#idm706

[diegolamannoidm-blog]

How a brand can evolve using digital trends

Trends in the digital world are changing a lot from the last couples of year, which means companies need to change the way that they produce content and create engagement with their costumer. Social media is more powerful than ever, social networks are essential for every person nowadays and the customers are getting involved with their brands. Because of this phenomenon, traditional publishers need to pay more attention to these trends and learn the skills to be successful in this market. 

The trend that has been taking off over the last few years is “Mobile”, everything in the market is focused in mobile (smarthphones, tablets, ebooks, etc). Customers are expecting that all their content will be properly adapted to mobile, therefore Apps and responsive design websites are a basic component of all brands when they are building a market strategy.

To go along with to the world of mobile there is another trend that’s becoming key in the market. This trend is call “Freemium”. Almost every game inside each of the biggest mobile markets is using this model. Music apps like Spotify or Rdio use the same model to charge fees to their clients. Basically the user is able to use most functions and services that the Application provides but for extra features or better service they need to pay, this payment could be just once for a single component or a monthly fee depending of the App.

Social media is around us for quite a bit but, everyday the power of these social platforms is getting more useful for brands. Having a fanpage in Facebook, a twitter account or even a Instagram profile is a good way to connect with customers. All these different platforms could be the channel to deliver content in a variety of formats (images, videos, audio, text, etc) and get the customers involve with the brands in a totally different level. 

Data and analytics are both related to each other and are essential to discovering new ways to engage customers to the content that is being produced. The amount of data created over the multiple platforms around Internet is incredibly huge and is important to pay attention to this. Clients that are speaking about the brand or what are competitors doing are two examples of how meaningful it is to have knowledge of this data. Hence having a tool to measure and understand this data is essential. Tools like Google Analytics for example can help any brand to reach their goal with the produced content.

This is just a few of the most important trends that are taking place in the market right now in 2013. There are more trends that companies need to keep in mind to be successful. Having in consideration this trends is the better way to create a good relationship between the brand and its customers.

[diegolamannoidm-blog]

Voice and Tone: How a brand speak with the customers

Each company tries to build its brand in the market, which is special thing that is going to make them unique to the customers and push the brand to the top of the market. In this process of making a brand, the voice and tone how the brand speaks to his customers is very important, and shouldn't be treated as an extra feature. 

But what is the voice of a brand?. Voice is the personality of the brand. II is who the brand really is. It is involved in every single piece of content that is produced under the brand’s name. The voice usually stays the same during the existence of the brand. An example could be: Adidas, their voice is always related to sports, quality products, famous players and healthy life. On the other hand, tone changes depending on the situation. For instance: is it normal that someone changes his o her tone of voice when they are speaking to friends or clients? In the first case, the tone probably will be casual instead of the second case, which will probably be very formal.

After the voice is made, the use of the proper tone in each scenario is key for the brand  to communicate correctly the message that it wants, in a way that customers feels respect and also understood by the brand. To accomplish this, there are 2 factors to take care of: “Situation” and “User’s emotional state”. Dealing with the users emotional state is a difficult task, because it  is hard to predict what it would be. When the content is being produced, the company needs to think of what’s going to be the most common situation that this content is going to be received by the user. Therefore the user probably will receive the content in a better way.

Situation can involve any content type. Success messages could be written cheerfully because most users are happy and comfortable when receiving this message. Alerts or error messages, however, needs to be handle differently. The content is better to be written in a more straightforward style given that the user requires and explanations and is looking for very specific information. 

The tone used for a brand could either break or make their content. That’s why it is so important to pay attention to this, specially when the topics are sensitive to the user itself. Topics like private information, forms, FAQ, unsubscribe screens, help docs, etc are situations that the company needs to take care because usually the customer is having a problem with the brand. Talking to the customer with properly tone in these situations is key to keep a customer in the brand or lose him. Consequently when a company’s content provides good information and avoid lose a customer is always a success. 

Voice and tone are a key part of a brand and also vital when used to communicate between a brand and its costumers. It’s always a good practice to try to predict the emotional state of a customer in a any situation that he needs to be in touch with the content, specially in situations that involve frustration or sensitive subjects. Therefore the influence of that content will most certainly be desirable in the customers eyes.

[angelarraiz]

Digital Trends that make the most out of Business

In today’s world of interactive technology and innovation is necessary take a step forward to have a competitive advantage and differentiate from the rest of the world. To keep ourselves updated we need to learn the latest technology and know what are the trends on business.

  It is not a secret that mobiles apps are becoming increasingly popular. Nowadays smartphones are an essential part of our lives, we can’t live without them, and apps are making easier our lives. That is the reason that companies are using this technology to engage customers and make the most out their business. This strategy is used for small and big companies, first of all to do not fall behind their competitors and second of all to establish an interactive way to connect with customer, promote a service, products, reduce costs and enhance performance of their business.

  Another trend that is more that necessary in today’s world is social media. Virtual communities and social networks have arrived to stay for a while in the World Wide Web to allow users interact and keep in touch every day. Companies are still figuring out what to do with social media, but they have done a good job so far, we can notice how companies are currently engaging users in social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so on, to reach new customers, promote their brand, and learn how to improve their products and services by listening and receiving feedback from loyal customers.

  Something interesting but scary at the same times is how big companies are using the users information to place advertisements on the social networks. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Facebook, for example, know all about the user interaction on their sites and take this data and the information on the users profile to offer targeted advertisement based on the users behavior. This type of advertising is a digital trend where businesses are profiting and taking as a strategy to increase revenues. There is plenty public information on the web, especially on Twitter where companies are putting their eyes to make the most out and have a competitive advantage.

  I think the technology influence on how we work and live, sometimes it is difficult to deal with a bunch of information, can be overwhelming and hard to process and digest, but the digital trends are something that we can’t ignore. Companies are now raising thousands and millions of dollars thanks to all the digital trends and learning how apply the technology on business to make a better users experience.

  Companies can take advantages of the digital trends, the key is how to use them to provide the right information, make users’ lives easier, save time, save money, and the most important gain credibility, loyalty and customer satisfaction.

[shaofh]

Keep up with the digital trends!

In the ever-changing digital landscape, it is crucial to keep pace of the innovative digital trends. The ability to adapt to change is critical for digital enterprises to survive in competitive environment. There are some inspired articles giving us an insight into the emerging trends of the digital industry, and I would like to share my thoughts of three digital trends after the reading.

Mobile

Nowadays mobile phone has become an intrinsic part of our life, especially since Smartphone had been brought to a tremendous consumer market by Apple. Smartphone enables consumers to carry their advanced mobile devices like to carry a tiny-computer in hands. The mobile innovation has totally changed the traditional way of getting knowledge and communicating. According to Monte Lut, 65% of users start search on smartphone, and 61% of smartphone user access social media on their mobile devices. The data shows mobile devices play a key role as a media platform. Thus one of the latest digital trends is that all digital contents are requested to be available on mobile platform. I think that also proves today’s digital innovation is basically technology led. Technology innovation can lead to the birth of new media mediums or platforms, and the change of media platforms can profoundly change the way that data and information are transferred.

As an extension of mobile device, mobile apps are taking over of the world. Today we can search and download any mobile apps on the Internet. They really facilitate our life in many aspects. There are apps helping people to manage their time and tasks, search maps and book hotels, check out when the bus is coming; there are also apps for entertainment and social media: people can check their emails, watch videos and play mobile games at any time and any places. Hailo, a cab app helping people to get a cab wherever they are, is a good example showing how apps integrate into people’s life by making spare resources accessible to people in need. These mobile apps not only make people’s life much easier, but also provide enterprise and companies a huge opportunity to monetize this new digital trend. For this reason, it is very necessary to analyze user behavior and user experience on the interface of mobile devices, so we can better understand how users get access to the content.

Freemium

Freemium is the combination of two words “free premium”, and it is a new business model in digital space. Publishers provide users their core product or service for free, whereas most of their profits are made from selling premium products to a small amount of advanced users. The advantage of this business model is that publishers can attract and accumulate a wider range of users by giving free service. The example given is Skype: although most of its Internet phone services are free, it charges from a small percentage of users who buy credits for unlimited calls or group calls. Freemium is only possible for the fact that the cost of copying digital products and distributing them on Internet is very low. Freemium has increasingly become a popular model in digital industry, I think it is due to Freemium reflecting the core Internet value of sharing resource and information in a global view.

Engagement

Another highlight of the digital trend is the emphasis on the engagement of audiences. Apart from data and audiences analysis, digital advertising also try to create two way conversations for communication. To involve their audiences into the conversation, more and more advertisements make efforts to show more of their brand personality and speak more like a human in open dialogues. Thanks to the flourishing social media, there are more and more interactive and one to one conversations that making advertisements customized. Looking for the future, the trend of focusing on engagement not only altered previous advertising or marketing models, but also influences consumer behaviors and habits in a deeper way.

For short, digital industry is a challenging space. We have to equip ourselves with updated technology and knowledge for every day. Anyway it is exciting for me to follow the new digital trends and better explore any potential innovations in digital industry.

Reference：

http://www.techhive.com/article/199243/a_brief_history_of_smartphones.htmlhttp://www.siia.net/blog/index.php/2013/09/10-digital-media-trends-you-cant-ignore/ http://socialmediatoday.com/marketingletter/1518801/10-digital-trends-2013-are-you-ready http://www.slideshare.net/EdelmanDigital/edelman-digital-2013-social-media-trends http://www.freemium.org/what-is-freemium-2/

[ryry86]

Digital Trends in IDM: Are We Ready?

The world's changing, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the media, the way media is presented to audiences, and the way audiences interact with media. All media is digital now, and new trends have emerged. Mobile has taken the world by storm, ridiculous-bytes of data are being compiled and analyzed and stored. Everyone and everything is connected, 24/7. It's a little frightening, but also pretty cool.

How is Centennial's IDM program preparing us for the road currently being paved by the onslaught of all these digital trends? I present a rundown of which courses are tackling which trends:

For starters, Interactive Narrative (the very class for which I'm writing this post) introduced digital media trends. Some of them I was aware of from everyday life (social media, mobile, apps) while others were foreign to me (analytics).

Speaking of which, Emerging Technology feels like a course designed specifically in response to these trends. We just had an entire class talking about analytics and social media, and spent another class learning about the innovative ways developers are creating apps for mobile platforms.

Production Tools is teaching us the basics of coding. One of the key elements of coding these days is responsive design, which formats code to fit a variety of screen sizes. It's now a standard practice that web services and products - sites in general - be usable for the mobile and tablet market.

As social media has become more and more prevalent, so to have the ways people and companies present themselves to the world. Apps like Instragram and Vine are allowing people to tell their story visually, through images and video. In Video Production, my group is in the process of shooting a video with the hope that it'll go viral on several different social media platforms as well as YouTube. We're learning about the theory and application of traditional filmmaking techniques because they will prove useful for these new methods of storytelling.

Last week's Fall Tour Interactive (which I wrote about in an earlier post) provided a wealth of information, showing us how actual businesses are adapting to these digital trends. Most of the game developers we visited use the free-to-play model. The Hailo app makes people's lives easier by saving them the trouble of having to stand by the curb, trying to wave down a cab, while an e-commerce platform like Shopify is allowing  businesses, big or small, to reach customers in a new way.

Many of these trends are still in the early stages; they'll only continue to grow. I imagine by the time this program is over, we'll be ready for them.

[beccamilz-blog]

The Benefits of Seemingly Trivial Digital & Social Trends

 Have you ever been extremely impressed with a company, agency or even a simple product? If you have, you have probably done further research into that particular company, agency or product to learn further about what other services they offer, who they are affiliated with and where an individual can purchase or obtain more of their particular services offered. Now, where would you go to do this research? The answer to this last question should be obvious, but for some companies, maintaining a strong online presence is simply not a priority or a concern.

Some companies may be falling behind on achieving and maintaining a solid digital presence, but many have realized the benefits of communicating with their consumers through social media platforms. As referenced by Carolyn Morgan in her article entitled, “10 Digital Media Trends You Cannot Ignore”, the author cites that communities provide ‘insight and new revenues’, as one of the major benefits of this particular community! Social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram provide online communities that a company can  use to connect with their users year round, consistently updating consumers on new products, opportunities and events.  Gaining an online following is extremely beneficial and encourages satisfied customers who are pleased with the company’s online content to tell their friends and family about their positive experience thus expanding their reach and user base. As well Morgan also addresses the importance of responsive design in order to achieve a successful and beneficial online presence.  There is nothing more frustrating then wanting to visit a favorite site on a mobile device and being unable to navigate through an unappealing and frustrating user interface when responsive design is not considered. A successful online presence should take this design into consideration so that they, as Morgan states, are able to  “create once, publish everywhere”. With including a responsive design for digital content, a company’s online content and presence must stand out and grab the attention of users before it is lost in the vast space of their competitors content. As seen in the Edelman Digital presentation on social media trends, intriguing and aesthetically pleasing photos stand out in a bland text filled newsfeed, making them easier to identify and digest for consumers.  This is important as content decay happens extremely quickly and companies and agencies need to take the creation of every post they publish into detailed consideration, striving to obtain as many hits and views as possible in the shortest amount of time.

Another incredible benefit to creating and maintaining a digital presence on social media platforms is that once unreachable, companies and agencies are now able to maintain community engagement. Community engagement allows for companies to be a part of a platform such as Instagram and repost consumer photos that promote their brand or products positively, amplifying sourced content, which ultimately benefits the company. Maintaining a positive relationship through communicating with consumers and customers on social media platforms is integral to a business’ success, and can be achieved by simply clicking a ‘like’ or ‘repost’ tab.

As stated previously throughout this post, being a part of the burgeoning social media community is absolutely essential in obtaining a loyal following and user base. As these social applications may seem simple and trivial to some, they now have the ability to promote and spread your digital content to audiences that were once unattainable. 

[omg-candice-world]

Surprise! Digital Trends that creep up before your eyes

As technology is progressing, competition between company and apps are fighting for consumers and worldwide attention, aiming to new heights to garner as much exposure in the most efficient way. The following articles that will be discussed all revolve digital trends that have surfaced recently, some points have been cross referenced but others that have been dissected into different streams: business purposes, consumer trends, and community engagement.

In the Edelman Digital article, the article summarized the emerging growth of apps and how consumers are becoming more engaged using mobile and social media. The article was simply well summarized and allowed readers to understand the social media trends through info graphics and bold statistics. Various charts and diagrams as well as visual brands have been used to identify companies and to make the text more enjoyable.

I also found it interesting as I was scrolling down to the customers’ response area and found one person contending on the statistics being inaccurate and that it was just based in US. This argument was directed at the Facebook data where it says a user submits a post per day, reaching 2.7 billion worldwide. The user complains that there are no sources to provide “authentic” proof of the statistics which I think is valid and forces users to question the sources and information companies are now publishing and whether it is entirely for their benefit.

Siia, a company that handles digital content for companies revolving around government matters, business development, corporate education and intellectual property protection states that some of the top digital trends are becoming free and accessible, therefore uniting audiences and generating new communities. What I found interesting within this article by Carolyn Morgan is the statement: “As traditional publishing transitions to digital content, whether web, mobile, social, video, data, events or communities, so the rules of the game are changing”, I begin to question the longevity of these “rules” since technology and content are constantly changing in this technology driven world. I felt like this article consisted of content that was denser and harder to process as I continued reading as opposed to Edelman Digital because they provided only short forms for companies to their examples and for people who are not in the industry or unfamiliar for what it stands for, it becomes hard to decipher what the author is trying to reference to their main point.

In comparison to these articles,“The top 10 digital trends- Are you Ready?” illustrates how each factor within each trend can help businesses grow. They use the example of Groupon and how they majority of their business is used through the use of mobile devices including tablets and smartphones. I like the fact that this article refers to businesses and the importance of discussing the trends within communities, especially social media being utilized for its digital word of mouth because customer input and comments are becoming more vital. Sites like Yelp will help businesses since people rely on other reviews that they know are authentic and not influenced by profit. 

[andyramjam]

Digital Trends and Their Impact on the Future of Content Strategy

    Digital content strategists are currently being forced to adapt to an evolving landscape. They can no longer rely on the old assumptions they made on how their content was being consumed online. As such, it has become the job of any professional in the digital content arena to get a grasp of the latest digital trends that will dictate how they shape their future content. The most relevant upcoming trends can be looked at under three over-arching banners: the rise of mobile, the move towards connectivity and the importance of engagement. Let us take a moment now to look at each of these over-arching trends.

    Previous assumptions would have stated that most online content used to be consumed via computers. We are now starting to a new trend where most online consumption will be done via mobile devices. Edelman Digital explored some of the latest social trends (full presentation can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/EdelmanDigital/edelman-digital-2013-social-media-trends) and found that users were increasingly using their Smartphones as a “kickoff point”. They were then, in much lower percentages, following up on these activities by using computers or tablets to complete the activity. This trend will signal a move towards an increasing reliance on mobile commerce as users start to use their computers less and less and look to be able to do things entirely on their phone. In order to adapt to this trend, content strategists are going to have to ensure that the design steps are being taken to ensure that the experience users get on a phone is on par, if not superior, to what they would get if they were at their laptop.

  What we are also seeing along with this reliance on mobile devices is a rise in the use of social networking tools. The most interesting part of this overall trend is the fact that we are seeing a greater emphasis being placed on visual storytelling as part of a content strategy plan. More visual content such as photos shared on Facebook or Instagram are some of the big factors driving increased usage of social media sites. As the technology progresses and market penetration continues of more sophisticated Smartphones, we will eventually see this trend move more and more towards video sharing. The huge rise in popularity of sites like YouTube and Vine proves that people are ready to start sharing self made home videos.

 As social media continues to play an increasingly important role in our lives, the focus of digital advertising will have to continue to adapt in order to properly disperse branded content to the right audiences. An increased emphasis on user engagement is what will be the driving force behind this phenomenon going forward. Savvy marketers and content creators are already well aware that users will pay more attention to content coming from a source that they feel engaged with. Brand strategies that are seeking to build communities around a certain brand and promoting content developed from within these communities helps to give a brand a sense of legitimacy that simply cannot be bought.

 While the landscape continues to evolve for content strategists, their goal has never changed. They are still attempting to tell the right stories and right users with the best content. These new trends simply represent more avenues by which these individuals can accomplish these goals. Hopefully, we will see more creativity with how all these trends are used in conjunction with one another so that these goals can be met and the needs of the consumer can be more efficiently fulfilled.