In today’s Internet ecosystem, there seems to be a blog for everything. Fashion blogs, fan club blogs, cooking blogs, review blogs — you name it. Blog types range from personal, professional, niche-interest and most importantly, business. 

This begs the question; who writes these blogs? What does it take to be a blogger? 

The beauty of the Internet is anyone can be a blogger.  Blog writers range from influencers to B2B government contractors! In 2019 there were over 500 million blogs published on the Internet. Blogging is more than just a hobby, it is actually a very useful digital marketing tool.

What is the point of these blogs? 

The average reader might guess entertainment. But to a digital content strategy firm, the value is search engine optimization

But what does that mean and why should my company care about SEO? 

Search engine optimization, or SEO, refers to the strategic content writing and website design meant to increase a website’s organic visibility. With over 3.5 billion Google searches a day,  it is critical for customers, partners, and even investors to be able to find information about your business through search engines. 

Blogging helps boost SEO quality by positioning your website as an appropriate answer to your customers’ questions. When potential customers and partners enter queries or keywords into the search engine, they are matched with algorithm-based results Google has determined most valuable and relevant to their search intent. 

When you optimize web pages — including blog posts — you’re making your website more visible to people who are entering keywords associated with your product or service via search engines like Google. 

But…how do I optimize?

There is more to a search engine optimization strategy than repeating select phrases over and over again! A digital content marketing agency will advise you to be smart about your blog. Almost as smart as Google’s algorithms, which crawl websites to determine which websites best match the intent of each user. 

Sound complicated? It is, but your search engine optimization strategy doesn’t need to be. A consistently updated blog can be an incredibly effective and user-friendly way to boost your website’s organic search rank. 

A digital marketing and analytics agency will analyze not only your business’ website but also competitors’ sites to identify a strategic blend of keywords to integrate into your website. Blog pages are an optimal place to include keywords because content can naturally accommodate frequently searched subjects. Using digital marketing and analytics tools, such as SEMrush or Moz, a top search engine optimization firm will recommend a series of blog topics and titles, a strategic cadence for updating your blog, and some expert tips and tricks. 

 

Here are Bluetext’s top tips and tricks to blogging your way to the top: 

  1. Identify the focus keywords. These should 2-3 phrases or words per post that receive high levels of search volume but have a realistically achievable level of competition. 
  2. Head for the headers! H1 text and titles are weighted more heavily by search engines. Put your keywords in these fields, but don’t fill your pages with H1’s, as this will deduct from your search equity. 
  3. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Aim to repeat the selected keywords 4-5 throughout the post. However, be warned: Google crawlers are smart. They value relevancy and will not rank a site that seems inauthentic or filled with spam-like content. 
  4. A picture is worth a thousand words…quite literally! Place your keywords in the alt text section on post images, and Google crawlers will include this in your keyword count and most users won’t ever even notice. 

 

For more tips and tricks when it comes to blog writing and SEO, check out our blog.

Do you remember when you used to have to consult books and encyclopedias for the answers to your questions? Just over 20 years ago, you had to reference the yellow pages to find a marketing agency. Nowadays, Google is the search engine king, the go-to for 73% of searches online (and 81% of mobile search). Top marketing agencies depend on Google and it’s algorithms to direct current and potential customers to their clients’ sites via both organic and paid search.

What’s the difference between non-organic and organic (search)?

Organic search is the result of entering search terms as a single string of text into a search engine. Organic search results appear as lists that are based on relevance to the search terms and exclude advertisements; they do not filter out pay-per-click advertising. Paid search is a form of digital marketing where search engines like Google and Bing allow advertisers to show ads at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). Paid search operates on a pay-per-click model– meaning there is no cost until someone clicks on your ad or content.

Organic traffic is widely considered the most valuable traffic source for multiple reasons:

The downside to organic search is that it takes time to get indexed and generate traffic. Although evergreen content ranks higher than paid (time-limited) placements, the lag in rank visibility may not work for every business case.

Rev up your (search) engines with a paid approach

Besides considering how much traffic will reach a site via organic or paid search, top marketing agencies also work with their clients to enhance their performance with search engine algorithms through search engine optimization (SEO). Improving your company’s search engine optimization isn’t just about the politics of appearing first, it carries financial benefits, too — 57% of B2B marketers say SEO is the biggest factor impacting lead generation.

To optimize your site rank in the organic search results, you need to employ SEO techniques to make your page as crawlable as possible to search engine algorithms. This includes using keywords in critical real estate (headers, links) and including content that relates to those key search terms.

Paid searches are the companies that have paid to appear at the top of your search engine. Even with the little yellow disclaimer “Ad” box, many users click intuitively on these paid placements. Rather than having to wait patiently for your SEO to build up through indexing, you can pay for the chance to get seen on page one of Google immediately.

You can put your money where your mouth is, or play the long SEO game

Sometimes paid search isn’t in a company’s budget – fear not, having the deepest pocket does not ensure SEO success. Google has processes in place (quality score, copy rules, landing page quality, and more) to make sure that the ads that rank are still highly relevant for searchers. Investing substantial budget in ads or paid search will only float a company so far in the ranking algorithms if their content isn’t crafted to support these buys.  In both organic and paid search, Google puts user experience first, which is why top marketing agencies such as Bluetext focus on a holistic approach to SEO, creating high-quality evergreen content that ensures both organic and paid efforts are supported through continuous search engine indexing. Digital marketing agencies are experienced at selecting organic keywords that will be both effective and realistic, and they provide support in creating a strong content base to perform in SERPs.

 

See how Bluetext can help improve your SEO »

We’ve all heard of SEO – but what exactly is it? And how do you achieve “good” SEO? Before attempting to tackle your own search engine optimization strategy, take a look at these five SEO basics.

  1. What is SEO?

 While there are varying definitions for SEO, SEO can be thought of as increasing the visibility and traffic to your website, brand, or company through non-paid search results.

  1. Why is SEO important?

SEO is important for many reasons, but here are the top four factors a digital marketing agency considers in their optimization strategy:

  • The majority of online traffic is driven by search engines
  • Organic search has no direct cost to run
  • Visibility is determined by the relevance and utility of content, not your budget
  • SEO helps effectively communicate your content to search engines
  1. How do search engines work?

 SEO matters because it helps search engines determine if your site is relevant to users. But how does the search engine know? The specific search algorithms are complex and unknown — even to top digital marketing agencies —  but a premier SEO strategy firm will tell you that search engines pick up keywords by crawling websites. They arrive on the website, go through every link and all text on the site, and summarize and bucket the content into the search engine’s index. The index is updated, and search rankings are updated to match it. This process can take days, or even weeks, depending on the popularity and size of the website. 

  1. What is a good SEO keyword?

 In order for a search engine to give you a good SEO ranking, it is important to incorporate keywords into your site that the crawlers will pick up on. Here are four factors that Bluetext, a leading digital content marketing firm, recommends considering when selecting your SEO keywords:

  • Relevancy: Can you write multiple pages solely dedicated to this keyword?
  • Search Volume: Do people actually search for this word?
  • Competition: Is this keyword popular among your competition? Make sure your keywords are unique enough to you in order to show up on the first search results page.
  • Campaign: Are there plans for a paid campaign around this keyword?
  1. What is the best way to utilize my chosen keywords?

Content, content, content. Blogs are not just for recipes and personal stories! They actually serve a critical function to search engine optimization. This is why digital content marketing firms recommend before your site launches,  you have a solid repertoire of resources and blog posts. Here are some tips to help ensure that your SEO keywords are utilized in the most productive way possible:

  • Make sure your pages have a central focus. Select one or two keywords to write about and stay on topic. If you have other keywords to optimize around, start a new post! 
  • Regularly link back to relevant pages with internal links. Otherwise, the search engine crawlers will not know what pages on your website are relevant or important
  • Leverage the H1. H1 headings are especially weighted by search crawlers because of their visibility and size. The H1 is the single most important line of text on a page
  • Ensure that pages are long enough to have crawlable body text, usually 200 words or more

Search engine optimization is a tricky terrain to navigate alone. Google search engines use a number of complex algorithms to improve the end user experience, so it is recommended you consult a digital marketing agency in planning your SEO strategy. Digital content firms, such as Bluetext, are a strong asset to leverage in keyword research and content planning. Digital marketing agencies are experienced and skilled at selecting organic keywords that will be both effective and realistic.

What exactly is digital branding, how is it different from digital marketing, and why does it matter? These are common questions that top digital branding agencies hear from clients. Digital branding is an umbrella phrase that describes a variety of ways that companies and organizations can capture their customers’ attention online. In the digital age, having a presence and personality online is often just as business success as personal relationships.

The difference between digital marketing and branding is significant

Don’t let the similar use of digital in these terms confuse you – digital branding companies often use both terms in discussing their work, but the processes are different. Digital marketing activities are those which promote products or services based on their value proposition in an online setting. In comparison, digital branding is more nuanced. The best branding agencies promote their customers’ businesses by highlighting specific underlying characteristics and values that make their company unique. Top branding agencies take this a step further by advocating for a digital-first approach.

Take your brand online with refreshing campaigns

You can think of your company’s brand as it’s ‘personality’ and the different aspects of its personality are it’s brand assets. These brand assets typically include:

  • Company Name
  • Logo
  • Color Schemes
  • Messaging
  • Slogans
  • Fonts
  • Advertising Methods

In an era where consumers turn to the internet for answers, positioning your company to stand out online is essential. 

A company’s brand colors, fonts, logo design, and application should all be carefully curated to fit a specific personality.

The brand interactions of the previous era of marketing were one-directional: a customer might see your advertisement but wouldn’t be able to engage directly with your company through that channel. With the internet, an eye-catching digital marketing campaign can lead to conversions and a strong user engagement with memorable branding.

Digital branding by the digits

If you still aren’t sure what digital branding can do for your business, consider some key figures that illustrate the value of digital branding.

Recent studies have shown that purposeful branding significantly increases revenue.  Modern consumers expect companies to have an online presence, and nearly 30% prefer to communicate with brands via digital avenues.

Because almost 50% of web searches are made from smartphones and mobile devices, companies have had to change the way they design their online presence. Top digital design and top branding agencies can transform dull contact pages stylized like Internet 1.0 websites of the 2000s into responsive and exciting digital destinations. See how Bluetext transformed Clarabridge’s digital presence with a branded video embedded into their website.

Leverage your brand awareness through ads

In 2018, more than 2.3 billion “bad ads” were taken down by Google — investing in your company’s digital marketing and branding with a top branding agency ensures your ads won’t get lost.

Branding is also becoming the go-to approach for advertising across digital platforms: A 2019 report showed that the most-used campaign type among all Facebook campaigns is Brand Awareness—55% of advertisers leverage Brand Awareness campaigns to drive impressions at a widespread and cost-efficient clip. 

According to experts in the field, consistent branding across all channels increases revenue by 23%, and 89% of marketers say that building off that consistency and achieving brand awareness is their top goal.

Despite the emphasis consumers have placed on seeking out authentic brand interactions, only 60% of marketers think their brand is aligned with their long term goals. Bringing in support from a top branding agency is a surefire way to bridge this gap and polish your companies digital brand experience.

Digital branding means a versatile and flexible approach to engaging customers

Modern consumers spend their days on a variety of different media outlets and through multiple channels, which is a substantial shift in how people consumed information a decade ago. Companies need to respond by following their consumers to these new platforms to maintain visibility and relevance. As interactions increasingly move online, brands must adopt a digital-first approach.

Bluetext, a leader in association marketing, is proud to announce that it has been selected by the Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS) as its design, marketing, and brand agency-of-record for NPE2021: The Plastics Show. NPE2021 is the industry’s largest and most influential plastics trade event and is held every three years in Orlando. Bluetext is designing the show’s logo, brand look and feel, website, and collateral, and is creating and executing the go-to-market campaigns to attract exhibitors and attendees to the event. It will also manage public and media relations as well as both organic and paid social media.

“We selected Bluetext because of its team’s strong creative and strategic vision that can help move the industry forward,” said Susan Krys, PLASTICS VP of Tradeshows and Marketing. “We’re off to a great start.”

NPE2021 will take place at the Orlando County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida May 17-21, 2021.

Learn how Bluetext can help with your association marketing, brand, and campaign needs.

Creating a successful digital web design can mean the difference between growing your customers and losing them on your website doorstep. For Clarabridge, which delivers a better customer relationship platform for its clients by leveraging artificial intelligence to sort through complex data, providing clarity with its website was critical. It turned to Bluetext to unify its various website platforms into a single customer experience.

Clarabridge’s challenge was fairly straightforward: Its clients’ own customers constantly provide feedback through a wide range of information channels, from direct contact to social media and everything in between. Yet, that same explosion of these channels and the sheer volume of data creates significant challenges on how to make sense of it all. Telling that story on Claribridge’s digital platforms had been confusing. It needed a better way to tell its story.

To address the digital web design, Bluetext used digital storytelling, brand extension, a sophisticated user experience, and aggressive search engine optimization to deliver a new website that does what Clarabridge promises for its customers – turning complexity into clarity. You can view the website live here.

Clarabridge’s messaging was a key component of the digital web design: “Every call, every chat, every tweet, every post, every comment, every conversation, every sentence. EVERY WORD. Every customer interaction presents an opportunity; don’t miss a single one.”

We designed a creative approach to transform the intangible brilliance of Clarabridge’s software into a tangible experience for target audiences. It was something they could see, and seemingly touch and feel, to carry that message throughout the website and convey the value it could bring to every brand’s customer engagement.

The digital website design begins at the top of the home page, with an engaging animation that represents the massive amounts of customer data and feedback flooding into their clients’ systems. Flowing down the page, moving through a funnel that sorts and selects the right information at the right time, the graphic turns the data into actionable snippets of intelligence that can be fed to executives, product managers, contact center teams, and frontline staff to better serve their customers.

The creative style of the digital web design pushes the boundaries to enable Clarabridge to stand out in a crowded industry, while the linear path of the video animation delivers the product messaging in a creative way that gets attention while taking audiences through the sales funnel. To see the design in action, visit our Bluetext Hall of Fame.

“Bluetext should be at the top of your list if you are in the market for a redesign.”

We’ll let our client speak for the project results:

“When we started our journey to build a next-generation digital platform we challenged BlueText to create a unique, engaging user experience that tells the Clarabridge story in an impactful way. Bluetext knocked it out of the park! It created a modern site design that breaks through the clutter in our crowded industry; an A/B homepage that greets new visitors with a video narrative providing a concise understanding of what Clarabridge does while recurring visitors receive a streamlined, mobile-optimized view of the site.

Beyond that, the custom backend CMS is beyond easy to understand, creating significant efficiencies for the Clarabridge team. Lastly, where they truly excelled and what I will miss most, is working with such a top-notch team of experts. Their customer service and ‘deep in the trenches’ support during the project was critical. This was hands down the smoothest site launch I have participated in. BlueText should be at the top of your list if you are in the market for a redesign.”

Carrie Marty Carroll
Vice President, Design (Brand.UI.UX)
Clarabridge

Learn how Bluetext can help with your digital web design for an amazing customer experience.

Many trade and membership organizations face a unique branding challenge with no easy solution: How do you brand association products and events in order to effectively tie the name of the association together with the offering> It’s not an easy question, especially when the event – typically a large annual trade show – has a long history and generates an important source of revenue for the organization. It’s even more difficult when the association’s asset is a product as opposed to a conference, such as a valuable industry certification. In a competitive market, the further the event or product is from the association, the more that brand equity is being lost.

Marketing trade associations is never easy, especially considering that the competitive landscape has never been more crowded. Not only are there more organizations chasing new members, but there are also more for-profit companies offering competing services. As a result, whether you are with a trade association whose members include large corporations, or a membership association with thousands of individuals enjoying your services and offerings, it takes a strong brand strategy and a sophisticated outreach plan to efficiently and effectively attract new members, retain existing members, and drive attendees to your conferences and events.

Having to reconcile the association brand with the brand of its products and events is not uncommon. It can often happen when the organization itself rebrands and updates its name without progressing the brand of its assets. Even among some of the largest and most established trade groups, this brand reconciliation can be a significant challenge.

What’s now known as the Consumer Technology Association holds its annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in early January every year. CES is one of the largest and perhaps the most famous trade show in the U.S., primarily because electronics manufacturers annually launch their newest smart TVs, VR devices, and other cool technology at the show – guaranteeing media coverage from reports who want to showcase the future of innovation. For decades, the trade group was called the Consumer Electronics Association. So when it evolved to its new name in 2015, it had to decide what to do about its trade show CES. The answer was to leave it alone because its name had become much better known than the association that sponsors it every year. That wasn’t an easy decision, and the CES brand is prominently displayed on the Association website.

Download Our Free eBook on Association Marketing in a Competitive Market!

But when the trade show or other product becomes much better known than association itself, that creates significant challenges. For one, it makes selling memberships to the association more difficult because the connection between the association and the product gets lost. In one example, a long-established membership association that was feeling the increased competition realized through market surveys that its brand awareness had been flat or declining over the past several years. It turned to Bluetext for help in overcoming this downturn.

With more competing organizations offering similar services, the client recognized one of the reasons for this decline: It had spent years branding its products and events separately from the association itself. This divide can present a significant challenge for organizations which offer a wide range of services which have each been branded individually. As new membership prospects are entering the market, they may know the products – in this case, the professional certifications – but they don’t know the association itself. Our solution was a multi-tiered, integrated approach that combined programmatic online media campaigns, fresh and compelling themes and creative, and a separate set of campaigns for the branded products themselves. We tied all of this together with new messaging and gave the campaign the simple yet measurable goal of increasing brand awareness and engagement with the association.

For another large association that has been around longer than any other competitor in its vertical, one of the challenges had been a result of its age – its brand was getting stale. Our approach was to develop a fresh look for its annual conference that brings in most of their annual revenue. For this client, our focus was on a bold new creative design that took the brand color palette and re-imagined it in dynamic, contrasting tones that pop from a distance, with 3-D shapes that both fit the brand and stand out at a large trade show environment.

For trade association marketing, there is no one solution when rethinking the brand. But having a strong brand strategy is a critical first step.

Download Our Free eBook on Association Marketing in a Competitive Market!

Our apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but in today’s social media landscape, it often feels like, “Content, content everywhere and not an engagement to be found!” That certainly seems true on a wide range of social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

We’ve all been there, posting on social media for our clients’ B2B brands and expecting the improbable – an engagement from a high-quality, ready-to-buy lead. Yet, as traffic on the major platforms continues to evolve, it seems like those quality leads have become more scarce. Digital Media Buying is proliferating as competition for customers heats up. But this growing competition to winning the audience’s attention is making the engagement challenge more difficult.

But thankfully, LinkedIn has figured out how to get that elusive engagement with the right targets, by literally making the improbable possible. Even better, it does so in a rather natural, organic manner.

That finally gives marketers, especially those of us who work primarily in the B2B space, something to smile about. Recent modifications to the algorithm that governs LinkedIn’s feed are boosting impressions and engagement for users with smaller audiences and connection bases while minimizing the extensive outreach of LinkedIn’s “power users.” (We see you Gary V and Richard Branson).

The market is sensing this new opportunity. There is an endless supply of professional content on LinkedIn, generating over nine billion Impressions each week. Most of this content, of course, isn’t useful, and users will soon catch on. But the demand from the public is there — waiting for the right company, thought-leader or piece of content to come along. I believe B2B Marketers have a rare opportunity to really grow with LinkedIn, and should strongly consider doubling down on their efforts.

Understanding LinkedIn’s Algorithm. If we want to build engagement, then we need to know a little about the algorithm responsible for serving content. The lofty goal of the algorithm created by LinkedIn’s engineering team is to ultimately deliver more value for the company by keeping users on the platform as long as possible. The strategy for doing that is simple: Make users feel like their time on LinkedIn is well-spent by serving up a feed of relevant, personalized content to every single one of its 610 million users.

LinkedIn’s home feed is the starting point of every user’s journey. To keep users engaged, the feed must understand the quality of every piece of content, and understand which content is relevant to whom. Failure to do so will destroy the quality of a user’s experience and turn “time well spent” into “time wasted.”

To understand how to do this, let’s first take a look at some of LinkedIn’s tactics.

LinkedIn Activity Graph. One of the core elements of the LinkedIn algorithm is the Activity Graph – a system designed to understand deep relationships between members’ content.

What’s A LinkedIn Activity? LinkedIn considers an activity to be any piece of user-generated content capable of having a subset of connected activities, which can include “likes,” comments, and shares – the common responses that demonstrate an interest in the content. And in turn, these actions become content as well.

Content Priorities. LinkedIn has a number of content types that it evaluates in order to rate them in terms of feed priority. Handpicked articles and paid ad campaigns have a much higher probability of showing up than user-generated content. Within user-generated content, LinkedIn has shifted towards a stronger balance between the various types, but with a slight priority given to video and text-only posts.

Some other types of content include:

  • User-generated content by the people and pages you follow, relevant LinkedIn #hashtags and predicted interests, such as
    Pulse Articles and Posts (Text, Photos, Videos, Documents, Links)
  • User Activities & Events (Liking, commenting, sharing, connecting, new job)
  • Promoted/Sponsored Content, both internal (LinkedIn Learning Courses, LinkedIn Premium) and external (Paid ad campaigns)
  • Curated Content
  • Dynamic Content

How it works. The ability to keep a user’s feed relevant is critical to LinkedIn’s success and requires the ability to programmatically identify the quality and relevance of the content. Here are the steps that LinkedIn’s algorithm takes to make these determinations.

Step 1: Quality Filter Scoring: Immediately after a user posts a piece of content to their page, and before it ends up in anyone’s feed, LinkedIn’s algorithm reviews the content and marks it as Spam, Low Quality or Clear. Only the Clear survive.

For everyone’s sanity, I’ll refrain from diving into what makes a post spammy. But I do think it’s important to focus on what is deemed low-quality, which according to LinkedIn are posts that are flagged for one or more of the following:

  • Having fewer than 500 words
  • Having software generated responses
  • Having highly promotional content.

Once that post is marked as “Clear,” it gets allocated into other users feed based on the initial priority of the content. Here’s where the real fun begins. LinkedIn begins immediately monitoring the engagement that each post generates. These include, for example:

  • The number of likes, comments, and shares for the post
  • The types and quality of comments
  • The time spent writing the summary and post
  • The engagement rate compared to the baseline rate of the person who is posting
  • The action that the reader takes when they see the post. For example, do users click the post and spend time reading the article or do they immediately go somewhere else.

Step 2: Engagement Test: As noted above, the post is now being analyzed for the amount of engagement it gets within the first hour. The more likes, shares, and comments the post receives, the greater the chance of moving on to the next step.

Step 3: Relevancy Assessment. During the third step, LinkedIn will assess the profile of the person posting the content to determine the relevancy of the post to their network. The lower the relevancy, the higher the probability the post will fizzle out.

Step 4: Taking it Up a Notch. LinkedIn has decided that machines can’t have all the fun and has introduced a human element into the mix. If your post is fortunate to reach this phase, it will be passed onto a human for review to determine if it’s worth pushing to the masses.

In my next post, I’ll take this a step further and outline strategies you can begin to incorporate into your ongoing LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy. If you have questions, topics you want to be explored, or any feedback please let me know!

Want to learn more about how to design and execute a successful LinkedIn strategy?

Internet challenges can go viral, for better or for worse. For better, think of the Ice Bucket Challenge of several summers ago that raised millions of dollars for ALS research. For worse, the list is, unfortunately, a lot longer. There’s the Tide Pod Challenge, which has sent dozens of college kids to the emergency room, and more recently there was the Momo Challenge, which scared the wits of countless children who came across it on the internet.

YouTube has scrubbed ALL real video clips of the Tide Pod Challenge

What’s common to all of these is the relationship of the challenges to the brands that have been associated with the viral responses, especially when, like with the Tide Pod dares, it’s not safe and it certainly isn’t supported by Tide! As a result, company marketing and communications teams are struggling with how to respond to these dangerous challenges and encourage their quick cessation. Questions are being raised, in the meantime, about the responsibility of the digital platforms that allow the more dangerous challenges to take hold and the role of digital influencers who are becoming so important to brands in promoting them.

PRWeek’s Chris Daniels recently wrote a front-page article about the topic, “Beyond Momo: Why brands need to get ready for digital hoaxes.” In preparing the article, Chris interviewed Bluetext Creative Director and Co-founder Jason Siegel for insight on how agencies like ours counsel their clients on this dangerous trend.

As Jason told Chris, “When a hoax interacts passively with influencers, dangerous sharing at mass scale occurs.” Jason explained that influencers get deluged with so much information these days that the sheer volume means they may not be taking the time to research the origins of every trend. It is unreasonable to expect them to act as fact-checkers to understand what’s behind every viral moment – especially if it’s a challenge that’s getting traction.

In the PRWeek article, Chris focuses on the Momo challenge, which encouraged kids to do dangerous activities, and he discusses the responsibility of platforms like Google and Facebook.

“Brands need to think about the risk in terms of influencers they engage with and having the hoax interwoven in a paid influencers stream that is shared by many folks,” Jason told Chris.

At the very least, brands need to take a close look at their influencer relationships. They also need to have an “escalation” plan in case a viral challenge takes off, for better for worse.

Need help with your brand influencer strategy? See how Bluetext can help.

 

When it comes to running an enticing media campaign—whether organic, paid, or personal—animated video will prove its worth end-over-end in 2019. We have already seen a massive shift from written to visual content on every social media feed. Humans are inherently visual learners. Simple animation captures attention more than a stylish static piece. But don’t start to throw out any of those high-performing blogs quite yet! The best approach is to cut through the noise and draw traffic through dynamically rich media.

The solution is clear, but the path forward is still causing designers and marketers alike more than a little frustration. Promoting each piece of content with a unique animation is a huge project, not to mention the necessity of fast-paced delivery. So how do you keep a balance between speed and relevance?


A Balanced Approach

While the standard method was to assign your designer the task of creating unique animations for various promotional content, events, or announcements, there is now an easier way to do it. In our ongoing campaign for our client, the payments giant Paya, our designer and content-marketer teamed up to produce a family of animation templates that would satisfy Paya’s large media needs. By designing a system of video templates (built in Adobe products After Effects and Premiere) for content production use, the templates could be accessed directly by any campaign manager without involving the video team.

[one-half-first]

[/one-half-first]

[one-half]

Whether the client needed to promote thought leadership, make an announcement about an upcoming trade show, talk about their latest acquisition, or have their PR team react to something relevant in the industry, Paya was there with an animated post on-time, on-message, and on-brand!

[/one-half]

One Style. Infinite Possibilities.

Building an adaptable animation template that can express various topics and be exported to various sizes and be ready to deliver to multiple platforms requires creative ingenuity that goes beyond the typical one-and-done animations. Motion designers are tasked with creating a template style that is more than just a quick-burning Instagram post but instead satiates a myriad of topics, content, and announcements that the campaign manager will need to post on many social feeds.

Through a thoughtful design approach, we created a fool-proof template system that even newcomers to the Adobe toolset felt empowered to create with. Every template featured static brand elements to choose from, allowing users to alternate background colors, exchange font weights, swap logo color combinations, and pull text overlay effects to match any of the pre-loaded animation sequences. The templates were for more than just editing text between an intro and outro scene; they empowered the campaign managers with an editable, on-brand aesthetic that could convey any message.

While the organic posts looked as expensive as a paid ad (and could theoretically be used that way if needed), the brand could talk to its audiences in a visually polished and dynamic way without exhausting the budget or personnel. When it comes to launching an organic social media campaign, nothing could be smoother.

Animating a Multi-lingual Message

Whether it’s for a new brand-launch, a pivot in the target industry or audience, or just an upgrade for your editorial calendar, building a scalable video technique will be worth it in 2019. Animation simplifies complex topics, and working with a video template can deliver exciting topics on a regular schedule.

Imagine posting up-to-the-minute quotations from a  popular conference, results of an ongoing political election, or even public announcements during an emergency event—one can access, customize, and export a unique animation without mobilizing the whole creative team on a Saturday afternoon. Use the messaging you already have, but make it come alive.

The sports world has already edged in this direction, but can you imagine a situation where releasing stats and highlights immediately after the game doesn’t demand a massive commitment from your whole marketing and creative squad? Think quick, engaging, and exciting posts in a personalized way.

An Account-Based Marketer’s Dream

This works beautifully for hyper-targeted campaigns. With a few clicks, you can talk to specific companies and audiences, subbing in relevant messaging between a unique intro/outro. You can target your next competitor or customer at the drop of a hat or develop a fleet of content ready-to-go for the entire campaign.

Taking a closer look at 2019 media strategies, video is being used more often for lead generation and conversion. Customers don’t spend as much time talking to sales reps as they do browsing their thought leadership ecosystems. Having a rich media layer in place for this bottom-of-the-funnel viewer is where you can stand out from the competition.

A Horizon on the Move

We will begin to see a lot of experimentation as brands find which video tactics resonate well, and which fizzle. Every competitor wants a personalized campaign, but only some are ready to invest the time and money. This approach allows you to do it all. Remember when seeing your name above a generic email made you feel special? This is the 2019 version, and enhancing your messaging map and fueling your personalization strategy with an animated zeal is not as hard as it sounds.