John Martin – Chief Operating Officer of the Washington Times talks about their new digital platform.  Designed by Bluetext.

Looking for a DC WordPress development company? You have found the right WordPress development company! We are located in Georgetown Washington, DC. The WordPress developers at Bluetext are fun, energetic, and dedicated to the cause. There is a level of professionalism that comes with hiring us that you won’t get with any other Washington DC web development company.  We love discovering new tools to help create the best sites for our clients. WordPress is currently one of the most popular CMS’s to have a site built on, and we understand why. In fact, we think so highly of WordPress that we have built our own website on it! It is a great resource for companies of all sizes. If you work with us keep in mind, throughout the development process we will offer WordPress training so you will be able to make any and all edits and you decide are necessary.

Our DC WordPress developers will work with you to build a new web presence that you can be proud of. We choose to work with WordPress because it allows our developers to have complete control over the layout of the site yet it is still easy for site administrators to make any and all edits to the page. Our Washington DC WordPress development company has built a reputation of excellence. Get in touch with us today to learn how we can help you improve your web presence. Throughout the entire process, we will work closely with you to build a top of the line, modern looking site that engages your audience and decreases bounce rates.

BENEFITS OF A SITE BUILT ON WORDPRESS

• We can help you improve your online presence with a custom built WordPress site through:
• Custom WordPress Plugins
• WordPress Training
• Extensive knowledge of WordPress themes
• Custom website development
• WordPress hosting advice
• Experienced WordPress team
• Top of the line features
• A passion for development

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

Q. What is the tie-in for the core Reznick Group brand?

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

 

Q. What do you expect the mobile experiences you’re launching to do?

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

Q. What kind of device do you prefer and why?

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

 

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

 

Bluetext is pleased to announce that on July 25, its client Acentia launched with a new brand identity and website to better represent its mission supporting customers on programs of National Significance. Over the past three months Bluetext worked with the Acentia management team, employees and customers to overhaul its messaging, create its brand, design and develop a new website, and re-launch the company to the public. On July 22 Acentia brought all of its employees to Nationals Park to unveil the brand for the first time. The launch was covered in the Washington Post and Washington Business Journal, and represents the type of fully-integrated campaign that Bluetext can deliver for clients. Be on the lookout for their new advertising campaign in the coming months.

 

 

Bluetext completely rebranded ITSolutions to Acentia.  Including name, logo, tagline, visual identity system, messaging platform, brand positioning, website, collateral system, public relations and social media.

 

 

Bluetext launched Acentia at Nationals Park followed by major Washington media coverage.

 

 

Homepage

 

Careers Landing Page

 

Customers Landing Page

 

 

Solutions Landing Page

 

 

Bluetext produced a family of thought leadership videos to communicate sector focus inside Acentia.

 

 

TAG YOUR IT!  No this isn’t a phrase that 5 year olds are yelling on the playground, but rather marketers and communicators are saying to their targeted constituents. Mobile tagging is the industry term for the creation, rendering, and applying of a two-dimensional bar code that is a link to an online experience, accessed through a mobile device. Each 2-D code, or tag, is encoded with specific information such as a Web URL, a phone number, or a person’s contact information. Once a tag is scanned or photographed it creates the link to a specified webpage, dials a voice call, or downloads contact information. Mobile tags are commonly used to link the physical and digital worlds within the context of a very specific location.

 

Marketers considering tagging tactics quickly discover a large and muddled technology and service provider landscape. Which tagging technology makes sense for your campaign? Here is a key benefits breakdown of some of the most popular solutions.

 

For Awareness

 

Instant Lottery – Product Giveaways, Point of Purchase Contests, Ticket Giveaways, Reward Systems
Mobile Arcade – Team Based Interactions, Phone Game Controllers, Location Based Games (like SCVNGR), and Geograhical Explorations
Travel by Tag – Preview Your Destination, Get historical content from where you stand

 

For Information Gathering

 

Product Preview – Get the facts before you buy
Content Sampling
Behind The Scenes – Get behind the scenes information on your product
Scan Triggered Updates – Produce a digital memory or Digital snapshot
Sample content before purchase, deeper information prior to purchase, deliver richer experiences, real time schedules, understand where your product has been, ensure the product is real and not stolen, convert currency costs for products instantly

 

For Action / Purchase

 

Scan To Pay – Skip the line and pay faster
Unlockable Rewards – Scanabable coupons, points system for loyalty programs, digital character expensions

 

For Post Purchase

 

Feedback Loop – Facebook Likes, Loyalty Measurement, Product Review Shortcuts, Vote on Artists and Products
Mobile How-to – Product assembly instructions, food recips, video instructions, training

 

 

Trend #2 – User Experience Design Becomes More Humanized

 

As marketers strive for the strongest brand recall in their competitive marketplaces, they must still focus on what our data continues to show – leveraging as many human sensors in a branded experience as possible drives results. The more human sensors involved in a customer experience the higher the brand recall, resulting in stronger campaign key performance indicators and the most positive word of mouth brand marketing you can get – viral.  The following trends in humanizing branded online user experiences will continue to emerge in 2011:

 

 

Touch – This year, brands will focus increasingly more on the touch experience. Touch allows the user to engage with another sense, thus offering higher brand recall. As tablets becomes ubiquitous, another experience will need to be considered in how we produce the interactive arts. Another dimension to the style sheet will emerge as standard in all projects to allow for presentations to be optimized if they have touch or a no-touch capability. Mice are much more precise than fingers, so interfaces will become dynamic to create optimized interfaces for the various devices. The human race is proving that there is a 4th screen needed in life. Wall mounted, the workbench, the casual experience and the mobile experience. I find myself equating my laptop to the modern day workbench, while the tablet is more like a casual device. iPhone and Android phones need to fit in the pocket. Until technology produces a mass market stretchable product, there will be two product categories. Printing and the disposable goods industry will shrink as people go all digital. The tablet is speeding that industry contraction. Printing in an analog way makes no sense with today’s technology. I am seeing consulting firms far and wide with high volumes of presentations switching to synchronized iPads in presentations versus printing. Clients prefer the progressive, cleaner, portable experience. Branding these experiences and producing applications for this customer behavior is a great opportunity to differentiate your brand.
CNBC iPad Application

 

 

Social Media Integration – Understanding how your social ecosystem is engaging with brands is critical in today’s socially connected world. A sound social strategy that creatively weaves into a brand experience is where you will see all brands, including public sector, business to consumer, and business to business audiences. These platforms are communities in themslves. Brands like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Vimeo will all be integrated into a user experience.
Live Customer Service – The time to react to your customer is shrinking. Customer service has become the new marketing. Look at how Rackspace and Zappos and other customer service centric brands are growing.  These are very different industries, both branding themselves with Ritz Carlton quality customer experiences. The “social support” experience grows. Brand get rated online through outlets like Yelp, Service Magic, etc. These ratings are search optimization pillars and facilitate many more word of mouth conversations between companies and their brand ambassadors.  Encouraging social support produces a strong knowledge base and a self service community that drives support costs down and brand engagement up.
HTML5 – The standard will continue to grow as browsers become modernized globally.  Brands and customers will demand HTML5 experiences for their richness, openness, and accessibility across all devices seamlessly. As differentiation between Flash, Silverlight, and HTML5 blur dramatically HTML5 will rule. What is Adobe’s next move? Open source Flash all the way?  I think this is the year.  Adobe’s sales will continue to grow as their tools continue to be best in class.
Mobile – Mobile and Facebook global growth continues to trend inline with one another. 2011 will bring 600 million global smart phones online. A more connected world is a more sophisticated world with greater demands and a changing dynamic. Mobile technology solutions like Square, PayPal, Identity X and other brands and their API developer strategies will enable brands to produce some amazing applications for their customers.

Design digitally becomes more humanized.  Years of two dimensional experiences with limited colors, limited fonts, and limited bandwidth and accessibility are now all things of the past. The amazing experiences agencies globally are producing for their clients are truly phenomenal.

 

 

Marketers typically don’t try to court developers, but that will change in 2011. More and more brands are relying on user generated experiences and content. Deploying a deep set of content feeds proprietary to your brand, APIs to extend your applications and allow your brand ambassadors to create new ones, and being a technological open brand are all compelling reasons to build brand loyalty, brand recall and brand innovation. Developers drive innovation across all key platforms. Smart marketers will continue to work with their communities of designers and developers to scale their digital vision.

 

 

Marketers should make brand ambassadors and promote their creations to drive audiences to embrace them.

 

The two forms of applications brand ambassadors with development skills are continually embracing are mobile and Facebook applications.  The reasons are clear:

 

Facebook is over 500 million people, and mobile smartphones are used by over 600 million people – Real people: connecting, sharing, and exploring

 

People continue to be the message more and more.  Todays consumer has an auto filter for paid advertising.  Leveraging the crowd to create a compelling branded experience is critical to an effective campaign.

 

Brand missions are to give people the power to create and share their content as the world becomes more connected and technology becomes more accessible.

 

Looking to the developer community enables brands to create deeper relationships with stronger insights.

 

So next time you have a brand marketing strategy discussion and you review your various targeted personas – make sure you consider the developer community.  They will surprise you with what they do positively for your brand.