Jeff
By Jeff White: Mar 16, 2011
Filed Under: Design, Jeff
Facebook is forever testing new user interface paradigms. And they usually release them on an unsuspecting public, generally to mass uproar. Facebook rarely responds to these protests, and generally speaking people seem to adapt and move on.
This morning, they released a particularly insidious update to the service. They’ve removed the ability to create paragraphs by hitting the return key in comments. You can still use the shift-return key combo to generate a soft return. But it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to change how such an important key works. Read More »
By Jeff White: Feb 27, 2011
Filed Under: Content, Design, Jeff
I was lucky enough to spend some time in the sun during the past week or so. One thing my kids were most looking forward to on our Florida trip was a visit to Disney World. A place that, honestly, I had no interest in going. Other than Pixar’s productions and a few of Disney’s animated efforts, I’ve lost a great deal of respect for the Disney brand in the last decade. Read More »
By Jeff White: Jan 27, 2011
Filed Under: Design, Jeff
Over a decade ago, I worked with a dude who had absolutely no standards. None. I mean, he hadn’t even gotten the job for himself. But that’s another story to be told over pints at the Henry House. Read More »
By Jeff White: Jan 26, 2011
Filed Under: Design, Jeff
In a time when charts and graphs have become more or less ubiquitous, it’s important to remember what the point of imagery is when representing data. Many apps will take data and represent it in pretty graphs and charts. As a long-time follower of Edward Tufte, I’ve always felt that the point of a graphic was to add meaning, not simply add clutter. Read More »
By Jeff White: Dec 23, 2010
Filed Under: Jeff
Hello everyone, just a quick post to let you know that we’re closing at some point today and will be back in the office on the third of January to give everyone some much-deserved time to spend with their families. Read More »
By Jeff White: Nov 26, 2010
Filed Under: Jeff, Strategy
PR and marketing hacks spout those three words all the time. Live the brand. Makes good sense, when you think about it. Living the essence of how you want consumers to feel about your product is pretty important. Everyone knows that Apple espouses great design. Their brand is simplicity, elegance and desirability. Most every Apple user has at least some of these reasons for choosing to use those products.
The same holds true for beer. Read More »
By Jeff White: Oct 22, 2010
Filed Under: Design, Development, Jeff
Let’s face it: the web has been about more than text and images for a long time. Now that we’ve got the bandwidth in most cases for delivering HD quality video, it’s almost become expected that video will be a part of your content strategy. How you use video is entirely up for discussion of course, but I want to delve a little more into the technical side of video for this post. Read More »
By Jeff White: Oct 15, 2010
Filed Under: Content, Development, Jeff
In today’s world, with a premium placed on the consistent production of high quality marketing content, it just makes sense to have the content you create work harder. Can that blog post be repurposed as a commentary piece in your local newspaper? Can you leverage something you wrote online to get an interview in a new market? Read More »
By Jeff White: Oct 07, 2010
Filed Under: Content, Jeff
It’s an age-old problem. Well, it’s at least as old as self-publishing on the internet anyway. You’ve got this gorgeous website that goes live amid (massive) fanfare, only to fall into a state of non-updatedness. We get it. It’s hard to find the time to add content to your website. Life is busy.
We recognize that most marketers know their business inside and out, but they may not feel comfortable standing in front of a camera, and other content experts within the company may be too busy to write. Without a plan going forward, it can be difficult to force yourself to create a new post and come up with a concept that is relevant, timely and interesting, not to mention useful. With a good content plan in place, though, it makes it easier to ensure that something gets posted.
It’s like going to the gym. If you’ve got a trainer or a training buddy waiting for you, anticipating your arrival, you’re a lot less likely to hit snooze when you should be working out. Your plan doesn’t need to be complex either, it just needs to be written down in a calendar. Once the commitment has been made, it’s easier to keep going as you see the results.
Some clients have been putting us to shame, however. Stephanie Beaumont at SeaAndBeScene.com launched her site earlier this summer and has been an absolute content machine. She’s posted over 120 videos and hundreds of text and image posts on the site in that time. Granted, she’s always been in the content creation business, but there’s a great deal we can learn from her model. The traffic stats and level of engagement for her site are over the moon, especially given that it’s only been up a few months.
In general, we’ve seen traffic for this site quadruple on the days when new content is posted and the results within a highly targeted site can be even more dramatic. It’s well worth taking the time to plan what to say and make time to say it.
How do you stay on top of content creation? Do you schedule a time to write or record daily, weekly or otherwise?
It’s an age-old problem. Well, it’s at least as old as self-publishing on the internet anyway. You’ve got this gorgeous website that goes live amid (massive) fanfare, only to fall into a state of non-updatedness. We get it. It’s hard to find the time to add content to your website. Life is busy.
Read More »
By Jeff White: Sep 29, 2010
Filed Under: Development, Jeff
As designers and developers, we deal with a lot of bug reports. Most of the time, these reports come during the design and development of a site. However, no matter how well-tested sites and apps are, once released into the wild, issues can sometimes be found that could not be anticipated. I know that this seems pretty basic, but it can be very useful. Read More »
