Author Archives: Stephen

About Stephen

Stephen Cataldo provides marketing and digital media services, website design, social media marketing, 3D animation, graphic design, product design and video and music soundtrack production services.

Mobile internet use passes desktop for the first time!

More users around the world are accessing the internet from mobile devices than from desktop computers for the first time, according to internet monitoring firm StatCounter. The combined traffic from mobile and tablet devices tipped the balance at 51.2 percent, vs. 48.7 percent for desktop access, marking the first time this has happened since StatCounter began tracking stats for internet usage.

It’s a huge moment for the web overall: this means going forward, companies that haven’t yet decided to focus on a mobile-first approach to their internet services and web properties really should, as the trend line is unlikely to reverse.

StatCounter also found that the maturity of the market impacts which is the dominant means of access, and as you might have guessed, mobile platforms are far and away the method of choice for internet access when it comes to emerging markets like India, where they account for 75 percent of use. More mature markets including the UK, the US and Ireland still see use swinging in favor of desktop, but the trend is still showing a narrowing gap.

This is not surprising news, given other recent milestones. In April last year, for instance, comScore found that the number of internet users who employ mobile platforms exclusively has surpassed those who only connect via desktop in the US (this doesn’t consider users who access via both methods). And Google revealed that more searches through its engine are being conducted via mobile platforms than on desktop as of last May.

This may have been a long time coming, but it’s still astounding how many major brands (including possibly our own) favor the desktop first and prioritize mobile web second. Maybe now that this tipping point has been achieved, that will start to change a lot faster.

5 Awesome Things You Can Do With Google Cardboard

VR Dylan Love, Men’s Journal

Google Cardboard turns your smartphone into a full-on virtual reality device without the high price tag. It’s made out of exactly what you’d expect, but its pieces come together to hold your smartphone in front of your face for use with VR apps.

With your phone acting as the display and your homemade headset holding it in the right place, Google Cardboard presents itself as a lower-impact Oculus Rift. There are a variety of Cardboard-style headsets available for purchase from the official Google Cardboard website. Some are fancier than others, but you can expect to pay $20–$30 for your own. (May we recommend the Star Wars-themed Cardboard?) After punching out the pieces and putting it all together, there are a number of apps to use that respond to head motions, immersing the wearer in a virtual reality landscape. These apps feature a designated “Works With Google Cardboard” logo so you know that they are specialized.

The Cardboard-compatible apps are cataloged on this page of the Google Play store, and they run the gamut. Titans of Space is a virtual reality tour of our solar system and outer space. A game called WAA! immerses you in a field of asteroids. Sisters presents itself as a terrifying ghost story game, and for the more utility-minded, an app called Tilt Brush Gallery lets you view sketches in 3D. This only scratches the surface, but they all serve the same purpose: to transport the app’s user to some place that is otherwise completely impossible to get to. With that in mind, here are five cool things you can do with Google Cardboard.

RELATED: Virtual Reality Check

Take 360-degree photos and send them to friends.

The camera in your smartphone is all you need to generate an immersive virtual reality-style photograph that someone can pan and scan through from their own Cardboard setup. Google’s proprietary photo app will stitch together the many photos required to make an entirely 360-degree experience, and it will even record live audio from the scene you’re capturing.

Read the paper in an entirely new way.

The NYT VR app provides users with news stories in virtual reality format “every month or so.” Content is one of the most obvious things to be reinvented by virtual reality technology, and the New York Times is one of the first media companies to get serious about being ready to have serious offerings when VR proliferates.

Disappear inside virtual game worlds.

Whether you’re investigating the spooky scenes of Insidious Chapter 3 or falling out of the sky in Caaaaardboard!, Cardboard can embed you in a daydream escape fantasy taking place on your smartphone screen. Just don’t let your boss catch you using it at work.

Explore the real world.

Browsing Google Street View through virtual reality goggles is sure to be nostalgic or adventurous depending on where you decide to “go.” Tour your old hometown, or brave the freezing temps of Antarctica from the comfort of your current home. An app called Orbulus zooms in on destinations of note, allowing you to explore everything from the Sydney Opera House to Paris at night.

Watch regular media in a new way.

An app called VR Cinema renders your stored video into split-screen format compatible for VR hardware, like Cardboard.

Instagram Marketing: Is It Right For Your Business?

For years, Facebook and Twitter have been the standard go-to’s for social media marketing. However, over the last few years there has been a palpable change in the digital landscape. The demographics of social media sites are starting to shift as new platforms begin to emerge. And as Facebook and Twitter invest more heavily in paid advertising, businesses are having a more difficult time getting organic exposure on these sites. All of this is leading many businesses to wonder if they should start casting their digital marketing nets a little wider. (Spoiler alert: most of them should.)

In a particularly telling sign of the times, in September 2015 Instagram surpassed Twitter in number of users, making it the second most used social media platform behind Facebook. Those kinds of numbers are hard to ignore and this stunning growth is part of the reason that people are starting to eye Instagram as the next great place to market their business. So how do you know if it’s right for you?

Instagram Marketing: Why It’s Awesome

While we’re firm believers that there’s no one-size-fits all answer when it comes to social media marketing, there are a few general rules of thumb that you can use to decide if Instagram is a good fit for your business. But first, let’s take look at a quick rundown of what makes Instagram marketing so great.

1. The Future is Mobile — and so is Instagram.

For years now the growing importance of mobile has been at the top of the list for every forecast of marketing trends — and we’ve finally reached the tipping point. As of 2015, not only is the time spent on mobile media (51%) significantly higher than that of desktop (42%), but there are now nearly twice as many mobile-only users (19.1%) as there are desktop only users (10.8%). Mobile is no longer just a growing a trend. It has become the primary way that Internet users are accessing online content.

This gives Instagram marketing a huge advantage over its top three competitors, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Unlike the other major social media platforms, Instagram was originally conceived as an app. Although the other social media heavyweights have invested heavily in their mobile apps, it’s difficult (if not impossible) for a platform that was originally created for desktop to have an app that functions as seamlessly and intuitively as a platform that is native to mobile. Just a quick side-by-side comparison of any of the major social media apps compared to the Instagram app makes this point abundantly clear. While other apps struggle with endless updates to more elegantly integrate multiple pages and menus, Instagram’s simple, stripped-down interface makes it easy and intuitive for mobile users.

Now that mobile is the primary digital media being used by consumers, it’s likely that emerging social media platforms will be mobile natives as well. While Instagram is perfectly positioned to take on that new competition, the platforms that were originally conceived for desktops are going to feel increasing pressure. In short, if you’re looking to invest in a social media strategy that will continue to have an impact over the long-term, Instagram should be a part of that strategy.

2. Your posts are more likely to be seen.

The great thing about Instagram marketing is that as you gain followers you know that they are actually following you. While Facebook and Twitter give users the ability to prevent posts from certain accounts from showing up their feeds, Instagram has no such functionality. If a user doesn’t want to see your content anymore, they have to unfollow you. This means that you can be sure that your content will appear in 100% of your followers feeds, greatly increasing the chances that they will actually see it.

Ensuring that your posts are being seen has become particularly difficult on Facebook. Not only does Facebook allow users to have a high degree of control over the content that appears in their NewsFeed, but the Facebook algorithm automatically curates each profile’s NewsFeed based on their connections and interactions. This means that if your followers don’t immediately and consistently engage with your content, chances are they will stop seeing it.

To make things more difficult for marketers and business owners, as Facebook increasingly invests in its advertising services, business pages are finding it more and more difficult to reach their followers organically (i.e. for free). While Instagram has introduced ads on the platform, thus far there has been no indication that they intend to treat the content posted by business profiles any differently than they have in the past, making Instagram marketing still your best bet for getting your content in front of your audience.

3. Instagram leads the pack for engagement.

It’s not enough to just be sharing your content — it needs to make an impact. Shares, likes, RTs, and +1’s are all indicators of how engaged your audience is with your content. The more you have your follower’s attention, the more opportunities there are to get your message out, build brand awareness, and engage in some killer PR. If leveraged correctly, these social signals can even pack a serious SEO punch. That’s why engagement is the Holy Grail of social media marketing.

Instagram’s clean, streamlined interface, judicious incorporation of ads, and focus on visual content creates an intimate atmosphere that is optimal for social sharing. So it’s no wonder why, when it comes to engagement, Instagram is the industry leader. While the exact numbers can be hard to quantify, estimates suggest that Instagram users are 58 times more likely to like, comment, or share a brand’s post than Facebook users and 120 times more likely than Twitter users. Those numbers are huge and they can make an equally huge difference for your business.

4. Businesses can brand themselves through visual storytelling.

Have you ever heard of an elevator pitch? The general idea is this: you’re the CEO of a startup or a salesperson trying to drum up new business and all of sudden you find yourself in an elevator with exactly the investor or the contact that you’d like to do business with. Basically, you have 30 to 90 seconds to tell this person what your company does and why they should want to work with you and you have to do it in a way that is interesting and compelling enough that the elevator ride ends with you getting a meeting and not an uncomfortable brush off. It’s as tricky as it sounds.

It’s also a great analogy for building your audience online, only instead of an investor you’re pitching Internet users and instead of 90 seconds you have 2 — maybe. This is where the visual storytelling aspects of Instagram marketing become a huge advantage. They say a picture is worth 1000 words and they’re right. You could probably sum up why the company you work for is so cool in 1000 words, but no one would stick around to read it. Or you could post a picture of your latest rooftop office party or your “workation” in Mexico and tell the same story in an instant.

How to Know If Your Business Should Be On Instagram

So you get that Instagram is awesome, but you’re still not sold on the idea that it’s right for your business. The truth is that despite the many advantages of Instagram marketing, it still doesn’t necessarily make sense for every business. Here’s a few rules of thumb that can help you know if it’s time for your business to take the plunge:

Your target audience is young. Approximately 90% of Instagram’s 400 million users are under the age of 35. Compare this to Twitter (where 55% of users are over 35) and Facebook (where 65% of users are over 35). The truth is that it doesn’t matter how great your product and your message are if you aren’t using the right channels to reach your audience. Trying to connect with young people on Facebook is like trying to text someone with a fax machine — it’s just not going to work.

Your product is visually compelling. Instagram marketing is all about visuals. Maybe you’re a travel agency that books luxury vacations or maybe you’re a company that builds sweet custom bikes. Whoever you are, if you are selling something that people are going to want to see, you need to be on Instagram.

Your competitors are on Instagram. If you haven’t yet, you should definitely check to see if your competitors are doing Instagram marketing. Even if you still think at this point that Instagram isn’t right for your business, if your competitors are already there and developing a following, chances are that they know something you don’t. Poke around in their profiles and try to figure out what it is, then get to work building a better version in your own profile.

If you think you can tell a visual story about your business — or you are trying to target a younger audience — Instagram needs to be part of your social media marketing strategy.

Are you ready to take the plunge with Instagram market, but looking to outsource social media? We’ve got a couple of pricing guides you might be interested in, both for professional social media marketing tools and small business social media marketing.

5 Advanced SEO Strategies You’re Probably Aren’t Using

BY PETER ROESLER

These simple but overlooked tactics can help boost your site’s traffic and revenue.

A lot of businesses have had their current websites for several years and while they may be functional, they may not be optimized for SEO in the current environment. SEO is a fast changing field, and even a site that was perfect a couple of years ago may be out of date when it comes to strategy and best practices. Many articles have covered simple things a business owner can do to improve their site’s SEO and internet marketing, this article will focus on a few advanced topics. Here are five advanced SEO strategies you probably aren’t using.

Optimize PDFs for SEO
Many people don’t realize that Google treats the PDFs on websites like webpages. Not just indexing the title of the file, but the contents within as well. For a start, this means that businesses should use keywords as they would on any other page on the site. Also, the PDFs on the site to promote can advance the company’s content marketing and SEO goals. Marketers should include keywords in their headings, give the file an SEO-friendly file name, and include all meta description options available when creating the file. Since, the links within the document count when clicked, be sure to include links back to the website in the logo (like you would on the website) and links to supporting content on the site. Finally, be sure to include as much text as possible and not rely too much on images. Google can read a pdf, but it still can’t assign an SEO score for a picture other than the information in the alt tag. So be sure to include a description to go with your graphics if you want the information to be easy to find through search.
Use Paid Promotion on Social Media to Boost Traffic
Business owners often want to improve their SEO rankings so they can increase their website traffic, but in some ways, that’s putting the cart before the horse. Google and other search engine algorithms take into account how much traffic a page gets when determining its ranking. So increases traffic to a site will boost its SEO, which in turn, boosts the traffic even higher. Social media is a great way to get the ball rolling. Most social media platforms have some form of paid promotion or ads that can be used to increase traffic. Business owners and marketers need to take advantage of these tools so they can find their target audience and lead them to their site. So long as the content is original and interesting to the audience and the targeting is done right, business owners can send a large amount of traffic for a small amount of money. And if people like what they see, they’ll come back to see more and share the link with friends. This sort of activity will boost a site’s SEO ranking.
Continuously Create Quality Content
There are a lot of ways that website owners can improve the structure of their site and SEO-friendliness of the content, but the one algorithm-proof method to improve a site’s search ranking is to continuously create content that’s useful to the audience. Though it may take effort and resources, businesses should endeavor to create blog posts and other forms of content for their site on a regular basis. This benefits the site in several ways. First, the SEO visibility of a site increases with the number of pages indexed, so continuously adding content provides more content for search engines to index. Secondly, creating blog posts that are topical, interesting or that answers a question takes advantage in the changes in the way people search and use the internet. People are searching for the answers to specific questions or looking for interesting things to share with their friends. Creating this kind of popular content will serve a business better than the most SEO-optimized traditional About Us page. Just be sure that the created content is SEO friendly.
Use Niche Directories
Many website owners are guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. At one point, directories were a large part of SEO, but now being listed in the wrong kind of directory can lead to a Google penalty. Understandably, many website owners have avoided all directories to be safe. However, this is overkill and deprives businesses of a very useful tactic. Niche directories are small directories created to serve a very specific community. If you’re a maker of handmade goods or the producer of organic foods, there are people looking at niche directories trying to find these kinds of sites. As long as the directory is targeted and useful, it’s okay with Google. Do a local search for your industry and see what directories come up and submit your site.
Focus on Neighborhoods to Improve Local
Local businesses are getting better at using the internet to find customers and changes to the Google algorithm for local search rewards small local businesses. For example, Google now divides more cities into subdivisions instead of considering each city as one unit. This means that businesses that identify their location within the city can turn up in important searches for local businesses. Businesses should try to keep a consistent name, address and phone number. Changing the NAP of a business makes it harder for Google to accurately place the business in local search radii. Additionally, businesses should include their neighborhood in website copy and marketing. This helps if someone searches for something like “deli near Southside Pittsburgh”. Also, be aware of nicknames and other ways the neighborhood could be identified, such as the dozens of nicknames for the different areas within areas of Manahattan (e.g. The Diamond District in Midtown).

So those were five advanced tips for SEO you may not be using. I hope you learned something new. If you didn’t learn anything but read to the end anyway, thanks for sticking around. For a wide variety of services that can be helpful to your business contact Kelsey Media Productions.

RIP Internet Explorer (1995-2015). We Knew Ye All Too Well

Microsoft Internet Explorer, a browser familiar to many and loved by few, passed away today after a long illness. It was 19 years old.

Bowing to the inevitable, Microsoft admitted today that it had decided to remove IE from life support. (IE will, however, continue to receive tech support through at least 2016.) IE is survived by Windows, Office, and the Microsoft Mouse.

RIP Internet Explorer (1995-2015). We Knew Ye All Too Well

Photo: YouTube

At its height, Internet Explorer — known unaffectionately as IE — dominated the Internet like no other software, accounting for 95 percent of all website visits. In recent times, however, IE’s popularity waned, thanks to the rise of powerful rivals and a long string of security mishaps. But even at the time of IE’s death, one in four Web surfers were using it as their browser of choice.

Microsoft marketing chief Chris Capossela says it was a heart-wrenching decision for all concerned.

“Many of us here on the Redmond campus loved IE. Yes, he was a cad and a scoundrel and a bit of a loose cannon, and the end got mighty ugly, but he was one of me own kind,” Capossela said, inexplicably breaking into a heavy Irish brogue.*

*This didn’t actually happen.

The early years

Internet Explorer 1.0 started life as a rebranded version of Spyglass Mosaic, itself based loosely on a browser developed by Marc Andreessen when he worked at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. It emerged into the world on Aug. 16, 1995.

By then, Andreessen already had his own commercial version of NCSA Mosaic, called Netscape. Like brothers separated at birth, the two browsers became intense rivals over the next four years. When Netscape introduced JavaScript, Microsoft countered with Cascading Style Sheets. Both companies continually upped the ante, creating the most intense head-to-head competition ever seen in the technology world.

Then matters threatened to turn violent. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates’s vow to “crush” Netscape formed a key piece of evidence in the Department of Justice’s 1998 antitrust suit against Microsoft. Fearing for its life, Netscape chose to enter the witness protection program, becoming part of AOL in 1999. It has not been seen since.

Rise and fall

For years, IE’s domination of the browser market remained unchallenged, and the pace of browser innovation ground to a halt. But IE’s meteoric rise was matched by an equally precipitous fall.

In 2004, a new rival emerged: Firefox. Based on code created by the old Netscape team, it was the first browser to pose a credible threat to IE. Four years later, Google released Chrome, another nimble alternative for Web surfers. Both free browsers slowly began to eat away at IE’s market share.

Then the security scandals hit. In 2006, researchers identified hundreds of vulnerabilities that could allow rogue websites to steal information or take control of users’ computers. PC World magazine named IE 6 the eighth-worst product of all time and “the least secure software on the planet.” In 2008, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) recommended turning off the ActiveX controls inside IE because of security concerns. In August 2014, CERT told users to ditch IE entirely until it was patched.

Photo: ZDNet

There were regulatory battles as well. To comply with a European Union antitrust ruling, Microsoft was forced to release a version of Windows without IE in June 2009. Those loading Windows 7 were able to choose from among a dozen browser alternatives. The browser ballot program concluded last December.

The final days

By this time, IE had plummeted from a commanding lead to a distant second or third place in the browser market, lagging well behind Chrome in nearly every survey. Even reports showing that IE 10 was actually more secure than its browser rivals could not forestall the inevitable.

If not universally mourned, IE will be long remembered for its many contributions to browser technology as well as for bringing Web surfing to the masses.

In lieu of flowers, Microsoft requests well-wishers to please support Project Spartan, the new and allegedly much-improved browser set to debut in Windows 10 later this year.

Advertiser Survey Suggests Images Better at Driving Engagement than Text

Posted by Kelsey Media Productions | written by Peter Roesler

For SEO and internet marketing purposes, the content on a website is one of the most important factors that determines the success or failure of a campaign. No matter how people get to a site, it’s the things they read and see while on the site that will convince them to take action with the business. Good written content is essential, but a recent survey of advertising executives suggests that good imagery may be slightly more important.

Recently, TripleLift surveyed more than 100 advertising executives as part of their inaugural Visual Web Awards. These experts were asked to rank eight different publishers across all verticals to determine which sites were the most attractive/engaging. The response to the survey suggest that advertising executives felt that visually-appealing displays are far better at driving consumer actions.

The winner of the award was a Macheesmo, a cooking site that uses imagery heavily on the homepage and throughout the site to drive engagement since it was created in 2008. Macheesmo was chosen by more than 40 percent of the respondents of the survey as being the most engaging.

“Enabling publishers like Macheesmo to beautifully integrate a brand’s creative into their site’s aesthetic is why we’re in business,” said Dan Martin, TripleLift’s VP of Business Development in a blog post about the award and the survey. “Advertising is as much as an art as it is a science and when publishers can easily paint their own canvas with great content and complimentary advertising – consumers will ultimately reward the experience with their time and attention.”

Looking at the website, it’s easy to see the various ways that images are used to drive clicks and engagement. For example, on the right hand side of the page, there is a link for an e-book. Usually, marketers promote these things with text-based links. Macheesmo makes the book more inviting by letting people click the cover of the book. The company itself also credits image-based design for a lot of their success.

“I think visual design is an incredibly important part of the user experience on the web,” said Nick Evans, the Macheesmo site’s founder and publisher. “It makes everything easier if you have a memorable design. Your visitors will appreciate an easy layout and remember a unique brand. Investing in a good design that showcases your content and voice clearly is some of the best money you can spend in the online world.”

Business owners and marketers can learn from this survey and work to make their sites more visually stimulating and engaging. For sites running content management systems like WordPress, there are a lot of plugins that can be used to make a site more visually oriented. However, it’s vital that marketers ensure the site still works on mobile devices.

One of the challenges of using an image-heavy layout is that it usually means there will need to be an entirely separate site for mobile devices. Responsive design can make images fit on the screen, but shrinking the entire layout so it can fit on a mobile will usually render the site difficult, if not impossible to use. Make sure to take these things into consideration when designing a website or, better still, hire a web design company that can handle the tricky stuff for you.

Images are an essential tool for marketers because they can can easily be used to generate interest, tell a story or promote engagement!

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Kelsey Media Blog

creative marketing and digital media services