Jason Siegel, Author at Bluetext

Infographics—Today’s Press Release
The Why and How of Telling a Story with Data Points

You might have the best content around, but if no one sees it, what good is it for your brand?
I think we can all agree that people don’t have time to read white papers or even press releases. They scan rather than scour. To get their attention, you need to grab them quickly, with easily digestible content and compelling graphics that tell the story at a glance. For this reason, infographics are becoming a requirement with every marketing campaign. They can accomplish in one screen what would otherwise take pages of text, and they can be an opportunity to present your brand in the best possible light.

Yes, infographics have become today’s press release. Bluetext clients are clamoring to take their data and turn it into provocative infographics. But then what? How do you ensure that key audiences will see, and digest, this gorgeous piece of storytelling art?

At Bluetext, every campaign we execute is different – some clients need to strengthen their brand, some need to sell more services, some need to differentiate versus upstart competitors, and some even need to energize their internal sales force. It is amazing how often this last point is a motivator for our campaigns.

For this reason, the simple question about our process for measuring success at Bluetext is not always black and white. What are you trying to achieve? Sure, we use Google Analytics or Eloqua or any of the various lead tracking systems. We also survey the market to get a baseline today then again in 6 or 12 or 18 months of where a brand stands. All of these measurements are valid for marketing campaigns, but there is no one size fits all approach.

Just as we recommend that clients ensure they understand the sandbox they play in through our messaging and discovery process, it is just as important to determine how you are going to measure success, and then be prepared to course correct quickly. What are you going to do with that great website or infographic we developed? How will you hit your target audience with it? Channels are always evolving, but success metrics should not.

The old adage “Build it and they will come” simply does not work in our world. Think about these three questions when executing a campaign:

If all of these questions are answered up front, we will work with you to create a powerful campaign delivered via the right channels to achieve the right metrics…that is how we define success with every campaign we execute.

This phrase widely attributed to Frederick R. Barnard, who published a piece commending the effectiveness of graphics in advertising with the title "One look is worth a thousand words", in Printer’s Ink, December 1921.

And while I am sure that ‘time’ was at a premium in 1921, its ‘attention’ that’s the new gold standard in today’s four screen world. And as a result, brand owners are turning to techniques that allow them to tell their story at a glance. Infographics , for example, help marketers make an immediate impact on their target audience using a much more progressive style of storytelling than traditional media can deliver.

Infographics are the graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge…manifested in a clear, simple, effective…and often times very beautiful…way to present complex information quickly. And with our attention spans being dwindled down to the tweet, having customers spend few minutes longer…and more engaged with your brand…than an ad or a white paper, it sounds like Mr. Barnard knew what he was talking about.

The following is a guest post from Damien Enderle, National Director of Marketing with Reznick Group, a top 20 accounting firm. Check out Damien’s profile here on Reznick Group’s website. Follow Damien on Twitter @ReznickEnderle and LinkedIn here.

Q. What is your core message by embracing mobile technology for Reznick Group?

A. For 35 years, Reznick Group has been a national leader in helping our clients gauge business trends and seize upon new opportunities for their accounting, tax and business advisory needs. In just the past two years, we’ve seen a significant new demand by these very same clients in providing immediate, fast access to our people, our tools, and our knowledge. Whether it is information on our website about our industries, practice areas, or details about our events and conferences, Reznick Group clients want the same access and experience on their mobile devices as they have on their laptops. Our goal in embracing mobile technology is to provide our clients, people and potential new hires with fast, easy access to information about our firm and their industries.

Q. Are you seeing your target audiences more hungry for on the go content from Reznick Group?

A. Absolutely. In the past 12 months alone we have seen a 340 percent increase in the number of site visits to our website from mobile devices. As of May, more than 10 percent of the total visits to our website are from mobile devices. Not surprisingly, the Apple iPad and iPhone deliver more than 80 percent of our mobile traffic.

It’s an interesting dynamic for Reznick Group and the accounting industry which for years has been much like the legal industry – very, very reliant and loyal to RIM and Blackberry – for mobile needs. Not surprisingly, we’ve seen that loyalty give way to the technology of choice for our clients and next generation employees, which is Apple and Droid smart phones and tablets.

A. The Reznick Group Experience is about delivering outstanding client service. Trust, Insight, Character and Access are the core values that guide us as a firm and which set us apart from others in our industry. The mobile experience we deliver for our clients, our people and our communities of interest is critical to giving people easy, meaningful access to our people and providing timely, relevant information on the industries in which we focus.

A. Simple, timely and meaningful access to Reznick Group’s knowledge and people is paramount in launching our mobile experience. Whether the user is a client, a prospect, an employee, or a potential new hire, we want the user to have the same, simple access to information on their mobile device as they do when they hit our website from their laptop or desktop.

Here’s a good example: Many of our clients and prospects are developers, bankers and commercial real estate executives who can earn lucrative tax credits through the U.S. Department of Treasury’s New Markets Tax Credit Program. Reznick Group recently developed a mobile version of our NMTC mapping tool to help investors instantly determine the eligibility of their projects based on qualified Census tracts. The mobile user experience is exactly what one would experience on their laptop or desktop. These types of tools and mobile experience are what we’re now looking to deploy across a number of our industries and practice areas for users of our website.

Q. Do you foresee social and mobile converging in the future and how do you envision Reznick taking advantage of this trend?

A. I believe we’re already there. Attend any conference or any industry event these days – I don’t care if you sell cars, pharmaceuticals, diapers, hamburgers, or professional services such as accounting – the ways in which people communicate and share information across websites, social media and email has already converged. In the accounting industry, if you’re just now thinking about how you’re going to integrate the desktop, social and mobile experience, you’re too late. The train has already left the station and you’re going to be running after it for the next several years. And here’s the surprise: even if you do catch that train, there may not be a seat on that train for your message in an already crowded mobile environment.

A. I too am a late covert, but I now kneel before the altar of Apple. I’m a big blues music fan, so for me there’s nothing like hopping a plane or train with my iPad and be able to seamlessly move from webmail, to gmail, to Twitter and Facebook while listening to music. My iPhone is also the simplest and most reliable hand device I’ve ever used.

Check out Damien’s profile here on Reznick Group’s website. Follow Damien on Twitter @ReznickEnderle and LinkedIn here.

A game-changing development is quietly taking place within government agencies. It will have significant implications not only for agencies but also for companies doing business with those agencies. The evidence is so strong, we can safely predict that 2012 will be the year that the majority of government workers go mobile for work—migrating from desktops to mobile devices and performing their job on a wide variety of platforms unchained from their desks.

At Bluetext we began to notice this last year when looking at the analytics of the websites, microsites, and landing pages we’ve designed and launched for some of our technology clients, all targeted at government employees. These include GovDefenders.com for DLT Solutions, Oracle, Symantec, and Quest Software; TheCloudPlaybook.com and DataCenterChampions.com for NetApp resellers; and GovTransformers.com for Google. More and more visitors to those sites—more than half of the traffic by the end of the year—were arriving by way of the mobile versions of Android and Safari.

While the move to mobile has been a topic of conversation for several years, our data suggested that it was happening more quickly and more pervasively in the government than previously believed. We decided to survey federal employees that work in information technology (IT) and ask them directly. With the help of the opinion research firm Fabrizio Ward we surveyed 200 federal IT workers shortly before Christmas. The conclusions confirmed our data.

The survey found that 45% of IT staff are using mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones, for work on a daily basis, and another 7% are doing so at least once a week. In other words, more than half of IT workers are now regularly—if not daily—relying on mobile devices to do their job. We then asked about their non-IT colleagues, and here’s where the adoption starts to get pervasive across agencies. Thirty-eight percent reported that many of their colleagues are using mobile devices, while another 19% reported that most of the employees across their agencies are doing so. Only 3% said that none of their colleagues are using mobile. This means that not only are the majority of federal IT staff using mobile devices for work, but that the majority of non-IT staff have also migrated to mobile.

Indeed, those who are using their mobile devices for work are doing so frequently. The survey found that of those who have gone mobile, 66% are doing so daily, and another 22% are doing so at least once a week. While email was by the far the more common application for mobile access, more than a third were using project management tools, and another 20% were using social media for work. (Facebook was the most-used social media platform on mobile devices, followed by Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.)

This is important news for government agencies which need to act more like the commercial organizations if they want to efficiently meet their mission demands and attract the highest caliber employees. But it’s also a challenge to companies who want to communicate with and engage government employees—if you want to be heard, make sure your digital strategies are mobile-friendly and optimized for all devices.

Bluetext is proud to announce that it has been selected by NetApp, the $5B data storage innovator based in Silicon Valley, to support its U.S. Public Sector public relations efforts. NetApp is at the forefront of Big Data, virtualization, and data center consolidation, and we are honored to have been selected to help them drive thought leadership and brand visibility across the Federal, State & Local, and education markets.

In a recent PRWeek article, Jodi Baumann, senior director of corporate communications at NetApp, explained that “it chose Bluetext for its Beltway expertise, senior-level experience and support, and digital and social media savvy. “They really get the entire Beltway area,” she explained. “They also had some really interesting ideas about social media and digital PR, which is something we’ve really tried to get our [public sector] business doing more of.”

Predicting the future is tough, especially on the web. After all, from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook to Twitter to Pinterest, the game keeps changing. Will infographics replace press releases as the dominant form of communicating brand vision? Will trade show floors be consumed by interactive experiences that bridge the online and offline experience? In this presentation, I highlight 9 marketing trends for 2012 that are as exciting as they are important. Add any I missed in the comments.

Jason Siegel is a founding partner of Bluetext and his achievements in the digital and design arena have made him a highly sought after speaker and provided great exposure for him, his clients, and the Bluetext organization. He is widely recognized as a pioneer in web design, creative communications and interactive strategies. His award-winning campaigns for major companies, non-profits and trade associations have earned him virtually every award in the creative design arena.

In 1998 Siegel founded Internet Gravity out of his college dorm room which led to Yahoo’s College Web Designer of the Year award. Siegel has launched breakthrough marketing technologies and digital media strategies including the first large-scale mobile app for the 2008 presidential inauguration– named App of the Week by The New York Times– and augmented reality campaigns for major technology brands.

He learned that the web was a level playing field for anyone with a computer and a creative mind. Five years later he sold Internet Gravity to a top 10 global PR agency.

Jason’s tenure was highlighted by incredible growth and amazing projects, including a mobile experience for the 2009 Obama Inauguration that was NYT App of the Week and received a National WEBBY Award.

His entrepreneurial spirit led him to found UFollowUp, a marketing automation software company, in 2002. He successfully sold UFollowUp to Lasso CRM in 2012. These two tracks enabled him to found Bluetext in 2011, one of the fastest growing agencies in the region. In September 2013 Jason was honored with the ”40 Under 40” award by the Direct Marketing Association.

Jason was inspired early on by great artists like MC Escher, Chuck Close, KRS-One, and then in college specifically by the manager of his University’s Design and Publications department who encouraged him to hang out his own shingle – controlling his own destiny. Today, the wild imaginations of his three children, his talented co-workers, and the rapid pace of the evolution of devices and the human interfaces for them–things like Wearable Computing that takes interface design to the next level—keep him inspired. In fact, Jason believes Responsive Design and Wearable Computing trends will drive an interface revolution in the government. He predicts that true responsive design will be implemented government-wide, leading to massive financial efficiencies for all.

Siegel cites his Obama Inauguration App as a key career and industry achievement. This app won Webby Mobile App of the Year, AdAge Top 10 App, NY Times App of the Week, and put Jason on the national media front when he was interviewed on ABC News w/Charles Gibson during Inauguration weekend.

Siegel has an exceptional record for client service with expertise in User Experience, Digital Integration, Branding, Web Strategy, Email marketing and Interactive Advertising. Blue chip companies are working with Jason and his teams, including Google, Intel, Georgia Pacific, and many more.

In addition, Jason advises some of today’s hottest start-up companies as well, being on the Advisory board for PointAbout, DLC Solutions, and PublicRelay, and as a strategic Angel investor for startup Guide.

Google’s new Hummingbird search engine algorithm is sending shock waves throughout the digital marketing arena. What it means, and how marketers need to adjust their SEO thinking will be on the to-do list for the foreseeable future.

When Google released its latest changes this fall, it used a very clever strategy that took almost everyone involved in SEO by surprise. First, it ran the new algorithm for 30 days before telling anyone. No big announcement, no public launch, just a quiet change. Then it held a press conference to discuss what was quickly recognized as its most significant revision in more than a dozen years. And with a full 30 days’ worth of data under its belt, Google was able to say that the world had not ended by its revision. Not only did the industry feel no seismic disruptions, but by most accounts no one had even noticed.

Hummingbird is a massive change in the way in which the Google search engine returns search results, and it has major implications for the way that companies and organizations need to approach SEO.

First, a little search engine background. Search has always been a game of cat-and-mouse. The marketer’s goal is to use links, key words, and other tactics to ensure that their website comes up high during relevant searches. Google’s interest is in having the most relevant results that don’t favor a site just because it has tricked the search engine. So, for example, when inbound links were weighed heavily, tacticians could create “link farms” that gave the impression of links that weren’t real. When Google altered the algorithm to degrade unimportant links, new tricks were developed that included keyword stuffing, or the heavy use of searched terms throughout the site. Google responded by setting parameters on how many words could be used in a given paragraph. The back-and-forth continued.

Hummingbird marks a steep departure from this word-based game. It focuses on context and what are known as “long-tail” queries to deliver results that are more specific to the needs of an evolving Internet where mobile devices and voice commands are replacing simple word searches. Hummingbird is supposed to reflect that context when, to use an obvious example, we search for Chinese restaurants. What earlier search engines would deliver was a list of restaurants. But what we really want to learn is a good place to eat that is nearby. The intent of Hummingbird is to understand that context and deliver recommendations of good restaurants in our area. Remember that what is a “good” place to eat is a subjective notion and will become very important in how marketers will need to structure their SEO strategy going forward.

That context gets more difficult as people speak their questions rather than type. So for example, while a typed query might read, “nearby Chinese restaurant,” a spoken query might say “What’s the best place to get Chinese near my home.” Google needs to recognize the actual location of your home, understand that ‘place’ means you want a brick-and-mortar restaurant, and get that “Chinese” is a particular type of restaurant. Knowing all these meanings may help Google go beyond just finding pages with matching words.

Google has reoriented its search algorithm in three very important ways in Hummingbird, and two of those changes have to do with what it determines is “good.”

The first is that Google now rewards good content. That means that long, detailed and well-sourced articles are going to get better results than mere word mentions on a page. Do a search on “slavery” and you will find long articles from The New York Times as well as The Smithsonian magazine. Search for “best rain jackets” and you will get reviews from publications and “How to choose” articles from within the REI site, instead of links directly to items for sale.

The second is that Google is putting links to what it considers to be good content directly on the results page, and is including related articles and other information that it didn’t previously deliver. From a consumer’s point of view, this turns the search results page into a sort of encyclopedia with snippets of content pulled from others’ sites. From a marketers perspective, it could mean that viewers will see information from your site, but not need to click onto your site to get it. Skeptics have theorized that Google is actually trying to keep you on their page as long as possible in order to run more ads and realize more revenues. Whatever the motive, getting someone to leave the search page for your website is more challenging.

The third is that social media, and in particular Google+, will become a larger part of the search engine equation. Google’s goal is to tap into your network of friends to give you additional insight on your query. Go back to the question about a good nearby Chinese restaurant. If Google sees that friends within your Google+ circles like a particular restaurant, that might be included in the search results.

This is a lot to think about, and requires a different mindset when executing your SEO strategy. If this is starting to make your head spin, join the club. Much of what has been written about Hummingbird so far is difficult for anyone not steeped in algorithm technology to understand. So with that in mind…

Download our top 10 recommendations on how to build a successful search strategy with Hummingbird here: www.bluetext.com/hummingbird