Entries for month: November 2011
23 November 2011
Happy Thanksgiving from RainCastle and the HubSpot Unicorn
Guest Post by Bryn Adler
The holidays are a great time to re-connect with customers and reinforce professional and personal relationships for your brand. One of the best ways to do this is by sending a holiday card or holiday-themed newsletter that celebrates the time of year, offers content or exclusive promotions, or just offers a laugh.
Case in point: Internet marketing firm HubSpot has created a set of Thanksgiving eCards featuring their crass and beloved HubSpot Unicorn.
HubSpot’s brand is centered primarily on two things: a constant push for inbound marketing, and a young, innovative community culture. The HubSpot Unicorn, with his immense knowledge of pop culture, love of marketing, and colorful language, is the perfect representative for the brand and is a the best voice for the company’s holiday marketing campaign.
The HubSpot Unicorn is also used actively in other branding efforts: he’s on Instagram, has a Twitter handle, and is used as an icon at conferences since his initial, controversial debut at Dreamforce.
How does your holiday marketing campaign work with your year-round branding to encourage customer participation and brand awareness? Do you need a new company card designed? Contact RainCastle for your holiday needs, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Categories: Brand / Marketing · Web / Interactive
Posted by Paul Regensburg at 11:58 AM | 2 Comments
16 November 2011
Creating a Google+ Brand Page: Experiments and Tips
On Monday, Google+ rolled out its brand pages for businesses, and while the social network has lost most of its steam since the initial hype, marketers are still rushing to create branded profiles.
Google+, despite its slowed growth and lack of interaction, is hoping to make a comeback with the introduction of branded pages based on the (very true) premise that marketers love content creation and social interaction; basically, that marketers see the use in creating as many online resources for brand information as possible.
It also doesn't hurt that Google+ will play a large role in real-time search results.
But, the greater implication of Google+ brand pages remains to be seen, so for now let's concentrate on the first step: creation.
"Yep, we're on it, are you?" (click to enlarge)
Setting up a Google+ brand page is incredibly easy. You simply sign in with your personal profile and set up a page. The interface will walk you through a series of steps to establish the company, add information about services, location, and contact information. From there, you have to look at individual aspects of the UI to add value to your profile. Below are a couple tips for creating a better Google+ brand page.
1. Adding to Your Circles
Facebook has "friends" and "fans," Twitter has "followers," LinkedIn has "connections," and Google+ has "circles." Google+ doesn't let brand pages add personal profiles to its circles unless that person has already added your brand to his circles. However, this shouldn't deter your initial circle-building efforts. Add other brands to your circles that you interact with in social media. Some of ours include HubSpot, Mashable, and TechCrunch, as well as local companies and brands.
Also, make sure that any employee who currently has a Google+ account adds your brand to their circles, and then have them post about it. This is also an option when you publish your brand page; whatever personal profile it is linked to has the option to share its creation with their followers.
2. Add Photos and Videos
Photos always add value to a networking site, no matter what the industry. In Google+, they can be added in three main areas:
1. Profile photo
2. Scrapbook
3. Photos tab
Your profile photo should be your branded logo, as is customary on any social networking site. And the photos tab is almost identical to Facebook: it houses "albums" that you can specify by adding photos and captions for specific events, services, products, etc.
The "scrapbook" section is where Google+ tries to differentiate itself in terms of design and put creativity in the user's hands. This is a series of five photos that are featured at the top of your profile. You can use this section to display whatever you want: portfolio work, office and employee photos, event photos, or create a series of interactive images that work together to create one larger design.
3. Add Useful Links
Your "About" section should be optimized from the get-go, meaning you should always have an introduction, contact, and website listed on your page. But Google+ has also included a helpful are here called "Recommended Links." This is the perfect place to link to other brand resources, pages, and networks. Looking at RainCastle's, you can see we've listed links to our blog, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages.
This sort of integration of social networks and web pages is beneficial in optimizing each page for search. You are strengthening each site with inbound and outbound links, and increasing credibility with Google when they crawl for your company name.
4. Connect your Google+ Page to your Website
Google gives you a simple one-line code to incorporate into your website that automatically links to your brand page. Linking your site is an important step to increase credibility, but also makes you eligible for Google Direct Connect, which hooks your Google+ page to search.
Basically, this gives people the ability to search for your Google+ page by typing into the search box "+[Company name]" ex: "+RainCastle Communications." Because this feature allows your Google+ page to appear at the very top of the page, it has a jump over Facebook and Twitter, and will automatically outrank any organic search results.
5. Share on Other Areas of the Web
Google provides you with your page's URL in a "tell the world" section, so take this and spread it like wildfire. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email, Gchat; anywhere you communicate with employees, customers, and friends, quickly let them know that you've created a Google+ page and ask if they would like to network with you.
Categories: Brand / Marketing · Web / Interactive
Posted by Paul Regensburg at 9:00 AM | 2 Comments
10 November 2011
Steve Jobs' Legacy: Phase 1, Flash Finale
"Adobe
Bows in Office Feud," so reads the headline of the front page article in today’s Wall Street Journal in the Marketplace section. The gist is that Adobe will no longer attempt to push Flash for browsers that come with smart phones and tablet computers and will increase its support of HTML5.
The WSJ article is a great recap of the genesis of the Adobe/Apple feud, which began in 1999 when Adobe refused to create a Mac version of their program "Premiere," which taught Steve Jobs that he never wanted to be in a business where he did not control both the hardware and software.
While Flash will still be supported on current Android devices, future development will not happen. Flash will be relegated to gaming applications and premium video services. Basically this is the formal acknowledgment that Flash is history on the web.
We will be recommending to our clients and other businesses that currently have Flash components in their websites, to replace the Flash — sometime over the next year, with a better supported technology, which is currently Javascript, and subsequently the emerging HTML5 standard.
Categories: Brand / Marketing · Web / Interactive
Posted by Paul Regensburg at 11:48 AM | 1 Comment
02 November 2011
Turn down the noise. Pump up the volume: Where is the content in content marketing?
Perched in the hills overlooking Pasadena is a great setting to study design. When I went to Art Center in the early 80’s, I was surrounded by all sorts of interesting and highly accomplished influences, not just in graphic design but in product design, automobile design, photography, illustration, and advertising. Some of my instructors were industry leaders who provided many visual references of what was considered great design. I soaked it up, like the California sun I happily found myself under on those shivery, 65 degree January days in LA.
Being pre-web, these references were books on all the great design movements like the Bauhaus, gold standard magazines like Communication Arts showcasing the best the design world had to offer, exhibits fusing architecture, design and the environment, minimalist ads by modern masters, exquisitely crafted displays of the cars of tomorrow, etc. And we talked a lot about design, what constitutes great design, what makes a great designer, what is the role of design in business, why design is valid to the CEO, what separates design from art, and so on.
When I got out of school, I was one heck of an educated visual designer. I also carried with me an impressive collection of reference material—books, magazines, scrap files, etc., so I could continue to stay “in the moment,” aware of every trend and expert practitioner in the field.
I wouldn’t trade my design school experience for anything, but I have to admit that looking back, all of the powerful influences also served to cloud the innovativeness, trust and intuition that had landed me there in the first place. Starting my own business is when those characteristics began to return, the same characteristics that have kept clients coming back.
A real challenge we marketers face today is remarkably like what I experienced in the years after design school, the need to turn down the noise and trust our own experience and instincts to provide innovative solutions for our clients. Like everyone else, we’re networking, Facebooking, linking in, attending webinars, watching videocasts, and reading blogs and tweets, which we then refine, rewrite, retweet, reblog, redesign, and generally review on a minute-by-minute basis. This is both incredibly useful and highly addicting. At times, it is also a crutch, an apparently legitimate way to avoid creating original content or trusting one’s own intuition. Many marketers today have no place for intuition. It can’t be measured. When I started my business 17 years ago, I’m glad I never read that.
Categories: Brand / Marketing · Web / Interactive
Posted by Paul Regensburg at 11:11 AM | No Comments
