digital marketing

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What is Digital marketing?

Digital marketing refers to any online advertising delivered through online or digital channels that include ads or content you might see on search engines, websites, social media, email, and mobile apps. You may think of it as promoting and selling products and services by leveraging online marketing tactics but it is a massively broad and sweeping term that coves pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing, educational information promotions, SEO, Geo fencing, IP targeting and even digital billboards. In many cases there are also dimensions of digital marketing in print and traditional marketing campaigns. There are as many specializations and ways to produce and engage with within digital marketing as there are ways of interacting with digital media and to put that in gross terms it would simply be better to say it is nearly immeasurable.  To quote one of my favorite developers “Digital Marketing is the strategic use of  SEO as a science, under the unpredictability involved in making art.”

Here are a few examples of some topics on Digital Marketing strategies for websites for you to read about from our industry leading  digital marketing specialists.

5 Ways to Build a Powerful Personal Brand as a Designer

Author: Daniela McVicker

Designers are artists. They use their creative energy to turn ideas into realization and share their special vision of things with the rest of the world. However, just like everyone else, designers need to make a living. That means that there needs to be an entrepreneurial side of them, helping them stand out and succeed as a professional. One of the basic things every designer should do is to create a powerful personal brand.

Your brand is the way you represent yourself to clients, customers, employees, and other designers. It tells them who you are, what you stand for and what you can do. It also allows you to climb the business ladder and grow as a professional.

Take a look at the 5 steps you need to take in order to build a personal brand as a designer.

  1. Define Yourself as a Designer

We may consider this step to be step zero actually. It is about knowing who you are and what you want to do.

Not every designer is the same and not every person is meant to do everything. Before thinking about building your personal brand, you need to be certain that you’ve found yourself and that you’ve developed a personal style.

That includes knowing:

  • what inspires you
  • what kind of designs you want to focus on
  • what you do best
  • what your style is

Only once you figure all these things out can you actually start thinking about branding your work and taking the next step.

So, how do you achieve this?

It takes self-exploration, time and experience to help you realize where you stand as a designer. The more you work, the faster you’ll figure it all out.

  1. Build Your Platforms

People need to know about you and your brand which means that you need a platform for sharing information with your customers. In other words, you need to give your brand a base.

There are two basic platforms you need to cover:

  1. website
  2. social media

Having a personal website is both practical and efficient. It gives you the chance to share:

  • your portfolio: all your best works in one place to help the customers get to know you as a designer
  • hiring information: if people want to contact you and hire you, you should make it available and simple via your website
  • your story: write about your beginnings and professional journey to help your customers understand who you are

Social media accounts give you a chance to bond with your customers even more personally:

  • write daily posts
  • interact with potential customers
  • gather an audience

In case you need help writing your website’s pages or social media posts, you can use proofreading and editing tools such as Grammarly or find reliable writing service.

Once you set up your platforms, you need to consider building a brand image. Take a look at the next step.

  1. Give Your Brand an Image

As a designer, you’ll have no trouble figuring out what you want your brand to “look like” and what kind of a personality you wish to give it.

It’s simple: you need to create a unique visual representation of your brand and be consistent in using it in every aspect of advertising and communication.

That implies:

  • brand colors
  • fonts
  • shapes
  • complexity

Try figuring out what your brand stands for and how to make it visible in your logo, website design, social media posts and everything else associated with it.

“When you think about Coca-Cola, you’re thinking red, right? That’s what you want to achieve with your brand. Make it recognizable and unique and make sure to nurture the same style in all your marketing materials”.

Be consistent and you’ll ensure people recognize your brand without even reading it’s you.

  1. Share Your Vision

It’s always a great idea to bond with your audience on a more personal level. It evokes special kind of emotions with your customers and creates long-term relationships.

What you need to do in order to achieve that is to define your vision and the story behind your brand.

Your vision answers the following questions:

  • What is your aim as a designer?
  • What do you offer to each customer?
  • Why are you different and special?
  • What makes you the best choice a customer can make?

“Define your strengths, skills, and values and make sure you emphasize them in your brand representation. Tell your customers what to expect from you and follow through on your promises”.

  1. Choose a Tone

When you put together your brand image, target audience, vision, ideas and platforms you use, you are ready to wrap the whole brand building story with one final choice: your voice.

This refers to the level of communication you want to be on with your customers and how you want them to perceive you.

Are you going to be:

  • strictly professional: “Dear Sir/Madam, thank you for contacting us. We’ll make sure to reply as soon as possible.
  • more laid back: “Thanks for messaging. We’ll try to reply ASAP.”

This tone of yours is the final touch to building your brand, and just like everything else, it needs to be consistent throughout your entire business journey.

If you find it all to be a bit too much for you, and you prefer focusing on designing and not branding or writing, you could hire an editor to help you make it all possible.

Final Thoughts

As a designer, you are aware of the importance of branding and representation. It’s what you do for a living. That’s why you have to realize you need to brand yourself and make sure the world knows who you are.

Use the advice we’ve given you and try establishing a strong and powerful personal brand as a designer. Think it through, define all your ideas and start working on building your brand.

Author’s bio. Daniela McVicker is a passionate digital marketer. Daniela is interested in everything related to SEO and blogging. She collaborates with Essayguard where she shares her experience and helps marketers make their names in the online world.

Building A Strong Presence On Twitter: A Simple 7 Step Guide

Author: Kaira Ralph

The primary purpose of Twitter, one of the many social media networks, is to help people share their thoughts with the crowd. Experts say Twitter is an example of American microblogging. Some people have deep conversation, and some people get busy with their business. They all profit on Twitter. Now you need to do something that grabs their attention first so that they will follow you. Find the correct time to tweet about your business to get the best engagement from your followers. Here are seven magic steps to increase Twitter engagement up to 100 percent.

Use Twitter Button On Blog

To get more traffic for your business, use a Twitter account. You can share your content on all social media, but Twitter provides an easy way to post the best content. Spread your encouraging message to your audience through Twitter. Here a few reasons to use the Twitter button there are:

  • A possible way to increase your social shares
  • You can connect with who reads your tweets
  • Throw your account name to a huge audience while using Twitter button

How to optimize the “tweet” button? You can see the Twitter share button on a blog post, and it is a useful button to share your content for people’s engagement. You need to know the simple formula for before you post. “Title + by @author + link + via@ your brand” That is called a premade tweet. Add the “tweet this” button on your blog posts and share tweetable content before making a tweet button—one of the most incredible ways to get more tweets and mentions. Use “clicktotweet” on your blog to create a short link to share content on Twitter.

Tracking your Tweets

The tracking method helps to track who shares your tweets. And also, you can find who shares your content without mentioning you. Build a new relationship when you track them, and also you can track feedback directly about your brands. This makes it easy to find when you get a notification while they mention your name. The next time they mention your brand, you will be alerted. Then you can share your tweet directly from your link. It is not necessary to mention brand keywords. You will quickly find a loyal audience from the crowd, and it gives better results than enforceable followers.

Reply And Engage With Them

Create Q&A sessions on your tweets or retweets. Find out who comments to your questions. Reply to comments and thank them for sharing your content. Use some smileys and memes or GIFs to invite them to follow you. In this way, you can build brand advocates and grab new audience’s attention to drive website traffic with Twitter retweets by posting prompt replies. Followers like you when they follow or like your brand. It’s all online relationships. Use some tricks to approach them to start a conversation like in real life. Write some “reply” or “thank” templates to interact with people and pin it to save your valuable time. For example, you can thank people for giving you a lot of Twitter retweets and post nice words as comments.

If you are a global company, you need to know different languages to reply to them or collect some important templates and translate them to pin it. One most significant point is if you respond to their comments using the “@” symbol to mention a specific person or few persons. It helps to keep your followers with you.

Try To Boost Your Tweets

You should optimize your content to stand out your brand from the crowd feeds. This helps to increase your credibility when you post the right content, and you can build a trustable relationship. Influencers will surely notice your optimized content, and they follow you, which brings more engagement. Experts say your content should include headlines up to 50 characters, author name, website link, hashtags, and clear images. Most people like to see visual content on social media platforms, so give some importance to tweets with niche images.

Formula format : “Headline + author name + link + @domain name + any 2 hashtags + images”

Add # Hashtags

Image credits

To increase your tweet’s visibility, add relevant hashtags on tweets, so people search easily for your tweets to their business. People quickly analyze your posts when you organize your tweets’ topics. Famous hashtags help to monitor your tweets from the crowd, and it increases your reach. First, make a list of keywords brand-oriented and use competitor tools to shortlist them. Create a tweet with relevant keywords, and you can add up to 10 hashtags, but 2-3 hashtags are best forever. Use “#” symbol before you start.

Each Day Follow Up To 100 People

One smart way to increase your networks when you follow the right people; you can connect with the audience. And in this way helps to build authority with a huge audience. If you have 15 minutes per day, you can follow up with 100+ new people every day. Every Twitter account can follow up to 400 accounts per day, and if you have verified accounts, you can follow up to 1000 accounts per day. This limit depends on ratios, and it will be different for each account.

Visit Live Events On Twitter

Image credits

If you attend live events, you have real-time conversations on Twitter with lots of people. Live programs build a strong relationship with industry, and Twitter chat is always best to grow your audience. You can start a Twitter chat for unique conversations and some brands having their twitter topics about their brand, but they already choose these chat topics. You always need to update about what time and date the chat is. Hashtags help to connect all tweets to make them ready for the conversation. Check the results when you finish your live Twitter chats.

Conclusion

Trying these steps to build a strong presence on Twitter. Remember, short and sweet rules for while tweeting:

  • Repeat tweets, but don’t repeat the same type of content
  • Calculate ratio before tweets
  • Don’t confuse your followers
  • Write a good bio for impressions
  • Tweets not only promote yourself
  • Ignore the spammers, but don’t ignore any people
  • Follow the organization, if you are interesting
  • Stay positive with people

If you use these awesome steps on your tweets, get more engagement from Twitter’s retweets.

Author Bio

Kaira Ralph works at Rousesocial as a social media strategist and a content writer. She contributes a lot of articles focusing on the latest social media trends to many blogs across the web. Her passions involve reading, painting, and traveling.

Conversational Forms Are Shifting the Design Mindset

Author: Romy Toma-Catauta

Conversational user interface is the new and popular digital interface that changes the way users interact with their devices. It enables effective, natural, and customized customer interaction. Plus, it can uncover what users think, create a significant database, improves proficiency and accuracy. Conversational interfaces have taken the web design world by storm and have led to new trends, one of them being the development of conversational forms.

Although traditional web forms are still popular, conversational forms seem to have a bright future. From now on, companies that need web designers will also have to find those specialists that know how to design conversational web forms and build amazing user experience. Staying updated with the latest web design trends and requirements such as mobile app development and using a comprehensive hiring guide are tools that can help companies find the right candidates faster.

Customer support tickets turn into engaging and effective conversations

Directing users to a tutorial, to the knowledge base or asking them to submit support tickets has been replaced with chat interfaces. Users who are inspecting a product or a service may require clarification about certain features or benefits and may need supplemental help through chat. Providing that on the product page saves them from having to navigate elsewhere in order to contact a customer support specialist.

Through customized questions and a general proactive approach, users get quick answers that solve their problems. It creates room for rapid, delightful and helpful customer interactions that improve user experience. Users are not treated anymore like ticket numbers as chat interfaces facilitate conversations between people who need solutions and the people who can help them. Instead of having information spread over multiple pages, users are funneled through conversational forms that provide only the details they need at a particular step.

Deeper personal connections through a customized user experience

Almost anything can be personalized from tone, gender, to the pace of speech. Conversational experiences need to be personal, high-quality, and to empathize with users. Interacting with conversational forms the way users would do with their friends is essential for engagement and retention. As an effect, users start to perceive devices as less than a machine, but more as a friend.

They provide more personalized answers through a conversational form, and at the same time, they receive customized answers that help them solve their problems faster. The below form by Codepunker has a customized submit button in order to look and feel like a natural conversation. Thus, its submit button copy says Where should I begin? instead of displaying a more general and dull message such as Submit.

No need for separate spam prevention measures

When using conversational forms, there is no need to have separate spam prevention measures such as CAPTCHA. Since users are able to take particular actions and be part of conversational interactions, this it’s proof of their humanity, so there is no need for CAPTCHA anymore.

Segment users quickly and provide a better user experience

Conditional sequences enable data collection and turn it into a valuable way to segment users. User segmentation helps UX designers understand the needs and the typical online behaviors of specific groups of people. As a result, web designers understand what best supports users’ needs and create relevant experiences and products for specific user segments to solve their problems. They will be able to provide guidance for users and let them know where they are on the website and what is expected of them.

Aside from conditional sequences, there is also the possibility to include specific calls to action based on users’ answers. Conversational forms guide users through everything they need to help them achieve their goals. Below, you can see an example of a search engine results form based on conditional logic –  the output changes depending on what the user selects from several options.

Conversational forms decrease friction between users and screens

As one of the goals of web designers is to decrease the friction between visitors and screens, conversational forms will be the tool that does that. Low friction questions such as “What’s your name?” or “What’s your goal?”, image selector buttons to reduce typing, predictive questions, buttons offering specific answers targeted to the user, conditional logic to customize the questions on later steps, or closed intents are all elements that help decrease friction for users.

Building conversational forms is a huge shift in the way web designers think about and adapt to a new type of interface, which seems to become more and more popular. Perhaps the challenge for web designers will be to adapt to this new major change and start improving their skills when creating these interactive and modern web forms. The future of conversational forms is bright and it will be a time for more meaningful and pleasant interactions using the new technology, but it depends on how web designers decide to shape it.

Author bio:

Romy Toma-Catauta works in the marketing field and is passionate about writing on remote work, business, interior design, and psychology.

4 Rules Of Digital Marketing For Achieving Better Results On The Web

Author: Gianna

In the era of the Internet, image culture, and ubiquitous information, most small, medium, and large enterprises decide to use various online communication channels. Internet marketing turns out to be more affordable than traditional forms of marketing and allows for better personalization, more accurate monitoring of the campaign progress, and tracking of real results. In this article Licreative technologies describes the 4 Digital marketing rules and guidelines for better results on the Internet

The Internet, including social media, is currently a very strong and popular space for marketing activities:

  • Over 3 billion people around the world are active in social media.
  • 95% of people aged 18-34 are willing to follow their favorite brands on social media.
  • 72% of consumers want brands to offer discounts and other promotions on social media.
  • On average, 46% of users take action after displaying a video ad on YouTube.
  • 64% of online consumers confirm that video ads viewed on Facebook influenced their purchasing decisions.

There is a reason why internet marketing is described as one of the most dynamically developing branches of promotional and sales activities. The scope of its operation is so wide that in fact, everyone will find an appropriate area for them to focus their activities on.

What are the benefits of online marketing?

By 2021, spending on Internet marketing is projected to reach over $ 375 billion. This state of affairs is influenced by many benefits that are associated with the use of e-marketing activities. The most important benefits are:

  • reaching potential customers 24/7,
  • access to detailed data on recipients, which allows you to better personalize messages and adjust tactics to real expectations and needs,
  • automation of certain marketing processes, which in turn saves not only time but also money,
  • the ability to measure the conducted activities and their optimization to achieve better results,
  • strengthening ties with recipients by interacting.

The only question is how does it look in practice?

Developing a comprehensive internet marketing strategy is a complex and time-consuming task. However, knowing and applying the most important digital marketing principles will not only make your work much easier but will also affect the effectiveness of your online activities.

Internet marketing in 4 steps

Below, I discuss the 4 most important principles of internet marketing that you should know. Thanks to the knowledge of these rules, your e-marketing activities will be even more effective and reach a specific audience.

Step 1. – Define your  e-marketing campaign strategy and  goals

No digital marketing campaign will succeed without defining clear goals and strategies describing what you want to achieve and by what methods.

To this end, it is worth following several case studies, market reports, and looking at the activities of competitors. The last of these points can be done in several ways. The use of competition analysis tools is one of them.

In defining your brand strategy, you need to consider three aspects:

  1. Your audience
  2. the goals you want to achieve
  3. and the results you want to get along with the way you measure them.

Step 2. – Create a communicative brand 

Today, consumers expect a personalized and unique experience resulting from contact with brands. In practice, this means that:

it is worth knowing what the identity and personality of your brand is, the focus should be on the skillful implementation of this communication in selected channels.
This will apply to your website, selected social media, marketing communication delivered via mailings, and operation on any other platforms that will be relevant to your business and which you will define in advance in your internet marketing strategy.

Aesthetic graphic presentation of the brand

Another important aspect that builds brand communication is its visual coherence and user-friendliness (UX / UI / responsiveness).

In practice, it comes down to using the same fonts, colors, graphic themes, layouts, slogans, images, making sure that the website is responsive and looks aesthetically on any electronic medium.

Your brand should be easily identifiable and aesthetically presented in each of the used communication channels, starting from the website and ending with social media channels.

Step 3. – Measure results for better conversion

If the campaigns you create are unique, interesting, valuable and of high quality, it will contribute to building a positive image of your brand and increasing trust in the brand.

Do you want to find out if your online marketing campaigns are effective? You should simply follow their results in the world.

In the “Analysis” tab you will find information on:

  • social media coverage – the estimated number of people who have had contact with statements about the brand,
  • interaction on social media – total number of likes, comments, and shares,
  • the number of positive and negative statements,
  • participation of women and men in the discussion about the brand.
  • All of them can help measure the effects of your campaign.

You can create such reports based on a selected period. You must keep your vigilance and follow up on campaign results.

Constant monitoring of results will allow you to see actions that do not convert, so do not waste time on them, and on the contrary – it will help to isolate those aspects that work best for your business.

Step 4. – Establish relationships with Internet users

Internet marketing, unlike traditional promotional forms, allows you to tighten ties with recipients much more efficiently and on a larger scale. And most importantly – this applies to both existing customers and potential ones!

So let’s use its potential and cultivate relationships with your customers interested in your product or services. Deepen contacts by engaging in communication with the client:

  • react to comments and suggestions,
  • track customer needs,
  • be active and even proactive.

Online marketing customer service is a long-term and well-documented investment. Nothing is lost on the network, information is spread very quickly, so caring for the quality of customer relationships can affect the company’s reputation

This is helpful not only because of the time saved that would have to be spent when manually searching for mentions of the brand. Many users do not use the brand profile marking in their entries, and internet monitoring also allows them to reach these threads. Thanks to this, you will not miss any ongoing conversation about yourself and you will be able to join it directly.

A useful function that will allow you to efficiently manage customer service on the Internet is sentiment analysis. The tool will automatically evaluate the nature of the statement due to positive, negative, or neutral overtones.

When determining online marketing activities, it is worth starting with planning. With a well-thought-out online communication strategy, defined goals, methods of achieving, monitoring, and measuring them, you will achieve the most valuable results.

By using e-marketing techniques, you can increase brand awareness, customer engagement, and loyalty, build interest among potential customers and ultimately – increase conversion and financial results. What you want to achieve and in what volumes depends only on you.

Public Library Website Design

Author: Sean H. Website Facebook Instagram LinkedIn

Carroll County Public Library needed an updated website that was easy to use for visitors. We provided them with a great website that worked for both them and their users.

Physician Practice Medical Office Website Design

Author: Sean H. Website Facebook Instagram LinkedIn

Dr. Louie Williams came to Design Web for digital marketing and a website for his physical medicine practice. He was establishing a new business and needed assistance with a new website, social media, email, and Google Maps. We were able to wrap everything up in a nice package and delivered a fantastic product that patients could use to find his office and register for treatment.