Content marketing is all the rage these days and for good reason, it works. So what is it? It is the art of creating valuable and consistent content that makes people want to read and share it. Giants like Ted, IBM, Chipotle and HubSpot are pretty much publishers in their own right, they have played the content marketing game like it’s a sport and it has worked out well for them. They do, however, have innovative visionaries at their helm and big budgets to back them. Without the big budget, how do you, take advantage of the content creation game? With your blog, of course. Your company blog is a magical place that can help in so many areas of marketing. It can help get people into your business, drive sales, create brand awareness and up your search engine optimization (SEO) standing. Your blog is what allows you to be […]
Building a Brand — The Right Way
Every day we work with small, medium, and large businesses on building a brand. Sometimes they are startups that require a complete brand built from the ground up; sometimes it is with bigger companies that previously had a solid brand but didn’t have the guidelines in place to keep it from getting diluted. Branding is as important for smaller businesses as it is for the behemoths. It is the way that a business differentiates itself from the competition. Brand gives your audience an immediate idea of what they can expect from your company. People hear brand and think that it’s this huge time-consuming monster that is going to eat up all their time that could be better spent on balancing the books or finding new products. Not true. Building a solid presence does require a little bit of investment of time and capital at the beginning, but it should not […]
How to Get a Job at a Creative Agency
So you want to get a job at a marketing agency. Who doesn’t want to work in a creative agency? It’s clearly where all the fun people work. Bar carts, candy stations and games like foosball and pool are the norm. It’s like a fun version of Mad Men, minus the rampant sexism and is where creativity goes to flourish – in theory, at least. talonX is no exception, not too be too modest, but we’re insanely fun to work with. We are always listening to wicked tunes, drinking mad amounts of coffee and we never (ok, rarely) take ourselves too seriously. Our team nights are pretty epic too. Naturally, people are regularly contacting us about potential employment. We have seen it all from people trying to get hired, the good, the bad and the downright WTF? Being the kind people that we are, we thought we would help out […]
Virtual Reality — The Future of Digital Marketing?
In the not-so-distant future, babies will be born and they will grow into kids who never knew a world without virtual reality. VR won’t be some new and awe inspiring technology to them, it will be the norm. The digital experience for these kids will be completely different to that of their parents and their grandparents. Until such a time, VR is this new(ish) and fascinating technology that is finally becoming financially accessible for us average folk. If you have had the opportunity to step into a virtual reality world you can immediately see how it is going to change the face of the digital world and it is only in the infancy stage right now, VR is only going to get bigger and better. Some of the virtual reality outlets are obvious, playing a video game is never going to be the same, you will be IN the game. […]
Sitemaps Are Like Pirates Gold
A sitemap is better than a treasure map. Ok, whoa… that’s not entirely true, allow me to rephrase. To your website, a sitemap is better than a treasure map. When you put a sitemap into a web designer’s hands it is akin to putting a lost pirate’s map into a treasure hunter’s hands – only a good web designer will strike gold more often than the treasure hunter. It is incredibly common for people to create a website kind of like they would a business card. They just want the website out there with a little information about who they are, what they do and then how to contact them. As time goes on they realize that they want a page for this, a page for that and the next thing you know their website is a 60 page monster and a nightmare to navigate. All of this could have […]
Background Videos That Don’t Suck
In the past couple of years internet speeds have increased exponentially and browsers have gotten better at supporting HTML5, video has become the new normal. It’s not just for advertising and informing the audience anymore, video has fast become a web design element. We are seeing more and more background videos on websites, but not all background videos are created equally. They may be cool and interesting at first, but if they are not executed well people will be abandoning your website faster than they would abandon the titanic. We don’t want this happening to you or your website, so we made a short list of how to make your background videos not…. well…suck. Compress We live in a very fast-paced world, obviously. So imagine going to a super cool looking website being blown away by their background video when all of a sudden it just stops, then starts, then […]
Website Preparedness Plan
People get so excited about websites. We get it, we’re in the web design business, we get excited about designing cool shit too! Allow me to rephrase that, people get so excited about their website – especially about getting their website built. They have the idea and the financial backing for their business and like a thoroughbred racehorse they are out of the chute, chasing down web designers. Unfortunately, that enthusiasm and excitement can lead people to hire the first designer that says ‘hi’ which can lead people down an unhappy road and turn what should be a great experience, into a god-awful one. Not that we want to put a damper on the fun, stay excited, stay focused. We want the website and brand design experience to be amazing for you, so we’ve compiled a list of what you should know before hiring a web design studio. Do your […]