Non-podcast blog posts.

Why You Should Remember Your Branding In Your Web Design

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This is a guest post by Kevin Nave who is a SEO Consultant for Itineris Ltd – Web Design Agency in Ipswich.

When you create a website you want it to do 1 thing – Increase business. This post will describe why your branding can be just as important as your website.

Branding – What, Why and How

When you start your business the first thing most people decide is what they are going to sell or provide. Next thing is to check the competition and get a logo done; the logo then forms the deciding factor of your branding.
Once that logo has been done your documents, business cards and flyers will all revolve around it. For this reason you need to ensure that your logo stands out as much as possible but also fits in with the industry. For example if you are in web design or SEO you would have a fun, snappy and crisp logo in which everyone will remember it but if you are in engineering it will be very serious and to the point. This is why you find large SME and blue chips are so protective of their branding, it can be the deciding factor on success as well as repeat business.

Web Design and Branding – What’s the difference?

So we’ve just established that when you create your branding you need to ensure that all branding is revolved around the logo as that’s how everyone remembers your business but we’ve also established that it needs to be inline with the industry so no-one thinks your trying to be something your not. We will now go into how this fits in your website.

We all know that creating a website can be a long drawn out process having to get the creative right, ensuring it’s SEO friendly and that it’s coding to your spec. The main part that helps you get the business from the get go when people hit your site is the creative, if your creative it’s blue and red but your branding is pink and black people are going to think they’ve hit the wrong site or your not a reputable company and leave. Customers want to see consistency, people don’t like change they will get scared and leave. Always keep your website to your branding you want returning customers to recognise your business and see stuff they trust. I always got taught 1 key thing within usability – Don’t make them think. This means that when people are looking for something they aren’t reading or looking at anything what they actually are doing is skimming for keywords of what they are looking for.

I’m going to use Facebook as an example here. Facebook’s branding is mainly the deep blue and when anyone sees that they think of Facebook, but, Twitter then came along, they used a light blue….coincidence? I think not. You need to remember this with your branding, people like to stick with what they know. We all know you want your business to stand out from the crowd but why not steal business from the competitor, if all your competitors branding is red there must be a reason. Don’t get me wrong stand out by all means, have a funky logo or do pretty clever stuff with your website but your don’t want to take people out of the comfort zone.

So what I’m trying to say is yes your branding is an integral part of your business and your website is the integral part of your business by being your online shop or office. Your website is your customer service, receptionist and salesperson.
So is there a different between your website and branding as you may have guessed….there is no difference. They are both brand guardians and are both brand representation. Treat your website like your brand protects it but make sure it’s memorable.

So how does branding fit in with my web design

As we have established that your branding and your website are exactly the same. The best way to make it fit into your website is to:

  1. Make sure the designers know that the brand is a large part of the business and what your branding colours and logo look like
  2. Look at what your competitors are doing. Stick out, be memorable, do what they are doing but better
  3. If your competitors have a intro video do a interactive video

What I’m trying to say is always keep an eye on competitors as well. Check what they are doing with their websites. The industry leaders are always best to look as they are the leaders for a reason; if they are doing it obviously works. I would never say copy them as I am a SEO consultant duplication is very very bad in my eyes but do something similar or better. Coke and Pepsi are prime examples of this. Pepsi do something amazing, coke does it better, that’s what you need to do with your competitors.

Always remember re-branding campaigns can work wonders – if you relaunch a product or change your colour scheme, PR etc can work wonders for it as it will bring attention to your brand making it stick in their minds….

Kevin Nave is a SEO Consultant for Itineris Ltd – Web Design Agency in Ipswich. He has a large experience dealing with large corporate clients such as BT and PlusNet but he has moved back towards small business and SME to use his experience to help the smaller businesses fight against the large brands online. He has a large experience of online services varying from creative and user experience through to SEO and Social Media.

10benefits

10 Benefits of Google Plus Communities for Marketers

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Google Plus Communities is a recent addition to the social network, it is in some ways similar to Facebook and LinkedIn groups. However, it is different in the way it has been laid out and is definitely easier to navigate.

Brands on Google+ can create communities, this is unlike Facebook where groups can only be created using the personal profile of  the admin, which can severely limit the branded presence in groups. “Administrators have to use personal Facebook profiles when posting to the Group; they cannot comment or post as the brand itself.” 

But more importantly, communities has value for marketers. Below is a list of benefits of Google+ Communities.

Ten Benefits of Google+ Communities for Marketers

1. Creating a community allows brands to identify consumers who have a specific shared interest.

Google Plus Branded Community

2. Identifying popular topics and using it for SEO.  Brands can create content around  topics important to community, which could improve SEO.

Community members can post to a specific topic. If a topic has more posts it could be inferred that topic is more popular.

Topics posted in Google Plus Communities

Note: Google+ does not show the number of entries for each topic, so at this moment it seems this may require more manual sifting. However, I cannot imagine there won’t be some analytics tool that would be able to help with that going forward, or Google may itself roll out this feature.

3.  Gaining more followers.  Communities don’t require a user to also follow the brand’s Google+ page,  however by joining a community a user maybe more likely to also follow the brand’s Google+ page.

The more the Google+ followers a page has the more likely the brand will be able to capitalize on SEO. This is because when a brand publishes the content on its page the more followers it reaches the greater the chances of the content being shared and  discovered by other consumers. Read more

4.  Making the brand more social.  Communities allow an easy and accessible platform for like-minded consumers to connect with each other.

For the Gen Y consumers, community and relationships are of great importance. A brand that facilitates that kinship is more likely to develop loyal customers in the long term.

5.  Allowing consumers a chance to be highlighted.  Communities offer the ability for consumers to share content with other members.

Posts by community members can be selectively shared on the brand’s page, making the connection between the brand and the consumer more intimate.

Cadbury UK Google Plus

6.  Gathering resource.  Content shared by both the brand and the community members make the community a go to place for expert information.

It helps cement the brand’s position as an expert in the category. It makes the brand more reliable and trustworthy.

7.  Discovering new content.  Brands can find unique content that community members publish.

Communities offer crowd-sourced ideas that brands can leverage.

8.  Using communities to get feedback on new product ideas.

Unlike a page where fresh content replaces older content fairly quickly, communities allow for topics that consumers can visit anytime and interact with the respective posts. (Hat tip to +Jerry Daykin)

9.  Identifying the most active community members.  These consumers who post regularly and respond to other community members are brand advocates and potential influencers.

10.  Seeing new or changing trends within the community.  As members gravitate to a specific topic or a new one, brands can have a better understanding and insight.

Share your experiences

These are some of my first impressions on the benefits of Google Plus Communities for marketers.  What do you think?  Where are the opportunities for brands with Google Plus Communities?

 

The original article “TEN BENEFITS OF GOOGLE PLUS COMMUNITIES FOR MARKETERS”  by Krithika Rosenthal was published on Krithika Rosenthal’s Blog

Original Article

 

The Relevance of GIS Technology in the Insurance Sector – A Gamechanger

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Risk assessment is one of the most important aspects for the insurance sector, and geographic information system (GIS) technology is proving to be quite beneficial for that. There are also multiple other advantages of GIS use in insurance and we will take a brief look at some of them to understand how it really can be a gamechanger – if it isn’t one already.

Natural Disaster Prediction and Analysis

The using of GIS tech has enabled insurance companies to properly estimate risks from investing in geographical areas, prone to natural disasters the most. As threat and risk assessment is greatly improved via the availability of previous disaster data and predictive analysis, insurers can now design their policies in such regions adequately.

Worker’s Compensation Insurance Providers Can Benefit from GIS Data

In order to understand how geographical information can be used by insurers providing worker’s compensation insurance, we will need to take a look back at what exactly the service does.

Spatial data refers to any and all information, related to the geography and history of a particular region. If a mining business is looking for workers compensation insurance quote from multiple insurers, GIS can help the insurance companies detect the condition and history of the land where the mining operation will be conducted, along with all the associated health risks for the workers.

By getting a fairly accurate idea regarding how risky the mining operation could turn out to be, they can then proceed to devise a policy with appropriate premium rates and coverage. This would keep them from putting themselves in a precarious situation if something does go wrong during the operation.

The same theory applies to construction sites, as well as almost any other business which involves some degree of risk that can be estimated with GIS technology.

GIS and Fraudulent Claims

If insurance frauds could be detected and avoided by insurers, they would actually have the financial capability and willingness to lower premiums and offer better deals to the clients who need it the most. Unfortunately, though, insurance fraud continues to be a huge problem in not just the United States, but globally as well.

Although geographical data systems can’t exactly prevent all forms of insurance fraud, they can certainly mitigate the chances by eliminating address falsification issues. The address or more specifically, the location details of the client is a very important factor in assessing the risks and determining the premium rates. Therefore, if clients falsify their addresses, the company’s estimation would be thrown off balance, resulting in losses, if and when something does happen to the insured individual.

GIS is one of the most useful data sources in existence and its application is widespread. Sometimes, certain industries use GIS information, without even realizing that they are using it, which further highlights the necessity of the technology. In the near future, as the hardware components and the machine learning capabilities of analytical AI improves even further, the use of GIS could do a lot more than we can even think of at the moment.