While you may feel like those years spent in classrooms and on campus (and in the pubs too!) have taught you everything you need to know about writing, this is not the case. I earned a degree in English Literature from the University of Waterloo and, now, I understand the differences between school and the workplace. I spent four years reading novels, crafting essays and honing my writing ability and style, which, truthfully, is only part of the repertoire of abilities a copywriter must have.

Instead of using the skills and knowledge you acquired in university to do the job, use them to learn how to do it. For example, my position at Yabsta Digital requires me to learn and use many digital skills, such as social media and search engine optimization. While my degree program did not cover these topics, I attribute my ability to study and retain the information effectively to my university experience. When faced with writing about a subject you’re unfamiliar with, use the research skills that served you so well in school to accomplish the task.

University truly is just the beginning. As you continue on in your new role, absorb as much as you can and never stop learning. While it may sound cliche, there really is no such thing as a stupid question. View this new position as a continuation of the learning process, whether you’re fresh out of school or have been navigating the waters of employment for quite some time. When it comes down to it, university must be acknowledged as a foundation in order to be successful – it has provided you with a certain set of skills, and, more importantly, an understanding of how you learn. It’s up to you to use those abilities and knowledge effectively, professionally and with advancement in mind.

Image Credit: Brice Ambrosiak (Flickr)

The numbers speak for themselves (see chart): businesses that publish a blog report higher returns on investment than those that don’t, signifying increasing trust in the medium as a company “voice” that speaks directly to customers. This presents limitless opportunities for small businesses in decidedly “local” jurisdictions who already know their target audience and how to speak to them.

But what are the best practices for starting a blog and keeping it consistently updated with fresh, original content that’s relevant to your business? That all depends on your time, creativity, available resources and the nature of your company: it’s important to use the tools at your disposal to create a “voice” or “persona” that represents your offerings without seeming pushy. An ideal way to do this is by staggering directly self-promotional posts between genuinely helpful or interesting posts that relate to your field. Below are two different examples of small business types and how they can respectively use blogging to generate interest and increase ROI (assuming a daily posting schedule):

Business-To-Customer Example: A Charter Fishing Boat

• Monday: Post about seasonal fishing conditions in the region (Helpful)

• Tuesday: Post about most recent fishing trip with photos of customers enjoying themselves (Interesting & Self-Promotional)

• Wednesday: Post about most common types of fish caught (Interesting & Helpful)

• Thursday: Post about most recent rates, specials and promotions (Self-Promotional)

• Friday: Post a roundup of links to other fishing blogs with a brief description of each post being linked to (Interesting)

Business-To-Business Example: A Commercial Security & Alarm Company

• Monday: Post about recent crime statistics in your area and the importance of an integrated security systems for businesses (Helpful & Self-Promotional)

• Tuesday: Post about most recent alarm system models on the market and review by effectiveness (Interesting & Helpful)

• Wednesday: Write a response to a topical industry-related consumer report and how your business has been affected by the findings of the report (Self-Promotional & Interesting)

• Thursday: Post about recent developments in CCTV technology (Interesting)

• Friday: Post about the costs associated with surveying/installing a security systems and link to your pricing page (Helpful & Self-Promotional)

Though blogging five times per week may seem excessive to business owners with minimal time to spare, there’s a direct correlation between increased blogging frequency and higher return on investment, as evident by the chart on the left. Like most things in life, the more you put into blogging, the more you get out of it. if you’re candid and passionate, it’ll show.

Excessive as this may sound to skeptics, thousands of small business owners with insufficient time or resources have taken to hiring professional bloggers as a scaled-down, cost-effective alternative to a full public relations campaign. While marketing yourself through social media platforms, SEO and a clean-coded website is still important, blogs provide a special type of value which says to your customers that you’re passionate about what you do, and that your passion is reflected in the quality of the products and/or services you offer.

At Yabsta Digital our team completely immerse themselves in all aspects of digital culture, from community management and the creation of sustained social media marketing campaigns to designing and developing effective multi-touch user interfaces for smartphones and tablets. Our mantra is to help our clients champion their products, brands, and services in the digital space.

It almost goes without saying, the Web has become an incredibly dominant medium for information exchange, commerce, and communication. We help our clients leverage the necessary tools and technologies to get the most out of their digital assets and achieve exceptional results.

Social media increasingly plays a significant role in our clients’ digital marketing efforts. We believe an active social media presence encourages stronger, more lucrative interactions between our clients, their brands, and their audience.

Facebook, often seen as a barometer for how influential the social Web has become, recently reported their monthly active users have grown to a staggering 1.11-billion people, up 23% from 901-million just 1-year earlier. Advertising revenue has similarly kept pace up to $1.25-billion in the first quarter of 2013, up 43% from $872-million in the first quarter of 2012.

Clearly we’re spending more time online, particularly with social media and we’re sharing much more about ourselves. Not surprisingly, one of the fastest growing segments of the Web, demographically speaking, are teens and millennials. The epicentre for this group: the once obscure now completely mainstream Tumblr network. Last week Yahoo! shelled out $1.1-billion U.S. to capitalize on Tumblr’s diverse mix of digital communicators, networkers, and influencers, further evidence social networks are poised to become the biggest advertising platforms of the future —that is, if you needed any proof.

The undeniable power of social media is matched by the diversity of its presentation and the audiences it attracts. With so much choice, finding the right fit for each client is the challenge, the fun, the joy. We’re pushing hard to make them all champions of the digital space.

Image Credit: Jason A. Howie (Flickr)

Proper preparation is key to avoiding feeling overwhelmed. My approach when starting at Yabsta Digital was research, research, research, and then research some more. I memorized the service offerings, as well as key points of the company’s history. I browsed through design portfolios, building confidence in my understanding of the digital agency as a whole. Having this knowledge on the first day will wow your employer and colleagues.

Industry-specific knowledge is also quite important. If your role involves, for example, search engine optimization and social media, learn as much as you can about those fields. While I was lucky enough to receive some booklets prior to my start date, and spent many hours studying them, not all employers provide training material in advance. It is your responsibility to educate yourself.

Boosting your self confidence is another great way to start off on the right foot. Discuss your new knowledge with a friend or family member, and practice explaining new concepts, such as search engine optimization. If you have a tried-and-true feel-good method, such as a haircut, manicure or afternoon with friends, now’s the time.

Though this may seem cliche, get a good night’s rest and have a healthy breakfast. Give yourself plenty of time to get ready the morning of, and, if possible, read over the job-related material you’ve collected so that it’s fresh in your mind. Personally, I found having brief conversations with the people I’m closest to on my way in to my first day at Yabsta Digital’s Toronto office boosted my confidence and calmed my nerves.

Arrive ten to fifteen minutes before you are scheduled to begin; the extra time will ease punctuality-related worries. Put a genuine smile on your face, shake your colleagues’ hands and have an open mind. Put your all into everything you are assigned, and demonstrate your knowledge, efficiency and communication skills. Ask for clarification when necessary, and be warm, friendly and receptive. Follow this advice and your first day is guaranteed to go well.

Coming up is Part 3, which will discuss the role a university education plays in the work setting.

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Faced with so many competing advertising mediums, web users today are increasingly cautious about what type of content warrants their trust online. Spam, scams and Nigerian Prince-infused junk mail have eroded public confidence in the internet’s power as a reliable marketing tool and continue to hinder honest advertiers who have a genuine product or service to offer. Consequently, producing and marketing engaging web video has emerged as one of the most successful inbound marketing strategies for brands: not only does it present your offerings in a fluid visual medium, but encourages users to stick around and watch the whole thing, thereby keeping them on your site longer.

But what makes a good web video truly stand out? Effective inbound marketing is predicated on making your website interesting enough for people to want to visit naturally, and video acts as an immediate attention-grabber, providing dynamic engagement with your brand that articulates your business’ preferred messaging tone (ie. light-hearted/humorous, solemn/professional). Here are two examples of web video branding from our own portfolio that strike different tones with equally effective results:

Bermuda Cablevision

The country’s sole digital cable provider, Bermuda Cablevision gave us free reign to not only produce and market a corporate video for them, but to develop the concept and shooting script ourselves. Taking advantage of this creative license, we realized that the product being promoted (hi-speed internet) offered the potential for virality if we came up with a unique enough angle. Inspired by the tendency of humour in advertising to promote brand awareness, we got to work on an ambitious concept that played on peoples’ loathing of internet lag for comedic purposes, promoting Cablevision’s new internet package as a “cure” for “bufferitis” (a fictional disease that “afflicts” those with slow connections). An unprecedented success, the original web video became so popular that Bermuda Cablevision not only began running it on local television, but commissioned us to produce a second video that expanded on our original concept. In this case, upbeat, lighthearted branding combined with competent viral marketing had proven a golden combination.

Tokio Millennium Reinsurance

Looking to stand out in a competitive global reinsurance market, Tokio Millennium required a video branding strategy that spoke to their corporate ethos and brought life to their slogan: “Run With Us”. The video was designed to both project their public persona as “active” and keep potential customers on their site as long as possible with prime placement on the homepage. With access to a skilled cinematographer, we collected original footage from around the globe with carefully-planned location shoots in Bermuda, London, Australia and Switzerland to accentuate the company’s global presence in the reinsurance market. The aura of vigor and worldliness accentuated by the footage gives Tokio Millennium’s potential customers the sense that they’re an innovative, progressive organization that’s always on the move.

Web users trust video content more than text or static imagery because it signifies a time investment on behalf of your business: it implies you went to the trouble to shoot, edit and produce a complex piece of dynamic media, which in itself makes it more likely to warrant a click. Combine that logic with a fresh, interesting creative concept and you’re almost certain to attract attention from your target audience.

Image Credit: Ikan News Blog

I emerged from my university bubble in 2010, ready to take on the real world. Armed with a bachelor’s degree in English literature, and unsure of exactly what it is I wanted to do, I jumped right in and started job hunting. While I didn’t expect it to be easy, I was admittedly a bit naive about the job market as a whole. I had to hunt for positions related to my field, and found that entry-level employment was scarce.

Landing a job at a reputable digital agency is no simple task, but one piece of advice that’s withstood the test of time is to do your research. Tailor each and every resume and cover letter for the company in question. When applying to Yabsta Digital, I related my skills and education to their service offerings to demonstrate exactly how I would be able to benefit the company.

Tailor each and every resume for the job on offer. Sell yourself as a great prospect for the job you’re applying for. Be specific. What does make you a good candidate for that position? Don’t make them guess. And don’t sell yourself short. Use your work experience, education and extra curricular activities to your best advantage in pitching Brand You.

The interview’s next. Even if job interviews make you as nervous as the idea of swimming in the ocean makes me (sharks anyone?), you must radiate positivity and professionalism. Never lose sight of why you’re the best candidate and let your personality shine.

Be sure to send a follow-up email or letter shortly after. Thank the interviewer for taking the time to meet with you and reiterate your qualifications. If you discussed an issue you feel to be of particular importance, such as availability, touch on that as well. Taking this extra step ensures that you stand out among the other applicants.

Following the interview, patience is key. While it’s tempting to make contact again to inquire about your status – don’t. If your personality and skills align with the needs of the company, the phone will ring. Not being selected for a coveted position can be disheartening but, from one budding copywriter to another, it’s all part of the process. Losing out on certain roles lead me to where I am today, which is exactly where I want to be.

Stay tuned for more adventures from a copywriting newb! Part 2 will cover how to tackle that daunting first day.

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In this post we’ll look at the mobile equation from more of a UX design perspective by delving into some of the key elements that will ensure your audience has a great experience when interacting with your digital content through a mobile device.

The mobile Web is unique from the traditional desktop browser experience. The most obvious difference is screen size. While mobile displays are physically much smaller than conventional laptop and desktop screens, most modern smartphones will usually run a higher screen resolution (a.k.a. pixel density), somewhere in the neighbourhood of 150 ppi (that’s pixels per inch) all the way up to 326 ppi on the iPhone 5. Again, this resolution is much higher than you’ll typically find on a desktop monitor. Inevitably this will cause an older Web site —that is, one that has not been mobile-optimized— to render at a much smaller size in a mobile Web browser. Page headlines and body text for example, set at a common 14 pixels or less, will likely appear illegible to most readers. In 2 and 3-column Web site layouts this problem is amplified by the additional information cluttering up the limited screen dimensions which causes everything to appear tiny in the viewable screen area.

In a mobile-optimized layout less is more. Removing sidebar columns in favour of a single column layout lends precious screen real estate which can be devoted to larger body text and more clearly defined menus and buttons allowing for greater overall ease of use and less eye strain on the part of the user.

Formula1.com is a textbook example of a desktop centric Web site that renders poorly on a mobile device (screenshot taken on Samsung Galaxy SIII smartphone). In this particular case a conventional 2-column layout becomes a usability nightmare even when rendered in landscape mode. Having trouble reading the text? This is a classic mobile UX faux-pas. Visitors are forced to constantly zoom-in on specific regions of the interface and pan around the screen to effectively read text or navigate between pages. Buttons and text hyperlinks are insufficiently proportioned to accommodate touch inputs —that is, finger taps as opposed to mouse clicks.

A great example of a mobile-optimized Web experience is this very site you’re reading right now. Yabstadigital.com employs a fully responsive design layout that dynamically sizes and reorients visual elements to make the best possible use of the available screen real estate.
You could think of a responsively designed Web site as one that intuitively knows how big the user’s screen or browser area is and how best to rearrange the content for optimal display efficiency. If you’re curious and on a laptop or desktop computer, try resizing your Web browser window to see how our site layout smartly adapts to the changing window dimensions as you expand or contract the browser area. Whether you’re viewing this site on a gigantic 27-inch desktop monitor or a 4-inch smartphone, headlines and body text will always render clear and readable; buttons and menu items will be easily accessible for touch or mouse driven input, and above all, distractions such as excessive page scrolling and zooming in/out actions will be kept to a minimum allowing you to focus on the site content itself rather than wrestling with the interface.

Mobile design considerations play a critical role in establishing credibility in the digital space and require special attention. As we’ve seen, a poorly executed mobile site conspires to undermine the user experience and can result in higher bounce rates and leave your audience with a fractured impression of your business offerings.

By contrast, a well planned and executed mobile design strategy has the capacity to enhance audience engagement with your brand, product or service and foster more successful interactions. Mobile is quite simply an investment in your business’s future livelihood and competitiveness.

Facebook affords small businesses the advantage of raw, direct interaction with their end consumers: the opportunity to spark brand endorsement and encourage feedback in a social setting via mutually sustaining client relationships. Simply put, it’s one of the cheapest, most effective ways to cut through the competition of traditional web advertising and quickly interact with target demographics in local markets.

Nurturing client relationships on Facebook requires an equal balance of creativity and quantitative analysis, but more importantly, a clear understanding of how business pages work hand in hand with the Adverts Manager to collect social data that helps you form relationships with users who are most likely to become customers and/or spread brand awareness.

Facebook’s Adverts Manager uses the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising model to charge for using it’s data, giving you flexible payment options that conform to your budget, who your business page is targeting and how you want to reach them. In light of this, the biggest challenge facing brands looking to get heard on Facebook is the sheer complexity of the provided data and how to get the most bang for their advertising buck.

Growing a Facebook fan base requires adapting your company’s voice to appeal to a discerning, previously untapped user demographic (social media members). Eager to get their names out there, many brands starting out on Facebook make the mistake of haphazardly rushing their PPC ads to generate high quantities of “Likes” and give the illusion of having a dedicated fanbase. This shortsightedness is wasteful, however, as the real value lies in customizing and targeting your ads so they’re most likely to be seen by the users who are actually (and actively) seeking your services.

As one of our larger Facebook clients, Bermuda Yellow Pages presented us with a unique challenge when we first took over their page. After years of being known solely as a trusted print directory, their Facebook messaging needed to reflect that they were web savvy and adaptive to the speed of technology as more and more of their clients explored online advertising as an alternative. With a PPC campaign specifically designed to address the individual needs of their advertising clients while also raising awareness of their own brand, we helped them grow their fanbase by over 500% and sustain trust-based relationships with their existing customers. Such successes require market research (knowing your audience), carefully crafted ads, good timing and rich, user-specific data, which Facebook provides in spades.

As they continue to refine the Adverts Manager and expand their user base, Facebook and its data collection process offer ever-increasing value to small business owners seeking more personal interactivity with their brands. With scores of demographic targeting options, low pricing based exclusively on user follow-through/goals achieved and a potential market of over 1 billion people worldwide, experimenting with some PPC is really a no-brainer.

In a future post I’ll explore Facebook’s updated news feed format and how to maximize your business page’s reach if you don’t have a budget for PPC.

Image Credit: SEHabitat

According to the Wall Street Journal’s tech blog, one in six sites on the internet today is built in WordPress, showing just how formidable the world’s most popular Content Management System has become. As such, there are thousands of associated third party plugins for web designers to use, both commercial and non-commercial. This post will go over some of the simplest non-commercial plugins that are available for designers who may still be adjusting to WordPress.

All In One SEO Pack

This tool allows for simple addition of SEO tags throughout your site’s individual pages, letting you change titles, keywords, and descriptions with ease. Each field also has a word counter which show the number of characters most ideal for SEO.

NextGen Gallery

NextGen is a simple-to-use gallery plugin that allows for dynamic photo displays, making it an ideal option for clients with little technical knowledge who need to update pictures on a regular basis. It also comes in handy for time-sensitive projects that require a simplistic, clean-coded and easily-editable image display solution.

Contact Form 7

Fairly self-explanatory, Contact Form 7 is a clean plugin that allows for easy insertion of a fully functional contact form with multiple fields on any page of your site. One of the most popular WordPress plugins due to its simplicity and regular updates, it’s a trusted way to receive emails directly from web users engaged with your site.

Enhanced Text Widget

Though WordPress allows users to easily add widgets to their sites, it offers no self-coding options other than basic Text and HTML. Enhanced Text Widget allows you to integrate Text, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, WordPress Shortcodes and PHP into your widgets, allowing developers to take them to the next level.

WP FileBase Manager

This is a highly useful tool if your website has an abundance of content that users need to be able to interact with easily, allowing you to upload files from both the front and backend of your site. In the backend you can easily organize your files into different categories, making it user friendly for both developer and their clients. It also comes with different widgets to enable file downloading and uploading in the sidebar of the site.

Though there will always be an overwhelming number of different plugins that do essentially the same thing, the aforementioned are tried and true. With the popularity and influence of WordPress continuously expanding, the number of available plugins increases exponentially, so it’s important to know which ones are right for your site. The important thing to remember is that not all plugins are regularly updated and not all of them are safe from online attacks. These five plugins not only stand on the merit of their functionality, but are also safe and regularly updated.

View a full list of available WordPress plugins here.

Image source: Smashing Magazine

Last week the cellular phone celebrated an incredible milestone. 40 years ago on April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, a senior engineer at Motorola, made the first mobile phone call from a Manhattan New York street corner with a prototype design that would eventually go on to become the world’s first commercially available mobile phone in 1983. At a whopping $3,995 US, the DynaTAC 8000x model was arguably one of the most expensive personal tech-oriented accessories of the day. Not surprisingly these first cellular phones began making regular appearances on popular TV and in movies, taking on the aura of an exclusive and rather impractical tech toy perhaps only the rich and powerful could ever hope to afford.

Today, thankfully, a lot has changed. Mobile phones have become incredibly ubiquitous in the marketplace and are currently the driving force behind the growing digital economy.

A recent Nielsen report suggests the growth of mobile devices has reached a “critical mass” with greater than 80% of consumers 16-years of age and older in developed countries using a mobile phone. In terms of daily usage, we’re using our phones for an ever widening array of tasks, from video streaming and price-comparison shopping, to email, social networking, banking and location-based navigation. Many of these tasks several years ago were only possible through desktop computers. Smartphone devices, now with greater processing power and larger screen sizes, are providing a viable alternative to the traditional desktop Web experience.
With more of our Web surfing taking place on smartphones and smaller tablet computer devices, it’s important to consider the benefits of a well-design mobile site and how proper execution can impact your company’s bottom line.

A study conducted by Sterling Research and SmithGeiger surveyed 1,088 US adult smartphone Internet users and found that nearly 75% of users prefer a mobile-friendly site:

• When they visited a mobile-friendly site, 74% of people say they’re more likely to return to that site in the future
• 67% of mobile users say that when they visit a mobile-friendly site, they’re more likely to buy a site’s product or service

The report goes on to suggest that not having a mobile-friendly site helps your competitors and can hurt your company’s reputation in several ways:

• 48% of users say they feel frustrated and annoyed when they get to a site that’s not mobile-friendly
• 36% said they felt like they’ve wasted their time by visiting those sites
• 52% of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company
• 48% said that if a site didn’t work well on their smartphones, it made them feel like the company didn’t care about their business

If you’re a small business owner, start-up, or established company, it’s time to start thinking seriously about solidifying your mobile presence with a Web site designed with the small screen experience in mind. In our next post on mobile we’ll explore what makes a Web site mobile-friendly from a design and execution perspective.

Image credit: samsungtomorrow