It’s well known that social media can do wonders for a brand. Now that it’s 2012, many businesses have at least a Facebook page, if not also Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and Yelp, among others. These are great ways to promote brands, yet so many don’t take full advantage of this incredible opportunity.

Setting up profiles on social media sites and posting interesting things is just the first step. The key to truly getting the most out of your social media strategy is to have an actual conversation with your customers. Build a relationship with them by being responsive, engaging, and appreciative.

For example, if someone tweets your company on Twitter just to say they love your product, take this opportunity to thank them and learn more. Ask questions – find out how your product fits into their lives and what improvements they’d like to see. Get to know them and strengthen the personal connection they have with your brand. At the same time, get some free market research!

Or maybe you’re in the restaurant business and someone posted a negative review on Yelp. This is obviously not an ideal scenario, but it can be turned into a huge positive if given the proper attention. Post a genuine and empathetic reply expressing regret for disappointing them, then ask that they give you another chance to prove yourselves. Not only will the person who posted the review feel heard and appreciated, but potential new customers will see how much you care about their satisfaction. Don’t just respond to negative reviews, though! Make it a point to connect with everyone who takes the time to post a comment. Even the most loyal happy customers will feel more valued when you give them some of your attention.

Looking at social media from a customer service perspective can give your brand so much more value than just using it as a marketing tool. Organizations that are dedicated to participating in online discussions about their brand will build a devoted fanbase and gain an invaluable advantage over competitors.

At Album we pretty much live and breathe the web. We know that’s not quite normal, though. In fact, most people don’t even know what kind of web browser they use. They just know which icon to click to get from point A (their desktop) to point B (their email, the news, Facebook, etc.). As common as this might be, it’s important to be aware of the software you use to browse the web and whether you’re running the latest version.

The internet is a fast-paced and innovative platform, but adoption of the latest technologies is often stifled because such a large portion of users are still using old, incompatible browsers. It’s a situation where everyone loses – the outdated users because they’re missing out on a better online experience, and the up-to-date users because web developers are hesitant to utilize new features if only a fraction of their visitors can take advantage. With that said, let’s take a look at some of the specific reasons why everyone who uses the internet should upgrade their web browser.

Security

We’re all concerned about the security of our computers and personal information. Every time a new version of a web browser is released, its primary purpose is usually to fix security holes and bugs that existed in the previous version. Continuing to use an outdated version makes you a target for attackers who know how to exploit those weaknesses in the software.

User Features

Aside from security, new releases of web browsers introduce a ton of convenient new features for users. For example, a big change between Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 was the addition of tabbed browsing. Safari 5 introduced a new Reader mode which strips away all the distracting ads on a web page and just focuses on the page’s text. These features make browsing the web so much more enjoyable!

Technical Features

The part that really makes web developers want to cry is older browsers’ lack of support for HTML5 and CSS3. While these terms mean nothing to the average person, they do impact how websites look and behave. Did you know users of Internet Explorer often don’t get the full experience of a website because their browser doesn’t yet support modern design techniques? It’s true! Microsoft has even launched a campaign to get people to stop using Internet Explorer 6 – a browser they created! – because it doesn’t support today’s web standards. Another fun fact: There are more people browsing the web on mobile devices than there are people using Internet Explorer 6 & 7 combined! There comes a point where web developers stop testing older browsers for compatibility at all because the small number of users makes it difficult to justify spending time troubleshooting issues.

Performance

Put simply, old browsers are as slow as molasses! Upgrading from an aging browser like Internet Explorer 7 to something new like Chrome 16 can feel like switching to a whole new computer. It starts much quicker when you first open it and pages load a ton faster while you’re surfing the web. Who wouldn’t want that?

Recommendations

Ready to upgrade now that you know all you can gain from a modern web browser? Great! The question is, which one should you use? Everyone has their own opinion when it comes to which browser is best, but pretty much everyone agrees on one thing: Don’t use Internet Explorer! It might come bundled with Windows, but IE is far behind Apple’s Safari 5, Mozilla’s Firefox 9, and Google’s Chrome 16. You can’t go wrong with any of these three, especially since they’re free to download for both Macs and PCs.

Last week Adobe announced they will discontinue mobile Flash Player and no longer pursue bringing it to new mobile devices. It was a move most people in the tech and design industries knew had to be made, yet few expected Adobe to actually do it. There was a time, when computers were the only devices being used to browse the web, that Flash was the most valuable and effective tool for building rich, interactive websites. But in today’s world of low-power touchscreen smartphones and tablets, Flash simply doesn’t fit in.

Many of the reasons Flash is past its prime were eloquently described by the late Steve Jobs in his open letter, “Thoughts on Flash.” In the end, Adobe conceded that Flash isn’t appropriate for mobile. Instead, the company will focus on helping developers make native apps and HTML5-powered websites.

This is good news all around, especially for those who advocate using open standards on the web. HTML5 is governed by a standards committee made up of many of the biggest players in technology. Their shared goal is to help advance HTML5 for everyone’s benefit. Flash Player and the tools needed to create Flash content, on the other hand, are controlled solely by Adobe. Their goal is to sell more software and services.

Also, viewing HTML5 websites doesn’t require installing any plugins. In contrast, users must install Flash Player themselves and carry the burden of keeping it up-to-date to protect their device from the latest security threats. There are significant performance and power consumption issues to consider as well.

Adobe took a big step abandoning Flash Player for mobile devices. It’s a huge change in direction for their business model and, more importantly, the future of the web itself. While Flash Player is still being developed for PCs and Macs (for now), the message is clear: Don’t use Flash if you want a wide audience to see your website’s content.

Responsive design is the most significant shift we’ve seen in the way websites are built in quite some time. Rather than developing a website that only works well on computers (and maybe a totally separate site for certain mobile devices), the responsive approach allows designers to build websites that seamlessly adapt to any screen size. Whether it’s a computer with a huge display, a tablet, or a smartphone, a responsive site is smart enough to adjust its layout and features to give users the best experience.

The most high profile website to incorporate a responsive design is The Boston Globe, which launched just a few weeks ago. For those who are curious about what responsive design really is, take a look and try resizing your browser’s window to see how the site reacts. The agency behind The Boston Globe’s new site started the project in November 2010 and spent nearly 10 months building it from the ground up. They solved a number of technical challenges and ended up with a final product that’s getting a lot of attention from both the design community and the site’s readers.

The Boston Globe took a mobile-first approach, which meant prioritizing which features and content were most important. By default, the site serves pages that are lightweight and fast to load – perfect for smartphones on slower 3G connections. The site then loads higher resolution images and additional content if the visitor is using a tablet or computer. This is a technique called progressive enhancement, which establishes a baseline for all devices and then dynamically adds features and improves the user experience depending on the device’s size and capabilities. The site also utilizes HTML5 local storage to allow users to save articles to their reading list so they can view them at any time – even when they’re not connected to the internet.

It’s clear that a lot of time and effort went into creating The Boston Globe’s new responsive site. And while it’s fascinating to deconstruct for design geeks like us, it’s also important to focus on the business benefits. Put simply, it’s all about creating a more pleasurable and immersive user experience for their readers. People expect the sites they visit to accommodate them wherever they are, no matter what kind of device they’re using. Responsive design achieves that and brings their content to a much larger audience of people who no longer rely solely on their Mac or PC to browse the web.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a constantly changing game that requires a great amount of time and effort. It also requires keeping up with Google’s algorithms, which are always in a state of flux and mostly kept secret. Sometimes all of the information floating around out there can be a bit overwhelming, especially when a lot of it consists of outdated or shady methods. Luckily, Google does occasionally speak out about what helps sites rank better in their search listings. And, just as importantly, they’ve also made it clear what won’t affect a site’s ranking – despite what years of myths may say.

Keywords meta tag
At the top of web pages, there are typically a series of tags in the head of the document that store different types of information. Back in the day, one of the primary ways to get your website listed at the top of the search results was to use the keywords meta tag to specify a group of words and phrases you wanted the site to rank for. This is no longer the case today, in terms of Google’s algorithm. Years of abuse by spammers has lessened its value, which led Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer, to go on record in 2009 to say the keywords meta tag is now completely ignored by Google.

Description meta tag
Unlike keywords, Google does still pay attention to the description meta tag. It sometimes uses the information there to display a site’s text snippet in their search results. But they have also said they don’t factor the description meta tag into their rankings. So it’s still a good idea to include a description – just don’t expect it to play a role in how high the site gets positioned in Google’s results.

Robots meta tag
The robots meta tag supports a bunch of different values that search engines take into consideration when crawling the web and indexing pages on a site. For example, you can instruct Google’s system to not index a certain page. Or you can tell it not to follow any links on the page. But the robots meta tag is only necessary when you’re explicitly telling Google NOT to do something. Proactively telling it to index or follow a page won’t have any affect on ranking because it’s already the default behavior.

Submitting a sitemap
Submitting an XML sitemap to Google is absolutely a good idea, especially if certain pages are buried deep within a site’s structure and hard to find. A sitemap also lets Google know when a page was last modified and how important each one is relative to the others. It’s important to note, however, that none of the information in a sitemap will affect the actual ranking of a site’s pages. It merely lets Google know the pages exist, which might help them get indexed. Where they are positioned in the index is another story.

Focusing only on PageRank
PageRank is a proprietary system that was a big part of Google when it first came out. Since it came in a publicly available number, it was a measurable form of success that could be tracked and charted over time. The problem with this approach is that Google doesn’t rely on PageRank nearly as much anymore, if at all, when they determine their search results. They base their listings primarily on relevance, which is not a quantifiable value. Plus, a site’s public PageRank is almost always out of date and inaccurate because Google only updates it a few times a year. It’s a much better idea to focus on offering great content to your site’s visitors rather than chasing down metrics that don’t carry much weight.

Before we can even start talking about what’s happening with the web right now, we need to cover a couple of things. First, Apple was right. We are not being biased or anything, but when the now recently resigned CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, suggested we are entering the Post-PC era at D8 in June 2010, he was right. The Internet now is getting accessed by millions of devices that are not PCs. Smartphones, feature phones, tablets, watches, TVs, video game consoles and much more. And the platitude of reasons to access the web is even greater.

The second thing we have to mention, is that one fundamental truth of the web hasn’t changed at all since it was conceived: Content is King. The web is fundamentally a content delivery system. It doesn’t matter if you are reading a web page on a marketing site, checking out your friends status on Facebook or even streaming a movie from Netflix. The main star of the web is and has always been content.

So, why mention these 2 points and how does this help explain the web today?

We are gonna need a bigger boat arm!

The web is a great delivery system.  And now more than ever we have a multitude of devices and channels from which you can deliver your content to your consumers – expanding even more the reach of your message and your company’s online arms. That’s the first challenge of the web in 2011: The different sizes and different capabilities of all these web accessible devices.

Dealing with so many new devices has created a new set of problems and the response to them is called “media queries“. You might have heard about flexible, responsive or adaptive designs. But no matter what technique you apply or what you call it, the beauty of this is you can design your site to fit the screen, and progressively enhance it to make sure it works with all the newest features that all the different browsers allow.

We, at Album, for instance are taking full advantage of media queries on a new site we are designing that has specific features available only for the iPad (This strategy pays off since we know our client’s franchisees will all have iPads, and we can target that specific audience and make their experience even better because of that).

The other thing that is just growing and making its way across the web is content strategy. Because if “Content is King”, content strategy is what can make or break a website. You need both a content strategy and a good understanding of the devices that are available today to be able to deliver your content to the largest audience possible.

And talking about reaching even more people, one of the key things that defines the web right now is the number of new channels available for you to deliver your content. Besides your website, your blog, your Facebook page (which more and more companies favor over their webpages) and Twitter accounts, there is now Google+ accounts (soon to open to businesses), Foursquare, Instagram, and many more. The size of these social channels is so massive right now, that most old media channels, like TV channels and newspapers, have incorporated some use of them. Making them an indispensable part of any content delivery strategy.

That’s it. The web right now is accessed from all sorts of devices, with different sizes, software, and resolutions, and it has more popular platforms and sites than ever. Where do we go from here? In our opinion the Post-PC era Internet will continue to move from your desktop to your pocket, and mobile devices will pretty soon overtake your living room and replace the way you watch consume TV (if it hasn’t done that already).

A few weeks ago Budweiser introduced a new icon and packaging design for the first time in a decade. The company hopes emphasizing their “bowtie” symbol will help reverse a trend of declining sales, especially among younger consumers in their 20s and 30s. Most of the blue has been removed from the identity, with red and gold taking a more prominent role. In an effort to maintain the brand’s legacy, traditional elements such as the Budweiser Creed and Anheuser-Busch Medallion still remain.


The refresh is certainly bolder and more contemporary than their previous can, which was looking very dated (and not in a cool retro way). The question is whether consumers will resonate with the changes in a way that will result in market share gains. In the past, major redesigns of beverage packaging have been hit and miss. Some are wildly successful, others have no effect at all, and a few actually damage the brand.

One famous example of a rebrand that went wrong in this product category is Tropicana. The popular orange juice was totally overhauled in January 2009 only to have PepsiCo (its parent company) revert back to the old packaging within just two months, due to disastrous customer feedback. The problem with the short-lived packaging was that it seemed to throw away all of Tropicana’s brand equity with a bland design you’d expect to see from a generic bargain brand. Consumers could no longer differentiate Tropicana from other orange juices – the exact opposite of what a rebrand should accomplish.

While it’s safe to say Budweiser’s refreshed packaging is in no way a clear disaster along the lines of Tropicana, it will be interesting to see if it affects sales in the next few months.

A few years ago when internet-capable smartphones began gaining popularity, most people shrugged it off as a fad. The vast majority of businesses continued to focus solely on traditional computer users when building their websites & developing online marketing strategies, because investing in mobile seemed like an unnecessary expenditure for such a small group of users. Now that it’s 2011 and the future is clearer, it’s time to reconsider this approach.

Mass market adoption

Mobile internet usage is booming as more consumers get their hands on iPhones, iPads and Android devices. An infographic from earlier this year – shown below – illustrates a number of surprising facts. The biggest jawdropper? In less than three years, mobile internet usage is expected to surpass that of traditional computers. That means your customers will be more likely to visit your website on a phone or tablet than on a Mac or PC.

The future is now

Even today a sizable chunk of your audience is using a mobile device to find information about your organization. Right now one-half of all local searches are performed on mobile devices, with most of them leading to immediate action. Smaller businesses have a fantastic opportunity to make a splash by focusing in this area. And it’s not just people on the go; multiple studies have shown that a majority of current mobile internet browsing is done at home.

Get involved in social

If there’s one thing to take away from this research, it’s the large role social networking should play in an effective online marketing strategy. Over one-third of Facebook’s users are mobile, in addition to more than one-half of Twitter’s user base. YouTube video views are skyrocketing on phones and tablets, too. It’s incredibly important for businesses to be involved in social media to remain relevant as consumers purchase millions of new mobile devices and spend even more time using these services.

Social content sharing is all the rage nowadays and Google wants a piece of it. Similar to the Facebook “like” and Twitter “tweet” buttons that have been popping up all over the web for the past couple years, Google has entered the fray with it’s “+1″ button. It’s all in an effort to make the internet more personalized and community-based, which means the people have the power. And the great thing about Google’s solution is that it could end up driving more search traffic to your website.

What is Google +1?

To give a brief overview of what Google’s +1 is, it’s essentially a way for web surfers to publicly say “I think this is worth checking out.” If a user +1′s your site, they’re endorsing it for their friends, family, and other contacts to see. Google says it’s like giving something your virtual stamp of approval, which seems fitting.

How does +1 work?

In order to use Google +1, a user has to have a free Google profile and be logged into their account. When they search for something on Google and find content they like, they can just click the +1 button next to the search result. Now, when one of that user’s contacts searches for something similar, there will be an annotation under that site saying “John Smith +1′d this”. Naturally, seeing that a friend liked a website would make you more likely to click on it too.

How can +1 help my website?

Google has only just begun rolling out +1 to the masses, so it’s still in the growing stages. But as time goes on, there’s a great opportunity to increase the social buzz around your site. The first step is to add Google’s +1 button to every important page on your website. It should be placed in an easy-to-find location, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the page’s actual content. This makes it easy for Google’s users to browse your site and +1 it at their convenience.

If your site has seen some +1 action and received a decent number of endorsements, Google will take notice. It tells Google your site is reputable with quality content that its users will find both relevant and useful. As a result, it will be more likely to place you higher in its search engine rankings. Higher rankings means more exposure, which brings more clicks, which brings more leads. Needless to say, there’s quite a snowball effect that can take place.

There’s much more to Google +1, but these are the basics that will help you determine how to best integrate it into your site’s online marketing strategy. Time will tell just how effective it is for users and site owners in the long run, but getting onboard early could be very beneficial in such a competitive marketplace.

When putting together marketing materials for your company, it’s incredibly easy to get carried away with long lists of features or services. The longer the list and the more in-depth you get with impressive technical details, the better you must look to prospective customers… right? Unfortunately that’s not always the case.

Especially in a world dominated by the web, companies must vie for visitors’ increasingly short attention spans with catchy hooks and brief descriptions. Most importantly, the short amount of time you have to make your pitch needs to count. Explain the benefits of your products or services, not just the features. You have to make a potential customer desire what you’re offering, and the best way to do that is to make it all about them. Tell them what they will get out of the deal, and then go one step further by explaining why they should care.

In other words, what are the benefits of the benefits offered by your features?

A great example is Apple’s web page for FaceTime video chats on the iPad. The page consists of a few prominent headlines, along with short blurbs that describe why FaceTime is something you should desperately want. Apple shares some technical information – like the fact that it works over WiFi and there are two cameras – but that’s it as far as features go. The screen size and resolution isn’t mentioned, nor is the number of megapixels the cameras have. Those are irrelevant to getting you to want to buy the product.

Instead, Apple tells you what the benefits of FaceTime are. You get to see, not just hear, your long-distance family and friends from wherever you are. Okay, that sounds great but why should you really care? Because you’ll never miss a birthday, anniversary, or holiday gathering ever again. You’ll get to see your little niece or nephew blow out the candles on the cake. You’ll get to laugh at your childhood dog’s new trick long after you’ve moved away from home. You’ll get to watch your grandchildren open their gifts on Christmas morning. It will almost be as if you’re really there taking part in the events.

That’s a much more powerful and effective way to sell your products or services than just throwing some bullet points on your company’s website, isn’t it?