Technology Archives | Page 8 of 9

Learn your customers. This is not news to anyone in sales, but the more you understand about your audience, the better you can appeal to them. With more and more sales moving to digital, companies need to invest in digital empathy and offering a personalized brand experience is the way to go. Gartner agrees, that this is the year that personalization can enable up to 15% more profits for companies who re-engineer their content strategy to align with customer intent on a case-by-case level. For instance, a questionnaire that simultaneously tracks their answers and interests while drawing them to your critical on-site content that aligns with those interests is a win-win. In the end, your customers are satisfied immediately when, after a few clicks, get what they need on a personalized listing page or action report, especially if you gate it, and you understand your customers in real-time. Raise your hand if you want to be a trusted consultant and thought leader with great top of funnel pipeline…

Peak Interest. Peak Opportunity.

You’re being overmarketed. That must sound strange coming from a marketing blog, but the truth as we see it is that there is more noise out there than ever and digital ad-apathy is stronger than it’s ever been. So how can marketers cut through that noise and get their foot in the door? Lead generation today is about taking the time to tailor and target the message to the right person. It’s important to balance marketing automation with personalized lead-by-lead outreach. Is it time-consuming? Absolutely. Is it worth it to increase your ROI? Absolutely.

Marketers overwhelmingly agree that personalization is a huge benefit for developing and maintaining customer relationships. According to Adobe 60% of us are having trouble trying to make the switch to personalized content, but 90% of marketers recognize that their target audiences expect a personalized experience.

So what change is happening to boost marketers’ confidence in 2020?

Empirical Empathy.

You may have the creative personalized ideas, writers, designers, and web developers ready to help go to market, but until your business has the right data to drive your GTM ideas, you might be starting from scratch. Instead, companies who cultivate all of their customer data together, including customer journey tracking, cross-platform reporting, and aggregating lead generation trends across their web, mobile, email, and social channels will find the personalized insights they need to succeed. Harness the bountiful (and cheap) organic user information, across multiple data platforms, into one cohesive customer profile. Then build your storytelling experience, quiz, or dynamic CTA button around what you’ve discovered about your users. Turn your expensive anonymous users into cheaper hyper-targeted users through a foundation of data and let a personalized marketing experience reap the benefits.

On average, marketers within companies store their customer data in at least four different systems, most of which are not shared or have no way to make meaningful connections. Dramatic investments are in store for whatever integration, platform, or process can unite the omnichannel user data and enhance data analysis. Start with implementing data-driven objectives like:

Location Data
Overlays
Survey Responses
Ad Campaign Interaction
Tag and Filter Results
Track Pageviews
Smart Lists
Dynamic Content Blocks
Link Clicks
Referral Source

With this precise user understanding at marketers’ fingertips, we enjoy the familiarity of personalized campaigns. Yet culling that data together and offering a message or experience to the potential lead based on their previous interactions with your company is vital to getting that foot in the door. Invest in understanding your audience and their behavior and interests and they will invest in understanding you.

Email is Still Mail.

Let’s face it, our inboxes aren’t overflowing with personal communications from friends and loved ones. That doesn’t mean email marketing has to be impersonal. So how do we get a user to click on that one email subject line when they return from vacation to a mailbox full of ads? Personalize your headline copy, customize imagery by location, gender, or season, and insert dynamic CTAs to make the offer relate to what you know about them. Make it pop!

Bonus – add additional personalized flair to your brand experience by implementing a kickback email upon conversion. The most common form of a kickback email is an automated thank you note sent to their inbox once their personal information enters your CRM. Higher engagement rate – check. Great first impression – check. Polite digital etiquette – check.

You’re on the Right Landing Page.

Let’s say you’ve finally convinced the user to engage with your content and click on the CTA button, you know you have their full attention. Making a personalized first impression when they arrive on the landing page both affirms that they are in the right place and encourages them to remain there. In the Calling All Optimists case study, the media campaign was designed to match the messaging that worked in the first place to pull double-duty by complementing the interest on the landing page. Driving the target audience to the site, the user is met with a unique welcome message in the hero-zone correlated to the specific ad they engaged with.

Personalizing your page ensures that traffic from all over the world sees the most appealing content for them. Whether it’s one of your homepages (yes – the more the merrier!) or a campaign landing page, every page should have a purpose correlating to every unique visitor and their previous exposure to your brand.

Make It Personal

Stand out by personalizing your digital reputation. Customers will remember your services, your messaging, and your products if you direct them to what makes sense for them, rather than sending them on a wild goose chase. Content marketing has been top of mind for this industry for years now, but personalizing that content marketing strategy is a way to make your brand feel exciting and special.

It’s time to say goodbye to cookie-cutter content passively thrown into your resources listing page and keeping your fingers crossed that someone stumbles into it. With social media engagement on the downfall and Google’s algorithm prioritizing their own thought leadership over yours, it is imperative to transform your strategy into something that appeals to your ideal customer. Two-thirds of consumers say they will switch to brands that treat them like an individual rather than a data point, a trend that will continue to be driven by younger audiences who value brands that are transparent, authentic, and personal.

No matter the tactic, the fundamental purpose of personalizing any campaign is to boost engagement by telling the user you understand their need. Communicating your own message by listening to their needs first will always prove to be worth the research, planning, and testing effort. Delighting the modern consumer is going to take some analytics-grit, but doing your marketing homework before investing in any large personalization initiative will pay off in 2020.

If you’re looking to digitally personalize your content, reach out to Bluetext to help you succeed.

PR and marketing have changed overnight. There is still a need to reach customers and prospects, but it goes without saying that priorities have shifted in the “new normal” brought on by COVID-19.

It is a challenging tightrope to walk; the news cycle is rightly dominated by the coronavirus pandemic, which means many narratives that resonated pre-coronavirus will struggle to reach your target audiences. For our technology clients selling to government and enterprise decision makers – as well as consumers – we’ve preached several key PR and marketing tenets.

Chief among them is “do no harm.” If we have a client that can offer valuable expertise and insights to advance the conversation and help individuals and organizations navigate the current climate while protecting consumers and businesses, we support those efforts. But you can’t force connections that aren’t there and detract from those better positioned to make a positive impact. In other words, don’t be an opportunist. Don’t be an ambulance chaser. Those efforts will backfire and damage your brand.

Bluetext Digital Briefing Centers

Second, clients and their PR/marketing agencies need to be measured, but also creative and nimble. A government contractor or enterprise software company that relied on physical conferences and in-person sales meetings to engage with customers and prospects must now turn more attention to digital strategies.

Check out how Bluetext has developed Digital Briefing Centers (DBCs) for clients needing a dynamic way to digitally showcase to customers and prospects their full range of solutions in action. Customized presentations, live demos and in-depth discussions can be arranged while offering a proven short-term alternative and long-term complement to physical, face-to-face environments.

PR In the Age of Telework

Businesses can’t just throw up their hands and wait it out; there is still a need for smart PR and marketing to grow or at least sustain sales for the near-term. Digital Briefing Centers address the fact that your website and digital presence is by far now the most important doorway to your brand and brand experience while traditional, physical doors remain closed.

On the PR side, the best way to illustrate how Bluetext thinks when it comes to remaining proactive and creative with clients is through a real-life case study. Transaction Network Services (TNS) is a leading global data services provider with a telecom unit that provides robocall detection technology to U.S. telecom providers. Recognizing that scammers seize on the fear, chaos and confusion caused by health crises, we knew this was an opportunity for TNS to share its important data to help protect consumers from risks to their savings and personal information. Coronavirus scams cost people $7 million in the first 9 days of April alone — so the stakes are high.

Bluetext worked with TNS to rapidly build a strategy to communicate the financial risk to citizens and analyzing data to determine which robocall scams were most prevalent in which parts of the country. Some of the media coverage generated in a two-week period is included below.

In addition to developing a rapid response strategy, we started to think longer-term about robocall risks in the coming weeks and months. First, we worked with the client to gather data on political robocallers who were capitalizing on confusion regarding postponed Democratic Primary dates in a way that could influence election outcomes – and ensuring the data could be easily visualized.

The bottom line is this: we are in an uncharted phase as a society, and it is a phase that may last for months and even years. The organizations able to adapt to the “new normal” will be those best positioned to support their customers, partners and employees.

If you are looking for a partner to better position yourself to support your customers, reach out to Bluetext.

A Google search of “cyber security companies” will return well over 700 million results. As a business becomes increasingly digital and transitions more operations into cloud-based tools, the data of both the business and its customers become increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks. Cyber security companies are cropping up in response to growing demand across industries, but even the cyber security companies have to worry about protection, especially when it comes to their websites. As its digital storefront, any website is a critical place to ensure proper security measures are in place.

Here are the top five steps that cyber security companies themselves are taking to keep their websites protected.

1. Ensure CMS Security

The most cost-efficient way to build and manage a website is to leverage a popular content management system, but on their own these systems are often prone to attacks. To mitigate vulnerability, cyber security companies install a series of security plugins or modules, such as Securi for WordPress and Security Kit or Paranoia for Drupal.

Important Note: Simple installing the plugin or module is not sufficient. To protect your website and its data, webmasters must update and configure new releases in a timely manner. Website design and development agencies, such as Bluetext, can ensure your site security is always up to date.

When Bluetext partnered with ManTech to completely redesign their website, CMS security was a major concern. ManTech is a multi-billion-dollar public company that provides subcontracted technological services to the US Government. We outfitted their new Drupal website with the latest and greatest security plugins to ensure adequate CMS security.

2. Leverage Two-Factor Authentication

The content management system supporting a website needs to be easy-to-use, but not easy-to-access. Top cyber security companies (and the cyber security marketing firms who design and build their sites) ensure that only entrusted individuals can manage content on their sites by implementing two-factor authentication. When a content editor attempts to login in to update a page, they must validate their identity through a secondary step, such as a text message, phone call, or email. We often recommend Duo from Cisco, which integrates easily with most content management systems.

When CyberArk, a Goldman Sachs-backed, global cybersecurity technology company turned to Bluetext to redesign its brand comprehensively, we also launched a new responsive digital platform, complete with two-factor authentication. The new website addressed the needs of CyberArk’s global enterprise customer base.

3. Setup (BIG) Form Security

Web forms are valuable tools to digital marketers — and hackers! The potential for attacks initiated via a web form is BIG, hence they need big security. Cyber security companies, like many other industries, use web forms as a key lead-generation tool, but they know these forms are not something to be taken lightly. Any element on your site that allows for (and actively seeks) user input is susceptible to SQL injections or spam bots. (The tl;dr for those links: you do not want your website to suffer either fate.) The key IT stakeholder for any website should make form security a top priority, and work with the website development agency to select and implement the right technical measures.

When Finite State, an IoT-based cybersecurity company, came to Bluetext to expand its industry presence through a full website development and rebrand, we made sure that form security was paramount to the fully customized WordPress content management system platform.

4. Don’t Skimp on Hosting

While GoDaddy allows a company to save money, cyber security companies know that those savings come at an even higher cost in terms of security vulnerabilities. Though secure hosting providers come with a higher monthly bill, the long-term peace of mind in security far outweighs the short-term costs. These providers offer SSL certificates, CDNs, firewalls and more to ensure that websites can withstand malicious malware and attacks. Some of the top secure hosting providers recommended by top website development agencies include WP Engine and HostPapa.

Hosting security was top of mind for our client, PlanetRisk. When PlanetRisk, an enterprise risk analytics company, hired Bluetext to lead a comprehensive rebrand and new digital user experience and re-platform their content management system, we made sure that their updated website was fully secure, hosting-wise.

5. Take a Proactive Stance

Too often, website security measures are only implemented as a reactionary step following an attack. Cyber security companies know better. If a malicious attacker penetrates the website, they could irreversibly tarnish the brand. Cyber security companies make sure that the steps above are covered before an attack by configuring them before the website launches. Proactive protection can be a challenge if you don’t know what to expect, so be sure to consult an experienced website development agency to ensure your bases are covered with the most up to date security measures.

If you model your website security initiatives after the experts, you’ll be best set up to withstand attacks. Learn from the experience of a cyber security marketing agency—don’t skip these important steps!

The decades-long reign of the PC is over, with mobile devices now making up more than 52% of all internet traffic. While plenty of people preach the importance of responsive website design, far fewer have articulated updated guidelines for the reality of today’s internet. Keenly aware of trends as ever, Google has continually refined its search algorithm to keep pace with increasingly mobile and untethered internet. Advertisers, marketers, and website owners alike need to be aware of what these paradigm shifts are, and how that could impact their sites’ SEO.

Cellphones’ bountiful data has empowered Google to enhance its search engine. Search results are more custom than ever before, incorporating key differentiating factors like time of day, weather, and geography. The search results for a morning bagel in Washington D.C. will look entirely different three hours later in San Francisco.

Optimizing for Local Search

More so than ever before, websites need to be local. Gone are the days of simply tacking on addresses and list of phone lines. To be competitive in 2020, websites need to address the mindset and inquiries of the region they serve, be it a street, coast, or country. A quintessential, doughy foldable New York slice is in stark contrast to a dense, deep-dish pie from Chicago. The top result for a pizza in Manhattan will not be wasting content on merely their cheese, sauce, and pepperoni, but rather what distinguishes their slice from their other New York brethren. Language, context, and local distinctions are now a mandatory part of website content strategy.

Dealing with Short Attention Spans

Major changes to search algorithms are only a handful of the changes introduced by the rise of mobile. Attention spans online are shorter than ever with the ubiquity of the internet and easily accessible information, even more so for mobile where screen size comes at a steep premium. Hero zones should be appropriately leveraged. Heroes should state the most important critical information concisely and contain a quick and simple CTA or takeaway. Organic visitors who cannot immediately find an answer to their search query after a glance and a few swipes will assuredly bounce away to a competitor.

Search and Virtual Assistants

Smartphones’ impact on websites has not just been limited to mobility and smaller screens. Virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple’s Siri fundamentally change how people browse the internet. For many on-the-go, the automated search functionality provided by these virtual assistants have all but replaced a typical Google search.

How Google and the other virtual assistants parse through webpages and present them for voice search is a complex topic, but the vital SEO fundamentals remain in place. Research demonstrates that people are unsurprisingly far more conversational in their wording versus a typed-in search. Optimized content thus needs to serve this need directly, often best served using blogs that cover such frequent, informal topics as “What is the best X” or “Y versus Z”.

Google has been increasingly leveraging its structured data for voice search results, largely due to its predictable format and parseable nature. For best results, website owners need to cross-reference website content and identify what data could be passed off to Google using structured data. Articles, menus, locations, events, and reviews are just a handful of the many structured data formats that Google accepts. Conveniently, Google now provides a simple tutorial for anybody familiar with HTML to get started on incorporating structured data and improving their site for voice search.

The shift to mobile devices has opened up new avenues for content creation and design. Location and voice were unheard of topics even a decade ago, but they are here to stay for organic search. It’s up to website owners and marketers whether they take advantage of these new strategies, or get left in the dust.

As the world has changed in the blink of an eye, so has the way we market to consumers. Now, more than ever, your website exists as BY FAR THE MOST IMPORTANT doorway to your brand and your brand experience. While stores stay shut, and face-to-face interaction is vastly limited, brands will rely on reaching their target audiences via their websites. Therefore, your website is mission-critical to your success.

Bluetext has published a 5 part blog series to help you think about and pressure test if your website is the best it can be.

Bluetext clients are often asking for our recommendations on the best content management system for their website, whether as a redesign or a re-platform for their business. We are a forward-thinking digital marketing agency that provides game-changing digital experiences for brands looking to make a difference in the market, and as such, we have always been a technology-agnostic company and supporters of the open-source community.

Over the years, we have helped countless clients identify the appropriate CMS to meet their specific use cases. We work with organizations of all sizes: from startups looking to launch their first website, to large, established organizations with complex business workflows and integrations and distributed teams. No matter where your company falls on this spectrum, we have proven guidelines for deciding on which CMS will be the most appropriate for your organization. Here are three key considerations to guide you through your CMS selection process to ensure you are set up for success for the next 3-5 years.

1. Determine Your Stakeholders and Their Needs

The first step in selecting the best content management system is to identify those individuals who have a stake in the redesign/re-platform and analyze their needs. To begin this process, take stock of who is involved with the current website (typically Operations (IT), Marketing and Executive Management). Depending on the size of your organization, there could be many additional stakeholder groups.

For each stakeholder group, take time to understand their specific needs for the new CMS and use these insights to develop KPIs for the platform:

Operations (IT) – Your IT team is likely concerned about the technology stack (what can they support), where it lives (cloud, on-prem) and what their role will be in terms of ongoing maintenance.
Marketing – The marketing team typically drives the website. They are likely concerned with the feature set: content management features, workflows, learning curve, marketing integrations, social sharing, etc.
Executive Management – Most often, the executive team is focused on two things: cost and timeline. How much is this going to cost, and how long is it going to take to build?

It is important to conduct this step every time your organization goes through a redesign or re-platform, as structure, needs, and concerns evolve over time. For example, in recent years, day-to-day website ownership has generally shifted away from traditional operations/IT teams into the hands of marketing teams.

2. Outline Requirements

The next step in the process is to translate stakeholder needs into requirements. We recommend building a requirements matrix that outlines the full set of necessary features for the new CMS platform. Much of the matrix will consist of functional requirements, but it should also include cost, technology, and timeline constraints. A forward-thinking mindset must be applied when developing requirements. Consider feature sets that are planned for the next 2-5 years to ensure the selected CMS has the flexibility to accommodate business changes. To build an effective matrix, leverage the following strategy:

Gather Requirements. Supplement and expand upon the needs of the stakeholders by gathering wholistic requirements from actual users. We recommend conducting workshops with each user group. In some organizations, the user groups may include the marketing, operations and sales teams. In other organizations, distinct business units or regional teams may make up other user groups. The workshops will result in pages and pages of notes, which should be consolidated into a set of functional requirements.
Consolidate & Group into Usage Scenarios. Consolidating your requirements into high-level usage scenarios will help you, and your team, come to a consensus on critical functionality. During the CMS product demos, you will be armed with your list of usage scenarios and can ask specific questions regarding how the platform in question would handle such scenarios. Some possible usage scenarios could be:

As a content editor, I want to be able to manage and reuse digital assets from within the CMS so that I do not need to re-upload items.
As a content editor, I want to be able to manage content from my mobile device so that I can provide real-time updates from remote locations.
As a content approver, I want the ability to review content before it is able to be published on the website.
As a site administrator, I want the ability to update the menu links on the website when the organization decides to change the navigation of the website.
As an IT Stakeholder, I want the CMS application to be built in PHP so that my existing team of developers can manage and support the website.

Creating a Prioritized Feature Matrix

Leverage the usage scenarios to develop your feature matrix and prioritize each requirement. What are the must-haves, nice-to-haves, and stretch features that you could live without? Prioritization is very important and should not be taken lightly. Be sure not to let your feature matrix get out of control. This should be a list of no more than 50 “features” that you need the new platform to provide.

The matrix will allow you to score the products against each other in a logical way and get a good idea of the product’s compatibility for your organization.

Feature	Prioritization	Product 1	Product 2	Product 3
Easily manage content	5	3	4	3
Easily manage content on mobile devices	3	4	4	4
Integrate with Product X	4	3	3	3
Integrate with Product Y	2	1	1	5
Strong Multilingual Support	5	2	1	3
Personalization Capabilities	4	3	0	1
….	…	…	…	…

Easy, right? Of course, gathering large groups of people for workshops is easier said than done! No matter the size of the organization, the scheduling for these types of workshops is a challenge, but ultimately, the work pays off. Skipping this step will, more often than not, result in the selection of a sub-optimal product and the need to rebuild the CMS again next year.

3. Market Research & Validation

Market research will help down the list of products available on the market to arrive at a “short-list” of candidates for consideration. There are several resources available to inform your research. Two of our primary sources of information come from top analyst companies Gartner and Forrester. Dries Buytaert put it beautifully in his blog post:”If you want to find a good coffee place, you use Yelp. If you want to find a nice hotel in New York, you use TripAdvisor. Similarly, if a CIO or CMO wants to spend $250,000 or more on enterprise software, they often consult an analyst firm like Gartner.”

To give a brief recap in case you are unfamiliar with how Gartner rates vendors, they look at two key, top-level criteria: Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. They rate vendors on their ability to deliver what they promise and their ability to stay ahead of market trends to provide a quality product to their customers.

While this is not a complete step-by-step guide to performing a CMS comparison audit, it should give you the tools you need to get it started. While every organization is different – wether it be organization structure, specific requirements or current marketing goals – utilizing these activities while performing your CMS selection will help ensure that you are setting your organization up for success.

Looking for help in determining what CMS is right for you? Let us help!

Bluetext has published a 5 part blog series to help you think about and pressure test if your website is the best it can be.

With 57% of the world’s population now on the internet, promoting your business through a website has become even more critical. Additionally, over 50% of website traffic comes from mobile, and over 66 million American adults now own a smart speaker with digital assistant capabilities. Your website is where a potential customer will get their first impression of your business, and navigating the way website browsing behavior continuously evolves can be tricky. Because having a poorly designed website can be worse for your business than having no website at all, turning toward an expert website design agency can help you find the best website solution for your company. An agency can help you stay on top of the latest web design trends, and bring both your website and your business to the next level.

User experience (UX) is one of the most important things to consider when redesigning your new website. According to Jakob’s law, users spend most of their time on websites other than yours. This means that users prefer for your site to function in a similar manner to other sites they frequently interact with. Staying up-to-date with current web design trends is imperative to keep your users engaged.

Bluetext suggests considering the following seven trends when building your website to ensure that your site combines SEO functionality with the best UX, boosting your brand’s presence online.

1. Make Mobile a Priority

Over 50% of all website traffic comes from mobile. With a user-base continuously becoming more dependent on mobile, it is even more important for website designers to prioritize and optimize web experience for mobile devices. Designers must create a thumb-friendly design to not only make mobile navigation easier for the user but also create a seamless, visually-appealing design.

More than 60% of companies reported an increase in sales after designing mobile responsive platforms; however, approximately 40% of people will leave your website if it isn’t mobile-friendly. While simply having a mobile presence may seem good enough, optimizing this experience through design to cater to mobile users is the most important factor.

If these statistics aren’t convincing enough, it’s also important to keep in mind that Google gives priority to mobile-friendly sites by ranking them higher in search results, positively impacting your SEO. Lacking a mobile-friendly experience can negatively impact your website’s ranking, whereas sites that are mobile responsive will often receive a ranking boost, even for searches on a desktop.

Check out some of Bluetext’s work on mobile with Paya and Mindtree.

2. Increase Page Speed

It takes users only three seconds to decide whether or not they want to stay on your website. These three seconds are crucial to your website’s dwell time (aka the time a user spends on your website before returning to the search results). Web design agencies can provide creative solutions to help engage your users within these three seconds. Additionally, web agencies know the best tactics for improving page speed, such as image compression. Image formats like JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and WebP often provide better compression than PNG or JPEG, which means faster downloads and less data consumption.

The less time it takes your website to load, the better your SEO. Because of the Google Speed Update, Google won’t prioritize your website to users if it will take too long to load. Taking your site to a web design agency will ensure that your website is optimized for the user, while also ensuring that you have the best possible SEO ranking.

3. Optimize for Voice Search

Page speed is also becoming more important as the number of smart speakers and digital assistants continues to grow. Over 66 million American adults now have a smart speaker, and designing a website that capitalizes on Voice Search Optimization is the only way to ensure that those using smart devices for their searches will have access to your site. Voice search is meant to be a faster, more convenient way to get information, and if your website takes too long to load, it is less likely to be returned for a voice search result.

According to a PWC study, 71% of respondents would rather use their voice assistant to search for something than manually typing their query into a search engine. The differences between these spoken and typed searches may lead to different SERP results, and if your website is not properly optimized for vocal search, you may lose ground to your competitors. Because vocal searches only result in one top result, everyone is vying for this “ground zero” position. You can obtain this coveted position by gaining Google’s featured snippet spot, which aims to directly answer users’ questions. Voice searchers are also more likely to search in long-form questions as opposed to using shorter keywords, so it’s important to consider the types of questions your target audience may ask, and to position your website well to answer these searches.

4. SEO vs. SEM: Choose Wisely

How can you tell whether to focus your marketing efforts on SEO or SEM? Let’s return to square one: what’s the difference? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was traditionally thought of as a component of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which comprised of both paid and organic tactics. However, this language is shifting, with SEM now referring exclusively to paid search. SEO is a method to optimize your website to receive organic traffic, while SEM is a way to funnel in relevant traffic from search engines by buying paid or sponsored ad listings.

So which is better to focus on for your website? SEO allows your business to get more visibility, building brand awareness at a low cost. Choosing keywords that are relevant to your website can earn you a spot on the first page of the SERPs, automatically earning you credibility and trust from search users. In order to increase your website’s chances of making this first page, follow these simple steps:

Use relevant keywords in the URL to describe the content of the page
Use your main keywords in the beginning of the title tag of your page
Use the right keywords in the meta description of your page and make sure it is enticing enough for users to click-through to your site
Use your primary keyword(s) in the H1 tag of your page
Use your main keywords along with related long-tail keywords in the first few paragraphs of the page

SEO will bring your website brand visibility at a lower cost, but it’s important to invest in researching which keywords will best optimize your website.

While SEO is typically more sustainable, turning to SEM can also do wonders for your website. SEM allows you to capture the attention of your target audience by claiming a spot above-the-fold of the SERPs. Sponsored listings also give you more control over the results you achieve; every element of the ad can be customized and tweaked to target your audience. SEM charges on a per-click basis, and while this may be more expensive, it allows you to achieve quick, measurable results without going through the trial-and-error process that SEO typically involves.

Both SEO and SEM have their pros and cons, and both may be right for your business at different times. Turning to an agency that specializes in SEO and SEM will help you choose the right tactic at every turn.

5. Hello, Homogenous Hero

The fast pace of modern life means that people have less time to spend on your website. When they enter your site, simple and intuitive web design will allow them to quickly find what they’re looking for. The use of minimal design allows for the rapid digestion of information and ultimately leads to more satisfied users.

The inability to spend endless time searching for information on a website also means that many web design agencies are moving away from the once-popular ubiquitous site, and shifting instead toward the homogenous hero. Instead of boldly featuring the headline in the center of the landing page, designers are opting instead to move the header and CTA to one side, with the image on the opposing side. This split-screen aesthetic also allows for easy conversion to mobile, providing a clear dividing line between the two content blocks.

Check out some of Bluetext’s latest homogenous hero designs through their work with Centauri and Perspecta.

6. Animate Your Site

The use of animation is an easy way to make your website appear polished and dynamic. Animation also helps bring your brand’s story to life, quickly engaging users and drawing more visitors to your homepage. When used as a tool to communicate complex messages easily, animation can reduce the time that a user must spend in order to understand your message, which enables them to spend more time exploring your website.

When adding animation and motion into your website design, it is important to consider web image optimization, which is the process of providing the smallest-sized images optimized in terms of quality, resolution, and format. With the rise of internet browsing on mobile, images and animations must be optimized to perform well on mobile. While animations are a fantastic way to engage your site visitors, they can also slow down your website load times and negatively impact your SEO. Let a professional website design agency like Bluetext help ensure that your website can support lively animation without dragging down your website load time.

When Bluetext redesigned the Clarabridge website, we made sure to incorporate motion in a sophisticated way, making the UX come alive. We used motion throughout the homepage to engage the user and pull them further down the landing page. This design also quickly explains how Clarabridge works and allows a site visitor to visualize how they might best use Clarabridge’s services.

7. Incorporate More Video Content

Video content diversifies your web page, and also appeals to those fast-moving users who do not have the time to search through a lot of text. Videos are also a great way to make an emotional connection to your users and lead to a better overall website experience. By 2020, experts predict that 80% of online traffic will be video. Additionally, 72% of businesses say that video has improved their conversion rate, and 45% of people watch an hour or more of video per day.

While video content is clearly an important marketing tactic, 64% of marketers see video as the most difficult content to create. Not only do videos take time to plan, shoot, and edit, but it is also tough to decide exactly what type of content should be presented in your video. Because viewers’ attention starts to drop off after roughly two minutes, finding an expert who specializes in video content may be the best route for creating the perfect video for your website.

Not only will video content boost your website’s success, but it is also rewarded by Google. If your site includes video, it is 53X more likely to get a first-page spot in search results. Video improves SEO, which boosts your ranking. But if a short video is one of the first impressions a user will have of your business, how do you go about creating successful video content, and keep the user coming back for more? Many website design agencies have video specialists who can tell your story in a clear and powerful way. Check out Bluetext’s latest video work with Invictus.

Invictus Brand Essence Video, July 2019 from Bluetext on Vimeo.

Interactive content is here to stay. Just take a look at the 96% completion rate on BuzzFeed quizzes. Even more, a 2016 Content Marketing Institute (CMI) study found that just over 80% of marketers say that interactive content is more effective than static content when it comes to grabbing consumers’ attention.

Well, what even is interactive content, anyway? Interactive content is “content that requires the participants’ active engagement — more than simply reading or watching. In return for that engagement, participants receive real-time, hyper-relevant results they care about.”

Digital branding agencies, such as Bluetext, will ensure you are leveraging all that interactive content has to offer. Here are the top 3 types of interactive content to look out for in 2020.

Quizzes and Assessments

Quizzes and assessments are pieces of interactive content in which the user provides answers to a few questions in order to receive insights based on them. They are fun for the user to complete, and if the results are what they were looking for, they will help you build trust with your audience.

This type of interactive content doesn’t only boost engagement — they also help you get to know your audience. So when you plan to incorporate quizzes or assessments into your content plan, seek out a brand strategy agency to help you develop your content and ask yourself: What do I want to know about my audience? You may discover something new and gain some essential insights that can help you tailor your marketing efforts to be more effective.

Bluetext, a leading branding company, worked with the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) to develop a microsite to invite top-of-funnel business school candidates to learn about what is available to them in the world of graduate business schools. The introduction page on the website is an interactive quiz that helps direct users to content specifically geared toward them based on where they fall in the business school process.

Polls

Polls are the easiest and simplest way to introduce interactive content to your marketing plan. They provide a quick way to get in touch with your audience and allow you to build a genuine connection with your followers.

The most straightforward way to use polls is to ask your audience for opinions on your content, service, or product. This not only helps you drive engagement online but gives you great insight into how your audience is feeling about your brand.

You can also invite your audience to interact with your profile by asking fun, light-hearted questions that invite them into learning more about what your company has to offer.

Contests

According to the CMI report, marketers believe that contests are the most effective type of interactive content you can use, especially in the early stage of the buyer’s journey.

Contests can include traditional raffles or giveaways. They can offer the chance to win a prize if they refer a friend to your company’s offerings. You can even introduce photos or hashtag contests where you invite your audience to submit their own user-generated content.

We have seen a rise in these types of hashtag contests and challenges across all social media platforms, especially on TikTok. The platform allows companies to leverage a hashtag to promote their brand, and users are eating it up.

Guess was the first brand in the US to release a marketing campaign as an official partner with TikTok. They ensured that every time a TikTok user opened the app, they were directed to the #InMyDenim hashtag challenge. Since its launch, videos with the hashtag have garnered over 38 million views and introduced the Guess brand to young Millenials and Generation Z.

Contests are great at bringing out people’s natural curiosity and competitive spirit, so encourage them to participate by providing an engaging contest.

Interactive content that is engaging and personalized provides your audience with a new way to engage with your brand and can build trust with your audience. Learn how Bluetext can help you leverage interactive content in your content marketing plan here.

With the start of the new decade, the digital marketing industry is abuzz with anticipation for 2020. Top interactive agencies are predicting big shifts in the upcoming year, in everything from engagement tactics to design and user experience. Bluetext, as one of Washington DC’s leading digital marketing agencies, has some 2020 predictions of our own.

In the upcoming year, trends in technology will alter and enhance how the world interacts with various media. Top interactive agencies are predicting massive growth in virtual reality digital marketing. The future will be filled with smart devices delivering increasingly insightful and interactive digital experiences. Recent innovations have allowed marketers to blend digital and physical realms to create an immersive world. Technology will enable expanded connections between sets of people, businesses, devices, content and services.

A top technology trend of 2020 will be virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Virtual reality refers to any type of experience that places the user “in” another world or dimension. Augmented reality is a term for essentially placing virtual content “into” the real world by way of, for instance, your camera on your iPhone or an app. The most popular example of this is Pokémon Go.

Top interactive agencies have been demonstrating the power of VR to change how users perceive the world and creating a truly immersive experience. Virtual reality production companies are expecting the next generation of VR to be able to sense shapes and track a user’s position and mixed reality (augmented and virtual) will enable consumers to view and interact with the world.

Virtual and augmented reality have been around for years, however, many companies were hesitant to adopt due to a poor user experience. Through recent tech improvements and growing expertise of user experience & interface companies, such as Bluetext, AR and VR are expected to grow quickly. In the next two years, Gartner predicts “70% of enterprises will be experimenting with immersive technologies for consumer and enterprise use.” Google cardboard glasses are a popular —and inexpensive—method to distribute the virtual reality digital marketing experience.

A number of companies have already deployed innovative AR and VR experiences, especially in the B2C realm. Companies such as Sephora and IKEA are using augmented reality to allow consumers to preview and test products. While AR and VR lend well to the “try before you buy” sales strategy with enticing previews to persuade a final purchase decision, it has also been used in campaigns to turn heads. Burger King unveiled an AR experience that quite literally burned away the competitor. The fast-food chain encouraged app users to scan competitors’ ads, which would activate an augmented reality experience. As the competitor’s ad combusted, it was replaced with a Burger King ad and directed to the nearest restaurant to claim a free Whopper.

Top virtual reality digital marketing experts will tell you this tech trend is sweeping a variety of industries as a method of differentiation. Especially in the B2B market, virtual reality has proven to be an incredibly powerful marketing tool to help close a sale and drive conversion. A virtual reality experience can go in-depth to product specs and prove exactly why it’s superior. When designed by a top virtual reality video production company the experience can be like a trade show, a sales demo, and a marketing presentation in one. Industries like cybersecurity or manufacturing can truly benefit from immersive experiences. When products are shown through virtual reality, the viewer can demo a complex product with ease. Top virtual reality video production companies also stress the importance of standing out in saturated markets and hectic trade shows.

An effective and memorable AR or VR experience is an opportunity to capture physical attention and convert that to digital action. Interested in differentiating your company with next-generation digital tactics? Learn how Bluetext can bring your video and virtual reality ideas to life.

Has your CMS become a drag on your organization? One of the most frequently-asked questions we get in conversations with clients is, “Should I upgrade my Content Management System?”. As trends in marketing evolve, so do the feature sets of tools used by marketers. As your CMS begins to show its age, the costs of keeping it up to date and adding enhanced functionality increases.

For many technical, marketing and IT teams, a clunky CMS, or one that they have simply outgrown, can mean lost opportunities to update and management content and analytics from one of the most valuable corporate assets. To help you determine if your Content Management System is weighing you down, we have put together a list of questions that can help you decide if it is time to upgrade your CMS platform.

First, Consider Refreshing your Brand

When was the last time your refreshed your brand? If you don’t remember the answer, it’s probably time for a refresh.
Is your brand identity fresh and modern? Take a look at your website, your logo, your digital assets and email campaign you use to sell your brand and connect with your customers. Also look at what your competitors are doing.
When was the last time you did market/user research to identify your target audiences? Do you know if you are you still marketing to the right audiences?
Does your messaging and positioning accurately reflect your current value proposition and customer pain points?

Asking yourself these types of questions should help determine if it’s the right time to progress your brand with a fresh perspective to meet customer preference and expectations. A brand refresh is the perfect timing for an update to your Content Management System. It also allows you to take advantage of the ever-growing feature sets that today’s platforms provide. Take the time to review the CMS market and do a comparison to determine what platform best meets your business needs.

Upgrade your Technology Stack

Does your current CMS platform allow your team to easily and effectively find, create and update content?
Are you managing several web properties across multiple technology platforms? Would it be easier if these were consolidated into a single platform?
Does your Content Management System provide you with the tools you need to effectively reach and attract you target market?
Is your Content Management System built for IT or is it built for Marketing?

Over the past few years, there has been a dramatic shift in ownership of Content Management Systems in the Enterprise. No longer are CMS’s provisioned and managed by your IT teams. No longer is it enough to provide an easy, structured way for non-technical users to create and manage content. No longer is it enough to provide useful tools such as WYSIWYGs, Form Builders, Workflow Tools and Enhanced Navigation Structures.

Today’s CMS’s are expected to not only support native content management tasks, but they are expected to support multiple digital properties. They are expected to keep up with ever evolving policies like accessibility and privacy. They are expected to enable a conversation with users based on what is known about them.

Improved Security

Is your current Content Management System supported by a company and/or a community?
Is your CMS currently up to date with the most recent version of the technology?
Do you have old legacy custom code preventing you from updating the underlying CMS technologies?

Security is always a concern when dealing with your website. The last thing you want is for the homepage of your website to become a poster-board for the hottest deals on the dark web. Having an old or outdated CMS leaves you vulnerable to well-known security vulnerabilities that are just waiting to be exploited. It might be time to get that ticking time bomb disarmed.

Most platforms provide tools to keep you informed about platform security and notify you both when a vulnerability is found and when a patch is presented. We highly recommend learning how your platform handles this type of communication to ensure you are in the know. Below are some links to useful information for Drupal/WordPress.

Drupal:
- CMS Provides Warning Messages from Admin UI
- Public Service Announcements: https://www.drupal.org/security/psa
- Security Releases: https://www.drupal.org/security
- Twitter Feed: https://twitter.com/drupalsecurity
WordPress:
- CMS Provides Warning Messages from Admin UI
- Releases: https://wordpress.org/news/category/security/

Reduce Maintenance Costs

Are you paying a hefty monthly retainer to keep the lights on for your CMS?
Do simple changes (like text or image updates) require a technical team to implement and/or take days or weeks to get updated?

Wouldn’t you like to use all of the money you are dumping into keeping your technology up and running into your marketing campaigns and content initiatives? If you are spending more money on your technology than you are on your marketing, it is likely past time to upgrade your CMS. A CMS should streamline your content management tasks and empower your team, not suck it dry.

Save Time

Do simple changes (like text or image updates) take days or weeks to get updated?
Are your page templates flexible and adaptable across desktop and mobile?
Are you spending a majority of your development efforts trying to keep your website up and running rather than enhancing it?
Does your system allow you to effectively market to your customers?

If the answer to any of the questions listed above are “yes”, then it is likely you have outgrown your current CMS platform and need to upgrade.

Looking for help in determining if your organization is in need of a CMS upgrade? Contact Us Today!

A Public Service Announcement was released on July 30th, 2018, announcing a moderately critical security update to Drupal Core. This update is not part of the normal Drupal Core security releases but was deemed important enough to release the update. A link to the public service announcement can be found here: https://www.drupal.org/psa-2018-07-30

More information on the actual vulnerability was released along with the security updated on August 1, 2018. Based on the feedback and messaging around the issue on other forums such as Acquia.com, it is highly recommended that anyone on Drupal 8.5 install this important update. For organizations not running on the latest version of Drupal 8, it is recommended that you manually upgrade the impacted libraries as soon as possible.

For more information on the Drupal Security Advisories, the Drupal Security Team and Drupal Security Rating Process, check out our previous post here: https://bluetext.com/drupal-8-critical-security-release-march-28th-2018/