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There is a lot of blue on the internet. Why?

by BrandingDesign

Go Google something. Okay, now, go and check Facebook. Great, okay, now, pop onto Twitter. And, just to seal the deal, take a peek at your LinkedIn.

You know what you just saw a lot of? The color blue.

Blue is the most popular color on the internet by far. But as to why, well, that seems to be up for debate.

Blue has long been the go-to color for links. But no one can seem to agree on exactly why, and who made that decision.

Internet folklore traces the popularity of links back to the father of the internet, Sir Tim Berners Lee. Some of the earliest pictures of him that feature links on his computer screen show links colored in blue.

When Mark Zuckerberg was building Facebook, in the days when he was still working out of a college dorm, the choice to make blue its main color was a no brainer. Mainly, because it wasn’t really a choice.

Zuckerberg is colorblind, unable to see red or green, and so blue is the only color he can fully interpret, which made his decision to make Facebook blue a pretty easy one.

The social network being one of the most popular sites in the world, and surely something most of us look at multiple times a day, has continued the trend of blue being the color we see most often online.

41 shades of blue

Apparently this is your favorite shade of blue. How do I know? Well, nearly a decade ago, Google, which was not exactly considered a purveyor of design, had an inconsistency.

Its homepage featured a button that used one shade of blue, and Gmail featured a button that used another.

They decided to standardize the shade they were using, but which blue were they going to choose?

To find out, they ran a bunch of user tests, testing a number of shades of blue that were almost imperceptibly different. How many blues? 41 to be exact.

As is talked about in the biography, Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!, this story has become something of a legend. A tech company, and a manager, who, rather than trusting the gut of their designers, used data to make a design decision.

I’m not saying it’s good or bad. But, what I am saying is that the winning blue has been one of Google’s main colors ever since.

So, why?

Perhaps it is because the sky and sea are blue. Perhaps it’s because one influential person just decided he or she liked the color blue. Whatever the truth is of its origin, blue is the internet, and indeed, the entire world of design’s default color.

 

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Content marketing in 2017

by BrandingNewsTechnology

Content marketing is rapidly evolving. Producing generic content and throwing it out there hoping for a miracle is no longer a marketing strategy for any business that hopes to stay competitive.

Spun content on web pages, auto-generated videos, and other poor content marketing strategies will often have a negative impact on your brand, making your business that much less to succeed.

Over the past few years, successful brands have been taking advantage of advances in tech to develop successful content marketing strategies.

For instance, mobile accounted for 53 percent of the total time spent on a digital device compared with 47 percent on desktops back in 2013. In 2015, 65 percent of users spent time on mobile compared with only 35 percent of users on desktop, illustrating the important role mobile has played for content in recent times.

Every indication is that content marketing and social media marketing will continue to evolve, and technology will be firmly in the driver’s seat.

Check out this sample of some of the tech advances that are likely to transform this landscape in 2017 and beyond.

1. Artificial Intelligence

Many of us have been conditioned to tremble and cower at the sound of artificial intelligence, thanks in part to the years we spent following The Terminator and The Matrix. With AI now capable of producing decent articles and other forms of content, content developers and marketers also have good reason to be afraid of AI.

Or do they?

While AI has been known to do impressive things, humans who take advantage of technology are often much better at accomplishing tasks than humans or machines alone. This is why content marketers who will take advantage of AI stand to benefit greatly from harnessing the powers of AI.

AI has the potential to change the content marketing landscape, even revolutionize it. It can be used better understand content for your keywords, enabling you to develop content that resonates with your audience. AI can also be used to help format content for SEO, discover relevant content for curation, and automate content distribution.

Content marketers will definitely have more to gain than loose from AI integration.

2. IoT and new devices

The world we currently live in is nothing short of unreal.

New devices are coming up each day with the ability to communicate via networked connections, thanks to the ever-expanding world of the Internet of Things (IoT). Users are no longer restricted to their PCs, laptops, and smartphones as far as interacting with content is concerned.

For instance, smart refrigerators can communicate with the user, Even the bluetooth speakers within a smart home. The challenge for content creators will be developing content that will be able to respond to each of the various devices within the IoT space.

This way, content marketers will be able to provide customized content based on location, monitoring data, and real-time alerts straight to the device. Marketers will even be able to send content based on proximity data, for instance, clothing retailers sending messages about dressing ideas during the cold season.

3. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

2016 has clearly been the year of virtual reality and augmented reality. If in doubt, just as any of the millions of users who at one point made Pokémon Go more popular than Tinder and Instagram. These developing technologies have uncovered a whole new platform for content consumption, one that Facebook’s Oculus Rift will most likely explore within the coming years.

VR will likely ease its way into the content marketing arena to fulfill the growing need for visual content. Content marketers will get the exciting opportunity to push content optimized for VR, which is largely unchartered land.

4. Live streaming

Live streaming has long been associated with live broadcasts of events such as sports.

Recently, however, live streaming has become just one of the many ordinary functions of a smartphone, right next to making phone calls and texting. Live streaming apps like Meerkat and Periscope have become more popular among everyday users

Live streaming offers content developers and marketers the platform to come up with more in-demand and live content, which still remains a vastly unexplored area.

Plus, with Facebook jumping into the live streaming arena, more users are likely to appreciate content that is modeled around live experiences.

5. Improved search engine algorithms

Search engine algorithms are finally becoming fully automated as far as updates are concerned. Most content marketers design their online marketing campaigns around manual search algorithms.

These are often updated manually and such updates are communicated promptly to the online community.

However, self-updating algorithms such as RankBrain will make it harder to predict what the rules are for maintaining organic visibility. RankBrain, a machine learning algorithm, scours the internet and fine-tunes search results, basically making it harder for content marketers to “cheat” their way to organic results.

Content marketers who will find ways to stay afloat will reap sweet, organic rewards.

6. E-commerce and social media

On their own, e-commerce and social media marketing have been explored by content managers for years. The likes of Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest have been used to propagate content and make inroads into new markets.

But the real game-changer is going to be social purchasing as more social media sites begin integrating aspects of e-commerce. Social media is currently one of the leading platforms that content creators use to distribute content and building audiences. With such sites becoming more focused on revenues, their focus will shift from content consumption platforms to becoming e-commerce hybrid sites.

As such, content marketers will need to find alternative platforms for interacting with their audiences since opportunities for organic visibility will have diminished considerably.

2017 and beyond presents a myriad of challenges and opportunities for everyone in the content marketing space. As a content marketer, preparing for the future isn’t optional. Early preparation will enable you to stay competitive as others in the industry play catch-up. Early adopters always have the benefit of self-differentiation, even when they implement technologies that end up taking a different direction.

Either way, it’ll be a huge win for the early birds.

by VIKAS AGRAWAL

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Small Business Branding

by Branding

As a small business, how do you stand out from your competitors? You know you need to, but every other company like yours is also trying to stand out.

Customer Perceptions

Regardless of the size of your business, branding is so important that you can never just leave it to chance. It is just as important as product development – get it wrong and your product will never sell or your service will never be used.

Your customers brains are overloaded with new information every day. Done right, your branding will find a way of cutting through the clutter.

Just think about the visual and auditory information that is assaulting their senses on any given city street, television channel or website. Every aspect of your customers’ lives is like this. In all this ever-changing mental clutter a consistent company brand image is essential to any company’s survival in the 21st Century.

Your company branding should tell people who you are, what you do and why you do it. It should indicate your market positioning and your unique selling points.

A customer should be able to see consistency across every channel they use to communicate with you, so should include every aspect of your business, including lighting, colors, ease of access and staff attitudes as well as the more obvious logo and name. Even the smell of your office or storefront is part of your brand.

Brand Power

Let your brand do the pre-selling for you. This is how Apple manages to sell so many devices. People are buying the brand. Many buyers do not care if the product will last beyond the guarantee period, they must have it because the brand is part of the image.

The reason people buy Kelloggs’ cereals is because the company’s marketing has focused on natural and sunshine. Both are powerful images today.

People buy Toyota cars for their reliability and Volvos for their great safety record.

It takes time to establish your brand’s unique selling point, but once established it will enable selling to your target customers a breeze. They will have decided to buy your product before ever contacting you about the details. This is the power of pre-selling.

Unique Selling Point

You need to develop a unique selling point (USP), a reason for people to buy from your company. This guide from Entrepreneur includes some excellent examples that every business owner should read.

There are thousands of companies very similar to yours, and you are competing with everyone of them around the globe for every single customer. Even the person that is standing outside your physical premises has in their pocket an instant connection to the Internet and every business that is online from all over the world.

Why should they buy from you? You must give them a reason to do so or they will buy elsewhere.

Your branding and USP are your tools. They are the only reasons they will take out their wallet in your store or on your website today.

Ideally they will be aware of your branding before they’re standing outside your store or viewing your website, but even if this is not the case, your branding can still win you the sale. If your branding is welcoming, with great customer service then they will likely complete a sale. They’re also more likely to come back for future purchases and to recommend your company to friends and contacts.

Customer Loyalty

If your customers were just half as loyal as Apple customers then your business would be a run-away success story. Yes, Apple makes great products, but they do have imperfections. Their customers are so forgiving because of the loyalty they feel towards the brand. They overlook the imperfections and high prices because they need the brand more than they need the product, so they are prepared to pay a hefty premium.

When it comes to cars many buyers will look for the same manufacturer every time. Ford, Mercedes and Kia owners stand out as the most satisfied repeat-purchasers. These companies all have a single brand strategy. When customers’ needs change they replace one car with another from the same range because they identify with the brand.

Making sure customers come back should be a top priority for every business. They have made one purchase and if they are happy they are likely to become repeat customers. It’s your job to make sure they are happy.

Emotional Engagement

Only 20% of reasons behind buying decisions are logical, the other 80% are emotional. If your company’s branding gives the right emotional signals then people will buy. This gets you out of the suicidal ‘race to the bottom’ where the lowest price is the main USP.

Emotional signals come from happy staff, correct lighting, well-chosen color schemes, ample parking and inviting websites. They come from a well-maintained store exterior, personal contact with the business owner through email, appropriate temperatures, from seeing your company associated with charity events and how easy your mobile app is to use. Everything.

In Conclusion

Large companies that have to account for every cent to their shareholders have huge budgets for branding. The shareholders accept this fact because they know how important branding is to the long-term success of any business.

Branding is the only way to make your company stand out. The image your company has, its brand, is your main route to emotional engagement with prospective customers and success.

How have you set your company apart from the competition? What have you done to ensure your own branding has a positive impact on consumers? Please share your thoughts in the comments box below.