(You know we mean it because we have a nice shiny "contact us" button)
Meet Jake Steele, the newest member of the Advent Creative Team. He has a great background in graphic design in Utah. In fact, you may have even seen some of his work on the Martha Stewart show, but I'll let him tell you about all that.
The field of search engine optimization has been one of the fastest growing areas of expertise. It's a skill that has been overhyped at times, but is still a necessary component to any sort of online marketing or communications strategy. At Advent Creative, we've been talking lately about what the future has in store for SEO.
In one way, this is the future of SEO: http://www.mastertrafficbuilder.com/
This group contacted one of our clients a while back. The client passed it along to us asking if it was legit. My response was that they might do a good job with link building and for very cheap. The question is if you want this group representing you on the Internet. With a William Hung look-a-like and a free Survey Monkey program for a website, probably not. But that's going to change soon.
Dan Pink, a best-selling author on the changing world of business, describes what I think will be the future of SEO in his book "A Whole New Mind."
In it, Pink argues that the future belongs to creative, empathetic, right-brain people. His reasoning is that anything that is analytical or systematic in nature will eventually be outsourced to a place that can do it for cheaper or even completely automated.
We're already seeing this with SEO. Let's look at link building specifically. Link building is absolutely necessary to any comprehensive SEO strategy. You've got to have it. However, it's not work that requires a whole lot of finesse or creativity. Leaving comments on blogs requires someone capable of reading a post and making a pertinent comment without sounding like a spammer. Something like that may never be automated, but it can certainly be outsourced.
So, the future of SEO is not going to be in the implementation, which can be outsourced or automated. Instead it will be in training and strategy.
Advent Creative has already made the switch. At this point, we have a training-heavy SEO thrust. We teach our clients everything they need to know about SEO so they can then pass on that knowledge and push the execution down to the lowest possible level. This saves them money and makes their whole operation more efficient.
We also work on overall marketing and online marketing strategies that include SEO and social media campaigns. This is something that is inherently creative and therefore will not likely be outsourced or automated.
The third thing we do at Advent Creative is incorporate onsite SEO into the design and development of the websites we build. We work it into the creative process, which greatly increases the functionality and effectiveness of all the sites we make.
As far as implementation goes, i.e. link building, directory submissions, social bookmarking, etc., we don't do much of it anymore. That's because we feel like the future of SEO is going to be training, strategy, and creative development. It's a brave new world.
Unless this is your first visit here, you might have noticed that we just had a makeover. Our web development and web design team team worked like Christmas elves in Santa's sweatshop get the site done before the new year and we're all pretty excited about it. Personally, I really liked the old website, too. It was easy to navigate, it looked cool, and it was very search engine friendly. We used it for about a year and a half, however, and it was starting to look a little bit old. We're one of the leading web design agencies in Utah, so it's important for us to keep our site looking fresh. But every company, regardless of industry, should keep a close eye on its website to make sure that it is still sending the right messages.
For instance, you might be an insurance salesman, which has nothing to do with web design, but you still can't let this sort of thing happen.
Here are a few tips on keeping your website fresh:
This is incredibly important because it directly affects your ability to keep the content on your site updated. If you have to send all of your content to a webmaster or contracted programmer every time you want to update, you will do it as little as possible. On the other hand, if you have an easy content management system, you can keep your site fresh. In the past we've used Joomla and Wordpress for websites. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Out of the two, I definitely prefer Wordpress over Joomla. At Advent, we use our own proprietary platform called Obray, which is probably the easiest content management system around.
Spend time and money up front to get a quality web design. This will pay off in the long run since a well-designed website will stay fresh longer.
About every three months take a look at your website and evaluate how it's working and how it looks. How well your sites works is easily quantifiable. How well your website looks is very subjective, but still important. Many companies wait until their competitors update their websites and are therefore perpetually behind the curve. With a quarterly review, you can schedule your site for updates proactively.
Most of the great websites on the internet were not built in a day. They were a process. That's why you should plan out phases for your website that may not be implemented for years to come. This way, when it's time to make an update, you know exactly what you need to do. It also keeps you away from the trap of endlessly revising and upgrading, which could delay or ultimately scuttle a website or business venture.
Check out this great video from our CEO where he explains why websites are organic, living things, as opposed to appliances, which you simply plug in.
A client once asked me if he could store important documents on his website.
“You mean using it like a hard drive?” I asked.
He said yes. He wanted to store all his important documents on his website securely without keeping any backups anywhere else. Well, you can guess what I told him.
But just in case you can’t guess, I’ll tell you: No. No way. No way in hell.
As a general rule, you should back everything up, even your website itself. It is possible to lose your entire website and never get it back if you’re not careful. Don’t laugh, this has happened to several people we know over the years. OK, you can laugh a little bit.
Here’s usually how it goes down:
1. Your cousin is learning how to build web pages and thinks he can make a few cool changes to your site.
2. Your cousin accidentally overwrites the whole site and moves back home with your aunt for protection.
3. You contact your hosting company to see if they backed it up.
4. The hosting company tells you that you’re on their super-cheap plan that doesn’t include automatic backups.
5. You hold out your palm, place your face in it and groan liberally.
This is the technological equivalent of getting so hammered that you can’t find your car in the morning and are forced to drop a few grand on a new one. Except perhaps that losing your car like that is a crazy enough story to make you the hit at parties. Losing your website is just as terrible, but so much more boring.
Here are tips to avoid losing a website:
1. Make sure your site is being handled by people who know what they’re doing.
2. Backup your site on your own computer by downloading all the source files periodically. To do this, you’ll need an FTP client. Then you log on to your site, copy all the files and save them to your computer.
3. Get a good hosting company that automatically makes backups of your website.
That’s basically it. Three simple steps to keep your website from drifting off into the ether of the internet.
LOGAN, Utah — Utah Business Magazine released its list of the top 25 advertising agencies in Utah on Monday and Advent Creative, a local firm, earned a spot with over $4.8 million in capitalized billings in 2009.
Advent Creative beat out several Salt Lake City firms to take the number 20 spot. The only other top agencies that weren’t from the Salt Lake metropolitan area were two firms from Park City and St. George, numbers 24 and 25 respectively. The honor reinforces Advent Creative’s goal to provide world-class design, web, video and branding work from Cache Valley.
Wade Olsen, Advent Creative CEO, said he’s excited about making the list and feels that it reflects well on Logan as a whole.
“We feel like this is representative of the kind of positive economic growth we’re seeing in the valley. We’re at the point now that businesses in Cache Valley can get world-class design and advertising expertise without having to go to Salt Lake,” Olsen said. “We’re very proud to be a part of that.”
Advent Creative recently merged with Digital Slant to be the leading brand communications firm in the Logan area. It’s made up of four departments: Advent Web, Advent Video, Advent Design, and Advent Branding. This unique structure has helped Advent Creative adapt and excel during challenging economic times.
Some of Advent Creative’s local clients include:
Stander, Inc.
Malouf Fine Linens
Alpine Orthopedic
Caspers
Bear River Health Department
Logan Regional Hospital Foundation
Utah State University
Bridgerland Applied Technology College
Smokin’ Blues Barbeque
Hamilton’s
Cafe Sabor
Quansys Bio
Hillyard, Anderson and Olsen
The Riverwoods
Elements Restaurant
Logan City
Milieu Design
Today is a red-letter date for Advent: we have our first limey on staff. Paul Fleming McCullagh, who’s Irish but was born in England, is our new front-end designer. He’s had years of experience working in print design and web design, and this multi-disciplinary background fits in perfectly at Advent. How in the heck did he end up in Logan, Utah? Well, it’s a long story. Come in sometime and ask him in person. We’re just pumped to have him on board. Also, his cool accent makes our meetings much more interesting. Here’s a short video so you can get to know him yourself:
Last week, the Social Media Club of Utah held the first ever social media awards in Salt Lake City. From what I’ve heard it was an amazing event. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be there because I was making a pilgrimage to Franz Kafka’s grave in the Czech Republic. (Not only did he write some crazy good novels and short stories, but he also invented the hard hat.
I’m happy to announce that one of our clients, the Standard-Examiner, received the award for Best Integrated Social Media Campaign.
(raucous applause)
They’ve really done a great job implementing the strategies and principles that we worked out with them. The entire newsroom is on Twitter and Facebook and has had some great success with sites like Reddit and Digg. They’ve also done some ground breaking work in reaching out to bloggers to create a strong online community. All of this caught the eye of the Utah Social Media Awards and voila, they netted a social media award.
At Advent, we feel that the future of newspapers relies on successfully adapting to new social media tools. We’re proud to have worked with a company as innovative and flexible as the Standard-Examiner. And so I say, in the time-honored tradition of Internet geeks: Woot, woot to you Standard-Examiner. Woot, woot.
Your branding is talking about you behind your back. Do you know what it’s saying?
By building an effective brand, you will be creating your company’s most loyal, most vocal and strongest ally. Imagine having a staff of brand defenders on your payroll, working in the public marketplace to explain and promote your company to everyone they see. If you could have this group of brand gossips working for you at all times, everywhere they went, would you send them into the world empty handed? Probably not. Instead, you would inform them of your goals and the benefits of your product, dress them to best represent you and, most importantly, to be consistent in what they say and how they say it.
You can and do have this group of brand gossips – although they aren’t human. This group is made up of all your brand communications, your printed collateral, corporate materials, sales presentations, public relations efforts, multimedia, and online communications – all the pieces that make up what your customers see. This is the majority of what your customers know about you. The rest they know from you personally. Presumably, you have confidence in the information you have given them personally. How much confidence do you have in the rest of their interactions with your company? These branded materials are speaking about your company with or without you there. Do you know exactly what they are saying?
If the message conveyed by all your marketing materials makes up the majority of what your customers know about you, it stands to reason this is something you should focus on. The future of your brand and the success of your marketing and, by extension, your company, depend on it. Brand-focused marketing is not simply about promoting specials and giving your contact information to as many people as you can find. Brand-focused marketing is about a process of discovering what you want to be when you grow up and crafting all your communications around a feeling and a theme that represents that idea..
Brand Karma. It’s real. And it’s powerful. Your prospects and current customers see you through the glasses you give them. They see only what you show them. Study your materials carefully from the perspective of your target audience and ask yourself honestly what you look like and what your brand is saying about you. Evaluate your message first to determine if it is representative of what you want to portray. Next, consider the visual portrayal of this message. Every visual element in every piece should reflect the message you are trying so hard to convey. This includes the use of your logo, the color palette, typography usage, spatial consistencies and the overall look and feel.
Imagine for a moment you’ve just completed an amazing new product offering or stunning new branch of service the whole company is proud of. A lot of man-hours, hard work and late nights went into conceiving and implementing this new facet of your company. The entire board of directors was involved in creating something that had value for your customer and would also raise your bottom line if people bought into it. You researched your manufacturing and distribution scrupulously to ensure you could offer the product or service and deliver it well and make a profit. You’re not done.
You haven’t even started.
Until you capture the essence of your brand – your brand karma – in a captivating, brand-focused marketing campaign, no one cares, no one knows anything about it and no one will buy. The visual reflection of your product or service is what makes it real to the customers you desperately seek. Brand communication built around a consistent concept and visual theme speaks to your audience in ways you never could alone. Two easy and very common branding mistakes are:
1. Neglecting marketing until it’s too late.
2. Not involving marketing partners (consultants, designers and other members of a design firm you trust) early on in the process so they can understand and reflect the core of your company.
The success of your brand depends on how strongly you believe that your brand communications truly are talking about you behind your back and on how effectively you control and craft what they are saying. A visual representation of your company that creates an army of brand defenders loyal to the promise of what you say you are, will become your greatest asset. Begin your brand process with careful inquisition regarding what you stand for and what you are all about. End by trusting this message and giving it a visual strength and clarity, which will never be misunderstood.
We hope everyone has a fun Halloween on Saturday. We had our annual Advent Creative Halloween party last night and it was a blast. (Insert lame Halloween pun here, i.e. “it was a howling good time,” etc.). I’ve posted some video so we can all relive the magic. Enjoy.
Last night, while surfing Reddit, I found this nifty little trick for YouTube. By replacing the word “watch” in the URL with “warp.swf,” you get a graphical representation of the video you’re watching and its connection to related videos.
Here’s an example of the altered URL: http://www.youtube.com/warp.swf?v=Xtssc6MAxUU
Apparently this has been around for a while in Google’s Testube, but I hadn’t heard about it until now. I can see why it’s not released publicly yet. All the video is low quality and stretched, but the interface is a lot of fun. Within minutes of messing around with it, I went from Advent Creative’s videos to a patch of funny German TV commercials.
While this is just a fun trick right now, it may one day be the way we surf the Internet. I wrote a blog post a while back about a group of programmers that were working on some online collaborative software that would be more of a workspace than an actual page. This YouTube Warp is in the same vein. I personally prefer surfing without the restraint of pages and backward and forward buttons. Let’s hope this trend continues.
Wanna be friends?