Tuesday, February 21, 2012

What Makes a Good Logo (5 Quick Tips)

What makes a strong, effective Logo? Lets asks a professional. This week we sat down with PT Senior Designer, Christina Lewis and she gives her "Elite 5" tips to making a strong Logo.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

PTBios: Nick (Marketing)

PTBios: We often act as an extension of our client's company. PTBios is an opportunity for our clients to have a "one-on-one" with their "colleagues." Meet Nick, Search Engine Marketing Specialist here at the The Plum Tree Group

Thursday, February 09, 2012

What The F@*# is Pinterest?

 Hello! Mica, your friendly neighborhood Outreach Assassin. I do Social Media and Email here at PTG and something that really caught my eye is a little thing called Pinterest. But first things first. What. Is. Pinterest.

Pinterest categorizes itself as an online pinboard. Much like the one we keep over our desks, it’s very image focused. I actually began a personal Pinterest account to spend a day playing with it. I wanted to know more about how PTG can use this new network for Social Media campaigns and SEO. Just a tip from my experience, if you want to investigate something new, do so as an individual personality - yourself! If you think about it, all Social Media is created to connect people with other people.

You start with boards, which are kind of like your own groupings, such as “My New Bathroom” or “Cars I Like.” Each board fits underneath a larger category like “Women’s Apparel” or “Food & Drink” which can be seen as it’s own feed whenever anyone posts into it. Each box in a Board is an individual Pin, which is a picture, video and link to source. Pinterest can do a whole lot of stuff with each individual Pin and account. Such as:

 

- Can save links like bookmarking

- Can use like a wish list with Prices
- Can see others' boards
- Can follow people/accounts
- Can follow individual boards
- Can comment on pins
- Can "like" pins
- Can tag other users in pins
- Can let followers pin to boards
- Can "repin" pins to own boards
- Can post videos (new, YouTube)
- Can search for content
- Can browse categories

- Can embed outside of Pinterest

 

 

 

 

Phew! But why is it important? One reason is sheer growth. It’s been called one of the “Top 10 Social Networks” by Experian’s Hitwise, due it its meteoric rise in the last six months from under under 1 million to over 3.24 million users per month.

Very very recently, Pinterest actually added functionality to put Pins into the FB timeline. Clearly, Pinterest is poised to grow.

Why else is Pinterest important? SEO! Most social media implements “No-Follow” links, which prevents spammers from creating a bunch of Twitter or Facebook accounts to affect page rank. Pinterest, however has several DO-FOLLOW links in every Pin that not only count toward SEO value, but are coming from a very reputable source: Pinterest! Also, when a Pin is “RePinned” that new page will also have links back and so on

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So, who then is doing all this Pinning and RePinning? According to comScore, Pinterest is Female-dominated, women making up between 54-70% of its user base. While it’s not limited to girly stuff, HitWise does explain that it’s “dominated by images featuring home decor, crafts, fashion and food.” An article in USA Today recently quipped, “if you haven't heard of [Pinterest], find the nearest twenty- or thirty-something woman. She'll likely know what's up and can tell you all about it. If she can stop pinning.”

What brands can use Pinterest? In terms of PTG clients, I’m exploring the idea of using Pinterest for both SMO and SEO purposes for companies that are female-oriented or have excellent photo content. Pinterest has some great ways to Pin, from an iPhone app to a Chrome plugin, but sadly, to get an account is Invite Only. Time to make friends with your resident Social Media Specialist, or you can add yourself to a waitlist on Pinterest. In terms of best practices, it’s hard to say this early, but the one I found in all my research was just to not overdo the self-promotion. If a brand or client wants a Pinterest account, be sure to start a board devoted to “Stuff We Like” “Things We Are Inspired By” in addition to any product images or promotional content. From there, just tread the Social Media waters and happy Pinning!

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

PT 'Voice' - Viral Marketing + Honda Super Bowl Commercial

Video marketing campaigns has had a huge effect on our industry specifically marketing. How did Honda capitalize on this during the Super Bowl?

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Is Google’s “Search, plus your World” Bad for SEO?

 

When it comes to social media, Google’s attempts to get involved have not exactly been gamechangers. However, we should not compare Google Buzz or Wave to the bigger, better Google+. The more versatile and popular network has finally learned to exploit the biggest advantage that Google has over Facebook and Twitter: integration with Google’s other services.

This means Google+ buttons on Gmail and Reader, integration with Chrome, and most recently, Google+ content showing up first in Google search results. But is Google’s so-called “Search, plus your World” feature something that makes social networking easier, or is it going to become a nightmare for Search Engine Optimization experts around the world?

We recently asked Plum Tree’s SEO experts what kind of effect they think it will have. Their opinion? Either it will be a big failure, OR they’ll essentially force people to accept it as a part of the new Google environment. The new, “personalized” Google+ search results will show up before organic search results and even before paid advertisements. This will make it harder for SEO engineers to optimize content, given that results pages will vary largely from user to user, depending on how active they are on Google+.

Over the last few years, one of Google’s goals has been to add “trust and authority” to search results, based on recently shared and trending content. Link building—that is, getting people to link to your content—has always been one of the biggest ways authority is determined. However, what will change is how Google determines the quality of the source that the link comes from. In other words, getting someone to link to your content on Google+ is immediately more valuable than a link from Twitter or Facebook.

Another huge impact Search+ will have on SEO is increased loss of keyword referral data. Ever since last year, if you are signed in with your Google account and perform a search, the keywords you search with are encrypted. Now, this might sound good for many people, but for SEO experts it means that a certain percentage of keyword traffic data show up as “(not provided)” in their Analytics platform. Originally, this percentage was only in the single-digits, but with so many people now logged in to Google Plus, many have now reported these numbers to be above 20%.

 

What this all means is that, if you want to leverage Google+ to optimize your content, it’s not enough to simply have a Google+ account and be posting content there—you also have to be well-connected and shared by many other Google+ users. As “Search, plus your World,” grows and evolves, we’ll start to get a better understanding of just how big of an impact it could have.

Friday, January 13, 2012

An Intro to Adobe Photoshop Touch SDK and Mobile App Suite

Adobe has come out with some pretty amazing new tools over the last year or so. While there have been several notable upgrades to many Creative Suite applications, the stuff we’re most excited about has to do with Photoshop and its new mobile capabilities. In fact, if you’re still using Photoshop CS4 or earlier, you’re missing out on some incredible stuff.

The Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit (SDK) was announced last April and will allow developers to create “companion apps” for mobile and tablet devices. The free-to-download SDK is part of a larger campaign to create an integration—or perhaps, more accurately, a communication—directly from tablet devices apps into Photoshop on your desktop computer. The SDK is compatible with iOS, Android, RIM, and webOS-based devices, as well as with both Mac OS and Windows.

As opposed to many websites and software companies who often just create a “mobile-version” of their program or network, Adobe is thinking more about tablets and mobile devices as a tool to be used in conjunction with your desktop computer. This means thinking about the inherent advantages that a tablet device offers. The apps are catered more to those times when creativity comes unexpectedly; in the coffee shop or in the park, scribbling on a napkin or taking a quick photo with your iPhone. Also, the apps are more designed to help “drive Photoshop” rather than act as a mobile substitute.

Adobe created this video to help elaborate on their vision for the Touch SDK’s potential for creativity and productivity.

To complement the release of the Touch SDK, Adobe has released three new mobile apps:

Adobe Color Lava:
If you’ve ever used Adobe Kuler, Lava is like that, but on steroids and made specifically for touch-based devices. You can actually swirl around colors and mix them up the way a painter would on his or her palette. Once you’re done, you can then transmit the colors you created back into Photoshop as swatches.

Adobe Eazel:
Digital finger painting done right; create rich realistic paintings on your tablet and then send them to Photoshop to finish them up. There are some other apps that do this, such as Sketchbook Pro, ArtStudio, and Brushes, but the ability to seamlessly integrate your work back into Photoshop is very attractive.

Adobe Nav:
In what is sort-of a mobile version of Adobe Bridge, this app can be used to browse through all the projects you have open on Photoshop, as well as to customize the default tools found in your Photoshop desktop toolbar. It can also be used as a way to transfer images from your tablet into Photoshop.

Adobe Revel (formerly called Carousel):
The newest of the bunch, this one requires a paid subscription, but for a good reason: it syncs your entire photo library between your computer, tablet, and mobile devices. No need to worry about storage issues or syncing things manually. Subscriptions go for $5.99 per month or $59.99 per year.

These all come together to form an amazing, cross-platform, Photoshop ecosystem of creativity. It’ll be exciting to see what other apps Adobe comes out with to expand Photoshop’s capabilities. Have you tried any of these apps yet for your iPad, Android device, or other tablet? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!