charleston sc web design
« Previous EntriesWordle Joy
Friday, June 27th, 2008A cool little application…..called Wordle. Just enter some text and watch a word cloud form. Change it to your liking. Below is a dump of text from our capabilities brochure. Seems like we talk a lot about applications.
Topics: Marketing & Advertising, charleston sc web design | No Comments »
Covering Your Tails
Thursday, June 12th, 2008
Amid all the hub-bub of the shave-o-matic premiere we managed to release a new starter site/blog for VetCareComplete, a new pet health insurance company in Richmond, VA. Because they were just coming out of the blocks we were able to help with overall brand planning, the new identity and tagline and the stage 1 site. The blog will be the basis of a community platform, while a companion site will rollout once the insurance plans are finalized and the company is ready to begin servicing customers and affiliate vets. In the meantime, look for true life stories from the founders (practicing veterinarians) about the crazy things pets get themselves into and therefore the reason they need comprehensive health insurance (just like their owners). Thanks to Matt, Keith and A.J.
Topics: Marketing & Advertising, Sweat & Tears, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design | No Comments »
Definition of Email SPAM Changes
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
Most marketers understand email SPAM as “unsolicited commercial email.” But has the definition changed while we weren’t looking?
A recent survey from Q Interactive and Marketing Sherpa tried to find out why consumers hit the “MARK AS SPAM” button and what they consider SPAM.
The interesting part - most people didn’t even cite “permission” as an issue.
Here are some of their findings.
Definition of SPAM to consumers:
- 56% - consider marketing messages from known senders to be spam if the message is “just not interesting to me.”
- 50% consider “too frequent emails from companies I know” to be spam.
- 31% cite “emails that were once useful but aren’t relevant anymore.”
Why did you hit the “Report SPAM button?”
- “The email was not of interest to me” (41%).
- “I receive too much email from the sender” (25%).
- “I receive too much email from all senders” (20%).
So what does this mean to marketers? Here are a couple ideas:
- Take the pulse of your subscriber base. Find out what they think about the frequency and relevancy of your emails.
- Give more options for subscribers. Make it easy to segment your lists so subscribers only get the most relevant, topical emails.
- Educate your subscribers. The survey seems to imply many don’t understand what the “report SPAM” button does. Help your subscribers understand the process for managing your email communications.
Topics: Fandango, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design, email marketing, tech news | No Comments »
Sucker Jeans
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
Seersucker never looked so good…and a new fashion brand is born. Kudos to Hook for their sinfully good work.
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Morning Commute in Charleston
Friday, March 21st, 2008Being the first day of Spring…and such a nice day at that…decided to share the joy the daily pedal to work. Very lucky to be able to ride back and forth in this amazing downtown. Now if we could get some bike lanes, please. You will notice that one segment along East Bay shows the almost-complete ped-bike lane that connects to the bridge. Nice. Other highlights include Roscoe’s morning bark routine, a sneak peak at the soon-to-come Caviar & Bananas location, and the currently transforming Cigar Factory. Happy Spring.
No Cars Go courtesy of Arcade Fire
Topics: Fandango, Go Green, charleston sc web design | 2 Comments »
Addy Time
Monday, March 17th, 2008
Had a fun Saturday night at the annual Addy awards show…four hours of chat, dinner, open bar and marketing awards. We were excited that a number of 2007 projects received awards. The Bundoran Farm website won a Gold Addy and the Best of Interactive award, the EcoFitness/BlueTurtle Yoga website won a Special Judges award for its tools/widgets, and the Charleston Area CVB Meeting Planner promotional site, Berenyi Inc. website and Drayton Hall animated timeline all won Gold Addy awards.
Other sites winning Sliver and Bronze awards included the Alys Beach website, Merge Advertising website, GetInspired Charleston website, SPCA Building Campaign website, Drayton Hall website, Ethanex Energy website, Ethanex Energy animation, Greenbrier Sporting Club microsite, TBonz Restaurants websites campaign, The Mason Building website, Garden & Gun Magazine website, New Market Charleston microsite and two DPS email campaigns.
Many thanks to all who participated in these projects…including the clients who make them all possible and the many team members who play a part in creating/launching each one. Cheers and thanks also go out to all the volunteers from Ad Fed Charleston who put in huge hours to make the awards and event happen.
Here’s a quick pic of RY, JC and MH celebrating the widget award…
Topics: Marketing & Advertising, Party, Sweat & Tears, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design | 3 Comments »
Social Strategies For Revolutionaries: SXSW Roundup
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008You know your company needs to be involved in social technologies, but where do you start?
At the “Social Strategies For Revolutionaries” session, Charlene Li, a Forrester research analyst (my favorite of the group), gave us the strategic framework for creating a social strategy that will appeal to executives and your target audience.
If you want to dig deeper, she’s got a book called Groundswell coming out soon. This presentation was based on those findings. Here are some choice notes.
What’s The “Groundswell” in Social?
Definition: people using technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.
What Process Can I use to Create a Social Strategy?
Try using the POST process (people, objectives, strategy, technology). Here’s a couple highlights from the first two. Notice technology is LAST!
People: Assessing your customers’ social activities is key. Why start with Myspace/Facebook if none of your customers are there?
To help with this, use what’s called the “social technographics ladder,” combined with knowledge of your customers age.
Obviously, age is a huge driver of adoption level, but there’s evidence more and more boomers are starting to become joiners rather than just spectators.
Objectives
Based on your objectives, you’ll want to deploy a social strategy tailored to what you want to accomplish. I had originally typed all these out, but here’s the handy chart to show what they mean, along with the tools to help out and the metrics to use to measure success.
How Do You Get Started?
It’s easy to get overwhelmed. So start small. Using the POST process above, maybe you discover your customers all over the blogs discussing flaws with your product. So you could set up your own blog to help answer those issues, or even create a team (like Dell) whose sole responsibility is to root out those negative stories and turn them into a conversation.
Other important parts to keep in mind, specifically related to internal cultures and staffing:
- Find people most passionate about developing relationships
- Educate executives
- Put someone important in charge
- Define the box with policies and process
- Make it safe(r) to fail
Final notes
- Set up your framework and process
- Start small, think big
- Make social strategy the responsibility of every employee
- Be patient - cultural change takes time
Topics: Blue Ion Team, Marketing & Advertising, SXSW 2008, Social Media, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design | No Comments »
Featuritis & The ABC Rule
Monday, March 10th, 2008Two nice points made by Kathy Sierra….kind of apply to anything/everything.
Topics: Marketing & Advertising, SXSW 2008, Sweat & Tears, charleston sc web design | No Comments »
A Morning Roller Coaster Ride
Friday, March 7th, 2008After our latest upgrade to OSX Leopard, Photo Booth for Mac comes with some pretty nifty options.
Here’s RP and MH taking a morning ride. Heavy-duty video editing courtesy of our amateur-hour editor, CS.
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Two Big Yahoo! Product Announcements
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008A couple of neat product announcements from Yahoo! came out over the last couple of days.
First up is their “Open Search Platform,” which allows third parties (like Blue Ion, hopefully) to modify your search results listings by adding images, more links, and hopefully some sweet animated gifs.
Here’s one from Yelp!
And here’s one I did for Blue Ion.
Learn more about it at the Yahoo! Search blog or from TechCrunch.
Second is the launch of Yahoo! Buzz. Similar to Digg, the more votes you get, the higher your story, video, etc. will go.
Bonus: some of the most popular stories make it to Yahoo! home page! Supposedly they sent Wired 2 million visitors when that happened to one of their posts.
Check out Yahoo! Buzz here, and more analysis at TechCruch.
Topics: Fandango, Marketing & Advertising, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design, tech news | No Comments »