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General Assembly’s Digital Philanthropy panel. Our team at Flightpath is proud to be involved with a number of nonprofit organizations in helping increase their digital footprint and improving their communication initiatives, so we were eager to learn more about the ways technology has changed the concept of giving. The panel featured Mike Seiler, Jen Bokoff, Ariel Azoff, and Greg Levin, and was moderated by Julie Levy, philanthropist and founder of Why We Give. The emergence of social media and other technological advances has had a huge impact on philanthropy. It’s been a positive change in most cases — increasing awareness and a building a sense of community — but how far does a ‘like’ or ‘share’ really go in helping these nonprofits?

How technology is changing philanthropy for the better

The role of ‘slacktivists’ in philanthropy

• Tell stories. The demand for authentic stories is high these days, and a story that creates empathy and connection can be powerful.
• Filter calls to action so people can make smart decisions.
• Provide next steps. It’s easy to write a check, but what’s next? Sites like Catchafire match professionals with nonprofits that can benefit from their skill set. This allows people to help in a direct way beyond making a donation.

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“A good guiding principle is this: be there across all stages of the consumer journey, not just when someone is ready to buy. To accomplish this, consider four key moment types that represent the full range of user needs,” Think with Google said in its whitepaper. Learning about micro-moments opens the door to new tactics for your brand that you didn’t know existed. We’ve gone a little deeper in explaining what these moments are, and how your brand can appear in these moments in a positive way. Read on to get inspired.

I-want-to-know moments

I-want-to-go moments

I-want-to-do moments

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I-want-to-buy moments

How to win in micro-moments

1. Put your content strategy first, branding second. If you’re still marketing from the standpoint of building brand awareness, stop. No one cares about you, your products, your tagline, or your brand—at least, not yet. They care about the fact that they have a problem they must solve, and if they don’t, they might lose their job. If you can solve that problem, then they’ll talk to you. Today’s marketing must focus on digitally replacing some of the sales conversations that sales people used to be able to get on their own. And so the idea of mass marketing is out. People don’t want to be sold to, and they won’t tolerate disruption (which is why Netflix, HBO and Amazon are quickly replacing cable subscriptions.) Branding comes ONLY as a side benefit of a content strategy that focuses on thought leadership and creates experience. In other words, if your content is worth reading, they’ll watch out for your emails and blog posts, and may even reach out to you directly if they think you can solve their problem. And when it happens that way, it’s awesome. I’ve seen numerous situations where someone has read a blog post, picked up the phone, and became a client that day. But since they don’t all work quite that smoothly, you need to focus on lead intelligence, which brings us to:

2. Your conversions aren’t really providing lead intelligence.

• What are the things that keep your prospects up at night?
• What are some of the typical business challenges they face and are trying to solve?
• As they’re exploring solutions to those business problems, what are the things they’ll care about throughout their buying process? (For example, are they an early stage shopper, are they looking at vendors, or are they actually narrowing down their selection?)

3. Your content isn’t fully integrated with your sales process.

4. Sales and business development are not educated on how to use content to their advantage.

5. You don’t have the right collection and analysis tools in place.

• Web pages they’ve viewed, webinars they’ve attended, white papers they’ve downloaded, newsletter articles they’ve clicked on, etc. These things provide the sales person with an indication of what to talk about and provide insight.
• Once a qualifying sales conversation has taken place, who is involved in the decision? What’s their buying process? What’s their timeframe?
• How far down the sales cycle are they? Are they just starting to research or are they down to vendor selection?

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Steven Louie, so rest assured it’ll be worth your while to try them out. Enjoy!  

 PerfectPixel

 GetThemAll Video Downloader

 What Font

 Window Resizer

 Full Page Screen Capture

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1. High expectations Customer experience has been a hot topic for the past year, and it seems the more we focus on creating a positive customer experience, the more demanding customers become. Companies like Casper and SoulCycle are setting the bar high by putting their customers’ happiness first. When Casper unexpectedly ran out of mattresses during their initial launch, they ordered air mattresses on Amazon for the customers whose mattresses were backordered. They even put some people in hotel rooms while they waited for their mattress to arrive. Though costly, this was a smart move because a.) it was the first move of many that’s declared Casper’s customer service over-the-top, and b.) they kept customers that they otherwise would have lost to a competitor (and mattress purchase lifecycles are typically six years or longer-making it worth the effort to beat out mattress competitors). If a customer doesn’t enjoy her experience in a SoulCycle class, they’re given a free class credit to try it again. SoulCycle does this because a bad experience could keep a customer from returning, but a free class provides a second chance for a better experience, which raises the likelihood they’ll return. After all, retaining customers is cheaper than attracting new ones. Aside from delighting existing customers and bringing in lots of new ones, companies like SoulCycle and Casper have set a standard for companies to go out of their way to see to their customers’ needs. Focus on delighting your customers in 2017. Whether it’s developing an easy-to-navigate app or website, or hiring cheery customer service representatives, your customers will be expecting their experience to be seamless, so make it a priority for 2017.

2. Authentically mobile experiences

3. Video everywhere

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4. Marketing automation

5. Data attribution

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“Is my website continually producing satisfactory results?”   If your answer to the question is “yes,” and you haven’t updated your site in 5 years, or just redesigned last month, your decision should be obvious. To put it plainly: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Most likely, your answer to the question is ‘no.’ Your sales could be declining or your leads could be lowering in quality. Maybe you’ve never gotten great results from your site. In which case, it’s probably time to redo it. Regardless, if your website isn’t yielding the results you want, you should make some changes. This list of indicators can help you decide whether or not it’s time for an update, and help direct your focus to the parts of your site that need to be improved. If you’re suffering from any of the following, your site could use some improvements.  

1. It’s not helping you drive demand

2. Your visitors are bouncing

3. Your users aren’t converting

4. Your buyers aren’t finding you in the first place

5. Your site is not optimized for a mobile device

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6. You can’t update your site easily

7. You aren’t using HTTPS

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WordCamp is a conference that focuses on anything and everything WordPress. They’re wonderfully informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress volunteers. Everyone from casual users to core WP developers and contributors participate, share ideas, and get to know one another. WordCamps have been held all over the world going back as far as 2006, and this year Belgium had its first Wordcamp in Antwerp!

Recently, l attended WordCamp USA in Philadelphia along with 1,800 other WordPress users ranging from casual bloggers, marketing professionals, experienced designers, tech enthusiasts, and leading technologists. Here’s a break down of a few of my favorite talks I attended while at WordCamp:

Design For Humans Not Robots

Tammie Lister was a delightfully brilliant speaker who illustrated the importance of designing for humans and not for robots. Too often, according to Lister, design lacks humanity. Take, for example, the very popular CAPTCHA: I’m not a robot.

“If you’re put into a position that you need to prove that you are human and not a robot … that’s probably not a very good way to have an interface,” Lister said.

via GIPHY

She speaks at great length to use cases and testing cases where we construct these very particular environments where we focus 100% of our attention on the thing we are doing without taking into account that the person using it likely won’t be giving your application 100% of their attention. They’ll be stirring soup, listening to music, having a conversation, and you know, doing other human things.

My takeaway here was that the default in design should not be that I need to prove I am NOT a robot. I am a human until proven robot, not the other way around, and that what I’m creating isn’t about me and what I want and what makes sense to me. Developers need to think about the end user and what makes sense for them.

How To Talk Content

Lisa Melegari took a deep dive into how to talk ‘content’ from a developer standpoint. As a developer who knows little about content, I knew this talk would benefit me. I’ve been meaning to get into blogging myself for a while, but I’m always held back by the same self-defeating thought: I don’t know where to begin.

“The blank slate paralyzes clients,” Melegari said. And this couldn’t be more true.

Melegari says to not use the word ‘content’ and to break it down into actual concrete things I need. Having the client fill out an onboarding questionnaire asking for age ranges, audience targets, existing assets, or the person in charge of creating those assets is invaluable as it gets the client to think in specific terms. And when designing or developing a site for someone, specifics are vital.

This was a wildly helpful new way to look at generating content for my own hypothetical blog I swear I’ll create someday. I can absolutely identify with the quote about content paralyzing the client. It ought to be a best practice to break down what I want from the client into bite-sized chunks of real identifiable assets instead of vague jargon like ‘content’ or ‘filler text’. While I understand what those words mean, of course, they do nothing to elicit a creative response.

Teaching the FBI to Photoblog with WordPress

When you say “WordPress” I admit I did not think “FBI,” but for Karl Kevilus that is exactly what happened. After a friend reached out to him asking if he’d like to help the FBI set up a website, Kevilus found himself teaching the FBI how to use WordPress to catch bank robbers using bank surveillance photos and footage.

The talk was a brilliant, hilarious, and humble look at the starting of Bandit Tracker, it’s offshoots, its successes, and it’s failures. Some successes include the hundreds of robbers brought to justice thanks to Bandit Tracker and some failures include actually inspiring robberies because Bandit Tracker gave a very succinct overview of a bank’s surveillance technology and layout. Woops. Failures and embarrassments aside, Bandit Tracker has been an invaluable resource for the FBI in catching bank robbers. So much so, that various regional duplicates have cropped up across the country.

Philadelphia is a gorgeous city I had never been to before but will certainly be back. While the talks were engaging, I did manage to find a little spare time to try some of Philly’s world famous delicacies such as the Philly Cheesesteak. I’d had generic cheesesteaks before, of course, and had never really thought them to be anything all that special but this completely changed the game and altered my view on the sandwich. For those curious, I got it with wiz and it was delicious.

All in all, WordCamp was an amazing experience that I will absolutely be repeating in years to come.

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Not so long ago, only e-commerce sites and other sites that handle secure information used HTTPS, the secure (encrypted) version of the protocol for web communications. But nowadays, it is increasingly common for any site to use HTTPS. There are many reasons to use HTTPS on your site, but here are 5 big ones:

1. SEO

A couple years ago Google announced that HTTPS will be used as a ranking signal. This means that sites that use HTTPS will get a small boost in SEO juice. While Google states this will start as a “very lightweight signal” they have stated that they may decide to increase it over time.

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2. User Perception

Google has announced beginning in July 2018 Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as “not secure”.

3. Page Speed

The speed test at www.httpvshttps.com shows there is a significant speed advantage for HTTPS. This may be a surprise to some, as historically running over an encrypted connection was considered slower. This has changed with HTTP/2.

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All major browsers support HTTP/2, the latest version of the protocol of the web. But there is a caveat – they only support it over secure connections. The speed test at www.httpvshttps.com is really comparing HTTP 1.1 with no encryption versus HTTP/2 with encryption. HTTP/2 offers significant performance improvements, so having your site load over HTTP/2 can improve the page load speed significantly, but it only works if you use HTTPS.

4. Security

This, of course, is the original and most important reason to use HTTPS. The other reasons are really just nudges to encourage us to make the web more secure. HTTPS connections are encrypted. This helps ensure that no one is eavesdropping on your communications. HTTPS is required for any forms that capture credit card data, and any sites that capture sensitive data including login credentials. It also prevents a proxy from injecting content such as advertising into your site.

5. It’s Free

Okay, it’s not really a reason to use HTTPS, but it’s a good reason not to not use it. The SSL certificates required to run a site over HTTPS used to be expensive. You can now obtain free digital certificates from the Let’s Encrypt certificate authority. Another free option is to use the Cloudflare CDN.

HTTPS is not a panacea. Just because a site has HTTPS, does not mean everything is safe and secure. There are many threats to information security out there. But HTTPS is becoming a ‘must have’ for just about every website.

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Drupal is an open source content management platform that is used by 8% of the Top 10k sites. Major websites that utilize Drupal include Memorial Sloan Kettering, Whole Foods, and The White House.

Drupal 8 launched in November 2015 with hundreds of improvements, making it easier to use for both developers and site administrators. Since its release, there are 111,000 websites running Drupal 8, while over 1 million are still on 7.
 

So the big question is – When should I move my site to Drupal 8?

If your website is running Drupal 6, you should upgrade to D8 ASAP. D6’s end of life was in February and sites will no longer receive security updates for the platform and modules won’t be maintained.

For those on Drupal 7, there isn’t a rush to upgrade as the end of life for D7 will not be until at least 2019. Drupal 7 will be supported at least until 3 months after the 9.x LTS release comes out, for which a release date has not been set.

If you are building a new website, go straight to Drupal 8. It will be time and cost effective to start with a new D8 install.
 

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Upgrading to Drupal 8

Moving to Drupal 8 is not just an upgrade. Like any other project, you must allocate the proper budget, timeline, and resources. Developers will need to rebuild and migrate the site. There may also be a learning curve as D8 uses the Twig templating system and uses object oriented programming.

A couple items to consider:

• Contributed Modules – Review the modules on your current install and see if there is a Drupal 8 version. Be sure to use a stable version of the module, not a release candidate (RC), alpha or beta.
  There is a free web service called D8upgrade which scans your website and generates a report on the status of your site’s contributed modules. You can also install Upgrade Status. The module checks the list of your installed modules and shows their availability for the new version of Drupal. Its dashboard will show you notes about upgrading the project, as well as a link to download the new version.
• Migration Process – Drupal 8 core includes the Migrate module which allows you to migrate content from your D6 or D7 site.

As we mentioned, be sure you’re equipped with the necessary resources to move to Drupal 8 before beginning the project. Best of luck with the move!

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You’re a blogging machine, but your content don’t seem to making a big impact. Or maybe you’re hard at work at producing ebooks and other valuable content offerings, and still, not seeing a lot of success.

It takes a complex recipe to create a successful content marketer. Your content production could be in great shape, but there’s no point in producing if you aren’t distributing properly. Are your resources low? There could be a lot of opportunities you’re missing if you aren’t recyclying old content to increase your blog traffic.

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If you think it’s time for a website redesign because you’re not getting enough quality leads, you’re probably right. But before hiring a branding company to redo your logo, consider this: you probably don’t know your buyer well enough to attract them in the first place. You may even be targeting the wrong audience.

Making your website look nicer isn’t going to bring in more leads or drive more conversions — bringing in a loyal audience will. It’s easy to get caught up in appearances, but before thinking about how your website looks, think about who you’re selling to.

It’s necessary to figure out not only who your potential buyers are, but also what they care about. What problems do they have (that you can potentially solve?) and where do they hang out?

Is your company’s site lacking a differentiating factor? Odds are, whatever issue you’re having, all of them lead back to personas. The most helpful thing you can do before redesigning your website is to start with persona research.

The first question to ask yourself when redesigning a website is “who is this website for?” Your answer shouldn’t be an aspirational one – it should tell exactly who your current buyers are. It could be that you’ve researched your buyer personas before, but you don’t know enough. Period.

It’s important to note your personas are constantly changing. If your website isn’t performing like you’d like it to, reworking your persona targeting is the place to start.

Knowing your audience

Let’s say you own a flower shop. Your ideal customers may consist of wedding planners and big businesses – people who put in large orders and spend lots of money. But in reality, your most common customers are one-bouquet-buyers on anniversaries and Valentine’s Day.

If your website homepage features deals on orders over $1,000 and flower arrangements for big events, you’re going to see a high bounce rate and will lose a lot of potential buyers. There’s an opportunity to create an ecommerce site to automate the order process and launch holiday campaigns when small orders are in demand. If you miss that opportunity because your focus is on big buyers, you’re missing out on a large portion of your potential revenue.

You need to get real about who your buyers are. Then everything you create should target that customer directly. It all boils down to knowing your audience.

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Building a buyer persona

Researching your customers will eventually answer the question ‘who’s my website for?’ Send out surveys, make calls, read comments, conduct interviews, and start conversations. Getting to know your customers on a deeper level will help you understand their pain points and eventually, how your website can be developed to help solve their problems.

Get to know what kind of jobs and positions your customers hold. What are their interests and hobbies? Building buyer personas will take time, but it will be the framework for the strategy behind your website.

For a step-by-step guide on building buyer personas

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The multiple audience dilemma

It’s possible your company markets to multiple audiences. Say, for example, your website handles B2B and B2C transactions. How do you make your website target both audiences at once?

First, find your primary target. Your homepage should cater to that audience without causing any confusion for the secondary audience. Clear calls to action will make this possible.

If your primary target is the B2B audience, your website’s homepage should be designed around their needs. The calls to action are what prevent confusion for your B2C customers. Both B2B and B2C visitors will be able to easily navigate their way around your site if your home page has a single focus with clear calls to action. A website with one focus is significantly easier to understand than a website with multiple.

Who are you up against?

Researching competitors can help clarify what others are doing right that your company could improve upon. Does your primary competitor’s website provide a better user experience than your company’s site? Why is that experience better? Pointing out the differences will help inform your priorities when redesigning your website.

Beyond inspiring design strategies and functionality improvements, competitive research is necessary to find a significant area of distinction your company can promote.

Finding the whitespace

Does your company have an ownable space? Or are you in a crowded market with a lot of competition? When researching your competitors, determine what area each of your competitors owns. Then, you’ll be able to find the whitespace, or area of expertise your company can own.

If your competitors dominate in size or technique, your whitespace could be attention to detail. Find that differentiating factor and own it.

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Mapping the customer journey

You’ve done your persona research and found your whitespace. Now that you have an ownable space, it’s time to figure out how to convey your message to the audience. You have an idea of who is visiting your site, but how are they doing it?

Using Google Analytics, map out common user flows on your website. What are the pages people are visiting most? Are those pages optimized for your sales cycle with clear calls to action?

Use this data to compose a series of user stories to demonstrate how a given user will be able to access and interact with your site. This will help you group and prioritize content and site functionality.

Industry differentiation and lead generation go back to persona research

After some thorough persona research, customer journey mapping, and discovering your whitespace, you should have a good idea of what your new website should accomplish. If you’re looking to bring in more leads, improve your conversion rate, or find your company’s differentiator, all goes back to your buyer personas.

Knowing so much about your customers allows you to design your website around their wants and needs, creating a personalized user experience for your buyer, and increasing the likelihood that they’ll convert. Now, get to designing that site!

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We were lucky enough to attend the fifth Forward Web Summit this past August, a 9-day event in San Francisco devoted to JavaScript. Over the course of the week, there was a series of full-day, interactive workshops, followed by a day of panels and discussions with some of the best in the industry. We attended discussions covering advanced fundamentals, a deep dive into the React Framework, ES6, and JavaScript in the mobile browser ecosystem.

After being fully immersed in all of the latest frameworks and buzzwords, the most thought-provoking workshop was, surprisingly, not one that covered any sort of new technology. Kyle Simpson’s Advanced JavaScript Fundamentals workshop took a step back from what’s changing in the JavaScript world, and focused on the bare bones of the language. Today, it can be overwhelmingly difficult to stay up-to-date with the latest technologies. By the time developers learn one framework, it feels like it’s time to learn another one. Also, especially for new learners, frameworks and libraries can act as a crutch for those who never bother learning plain JS. This is not to discredit something like React, as it’s an incredibly useful and efficient way to build UIs, but it’s important to have a complete understanding of JavaScript fundamentals to build upon.

Kyle Simpson made a great point of noting how important it is to understand not only why your code doesn’t work, but also why it does work. At the beginning of the workshop, he asked, “Who has ever written JavaScript that didn’t work, and couldn’t understand why?” As expected, the entire room raised their hands. He then asked, “Who has ever written JavaScript that did work, and couldn’t understand why?” yielding the same response. Every developer has experienced magically functioning JavaScript that works in a way they didn’t expect. Especially living in an age where a Stack Overflow solution is just a Google search away, developers can copy and paste a script without fully understanding it. Short-term, this may work, but it disadvantages the developer upon modifications and debugging. While it’s useful to read books and watch tutorials that only cover “the good parts” of JavaScript, developers should aim to grasp the language in its entirety.

Overall, Forward JS was an eye-opening week of professional development. Attending workshops and courses gave us a new perspective on the JavaScript world. Aside from the courses, Forward JS was a great way to meet with other developers, exchange thoughts on the language, and gain insight on what other people are learning. We learned a lot in San Francisco this year and look forward to attending other Forward events in the future!

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When I first started experimenting with Pinterest in 2010, I was inspired to plan, shop, and get organized. I also saw quite a few missed opportunities. The early days of Pinterest featured a lot of broken links, 404 Errors, and links to blog posts that took up to 10 seconds to load. Here I was, an eager shopper with my credit card balancing on my laptop keyboard, unable to locate the product I was ready to purchase.

Fast forward six years and Pinterest has really grown up. The platform has evolved from a lookbook of sorts to a natural extension of e-commerce sites. Pinterest convinced brands who before saw social media as just a ‘brand awareness play’ that it could be much more than that. Pinterest is a platform that directly drives conversions when done right.

With the holidays underway, now is an ideal time for brands to ramp up Pinterest marketing to meet Q4 goals. Pinterest is a platform for planners (say that five times fast), so it’s likely users are going to be flocking to the site this holiday season to search for gifts, decorations, and the perfect holiday party outfit. Before you dive in, check out our tips to get you ready to market on Pinterest. We’ll cover design best practices, search intent, audience demographics, and the Pinterest customer decision journey.

Ask and you shall discover

Pinterest is both an “answer engine” and a “discovery engine.” Brittany Richter from iProspect spoke about this on a recent webinar held by AdWeek. While I may search for ‘Vince Sweaters’ and get the answer I’m looking for: a display of this season’s fall sweater line by Vince, I may also stumble upon a similar-looking sweater from a different brand at a significantly lower price point. Hence the ‘discovery’ aspect.

These are the results displayed on my Pinterest account when searching ‘Vince sweater.’

While most of the results from the search “Vince sweaters” displayed Vince sweaters (typically a $250 price point), there was a Promoted Pin from Azbro with a similar looking sweater for $20.99.

The Pin drives directly to the product page on Azbro’s website. Talk about a direct path to purchase.

A place where brands fit in

Unlike all other social media platforms, Pinterest is a welcome place for brands. While a well-produced ad can get positive feedback on Facebook or Instagram, a lot of what brands put into those platforms is invasive and unwanted.

Not unlike the other platforms, Pinterest ads must be done right to serve their purpose. But the majority of content on Pinterest comes from brands, and users take no issue with it. This is because users are typically searching pinterest with intent. But more on this later. First, we’re going to jump into some Promoted Pin hits and misses.

Fit in without blending in

Just like on Facebook, your Homepage on Pinterest is tailored to your specific taste and behavior. A typical mix of content on my Homepage these days can feature home decor, fall fashion, beauty tips, and dogs. The screenshot below features all of these in both organic and promoted posts.

The two Promoted Pins in this screen grab, from Casper and Honest Beauty, fit into my Pinterest dashboard seamlessly as far as aesthetic. While Casper’s ad is a product feature, the imagery is simple and stylized to fit happily into my feed.

Honest Beauty takes a less direct route with their ad by providing a free skincare trial instead of featuring products in their advertisement. Rather than using copy like ‘free offer’ or ‘get free skincare products,’ the Pin asks the user to choose their skin type. This content is fit for Pinterest because it’s personalized to the user.

When it comes to advertising on Pinterest, it’s not a matter of blending in. Of course you don’t want a user to scroll past your ad. The ideal ad doesn’t look like branded content but also is relevant, eye catching, and visually pleasing. Casper and Honest Beauty do this successfully with their two ads.

A quick note on sizing

We wouldn’t want to give you advice on aesthetic without mentioning image sizing. The optimal image size for a Pin is 600px wide x 900px high. Since Pins are organized into columns, vertical Pins take up more space, and the 600 x 900 size is ideal so that the Pin doesn’t get cut off. Feel free to download our social media ad sizes cheat sheet to keep this and other ad image sizes on hand whenever you need them.

Be careful to avoid over-branding

The above two examples feature Pinterest-friendly products. Mattresses, while not exactly glamorous, are products Pinterest users may need. While a user may not search Pinterest directly for a new mattress, Casper knew people who are planning to move or redo a room on Pinterest will likely be looking for a new mattress as well.

Beauty products and makeup tutorials are often among top searched topics on Pinterest, so Honest Beauty was able to advertise their brand without displaying a product shot and getting lost in the clutter.

Pillsbury also is a Pinterest-friendly brand, as people constantly visit the site to search for recipes. The screenshot below shows an ad from Pillsbury that doesn’t look much like the other content in my feed. This is the invasiveness we referenced earlier. There’s no need to slap a logo on a Pin to get noticed. In fact, eyes are likely to glaze over when encountering a large logo on Pinterest.

In this case, the ad could have done without the logo, label, and copy. It’s important that people know content is coming from your brand, but be careful not to over-brand. We think the photograph linking to the Thanksgiving pie recipe page on the Pillsbury website would have sufficed.

Circling back on search intent

Earlier we mentioned search intent, which we consider Pinterest’s greatest advantage over other social media platforms when it comes to brands. We covered the topic with our earlier example of Vince sweaters. If you work for a company that makes sweaters, your ad will be relevant to people looking for fall fashion, fresh outfit inspiration, and searching specifically for sweaters. The common theme here is that people are searching with intent. In other words, at the end of their web searching sesh, they’ll likely purchase a sweater.

This is why branded content on Pinterest has such a huge advantage over that on other platforms. It removes the hurdle of convincing people they may need your product and goes right to the easy part: showcasing why your product is the best. Search intent is simple enough to understand, but the trick is to keep it top-of-mind when creating ads.

Search intent fail

The example below shows a Pinterest ad fail. Tiny Tea did a great job producing unobtrusive imagery. The photograph of a woman in a slouchy sweater holding a mug fits nicely with the rest of my feed.

The issue here lies with intent. I searched for ‘comfy sweater’ on Pinterest and scrolled through organic and branded content looking at tons of sweaters. Upon clicking through one of the Promoted Pins though, I was taken to Tiny Tea’s website. If a user is searching for sweaters, there’s no reason they’d be interested in tea. Aside from not being relevant to my search, the ad ended up being a source of frustration during my experience.

This seems like common sense, but is a mistake made by brands quite often. It’s possible that a user would buy a pair of jeans rather than a sweater when searching for a sweater. But tea is a big jump. Tiny Tea should focus on ‘holiday beverages’ and ‘detox drinks’ to capitalize on their users’ search intent.

Video ads

Pinterest debuted video ads in August. The ads have sound, providing a great opportunity for tutorials. More importantly, though, Pinners have the ability to purchase directly from the Pin with six Buyable Pins beneath each video. According to Pinterest, 67% of Pinners say the new video ads have inspired them to take action.

As is common with premature advertising opportunities, Pinterest’s video ads come at a high price point. But the great news is that Pinterest is making it easier for brands to market and for users to purchase on the platform. We predict that the cost will lower when Pinterest focuses on making video ads more mainstream.

A little about the audience

Most people know that Pinterest is made up of a mostly female, mostly young adult audience. We’re throwing in some demographic information here because the stats have evolved over the past couple years, and we want to emphasize the importance of focusing on your audience when creating ads.

Last month, Pinterest announced on it’s blog that the platform has over 150 million monthly active users. Also according to Pinterest, over 40% of people who join Pinterest are men — up 70% from October of last year. More people, more men, and more users in countries outside the U.S. means a lot of new opportunity.

Looking beyond the numbers, it’s important to know the types of people who are using Pinterest. Pinners are planners, creators, organizers, idea makers, and shoppers. Think on this when creating advertisements on Pinterest. Your ad should in some way inspire, delight, or make a Pinner’s life easier.

The Pinterest customer journey

Pinterest is extremely advanced in its ability to target people at different points of the buyer journey. An advertiser can target people in the awareness stage (CPM), the intent stage (CPE – cost per engagement), and the conversion stage (CPC). Check out the different targeting tactics Pinterest makes available for different stages of the buyer journey below.

Awareness stage

• People are attracted through two paths in the awareness phase of the funnel: keywords and interests
• Keywords are used to reach shoppers in Search and Related Pins
• Interests are used to reach shoppers in their Home and Category Feeds

Intent stage

• Advertisers have the ability to target audiences on Pinterest. You can target site visitors, CRM contacts, Actalikes, etc. to capture people in the intent phase of the purchase funnel

Conversion stage

• Buyable Pins (including video Pins) target users with intent to purchase

Pinterest users visit the site in different phases of the buyer journey and advertisers are able to deploy different tactics on Pinterest to capture their customers at every stage.

Going beyond social KPIs

One of the most important parts of an ad campaign is measurement and optimization. Your efforts on Pinterest (and all social channels) should always tie back to your business objectives, so it’s important to look beyond the typical social KPIs. Sure, getting a lot of shares is something to celebrate, but did anyone actually click through? How many conversions did your ad drive?

Like on Facebook, Pinterest has conversion reporting. A user can create a tag then add it to their site to track website conversions from Pinterest. The platform also has cross-device reporting, which is useful to track where users are engaging and converting (i.e. a customer may interact with a Pin on mobile and purchase that item on desktop).

With your proper tracking in place, and business objectives defined, you’re able to properly measure the effectiveness of a campaign. A helpful piece of advice is to keep your budget somewhat fluid to give you the ability to make adjustments to drive optimal performance.

Let’s get going

By now you know enough about Pinterest audience demographics, design best practices, and customer targeting to launch a successful campaign.

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The number of social networks that offer advertising grows every day, and it can get confusing formatting ads for each specific platform. The bottom line: looks are everything. In order to get the best ROI on social media ads, your ads must have stunning, well-formatted images optimized to display on mobile and desktop devices.

Facebook does a great job of making specs available and easily accessible for Facebook and Instagram advertising. And why wouldn’t they? The better your ads look, the better they perform, and you’re likely to spend more money with their platform.

It’s a mystery why it’s so difficult to access ad sizing information from Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but we’ve put together this handy tool to simplify the process. We’ve done the digging to get the most up-to-date information so you can bookmark this infographic and get to designing.

This cheat sheet was last updated April 2017.

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In the marketing world, our impression of new mothers tends to be outdated and inaccurate. Gone are the days of technologically confused moms who don’t know how to send a text or turn their phone on vibrate. Young moms and soon-to-be mothers are online and fully digital.

This is great news for digital marketers, specifically those who work in the baby industry. Moms are researching, reading reviews, and shopping online everyday.

But how do you make sure your brand shows up where moms are looking? Know your audience and their behavior, to start.

Keep these tips in mind when marketing to new moms online:

• Moms are millennials This may be surprising because a lot of us think ‘selfies and memes’ when we hear the word ‘millennials,’ but in reality, many of them are young moms. Women are about 26 years old when they have their first born, according to CDC. This doesn’t mean they’re not taking selfies or making memes though, so adjust your content accordingly.
• They’re online Duh. Over 90% of moms are online, so we can’t think of them as people who don’t know how to check their email anymore.
• They’re on their phones In fact, they’re addicted to their phones according to a BabyCenter report. This means your site should be mobile optimized, or you could lose a good amount of your potential customers.
• They’re on Pinterest Moms are on Pinterest specifically researching and shopping for baby supplies. More than a third of Pinterest’s unique visitors are American moms, according to Nielsen. If you work in the baby industry, make Pinterest your social media priority.
• They read blogs In fact, 1 in 3 bloggers are moms. New moms look to blogs for advice and tips. This is a great opportunity for brands to practice inbound marketing. Create content that answers the questions moms are asking to become a go-to trusted source.

“I think Pinterest is undervalued by marketers when it comes to mothers,” Maria Bailey, author of ‘Millennial Moms: 202 Facts Marketers Need to Know to Build Brands and Drive Sales’ told eMarketer. “Marketers put so much effort into Facebook—and mothers do follow brands on Facebook—but mothers are actually making purchases directly through links on Pinterest. There’s a lot of potential there.”

Though the ‘mom market’ is nothing new, the way they’re behaving sure is. With this knowledge, we can target new moms with great content in the right place at the right time. Focus your efforts on the platforms that moms are using to perform research. Take advantage of Pinterest and blogging to get your brand front and center when moms are ready to purchase. 

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They weren’t lying when they said video is the future of social. Facebook’s newest app, Lifestage, allows high school students to communicate and express themselves solely through video.

Unlike Instagram stories, Lifestage isn’t a direct copy of Snapchat. The new app doesn’t allow for any form of communication outside of video. Rather than serving as a messaging platform, Lifestage will be used for self-expression through video bios.

Lifestage was created for people 21 and under, and designed for high schoolers to “find out more about the people in their school community,” Michael Sayman, the app’s creator, posted to Facebook. “Lifestage looks back at the days of Facebook from 2004 and explores what can be done if we went back and turned the crank all the way forward to 2016 with video-first.”

Did we mention Sayman is 19? How Gen Z is that? The teen has been at Facebook for about two years and had two successful apps under his belt prior to starting there.

Aside from making us adults feel a little excluded, Lifestage has us wondering what potential opportunity could be in store for marketers.

[Tweet “If Lifestage proves successful, this could be a platform full of Gen Z-ers and a lot of possibility.”]

We could be getting a little ahead of ourselves, as the app was released just last week, but a new platform means a new marketing opportunity.

Here’s what we’re thinking Lifestage could have in store for marketers:

Localized targeting: When signing up for the app, students enter the name of their high school. Talk about a hyper-targeting opportunity. While Snapchat’s advertising platform is nationally focused (and typically used for brand awareness), Lifestage could be used for local advertising. Who’s to stop a local pizza joint from posting an ad just around lunchtime? (Maybe a hefty price tag, but hey, we’re still in the hypothetical stage of thinking.)

Demographic targeting: Brands that advertise on Snapchat are reaching an audience in the 18-34 range. Think about how much your opinions and behaviors changed in that age range. Lifestage is just for high schoolers, so brands can really get personal with their tailored content. Facebook’s ad targeting platform is pretty amazing with its targeting, but that can only go so far if this generation isn’t using the platform regularly.

Native content: Remember the days on Snapchat before an ad would interrupt your peaceful story viewing? The subtler an ad is, the less likely you are to irritate your audience. Branded profiles could serve as a less invasive way to get eyeballs on your business or product. The platform asks its users to fill out a profile using only video. Profile fields include ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ as well as ‘my favorite song’ and ‘my locker.’  Brands could participate in a similar video profile that users could explore at their leisure.

Influencers: Gen Z relies heavily on their peers on social media to influence their purchasing decisions and shopping habits. Influencers use any form of social media to get their message across, but are particularly successful on Instagram and YouTube. Lifestage provides a new way for influencers to reach their demographic, so we’re thinking it will be flooded with influencers in no time. Aside from native content, utilizing influencers is a great way for brands to reach their audience more organically.

Since Lifestage is still brand new, we’ll give it some time before joining the fun. But don’t let the fact that a platform is new (or the fact that you have to be under 21 to join) stop you from dreaming. Brands should be thinking on opportunities the moment a platform is released. That way you’re prepared with content that will blow users away when the platform does open up to brands.

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On August 2^nd, Instagram took a huge bite out of Snapchat by adding the new “Stories” feature. This major development is clearly a carbon copy of Snapchat’s evolutionary platform.

Instagram’s Stories allows users to post short videos and photos that exist for a span of 24 hours. It is a comparable application to Snapchat, which is a famous ephemeral app that is mainly popular for its 24-hour video and chat tales, facial recognitions and image filters. The features that Instagram released are almost identical to Snapchat from its very theme and vernacular.

Back in 2015, advertisers began to anticipate potential opportunity for marketing on Snapchat with image and branding. The idea of Snapchat gave way to more interactive experiences than Facebook and YouTube (which advertisers believed users commonly watched inertly). Snapchat does not contain traditional ad-targeting tools and is continuously searching for ways to attract bigger brands. While they’re still developing their bouncy infrastructure and competing against major rivals—Now This! Instagram has nearly replicated their services!

What does this mean for marketers? The CEO of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, discussed the latest development with TechCrunch and said that, “this is about a format, and how you take it to a network and put your own spin on it. Facebook invented feed, LinkedIn took on feed, Twitter took on feed, Instagram took on feed, and they all feel very different now and they serve very different purposes.” Instagram’s owner, Facebook, took note of how other social networks adapted their feed and decided to flip the script by incorporating Snapchat’s strengths into one mobile first platform: Instagram.

Where Snapchat advertising had astronomical cost and exclusivity, Instagram is self-servicing, leaving marketers wondering how advertising will look via Instagram stories. Instagram’s new interface allows for both stories to be displayed at the top of your screen, while in-feed photos and videos appear in your timeline below, without ever having to switch off to another platform, creating a more dynamic means for distributing content. It fulfills the concept of organic experience building between users and brands in a more interpersonal relationship and is even easier for users to follow a brand, watch their stories and like their post. In addition, there are more opportunities for exclusive behind the scenes video clips, contests, giveaways and other incentives rather than the usual photo upload.

While we are in favor of this astonishing feature that Instagram impenitently “borrowed,” there’s still speculation about its forthcoming progressions. What will happen with Snapchat? Will new Instagram stories be as affective as anticipated? How will this influence other social media platforms? What will sponsored Instagram stories look like? Will Instagram add those fun filters that Snapchat is synonymous with? Instagram has yet again proven that it is a force to be reckoned with and only time will tell what’s next for this photo-sharing tycoon.

For the past couple years we’ve heard a lot of buzz around the term “Dark Social.” It’s “a term coined by Alexis C. Madrigal, a senior editor at The Atlantic, to refer to the social sharing of content that occurs outside of what can be measured by Web analytics programs.” This covers everything from sending your favorite new Beyonce video through SMS, to emailing a friend a hilarious article. These transactions generally consist of one-to-one private interactions; starkly different than general social sharing which is typical one person sharing to many people.

Why does this matter? Brands have noted an increase in direct traffic, so great that it has grabbed the attention of digital marketing professionals all over. Surely people aren’t actually typing in the direct URL to visit these specific pages all of a sudden. And sure enough they aren’t, these bumps in direct traffic are due to dark social, users sharing links through private messaging interactions. According to Hootsuite, “dark social has been reported to be responsible for up to 60% of overall referral traffic for various websites.” More and more people are sending links via WhatsApp, Snapchat and SMS and these conversions are being lost when it comes to referral traffic analytics, hence the fitting name: Dark Social.

So is dark social a bad thing? No, it’s awesome! It’s the new word of mouth and it’s here to stay. Where it does become problematic for brands is in regards to analytics and tracking where website visitors are actually coming from. Places, such as Buzzfeed, generate personalized links for each article/user so that when they send that article to a friend through Facebook messenger, they can still track where that click is coming from and attribute the traffic source correctly.

As organic reach on social media withers, and personalized email programs become old news, brands have begun entering the one space that you thought was reserved for your “real” social life—private messaging.

 We all have our own, individual style when it comes to what information we want to post to our whole social media following, and what we reserve for a more selective audience on our private messenger apps, like Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp. Well, it turns out that private messaging is where most of the action is happening. In fact, messaging apps are seeing 1.4 billion monthly users, with the top four messaging apps sharing 3 billion users in total. This is surprising when stacked against the number of active users on the top five social media networks, which amounts to only 2.04 billion users.

The palpable popularity of private messaging is not new, but it has elicited some recent shifts in the market.  Apps like Kik and Slack have joined the scene, and brands are launching chat bots, or automated messaging interfaces, to engage with consumers in the private messaging world. Companies like KLM and Sephora have developed chat bot interfaces that offer a wide range of services, such as the facilitation of financial transactions, or personalized beauty tips. Taco Bell has a TacoBot operating on Slack, which will process your food orders for you, and will even make food recommendations if you ask it. There is also speculation that Facebook will announce its own launch of automated agents, to be named “bots on Messenger”, at the upcoming F8 conference.

The proliferation of chat bots is inevitable as they are surprisingly easy to build and scalable across several messaging platforms. So, should we be concerned about brands invading the “private” space, or is this a welcomed service offering?

Chat bots are great for those consumers who are too impatient to wait on a customer service line, but are still looking for that personalized experience which can’t be achieved by browsing a website or performing a Google search.  The founder of Kik claims “Chat apps will come to be thought of as the new browsers; bots will be the new websites…this is the beginning of a new Internet.” It is the difference between browsing a newsfeed, with content curated for you based on an algorithm, and asking for exactly what you want, when you want it.

 For the marketing world, personalization is already huge, and private messaging is a clear next step. On the basic level, brands have an opportunity here to extend their customer service reach, with a lower cost than hiring more staff. In addition, there is the opportunity to offer useful services to consumers, in a very accessible way. For example, food companies can offer recipe suggestions, and furniture stores can offer design inspiration, in the same way that Sephora has a chat bot offering personalized beauty regimens.

 But, the smartest brands will not focus only on the content and services that they can put out for consumers; they will hone in on the other added value of chat bots—data collection and brand development. With the potential to have one-to-one conversations, brands have a lot to gain in terms of client discovery and the collection of micro-level data. But beware, bot relationships will mimic real relationships. The more you speak to your consumers and interact with them on an individual level, the more attention and personalization they will expect in return.

 As the VP of Digital Marketing at Sephora attests, “We know, based on global trends and the evolving landscape, this is the next element to engage with our customers on”. So, get out there, get chatting, and chat wisely.

We’ve said it before but we’ll say it again, everything is in motion. And when it comes to photography, RIP to the standard still shot. Many have coined 2015 as “The Year of Video”, but we’re thinking it’s the year of motion and the end of the one-dimensional way we consume images.

With GIFs still owning the Internet and 360 degree photos coming to the forefront, we explore a two apps that are visual pioneers in the realm of putting pictures in motion: Phhhoto and Fyuse.

Phhhoto

Though the name leaves something to be desired, this addicting app snaps four photos in succession and pastes them together to produce a hilarious/inspiring/creepy looped GIF. Early adopters included the celebrity likes of Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus.

Not the photography type? No problem, Phhhoto has the most awe inspiring discover page appropriately known as the “Wow” tab. Sign up to start creating or just for a dose of daily inspiration: http://phhhoto.com/

In the meantime here are a few of our favorite Phhhotos:

Fyuse

Meet the app that lives in the grey area between a video, a photo and a GIF. This “Spatial Photo” app allows you to capture images in a sharp 3D picture. Petapixel explains that on Fyuse you, “capture a dynamic photo by moving your phone around during capture, and viewers will be able to explore your 3D photo by tilting their phone in their hands.”

From landscapes to #ootd (Outfit of the Day) images, Fyuse has the potential to capture & share life’s moments in an amazing way that transcends 2D pictures. Get started with Fyuse now: https://fyu.se/

Here are a few of our favorite Fyuse posts:

The future of photography is coming into focus and it’s sure to include movement, depth and endless creative opportunities. It’s safe to say, we’re excited!

Flighpath is a Creative Digital Agency that’s been around since 1994. We’ve done it all, from designing apps and websites to providing social media, SEM and SEO services, but Flightpath is made up of more than just designers, coders and content developers. Check out the infographic below to see who we, Flightpathians, really are:

Like what you see? Want to know more? Click here to contact us!

My 10-year old daughter is a fifth grader in New York City.  I often reflect upon the fact that a lot of her school’s educational philosophy seems well-tailored toward molding/shaping people with the same kind of skills and attributes that we look for in new hires at Flightpath.

With that in mind, it was with great interest, that I read an e-mail from her middle school principal, discussing his recent experience in Boston where he attended the National Association of Independent School’s (NAIS) annual conference. The theme of this year’s conference was “Design the Revolution: Blending Learning, Leading, and Innovation.”

The conference website explains that “Independent education plays a leading role in the revolution changing the way the world thinks. The myriad ways we can learn and innovate knows no bounds thanks to new patterns of innovation, an emphasis on instructional systems, and increasing interaction with new people and ideas around the globe. This freedom comes with a responsibility to design a plan for success that includes thinking creatively, problem-solving differently, defining 21st century learning, and leading students into a future we’ve only glimpsed.”

These are the same issues we ponder on a daily basis at Flightpath.  How do we alter and improve patterns of interaction? What new tools can we leverage to better communicate among teams and groups housed within and without our physical headquarters? How do we grasp new trends and opportunities? How do we infuse creativity and innovation into every thing that we do? How do we measure, assess, and improve outcomes?

If a mantra of NAIS is that “ongoing learning keeps NAIS schools strong and innovative” that also rings true for the team at Flightpath.  – To that end, apart from other avenues, we’ve got Flightpathers attending a slew of conferences over the next few months including SXSW, ClickZ Live NY, UWestFest, and An Event Apart.  As part of my own professional development, I’m going to start keeping an eye on the NAIS website and try read their blog regularly. If early indications mean anything, it’ll be instructive to glean learnings, ideas and parallels from this forward-thinking group.

As marketing shifts from the Age of Mass Media to the Age of Advocacy, influencers have landed at the center. But what is an influencer? Jess Estrada, a digital strategist and blogger explains that, “Influencers are people with significant networks (followers, readers, etc.) who can speak to a broad range of products and services with the ability to sway opinions in their favor.”

At the SXSW panel, “Changing Face of Fame: Social Media Celebrities,” Cubby Graham, Community Builder at Charity Water, Paula Veale, EVP of Corporate Communications and Rob Fishman, Co-Founder of Niche, took a deep dive into the new world of celebrity that is made up of influencers and detailed how to get the most out of a partnership with influencers. Here are three things to consider before you begin influencer marketing:

Distribution

Even as brands begin experimenting with the hot new trend that is Influencer Marketing, they often still attempt to push messages out via “traditional media” (TV, print, radio, etc.). However, limiting distribution to the old school way is a big mistake. When partnering with influencers, who are more likely than not, innovators in the digital/social space, it’s important to examine which distribution channels are most successful for each individual influencer and then follow suit.

Freedom

As marketers, we’re used to drafting the specifics of any campaign, promotion or initiative months in advance, followed by umpteen rounds of revisions and by the end there is a clear vision and plan laid out. You know exactly what you’re getting (usually); however, often times this necessary process limits creativity and spontaneity. When it comes to partnering with influencers, creativity and spontaneity are two key aspects to a successful partnership. How do you achieve those? Freedom.

Of course, there will always be guidelines (language, usage and timeline) that brands want partners to act within. Make these guidelines as broad and non-limiting as possible for the best results.

The Right Audience v.s. The Biggest Audience

Sometimes the biggest audience isn’t the best audience. As Jeremy Welt from Maker Studios put it, “Reaching 10K of the right people is more important that 100K people who don’t care.” When looking for influencers to partner with, marketers must take a deep dive to determine if both audiences (influencer and brand) align. It’s not about who has the most followers, it’s about who’s followers are the most engaged and what demographic do these followers fall into.

Social media marketing has become a no brainer for businesses. That said, modern day influencers live and thrive on social media and make for a natural partnership to leverage brands’ social media presence. Influencers don’t begin as advertisers; they begin by making a human connection with people across the web. This connection resonates on a personal level and influencers are seen more as a trusted friend, making their opinions and recommendations extremely influential, hence the title influencer.

Why does this matter? Well, according to Simply Measured, 74% of consumers rely on social media to inform their purchasing decisions, while 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations. Think about it; if someone you admired and followed on social media recommended a brand or product, wouldn’t you be more inclined to at least try it?

Keeping up with the overwhelming demand for content was a major obstacle for brands in 2014.  How can you produce massive amounts of engaging, authentic content while under seriously limited time constraints?  One solution is to leverage existing social content from your brand and your customers.

Many brands are turning to social media aggregation platforms to collect, organize and display social, user-generated content.  The end result is a well-curated social hub that looks similar to a digital magazine full of engaging content and conversations around a particular topic or brand.

Now comes the tough part…deciding which social feed curation platform to use.  The number of companies that offer this type of tool or service is extensive and continues to grow.  Each platform has its own strengths and weaknesses so I always recommend evaluating tools based on an individual basis based on the brand’s specific needs.

In this blog post, I compare three of the leading platforms for creating social hubs: RebelMouse, Tint and Chute.  Additional platforms on the market include: Postano, Twine, Offerpop, Votigo and more.

Below is a chart I created for a client to compare the three social feed platforms based on general service needs and product offerings.  In addition, I’ve included my own reviews and takeaways of each platform.

Platform Conclusions & Takeaways

RebelMouse: Launched in 2012, RebelMouse has always referred to itself as a ‘social front page’.  It allows brands and publishers to create very well curated sites, similar to a Tumblr, centered on a topic or news vertical.  Recently, RebelMouse has expanded its focus from solely being a social aggregator to being a full-fledged publishing platform with custom editorial tools, detailed analytics tools and community/contributor profiles.

Tint:  This relatively new platform is self-service and does a little bit of everything when it comes to displaying social feeds.  Its strength lies in curating content from a specific social feed or hashtag versus a general topic.  It is also a very useful tool for event marketing or retail–just think of how interactive the content becomes when shown on a huge projector, in-store screen, or jumbotron.

Chute: Chute’s major function is gathering user-generated visual content and obtaining rights to ‘publish fan photos and videos at every customer touch point — as a mobile app, photo gallery, banner ad or even a billboard in Times Square.’  In addition to using Chute to repurpose UGC content, brands often employ this platform for specific campaigns or contests (both short-term and ongoing) because of how easy it makes it for consumers to submit photos via hashtag or just click a button directly on the microsite to upload.  

***It’s important to note that my review of these platforms is not comprehensive.  To get full information about each platform, it is always best to reach out to a company representative for more information about product details, new updates and pricing models.  I also highly recommend signing up for a free trial or demo of the platform to get the full experience and gain perspective into usability and performance.  

Video content marketing is on the rise and marketers are increasingly seeking out platform influencers to reach their video-oriented consumers.  Vine, a six-second video sharing service with a primarily teen demographic, is just one of the major sources of video influencers and content creators.  According to a recent study, branded content on Vine accounts for 4% of the top 100 tracked Vines.

At the December iMedia Agency Summit, Reed Berglund, CEO of Fullbottle, moderated a perspective-changing discussion about influencer marketing with three top Vine talents, Andres (@EhBeeFamily), Tony Serafini (@Bottlerocket), and Ginger Wesson Lavender (@GingerWesson). 

All 3 panelists explained that they sort of stumbled into their Vine fame.  Andres had been working as a market researcher, Tony was and is a teacher and Ginger was a bored housewife.  Today, they’re doing content creation and distribution deals with A-list brands including Pepsi, Disney, P&G and Toyota.

What are some general content tips from these Vine experts? Keep it simple.  Always think about a beginning, middle and end – with some some kind of interesting or unexpected twist in the middle.   According to them, the best times to post for maximum impact are around 4pm on weekdays (avoid Mondays and Tuesdays; Aim for Wednesdays) and around noontime on weekends.

Once you find consistent success creating videos on Vine, the panelists recommended extending your brand onto other platforms.  Keep in mind you will need to make slight content modifications or variations based on the platform-specific audience and consumption behaviors.  Suggestions include sharing behind the scenes filming pictures on Instagram or vlogging on Snapchat.  And most importantly, always respond to your fans in a timely fashion across all platforms.

Another important topic one of the panelists mentioned was brand integrity.  If you get to the point where you’re creating branded content for an advertiser, remember “money talks but it only talks so much.”  Make sure your branded Vines stay true to your own personal brand so as not to turn off your followers.  Continue to produce original, entertaining work and share new branded content from your own profile first to keep fans feeling like they are your top priority.

What does 2015 hold for these Vine talents?  The sky is the limit.  For now, enjoy a roundup of some of our favorite panelist branded videos from 2014:

I recently had the privilege of speaking at the Social Media Marketing Forum for Educational Institutions about an enrollment marketing campaign Flightpath executed for Fairleigh Dickinson University.

At the event, presenters from Harvard Business School, Babson College, Cornell University, Elizabethtown College and Brandwatch imparted insights on how they’re using social media and digital channels to tranform educational institutions into brands, impact development and enhance student life.  Some of the more interesting educational marketing topics covered were social messaging apps like YikYak, social listening tools and crowd-funding.  

With the help of Jon Wexler, VP of Enrollment Management for Fairleigh Dickinson University, I presented specific details on how we leveraged a multi-channel digital approach to drive overall student enrollments, build a prospect pool for future remarketing, increase enrollments of acceptees (credit walker), and enhance student life & connections. 

Another component of our presentation outlined our gamification initiative, an iOS gamed called Mascot Rush that we developed to help engage prospective FDU students and increase applicant activation.

Check out the full case study presentation below to learn more about the campaign!

Once the ugly stepsister of the marketing world, email marketing has made huge strides in 2014.  Don’t take our word for it; recent email statistics prove email marketing is here to stay.  As of 2013, there are nearly 3.9 billion email accounts worldwide, with that number expected to increase to 4.9 billion by the end of 2017.

It’s important to note that while email users are increasing, they are becoming more sophisticated in regards to consumption habits.  In a recent study, 54% of people reported using automatic sorting filters for their inbox and 58% claimed they will unsubscribe if they receive an unwanted commercial email.  To keep saavy email users happy, marketers have to continually improve the strategy and creative innovation of their email campaigns.

Here are three email marketing trends you’re likely to see in your inbox this fall–plus a list of helpful tools and analytics to implement them.

Image-off Styling

Email users tend to prefer emails that are primarily image-based versus text-based, but unfortunately 85% of email clients block images by default.  To reconcile this, marketers are finding ways to improve the look of images-off emails with styled ALT text, HTML mosaics and bulletproof backgrounds/buttons.  And if you’re really up for a challenge, try SONY Playstation’s technique of using smart Photoshop design and slicing to make images and logo outlines appear in the images-off version (as shown below).

Must-try tool: Mozify is an innovative tool that allows you to convert any image to an HTML mosaic or to formatted HTML text.  The result is a coloured mosaic of table cells that render an approximation of an image even before the image is loaded in emails.

(Source: Sony Playstation)

Advanced Personalization

Basic email personalization, such as name and account information, no longer satisfy the consumers who expect detailed, up-to-date messages that match their unique buying needs.  To truly make enhance the customer experience, emails should take into account detailed interaction data (including how, when and with what customers are engaging) as well as factors like holidays, weather and location.  According to a recent study, about 64% of marketing executives say they want to increase the amount of money they spend on personalization in the next year.

Software essentials:  CRM & Marketing Automation platforms allow marketers to effectively track and engage with customers based on consumer behavior.  Popular solutions include Salesforce, Marketo and HubSpot.

(Source: OpenTable)

Videos & Animated GIFs

Approximately half of the marketers who used video in email campaigns saw increased click-through rates, increased time spent reading the email, and increased sharing and forwarding, according to a survey by eMarketer.  Both videos and animated GIFs are smart alternatives to lengthy copy when trying to encourage click-throughs, give instructions or illustrate complex concepts.

Pro-tip: Animated GIFs can have large file sizes which can be slow to download and play. When it comes to saving your GIFs, one of the best ways to minimize file size is to reduce the number of colors actually saved in the file.

(Source: Jack Spade)

If you were unsure of the power of social video before, Instagram’s latest brainchild, Hyperlapse, will make you a believer.  Launched earlier this week, Hyperlapse is a stand-alone app for iOS that condenses and stabilizes phone videos into trendy timelapses.

Unlike other video editing tools, Hyperlapse allows for users to easily adjust the video from 1x to 12x speed without any delay for scrubbing or processing.  And don’t be fooled by the brilliantly simple user experience, the technology behind this app is pretty serious.

While Hyperlapse certainly helps gives phone videos a more professional look, there are still some guidelines and best practices users should follow before hitting the share button.

Here are some essential do’s and don’ts for making Hyperlapse videos:

DO make sure it’s long enough: We learned the hard way that at 12x speed, a 10 second video does not meet the 3-second minimum requirement to upload a video to Instagram.  To be safe, try to always shoot between 30-45 seconds worth of video to hit the minimum requirement.  (Note: 3 minutes of original footage=15 seconds of timelapse at 12x speed)

DON’T speed up the video if you’re moving the camera.  Videos played back at high speeds look great if you’re keeping the camera still and staying in one place.  However, if you’re following someone or moving, they can be nauseating to watch when sped up.  Keep the speed low and let the smooth video do the storytelling.

DO frame your subject in the center of the shot.  When the app stabilizes your video, it will steady the center portiton of the video and crop out the edges of the frame.  The cropping is minimal but to be safe, keep the important elements of the video towards the center.

DON’T do too much.  Less is often more when it comes to timelapse videos.  You can overdo it with too much movement and action.  Instead, focus on planning out the subject, the length of the event and a clever (but stable) perspective to film from.

DO exercise some posting restraint.  Timelapses are great, but no one wants to see their Instagram newsfeed crammed with timelapse videos.  Think quality over quantity. Your followers will take note.

Now get out there and start filming….because life is extra fun at 12x speed!  And for more best practices and tips, download our 2014 Social Media Marketing guide.

It’s not clear exactly when the marketing world entered the ‘Nice Age’ but if recently your heart has been melting more and more as you’re exposed to commercials, ads and branded content then you’re experiencing this industry shift firsthand.   It’s hard to believe how far marketers and brands have detoured from a very product and sales driven belief system to a socially and emotionally connected one.

The bottom line, as a recent NY Times article points out, is that this ‘warm and fuzzy’ content phenomena has major profit potential.

Here’s a look at how brands can make opportunity happen in today’s competitive, often (heart)warming climate:

1. Get sentimental on social media

Use social media in the most personal ways by asking questions and sharing compelling human insights (beyond just a nice video/photo).  Take on the role of your consumers’ best friend by giving followers a good laugh, great advice and genuine conversation.

2. Give your brand stories a fairytale ending

With all the negative news in the media today, people are eager to hear heartwarming stories with happy endings.  Mix up your content/advertising plan by injecting stories about real people and real emotional currency versus being completely brand-focused.  Whether it’s a video of someone’s first kiss, newborn puppies or a random act of kindness, everyone loves to share and support good news.

3. Stop selling and serve up a smile

Pet brands do a great job of using smile-inducing images and stories in their marketing efforts across all platforms.  They know the value of making someone smile; we’re talking about supercharged brand loyalty and trust.  If you think your category doesn’t lend itself to puppies and other emotional content, think again.  Even classic B2B companies are finding that the pathway to richer engagement is through both the service AND the smile!

4. Embrace the haters

With the rise of social media, customer complaints and negative reviews are more public than ever.  Rather than ignore it, saavy brands are acknowledging the issue and addressing it directly to show the brand’s commitment to building an authentic relationship with their consumers.

5. Create “aha” moments by over-delivering on industry expectations

Thanks to technology and digital innovation, brands are now more than ever offering products and services (or even just great content) that extend beyond their traditional verticals.  Whether your brand independently takes on a completely new category like Google is doing with their driverless car, or you enter into an unlikely partnership like ProFlowers and Uber did, the real value lies in showcasing your innovation and passion to consumers.

6. Get into Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in a real world way

The intentions behind your CSR strategy should go beyond just “increasing share holder value”.  Your goal should be to show and share the sincere value you have for anyone who interacts with your brand. Winning brands (Think: Ben and Jerry’s and TOMS Shoes) create “forever smiles” by doing good year-round in thoughtful, creative ways.

A new study by Adaptly, in partnership with Facebook and Refinery29, shows that sequential Facebook ads that incorporate brand storytelling and awareness outperform sustained campaigns with ads solely focused on getting conversions.

The survey results were eye-opening: Sequenced ad campaigns that slowly led viewers down the sales funnel received 87 percent more view-throughs and 56 percent more email subscriptions compared to sustained call-to-action campaigns.

While producing a successful Facebook drip campaign requires notable time, creative input and strategic planning, the payoff can be worth it.  New to the concept? Our cheat sheet covers 5 essential rules for creating a successful sequenced ad campaign!

Team USA may not have won the World Cup but soccer in America sure didn’t lose either.  The 2014 World Cup made it very clear that Americans have officially joined the rest of humankind in the worldwide obsession with soccer.

I imagine the extraordinary global outpouring of emotion (and by emotion, I mean all-out insanity, joy, passion and craziness) surrounding the games has not gone unnoticed by NFL execs. But what may be less clear is the fuel, if not the spark, of all this euphoria.

National pride and a new generation of youngsters who have grown up with a deep, committed love for the sport may be what sparked Americans into soccer’s intergalactic orbit. But the fuel, is what the NFL could truly learn a great deal from.

I’m sure the NFL is very busy getting ready for the upcoming season so let me cut to the chase. The fuel (yes, the element which ignites and keeps the spark ablaze) is the scoring celebration.  Goal celebrations fuel excitement and we’ve seen this in all the World Cup venues and live remotes. If these players simply high-fived or chest bumped, so would the fans. But they don’t; they celebrate by running 20 yards and then sliding another 10. All the while beaming with the most passionate human emotion!

Scoring celebrations create an undeniable bond between player and viewer that is founded on emotional currency.  Spurred by an intense connection based on shared experience and passion, emotional currency fosters loyalty and engagement.  It is what creates not just fans, but super-fans.

Need proof?  The 2014 World Cup statistics say it all: Tournament attendance is projected to hit 3.4 million, over 300 million World Cup-related tweets have been posted and in just the first week of the World Cup, Facebook received more interactions about the tournament than it did for Sochi Olympics, Super Bowl and Academy Awards combined.   

So I raise the question: Why not embrace goal celebrations after an NFL touchdown?  Why instead, a 15 yard penalty for the littlest of real emotion?

As someone who has studied emotional currency for decades, I urge the NFL to see the positive effect that scoring and celebrating has on fan involvement and overall enjoyment. Not only that, but this type of emotional connection can translate to higher viewership, better ticket sales, increased media and sponsorship opportunities…the list of marketing benefits goes on and on.

Simply put, allowing, let alone fostering, real emotional scoring celebrations could be game changing for the NFL.

This post was written by Cliff Medney (@cliffmedney) Chief Creative Strategist at Flightpath.

Marketing on Twitter?  You may want to consider using Twitter cards.  Twitter cards allow users to showcase media-rich tweets that expand to reveal more information and visuals.  Technically, Twitter cards have been around since 2012 but in the last several months the feature has improved dramatically, now offering marketers 8 different cards with varying functionality.  The cards seem to be especially useful for e-commerce companies and brands that regularly produce a lot of content.

What brands are doing the best job of using Twitter Cards?  We rounded up, in no particular order, 4 brands rocking Twitter Cards to increase clicks, RTs, leads and more.

rands rocking Twitter Cards to increase clicks, RTs, leads and more.

1. Bonobos: The brand does a great job using player cards to embed videos about product launches, events and thought leadership.

1. ModCloth: Product cards are this online retailer’s best friend. And for good reason; they are doubling many brands’ click-through-rates.

1. Monster: Earlier this month, Monster announced they would be using Twitter Cards as branded recruitment ads to boost clients’ visibility with potential employees.

1. Burberry: In addition to using Twitter Cards for video, photos and product launches, the luxury brand recently added an innovative calendar sync feature that allows users to subscribe to their brand’s calendar and stay engaged.

Want even more information about social media marketing?  Download our 2014 guide to social media best practices. 

Back in 2009, Flightpath designed one of the first TV Everywhere apps, by incorporating a live streaming feed into Cablevision’s MSG Varsity app.  We’ve just finished the third iteration of the app and in the ensuing years, television viewing habits have changed dramatically.

TV Everywhere, a term for authenticated viewing of broadcast shows from channels you subscribe to on your cable or satellite network, grew in popularity by 246% over last year, according to a study by Adobe.  Today, 1 out of 5 households use TV Everywhere apps to watch television content.

While the future of TV in general is still up in the air, marketers would be crazy to ignore the soaring number of TV Everywhere apps when thinking about their upcoming marketing strategies.

Below are four TV app trends marketers should watch out for:

Cross-platform marketing of TV apps

On tablets, over the top (OTT) service apps such as Netflix currently have more users than those offered by both TV networks and operators.  Why is this?  Lack of marketing efforts for existing TV Everywhere apps.  Expect network marketers to increase promotion of their TV app in traditional and digital ads.

Greater selection of advertisements

Consumption habits have shifted and viewers are now watching multiple episodes at a time.  To avoid bombarding the viewer with repetitive ads, marketers need to provide a wider variety of advertising content for these engaged users.

TV as an e-commerce platform

With the recent release of Amazon Fire TV, it’s hard not to think about the synchronization of e-commerce and television.  Imagine a consumer watching content and being able to seamlessly save and purchase their favorite items from the show.  Now is the time for marketers to start thinking about TV as the next screen for commerce.

Integrated social components

Consumers are demanding more and more from the TV watching experience and social media is no exception.  Social media is a natural platform for discussing TV content but consumers want the interaction to be as seamless as possible without taking them away from what they’re watching.  If TV apps begin incorporating social media functionality, marketers will want to take advantage of additional real-time marketing opportunities with TV viewers.

This post was written by Stephanie Bousquet (@sbousquet), Marketing Manager at Flightpath.

Since Facebook’s recent statements regarding their algorithm change, the topic of conversation for many marketers and business owners has been organic reach (or lack thereof). The issue of declining organic reach is something we have been aware of and dealing with for clients since August 2013. However, lately we have been noticing an even more alarming trend: the decline of paid reach.

Starting mid-April 2014, we noticed a significant decrease in paid reach on promoted posts across all of our clients’ brand pages. Overall, we’re seeing the cost per reach nearly doubling.  

There is always the possibility this decline in paid reach was caused by minor changes in content and scheduling but for the most part we have followed a consistent campaign strategy since implementing promoted posts. It seems highly unlikely that we would see this trend across multiple clients all within the same time frame.

One thing to note is that although paid reach decreased, engagement levels appeared to remain the same.

So what does this mean? It’s hard to say for certain but it could force companies to dish out even more money to reach the same number of fans. In other words, expect the cost of effective promoted posts to rise (especially as more and more brands start to utilize this advertising option).

In the future, marketers may want to focus on narrowing the targeted audiences on promoted ads, increasing engagement rates and ramping up influencer marketing strategies to see continued success on Facebook.

This post was written by John Lee (@johnlee27), Senior Director of Digital Marketing at Flightpath.

Merchello is a new, open source e-commerce system for Umbraco that was recently announced at uWestFest. It was created by Rusty Swayne of Mindfly and Jason Prothero of ProWorks. Being new, it may not be as mature and feature-rich as other systems such as Magento or uCommerce, but it has promising potential and fills a niche by providing a free, open source e-commerce solution for Umbraco web sites.

Why Merchello?

There are a number of reasons that make Merchello a compelling choice for building e-commerce websites. For one, it is licensed under the Open Source Initiative-approved MIT license. This means that it is free to use and modify. And that means you can customize it to meet your specific needs. In fact the architecture of the system is designed to make the entire storefront experience customizable.

Merchello embraces the philosophy and design principles of Umbraco. Many content management systems have a lot of plugins and modules that provide extra functionality but you are often stuck with their user experience design and it takes a lot of effort to customize that experience. Umbraco embraces simplicity and gives developers an API to build a custom user experience. Likewise, Merchello allows developers to build a custom online retail experience by providing an API for adding store functionality to the front end of their Umbraco website. The API follows the patterns and practices of the Umbraco core API, so it is easy for an experienced Umbraco developer to learn and use. The Merchello creators have provided a great sample site (pictured below) to show how to use the API to build store functionality such as product display, a shopping cart and the checkout process which you can use as a starting point. And, of course, since it is built on Umbraco, a Merchello storefront can leverage all the features and APIs that come with Umbraco to provide a great web experience.

Merchello’s back office embraces the new, elegant design of Umbraco 7. With Umbraco 7, the back office interface was completely redesigned and implemented using Angular.js so that it is more responsive and easy to use. The Merchello back office integrates with Umbraco in a way that is consistent with it’s user experience and extends it to provide catalog and order management. It also follows Umbraco 7’s plugin architecture for providing support for adding additional payment, shipping and taxation providers to process payment and calculate shipping and taxation.

Features

While the current release of Merchello (version 1.1) is missing some basic features, it is quickly evolving and new features are being added regularly with frequent releases.

The current version has:

• Catalog/product management with full-text search
• Variant pricing
• Inventory tracking
• Shipping methods based on providers (with flat rate and UPS providers available)
• Payment methods based on providers (with cash and Authorize.net providers available)
• Order management with credit card payment capture and shipping tracking

Upcoming versions will have:

• Order notifications
• Persisted customers integrated with the Umbraco member system
• A Paypal payment processing provider
• Support for multiple warehouses
• Back office Localization

The creators of Merchello are also looking for input on what functionality to include and prioritize and, as an open source project, are of course open to accepting contributions. You can find more information about Merchello from the links in this Bitly bundle: http://bit.ly/Merchello.

This post was written by Alex Lindgren (@alexlindgren), Director of Technology at Flightpath.

Over the past several weeks, the hamburger menu has received some seriously bad internet PR for being a poor navigation tool that destroys engagement.  One article even referred to the three-lined menu item as “the devil”.

Whether you love or loathe the hamburger icon, it is hard to deny that is has become somewhat of a design standard over the past 5 years, thanks to growing mobile apps and users.  Also, now that responsive design is the norm, the hamburger icon is even more prevalent across all screens.

In a recent article, one UX designer raised a very valid question: “Why kill a ubiquitous icon, which our users know and understand, and replace it with a new iteration for them to learn all over again?”

We would have to agree with this logic. We have bigger design problems than the hamburger menu for which we could be finding solutions. Why not simply improve on this design foundation that we worked so hard to build?

In hopes of saving the hamburger menu, we’d like to offer 5 ways to enhance it:

• Streamline your IA no matter what.  Menu bar items should serve a necessary purpose and be prioritized based on the users needs.  Hamburger menus should not be a dumping ground for worthless content.

• Add a ‘menu’ label to the icon if you are worried about users not identifying the navigation action.  It’s all about knowing your audience; most mobile users recognize that this icon signifies action so it may not be necessary.

• Leave user utility items such as ‘sign-in’ or ‘donate’ on the main screen in addition to having them in the sidebar menu.  Without overloaded navigation tabs, this can actually emphasize these important conversion points.

• On desktop, increase efficiency and changes in navigation patterns by allowing the menu to remain static once it has been opened.  At least for large desktop screens, the existing content should be able to scale accordingly without overwhelming the user with too much information.

• Have some fun with it. A major reason the design community is so up in arms about the hamburger icon may in part be due to our own laziness and reliance on it.  If nothing else, standardizing the icon should give us more opportunities to present this menu in surprising, exploratory ways.

That being said, there are times when designers should not utilize the hamburger menu: e-commerce and transactional sites (for the most part) and sites with very few navigation tabs.  In these cases, there are plenty of alternative navigation menu options designers can use instead of the hamburger menu.

As designers, we need to make smart, strategic decisions when determining a design format.  It doesn’t make sense to completely write off a design element that serves an important purpose, like the hamburger icon, but it’s important we don’t throw all caution to the wind and abuse it.  There are rules and there are no rules; just guidelines.

A roundup of the latest and greatest social media stories and news:

Twitter got a font update late last week and users had plenty to say about it.  Days after pushing the font update live, Twitter confirmed they did indeed make the switch from Helvetica Neue to Gotham.

Facebook keeps us on our toes once again by changing their News Feed algorithm to deemphasize stories automatically shared by third party apps without actions by the users.

Yahoo takes on YouTube with plans to launch their own video platform this summer.  Reportedly, Yahoo plans to lure users from Google with higher revenue percentages.

Twitter growth predicted to skyrocket in Asia-Pacific and reach 400 million users by 2018, according to an eMarketer report.  A long wait for Twitter execs, who previously hoped to reach that mark by 2013.

Instagram face-off: A study using 1.1 million Instagram photos analyzed with face-detection software showed that pictures with faces are 38% more likely to get ‘likes’.

Twitter users cash in thanks to anonymous donor @HiddenCash who recently began posting clues to the whereabouts’ of envelopes of money in LA.  His social good experiment has gained widespread attention and new pay-it-forward twitter handles have popped up across the country.

Best brand tweet of 2014 goes to Denny’s Diner for their real-time response to Apple finalizing a $3 billion deal to buy music-streaming company Beats Electronics.

And The Most Liked Instagram Ever goes to….Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.  The reality star posted their wedding photo to her account last week and it has since gotten 1.98 million likes (and counting).

It’s no secret that mobile visitors are taking up an ever-increasing amount of visits and pageviews across the web. According to StatCounter, 23.56% of worldwide Internet traffic was on a mobile device in April 2014. Another 5.83% came from tablets. That leaves the traditional desktop with a 70.61% share.

One of the more common questions we get at Flightpath is how best to address these two distinctive segments. Should a separate mobile site be created on its own domain, such as ‘m.website.com’ ? Or should a single website be developed responsively so that the regardless of what kind of device is used to access the page, it is delivered in a way that provides a user-friendly experience?

The answer to that can be complicated, and that’s not really the point of this article. The point of this article is to address the question from a search engine optimization perspective. What are the advantages and disadvantages to each, and more importantly, what does Google want? If there’s one thing any seasoned SEO strategist knows, it’s that you’ve got to keep Google happy.

Well, first things first. Google absolutely gives preference to mobile-friendly sites for mobile searches, regardless of the technique used to achieve a positive mobile experience. This goes back to one of Google’s most basic tenants used to guide ranking factors: provide a good user experience. Sending mobile visitors to a completely un-optimized desktop oriented site is definitely NOT providing a good user experience.

Now, on to the question at hand.  As it turns out, Google has more or less directly answered this question: they prefer responsive websites.

Google supports smartphone-optimized sites in three configurations:

1. Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device. This is Google’s recommended configuration.
2. Sites that dynamically serve all devices on the same set of URLs, but each URL serves different HTML (and CSS) depending on whether the user agent is a desktop or a mobile device.
3. Sites that have separate mobile and desktop URLs. 

For once, we have a seemingly candid response from Google. Hurrah! And oh, hey, the folks at Bing agree.

Why is this Google’s preference, though? Think about it this way, responsive sites serve the same set of URLs with the same HTML to all devices. A straightforward crawl as far as Google is concerned. Now when you introduce multiple domains, URLs, directives and redirects – the elements necessary to run a proper mobile site, it makes Google’s job a lot harder. Google is certainly up to the task, but it’s going to take more time and computational power to perform the same task of indexing the site accurately.

Keeping Google happy isn’t the only SEO-advantage of responsive web design. Responsive sites are actually much easier to optimize around.  You’ll notice that I said “easy” and not “better”. The fact is, you can circumvent most of these issues with proper planning, implementation and maintenance. However, it would be a folly to ignore the element of human error. Furthermore, if you can achieve the same result without adding layers of complication, always go with the more straightforward route. Finally, something SEO’s and Google can agree on.

One of the complications avoided by going to responsive route is duplicate content. Serving the same content on separate URLs is always a bit of a dangerous game. Proper use of canonical tags can alleviate this, but again, this introduces complexity and the opportunity for human error (and let me tell you, I have audited a lot of websites, there is an abundance of human error when it comes to things like canonicalization and proper redirects).

Link-building is also a much more manageable process when there is only a single domain or URL to worry about. All of your link authority is concentrated on a single set of URLs. This applies to social sharing as well – there’s no need to worry that someone will share a mobile URL and send a bunch of desktop users to a mobile site.

One last point that I’ll mention is that setting up a new mobile site usually involves the creation of a new sub-domain, most typically ‘m.website.com’. This means starting from scratch as far as domain authority is concerned.

Are there reasons to consider a separate mobile site over the responsive route? Yes, absolutely. When mobile users follow significantly different usage patterns (restaurant searches, for example), it’s probably a good idea to serve them unique content based on device. There are also sites that have enormous amounts of content that simply can’t be made easily navigable with reasonable load times on today’s mobile technology (imagine trying to make nytimes.com responsive – it would take ages to load and likely be even more difficult to navigate).

While there are situations in which a separate mobile site is the correct answer, responsive sites are still more SEO-friendly. It really comes down to the fact that operating off on one URL is much easier for Google to crawl, simpler for Google’s algorithms to process and easier for visitors to interact with.

Thanks to everyone who joined us for the Umbraco Roundtable & Intro to Merchello event on May 20 as part of Internet Week NY.  A good time was had by all and we were thrilled to meet fellow Umbraco developers and enthusiasts.  The event was the first official gathering for the NY Umbraco Meetup group, a community we are excited to continue growing and hosting events on behalf of.  

Here are some highlights and takeaways from the event:

Change and evolution are inevitable in the marketing world. Luckily, if your brand outgrows its Facebook fan page name and the name no longer reflects your brand’s intent, Facebook offers the option for a “Significant Page Name Change” once per calendar year.  Flightpath recently helped a client with the rebranding of their Facebook page and after experiencing the intricate process firsthand, we compiled the essential information you need to know before moving forward with a page name change.

What Classifies As A “Significant Name Change”?

A “Significant Page Name Change” is any change that falls outside of the general Facebook page name guidelines, which Facebook cites as, “name changes and migrations that do not result in a misleading or unintended connection.  For example, we will allow local to global migrations, such as “Facebook France” to “Facebook”, but will not allow global to local migrations, or location to location migrations, such as “Facebook France” to “Facebook Russia”. Additionally, you may not request a name change or migration that would result in re-categorizing a product Page to a brand Page, a generic or opinion Page to a brand Page, or a Group to a Page. All migrations are at our discretion and are final.”

What Is Different About This Process?

The major difference that occurs when making a “Significant Page Name Change” versus a standard page name change is that your brand’s Facebook audience will be notified of the change via email 14 days prior to the name change taking effect. Users then have the option to visit your brand’s Facebook and unlike the page.  For those worried about a large amount of their fans dropping off, Facebook says they have “seen a very low percentage of users choosing to unlike a Page based on a Significant Page Name Change. There may be an initial spike in unlikes when the email is delivered, but that spike in the unlike rate typically settles within 2-3 days.”

What Should You Consider Before Making the Change?

Before making the leap to significantly change your brand’s name on Facebook be sure to take into consideration how your Facebook community will feel about the “new you”.   When launching your new brand to existing customers, you do not want to risk losing followers or alienating your audience.  Make sure you have a content marketing strategy in place that allows you to clearly communicate the changes to your audience. Knowing why a company is changing its name, and more specifics about what is and is not changing, may make the transition easier for customers.

Learn More

For more information on Significant Page Name Changes, refer to Facebook’s official documentation.

For over 100 years, Minwax has provided professional contractors and craftsmen with high-quality wood finishing products.  However, the wood care brand also services another loyal group of users: DIY-ers.  With the rise of Pinterest and novice home improvement, this group of enthusiasts, many of whom are new to wood finishing, turn to Minwax to help beautify the wood throughout their home and beyond.

As part of an integrated digital marketing campaign, Minwax has teamed up with Flightpath to launch an innovative website that better delivers their products to their diverse customer base.  Serving as a vehicle to inspire and educate their consumers, the new site seamlessly showcases DIY photos, tutorial videos and project plans while also providing detailed product information for all wood finishing needs.

“Our goal for the site was to convey that the completed wood finishing project is the true hero, and the [Minwax] product is the best means to achieve that result,” said Everett Hutton, Senior Account Executive at Flightpath.

Starting from the elegant homepage, Minwax encourages visitors to “Get Inspired”—showcasing beautiful user-generated images of DIY projects they’ve created.  There is even a section proudly dedicated to the ‘Minwax Fan of the Month’–a Facebook contest where Minwax fans upload their own wood finishing projects and vote on a winner.  By displaying real projects made by real people, the site captures an undeniable sense of personal achievement and individuality that goes hand-in-hand with the DIY experience.

“We are all very excited with the result of our intensive collaboration. The site is clean, contemporary, easier to navigate, and is sure to meet the needs of our diverse end users,” said Jacquelyn Ferrara, Director of Marketing for Minwax.

Visit the new Minwax site to explore and get inspired for yourself.

Update: In July 2014, Minwax Australia also partnered with Flightpath to launch a new version of their site based on this same design.

Traditionally, B2B marketing focused on product attributes and business value.  While great product features are key for selling, we cannot ignore the influence emotions play on buying decisions even in the B2B marketplace.

A recent study showed that personal value has 2x the impact business value does when it comes to making a B2B buying decision, with 71% of buyers claiming they will make a purchase if it has personal value.

(Source: Kapost)

Here at Flightpath, we firmly believe in the power of emotions and storytelling.  We have a rich history of helping organizations create, connect or use emotional currency via digital channels to maximize potential and opportunities.  Whether it’s on your website, in a marketing video or even throughout your social media strategy, highlighting the personal value of a product can increase your chances of making a sale and strengthen brand loyalty.

Download our case study to learn more about how emotional currency is the key to staying relevant with your consumers in a highly competitive digital landscape.

New York’s annual technology festival– Internet Week New York–is slated to have it’s biggest year yet and Flightpath is excited to announce we will be hosting our own IWNY event for the growing Umbraco developer community.

What’s Umbraco? Built by a Denmark developer, Umbraco is an open source CMS platform known for it’s user-friendly interface and hassle-free customization.

In collaboration with the NY Umbraco Meetup group, Flightpath will open our offices on Tuesday, May 20 for a casual meet-and-greet for fellow Umbraco developers to get to know one another and chat about general Umbraco discussion topics. There will also be a special presentation on Merchello, the newest ecommerce package for Umbraco 7 led by Flightpath’s very own Director of Technology, Alex Lindgren.

Register for the event here and add it to your schedule on the IWNY website.  Space is limited so make sure to RSVP before it fills up!  Spread the word about the event using the hashtag #UmbracoIWNY.

Flightpath is searching for a intern extraordinaire to join the social media team for summer 2014. We’re looking for someone with an unrequited love for all things social whose communication skills are sharp (if your wit is too, that’s even better!).

Our ideal candidate:
• Hates going a day without checking Buzzfeed, Upworthy and all the other pop-culture sites he/she loves

• Can name a favorite internet meme (or five!) in a heartbeat

• Makes his/her friends jealous with the number of likes they get on Instagram pics

• Sees an awesome Facebook picture with a lame caption and immediately gets sad.

Think you might be a good fit? We would love to hear from you. To learn more about this internship and apply, please visit our careers page!!

Working on a project that has creative breathing room but lack of time and resources may initially put you in a tough position, as your concepts have to be grounded in the reality of execution.  However, it’s not an artistic death sentence.

For a recent Easter video campaign for our client, Fonseca Bin 27, I was tasked with producing a 10-second stop motion video, from concept to creation, in less than 3 hours.

Here’s are some tips I learned along the way—helpful for anyone creating stop motion video in a time crunch:

1. Create A Compelling Narrative 

A narrative doesn’t always require a tremendous amount of time to develop but to be effective it should be flexible enough to carry a headline and elevate the brand.

Tip: I always like to extend the story a little further and if the client doesn’t want it, it’s easy to chop off the ending.  For Bin 27, the narrative was originally supposed to end once the foil was wrapped back up but I made the bunny slip back behind the bottle while leaving a trail of chocolate crumbs (and the scene made it into the final video).

2. If Nothing Else, Get A Tripod

Before you shoot any stop motion videos, the one item (besides a camera) that you absolutely need is a tripod. There’s no way humanly possible to hold a camera in an even relatively similar position while moving the subject an 1/8 of an inch after every frame. The result wouldn’t just be a jumpy video; it would look like a random collection of photos.  So grab a tripod and make sure its in a locked off position before filming.

3. Leverage Natural Lighting As Much As Possible

When you don’t have the resources of a professional studio or lighting equipment, the best thing to do is find a space with exceptional natural light that you can shape with reflectors. It’s typically better to go with available light and use longer exposures with a smaller aperture for sharper images rather than using other tungsten continuous light sources like a desk lamp. This ensures that the images are between 2900-3200˚K, which is a warmer color known as tungsten. Normal daylight is around 5600˚K and is whiter or cooler.

Tip: You can always set the cameras color balance. For the Bin 27 video, I set the color balance at 5800˚K. If you leave the color balance on auto the camera will adjust each picture individually and you will most likely end up with a range of cooler and warmer pictures. Not good.

4. Use After Effects For Automatic Sequencing

To save time in post-production, I render out the selected images (after color correcting) into JPEGS and import them into After Effects as a JPEG sequence. This can save you considerable time when making a stop motion piece because After Effects automatically places the images in a sequence so you don’t have to individually place each image in a timeline in the correct order.

5. Invest In a Remote Camera Shutter Release

Every time you physically press the button to fire the camera, you move the camera ever so slightly. The end result is a very jumpy sequence of images. Remote shutter releases are an inexpensive solution to not having to press the shutter button and risk camera shake. An average remote release usually costs under $20 and gives you around 16 feet of leeway from your camera.

Tip: Because I did not have a remote camera release for this stop motion video, there were numerous frames that weren’t properly aligned.  To fix this, you can apply an effect called image stabilizer that analyzes the background and lines up all the images, effectively smoothing out the bumpy frames. 

6. Think Outside the Box 

The biggest take-away from this project was that even when working on the fly, you can do more for your clients than you may think with just a little bit of creativity. The more and more you surprise your clients with something new and creative, the more they appreciate your willingness to take the initiative to push and elevate their brand. And the more they trust your creative authority in guiding their brand. It’s just one more way to build a better atmosphere for client engagement and their trust in the agency.

A minute might feel like an insignificant amount of time in our lives but when it comes to big data 60 seconds is enough time to leave a massive digital trail.  The people at DOMO created this infographic that breaks down the mammoth amount of data all 2.4 billion Internet users produce every minute.

Hard to believe that in just one minute we email over 204 million messages, share 2.4 million pieces of Facebook content and upload over 72 hours of video to YouTube.  How are you or your business contributing to this endless stream of data?  Don’t take too long to ponder that question…a lot can happen in just a minute!