers do this with some form of animation, but a live-action video works equally well. Try asking your most camera-friendly employee to give a tour of your facilities, talking to ten workers about why they love their job or explaining why your business is an industry leader.

The How-To
How-To videos take your company’s services and demonstrate their value for the video audience. These videos can be very engaging to a technical audience since industrial concepts are often difficult to explain or absorb solely through writing or advertisements. Examples of a good How-To video might include walking viewers through complicated preventative maintenance tasks or troubleshooting common issues with your products.

The Demo
Demonstrating your product on video can be an effective way to attract potential buyers. This can be especially useful if your product type is difficult to explain or a new and disruptive addition to the market. Regardless, buyers like to know what they’re buying, and a video demo is a great way to show them. This isn’t much different from a product demo you might host for an in-person customer—it just reaches a much larger audience.

The Testimonial/Case Study
What other companies say about you matters. If you can get them to say it on video, their feedback can be a valuable digital marketing tool. This type of video can work well as a series of testimonials from a range of clients, or as one longer focus on how your product/service provided a solution for one of your customers.

Ready to start incorporating video into your marketing materials? Contact Crown Media Studio today and discover the great options we have for creating eye-catching and engaging videos at the most affordable rates ANYWHERE!

Magic Leap One Creator Edition Launch

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sat, 11 Aug 2018 23:08:18 GMT

Augmented reality headset launches after delays

After eons of beating around the augmented bush (and months of our barbed skepticism), Magic Leap finally announced the launch of its first commercial product yesterday.

Priced north of $2k, the Magic Leap One Creator Edition AR headset, according to the company’s press release, “brings digital content to life here in the real world.”

And it only took them 7 years to get it there…

Which is fair, because tech takes time, but also insane considering the amount of money Magic Leap has been able to squeeze out of investors ‘on spec’ — more than $2B since it was founded in 2011.

They recently declared the product would be out “sometime this year” during the announcement of their exclusive mobile partnership with AT&T last month, and looks like that “sometime” is now.

So far, so good

Back in October, Magic Leap’s technology was sharply criticized by several news sources, the consensus being that the so-called revolutionary AR device was more of a leap than a reality.

But, CNBC reporter Todd Haselton was invited to take the new headset for a spin yesterday, and, well, he spit some pretty strong words straight outta positive town:

“The Magic Leap One is impressive… unlike any computer I’ve used before… The experience with the goggles was like a computer-generated 3-D world with real depth.”

The 7 biggest marketing trends for social media in 2018

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sat, 04 Aug 2018 23:12:12 GMT

Here’s everything you need to master social media marketing this year.

Marketing your business on social media works for one very good reason: everyone is there. But ‘everyone’ includes a lot of other marketers, which means the people you want to reach are already getting inundated with ads from competitors. That you have to stand out isn’t news. But how you can stand out on social media in 2018 is news—because for every platform, there’s an emerging trend you can leverage to get seen and engage your followers.

Here’s everything you need to master social media marketing this year.

Trend #1: Instagram is the new Facebook

“For marketers searching for a social media platform that can provide access to a growing audience of highly engaged users, Instagram has become a market leader.” —Owlmetrics, Instagram Stories Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide.

Instagram is a great platform for posting your travel photos. Get your favorite and pair it with a personal message using any of these layouts from Canva: Travel Blog Instagram Post , Orange Madrid Travel Instagram Post , and Travel to Spain Instagram Post .

Instagram has been growing like crazy , and there are a few reasons why. For one, it’s still a happy, cheerful place where people share pictures of their breakfasts and vacation destinations, rather than spewing their political opinions. For another, it hasn’t yet reached the ad saturation that prompted Facebook to switch around its algorithm yet again to prioritize “friends, family and groups” (we’ll get to that later).

“One reason for Instagram’s rapid adoption among advertisers is the pipeline of 5 million active advertisers on Facebook. As Facebook faces ad load saturation on its main app, marketers have more reasons to experiment with Instagram advertising. Facebook can provide the same targeting capabilities on Instagram, but there’s a growing number of ad types and more available inventory on Instagram for advertisers to drive conversions.” — JD Prater , Director of Growth Marketing & Customer Acquisition at AdStage.

But Instagram is an inherently visual platform, which means it requires a different approach than Facebook’s text-forward posts. If the image doesn’t grab viewers, you’ve lost them immediately. But, overlaying words on images can give you the best of both worlds.

Blinkist uses overlays to great effect with either taking pictures of book covers, or overlaying quotes on top of stock photo backgrounds. Followers come for the quotes and stay for the books, or at least the summarized key ideas of the non-fiction books Blinkist shrinks down.

Trend #2: The push towards original, branded, niched images continues

As more marketers get wise to Instagram, generic ads are cropping up. Consumers are well-trained to ignore these already. Stock photos? Gimme a break.

The content that Instagrammers pay attention to often aren’t polished, professional photos. The images that get views and engagement tend to be a lot more personal, and extremely tightly niched.

“In 2018, it's important for visual creators to produce content tailored to specific audiences. Social media is becoming noisier as platforms mature. To reach your desired fans, you must create unique designs that match their interests. You may find that your followers prefer wild patterns versus solid colors. For more insight, do the research, execute, and evaluate your work.” — Shayla Price , B2B Marketer.

Here are two different approaches that each work well—one with shared images, the other with original.

Audrey Crisp Interiors has more than 51,000 followers and just 926 posts on her Instagram account, but her “modern boho” aesthetic is so consistent, that she’s become a go-to image source for the inspiration-hungry, modern design lovers. The images she posts aren’t original - they’re sourced from other designers and stores like West Elm. But, because *her* style is reflected in every post she curates, it works for her audience. Besides, sharing other people’s content (and attributing it accordingly) is a time-honored way to build a following (and it’s clearly working for Crisp).

Trend 3: Messenger bots are becoming marketers

Facebook only recently brought brands and Messenger bots together, but this pairing is poised to take off. Brands like LEGO and Sephora invite Facebook users to contact them via bot on their page to get answers to questions like “what LEGO set should I buy my 8 year-old niece?” and enable faster, simpler scheduling of makeovers, respectively.

Arri Bagah , Head of Chatbots at BAMF media , says Facebook Messenger bots can be used to build relationships with customers with informative, helpful content, offer customer service troubleshooting and FAQ-answering, and even recover abandoned shopping carts. But, the secret to successful Bot marketing is to make the Bot as human-like as possible. Cute. Funny. Informal. And not just text-based. As Arri says, “If you look at how people use messaging apps, they use images and gifs. And that’s what you need to use with a chatbot to make it feel personal and engaging.”

Social media-based bots are on the rise. As digital marketing strategist Gus Younis adds, “with the success of FB messenger ads, it’s very likely that other platforms might copy that experience. Everybody is trying to get more ad inventory, and messaging is the next placement to go for.”

Trend 4: Facebook is adding virtual reality

This trend may not hit in full force until next year, but if you want to land early-adopter status, get ready to go virtual. Facebook owns Oculus, a virtual reality hardware and software company, so it’s no surprise that the two are collaborating on a project that brings together the best of both worlds: Spaces . Spaces will use Facebook photos to build a custom avatar, players can record their VR activities live and post them on Facebook for friends to follow in real-time, and Facebook friends can make and receive Messenger video calls whether they’re in VR or not. Facebook announced plans to scale Spaces in 2018, and while marketing opportunities probably won’t be rolled out early, you can bet they’re in the near future.

Trend 5: Facebook groups are where the action is

That latest algorithm change prioritizing friends, live video and group posts dismayed most brands—but not those who already heavily use their own Facebook groups. Cultivating communities around your brand has proven to be an incredibly powerful way to connect—and stay connected to—a core audience of customers who are engaged and willing to help each other out.

As digital marketing strategist, speaker, and entrepreneur Ross Simmonds says, “Facebook Groups surpass pages as being the most important organic tool in the Facebook marketing toolkit."

"Facebook has talked about their commitment to making the world more connected for years and currently Groups is the best way for strangers to meet strangers. The latest announcement from Zuckerberg stating that they want Facebook to be more social and less priority around media & brand content shows me that the writing is on the wall. In 2017, 1B people were accessing Groups in a single month. I expect that number to continue to rise in the months ahead.”

In just one year, the professional group The Copywriter Club has grown into a 7,000 member strong network of highly engaged, mutually supportive copywriters. There’s also a podcast, but instead of the community supporting the podcast, it’s actually the other way around, as co-founder Kira Hug explains.

“We started the Facebook group a year ago, and the strategy immediately was just to get the right copywriters in the room. I sent personal invitations to all the copywriters I knew; I was stalking other Facebook groups to find writers I did not know; I was looking at different online directories with copywriters abroad—anything I could find.

The podcast helped as well to support the growth. The podcast gets us all speaking the same language. We can refer to different guests and shows, we know the general topics we’re talking about. That’s how we got started. And I think the Facebook algorithm has helped us greatly over the past year. I feel like we’ve popped up in a lot of people's feeds.”

Does it work as a marketing tool? You bet. Founders Kira Hug and Rob Marsh just sold out their first members-only conference in New York.

Trend 6: Forget evergreen content - try Instagram stories

Instagram stories don’t have to be video - they can also be pictures or even GIFs (made with Boomerang), with added filters, stickers, drawing, text and other capabilities that are constantly being added. The key is like Snapchat, they only last for 24 hours. Yeah, not exactly evergreen content. So why invest?

"2018 will be a year where we'll witness a surge in live streaming and videos as a content distribution channel. With diminishing attention spans and need for bite-size content on the go, the above channels would make brands use them in innovative new ways. A report by Statista states that there are over 300 million daily active Stories users worldwide- clearly, early adopters on platforms like this will enjoy an edge." — Taru Bhargava , content marketer & strategist.

There are a lot of people watching stories! Stories are authentic, fun and engaging, and nearly effortless to create. Since they don’t last forever, businesses can use Stories to test out ideas on their audience and gauge reactions, and, since Instagram lets creators add links to Stories (otherwise forbidden on regular Instagram posts), brands can use them to drive traffic.

Tour company Pride of Maui posts stories frequently, taking advantage of their beautiful surroundings to take videos of swimming turtles or just waving palm trees. Notice the text overlay with the palm tree sticker - little touches that send a crystal clear message that it’s time for a vacation.

Fun fact: photos tend to drive more ‘likes’ per post, but videos drive more comments - and video engagement stats are growing faster than those for photos.

Trend 7: For Facebook Live, make videos practical and/or inspiring

The most shared type of content on Facebook in 2017, according to Buzzsumo , was video. Not just any videos though. Live videos posted from Facebook groups do particularly well in news feed placement. But videos that are inspiring, heartwarming, and contain practical tips are the ones that get shared the most.

Speaking of trends: Twitter is trending down

With all of the talk about social media platforms, one popular one has been waning in influence: Twitter. Statista shows the number of monthly active Twitter users leveling off throughout 2016 and 2017, marking a distinct shift from previous years where the numbers just kept growing. It doesn’t help that Twitter lost access to streaming NFL games to Amazon either. No one seems to know what the future of Twitter holds, but there is consensus that their leadership will be making some changes.

Does all of this speak to an overarching trend for 2018?

When you put these trends together—the rise of video, Facebook groups, Instagram gaining popularity, and even bots and VR—one overarching trend begins to emerge.

People are gravitating towards positive online experiences.

That might sound obvious, but that hasn’t been the case in years past when consumers were flooding Twitter and Facebook with political and social outrage, sharing the latest bad news about climate change and refugees.

This year, people gravitating towards videos that are overwhelmingly positive, inspiring, and/or useful; Instagram is still about people sharing what they love about their lives; Facebook groups are clusters of like-minded people (for the most part) agreeing to help each other out; and bots, when done well, are so darn cute that they’re practically a form of escapism to a brighter bot-filled Jetson-like future.

If you want to be on-trend this year, just spread hope.

SIGGRAPH 2018: CG Immersion Days for Everyone

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 21:45:42 GMT

SIGGRAPH 2018 is a five-day immersion into the latest innovations in CG, Animation, VR, Games, Digital Art, Mixed Reality and Emerging Technologies.

***This article originally appeared in the August ‘18 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 282)***

With advances in technologies coming at us from every direction each day, it’s easy to feel a bit lost and overwhelmed. That’s why it’s wonderful to have all the latest innovations and the people behind them under one roof each year at the CG/interactive tech confab known as SIGGRAPH. This year’s edition, held at the Vancouver Convention Centre (Aug. 12-16), features all the amazing components we have grown to love through the years: the art gallery and papers, the “Birds of a Feather” graphics-related discussions, business symposium, Computer Animation Festival, courses, emerging technologies, games, job fair, panels and production sessions, and the super cool VR, AR and MR offerings. No matter what your specific interests are, we know you’ll find plenty of inspiration and mind-blowing moments.
Visual Highlights of the Computer Animation Festival
SIGGRAPH 2018 Computer Animation Festival Producer Larry Bafia says the 25 projects presented in the Vancouver edition’s two-hour program represent a wide variety of genres and types of CG animation.

“Our jury was great at putting together a spectrum of films that ranged from photorealistic to stylized and fantasy films,” he notes. “We have the latest shorts from DreamWorks and Pixar (Bilby and Bao), as well as five students pieces from France and the U.S.”Bafia, an animation professional who has worked at Will Vinton Studios, PDI/DreamWorks and Warner Bros. and teaches at The Centre for Digital Media, says he and his team were quite impressed with the high level of game cinematics coming through. “The new Hearthstone from Blizzard and Blur Studio’s Far Cry 5: Pastor Jerome Jeffries are represented well. The cinematic for Ubisoft’s Beyond Good and Evil 2 was a lot of fun, too.”He points out that there is an abundance of interesting looking work done with real-time technology. “We are showing Episode 2 of Adam by Oats Studios, which is made in real time by Unity,” says Bafia. “The interactive demo for Unity’s Book of the Dead is also featured.”

The 2018 edition of the animation festival also includes several pieces focusing on scientific matters. “There’s a scientific simulation done by NASA offering a multiple-angle of a hurricane, as well as a Canadian piece about the geometry of artificial intelligent. Poland’s Platige Image has a great piece which is the deconstruction of a painting. Toronto-based studio Guru’s short Space Between Stars is also quite visually impressive.” (Guru’s short is directed by in-house artist Samuel W. Bradley and follows a group of ethereal creatures exploring a vast and unsettling derelict space station.)

Another highlight is the French short 1 Mètre/Heure (One Meter Per Hour) by Nicolas Deveaux. The short, which debuted at the Cannes Festival earlier this year, is a photorealistic piece capturing the performances of a troupe of snails delivering a magnificently choreographed ballet on the wing of an Air France jetliner.
Looking back at the 25 projects selected for the festival, Bafia says it was a very competitive year. “The jury had to make some tough decisions on the final day,” he notes. “I also didn’t tell the jury which projects were student films and which were professional ones. We had 425 films submitted, so it was a big task. It all came down to performance and sensitivity to storytelling and strength of narrative.”
Overall, Bafia says he sees more work being done using Blender and Unity all over the place. “Great CG animation is being produced everywhere,” he notes. “It’s wonderful to see fresh work using animation as a universal language. We see films from Asia, North America, South America, Europe … I believe we have shorts from 12 different countries represented. What it all boils down to is that it’s more about the talent that the tools.”

Mission: Full Immersion

If you thought last year’s VR and AR offerings at SIGGRAPH L.A were amazing, wait until you see that program chair Pol Jeremias and his team have planned for the Vancouver edition. “We are making a big investment in augmented, virtual and mixed reality this year, and part of my job as the director of the VR program is to rethink how we can best show the projects,” says Jeremias, who is lead graphics software engineer at Pixar. “That’s why we have created an immersive pavilion, which is a whole space dedicated to immersive technologies. Aside from the VR Theater, we all have a new space we call the ‘VRcade,’ which houses 10 interactive pods.”
In addition, installations showcasing VR and AR projects and research being done in those areas are showcased in the VR Village area. “We saw how augmented reality can help you design your living room, or perhaps put you inside the space station.. It’s a really large space, and we will have more than 20 booths showcasing the latest VR and AR technologies,” says Jeremias. “We have also curated a museum of VR, where attendees can see old headsets created for the technology and experience the evolution of the medium through the years.”

The VR Theater will present two different programs each day of the conference, each running 45 minutes in length. One program includes five VR presentations, the other program presents four projects. Two 20-minute VR shorts will be presented: Space Explorers by Felix & Paul Studios, and Arden’s Wake – Expanded from Penrose Studios. Also featured within the VR Theater will be a live-action, sci-fi themed project called Trinity and a student-produced piece entitled Bluebird from Savannah College of Art and Design. This year, for the first time, a number of kiosks, located just outside of the VR Theater, will be available to attendees to view short VR content.
Jeremias says he is very excited about the wealth of projects showcased in the VR theater this year. He mentions Jeff Gipson’s Cycles, billed as the first major VR project from Walt Disney Animation Studio, which explores the true meaning of creating a home and the life it holds inside its walls; and the new chapter in Baobab Studio’s Crow: The Legend (directed by DreamWork veteran Eric Darnell), about the Native American folk tale legend who helps bring back light and warmth back to the world. Also featured is Google’s Welcome to the Light Fields, which allows users to experience realistic reflections and translucence as they visit the Gamble House, Mosaic Tile House and the Space Shuttle Discovery. Also on the do-not-miss list is Peter Billington’s acclaimed Wolves in the Walls, an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s story which casts the viewer as the eight-year-old heroine’s companion.

“We see VR being used to tell very interesting stories, narratives exploring what it means to be homeless, or stories about the LGBTQ experience,” he adds. “There is a great project about Martin Luther King [Jr.]. And there’s a piece made with Google Tilt Brush called Show of Kindness.”
Looking at the big picture, Jeremias says he is very excited to see how VR is changing the way artists are creating animation. “Tools like Tilt Brush or Quill that allow us to do quick stories are really making an impact, even if it ends up on the 2D screen, you have this sense of scale in VR. As we get more human and have better experiences interacting with virtual worlds, the tools get more intuitive and allow us to make 2D films faster and more efficiently.”
He also points out that VR adds a very personal dimension to the art of storytelling. “The fact that you not just a passive member of the audience changes everything. If you look at the history of cinema, during its early years, it was just recorded theater, but then it developed its own language and filmmakers were able to take full advantage of its dimensions and capabilities. The same is true for the VR medium. We are still in the early days of the medium and haven’t taken full advantage of its possibilities.”

More of this year’s highlights include:

Opening Night (Aug. 13) will feature a live performance by a band taiko drummers and a keyboardist, who will play music to accompany a video montage of highlights from the history of the Electronic Theater, based on this year’s “Generations”
Can’t-miss Keynote by Rob Bredow (SVP, Executive Creative Director, and Head of Industrial Light & Magic). Read our recent interview with the Solo VFX producer about the SIGGRAPH conference and the state of CG here.
10 Production Sessions look at the making of blockbusters such as Ready Player One, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Blade Runner 2049, Incredibles 2 and Avengers: Infinity Wars as well as sneak peeks at Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph 2 and LAIKA’s 2019 feature Missing Link. Also featured will be the VR project Crow: The Legend and the amazing vfx of HBO’s Game of Thrones.
A special 25th Anniversary session will look back at the making of the original Jurassic Park, hosted by the pic’s CG animator Steve “Spaz” Williams.
The second annual Production Gallery will showcase 50 pieces of original artwork by renowned futurist Syd Mead.
For more info, visit s2018.siggraph.org.

Warner Bros. and DC are big winners at Comic-Con 2018

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 17:53:51 GMT

New Announcements from Marvel and DC

Outside of Wonder Woman, it's been a weird time for DC. Batman vs. Superman came out, it made a bunch of money, but the response wasn't great. Suicide Squad survived the critics and rolled in the dough. Justice League did better with critics than BvS... and vastly underperformed.
At Comic-Con this year, Warner Bros. and DC came with a mission: to prove the DC cinematic universe can stand up against Marvel . And as Stream Economy pointed out, DC at least succeeded in showing it's possible.

We're still in the early stages of the Comic-Con trailer horse race, but so far Aquaman is the clear winner, with Warner Bros.' upload of the film's first trailer netting more than 18 million views. Fellow Warner Bros. trailers Shazam (7 million plus 9.6 million from a trending upload) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (7.2 million) are also at the front of the pack, alongside the trailer for Dragon Ball Super: Broly (6.2 million).
But as we saw from the reveal of the latest Battle Angel Alita trailer, there still could be more to come.

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe had zero announcements during this year's Comic-Con, Marvel Animation right now might be providing us a really good look at the MCU's future.
The new Marvel Rising: Initiation and the linked Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors series are bringing together younger heroes like Ms. Marvel, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Spider-Gwen (also known as Ghost Spider), Quake and Patriot. The new show provides a more hopeful take on teamwork and fighting crime, which is a welcome relief from the devastation seen in the MCU's current Infinity War status quo.
Several of these characters have an imminent future in theaters, such as Ghost Spider being in Sony's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and MCU head Kevin Feige already teasing that Ms. Marvel will happen in some way after her idol Carol Danvers makes her debut in 2019's Captain Marvel.
And this isn't the first time Marvel animation has become ahead of the movies, as Captain Marvel already plays a role on Disney's Avengers Assemble.

sources CNET, PlayDates

6 Digital Design Trends For 2018

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sun, 03 Jun 2018 22:11:05 GMT

Here are our top picks for digital design trends we are seeing in 2018

Although the first part of the year started a little grey and chilly, at Crown Media Studio we’ve been getting excited and looking on the sunny side with some of the fresh, new digital design ideas that will brighten your screens over the next year.

Here’s our list of the six digital design trends that you must pay attention to this year.

1. Bright, Bold Colours
Graphic designers are already showing their courage. Bright, clashing colours are going to be a loud and proud feature of design in 2018. With the new SVG capabilities in OpenType font formats, colour fonts in marketing emails are already becoming popular.

2. 90’s Fashion
You may have already seen the Clueless-inspired fashion in stores. 90’s fashion and imagery are going to be a huge trend in 2018. Think web design with bright colours on dark backgrounds and that signature 90’s squiggle!

3. No More Gender Stereotypes
More brands are re-thinking their portrayal of outdated gender roles. Unilever have discovered that women no longer relate to the picture-perfect housewife in their adverts.
The Advertising Standards Authority are also planning to issue new rules regarding gender norms. Expect to see some refreshed ideas on how gender is presented in the coming year’s adverts.

4. The Colour Purple – Ultra Violet
According to the Pantone Colour Institute, ultra-violet is set to be the official colour of 2018. We have already fallen in love with the colour at Upperdog HQ and can’t wait to start using it some new email campaigns!

5. Split Page Web Design
Although we love a big, statement hero image on a homepage, 2018 will see a shift to more split page web designs. Split page designs are ideal for creating equal importance visually in your landing pages or homepage.

6. Calming Everything
2016 was a politically chaotic year. In 2017, we were still trying to recover. But according to Facebook, 2018 will be the year we seek to distil our stress. Calming everything, is going to be reflected in design trends, with soft, cute character illustrationsc and positive statements.

There are plenty of design trends in the digital marketing industry and it’s hard to mention all of them, but these 6 are some we expect to continue gaining steady popularity throughout 2018.

Hong Kong Disneyland's Mystic Manor

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 12:29:18 GMT

RFID/WiFi/electroluminscent driven spook-house for the 21st Century

From the moment the first on-ride videos hit YouTube, theme park fans around the world have been raving about Hong Kong Disneyland's Mystic Manor. Theme Park Insider readers loved the new ride so much that you named it the World's Best New Attraction in the annual Theme Park Insider Awards last month.

At the biennial Disney D23 Expo, Imagineers Joe Lanzisero and Mark Schirmer spoke about their work on Mystic Manor, a "redemption story," as Mark described it, of a beloved sidekick who messes up by opening an enchanted [Pandora's?] music box and then struggles to close it before anything else goes horribly (and hilariously) wrong. Joe and Mark described the project, the challenge of creating a new intellectual property from scratch, and the opportunities afforded by telling their story using a revolutionary new ride system.

Here's an edited transcript of their remarks
:
On creating an original story
Joe Lanzisero: "This has probably been a high point of my career, for a bunch of reasons. One, we got to create something totally new. We didn't have to do a Pixar project or something based on something else. [Laughter from audience] It's great that we have all that wonderful IP that we can go to mine for a project, like Monsters Inc. in Tokyo, which Mark and I did together, but this was an opportunity, like the original Imagineers had, to create something totally new -- we created new characters, and new ride system."

Mystic Manor project leads, Mark Schirmer, left, and Joe Lanzisero. With Albert the monkey in the, uh, middle.
"It has its genesis in some pre-existing Disney mythology. Those of you who have been to The Adventurers' Club [loud applause], thank you Joe Rohde for that concept; we took that same idea to Tokyo when I was doing the Tower of Terror there. They didn't know the whole Rod Sterling "Twilight Zone" thing, so we had to create a new story there. And we created this story about this Society of [Explorers and Adventurers] and Harrison Hightower, who owned the hotel there. He was a member of the society, well, surprisingly enough there was another member of the Society, Lord Henry Mystic, who, unlike some of the other characters in the Society -- some of them had kind of shady backgrounds -- Lord Henry here, he's an earnest guy. He's part of the British upper class, traveling the world, and along the way met this little monkey character [the sidekick, Albert]."

The two then played the Mystic Manor preshow for the audience:

Mark Schirmer: "With that preshow, the things we wanted to communicate in there were pretty straightforward: to introduce Albert and certainly Lord Henry, as he's voicing that over, and it was [also] about the music box -- the latest acquisition [in Lord Henry's collection]. It might have some interesting who-knows-what inside and we just need to be careful about it. We really wanted to communicate about those things."
Joe: "When we base an attraction on a movie, our guests come pre-wired with some emotional connection to the experience. They've seen the movie. They have the music from the movie. They know the characters from the movie. It's all in their head. So our job becomes planning those trigger moments. On a Winnie-the-Pooh ride, you're going to want to see Tigger bouncing around and hear the Tigger song. We just have to show that, and boom, that triggers in people's heads this emotional connection. We were starting here with a blank sheet of paper, so it became important for us to start establishing who these characters were and how they got to know each other. So besides that pre-show film, as you walk through the queue line, it's like a museum in his house. It's Lord Henry showing photos of his travels and the other members of the Society. But we also set up how Lord Henry first met Albert. He chose to rescue Albert, and it really creates this bond. They love each other. It's really a father and son-like relationship."
On the ride system
Mark: "One of the things that was really integral to this attraction was the ride system, and the ride vehicle. You may note that it is a trackless system. We actually have more than 200 RFID tags buried in the concrete floor to help guide this system. We start out by dispatching four vehicles at a time, but to help heighten the excitement we actually go down to single file, and then we'll group you back together at the end. We really wanted to help tell the story of this in the queue, where [we say] Lord Henry actually invented this. He was a bit of tinker as well as an explorer. He invented the Magneto-Electric Carriage [the ride vehicle] that he took to the Paris Exhibition of 1900 and of course won the gold medal."
Joe: "In our attractions, ride vehicle usually take on two roles. One, they're invisible, like on Haunted Mansion, with the Doom Buggies. They're really not part of the story. It's just a conveyance device that moves you through the house. In other attractions, Indiana Jones being a good example, or here, the ride vehicle is really part of the storytelling."

"It has the ability to start and stop, turn 360 degrees, go fast, go slow. It really becomes our camera in that we can tell people what we want them to look at. A lot of this is what Walt was really trying to do with the original Haunted Mansion, and that was to create a large-scale magic show. We have some of the most amazing special effects in this show, and the reason why we can pull them off -- most of them have a set-up, they play out and we move on to the next one -- is because we have the ability now with this ride vehicle to time out the whole experience to allow each scene to play through before moving on, unlike rides like Pirates or the Haunted Mansion, which have to be continuous -- it's just a cycle of things that go and go and go, and hopefully you catch the right moment. Here we are guaranteed always to get you at the right moment where we want to to see the particular thing."
On the importance of music and special effects
"Two really, really important things made this show special, and were so key to the storytelling. [One] was the music. We knew from the start that music would be an important part of this, going back to our heritage with great attractions such as It's Small World, Pirates and Haunted Mansion. I bet as I said those names, those songs popped into your head. That's great, because it become part of the experience. So we knew we wanted to have great music. And then this "music dust" [which escapes from the open music box] was so important. It almost becomes a character in how it has to comes alive and brings objects to life and such. So the fact that we were able to get Danny Elfman to do the music, and then to really kind of crack the code on a new special effect that had never been done, this music dust, were pivotal moments in making this happen."
Mark noted that they were able to recruit Elfman because his manager had been at Mark and Jim's initial session previewing Mystic Manor, at the original D23 Expo in 2009, and brought the Mystic Manor project to Elfman as a result.

The two also noted that Mystic Manor includes several homages to other Disney attractions, including an appearance by Trader Sam from the Jungle Cruise, singing busts much like those in the Haunted Mansion, and a Tiki God on a much larger scale than its fellow deities from the Enchanted Tiki Room. The ride also includes a scene with 4D effects, as bugs crawl from a mummy's sarcophagus and into your ride vehicle. (Hey, isn't that an homage to a Universal attraction, too?)
Speaking of Universal...
Joe: "We used a lot of projection in this show, but our goal from the start was that you would never know there was projection. You're not fooling anybody when you can tell there's a screen with something projected on it. There are whole rides that other companies have done where you put on 3D glasses, and it's all projected. I mean, they're cool, but it's not real. I think what makes this ride so much more believable is that you don't have 3D glasses on, everything is dimensional and real. It's all environmental. Wherever there was any kind of projection special effect, we worked very hard to combine things -- there's projection, there's fog effects, there's black light effects, there's animation effects -- everywhere we could to blend things in such a way that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and it became one believable thing."

The two showed a floorplan of the Mystic Manor show building.

On character animation

"Originally, Lord Henry and Albert were going to be a lot more realistic looking. I have a background in animation, so I think about these things -- the expressiveness of an animation character, giving them big eyes, and exaggerated features. The early Imagineers knew this. Marc Davis and Blaine Gibson, when they created all the characters for the Haunted Mansion and Pirates, they're not real. The proportions are all exaggerated. The eyes are bigger. The limbs are exaggerated. All that's for an easy read. In our attractions you just have seconds to tell people what they're suppose to be feeling about this character."Mark: "The ride is only five minutes long, and we've got so much story to tell. These guys have to be recognizable immediately."Joe and Mark did not take questions at the end of their hour-long presentation, so there's still no word on when, or if, Mystic Manor or another attraction based on the Society of Explorers and Adventurers might appear in another Disney theme park.

5 Keys To Making Your Content More Meaningful

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Thu, 31 May 2018 11:03:34 GMT

Produce compelling content for your blog or social feed with these 5 key content ingredients.

Creating meaningful content has always been the best way to increase engagement. However, social media outlets such as Facebook have shifted their focus toward content that matters to its users, making meaningful content even more important. In order to maintain visibility on social media platforms and increase your engagement, meaningful content is an essential part of your marketing strategy. Here are some tips to help you create more meaningful content today!

Listen to Your Audience
The most important part of creating meaningful content is to listen to your audience. You should first look at the content that people seem to be engaging with the most. Look for common themes in that content and create new content with similar themes. You should also find out what your audience is talking about and what they care about. Focus your content on subjects that your audience cares about to create content that is meaningful to them.

Form Connections
Writing about topics that are important to your audience is a great first step to creating meaningful content. However, in order to encourage engagement, you should write about topics on which your audience can connect. When you encourage a sense of community among your audience, they will be more likely to engage with one another on your content. Forming connections with your audience and between your audience members will help make your content more meaningful and encourage engagement.

Be Original
Content is less likely to make an impact if it resembles other content. One of the best ways to make your content meaningful to your readers is to be original. However, original content does not necessarily mean talking about topics no one else is discussing. A great way to be original while remaining relevant is to find unique angles on ideas everyone is talking about. Original, compelling content will help make an impact on your readers, which will encourage engagement.

Create an Immersive Experience
One of the best ways to ensure that your content is meaningful is to create an immersive experience for your readers. Write your blog posts in story format, including compelling details that will implore your audience to keep reading. Make use of videos, graphics, gifs, and other visual content that will improve the experience of the reader. When your readers feel immersed in your blog post, they will be more likely to read all the way until the end and engage with the content.

Be Accurate
In the age of “Fake News,” it’s more important than ever to produce accurate content. Be sure to verify any facts and statistics that you include in your content. When your content is inaccurate, your content and your brand, in general, become unreliable. Inaccurate content will not be meaningful to your audience, meaning it will not receive engagement. Be sure to produce compelling content that is also accurate in order to leave an impact on your audience.

Are you ready to create a blog for your business but you’re not sure how to start? Are you looking to revamp your blog but you’re not sure what changes to make? We can help you at Crown Media Studio. Contact us today to find out how!

Summer 2018 Social Media Trends

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sat, 12 May 2018 16:52:48 GMT

6 Social Media Trends That Will Dominate Summer 2018 Marketing

Keeping up with social media seems like an impossible task some days. No sooner do you perfect your marketing on a platform than a new one springs up or begins to rise in popularity.

On top of that, the makeup of your Internet audience is constantly changing and shifting from season to season.

The best way to figure out how to plan your summer social media marketing campaign is to look at upcoming trends.

1. Local Trends

In recent years, businesses have come to recognize the value of local SEO. Tie into local events to gain more traffic to your site.

For example, if there is a popular festival in your area, can you rent a small booth and then share images on social media of the event? Perhaps there is a famous artist headed to your area for a concert, and you name a sandwich in your restaurant after him. Figure out how to reach people on a local level and drive them to your brick-and-mortar stores.

Summer equals beautiful weather, and people are excited to get outdoors and experience life. For summer 2018, this means a lot of different events. As a business owner, take advantage of local events by creating a Snapchat geofilter and including your snaps at events to engage current customers and connect new ones. One example of this is Churchill Downs adding snaps to their Snapchat story about the Kentucky Derby. Anyone who searches for the word “derby” sees these snaps.

2. Event Tie-Ins

One way to up the presence of your brand on social media is to figure out which summer events you can relate to your industry.

One of the easiest ways to tie into summer activities is to first look at major holidays — Memorial Day and Fourth of July, for example. Next, look at major national and global events, such as the Summer Olympics or big festivals.

Then, you can piggyback off the marketing for these events by tying into a hashtag or running special promotions of your own during the same timeframe. Expect to see summer marketing tie into various summer events, both in the specials offered and hashtags used. For example, the brand Omeka uses hashtags such as #summer2018 on their Instagram page along with images of sandals and baseball caps to pull in new customers.

3. Strong Images

Even though big, beautiful images are not a new trend, they are worth mentioning because they are such a vital part of any social media marketing campaign.

Across the board, social media posts with images tend to get shared more often than other types of posts without images. On Twitter, a post with an image is about 150% more likely to be retweeted.

Because summer is about cooking outdoors and hanging with friends, expect to see more food images in the summer of 2018. For example, Food Lion shares recipes on their website and then uploads similar posts with strong images on their Instagram account .

4. GIFs and Emoji

Millennials, in particular, prefer emoji, GIFs, and stickers over words and relate to them better. If you want to reach people in this age range, expressing yourself on social media with these icons is a smart move.

Expect to see brands tie images into their posts in new ways. Instead of lengthy posts, you might just see a happy-face emoji combined with a symbol for money to symbolize a store that's having a flash sale, for example.

Summer means the kids are out of school and looking for engaging brands in the summer of 2018, and brands are looking to engage them. Vodafone clearly sees generation Z and millennials as key to growing their mobile carrier service globally, as evidenced by their Instagram posts including plenty of GIFs.

5. Social Causes

Lately, a lot of companies have jumped onto social causes and are engaging in marketing strategies with a cause. For example, Adidas used Lean In to help promote gender pay equality with their #20PercentCounts campaign.

The campaign encourages employers to look at pay levels within their companies and to close the gap so pay is equal based on experience rather than gender. Summer brings time with family and awareness of the struggles family members face, so expect to see more companies adopting causes in the summer of 2018 and beyond. Marks and Spencer adopted the cause of breast cancer, and they share similar images on their Instagram account along with pink-themed photos.

6. Lightheartedness

There are a lot of serious issues in the world, but when summer hits, people want to have fun and enjoy the warmer weather. Lightheartedness seems to be well received on most social media platforms and was trending in the first quarter of 2018 and can be expected to continue into summer. After all, summer is about cooking out in your backyard or going on a boating adventure with friends. Summer equals fun, so expect to see fun posts from brands in the summer of 2018. Budweiser taps into this trend with their Snapchat posts that feature elements such as festival food and a bottle of their beer.

Social media trends for summer 2018

With each new season comes new challenges and new trends in social media marketing.

These six trends are an excellent source of ideas for your social media marketing calendar, but don't overlook the value of staying up to date on current hashtags and trending topics online.

The key to a successful social marketing season is looking at the big picture and not being afraid to try new ideas. If you are interested in learning more about how to get the most from your social media marketing, contact us here at Crown Media Studio.

sources: marketdive, kayla matthews, dmnews, social media manager

Responsive Web Design 2018

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Mon, 07 May 2018 14:28:00 GMT

Understanding Responsive Web Design For Your Brand

Responsive Design On The Web

Over the past decade, the number of smart devices, internet-capable devices, mobile devices, and computers has proliferated to a staggering degree, and web design no longer focuses only on desktop displays. More people use smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices to access the web, and responsive web design makes this possible. It’s essential to understand how responsive design works so you can capitalize on the benefits for your own brand.

Instead of creating a consistent appearance for every device like in traditional web design, responsive web design reconfigures a website’s display and layout based on the device used to access it. For example, a website viewed on a desktop may have a banner image, header links, and sidebars on either side of the page, strafing the main content in the middle. On a tablet, the website may drop the sidebars and compress the header links into a drop-down menu to make the page’s content more navigable and readable, instead of compressing everything down into a smaller version of the desktop format. For a smartphone, responsive design can account for screen rotation to provide different layouts and content structures based on the user’s preferences.

Harnessing Responsive Design

If you want to learn how to design a website, one of the first problems you have to tackle is how to reach a wide audience using a variety of different devices and displays. Good web page design means that the page loads and performs well no matter how a user accesses it. Without responsive design, a website may load well and look and function admirably on a desktop or laptop display, but then appears unfocused, cluttered, or unintelligible on a smaller screen.

Touch functionality is another critical factor. If your website does not account for touch controls, visitors using mobile devices will find it difficult to navigate. Responsive design allows for high-quality web design elements like expanding content folders and multiple configurations for device orientation.

Who Needs Responsive Design?

You may wonder who needs to worry about responsive design outside the world of website marketing, but the reality is that every company with an online presence benefits from responsive design. While responsive design truly shines on e-commerce platforms, any website benefits from having readable, accessible content available on any internet-capable device.

Responsive Design For E-Commerce

Some businesses rely heavily on e-commerce due to the fact that Americans do most of their shopping online today. Other companies who may not have a need for an e-commerce platform still benefit from responsive design, however. Business owners who do not do any e-commerce or those who solely rely on a physical retail location can deliver content and provide an updated website that performs admirably on a variety of devices. This helps build customer trust and loyalty. If they can trust your website to work well no matter how they access it, it conveys a sense of quality.

For e-commerce focused businesses, responsive design is critical. Good design during the shopping and checkout processes can secure a sale, encourage repeat and impulse sales, and take advantage of mobile technologies like geo-targeting and marketing beacons. Your customers will be able to interact with your brand more fluidly and more easily on any type of device if you implement responsive design in your site’s construction.

Page Functionality

Visitors to your website won’t stay for long if pages take too long to load, images distort on different devices, or they can’t access the same content on their phones as their desktops. Responsive design allows you to load the web page assets that are most crucial for each platform while saving performance. A mobile version of a web page may load more slowly because of high-resolution images, animations, or video content, but responsive design will help you find a configuration that performs admirably without diluting the value of your website’s content.

Professional website development hinges just as much on function as it does on form and aesthetics. Creating a robust, memorable user experience means meeting customers’ demands in a very short time, regardless of whether or not your goals include e-commerce success. Responsive design allows for adjustments such as swapping a video on desktop with a series of still images the user may tap through with a finger. Providing an optional link for the video content offers choices to the user, and micro-interactions such as manually flipping through images and animations can be pleasant and memorable experiences for your visitors.

The Value Of Digital Presence

A functional, attractive, and easily navigable website is an asset for any brand. Even small mom-and-pop businesses benefit from having an online presence due to the omnipresence of social media and digital communication. If your customers cannot find you online, they won’t find you at all. Responsive design is scalable, and minimalism is still a crucial component of modern interface design.

The scalability and customization responsive design affords is also a much wiser investment than a proprietary application. While many brands release their own apps, those apps may only work on a few operating systems or device types. Instead of potentially alienating a section of your consumer base, create a mobile version of your website with responsive design to provide the best experience possible to the widest audience.

Shareable Content

Social media plays a large role in modern life, and you can boost your digital presence with shareable content. Provide your customers with emails, blog posts, guides, and promotions that encourage them to share your content with others. This expands your sphere of influence and drives sales, connections, and ultimately revenue.

Building Your Digital Community

Unless you have a readily available in-house team of web designers, finding the right web design company for responsive design projects is a very serious choice for any brand. The right e-commerce web designer can help you secure explosive growth in online sales, and any company will benefit from an attractive, functional, and reliable website. Responsive design ensures your audience can always find you.

Crown Media Studio is a high-quality, Charleston based website design company offering design, development, and marketing services to clients in various industries. We develop designs, content strategies, and development projects for small businesses, ministries and professional service organizations. Consider the return on investment you could see when you work with Crown Media Studio to build a more responsive website.

Social Media Content: Keys to a Successful Strategy

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 21:22:16 GMT

Unlock Strategic Thinking About Creative Content Messaging

At Crown Media Studio we value thoughtful process! The way we work as a team is designed around innovation and strategic thinking. In this blog, we highlight our strategic approach to building a social media content strategy.

Let’s start from the top.

Our philosophy is rooted in strong, hard-working creative content, smart distribution tactics, (social media advertising) and audience intelligence. One doesn’t work without the other, and data is at the core of each element.

Our process follows three high-level key pillars:

Insights & Strategy
Social Media Content
Paid Media Planning & Social media Optimization

INSIGHT & STRATEGY

In this first pillar, we design a client’s social ambition based on their business ambitions. Once this roadmap is set in place, our research phase begins which powers the overarching strategic approach and communication ideas.

It’s important to continually disrupt and push this phase through new tools, technology, education, and thought-leadership.

When developing a social ambition it’s also a wonderful time to design client workshops to push innovation, and new ways of thinking to better understand consumer business, budget structure, consumer needs, pain-points, brand voice, platform opportunities, state of competition, desired audiences and more!

SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT

Next, comes social media content! It’s important to gather market, industry, and personal insights before launching the creative process. Once that data is in hand, the creative process begins.

At Crown Media Studio our creative content is social-first by design. It’s key to think about how creative concepts resonate with audiences in the right environment.

Creative should connect with authority, feel immersive, business-driven and connected. In order to get there here are a few tips:

Craft a consistent tone and personality
Have clear messaging
At the end of the day, it should add relevant value to the viewer
Overall, creative should appear eye-catching

MEDIA PLANNING & EXECUTION

A crucial part of the strategic process is media planning. This stage is powered by data and once executed, is optimized and should evolve in look and feel on a consistent basis based on the results.

The technical set-up is key to project a powerful message. From leveraging pixels to placing ads for success, it’s a crucial piece of the performance pie.

After the execution phase comes reporting! This is the time to deep dive into audience behaviors, ROI and creative to tweak and power the following strategy, website updates, business structure and much more!

We hope you enjoyed taking an insider look at how we work at a high-level here in Charleston, SC at Crown Media Studio

Sources: Media Manager, Socialfly, Katie Bathcombs

Skype announces new version for content creators

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sun, 15 Apr 2018 23:10:12 GMT

New Skype for Content Creators Targeted to Live Streamers and Video Bloggers

Content creators have become an industry to themselves. And companies that provide communication solutions have been adapting their products to meet the particular needs of this growing user base. Skype for Content Creators is the latest feature, which will allow creators to record videos, podcasts, and live streaming calls.

Skype Content Creators Mode

On the Skype blog, the company says these creators will be able to make recordings without having to invest in expensive studio equipment. As long as you have a Windows 10 or Mac computer, you can use Skype Content Creators to place and record calls.

With this feature, creators as well as small businesses who have podcasts can now engage even more with their audience within the Skype platform.

Live broadcasting is being adopted by more platforms to meet the growing demand of online communities, both consumers and organizations. YouTube made the same move just last month, by simplifying live streaming even more.

Skype is also simplifying the process. In the blog, it said it is making it easier than ever to use the audio and video for creating collaborative and engaging content with as little as two steps. Skype unlocks your content from within the Skype for Desktop app so you can set up your calls to live stream them on the platform of your choice.

With Content Creators mode, you can place and record calls directly in NewTek NDI–enabled software, including Wirecast , Xsplit , and Vmix . The NDI platform is a royalty-free standard which enables video-compatible products to communicate, deliver, and receive broadcast quality video.

When a call is recorded you can import it into different apps such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Audition for editing. But Skype points out there is no need for additional recording or screen capture solutions. It says it will, “Provide clean feeds of all group video call participants to your choice of NewTek NDI–enabled software, dramatically simplifying the process of using Skype within collaborative content.”

Skype for Content Creators will be available this summer for Windows 10 and Mac users.

First Look: Disney-Pixar's 'Bao' Film

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sun, 15 Apr 2018 20:22:24 GMT

Film features the first female director of a Pixar short

Earlier this month, we received a first look at Pixar‘s latest venture: a short animation titled Bao . Now Pixar has shared a first clip of the project about an adorable tiny dumpling.

Bao tells the sentimental story of “a Chinese-Canadian woman suffering from the depression of an empty nest, who gets a second shot at motherhood when one of her handmade dumplings comes alive,” as stated by Entertainment Weekly .

Directed by Chinese-Canadian storyboard artist Domee Shi — the first female director of a Pixar short — Bao was inspired by Shi’s upbringing as an only child to Chinese immigrants. “I just wanted to create this magical, modern-day fairy tale, kind of like a Chinese Gingerbread Man story,” Shi said. “Often times it felt like my mom would treat me like a precious little dumpling, wanting to make sure I was safe, that I didn’t go out late, all that stuff.”

“The word “bao” actually means two things in Chinese,” Shi explained. “Said one way, it means steamed bun. Said another, it means something precious: a treasure. It felt like a really universally appealing story that a lot of people could identify with.”

The seven-and-a-half-minute short is scheduled to play before The Incredibles 2 which hits theaters June 2. While you wait, be sure to catch the best films and TV shows dropping in April.

12 Content Marketing Strategies for 2018

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sat, 14 Apr 2018 05:47:34 GMT

12 Overlooked Content Marketing Strategies That’ll Skyrocket Your Growth

Content marketers are the unsung heroes of the marketing world.

Without great content, you can’t get conversions.

And without conversions…

I don’t need to finish that sentence, do I?

But many content marketers are already suffocating under the weight of a million other tasks that keep them scrambling to keep up, instead of strategically creating great new content.

Are you exhausted from putting out fires all day, every day?

Are you simultaneously trying to solve every business problem in the form of blogs, infographics, and Pulitzer-Prize-winning tweets?

There is hope.

I’m going to show you 12 content marketing strategies you may be overlooking that can skyrocket your growth.

But first, let’s level-set on what “great” content actually is before we talk about how to create it.

Why invest in a content marketing strategy?

I have three questions for you:

How much time have you spent thinking about your content marketing strategy — honestly?
Are your contributions recognized and valued by others in your organization?
Are you running out of ideas for new growth drivers?

Content marketing costs 62% less on average than other tactics but delivers 3x the leads.

That’s a pretty compelling statistic to deliver to naysayers that may not see the value, right?

And yet, only 37% of marketers have a dedicated, documented content marketing strategy.

Where is the disconnect? If it’s so valuable, why isn’t it a high priority in every organization?

Simple. Marketers are overworked and overwhelmed.

Think about it.

The average blog takes about three and a half hours to write. That’s well over a third of the typical workday.

Add to that the time constraints of daily “emergencies” and the never-ending parade of content needs fighting for attention.

Marketers are the “firefighters” of most organizations, constantly running around, putting out tactical blazes.

So how do content marketers choose the right strategies for the biggest results when they feel like they can barely stay ahead of the landslide of tactics they have to get done each day?

First, you have to know where to look to find the best return on your time investment. Here are 12 strategies to apply to your content efforts to start getting results.

1. Use visuals

When your audience visits your site, show them what you want them to know, instead of just telling them.

When you go to your homepage, what jumps out? Is it just a sea of text? Where do your eyes go first?

All text and no imagery makes for a very dull page.

When you tell someone something new via written text, they will only remember about 10% of that information .

However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, the same person is likely to retain 65% of the information .

How is that possible?

Human beings process images 60,000 times faster than plain text.

That old adage of a picture painting a thousand words is especially true in content marketing.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to add visuals to your existing content.

Another simple way to use your existing content in a more visually-appealing way is to turn your data into an infographic.

A graphic design tool like Canva can help you build compelling infographics that will stick with your readers and help your content get shared.

2. Write to go viral

Not every piece of content is destined for fame. Some content is just good, old-fashioned utilitarian stuff that has to be written, but isn’t going to get retweeted hundreds of times.

And that’s okay.

The problem is, some content marketers underestimate their ability to create viral content, and they get stuck in the “utility rut.”

They’re constantly putting out the stodgy, necessary functional posts that only the most diehard readers will actually make it all the way through.

Please don’t be afraid to take some healthy risks with your content.

Be funny. Be shareable. Be a little edgy.

Remember this ad campaign from Old Spice ?

It was all of the things I mentioned. Meant to be funny, easily shared, and a tiny bit risque.

It went viral, to the tune of a 107% increase in sales over five months .

If you’re not sure what steps to take to create viral content, check out the kinds of posts that were shared the most in 2017 , according to Buzzsumo .

Above all, be yourself when you write. Maybe every post can’t hit a home run, but originality is rewarded.

3. Go where your audience goes

If you want to meet other dog lovers, you go to a dog park. If you want to meet Parisians, you go to Paris.

It’s no different for content marketing.

Many content marketers stick only to the platforms and content venues they are most comfortable with.

The problem is that the way people consume content is changing.

For example, just a few years ago, who would have considered Alexa (and other voice search devices) as a vehicle for content marketing?

Projects like Marketing School are making their content available through these devices as yet another way to meet their audience.

Go where you are most likely to meet your audience, and they are most likely to listen to you.

How do you know where that is? Do some research on where your specific audience is most likely to congregate .

Is it Twitter? LinkedIn? A user community?

Be there when they get there.

Once you’ve identified where to find your tribe, take some time to personalize your content to meet their needs.

Platforms aren’t one-size-fits-all when it comes to content. Tailor for the platform and the audience.

Trust me — they will thank you for it.

57% of your audience is willing to give away some personal information in the interest of helping you personalize the content you offer them.

Here’s an example from Twiddy , a vacation rental company in the Outer Banks.

By using their consumer data to customize pricing predictions and suggested rental options when users logged in, they boosted their portfolio by 10% .

4. Do more than blog

Blogging, while important, is not content marketing , per se.

At least not on its own.

Hear me out.

Nearly 410 million Internet users read blogs, but marketers often look at blogs as the endpoint of their content, rather than the starting point.

Blogs don’t create conversions on their own.

Sure, they are a piece of the puzzle, but you have to look at your overall content goals and roll your blog strategy into them — not the other way around.

Doug Fowler, President of Waypost Marketing, explains it well :

… Recent changes to search engine algorithms still value fresh site content, but that doesn’t mean you should just churn out blog articles…your time is better spent creating more targeted content in more pleasing, easier-to-digest formats…

In other words, don’t be a one-trick content pony.

SmallFuel Marketing illustrates it this way:

Don’t stop writing blogs, but use those blogs to fuel SEO, social media outreach, cross-promotion, influencer marketing and as a vehicle to share your deeper pool of content.

If you look at my blog , you will see that my posts point readers back to other content sources by design.

In fact, I’m doubling down on video content this year by spending $144,000 and much of my content marketing efforts are on video instead of blogs.

Why?

The blogosphere is becoming more saturated all the time.

Not only that, four times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a topic than read about it.

Speaking of sharing, have you taken a look lately at where you are sharing your content?

5. Share everything, everywhere

Marketers can’t live by organic search traffic alone.

If you wait for your audience to send a search party out for your content, you’ll be waiting a while.

Instead, it’s your job as a marketer to take your content to the people who need to see it.

The average social media post only reaches a small fraction of your audience organically. You can boost those odds simply by sharing on multiple platforms.

As Jay Baer famously said “ Content is fire. Social media is gasoline.”

Think about it. If you are only sharing on one social platform (or on none at all), you will miss out on the diverse audiences that compose the social media spectrum.

Literally, billions of people would never read, share, or subscribe to your content, because they wouldn’t even know you exist.

Don’t be stingy when it comes to sharing.

Look for opportunities to engage with unique audiences, and as new platforms emerge — embrace them.

6. Curate on occasion

We’ve already talked about how content marketers are overworked and swimming in new demands, right?

Think of content curation as a silver bullet in your arsenal of meeting content demands.

Content curation promotes thought leadership , creates goodwill with other industry experts and helps pump relevant content into your posting stream.

A couple of considerations:

Be discriminating. Make sure the content quality is up to your standards.
Attribute the content to the original author. If you don’t, it’s just plain, old plagiarism.

Some marketers are afraid to curate — feeling like anything but original content is “cheating.”

That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

According to Curata, the best marketing organizations curate up to 25% of their content .

Look at how content curation helped one marketer grow his Twitter following in just a couple of months.

If you select the right content to complement your brand and attribute it to its original source, you’ll only be offering greater value to your readers and promoting your fellow thought leaders.

7. Know your personas

Have you taken the time to create buyers personas yet?

I’m not talking about having an idea of who might be reading your content or buying your product.

I’m talking about thoughtful, artfully-constructed buyer personas .

While it might feel like just one more thing you have to do, it’s worth the effort.

Ian Cleary, founder of RazorSocial, offers this advice :

Do research with your audience before you publish your content so that you build it based on what they want, rather than what you think they want.

82% of companies say that they are better able to frame their value propositions if they use buyer personas.

Here’s a great example of a buyer persona that American Express developed specifically to refine their content creation efforts.

And if you’re a new company and don’t have a lot of customer data of your own yet, don’t be afraid to check out your competitors’ customer data.

There are lots of online tools to help you spy a little. Here is a list of 25 tools Kissmetrics recommends.

As a bonus, you can also use them to monitor what your own audiences are saying about your brand.

8. Repurpose your best work

As soon as you hit “publish” on a great post, the real fun begins.

There are tons of different content types you can choose to repurpose content into a new vehicle to pick up conversions.

Have you ever heard of the “ Marketer’s Rule of Seven ?”

It says that your audience needs to hear your message approximately seven times before your message hits home.

Repurposing content is the perfect way to repeat yourself…without repeating yourself.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a big video production or design team.

There are tools that can help you repurpose content. For example, Lumen 5 is an online tool that storyboards blog posts and turns them into video .

You could also turn your blog topics into a podcast. Podcast popularity has more than doubled over the last decade.

With a quarter of the population listening to podcasts, it’s certainly another worthy vehicle to mobilize your messaging.

Try one or two fresh content types to see what resonates with your audience. Once you master those, pick a couple more.

Make your evergreen content work hard for you.

9. Manage your content before it manages you

Once you’ve built up a bank of content and are ready to release it into the wild, you need to decide the best way to manage it for maximum results.

Don’t leave it to chance and off-the-cuff decisions. Invest in the right tools to help you curate, repurpose, schedule and track content intelligently.

It’s a common misconception that content management and editorial tools are too expensive for everyone but the biggest companies with the biggest budgets.

It’s simply not true.

While content management systems certainly come in all price points, here are a couple of examples of low-to-no cost tools you can try out:

Trello is a free, visual project management tool that helps you sort content projects into a Kanban format so that you can track progress, attach files, and assign due dates.

If you have plenty of social media content, but not enough bandwidth to post it at the right times, try a tool like Buffer to automate your posts for you.

Video Marketing Strategy Rundown 2018

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 22:27:59 GMT

How To Create High-Performance Video Marketing

Large and small brands alike struggle to execute brand strategy with video as a central tool. With growing expectations in the advertising industry around ad targeting and behavioral modeling, video can seem like a medium reserved only for brands focused on younger demographics or for larger corporations with the budget to produce multiple iterations of videos to target different demographics.

It can be difficult to generate new creative for every medium and network, so it's important to remember that focusing on a single ad network can often have better results than spraying creative across many different ones. By doubling down on your top-performing segments and creating content that speaks to that specific demographic, you can significantly increase your KPIs.

Identify your core demographic.

The most important step in executing a high-performing video marketing campaign is making sure to establish and validate the core demographic of the user base you're trying to target. If your company has been running marketing campaigns for an extended period of time up to this point, you have likely already figured out your best-performing demographic for your company's KPI.

If you haven't, video marketing may not be the right first step for you. Using search ads to validate your demographic is an easy and cost-effective first step to validate your product and customer base if you're looking for a strategy to start off your campaign.

Create thumb-stopping content.

Once you have established the core demographic for your video marketing campaign, the next step will be creating advertising content. Set some baselines for video length (15 seconds is ideal) and the key points you want to hit to make this process run much more smoothly. A general rule is to focus on capturing the user's attention within the first second of the ad, so open with a combination of eye-catching movement and your brand's message. The goal is to create "thumb-stopping" content that causes the user to pause and watch your video before they scroll down their news feed any farther.

Launch and test different versions.

A common misconception among advertisers is that in order to split test different video creatives, you need to create different versions of the video. While that is an effective option for larger brands with many established markets and a huge budget, growing companies need to be able to use other solutions to split test their creative without breaking the bank. One way to split test your creative is by changing the thumbnail of the ad. Create an ad set in your campaign with three of the same video, each with a different thumbnail. Make sure to remember which thumbnail you think will perform best before you start the campaign; the results may surprise you.

Spend big on the winners.

After your campaign has been running for about seven days, it's time to declare a winner. Take the remainder of your budget, and allocate it to the top-performing ad in your campaign so you can enjoy a tested and performant ad. Don't forget to restart the cycle and try different ads against your new control ad.

Running a video ad campaign and split testing the creative is an easy way to create high-performing media in a shorter period of time. Focus on thumb-stopping content, and make sure to always test different versions of each ad. If you follow these steps, you will be off to a better start than many campaigns running today.

Isao Takahata, Leader in Japanese Animation, Dies at 82

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 20:23:04 GMT

Studio Ghibli Master passes on a legacy of superb animated films.

Isao Takahata, a film director who founded Japan’s premier animation studio, Studio Ghibli , with Hayao Miyazaki in 1985 and made sophisticated animated films like the elegiac World War II drama “Grave of the Fireflies,” died early Thursday in Tokyo. He was 82.

The cause was lung cancer, Studio Ghibli said in a statement .

Studio Ghibli has released some of the highest-grossing anime films ever, like “Ponyo,” “Howl’s Moving Castle,” “Princess Mononoke” and “ Spirited Away ,” which won an Academy Award for best animated feature in 2003 after an English version was released.

These lushly animated fairy tales were all written and directed by Mr. Miyazaki, whose name is more recognizable to international animation aficionados than that of Mr. Takahata.

“If Studio Ghibli is your favorite band, then Takahata has the deep cuts from the back catalog,” Dave Jesteadt, now the president of GKIDS , which distributes many Ghibli films in the United States, told The Los Angeles Times in 2014.

The disparity in their recognition might in part have had to do with Mr. Takahata’s output, which was considerably smaller than Mr. Miyazaki’s. Mr. Takahata took longer to complete films than Mr. Miyazaki, who is known for his unflagging work ethic.

Mr. Takahata’s slow pace sometimes caused resentment — Mr. Miyazaki jokingly compared Mr. Takahata to “a real slugabed sloth” in 1990 — but it also led to meticulously crafted films.

Mr. Takahata talked about his last film, “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya,” at the Studio Ghibli offices in suburban Tokyo in 2015. Credit Shizuo Kambayashi/Associated Press

Many of Mr. Takahata’s movies were popular, particularly in Japan, and many critics praised his work, especially “Grave of the Fireflies” (1988), a harrowing tale of a brother and sister trying to survive after Japan is devastated by American firebombing during World War II.

The film, written and directed by Mr. Takahata and adapted from a story by Akiyuki Nosaka, dealt frankly with cruelty and death but also had moments of innocence, beauty and grace.

Grave of the Fireflies - Official Trailer Video by Madman

The critic Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times called the film “an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation.”

“This film proves, if it needed proving, that animation produces emotional effects not by reproducing reality, but by heightening and simplifying it, so that many sequences are about ideas, not experiences,” Mr. Ebert wrote.

Mr. Takahata’s other films include “ Only Yesterday ” (1991), a contemplative tale of a woman who reminisces about her past on a trip to the countryside, and “ Pom Poko ” (1994), an environmentalist fantasy about shapeshifting raccoon-like animals called Tanuki that struggle to maintain their lifestyle against encroaching suburbs.

Both films were drawn in naturalistic styles, even when they depicted fantastical subjects, a hallmark of a lot of anime and many of Studio Ghibli’s films.

Mr. Takahata, who was not an animator himself, chose a different approach in later films like “ My Neighbors the Yamadas ” (1999), a surrealistic family story drawn like a comic strip; and his last film, “ The Tale of the Princess Kaguya ” (2013), a dreamy, watercolored portrayal of a Japanese folk tale.

Mr. Takahata’s last film was “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya,” a dreamy, watercolor interpretation of a Japanese folktale. Credit GKIDS

“It is about the essence that’s behind the drawing,” he said of his aesthetic in “Princess Kaguya” in an interview with The Associated Press in 2015. “We want to express reality without an overly realistic depiction, and that’s about appealing to the human imagination.”

“The Tale of the Princess Kaguya” took Mr. Takahata about a decade to finish, though he worked on other films at the same time. It was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated feature in 2015.

“The film’s tone — the sense of characters grasping to hold on to innocence as the civilized world whisks it away — is all Takahata,” the critic Ty Burr wrote in The Boston Globe in 2014.

Mr. Takahata was reported to have been born on Oct. 29, 1935, in Mie Prefecture, in southern Japan. He grew up further west in the city of Okayama.

He told The Japan Times in 2015 that as a boy during World War II he fled an American bombing raid that killed more than 1,000 people in Okayama. He remembered rushing, barefoot and in his pajamas, past piles of bodies — an experience he drew on for “Grave of the Fireflies.”

He graduated from the University of Tokyo, then started his career in animation in the late 1950s at Toei studio, where he met Mr. Miyazaki.

Mr. Takahata worked on television anime series like “Lupin the 3rd” and “Heidi: A Girl of the Alps,” and also directed the film “Gauche the Cellist” (1982), before the two men created Studio Ghibli.

There was no immediate information on survivors.

Source: NY Times

Beyond Search: Content Marketing and SEO

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 00:15:58 GMT

Creating an audience focused content strategy

Delivering content that best serves the needs of users is certainly top-of-mind for many SEOs since the Hummingbird algorithm update and subsequent buzz around RankBrain . It sounds easy enough in theory, but what does that actually mean in practice? Many SEOs believe that they're already doing this by driving their content strategy by virtue of keyword research alone.

The problem with solely using keywords to drive your content strategy is that not all of your audience’s content needs are captured in search. Ask your nearest customer service representative what questions they answer every day; I can guarantee that you won’t find all of those questions with search volume in a keyword research tool.

Keyword research can also tempt you to develop content that your brand really shouldn’t be creating because you don’t have anything unique to say about it. Sure, you could end up increasing organic traffic, but are those going to be converting customers?

Moving away from a keyword-first-driven content strategy and into an audience-centric one will put you in a better place for creating SEO content that converts. Don’t get me wrong — there's still an important place for keyword research. But it belongs later in the process, after you've performed a deep dive into your audience and your own brand expertise.

This is an approach that the best content marketers excel at. And it’s something that SEOs can utilize, too, as they strive to provide more relevant and higher-quality content for your target audiences.

How is an audience-focused content strategy different from a keyword-focused content strategy?

A content marketing strategy starts with the target audience and dives deeper into understanding your brand’s expertise and unique value proposition. Keyword research is great at uncovering how people talk about topics relevant to your brand, but it is limiting when it comes to audience understanding.

Think about one of your prospective customer’s journey to conversion. Is search the only channel they utilize to get information? If you are collecting lead information or serving up remarketing ads, hopefully not. So, why should your audience understanding be limited to keyword research?

A content strategy is a holistic plan that tackles questions like:

Who is my audience?
What are their pain points and needs?
What types of content do these people want to consume?
Where are they currently having conversations (online or offline)
What unique expertise does our brand offer?
How can we match our expertise to our audience’s needs?

Finding your unique content angle

The key to connecting with your audience is to develop your unique content angle that finds intersections between what your brand’s expertise is in and your audience’s pain points. The Content Marketing Institute refers to this as a " content tilt " because it involves taking a larger topic and tilting it in your own way. Defining your brand’s expertise can be more difficult than it appears on the surface.

It isn’t uncommon for brands to say their product is what makes them unique, but if there is a competitor out there with the same general product, it’s not unique. What makes your organization different from competitors?

Here's an example

When I worked for Kaplan Financial Education , a professional licensing and exam prep provider brand under Kaplan Professional, finding our tilt was a real challenge. Kaplan Financial Education has a lot of product lines all within financial services, but the audience for each is different. We needed a tilt that worked for the entire Career Corner content hub we were creating. What we realized is that our core audience all has a big pain point in common: entering the financial services industry either through insurance or securities (selling stocks and bonds) has low barriers to entry and high turnover. Everyone entering that job market needs to know how to not only pass their licensing exam(s), but also be successful as professionals too, both in the early years and also in the years to come.

Kaplan Financial Education’s biggest content competitors create very factual content — they're websites like Investopedia, Wikipedia, and governing bodies like FINRA and state government departments. But Kaplan Financial Education has something going for it that its competitors do not: a huge network of students. There are other licensing exam prep providers that compete with Kaplan Financial Education, but none that cover the same breadth of exams and continuing education. It's the only brand in that industry that provides licensing education as individuals progress through their financial careers. "From hire to retire," as the marketers say.

We made our content tone more conversational and solicited input from our huge student and instructor network to help new professionals be more successful. We also used their quotes and insights to drive content creation and make it more relatable and personalized. All of our content tied back to helping financial professionals be successful — either as they're getting licensed or beyond — and rather than simply telling people what to do, we leveraged content to allow our current students and instructors to teach our prospective students.

You may be thinking... so I can only write content that fits in this tilt? Isn’t that limiting?

As SEOs, it can be really hard to let go of some keyword opportunities that exist if they don’t fit the content strategy. And it’s true that there are probably some keywords out there you could create content for and increase your organic traffic. But if they don’t fit with your target audience’s needs and your brand’s expertise, will it be the kind of traffic that's going to convert? Likely not. Certainly not enough to spend resources on content creation and to distract yourself from your larger strategy objective.

How to build your content strategy

1. Set your goals.

Start at the end. What is you are ultimately trying to accomplish? Do you want to increase leads by a certain percentage? Do you want to drive a certain number increase in sales? Are you trying to drive subscribers to a newsletter? Document these goals first. This will help you figure out what type of content you want to create and what the calls-to-action should be.

If you're a business like Kaplan and leads are your ultimate goal, a proven strategy is to create ungated content that provides good insights, but leaves room for a deeper dive. Have your calls-to-action point to a gated piece of content requiring some form of contact information that goes into more depth.

A business like a car dealership is going to have a primary goal of getting people into their dealership to buy a car. Their content doesn’t necessarily need to be gated, but it should have a local spin and speak to common questions people have about the car buying process, as well as show the human elements that make the dealership unique to establish trust and show how customers will be treated. Trust is especially important in that industry because they have to combat the used car salesman stereotype.

2. Identify your primary audience and their pain points.

The next step is to identify who you're targeting with your content. There are a lot of people at your disposal to help you with this part of the process. Within your organization, consider talking to these teams:

Customer Service
Sales
Technical Support
Product Management
Product Marketing
Social Media Marketing

These are often the people who interact the most with customers. Find out what your audience is struggling with and what content could be created to help answer their questions. You can also do some of this research on your own by searching forums and social media. Subreddits within Reddit related to your topic can be a goldmine. Other times there are active, related groups on social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook. If you’ve ever been to the MozCon Facebook group, you know how much content could be created answering common questions people have related to SEO.

3. Determine your brand’s unique expertise.

Again, dig deeper and figure out what makes your brand truly unique. It likely isn’t the product itself. Think about who your subject matter experts are and how they contribute to the organization. Think about how your products are developed.

Even expertise that may seem boring on the surface can be extremely valuable. I’ve seen Marcus Sheridan speak a couple of times and he has one of the most compelling success stories I’ve ever heard about not being afraid to get too niche with expertise. He had a struggling swimming pool installation business until he started blogging. He knew his expertise was in pools — buying fiberglass pools, specifically. He answered every question he could think of related to that buying process and became the world thought leader on fiberglass pools. Is it a glamorous topic? No. But, it’s helpful to the exact audience he wanted to reach. There aren’t hundreds of thousands of people searching for fiberglass pool information online, but the ones that are searching are the ones he wanted to capture. And he did.

4. Figure out your content tilt.

Now put your answers for #2 and #3 together and figure out what your unique content angle will look like.

5. Develop a list of potential content topics based on your content tilt.

It’s time to brainstorm topics. Now that you know your content tilt, it’s a lot easier to come up with topics your brand should be creating content about. Plus, they’re topics you know your audience cares about! This is a good step to get other people involved from around your organization, from departments like sales, product management, and customer service. Just make sure your content tilt is clear to them prior to the brainstorm to ensure you don’t get off-course.

6. Conduct keyword research.

Now that you’ve got a list of good content topics, it’s time to really dive into long-tail keyword research and figure out the best keyword targets around the topics.

There are plenty of good tools out there to help you with this. Here are a few of my go-tos:

Moz Keyword Explorer (freemium): If you have it, it’s a great tool for uncovering keywords as questions, looking at the keyword competitive landscape, and finding other related keywords to your topic.
Keywordtool.io (free): One of the only keyword discovery tools out there that will give you keyword research by search engine. If you are looking for YouTube or App Store keywords, for instance, this is a great idea generation tool.
Ubersuggest.io (free): Type in one keyword and Ubersuggest will give you a plethora of other ideas organized in a list alphabetically or in a word cloud.

7. Create an editorial calendar.

Based on your keyword research findings, develop an editorial calendar for your content. Make sure to include what your keyword target(s) are so if you have someone else developing the content, they know what is important to include in it.

Here are a couple resources to check out for getting started:

HubSpot’s free editorial calendar templates (Google Sheet or Excel)
Content Marketing Institute’s free editorial calendar template (Google Sheet)

8. Determine how to measure success.

Once you know what content you're going to create, you’ll need to figure out how you'll measure success. Continuing on with the Kaplan example, lead generation was our focus. So, we focused our efforts on measuring leads to our gated content and conversions of those leads to sales over a certain time period. We also measured organic entrances to our ungated content. If our organic entrances were growing (or not growing) disproportionate to our leads, then we’d take deeper dives into what individual pieces of content were converting well and what pieces were not, then make tweaks accordingly.

9. Create content!

Now that all the pieces are there, it’s time to do the creation work. This is the fun part! With your content tilt in mind and your keyword research completed, gather the information or research you need and outline what you want the content to look like.

Take this straightforward article called How to Get Your Series 7 License as an example. To become a registered representative (stockbroker), you have to pass this exam. The primary keyword target here is: Series 7 license. It’s an incredibly competitive keyword with between 2.9K–4.3K monthly searches, according to the Keyword Explorer tool. Other important semantically related keywords include: how to get the Series 7 license, Series 7 license requirements, Series 7 Exam, General Securities Registered Representative license, and Series 7 license pass rate.

Based on our content tilt and competitive landscape for the primary keyword, it made the most sense to make this into a how-to article explaining the process in non-jargon terms to someone just starting in the industry. We perfectly exact-match each keyword target, but the topics are covered well enough for us to rank on the front page for all but one of them. Plus, we won the Google Answer Box for "how to get your Series 7 license." We also positioned ourselves well for anticipated future searches around a new licensing component called the SIE exam and how it’ll change the licensing process.

Once you've created your content and launched it, like with any SEO work, you will have a lag before you see any results. Be sure to build a report or dashboard based on your content goals so you can keep track of the performance of your content on a regular basis. If you find that the growth isn’t there after several months, it is a good idea to go back through the content strategy and assess whether you’ve got your tilt right. Borrowing from Joe Pulizzi , ask yourself: "What if our content disappeared? Would it leave a gap in the marketplace?" If the answer is no, then it’s definitely time to revisit your tilt. It’s the toughest piece to get right, but once you do, the results will follow.

Beyond the Basics: Keyframing in Adobe After Effects

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Wed, 03 Jan 2018 18:53:45 GMT

Up your After Effects game with these advanced keyframing tips and tricks.

Keyframing is one of the most important and powerful features of Adobe After Effects . Knowing how to apply and manipulate them will help you to become a more seasoned motion graphics artist. Let’s take a look at a few advanced tips and tricks when it comes to working with keyframes in After Effects . We'll focus on five methods in particular, including precisely editing values, reversing time, changing interpolation, adding roving keyframes, and working with expressions. We'll use these advanced methods to bring an airplane graphic to life.

Precisely Edit Values

In After Effects, you use keyframes when you want a value of a layer to change over time. Adding two keyframes to a layer at different times with differing values will bring that property to life.

For this example, I’m going to adjust the rotation and position values of my airplane, making it perform a barrel roll. Usually, I would make adjustments to the values straight here in the composition panel. However, if I double-click directly over a keyframe, I get a dialogue box to assist me. Using the dialogue box, I can have more precise controls, including percentages and other specific measurements. Being able to quickly adjust keyframe properties and values is important in animation.

Reverse Time

Adding multiple keyframes of differing values to a property brings that property to life, and usually in a linear fashion. For instance, you can add scale keyframes to make a layer slowly scale up or down. Use position keyframes to have an object travel from left to right, or up to down.

In my last example, I made my plane barrel roll from the left side of the screen to right with a few simple rotation and position keyframes. After Effects offers me a way to quickly and easily reverse these keyframes. To do so, I can select my keyframes and go to Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Time-Reverse Keyframes. If I do this to both position and rotation keyframes, my plane will now barrel roll from the right side of the screen to the left.

Change Interpolation

When you use two keyframes on a layer, After Effects interpolates the values between the two. To take a look at your interpolation methods, select a keyframe and go to Animation > Keyframe Interpolation. You’ll notice you have both spatial and temporal interpolation options. Spatial (space) relates to the keyframes in the composition panel, while temporal (time) references keyframes on the timeline.

For this example, I have my plane flying into the screen, making a sharp turn, and flying up out of frame. The turn is very abrupt, so I want to change the interpolation method of my middle keyframe to make the turn smooth. I have four methods from which to choose, including linear, bezier, continuous bezier, and auto bezier. I’ll select continuous bezier and then adjust my bezier handles accordingly. Now, I have a smoothly turning plane.

Roving Keyframes

You can control the speed of your animation by moving keyframes temporally on the timeline or spatially in the composition panel. If you look at the airplane graphic, you’ll notice small dots in between each keyframe. These relate to the speed of the animation. As you move keyframes around, you’ll notice that the number of dots changes. While you can manually adjust speed with this method, a better way is to use roving keyframes.

You need at least three keyframes for this effect to work since you cannot make a start or end keyframe roving. To utilize this on my airplane graphic, I’ll grab my middle keyframe, right click, and select Rove Across Time. Now, the middle keyframe will interpolate its speed based on the adjacent keyframes.

Add Expressions

Expressions allow you to apply advanced effects to properties without having to do massive amounts of keyframing by hand. You can write expressions using the standard JavaScript language; however, you don’t necessarily need to know JavaScript to use expressions.

Create expressions quickly by copying simple examples and modifying them to suit your needs. To apply an expression to a property, hold Alt while you click the property's stopwatch icon. This will open up a text box where you can apply your expression.

I’ve copied a simple wiggle effect, which I want to simulate my plane hitting turbulence. If you prefer keyframes, you can convert your expression by selecting the property and choosing Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Convert Expression to Keyframes.

Digital Signage for the Blind

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Wed, 03 Jan 2018 18:47:52 GMT

Miranda House puts up digital 'talking signages' for its blind students

NEW DELHI: Taking a big step towards making the campus disabled-friendly , Miranda House has become the first DU college to put up "digital vision signages" on its premises to help its 70 visually challenged students find their way across the college.

Under the "mapped by digital vision" programme, Miranda House has installed 100 QR code acrylic sheets. When a smartphone with a customised app comes within three feet of a code, verbal messages go out identifying the location and giving other details. "If a student wants to meet me, the digital signage in the office corridor gives a warning about the glass door and verbally directs the student on how many steps she should take to reach the spot," said Pratibha Jolly , Miranda House principal. Jolly said the digital map ping programme was un dertaken by Lakshita , the college's `enabling society'."We carry out a programme called `Samdrishti' wherein we guide the visually challenged students and take them around the campus, to Metro stations, bus stops and the university's equal opportunity cell. The QR coded digital signs are an extension of that programme to sensitise the college and make it more accessible to them through technology, "she said.

Shanti Chaurasia, a Hindi honours student at Miranda, said that as a visually challenged girl it would have been tough for her to move around the campus. "But the app installed in my phone is very smooth and through its verbal messages, it helps me whenever I mistakenly go to some other area."

The 18-year-old student said she was trained on how to use the app by teachers who had installed it on her phone when she took admission.

"They took me around the college and with the assistance of the app and the codes on certain locations, I could identify the place and be sure that I was on the right path," she said.

"This is an attempt at deconstructing the notions of disability and bringing a fresh approach to sensitisation of the sighted," said Reena Bhatia, convener of Laskhita.

Bhatia said the mobile app was created by a company, Yes We Do (YVDO) and later customized by the college. "We added all the necessary information about the college and we regularly keep a check on it," she said.

The college, under the Amba Dalmia digital resource centre for visually challenged students, also provides 10 networked computers preloaded with special talking software Jaws, Kurjweil and Safa, in both Hindi and English.

"We have also installed non-visual digital access software on the laptops of all visually impaired students which are also Braille face and Lex scanner compatible.

There are scanners, ebook readers, voice recorders and Braille embosser that converts printed text to embossed Braille dots for easy reading," Jolly said.

-Times of India

Pixar offers free online lessons in storytelling via Khan Academy

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 23:27:50 GMT

Next installment will focus on character creation.

There are few organizations in the world that can claim more expertise when it comes to storytelling than Pixar. The Disney-owned animation studio is known for its ability to consistently create world-class movies with gripping narrative alongside stunning visuals. Now, Pixar is helping others learn the secrets of great storytelling – for free, in partnership with online education provider Khan Academy.

The two have teamed up to create “Pixar In A Box,” and in this third instalment of the series, lessons are sourced from Pixar directors and story artists including Inside Out and Up director Pete Docter, Brave director Mark Andrews, Inside Out story artist Domee Shi, and Ratatouille animator Sanjay Patel.

The first lesson is available now, and will provide an introduction to storytelling as well as help you hone your initial creation of things like setting and character. The lessons include both videos and activities for students to complete, and provides a general basis on which to build. The next instalment will focus on Character creation specifically, and others segments will address storyboarding, emotional appeal and more, with releases happening throughout 2017.

Pixar’s previous Khan Academy courses include topics like virtual cameras, effects and animations, but this is the first to focus on the less technical aspects of movie creation. I expect Pixar will offer me a job upon completion of this course and then I’ll win my Oscar.

6 Essential Tools for Content Marketing

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 05:45:01 GMT

Buffer. Almighty. Press. SumoMe. Why not use them all together in one work flow?

Buffer

Buffer is a smarter way to post your content to social media. It's like the Swiss Army Knife of social media tools and can really help with streamlining your social media syndication efforts.

Buffer lets you connect all of your social media profiles into one central hub. From there you can schedule content to all of your social media assets with just a few clicks. What sets Buffer apart is its post analytics, which helps you dish out content to your audience at just the right time.

Using Buffer to streamline your social media publishing saves time and eliminates any headaches from juggling multiple social media profiles. This gives you more time to focus on creating quality content, and less time scheduling it.

Almighty.Press

Almighty.Press is a content-discovery tool that goes well beyond measuring basic engagement metrics such as likes, tweets and share counts. The intuitive platform connects you with a real-time filterable news feed of trending content from around the globe.

The virality of the content is measured using its Almighty Force algorithm . This allows brands to track trending content before it becomes saturated. The end result is viral content topics that arrive ahead of your competitors'.

Using Almighty.Press to identify, track, and publish trending topics before they are saturated will give your content the edge to conquer engagement algorithms employed by many social networks.

SumoMe

SumoMe offers an array of solutions to help grow your audience and improve the reach of your content. Most notably, SumoMe provides a list-building tool with an exit intent feature which tracks a user's mouse movement to identify when that user intends to leave your website. This can be used to trigger a pop-up message with related posts, an email opt-in form or a custom special offer.

Brands can improve conversion rates on any page with full-screen calls to action that slide down from the top of the view port after the page content has loaded, encourage email opt-ins and promote the brands' most recent blog post or product.

Additionally, SumoMe provides responsive share-button solutions that complement your website. Handy analytics and A/B testing for your share-button placements are baked into the app. These features work to maximize your on-page social engagement.

Using SumoMe tools can help increase the frequency with which your content gets shared across social media platforms. Having more shares and more email opt-ins is always a good thing.

Ninja Outreach

Ninja Outreach makes finding influencers easy. Simply enter a keyword to discover thousands of business leads, social media influencers and niche bloggers. Ninja Outreach provides data and contact details for over 25 million contacts.

Ninja Outreach also provides a platform to find, contact and manage influencers. With this data, brands can select a pool of influencers and create outreach email templates directly from their dashboards. This makes it easy to find leaders in any niche. From there it is easy to track email opens, clicks and replies.

Using Ninja Outreach to find influencers will save you a significant amount of time and establish connections with people who can significantly increase your content's reach.

SendGrid

Email is an effective way to build customer relationships. SendGrid 's platform allows for integration with almost any website, giving you the power to reach all your subscribers. SendGrid makes it easy to create email funnels that can be A/B tested right down to the last detail, allowing you insights into what is working and what isn't.

Use SendGrid in conjunction with SumoMe to create winning email capture forms that are complemented by well-timed emails for maximum engagement with your audience.

Taking time to set up and test your email campaigns can yield fantastic results for almost any content marketing effort. Once set up, SendGrid will streamline your email outreach , allowing you time to focus on other aspects of your business.

Pushwoosh

Pushwoosh is a handy service for sending notifications to desktop computers, mobile devices and applications.

Any content marketer worth his/her salt will know the pain of ever-increasing punitive action from Facebook’s News Feed algorithm. In today’s fast-moving climate, it's wise to not have all your eggs in a single basket.

Finding new and reliable ways to reach your audience is one of the most important parts of a content marketer's role. Pushwoosh provides an intuitive desktop and in-app notification system that reaches 100 percent of your subscribers by notifying them directly via their phone or web browser.

Need to address only Spanish-speaking users who made a purchase last year? Customers who recently spent more than $1,000? Easy as breathing! Use tags and filters along with other segmentation features to tailor a personal push message that will find its user in the right place, at the right time.

You can link your sites' RSS feed directly to Pushwoosh , and they will automatically send out notifications to your subscribers when you publish new content. Pushwoosh can also be connected to Almighty.Press, giving you the ability to find fresh, relevant content and syndicate it with your audience.

Final thoughts

What's even better about all of these tools? They can be used in combination to increase your brand engagement.

You can identify content with viral potential using Almighty.Press, then automatically queue the content for social media syndication using Buffer. Once users visit your site, you can use SumoMe to increase the chances of a social share or email opt-in.

In addition, use SendGrid and Pushwoosh to keep your audience updated with the latest content. Ninja Outreach can find you those ever-important influencers to help get your content in front of the people that matter most to your business.

Use just some of these tools and your content-marketing efforts are almost certain to produce better results than they did last time out. Better yet, why not use them all in one turbocharged work flow?

The Power of Video in 2017

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 18:52:15 GMT

Embrace video wholeheartedly if you’re going to keep pace with the competition in 2017.

Video is the new king! It’s something we at Crown Media Studio have been saying for some time – and the reality is that your content marketing will need to embrace video wholeheartedly if you’re going to keep pace with the competition in 2017 .

It’s estimated that over half of all internet video traffic will be content delivery traffic by 2019 . Video is the new channel of choice, with consumers and business buyers preferring the immediacy, the visual impact and simplicity of watching video content. They want real personalities, delivering helpful, practical advice – advice that helps them solve their issues and attain their life goals. And, increasingly, the millennial generation can sniff out ‘old-school marketing’ in an instant – and will avoid it like the plague, as a result – making the need for a new marketing approach even more imperative as your client base becomes younger and more digital-savvy .

Video as the dominant and fastest channel

Video is fast becoming the dominant viewing platform for the 21st century . And that’s not just down to video being used as a pure content medium. Video is a channel where you easily document the life of your business, share what’s happening in your niche sectors and get your own professional opinions on topical business issues out there in the real world.

75% of executives watch at least one work-related video every week , according to research by Hubspot. So there’s a huge potential audience out there for your videos. Business owners and decision-makers want information fast, with advice that helps them understand and resolve their financial, business and strategic issues.

If you can develop yourself as video-based thought leader in your chosen niches, it will have a huge impact on the brand profile of the firm as a whole.

So if you’ve never considered video as a channel for your content marketing, 2017 is definitely the time to reassess the benefits of visual marketing, and to take some proactive steps to get you and your firm in the spotlight… it’s time for lights, cameras and ACTION!

Combining video and social media for maximum impact

As internet speeds and mobile usage has soared, so has consumption of video content on social media. Facebook , for example, has an average of 8 billion video views every day . That’s a staggering number of views and this increase in video views is mirrored across the other main social sites, such as Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat etc.

Using social networks effectively is a brilliant way to expand the reach of your video content and connect with a far wider audience through retweets, reshares and organic search. Studies have shown that using video content on Facebook will double your organic reach , making video not just a brand exercise, but a very real way to increase your online presence and potential leads .

YouTube is another channel to work into your video strategy. You may think of it as just a video-sharing site, but in fact. it’s the second most popular search engine in the world, after Google. It’s the go-to destination when you need a visual explanation to a pressing problem.

People love the ‘explainer video’ that gives them the step-by-step guide they need for everything from learning the guitar to fitting their new baby’s car seat – and that’s just as relevant to B2B advice and content too. When business owners go looking for an expert, they’re likely to search your YouTube channel just as closely as your blog, your LinkedIn profile or your website services pages.

Vlogging and getting more personal

Vlogging (recording a video blog and sharing it with your followers) has become an incredibly popular way to share your opinions, ideas and advice with your chosen audience. It’s a highly effective way to present a more personal, more human face to clients and prospects – and as we’ve said before, getting real with your clients is a game-changer when it comes to building valued working relationships.

Rather than writing a thought leadership blog, or writing yet another PDF guide to small business accounting, why not sit down and record a piece to camera? It does require a certain amount of presentation skill (not to mention some confidence in your chosen topic), but it’s a fast, efficient way to capture your thoughts and get a conversation going.

Some key things to consider when vlogging include:

Vlogs are about being spontaneous – the key thing about vlogging to record your thoughts and ideas quickly. Vlogs are short (3 minutes or less) and get published fast.

They can be rough and ready, or polished – your vlog can be an instant stream-of-consciousness piece (recording your thoughts straight to your smartphone), or it can be something more professionally recorded (using a high-definition digital SLR camera and editing the final content). The choice is yours.

You need to say something interesting – share some opinions, give some practical advice or tell your audience something that will get them thinking.

Vlogs are not about high production values – you’re not making a big budget video: this is about shooting something rough and ready with your smartphone.

Be open and BE REAL! – what people want to see is the real you, so be genuine and show your personality.

Gavin Bell is a Facebook Ad expert who works with some of our clients. He’s recently started a vlog series which is a great example of where to start, and the progress you can make as you get more comfortable with video. Take a look at Gavin’s first vlog for some inspiration.

We also have a list of video equipment which will help you get started.

Work video into your content strategy

As with all content marketing, your results and return-on-investment from video content will be far greater when you work it into a proper long-term content plan.

Incorporate video into your annual content plan alongside written blogs, regular social media posts and ongoing updates to your web content. Mix it up with rough-and-ready vlogs, live Facebook videos of events you run and high-production value video content to introduce you and the team on your website.

With this broad content palette, you’ll keep engagement high, SEO looking good and will give your video content the reach it needs to have a real and meaningful impact over time.

Visual Effects Artist Creates Epic Video To Sell His Old Car, And Now 2 Million People Want To Buy It

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 01:26:00 GMT

Watch this amazing video that demonstrates the power of visual communciation.

For most of us, selling a used car generally involves placing an advert on a popular website or in the classifieds section of a local newspaper. But when it came to selling his old SUV, Eugene Romanovsky decided to take things to a whole new level by creating the most spectacular advertisement for his 1996 Suzuki Vitara.

Employing his skills as a visual effects artist, the Israel-based Latvian made an epic 2-minute video showcasing everything that his trusty car can (and cannot) do. From driving underwater to visiting outer space and even cruising alongside dinosaurs and featuring in Mad Mad: Fury Road, it’s really not surprising to learn that his video has been viewed over 2 million times since he recently uploaded it to YouTube. See for yourself below. Don’t forget the popcorn!

How to Hire a Charleston, SC Website Designer workshop.

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sun, 09 Apr 2017 16:59:35 GMT

Business Website Design and how to shop for a Charleston, SC website designer.

BUSINESS WEBSITE DESIGN : The S.C. Small Business Development Center holds a marketing workshop, “10 Things to Consider When Shopping For a Small Business Website.” 3-5 p.m. 6296 Rivers Ave., North Charleston. Scheduled speaker is Jennifer Morrow, owner of RootedID. $20. Go to www.charlestonsbdc.com or call 843-740-6160 for more details.

>>>>See more about Charleston, SC business and website design events

How This Startup Is Using Influencer Marketing, Viral Videos, and Beards to Build a Business

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sun, 09 Apr 2017 16:50:15 GMT

Discover how this startup racked up 130M views in 15 months.

If you want to know how to make ads so engaging people forget they're watching an ad at all, take a page out of Dollar Beard Club's marketing book .

In 15 months, this bearded troupe of well-groomed entrepreneurs has racked up 130M video views. Who knew the "beard care" industry could be so engaging?

Despite the fact their videos (you've seen them) are a blend between short comedy skits and an ode to the love of beards (reminiscent of Old Spice commercials, known for their wacky, off-tempo humor and pop culture references), they certainly get the job done. The company has done an astounding job at getting people to pay attention oh so simple: beard care.

Dollar Beard Club is a membership style company (starting at $1 a month) that provides products to their loyal members that facilitate proper beard care. These include the Fundamentals, Essentials, Accessories, and Necessities for keeping a well groomed and healthy maintenance, growth, and style.

To capitalize on November's prized "Beard Month"--where men everywhere decide to either grow mustaches for Movember, or a full forest beard for No Shave November (to benefit charity)--Dollar Beard Club has recruited an arsenal of social media influencers to start what will no doubt be a storm of engagement.

The stars of the video entitled "The Truth About Beards" include:

Dan Bilzerian - King of Instagram
Richard Sherman - NFL Player
Brent Burns - NHL Player
Adam Lazzara - Taking Back Sunday Frontman
Madison Rowley - 2x World Beard Champion
Gay Beards - Instagram Influencers
Mischa Janiec - World Natural Bodybuilding Champion
The Man Spot - Instagram Infleuncer
Sean Whalen - Facebook Infleuncer
Max Nosleeves - YouTube Comedian
Riley Hawk - Professional Skateboarder (son of Tony Hawk)
Clint Walker - Professional Skateboarder
Kurt Yaeger - Actor (Sons of Anarchy, NCIS LA)

Be sure to take note of the storytelling in the video. If you are looking to build your brand online using video, Dollar Beard Club is a perfect case study to take a look at.

Return of The World Animation Celebration!

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 00:33:31 GMT

The World Animation Celebration Returns in 2017

Animation Libation Studios and Animation Magazine will once again present The World Animation Celebration in 2017. Hosted by Sony Pictures Animation, the international animated short film festival will take place September 30 and October 1 at the studio, located in Culver City, California.

The two-day event will showcase the best in traditional, CG, digital, stop-motion, experimental and VR animation from fllmmakers and students around the world, which will be reviewed by a panel of world-class professional judges. In addition to the film program, attendees will be able to take in industry panels, guest speakers and artist demos, meet with recruiters and school representatives, and participate in portfolio reviews.

Film submission and early bird registration information will be announced soon.

Animation Magazine , now celebrating its 30th anniversary year, is the oldest publication promoting the business, art and technology of animation worldwide throught its print and digital magazine, website, daily newsletter, job board and events.

Animation Libation Studio is a global animation studio and gateway between higher education and the industry that makes it possible for newly emerging artists to work together with seasoned industry professionals from around the world to create original content for film, television, and the web.

A world leading animation and family entertainment production company, Sony Pictures Animation is following its record-breaking Hotel Transylvania monster comedies and mouth- watering Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs worldwide hits with the fully animated reboot Smurfs: The Lost Village in April 2017; The Emoji Movie , a surprising and comic take at the secret world inside our phones, in August 2017; the inspirational feature The Star in November 2017; Hotel Transylvania 3 in July 2018; and an animated Spider-Man feature from the minds of directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord in December 2018. The studio’s recent home entertainment releases Open Season: Scared Silly and Surf’s Up 2: WaveMania are currently available on DVD and digital. Sony Pictures Animation is a division of the Sony Pictures Motion Pictures Group.

5 Tips for Hiring a Good Web Designer

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 00:28:20 GMT

Entrepreneur Magazine reveals the best strategies for vetting out web designers.

A web developer can be one of your most critical hires. After all, that's the person who will create the online face of your company and enable you to interact virtually with your customers.

So, it's especially important that you hire the right talent the first time out. Otherwise, you risk hurting your business, as well as wasting time and money seeking a replacement.

Here are five tips that can help in the selection process:

1. Hire for DNA first, then work experience.
When I hire web developers, their personal DNA is the most important consideration. While experience is important, the bigger predictor of success is someone's innate DNA and how it fits your company. Are drive, determination, persistence, curiosity, important to you culture? Or, are you more low-key and relaxed about time management and deadlines? Whatever characteristics make up your culture, you want to ensure that the web developer will fit in.

For example, a brilliant web developer who has worked at a large financial institution may not do well at a startup. Why? A startup typically requires traits like versatility, adaptability, risk-taking and a self-starter personality, but these may be less important at a large company.

So, make a list of your company's DNA requirements. Do you foster an environment of relentless drive? Do you want great team players? If you come up with five requirements, make sure the interviewee matches at least three. Hiring for DNA also can help you to start to define a company culture and ensure that your team will work well together.

Of course, it's easy for some people to fake it in an interview, so you may need to evaluate them in other ways to ensure they're a good fit.

2. Try out a new developer with a small project first.
Although you might think you've identified your ideal candidate, just to be sure you should give him or her a small, non-critical project. That can let you observe the person in action and provide additional information beyond the job interview.

You can see how efficient the candidate is in delivering products and how buggy the final product is. Did he or she go above and beyond to get the product delivered? How creative was the solution? How well did he or she work in a team and communicate problems and delays?

3. Pick a developer with aptitude, not a particular skill set.
In the tech space, skills become obsolete every two years, give or take. So, it's better to hire a web developer who can learn new technologies easily rather than someone who knows a specific technology now but may not adapt when a new one comes along.

The easiest way to detect whether someone will adapt well to change is to ask questions that will reveal whether a Web developer has a love for learning. For example:

What new programming languages did you learn recently?
What are your go-to places for learning new tech tips and tricks?
What are your favorite technology conferences?

4. Don't ask trivia questions about programming.
These are examples of trivia questions you want to avoid asking when interviewing web developers:

Who is the primary creator of the Java programming language?
In what year was PHP released?
What is the origin of the Python scripting language's name?

While such information may seem useful, trivia questions are often a terrible way to determine if someone is smart. They just single out people who can memorize things.

As a rule of thumb when I conduct technical interviews, I never ask questions that can be easily searched for and found online. Instead, I focus on open-ended questions and listen. What I look for is how much passion candidates show in their answers and how well they communicate and explain tech terms.

Some examples of open-ended questions:

How do you manage conflicts in a web application when different people are editing the same data?
Which design patterns have you used, and in what situations?
Can you name any differences between object-oriented design and component-based design?

5. Hire slow, fire fast.
Take your time when hiring, but if you realize the person isn't working out, let him or her go as fast as you can. An ineffective web developer can be disruptive to the entire team and potentially the entire project.

At Webgrrls.com, I made a significant hiring mistake a few years ago and let that person stay on for far too long. Although he was a talented lead developer, he'd sometimes disappear for days, missing important deadlines. Missing deadlines can be especially detrimental to startups where resources are tight and the ability to develop and improve products quickly and efficiently can make or break them.

The fire-fast rule may be difficult to follow in small companies where there's often a feeling of everyone being in it together and forming close friendships. But don't let that stop you.

-Entreprenuer Magazine

Website Designer Kid Turns Down Millions!!!

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 00:19:23 GMT

Find out what kind of website he designed and why he won't sell out.

Anjali Bisaria

January 24, 2017

Mohammed Ali is a website designer. He is also an amazingly confident kid! The 16-year-old recently rejected a £5 million offer for a website he designed in his bedroom! That's over Rs. 42 crores he said no to!

Ali, is responsible for having designed weneed1.com, a price comparison website, believes that it will be worth a lot more in future.

A buyout that could have literally made him a millionaire was offered just before Christmas. The kid said, as reported by Metro ,

"We met the investors in London, they were a global data driven company, and they didn’t realise I created all the technology involved. The main reason we rejected the offer was because, if the technology and concept is worth millions already, just think how much it will be worth once people use it."

Of course, he realises the big risk he took by rejecting the offer but Ali wants his website to become a household name.

And it's not the first time the genius boy has won something big. His video game 'Project 2006' previously earned him a £30,000 reward!

His website, that Ali co-created with his 60-year-old business partner, Chris Thorpe, will launch on January 28.

‘The main reason we rejected the offer was because, if the technology and concept is worth millions already, just think how much it will be worth once people use it.’
He said he understood it was a big risk to reject the money from the American investors but wanted to create something for himself and make his website a household name.
Ali claims to have developed a new algorithm that provides ‘real time quotes instead of the normal pre-fixed quotes you find on insurance sites.’
He added: ‘The big thing about what we’re doing is that there are no competitors – this is a real time money saving expert – it’s like a Bloomberg for the general public.’

Designing costumes for Lady Gaga didn't lead to this artist's big break. A website did.

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 18:53:23 GMT

'For someone who's part of a marginalized community, I feel like I'm finally being seen.'

Artist Fin Lee was living the not-so-glamorous freelance life, when they got the gig of a lifetime.

In fact, if you watched the 2016 Grammys, you probably saw their work. They designed and illustrated the costumes Lady Gaga's backup dancers wore during her tribute to David Bowie.

After years of struggling to catch a big break, Lee (artist name: Lostboy ), who identifies as queer and uses they/them pronouns, finally got a foot in the door.

Lee's artwork in the style of Egon Shiele (Bowie's artist icon), as well as Bowie's actual hands on jumpsuits for the dancers. Image used with permission.

You'd think designing costumes for Lady Gaga would be a career-changing milestone. But that's not how things went for Lee.

Lee continued to get the occasional illustrator job, but still had to work as a barista to make ends meet. Occasionally, they'd be in the running for a big, exciting gig again, only to watch as someone else got the job instead. Lee noticed a troubling and frustrating pattern to who that "someone else" often was. Though not always the same person, these artists had a few traits in common — namely, they were male, and often white, straight, and cisgender too.

"I think the way our society is — we’re used to seeing a certain type of person in a certain type of field," Lee explains.

Employers or potential employers often aren't aware they might have subconscious biases influencing their hiring process, but the data doesn't lie. This is a problem.

According to a study recently published in the American Sociological Review , white men are more than three times as likely to get called in for a job interview than a woman with the same qualifications. And that discrimination gets exponentially worse for transgender women.

So where do you go to find work when a potential employer's subconscious biases about who you are prevents them from seeing the good work you're capable of doing?

The turning point in Lee's career came when they became an early user of a new website called Women Who Draw .

Women Who Draw is a database of artists designed to give marginalized artists visibility and a deeper sense of community in a competitive field. The website specifies that it is "trans-inclusive and includes women, trans and gender non-conforming illustrators."

Lee was brought on as a beta tester by one of the site's creators, San Francisco illustrator Wendy MacNaughton . MacNaughton, together with fellow creator and artist Julia Rothman , hoped Lee, a queer Asian artist, could offer advice on how they wanted to see the site operate.

Lee happily obliged. "It's the first of it’s kind that I’ve seen where it’s so inclusive," Lee says.

“Women [on the site] can choose how they want to identify in terms of their race, orientation, location, religion," says MacNaughton. "There are many other ways people identify, but those four seemed very relevant in terms of visibility, and useful for art directors when they’re looking for specific people who might have specific experience, expertise, or perspective."

For employers who want to hire more diverse illustrators, Women Who Draw is an incredibly helpful resource.

Heather Vaughan, an artist and art director for a gaming company, explained over email that "[Women Who Draw] actually came at a really great time. She says she was "specifically looking to find female artists to work with ... since women in games are an even smaller group."

Today, Women Who Draw features over 700 artists, with portfolios that are an incredible representation of diversity, both artistically and demographically. Gracia Lam, who is Asian-Canadian and identifies as gay, says that Women Who Draw makes it so much easier for clients to choose illustrators who can help tell "fuller, more well rounded" stories.

Similarly, Annelise Capossela, a Brooklyn-based illustrator, says that Women Who Draw helps art directors who are looking to diversify their hiring pool and make the conscious choice to search for illustrators and artists who have "uniquely personal insight into certain topics or experiences."

Shortly after Women Who Draw's public launch in December 2016, Lee got their first big editorial job.

On Christmas Day, Lee got a call from Rodrigo Honeywell, the Art Director of the travel section at the New York Times, offering Lee an opportunity to illustrate the feature image for an upcoming article.

Honeywell found Lee through Women Who Draw's database.

Lee has also seen a major uptick in visits to their website since WWD's database launched — over 600 hits on the first day alone.

Lee has come a long way in the year since the 2016 Grammys. But it was Women Who Draw that really helped them open the door to a full-time career as an artist.

Thanks to all the exposure from Women Who Draw, Lee now has a full-time job with an illustration agency that represents artists. They no longer have to serve coffee.

While that's great news for them, equal opportunities for artists like Lee may diminish under a Trump administration. There couldn't be a better time for a site like this.

"For someone who's part of a marginalized community, I feel like I'm finally being seen," Lee says.

Video Marketing 101: 6 Tips for Getting Your Brand Started on YouTube

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 20:26:28 GMT

Here are 6 basic considerations for starting up a YouTube channel.

While other platforms have seen significant rises in video content, YouTube remains the king of online video - and as such, it should be a critical consideration in all of your online marketing efforts.

So how can you use YouTube tо gеt more customers and build your business?

Here are some key tips

1. Establish a YouTube Presence for Your Business

First, you need to start with the basics, setting up a brand profile on YouTube.

Setting up a YouTube business profile is easy - you need a Google account to sign up for a YouTube profile, which you'll already have if you use Gmail or if you've ever used Google+. Using your Google account, you can sign into YouTube - from here you can create a brand channel or a specific brand account, which you can connect to your personal profile .

2. Set Up Customized Graphic Background for Branding

Once you have a brand profile established, you can sеt uр аnd customize the background for your YouTube channel .

Your background image will represent your business, so it needs to be professional, and there are a heap уоu can find an inexpensive freelance graphic artist such as Upwork or Fiverr to assist, if required.

Make sure your background image is consistent with аll оf your other online media channels like Facebook and Twitter. This wау, people will come to recognize уоu nоt only bу your brand name, but also by your logo and presence.

Here is an example from Nike:

This simple, yet bold, black and white background instantly grabs your attention and is memorable.

3. Optimize Your Channel - General Description with Keywords

Optimize your YouTube channel by writing a general description, using keywords that are appropriate tо what уоu want tо promote аѕ a niche fоr your business. You should also provide a link ѕо that people саn bе directed to your web page - this way, they'll bе able to find your products and services and buy them from you easily. The key is to always make things as simple as possible for your customers - the less clicks they have to make, the more likely they are to visit.

Also, establish targeted, keyword-focused, channel tags ѕо YouTube's search engine can direct people tо find your content on the platform.

For example if your company sells active wear you will want to target words that are related to that niche in both the description and the tags.

4. Publish Videos

Typically, people come to YouTube to seek branded video that answer questions, so if уоu саn answer the questions being asked about your business and niche, you'll stand a better chance of getting your content seen on the platform.

People also tend to like testimonial videos tо ѕее what other people are saying about your products or services, so it's worth adding those into the mix also. Customer testimonials are among of the most trusted reviews that you can get anywhere, and they generate significantly higher conversion rates than other content types.

Demonstration videos are another option, showing, in video form, how exactly you can use your products or services to perform specific tasks.

5. Add Friends and Subscribers to Your Channel

Onе of thе best ways to boost your YouTube presence iѕ to invite other YouTube users tо subscribe to your channel. Onсе someone hаѕ subscribed, every time you post a new video they'll receive a notification.

Once уоu build a list of subscribers, you саn also send them information about your business. You could, for example, provide them with coupons, special offers, new information, links to other pages and much more.

6. Incorporate Brand Recognition

Your business hаѕ itѕ оwn, unique tone оf voice - ѕо make sure that's reflected in your videos.

If your company iѕ casual аnd fun, make sure your videos аrе tоо. Bе sure tо have your company logo displayed at the start or finish of your videos. Uѕе your brand colors wherever you саn. Give viewers a call to action аt the end оf your videos by inviting them tо give уоu a call оr visit your website.

Building awareness аnd recognition of your brand is important in broadening your customer base.

YouTube hаѕ thousands of video uploads each day аnd even more daily viewers . It's one of the most powerful channels that you can add to your social media repertoire - follow these simple tips to grow your business on YouTube today.

Animation and motion-graphics trends 2017

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 01:30:15 GMT

We examine four awesome modern animation trends.

Axonometric projection

This is by far the most cost effective way of displaying 3D objects in a 2D world. Styled in an infinite space where the camera pans only on the X and Y axis, most graphics are created before the animation phase. That means there are no surprises and a clear approval process. This style is most suitable to provide a bird's eye view to give the audience a sense of the big picture. It could also be used to demonstrate layers, considering the elements are styled with a strict angles, it makes them highly stackable. Of course the level of complexity could also be upped with 3D isometrics. The result, highly complex visuals with constant movements to narrate the story.

ILLUSTRATION

This style will never get old. Often copied, never duplicated. In our experience, this is best used for narrative purpose. For example, if you had to communicate a journey, or to highlight characters – this is the way to go about it. It's very time consuming considering every frame is drawn by hand and you'll need at least 8 frames per second so the animation doesn't appear too low in frame rate. This style of animation means the sky is the limit. A strong visual must already be conceived even before the pen touches the paper or Wacom tablet. Why? Well, you wouldn't want to be told, at the last minute that the animation is 'not right', because that also means that 500+ frames are 'not right'. Of course when it comes to illustration, every artist has their own flavour on the digital canvas which is why illustrative styled animation is often copied, never duplicated.

HANDCRAFT

This style often blends live-action elements with CGI components to give the audience a sense of wonder and intrigue. There is always something magical or endearing when we see craft work created by tangible materials come to life. When we throw in an external factor such as a pair of hands or a stick prodding a wheel, it becomes 'human' powered. It brings a smile to your face, because face it – when we don't understand how something came to be visually, subconsciously, we go to our default 'oh, its a CGI thing'. When we are able to see how the cogs integrate and work with each other, we appreciate it more. Here are some examples.

LIQUID MOTION

One segment of animation that is often overlooked is transition, how to move smoothly from visual A to B. Often people struggle with putting two and two together and if animation demonstrates that – instant Wow! Though it dates back many years, we are starting to see a real emergence of this trend. Our take? People are tired of geometric shapes and harsh straight lines. When we see something fluid, something liquid, instantly our minds snap into dynamic mode. The result...a truly psychedelic masterpiece.

How to Hire a Website Designer And Not Get Burned

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 15:59:06 GMT

Tips for surviving the process of hiring a website designer.

You’re finally ready to take the big step: It’s time to get a website for your small business, or to get a major refresh of your old site.

And so… now what?

Let’s assume you’ve already tackled the first problem: You know you need this thing built for you. You don’t have time to become a self-taught website designer. Neither do most of your peers. 54% of small businesses outsource website and graphic design, according to the WASP Barcode 2016 State of Small Business Report .

But that’s just the first of many issues. For instance, what do you want to have done? How much will it cost? Where will you find this designer? How will you tell if they’re good or not?

They’re all really good questions. Here’s how to answer them:

What do you want to have done?

Knowing the scope of the work helps you figure out what a realistic budget should be. It’s also critical for choosing which website designer to hire. For instance, if you’re a very small local business (aka a “micro business”), you may only need a six-page website. These basic pages might be enough:

Homepage
About us
Contact us
Our services / pricing
Testimonials page
One landing page or events page

That’s one lean website, but if you’re just starting out and you don’t have a big budget, it’s a great first step.

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Or maybe you already have a basic site like that, but it’s old and not mobile-friendly. Say you want to add a simple blog, a couple more product pages, and give the whole thing a new look.

Whatever you want for your business website, write it down. Think about it for a bit. Ask your employees or your peers what they think about your site. Or even better – ask a few of your customers what they think of your website.

From all that input, write a short list of must-do, must-have things. Be really specific about what you want done. Write it all down. You’re basically writing out what you want the designer to do.

Caption: It’s okay to “steal” elements you like from other websites for your own site.

Find sites you really like

Want to assure your success even more? Spend an hour or two looking through websites that are similar to yours or in a complementary niche.

Make detailed notes about what you like about these sites. See a contact page you love? A typeface you want to use? Make a note of it and capture the link.

You’ll be capturing concrete, actionable information for your designer as you do this. It’ll cut down the time it takes to create your site, and thus reduce your costs by a lot. It’s also one of the best ways to ensure you end up with a site you’ll really like.

How much will it cost?

The hourly rate for a web designer can vary by a lot - from as little as $15 per hour to over $100 per hour. Somewhere between $40 and $75 per hour is about average.

That might be helpful information, but it doesn’t tell you the total cost of your new website. How do you know if you have five hours of work here, or fifty?

Just to give you the roughest of rough estimates… having someone design and build that simple six-page website would probably cost in the ballpark of $720. Why that number? It’s $60 per hour, times two hours per page, times six pages.

Again – that’s as really rough guess. A designer could also legitimately add another $300 to that $720, just for developing the overall design and for time spent coordinating with you.

For the more elaborate re-design I described above you’d be looking at $1,680. That would include 1.5 hours per page to re-do the old pages, plus two hours each for six new pages (21 hours total), all billed at $80 per hour. A little more expensive than the first designer, but maybe this one has more skills.

Of course, some small business owners simply don’t have this kind of budget. If you need a site for $400 or less, it can be done. Just realize you might get what you pay for. An alternative to hiring a designer is to do your website yourself, perhaps with one of the website builder tools like Wix, Yodle or Weebly.

How to find the right website designer for you

Remember that list of “Websites I Like” that you made? Pull it out again.

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Contact the business owner of each site (or as many as you can). Find out who built their website. In some cases, it’ll be a full-time employee. It’s possible these people would help you in their spare time, but it’s better if you can find a full-time, self-employed web designer.

In addition to your website list, reach out to a handful of business people or business groups you’re connected to. Often a name will pop up with this research (if you’re lucky, one name will keep popping up as you ask around).

Get the names of three to five different designers, then contact them with your list of what you want done and the notes on which sites you like.

See if:

They’re available to do the work.
Their price is in line with your budget.
They can provide 1-2 additional references.
They can set your site up so you can easily make minor edits after they’re done.

Ask about what their payment schedule is, and what their policy is for deadlines and milestones through the project. Expect to pay about a third of their price up front, a third at some mid-point of the project, and then a third when the site is completely done.

Usually a winner will arise pretty quickly. Hopefully, you’ve also found a business partner who can help you promote your site – and your business - for years. Pick accordingly.

Why your website needs a storyteller not a designer.

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 00:38:26 GMT

Your website must help visitors realize quickly that you get them, and that you have what it takes to change their current reality.

Your website is the hub of your online presence – period. (Well, maybe that’s not exactly true from you right now, but it must be!)

As such, it has to do some heavy lifting and that heavy lifting must extend far beyond the interactive brochure still built today by many business owners.

Your website must tell a story. A story must be engaging and there must be a hero, a problem, a quest, a call to arms, and a promise of a happy ending.

The trouble with most sites, however, stems to some degree from how the web design industry is viewed.

A business creates a great product or service, develops the processes for marketing said product or service and then turns to a designer to create a gorgeous set of web pages to showcase it.

At some point, they determine they are going to need lots of pretty words to go with that awesome design, and then eventually they will need someone to “SEO it all.”

Of course, today the path described above is a recipe for disaster and waste.

The purpose of your site

As the digital hub for your business, your website must be able to attract the right prospect, as well as build trust, provide information, offer a guided trial experience, convert, and nurture and do so without friction or confusion.

Your must build your website with a narrowly defined ideal customer, deep knowledge of their challenges and pains, and instant delivery of a strong message of differentiation. In other words, your website is a study in marketing strategy and the voice of your online presence.

It must make people feel something quickly, it must draw them into their story, it must help visitors realize quickly that you get them, and that you have what it takes to change their current reality.

This is a process, not a webpage!

Guiding the journey

The buyer holds the cards today and expects to find whatever they are looking for online. They research, read, shop, bookmark, subscribe, revisit, compare, rate and review as standard markers along the buying process.

Websites today don’t create demand, they organize behavior and this requires strategy, storytelling, research, search engine optimization, intention, AND a design that facilitates what people expect from the sites they visit.

A storytelling home page might include a message that grabs the reader right where it hurts (strategy message, SEO, trust), trust markers in the form of testimonials (trust), a story about someone who was helped (proof, education), a scannable description or two about products and services (SEO, education), a story about the person and purpose behind the brand (trust, content), more trust markers (more trust and proof), a picture of what it could be like for the reader (content, aspiration, SEO), and several compelling calls to act (trial, trust, nurture). Here’s a good example of site that practices this approach

Great web design today supports; it does not dominate.

Conversion matters

Every interaction with your site is a conversion of some sort. Guiding and stimulating the behavior of the visitor is the objective.

When a first-time visitor comes to your site your goal is to convince them to come back – that’s a conversion. When they come back your goal is to get them to stay and read some more – that’s a conversion. When they stick around your goal is to interest them in specific information that educates – that’s a conversion. When they start consuming your ebooks, newsletters, and webinars your goal is the get them to tell you about their needs and challenges – that’s a conversion.

Okay, I suspect you get it – a conversion is much more than a purchase, it’s a set of micro-commitments that lead to a profitable purchase and your site must light the path at every stage.

This is perhaps the trickiest part as every visitor is different. They have a different story, they have difference knowledge about their problem and your solution, they are often at different points in the journey and they certainly have their own way of making purchase decisions.

Conversion is about helping them make the choice that seems right for them, not about forcing then through a funnel.

Measuring every activity, click, hover, page visit, and even time on site, is the only way to start to understand what’s working and not working. It’s the only way to personalize the journey based on what you learn. True conversion nuts test and can tell you what elements of their contact us form are causing friction.

You don’t have to go that level, but heck understanding what people who respond to your Facebook Ads do when they hit your site might be an awesome first step.

SEO at the start

Great web design starts with keyword research.

Keyword research, long the workhorse of the SEO pro, is an invaluable tool when it comes to developing strategy. Keyword research not only helps you determine popular search terms, it helps you better understand your ideal client, get a deeper grasp on their problems and intentions, and reveals clues to how they find, research, and source products and services like yours.

This knowledge allows you to create the right structure for your site before you ever start choosing colors and fonts.

Understanding the story structure of your home page and subsequent main pages is how you build and use your website to attract the right clients!

Content at the heart

In the end, your website is a container for your content, pure and simple. Nice packaging helps a visitor find and consume your content, but useful content is what drives the online machine.

Of course, content for content sake isn’t what I’m referring to here. Your content must be designed with intent. You must have content that helps create awareness, content that builds trust, content that educates, content the converts and even content to stimulate referrals.

By building a website and subsequent content around the story your prospect is telling themselves you also create context and that’s the key winning conversion with your content.

Hire a storyteller

You can no longer afford to view your website as a design only adventure. Your web hub must be built with your overall marketing strategy in mind and for my money, that starts by engaging a marketing professional who begins with strategy and who can turn your strategy into a story and who can make your content the voice of strategy.

If you want to talk to me about this idea send me a note with the text – I want to talk to a storyteller.

Franz Kafka’s Existential Parable “Before the Law” Gets Brought to Life in a Striking, Modern Animation

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 00:26:08 GMT

“Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. ‘It is possible,’ says the gatekeeper, ‘but not now.'” So begins Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law,” a short story first published in 1915 but still resonant just over a century later.

It takes no great intimacy with the work of the man who also wrote the likes of “The Metamorphosis” and The Castle , which ultimately drove his name into the lexicon as a byword for absurdly intransigent bureaucracy and the irony of struggling against it, to figure out whether the man ever does get to see the law. Most readers now first encounter the text of “Before the Law” when they read a priest telling it to Josef K, protagonist of Kafka’s posthumously published 1925 novel The Trial . Some see it before they read it in the form of the pinscreen animation (by Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker, the masters of that recherché art) that precedes Orson Welles’ polarizing cinematic adaptation of the book .

A few years ago, the Barcelona-based animator Alessandro Novelli created his own update of the parable, The Guardian . Using a mixture of two- and three-dimensional animation in a stark, line-drawn-looking black and white, it envisions the man (sporting a thoroughly modern beard and pair of severely tapered pants) and his journey through mountains, woods, and cities to the gate. Once he reaches it, his lifelong standoff with the gatekeeper opens up a number of unexpected visual realms, taking us atop a chessboard, inside an alarm clock, beside falling dominos, deep underwater, and up into the night sky.

Unlike Alexeieff and Parker’s straight adaptation, The Guardian extends the story: Kafka’s stern sentinel and his utterly impassable portal turn into a challenge aimed more at the man’s fortitude. “Wherever it is you go to now,” says the gatekeeper after he has finally given the aged and weakened protagonist his chance, “remember this gate, and that this gate existed and was opened just for you. Yet you never found the strength to cross it.” In Kafka’s original, when the gate closes, it closes with an existential finality; in Novelli’s it re-opens “for the ones who will come. For the ones who will be brave.”

Nikolai Gogol’s Classic Story, “The Nose,” Animated With the Astonishing Pinscreen Technique (1963)

Watch Franz Kafka, the Wonderful Animated Film by Piotr Dumala

Kafka’s Nightmare Tale, ‘A Country Doctor,’ Told in Award-Winning Japanese Animation

Franz Kafka Story Gets Adapted into an Award-Winning Australian Short Film: Watch Two Men

What Does “Kafkaesque” Really Mean? A Short Animated Video Explains

5 design ideas to revamp your website

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sat, 07 Jan 2017 23:54:30 GMT

A Charleston area website designer talk about some bright ways to improve your website's appearance.

These days, it’s almost impossible to see a business that does not have a website. Even small businesses have taken to the Internet to find more customers and create an online presence. The problem is, with so many companies creating their own websites, yours can get lost in the shuffle. Luckily, a great web design can make a big difference. Here are five web design trends that could help increase your web traffic.

Scrolling

Scrolling is a convenient method for traversing a website. Instead of navigating through confusing menus and drop-down tabs, a scrolling one-page site has a cleaner look and is usually more intuitive for the user. This web design style is definitely more important today, now that people have grown more accustomed to mobile web browsing.

You also have to decide how far visitors will have to scroll to get to know your company. While a long scrolling page gives you more white space and content to work with, a short scrolling page can quickly convey your company’s message and encourages call to actions. The next time you revamp your company website, consider the appropriate scrolling element for your page.

Flat design

To achieve an optimal viewing experience for users, many companies adopted a flat design for their websites. The flat design style replaces the elements that gives an illusion of depth, like shadows and textures, with minimalist typography and colors. For example, Google employed this style to get content to viewers more efficiently. The company added flat design colors and used a sans-serif font. This allowed the logo to load faster and made it was easier to read as well.

Animations

One way businesses have been setting themselves apart from others is by including customized animations to their pages. Now this doesn’t mean you should overload your site with flashy effects that take forever to load. If you want to use animations on your site, give it a subtle twist. For instance, Slack’s loading animation features their logo.

Additionally, animations can be used to increase user interaction and engagement. Hover animations will allow your users to mouse over your content and get an immediate response without having to move between pages. Slideshows on your homepage can also showcase what your company is about without throwing too much information at the audience. When deciding to add an animation to your page, figure out how a specific effect can enhance the user experience while showcasing your business.

Full-screen forms

More websites and apps are using full-screen forms to increase user interaction. Rather than being redirected to another page when your visitors decide to register or login to a website, you are welcomed by a full-screen form without leaving the home page. This is also especially useful for mobile users since they are less likely to misclick sections of the form.

Customized photos

The next time you want to use photographs to highlight your company, forget about using stock photos. Businesses who exhibit their own photography on their homepages look more personal and stand out from the competition.

While these trends are popular at the moment, don’t blindly adopt them all because it will end up looking very messy. The best way to approach these web design trends is by making sure that the design fits your target audience. You won’t exactly have mouse over animations for a website that doesn’t have very many images. Use the trends that are best for your company.

If you want to learn more about current web design trends, give us a call.

The Physics of Kung Fu Brought to Life Through Motion Capture Visualizations

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sat, 07 Jan 2017 23:36:13 GMT

Kung Fu Motion Visualizations

We’ve all seen exaggerated depictions of kung fu in movies or maybe a demonstration by a practitioner in real life, but German digital artist Tobias Gremmler decided to portray the Chinese martial art in an entirely new light through the use of motion capture. By capturing the motion of different sequences Gremmler is able to distill the data into these animated sculptures, effectively turning movement into structure and volume. The motion of limbs is turned into a complex moving scaffold or interpreted as dramatic bursts of particles, the visuals used to seemingly isolate the physics of kung fu. If you enjoyed this also check out films like Asphyxia , Walking City , and these similar idents for CCTV . (via The Creator’s Project , Prosthetic Knowledge )

2017's Top 10 Digital Branding and Marketing Trends [Infographic]

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sat, 07 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Digital Marketing in the Charleston, SC area now includes agencies, organizations and freelancers that incorporate media channels such as video and animation, website publishing, analytics, blogging and more. Discover 2017's top trending marketing trends.

“But I Already Have a Website”

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Sat, 07 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Everyone views a website as mandatory, yet few understand the exact purpose of owning one. In the 1990s and early 2000s, business owners could justify a one page website as traditional marketing still ruled the roost – print and TV. Fast forward today, digital marketing has captured the lion’s share of advertising budgets, as money follows the consumer. Mobile technology and wifi facilitate a ubiquitous internet, allowing search engines and social media to become recurring, consistent touch points with today’s consumer, regardless of age .

As web technologies continue to advance, user experience and marketing channels are increasing in entropy, becoming increasingly more complex. Whereas the web once relied on static webpages and plain text, it now showcases augmented reality, virtual reality, high res photography, flash, html5, and video. For over 20 years Christopher Silva, CEO of Crown Media Studio has remained on the cutting edge of new web technologies and graphic design. As a top web designer in Charleston, SC, his body of work encompasses true brands. Fake aspirant brands could blend in with real brands years ago, but today it’s becoming increasingly more difficult. A local business website of yesteryear was barebones, giving driving directions, a phone number and perhaps a few images. Businesses today have an opportunity to actually engage potential customers with real-time chat, virtual tours, video, dynamic navigation options, high res photography and calls to action. Big data has also co-evolved around emerging markets, mitigating guess-work, proving the worth of digital marketing through precise, positive ROI tracking . If a customer can be acquired for less than spend necessary to acquire them, a scalable new customer funnel has been established. Google Analytics and Adwords has been at the forefront, shifting mindsets from a marketing expense to a revenue producing activity.

Now Facebook, YouTube and other platforms are allowing business owners and webmasters to discern between successful campaigns and unsuccessful ones.

The genie is out of the bottle. Everyone knows it’s simply not enough to “have a website”, but to have a better web presence than ones competition, as a digital impression is often the first one a brand establishes with a new potential customer. If a web user isn’t impressed he/she is gone in 10-20 seconds . Despite this fact, many are either ill-advised or lacking a budget to create a truly inspiring web presence, let alone support it through marketing efforts. This has given rise to two distinct target markets: business owners seeking the cheapest barebone websites, and those who invest heavily into their digital presence. This further deepens the dichotomy between brands and fly-by-night companies, as now they are losing on two fronts, both real life, and virtual.

Principles of Design and Marketing

(source: splendorgraphics.com)

A business should be unapologetically naked to its customers: value proposition (what), ethos (why), and proof (how). Successfully exhibiting these core three traits is standard practice for successful marketing agencies such as Splendor Design Group, but a vast majority of business owners fail to answer consumer basic questions, fears, and objections. Art imitates real life, and dating is a petri dish of human habits. Just as singles only invest emotionally into people they deem physically attractive, a website starts off a shallow process, but ends in deep storytelling. Knowledge conquers many shallow preconceived notions, yet it’s impossible to edify one’s potential clients if they don’t stick around to hear your value proposition. When executed properly, even a villain is hard to hate once you know their backstory. Transparency is misinterpreted; a prospect doesn’t care if a business owner wakes up at 4am to take care of his/her grandmother; selfishly and rightly, they need to know if they will be benefit from a business relationship. If a web presence answers this positively, then added layers of emotion can be peeled back as the layer of communication and decision making furthers the prospect towards a desired outcome. In other words, if a woman’s preferred man is 6’5 with brown eyes, a shorter, blue eyed man would stand little chance, through no fault of the man (message), unless the woman gave him one. If the medium is the website, and it’s unattractive, all further communication or emotional connection is impossible. A website is a catch all opportunity to seize as much business in the open market, while staying true to one’s business. In a world of shrinking attention spans and hyper competitive markets, standing out is cliche but a principle as old as time and evolution. Birds sing, peacocks…peacock, Kangaroos flex, and the list goes on. Without drawing attention, and more importantly maintaining interest in the hearts and minds of your clients, web marketing falls short, warping back to 1990 one-way information flow. Christopher has lead by example through his agency website; a highly interactive video welcoming new visitors, detailed case studies, team member backgrounds with photos, and strong calls to action. If someone is in the market for high end custom web design, branding and marketing, the web experience helps guide the consumer into taking action through email or phone call. The antithesis is a website so poorly done a user hits the back button in search of nearby competitors. Factor in cost of acquiring new business, even just word of mouth (not including new marketing), losing business due to an unprofessional website has real world implications.

Five Content Marketing Trends to Watch in 2017

christophersilva80@gmail.com (Christopher Silva) — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 17:48:07 GMT

This is a subtitle for your new post

Five Content Marketing Trends to Watch in 2017

In what usually is a rather uneventful month for news, December proved us all wrong in 2016. A number of newsworthy activities related to the content marketing industry appeared on the radar this month, and I believe they could work as a crystal ball for content marketers as we move into 2017.

Trend 1: Buying influencers

As Robert Rose and I covered in a recent This Old Marketing podcast , CNN bought the social media app Beme owned by YouTube celebrity Casey Neistat who amassed 6 million followers through his video blog. CNN is shutting down the app and asking Casey and his team to start a new media platform.

Basically, CNN is looking to target a new audience, one that it believes Neistat holds the keys to. Instead of organically growing a platform or finding a leader within its ranks, CNN just went out and purchased Neistat and his team for $25 million.

Takeaway: Influencer marketing was hot in 2016. Look for influencer marketing to shift a bit from partnering with content creators and distributors to flat-out purchasing them.

Look for influencer marketing to shift from partnering to purchasing says @JoePulizzi. #cmworld Click To Tweet

Trend 2: Content marketing as defensive mechanism

Earlier this month, Kellogg’s pulled its advertising from Breitbart.com, which has been in the news a lot since President-elect Donald Trump named Steve Bannon, Breitbart’s former chairman, as a top adviser. Breitbart, which Bannon proclaimed is the “platform for the alt-right,” has a very particular point of view, and one that Kellogg’s doesn’t agree with.

Hence, the removal of Kellogg’s advertising from Breitbart’s site.

To combat this, Breitbart aggressively came after Kellogg’s with a #DumpKelloggs campaign, where Alexander Marlow, Breitbart News editor-in-chief stated, “Boycotting Breitbart News for presenting mainstream American ideas is an act of discrimination and intense prejudice.” The campaign trended on Twitter and was picked up by all the major news outlets.

According to FiveThirtyEight, Breitbart.com’s traffic increased at a faster rate than almost every other media site during the election process. Whether you agree with its site or not, there is power in its audience and growth.

Kellogg’s simply has no power to combat this. Sure, it can send out a news release and talk with the press. It can do an ad in The Wall Street Journal or some other outlet, but Breitbart has a huge audience of followers and can basically attack anyone it wants without repercussion.

In the future, how does Kellogg’s combat this? How does any company combat a situation when an organization with a large audience comes after them?

Takeaway: This type of action from Breitbart and other media companies against brands will only multiply in 2017. The only way for companies to battle this is to create their own large, loyal audiences. Look for a content marketing/PR business case to be front-and-center in any large enterprise out there for 2017.

Look for a #content marketing/PR business case to be front & center in large enterprises. @joepulizzi. Click To Tweet

Trend 3: Backlash against social platforms

As of this writing, YouTube megastar PewDiePie (aka Felix Kjellberg) has been extremely critical of YouTube over the past few months. Specifically, PewDiePie believes that YouTube’s algorithm changes are costing him traffic , which is hurting his advertising revenues and other sponsorship opportunities.

On Dec. 2, in one of his videos PewDiePie said he’s so frustrated about the matter, that when he hit 50 million subscribers he was going to shut down his account. Of course, PewDiePie hit his 50 million subscribers and decided to keep his channel (essentially trolling the internet). That said, he continues to rant about YouTube and its algorithm changes.

Honestly, the details don’t really matter. More and more social media influencers, as well as brands leveraging social media, are frustrated with YouTube, Facebook, and more, and their ongoing algorithm changes. For example, BP has been moving away from Facebook to publish more on LinkedIn as more and more of its Facebook content goes unseen.

Takeaway: As I travel the globe talking to enterprises about this issue, frustration is at the highest level I’ve seen. In 2017, I believe two things will happen — there will be more advertising on social media platforms and less organic publishing. The case can be made that a brand does not need to publish organic content on any social platform and instead can opt for an owned platform (website) plus paid promotion to create and grow an audience. Of course, social media sharing can happen, but the brand doesn’t need to be present on that platform for sharing to happen.

The case can be made that a brand does not need to publish organic content on social platforms. @JoePulizzi Click To Tweet

Trend 4: Email renaissance

According to Campaign Monitor, social media darling BuzzFeed added over 1 million email subscribers in the past 12 months. How? The answer can be found in trend No. 3. With social media channels moving toward revenue growth, brands have almost no control over communicating with fans and followers. Of all the ways to grow an audience, email has emerged as THE most critical.

Other media brands are following suit. For example , The Washington Post now has over 75 e-newsletters, while The New York Times has 12 people dedicated to newsletters. While some believe email is dead, the media is telling us that email is a growth area. And last but not least, our CMI/MarketingProfs B2B study found that email was rated as the No. 1 success metric for measuring content marketing.

Takeaway: In 2017, we’ll see two things. First, more brands will launch targeted and relevant e-newsletters, which will become the key method to grow their audiences. Second, more brands will take a hard look at the e-newsletters they have and move them from “email as marketing collateral” to “truly amazing and relevant customer experiences.”

In 2017, more brands will launch targeted e-newsletters as the key method to grow audiences says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

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Trend 5: Print resurgence

Airbnb and publishing partner Hearst recently announced the launch of a new print magazine appropriately called Airbnb mag. The magazine will be distributed to Airbnb homes and include content created and curated from people who provide and use the Airbnb service.

Not to be outdone, School of Doodle just launched a print magazine as did VFiles .

And, not that you’ve noticed, but print magazines as a tactic for content marketers have been steady for the past couple of years (according to our research ). I believe we’ve hit a bottom in print’s decline as more marketers look to cut through the digital clutter with (what else?) print.

Takeaway: I expect a number of big brands to launch print magazines in 2017. The targeted, niche publications will complement some online component (but be valuable in and of themselves).